The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets | Page 7

whole history of civilization been but one long effort to
substitute psychic impulsion for the driving force of blind appetite?
Society has recognized the "imitative play" impulse of children and
provides them with tiny bricks with which to "build a house," and dolls
upon which they may lavish their tenderness. We exalt the love of the
mother and the stability of the home, but in regard to those difficult
years between childhood and maturity we beg the question and unless
we repress, we do nothing. We are so timid and inconsistent that
although we declare the home to be the foundation of society, we do
nothing to direct the force upon which the continuity of the home
depends. And yet to one who has lived for years in a crowded quarter
where men, women and children constantly jostle each other and press
upon every inch of space in shop, tenement and street, nothing is more
impressive than the strength, the continuity, the varied and powerful
manifestations, of family affection. It goes without saying that every
tenement house contains women who for years spend their hurried days
in preparing food and clothing and pass their sleepless nights in tending

and nursing their exigent children, with never one thought for their own
comfort or pleasure or development save as these may be connected
with the future of their families. We all know as a matter of course that
every shop is crowded with workingmen who year after year spend all
of their wages upon the nurture and education of their children,
reserving for themselves but the shabbiest clothing and a crowded place
at the family table.
"Bad weather for you to be out in," you remark on a February evening,
as you meet rheumatic Mr. S. hobbling home through the freezing sleet
without an overcoat. "Yes, it is bad," he assents: "but I've walked to
work all this last year. We've sent the oldest boy back to high school,
you know," and he moves on with no thought that he is doing other
than fulfilling the ordinary lot of the ordinary man.
These are the familiar and the constant manifestations of family
affection which are so intimate a part of life that we scarcely observe
them.
In addition to these we find peculiar manifestations of family devotion
exemplifying that touching affection which rises to unusual sacrifice
because it is close to pity and feebleness. "My cousin and his family
had to go back to Italy. He got to Ellis Island with his wife and five
children, but they wouldn't let in the feeble-minded boy, so of course
they all went back with him. My cousin was fearful disappointed."
Or, "These are the five children of my brother. He and his wife, my
father and mother, were all done for in the bad time at Kishinef. It's up
to me all right to take care of the kids, and I'd no more go back on them
than I would on my own." Or, again: "Yes, I have seven children of my
own. My husband died when Tim was born. The other three children
belong to my sister, who died the year after my husband. I get on pretty
well. I scrub in a factory every night from six to twelve, and I go out
washing four days a week. So far the children have all gone through the
eighth grade before they quit school," she concludes, beaming with
pride and joy.
That wonderful devotion to the child seems at times, in the midst of our

stupid social and industrial arrangements, all that keeps society human,
the touch of nature which unites it, as it was that same devotion which
first lifted it out of the swamp of bestiality. The devotion to the child is
"the inevitable conclusion of the two premises of the practical
syllogism, the devotion of man to woman." It is, of course, this
tremendous force which makes possible the family, that bond which
holds society together and blends the experience of generations into a
continuous story. The family has been called "the fountain of morality,"
"the source of law," "the necessary prelude to the state" itself; but while
it is continuous historically, this dual bond must be made anew a
myriad times in each generation, and the forces upon which its
formation depend must be powerful and unerring. It would be too great
a risk to leave it to a force whose manifestations are intermittent and
uncertain. The desired result is too grave and fundamental.
One Sunday evening an excited young man came to see me, saying that
he must have advice; some one must tell him at once what to do, as his
wife was in the state's prison serving a sentence for a crime which he
himself had committed. He