are generally away from the extremes of hot and cold toward an optimum
temperature. The curve of truancies and runaways increases in a marked ratio at
puberty, which probably represents the age of natural majority among primitive
people. Dislike of school, the passion for out-of-door life, and more universal
interests in man and nature now arise, so that runaways may be interpreted as an
instinctive rebellion against limitations of freedom and unnatural methods of
education as well as against poor homes. Hunger is one of its most potent,
although often unconscious causes. The habitual environment now begins to
seem dull and there is a great increase in impatience at restraint. Sometimes
there is a mania for simply going away and enjoying the liberty of nomadic life.
Just as good people in foreign parts sometimes allow themselves unwonted
liberties, so vagrancy increases crime. The passion to get to and play at or in the
water is often strangely dominant. It seems so fine out of doors, especially in the
spring, and the woods and fields make it so hard to voluntarily incarcerate
oneself in the schoolroom, that pubescent boys and even girls often feel like
animals in captivity. They long intensely for the utter abandon of a wilder life,
and very characteristic is the frequent discarding of foot and head dress and even
garments in the blind instinct to realise again the conditions of primitive man.
The manifestations of this impulse, if read aright, are grave arraignments of the
lack of adaptability of the child's environment to his disposition and nature, and
with home restraints once broken, the liabilities to every crime, especially theft,
are enormously increased. The truant, although a cording to Kline's
measurements slightly smaller than the average child, is more energetic and is
generally capable of the greatest activity and usefulness in more out-of-door
vocations. Truancy is augmented, too, just in proportion as legitimate and
interesting physical exercise is denied.
The vagrant, itinerant, vagabond, gadabout, hobo, and tramp, that Riis has made
so interesting, is an arrested, degenerate, or perverted being who abhors work;
feels that the world owes him a living; and generally has his first real nomad
experience in the teens or earlier. It is a chronic illusion of youth that gives
"elsewhere" a special charm. In the immediate present things are mean, dulled
by wont, and perhaps even nauseating because of familiarity. There must be a
change of scene to see the world; man is not sessile but locomotor; and the
moment his life becomes migratory all the restraints and responsibilities of
settled life vanish. It is possible to steal and pass on undiscovered and
unsuspected, and to steal again. The vagabond escapes the control of public
sentiment, which normally is an external conscience, and having none of his own
within him thus lapses to a feral state. The constraint of city, home, and school is