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ARNUM and Bailey's circus had just come to town. I heard the roar of the lions and the trumpeting of the elephants when still a block away from Madison Square As I came nearer, that peculiar circus smell reminded me of those early days when the coming of the circus was the great event of my life, when it caused thrills to radiate from my solar plexus all through my body. What a delightful tingling in my toes and finger-tips! How I clutched that quarter of a dollar in my pocket for fear it might somehow get away! It was earned, if I remember rightly, by selling a snared partridge (or was it a muskrat's skin?).

Have you forgotten that time when you were a boy yourself, when every day was filled with wishing and every night with dreams? You were all alive then. Every fiber of your being, like the taut strings of a violin, was seeking expression. If you have forgotten those days, I beg of you don't read on, for you won't understand.

I am writing this for the gray-haired men who love to play with children and with whom the children love to play; whose souls have never withered up, and never will; who can understand a boy because their hearts are still young, though their legs may be reluctant to jump a three-rail fence.

My friends, then, who understand, you will recall that fringe of kids which is always around the entrance to a circus, hands

in their pockets feeling for the dime or quarter that isn't there, with wistful faces shining through the dirt. That shine comes from the same old thrill we used to have when we were boys and wished very much for something we didn't have the money to buy. They were there around the entrance to Madison Square Garden, dozens of them-barefooted, ragged, dirty, and happy. Mingling with the bunch, I asked, "What are you kids doing here?"

"We's just wishin'."

"What are you wishing?"

Quickly came the reply from a blue-eyed, curly-haired youngster: "Say, mister, we's wishin' some rich guy would come along and buy us all tickets into de circus, see?" Another volunteered, "I'se wishin' I was, a horseback-rider like that guy on de poster ;" and another, "I'se wishin' I lived in de country an' the circus come and pitched de tent near where I was livin'."

"What would you do then?" I asked.

"Gee, I'd sneak in under de tent mighty quick, an' so would all de udder guys.'

Around the corner strode a policeman, and at the cry, "Cheese it, a cop!" in every direction suddenly vanished my "wishin' squad.'

Those fluttering rags and pattering feet were gone, but they

left with me a bag of gold; more than that—a fortune, if we measure wealth in terms of satisfaction. For on that day I "junked" from my vocabulary and point of view forever the unsavory terms "hoodlum" and "vagabond" as applied to boys of the street, and ever since that time I've looked upon them as just a wishing squad." I've come to know hundreds of them, and have never had reason to change my new point of view. I have grown to feel with them, and to care. So there has come about a better understanding of these "misfit " boys who make up the "wishing squads" of our city streets.

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Maybe I was born with lots of faith in "misfit" boys. We had one in our town when I was young. Perhaps that is why the term original good" has always seemed to me to be a fair working hypothesis. In fact, I sometimes think it works out even better in practice than the other more orthodox term, original sin." Yes, I have faith-lots of it-in "bad" boys; the same kind of faith I have in seed corn, potatoes, wheat, rye, and in the soil. The potential is in the seed and in the soil and in every boy, but the Eternal Wisdom seems to require some one with common sense and common humanity to raise crops or to make worthy men out of "misfit" boys.

You will recall that in some parts of the Far West large areas of seemingly desert lands were formerly given up to sage-brush, cactus, and rattlesnakes. Then some men with a vision and with an understanding came along; they tapped the life-giving lakes among the mountains and they brought the water to the "wishing" soil. Homes were built and children played where formerly lurked the rattlesnakes. The sage-brush and the cactus gave way to the green grass, the fruit, and the flowers.

The soil of the desert was not really "totally depraved "— only judged so from its fruits. When neglect gave way to understanding and the proper means were used to bring out the dormant energy of the soil, abundant harvests were the result.

All normal boys, whether we call them "good" boys or "bad" boys, are just bundles of energy seeking expressionour "wishing squad." If the wishes of these boys are wisely directed and satisfied by intelligent parents and teachers, we will get the expression of this energy through their spiritual and moral growth which we want for the making of men. But if neglected or misdirected this energy will find for itself ways of expression in anti-social acts which lead to the making of crooks- -a harvest of enemies of society instead of noble men and good citizens.

Every State has its "human dump heap" for delinquent boys who have committed some anti-social act, such as truancy, vagrancy, incorrigibility, larceny, or "breaking and entering (I have been a trustee of one of these human dump heaps for several years)—an institution to which boys are committed by the Juvenile Court to serve time for delinquency.

