Page:The Art of Helping People Out of Trouble (1924).pdf/227

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sort of sequence that enabled Tony Patrello successfully to make the adjustment to adolescence. In the years that immediately succeeded his father's death he had been drifting farther and farther away from the influence of his home. At thirteen years of age he preferred the manners and habits of the street to those which his mother urged upon him. He was a frequent truant from school and a leader of a group of boys whose deviltries in the neighborhood threatened soon to bring them before the juvenile court. No appeal seemed to have any effect upon him.

One morning a social case worker happened to see Tony take his father's violin down from the wall. She asked him whether he would like to learn to play upon it. He thought that perhaps he would. Lessons at a neighboring settlement were arranged for immediately. It was a new experience and for nearly a month Tony was engrossed in it. He spent all his spare moments in practice and measured time by the intervals between his lessons. His attendance at school became regular, for the social worker had conditioned his instruction in music upon this, and he began to devote to his violin the leisure that had been wasted on the street. The dynamic of adventure possessed him