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.
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