"A dollar a week!" he said. "Do you know what one fellow in our class makes right through the year?"
"How much?" I asked.
"He makes between six and eight dollars a week," said Dick.
"That doesn't sound possible," I said.
"He told me he made that. And another fellow he knows about did as well as this even while he was in college. He pretty nearly paid his own way."
"What do you make on a paper?" I asked.
"About half a cent on the one cent papers, and a cent on the two cent papers."
"Then these boys have to sell over two hundred papers a day."
"They have about a hundred regular customers," said Dick, "and they sell another hundred papers besides."
It seemed to me the boys must have exaggerated because eight dollars a week was pretty nearly the pay of an able-bodied man. It didn't seem possible that these youngsters whom I'd pitied all my life could earn such an income. However if they didn't earn half as much, it wasn't a bad proposition for a lad.