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When one glances up from the formidable-looking commitment paper into the frank, open face of the boy, one naturally asks: "What got you into trouble, son?" The answer is almost invariably the same: "Playing hooky. Why didn't you go to school?" "The teacher was down on me, or "I didn't like the teacher," or "I didn't like school." "What did you do when you weren't in school?” "Went wid de gang.' "What did the gang do?" "Crooked copper, brass, an' things like that.' "Where did you sell it?" "To de junkman.' "What

did you do with the money?" "Went to the movies or bought eats and candy.'

Probably ninety per cent of "delinquent" boys will answer these questions in almost exactly the same language. Most of these boys have had very unfavorable home conditions, caused by poverty, drunkenness, or the death of 'a parent.

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The public schools are inadequately equipped to interest the wild boy who has not been properly domesticated. He does not fit into the nice round hole prepared for him in the school tem. There is not time, and there is little inclination, to trim the hole to fit the boy, so the teacher "trims" the boy, and the truant officer, when he can catch him, is kept busy dragging the reluctant urchin back to school.

Nature abhors a vacuum. So does a boy, whether it is in his stomach or in his pocket.

When a bunch of boys "on the hook" get together, each one having an empty stomach and empty pockets, nature finds cause

for immediate action, to the great pleasure and profit of the nearest junk dealer.

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Why do you steal junk?" I have asked many boys. “Because it's easier to get money that way." "Does the junkman know you stole it?" "Sure. How else could we get it?" The Fagin" who teaches boys to pick pockets is no greater menace to society than the junkman who encourages boys to become thieves by receiving from them stolen goods. So serious has this menace become that the New Jersey Legislature has recently passed a law making it a State's prison offense to buy junk from a boy under sixteen years of age. Legal evidence sufficient to convict them seems difficult to get, and the junkmen continue to smile and make their illegitimate profit.

With honest labor in great demand and juvenile delinquency on the increase, why should not the Government conscript the junkmen and put them at some honest job that does not help to make criminals out of the boys of the street?

Mr. Edison has said: "Let me have the pay the truant officers get each year, and I'll make all the boys scoot to school." Adapt the fascination of the movies to the needs of the classroom, and a very potent cause for truancy will be made to pull in the right direction.

The potential for the making of a noble man is in the soul of every normal boy.

A wonderful harvest of men awaits those who have a vision of the larger motherhood and the larger fatherhood; who understand what it means to a boy to feel, perhaps for the first time in his life, that "somebody cares" and is willing to give him a square deal; who have grown by experience to realize that the largest compensation in life does not come to us in terms of cash, but in terms of satisfaction.

It was said to me by a philosophical friend," Men understand dogs and horses better than they do boys. Whether men utterly forget their own boyhood or simply misremember it, it is true that they misunderstand boys as completely as if boys belonged to another species of creature."

For whatever reason, life is not arranged with much thought to the natural needs of boys or with much sign of insight into the boy heart. Education, restraint, rebuke, all are arranged with too little imagination for boy impulses that not only cannot be eradicated but that should not be eradicated. They do not sufficiently recognize the boy as a person. We read of boy hardships in biography with immense sympathy and resentment, and too often forget that the next wishing youngster we meet, particularly if he is breaking some rule in the making of which he has had no voice, is potentially living the first chapter of a biography.

I want to see the world made safe for boys. I want to see boys taken into the game, and not shoved aside as common enemies whose rights, wishes, needs, and potentialities are to be considered only in biographical retrospect. If the boyhood of Lincoln was important, not only to Lincoln but to the world, so every boy's boyhood is important; for though he may never be a Lincoln, he is, and will be, a factor one way or another in the welfare of the group in which he grows up. To thwart, badger, or belittle him is to lose sight, not only of something that belongs to him, but of possibilities for good or evil which it is our business to consider for the sake of the humanity on which his qualities will react.

The Hindus say, "My neighbor is myself in another body." It is every man's duty to say, "This boy is myself in a younger body-perhaps a body badly housed, badly fed, badly taught. badly governed, and, by the will of God, badly tempted. I shall do for him what I should like to have done for me in these conditions. I shall not too quickly and smugly say, 'My lickings did me good,' or "My hardships were the making of me,' but try to remember how many boys were ruined by lickings blindly administered in the wrong way at the wrong time, and how frequently needless and preventable tortures of hardships have scattered human wrecks along the pathway of life. I shall try to remember that it is not what I needed (if by a miracle I remember that), but what this individual boy wishes and needs, that is to determine my conduct toward him-my conduct personally and as a member of human society."

When this has become the common vision, there will no longer be a "boy problem."

