Let us take one of these boys, who has learned in his six or eight years to speak his native language, and to feel himself strongly identified with the fortunes of his family.  Whatever interest has come to the minds of his ancestors has come through the use of their hands in the open air; and open air and activity of body have been the inevitable accompaniments of all their experiences.  Yet the first thing that the boy must do when he reaches school is to sit still, at least part of the time, and he must learn to listen to what is said to him, with all the perplexity of listening to a foreign tongue.  He does not find this very stimulating, and is slow to respond to the more subtle incentives of the schoolroom.  The peasant child is perfectly indifferent to showing off and making a good recitation.  He leaves all that to his schoolfellows, who are more sophisticated and equipped with better English.  His parents are not deeply interested in keeping him in school, and will not hold him there against his inclination.  Their experience does not point to the good American tradition that it is the educated man who finally succeeds.  The richest man in the Italian colony can neither read nor write—­even Italian.  His cunning and acquisitiveness, combined with the credulity and ignorance of his countrymen, have slowly brought about his large fortune.  The child himself may feel the stirring of a vague ambition to go on until he is as the other children are; but he is not popular with his schoolfellows, and he sadly feels the lack of dramatic interest.  Even the pictures and objects presented to him, as well as the language, are strange.

If we admit that in education it is necessary to begin with the experiences which the child already has and to use his spontaneous and social activity, then the city streets begin this education for him in a more natural way than does the school.  The South Italian peasant comes from a life of picking olives and oranges, and he easily sends his children out to pick up coal from railroad tracks, or wood from buildings which have been burned down.  Unfortunately, this process leads by easy transition to petty thieving.  It is easy to go from the coal on the railroad track to the coal and wood which stand before a dealer’s shop; from the potatoes which have rolled from a rumbling wagon to the vegetables displayed by the grocer.  This is apt to be the record of the boy who responds constantly to the stimulus and temptations of the street, although in the beginning his search for bits of food and fuel was prompted by the best of motives.

The school has to compete with a great deal from the outside in addition to the distractions of the neighborhood.  Nothing is more fascinating than that mysterious “down town,” whither the boy longs to go to sell papers and black boots, to attend theatres, and, if possible, to stay all night on the pretence of waiting for the early edition of the great dailies.  If a boy is once thoroughly caught in these excitements, nothing can save him from over-stimulation and consequent debility and worthlessness; he arrives at maturity with no habits of regular work and with a distaste for its dulness.