Sometimes he diverts himself throwing stones at the windows of passing cars, and splintering the glass into the eyes of frightened ladies and children, and suddenly disappearing as if the earth had opened and swallowed him, as you wish some day it would.
What this boy will be as a man, it is not difficult to tell. He counts one at the ballot-box, remember that, when you deny cultivated, intelligent, loyal women a vote there.
If there is one sight more offensive to me in New York than another, it is that of a servant in livery. Daily my republican soul is vexed by the different varieties of this public nuisance. Sometimes he appears to me in the sacerdotal garb—a long, petticoat-y suit of solemn black, with stainless stiff white cravat. Then again he crosses my path, bedizzened in blue, with yellow facings, and top-boots. Then again he flames out like a poll-parrot, in green coat, and scarlet waistcoat. Again, his white gloves, and broad hat-band, are the only public advertisements of his servitude. Generally upon the hat of this animal is mounted the "cockade," which his parvenu master imagines is just the thing, but which in reality is in "the old country" only worn by servants of military men. Yesterday I saw a vehicle, in which was seated a gentleman, driving a fine pair of horses, and behind him, on a small seat, was his man-servant with his arms folded like a trussed turkey, and his back turned to his master. This last fact seemed to me a very funny one; but, I dare say, it is satisfactorily accounted for in some book of heraldry, unfortunately not in my library. Now, it is not for a moment to be supposed, that when but so lately the nation was struggling for its "God-given rights," that the men of America are interested in these finikin-equine-millineries. Of course not. They are to be pitied; they are undoubtedly the too compliant victims of weak wives and silly daughters. For themselves, I have no doubt they are sick at their manly hearts at these servile and badly-executed imitations of old-country flunkeyism, and blush, with an honest shame, at being obliged to parade this disgusting and ill-timed exhibition, in the same streets where our maimed soldiers are limping home, with our torn and blackened flag, which tells so well its mute, eloquent story.
Let me speak of a pleasanter topic: my visit to the newsboys. One Sunday evening I went to "The Newsboys' Lodging House, 128 Fulton Street, New York." Few people who stop these little fellows in the street to purchase a paper, ever glance at their faces, much less give a thought to their belongings, associations or condition. Oh! had you only been down there with me that evening, and looked into those hundred and fifty intelligent, eager faces, numbered their respective ages, inquired into their friendless past, given a thought to the million temptations with which their present is surrounded, spite of all the well directed efforts of Christian philanthropy, and looked forward into their possible future, your eyes would have filled, and your heart beat quicker, as you have said to yourself, Oh, yes; something must be done to save these children.
Children! for many of them are no more. Children! already battling with life, though scarce past the nursery age. Imagine your own dear boy, with the bright eyes and the broad, white forehead, whom you tuck so comfortably in his little soft bed at night, with a prayer and a kiss; whom you look at the last thing on retiring; for whom you gladly toil; whom you hedge around with virtuous, wholesome influences from the cradle; who does not yet know even the meaning of the word "evil;" who jumps into your arms as soon as he wakes in the morning, with the sweet certainty of a warm love-clasp; who has the nicest bit, at breakfast, laid on his little plate; whose little stories and questions always find eager and sympathizing ears; imagine this little fellow of seven or eight, or ten years, getting out of his bed at one or two o'clock in the morning, going out into the dark, chill, lonesome street, half-clad, hungry, alone to some newspaper office, to wait for the damp morning papers, as they are worked from the press, and seizing his bundle, hurrying, barefoot and shivering, to some newspaper stand or depot, at the farther part of the city. Imagine your little Charley doing that! Then, if that were all! If this drain on the physical immaturity of childhood were the worst of it. The devil laughs as he knows it is not. Big boys—men, even—cheat; why not he? If he can pass off bad change—surely, who has more need to make a sixpence, though it be not an honest one? What care customers if he grow up a good or a bad man, so that the newspaper comes in time to season their warm breakfast? Who will ever care for him living, or mourn for him dead? What does it matter, anyhow?
That's the way this poor friendless child reasons. I understood it all last night. All too that this noble philanthropy called "The Newsboys' Lodging House" meant. And as I looked round on those boys, I felt afraid when they were addressed, that the right thing might not be said to so peculiar an audience. For children though they were, they had seen life as men see it. Untutored, uneducated, in one sense, in others they knew as much as any adult who should address them. Sharpened by actual hard-fisted grappling with the world, let him be careful who should speak to these grown-up children of seven, and ten, and fourteen years. Thinking thus, I said, as their friend, Mr. C. L. Brace, rose to speak—pray God, he may take all this into consideration. Pray God, he may give them neither creeds nor theology; but, instead, the wide open arms of the good, pitiful, loving Saviour, whose home on earth was with the lowly and the friendless. And he did! It was a human address. The God he told them of was not out of their reach. It was every word pure gold. Bless him for it! He had them all by the hand, and the heart too. I saw that. Promptly, frankly, and with the confidence of children in the family, they answered his questions as to their views on the chapter in the Bible he read them. And if you smiled at some of their queer notions, the tear was in your eye the next minute at the blessed thought that they had friends who cared whether the immortal part of them slumbered or woke; who recognized and fanned into a flame even the smallest particle of mentality. Now and then among the crowd a head or face would attract your eye, and you would be lost in wonder to see it there! The head and face of what I call "a mother's boy." God knows if its owner had one, or, if it had, if she cared for him! And as they sang together of "The Friend that never grew weary," my heart responded, aye—aye—why should I forget that?
I hope you will go—and you and you—on some Sabbath evening, if you come to New York. They love to feel that people take an interest in them. It brightens and cheers their lives. It gives them self-respect and motive for trying to do right; and don't forget to ask the Superintendent, Mr. O Conner, to show you the nice little beds where they sleep. Do go; and if you can say a few words to them, or tell them a bright short story, so much the better. They will know you next time they sell you a newspaper; don't forget to shake hands with them then. And take your little pet boy Charley down there. Show him the little fellows who go into business in New York at seven and ten years old, and have no father or mother at night to kiss them to sleep. It will be a lesson better than any he will ever learn at school. He will find out that all boys are not born to plum-cake and sugar candy, and some of the best and smartest boys too. He will open his eyes when you tell him that without plum-cake, or candy, or a grandpa, or an aunt, or father or mother to care for them, some of the newsboys who came from that very house, to-day own farms in the West, that they earned selling newspapers, and have since come back for other newsboys to go out there and help them work on it. Tell Charley that. I think he will be ashamed to cry again because there was "not sugar enough in his milk."