Some of the boys go out for a walk, others, I am sorry to say, to spend their earnings at the cheap theatres and shows of the city; but the sensible ones drop their spare pennies or silver coins into the odd-looking savings-bank near the door, and hasten up stairs to the reading-room or the gymnasium. Let us follow some of them to the latter.
What a jolly place it is! One could have no end of fun with its horizontal and parallel bars, its rings, ladders, and flying trapeze: it is better than a circus.
There's a race for you already on that long ladder rising from one side of the room, crossing over, and coming down on the other slantwise. Johnnie Wilson has started at the north end, Billy Jones at the south end. There they go, hand over hand! Now they meet overhead in the middle. I declare, Billy's feet touch the floor first: he has beaten by three rounds.
"Hurrah for Billy! three cheers for Billy Jones!" shout the boys who are watching them.
Yonder three lads are trying their strength lifting iron weights in the corner. Tough work they find it, and soon leave to take a look at a comrade who hangs by his feet from a horizontal bar.
Now he swings back and forth before the little group, who are eager to risk their necks in the wonderful experiment.
See! he lets go, and with a dexterous swing catches by his hands, and drops safe and sound before his admirers.
This is nothing to what is going on yonder, where two boys are performing prodigious feats on the flying trapeze, squirming and twisting, and turning somersaults, hanging by their chins, then by their toes, and then by each other, until the looker-on trembles and grows dizzy.
Let us look for wee Joe Brown; he is not here, neither is he in the reading-room below-stairs, where a dozen or more youngsters are amusing themselves quietly, some reading story-books and illustrated papers, others playing checkers or dominos.
I'll tell you where Joe is. He is one of the early birds. Since four o'clock in the morning, when he went out for his daily papers, only when he ate his simple meals, his busy little feet have paddled about the great city, his childish voice has shrilled forth the familiar cry, "Sun, Herald, an' Tri-bune, Post, 'Xpress, an' Commercial," until, too sleepy to read, too weary for even the fascination of watching the flying "trapezeists," he sought the solid comfort of the dormitory.