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I had reached Broadway, and at the corner I paused to look at a display of men's furnishings in a window. Far down the street, on the other side, almost lost in the hurrying crowd, Martigny was buying a paper of a newsboy. He shook it out and looked quickly up and down its columns, like a man who is searching for some special item of news.

A woman leaned wearily against the signpost, her head bowed motionless on her lace and silken bosom. Before her stood a street car, silent, and within but the messenger but glanced and hurried on. A grimy newsboy sat in the gutter with the "last edition" in his uplifted hand: "Danger!" screamed its black headlines. "Warnings wired around the world. The Comet's tail sweeps past us at noon.

It was as a Milwaukee newsboy, at the age of twelve, that "Jimmie" Blake first found himself in any way associated with that arm of constituted authority known as the police force. A plain-clothes man, on that occasion, had given him a two-dollar bill to carry about an armful of evening papers and at the same time "tail" an itinerant pickpocket.

Those selected were now drawn up in an irregular line in front of the stage, their eyes fixed on vacancy, their heads bent forward, perfectly motionless. Each was then given a suggestion. One was to be a newsboy, and sell papers. Another was given a broomstick and told to hunt game in the woods before him.

The man of the house opened the door himself, and something must have disturbed him mentally, for when he saw it was a newsboy, he took me by the collar and threw me into the gutter. My papers were spoiled and my rags soaked with slush and water. "I picked myself up and came back to the window through which I saw a bright fire on an open hearth, and around it the man's family.

Early next morning the newsboy went around the cars, and chumming on a more extended principle became the order of the hour. It requires but a copartnery of two to manage beds; but washing and eating can be carried on most economically by a syndicate of three. I myself entered a little after sunrise into articles of agreement, and became one of the firm of Pennsylvania, Shakespeare, and Dubuque.

He strode up and down the room, striking his stick upon the floor, and uttering inarticulate sounds of rage and defiance. When Cap had finished her story he suddenly stopped before her, brought down the point of his stick with a resounding thump upon the floor and exclaimed: "Demmy, you New York newsboy! Will you never be a woman? Why the demon didn't you tell me, sirrah?

He had hit upon a first page story. A half-hour later every newsboy in the downtown district was shouting himself hoarse, and the words he shouted were these: "All about Johnny Thompson. Johnny Thompson, featherweight champion. Alive! Arrested for conspiracy! Extry!" The theatre crowds were thronging the streets, and the newsies reaped a rich harvest.

In New York the game is always on, the tables always set: from the newsboy to the magnate the gambler's hope is open to every man. Only one thing disturbed his self-complacency, Margaret treated him indifferently, coldly. He even suspected that though by some accident she had borne him three children he had never won her love, that she had never been really his.

The old cobbler next door enjoyed reading the anecdotes on Sunday when he could not work; the pale seamstress upstairs liked to look over advertisements of the fine things which she longed for; and Patsey Flynn, the newsboy, who went by each day to sell his papers at the station, often paused to look at the play-bills, for he adored the theatre, and entertained Johnny with descriptions of the splendors there to be beheld, till he felt as if he had really been, and had known all the famous actors, from Humpty Dumpty to the great Salvini.