One afternoon, as he bought a paper of a newsboy, he asked, “How does selling papers pay?”
Tommy Hooper, the boy addressed, answered, “I make about seventy-five cents a day, but I have to hustle.”
Seventy-five cents a day! That would be four dollars and a half a week, or deducting two dollars for rent he would have two dollars and a half for his work, and he felt that on that sum he could live as well as he did now, since he knew of a place where he could buy a ticket good for three dollars’ worth of meals for two dollars and a half.
“Was you goin’ into the business?” asked Tom.
“I don’t know but I may.”
“I don’t b’lieve you’d like it.”
“Why not?”
“You’ve got too good clothes on.”
“What difference does that make?”
“I don’t know of no newsboy dressed like you.”