They were young men of from seventeen and eighteen to twenty-three and -four years of age, and bore the unmistakable stamp of the hoodlum class.

The hoodlum element is a constituent part of human nature, present in every one; the classification of the individual depending simply upon the depth at which the turbulent element is buried, upon the number and thickness of the overlying strata of civilization and refinement.

From the direction of the mine came the hoodlum racket which betokens, in Syria, the efforts of a number of honest labourers to perform their daily tasks in an efficient and orderly way.