The morning news., 1891-09-20
CHILD LIFE In NEW YORK
MANY RACES OF CHILDREN JOST-
LING ATFLAY.

NNA@N CANAAt ASl'N- IL tNeCA AIueO
thought the street children of Paris a most
precocious and extraordinary class. The
loquacious traveller has never ceased to ex-
press marvel at the gamins of Genoa and
Naples, and everybody knows of Dickens
admiration for the youngsters of the British
capital. But New York, epi:ome as it is of
all that other cities have produced, pre-
sents a collection of children more remark
able in variety and more surprising in
characteristics than the children Of any
other city in the world.
In any of the big European cities there
is and must necessarily be a certain uni
formity in the traits observable among chill
dren. In New York there is no uniformity.
The German youngsters are one class; the
Hebrew youngsters are another, while the
Italian children make up another large and
peculiar division. Each division evinces a
certain Differentiation in habits, If the
language differs SO do the sports. Certain
games characteristic OF child life in every
civilized country. is found among these diff
ferent races of children in curiously varied
FORMS
But it is to be noted that the race divis-
1OL Is IuOIo Idplulf OUllIeTdbeu bulOUk tuo
children than among their parents. Labor
and trade are slow in welding races to-
gether. After working hours the clannish
tendency draws the different races into
groups again, and the masses are strangely
compact. But at play the hard edges of
the clan cast are melted away. The free
masonry of child sport unltes the Hebrew,
and the Italian, and the German, the Pole
and the Swede, and the different races over
no Yrnhlafn hu a iarOOTl
more extraordinary than any patols the
world has ever heard before.
When they are together the Italian chill
dren speak u dialect that is supposed to be
Italian. 1t is, indeed, the kind of thing you
will hear in the underground dens of Naples,
with a pungent admixture of words that
one can call nothing else but New Yorkese.
In their struggle with the new tongue the
babies from sunny Italy naturally master
the "bad words" first. There Is distin-
guished precsdsnt for this habit. When
they mingle, say, with a lot of German
children, the young Italians and their Teu-
tonic companions compromise on an almost
unrecognizable English. 1t is a marvellous
compound. But it goes.
The Italian method of acquiring English
is always slovenly. Italian children are so
slow in getting a comprehendable pronun-
citation that the boys have made but mod
crate invasion of the newspaper selling
field. This difficulty, however, has never
kept them from backing boots, and they
have swept down on the "shine" business
like O resistess invading army. In this
trade vocab bularY of but three words is
requisite. You must be able to say "shinen
ana ''five cents" After they are at it for
awhile the Toys evolve their salutation into
"Shine, bossm But at most very slender
requirement in the language will answer.
The other day saw a street picture that
was at once, a reminder of the young
Italians supremacy in the bootblRckiug
profession and comment on the character
istics of Young America in general as he is
witnessed in the metropolis On one of
those pompous "shiningh stands In the
Bowery. stand so constructed that the
'shiner" does not require to get upon his
knees as was required of the bootblack in a
less democratic antiquity, was seated a
dapper boy In knee breeche5, who, with
finely nonchalant air. was submitting to the
shce polishing process at the hands of
an Italian boy. The entirely unembar-
raised demeauor of the seated boy, the en-.
ergetic interest of the youth with the brush
for when an Italian is caught very young
he is susceptible of being melted to short
paroxySms Of real activlty-and the gen
eral ensemble of the picture, were sufficient
to suggest more than one fruitful reflection
upon the present status Of civilization as
visible in New York.
New York has a compulsory education
law and more or less vigilant Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, but
certain foreign elements, ignorant of betn,
and incapable of understanding the func-
tion of either, treat their offspring with a
beautiful disregard of those decencies which
Americans have been trying to respect A
walk through Baxter street, or the Bend, or
Essex street, or Delancey street-a stroll
fOh irrht Ien, 4
will suggest some reason why the fertile
but impecunious parents insist upon getting
something out of their children at a very
early age. There is scarcely trade in some
feature of which the services of children
cannot be made useful. The little PEOPLE
are active everywhere, alternating work
and play or combining both. MInding baby
is familiar pursuit. Many little drag
gled girl of 8 or is seen struggling with
baby almost as big as herself Here and
there little one is trotting with beer
can, hurrying to avoid the scolding for
allowing the froth to disappear The chest
nut vender has bis children at the crank of
the roasting apparatus. In thousands of
shops children watch the coun ter. Mamma
is in the back shop sewing on pants Pop
works at the brewery.
| have before me little photograph that
illustrates a phase of child life, and illus
trates it with a kind of pathos In the
warm season now closing New York is
crowded with soda fountains. The soda
water is very bad, but it is wet and cold and
people like it, even when it is so poor that
you get goblet of it for cents. These
fountains are often minded" by children,
who very often not only act as call bell to
the contiguous proprietor, but actually
wrestle with the difficulties of the faucets
and syrups.
But, after all, the element of happiness
does not seem to be distributed in the pre-
else ratio estimated by the theorists. The
poor children are not all depressingly mis-
erable, any more than the rich children are
all exuberantly happy. The children In
Essex street, on Cherry Hill. In the Bend
and on Tenth avenue all seem TO be having
an ANONYMOUSLY jolly time. The children in
Madison square and Bryant park are
cleaner, but there is Yisibly paler cast to
the fun they are having. They are trained
to take care Of their clothes. They have to
keep off their knees, when their knees are
the very things they want to make use Of.
The babies in the perambulators have a
snug and fluffy, but somehow an impris-
oned look, after you have been studying
street. And then the white-aproned nurses,
who love gossip and dote on young police
men. are scarcely more attentive than
the child nurses Of the quarters who try to
play "Jecks'' and mind the baby at the
same time. The Park avenue children
know almost nothing at all about climbing,
except so much as they may learn in their
weli-dressed summer outings. while the
Cherry Hill boys keep in capital training all
the year round The Park avenue boy has
a piano in the house. The Cherry Hill boy