[Those who are using the weekly outline should not attempt to cover the whole of an outline in any one lesson or study. Assign for one lesson selected questions, one or two propositions for discussion, and only such words as are found in the material assigned. Or distribute selected questions among different inembers of the class or group and have them report their findings to all when assembled. Then have all discuss the questions together.]

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I-INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

A. Topic: The American Army in France.
Reference: Pages 396, 397.
Questions:

1. What record are the American forces in France making? 2. What does this item show the spirit of Germany toward American soldiers to be? How explain this attitude? 3. Do you think it would be wise for our Government to give out fuller accounts of our soldiers' activities?. 4. What kind of experiences are ahead of our boys ey prepared over there"? Are we and they for these? 5. Read: "Under Fire," by H. Barbusse; "A Crusader of France," by Captain Belmont; "To Arms," by M. Tinayre-all published by E. P. Dutton; "Trench Fighting," by Captain Elliott (Houghton Mifflin); and "Cavalry of the Clouds," by Captain Bott (Doubleday Page).

B. Topic: Dare We Dicker for Peace?
No Time to Think Peace.
Reference: Pages 409-411; editorial, pages
401, 402.

Questions:

1. What are the convictions and the determinations of the American people as set forth by Dr. Odell? How does he know? Does he speak your convictions? 2: Show wherein Dr. Odell has or has not proved his propositions. 3. Which of the quotations from President Wilson's speeches do you like best? Explain why. 4. State your opinion of Germany in eight or ten sentences. 5. Give as many reasons as you can why America should or should not dicker for peace. 6. The Outlook says (page 402) that "this is the time not to talk or even think peace" (italics mine). Has it shown convincingly why? Is this statement by The Outlook too strong? Discuss. 7. What is Germany's most dangerous weapon according to The Outlook? Is there sufficient evidence to justify this position? 8. Are you willing to stand for peace negotiated with the present masters of Germany"? Give your reasons. 9. If you are willing to stand for such a peace, read "German Atrocities," by N. D. Hillis (Revell). Read it, anyway, and get your friends to read it. Read also "The Diplomatic Background of the War," by Professor Seymour (Yale University Press).

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II-NATIONAL AFFAIRS

A. Topic: What Is to Become of Our
Reservoir of Oil?

Reference: Editorial, pages 402-404.
Questions:

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who is not thus concerned? Be sure you prove what you say. 2. Discuss the various relations of your answer to question 1 to the significance of this editorial. 3. What has The Outlook said by way of proving that we are wasting petroleum? 4. Explain the Leasing System. Tell what think of it and why. 5. What provisyou ions of the Ferris Bill has The Outlook mentioned? What objections to this bill are considered by The Outlook? 6. What does The Outlook believe should be done about the regulation of oil production? 7. Do you think public oil lands should pass into private hands? Reasons. 8. Discuss why Congress is so slow in passing needed legislation. Are there ways of speeding up such legislation? State and discuss.

B.

Topic: The Regulation of Wages; Light vs. Night; Mr. Bryan Reaps; Educating Women Voters. Reference: Pages 395, 396, 397, 405, 408. Questions:

Note-Make this topic the basis of a study of the attitude of the individual toward public affairs. 1. Explain what is meant by "the law of supply and demand." For what reasons has it been commonly accepted? 2. The Outlook says that for all practical purposes this doctrine is now obsolete. Why? 3. What is taking its place? Will this mean more for the good, of society than the old belief? Discuss. 4. In what respects and to what extent should the Government control the individual in industrial matters? 5. Explain the daylight saving plan. Do you think it would be well for America to adopt it? Should the Government have authority to compel citizens to observe such a plan? 6. Tell how Mr. Bryan was received at Toronto. How account for his reception there? What do you think of the incident? 7. What is being done for the political education of women voters? (See pages 405, 408.) How valuable is this work? Why? 8. What, in your opinion, are the principles that should determine the attitude of the individual toward public questions? How is your attitude determined toward such affairs?

III-PROPOSITIONS FOR DISCUSSION (These propositions are suggested directly or indirectly by the subject-matter of The Outlook, but not discussed in it.)

1. Germany is worse now than in August, 1914. 2. The primary object of education is to free the individual from the tyranny of worn-out notions. 3. The average American does not know enough to form a sound opinion on public questions.

IV-VOCABULARY BUILDING (All of the following words and expressions are found in The Outlook for March 13, 1918. Both before and after looking them up in the dictionary or elsewhere, give their meaning in your own words. The figures in parentheses refer to pages on which the words may be found.)

Loathe, sophistries, inarticulate, pact (409); immunity, franchises of liberty, treason to humanity, quaver (410); oil, gasoline, petroleum, impunity, culpably, prodigal (402); patented lands (403).