Owen Wister

“ To your widely watchful mind any stranger, and almost any friend, may suddenly turn into the policeman, or come out from behind something and beat you or cheat you, and you pass your shrewd, self-sufficient days in alertness against mankind. And so this crowd of boys hovering at the threshold or near it on the dark pavement, full of the inevitable unhappy cleverness that life had taught each one, and with the feeling clear among them that a mere open door and a light were by no means enough to catch such accomplished birds as they. ”

“ The most belligerent cannot wage war without some enemy to complete the bargain, and thus the stranger in the Evening Home settles on a bench with blankness at first in his spirit, and presently with the dawn of a new idea—that here are a number of people known to him who are finding enjoyment in a manner not known to him, and he will investigate how this is managed, and why some of them wear badges. ”

“ But teaching, either mental or manual, is not the central aim of this place, and the Evening Home and Library Association, of Chestnut and Aspen streets, Philadelphia, stands alone of its kind in our country, and, so far as I know, has but one counterpart anywhere, which is the People's Palace in London. There, too—but only there—some wise and devoted people have got hold of a notion that lies below reading and arithmetic and carpentering. ”

“ After each one of us has learned to walk and talk and spell, and perhaps be president of something, and the mansion of self is crowded from floor to roof with business and recreation, still some room is left in the heart of nearly every man, vacant of his own concerns, ready for another's use—a sort of lodging for strangers, in fact, the spare room of benevolence. ”

“ Our cities are full of institutions where trade knowledge is well taught, but none of them are meant to fill the lack for which the Evening Home stands, and that is simply home influence for those who have never known it. ”

“ When the volunteer has somewhat learned the character of each individual, his special enjoyments and needs, he is recommended to what seems appropriate for him. He must join the Home, become a member for fifteen cents a year, and wear the club button. Then he has waiting for him many clubs and classes: the night schools, the manual training school, the cooking school, military drill, debating club, fife and drum corps, and last, but in many cases undoubtedly best for persuading him to system and discipline, music, which he can take in the form of singing, piano, guitar, and banjo. ”

“ For in everything that he tries to learn he is opposed inveterately by his own mental incoherence. Reading and writing are, I suppose, the most distasteful to him; but even modelling the Lucerne Lion in clay does not generally hold him long absorbed at the outset; and though I saw heads of animals and angels that showed evident facility, and were the promise of a future livelihood for their designer, the main room was filled with little vacant idlers who could make up their minds to nothing but noise, until, at the end of the evening, they were gathered to the piano ”

“ It is the lack of independence and persistence far more than scanty book-learning which brings most men to begging and the penitentiary, and in this experiment that is being tried with gathering success at Chestnut and Aspen streets the street boy is found invariably devoid of application. No matter how sharp his wits may be, how naturally apt for acquisition—and many have excellent brains—never a one begins with the slightest notion of sticking to a thing. ”

“ I succeeded in counting seventy-five of them, but there were more—a company showing various styles of orderliness and self-respect, made from the humblest, the very humblest, of the homeless and the penniless—boys who had often not got so far as selling papers, who had never done a coherent thing in their lives, and who came into this place of their own free-will, and had learned better without rules. For no rules exist here, printed, written, or unwritten. The new-comer meets no restriction more formulated than those which the more lucky of us began with in the homes of our childhood. ”

“ For without the power of attention, be it well remembered, the manual training schools will accomplish nothing for him. He will not sit still long enough, but, having strayed in, will directly, upon discovering himself to be bored, stray out again to pervade the streets and mature himself in evil.
Suspicion, as I have said, is the cardinal taint in these young people, and to allay suspicion is the first effort of the volunteers. It is a volunteer's custom to select a group of about ten boys, and tell them his or her name, and on what evenings he or she will be at the Evening Home. ”

“ I do not suppose that it lies in the imagination of most of us to conceive what we should have been like had we begun our lives alone and uncared for by a single human being, and I believe that the sense of being valued by somebody is inestimable in the making of character ”

“ If you own no father or mother in particular, and have been hopping about the curb-stones for some dozen years, you may not be able to read or write, but your knowledge of traps and how to escape them is full-fledged. ”

“ In no other place can we acquire the sorrowful wholesome knowledge of how many upon this earth directly need our help, and what various help they call for, day and night. Yet if a man the year round did nothing else than minister to the thousand shapes in which Want roams among us, he could not reach all or the half ”

“ You have learned that, and therefore can learn some more." Again some of them went away, but returned, to find the leader eternally shouting by the piano, and the chorus replying, "Sir Joseph's barge is seen." By this time the music, and possibly the drama, began to interest them, and they caught at the sentiment of "Fair moon, to thee I sing." Pinafore was now creeping from chaos, when a sudden twist in the boy nature cropped out and threatened to tangle the whole enterprise. The big boys of seventeen would not sing with the small ones of twelve. ”

“ The amount can be withdrawn in whole or in part by giving notice and presenting the card, upon which the stamps are cancelled. I took some of these to look at, and it was strange to count at sight how various were the inclinations to save. Here was a book full of five-cent stamps, while the next contained a single deposit of a cent. A small boy stood by, and informed the volunteer, in a determined manner, that he preferred spending his money. She abstained from over-advising him, but dropped an observation upon the prudence of certain other boys. ”

“ If this work spreads elsewhere, our jails and our penitentiaries will certainly have fewer in them, more of the destitute will have started upon life with something like a home; and it is there, I think, that charity begins. ”

“ AT the threshold, outside which we stood before entering, the small natives of the street had gathered themselves, and, partly curious, mainly derisive, considered the premises with suspicion. The door was open for any that might wish to look further ”