The parent who receives charitable aid and yet provides pleasure for his child, and is willing to indulge him in his play, is blindly doing one of the wisest things possible; and no one is more eager for playgrounds and vacation schools than the conscientious charity visitor.
This very imaginative impulse and attempt to live in a pictured world of their own, which seems the simplest prerogative of childhood, often leads the boys into difficulty.

Three boys aged seven, nine, and ten were once brought into a neighboring police station under the charge of pilfering and destroying property.

They had dug a cave under a railroad viaduct in which they had spent many days and nights of the summer vacation.

They had "swiped" potatoes and other vegetables from hucksters' carts, which they had cooked and eaten in true brigand fashion; they had decorated the interior of the excavation with stolen junk, representing swords and firearms, to their romantic imaginations.
The father of the ringleader was a janitor living in a building five miles away in a prosperous portion of the city.

The landlord did not want an active boy in the building, and his mother was dead; the janitor paid for the boy's board and lodging to a needy woman living near the viaduct.