“What could you do?”
“Sometimes one thing, and sometimes another,” said Dick. “I changed my business accordin’ as I had to. Sometimes I was a newsboy, and diffused intelligence among the masses, as I heard somebody say once in a big speech he made in the Park. Them was the times when Horace Greeley and James Gordon Bennett made money.”
“Through your enterprise?” suggested Frank.
“Yes,” said Dick; “but I give it up after a while.”
“What for?”
“Well, they didn’t always put news enough in their papers, and people wouldn’t buy ’em as fast as I wanted ’em to. So one mornin’ I was stuck on a lot of Heralds, and I thought I’d make a sensation. So I called out ‘GREAT NEWS! QUEEN VICTORIA ASSASSINATED!’ All my Heralds went off like hot cakes, and I went off, too, but one of the gentlemen what got sold remembered me, and said he’d have me took up, and that’s what made me change my business.”
“That wasn’t right, Dick,” said Frank.
“I know it,” said Dick; “but lots of boys does it.”
“That don’t make it any better.”
“No,” said Dick, “I was sort of ashamed at the time, ’specially about one poor old gentleman,—a Englishman he was. He couldn’t help cryin’ to think the queen was dead, and his hands shook when he handed me the money for the paper.”