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He had acquired a prominent position among the down-town boot-blacks by his strength, which he used oftentimes to impose upon boys weaker than himself. He was a young ruffian, indeed, with few redeeming qualities.
It may seem a little unnecessary to some of my readers to make this explanation; but they must remember that pride and "big-feeling" are confined to no age or class, but may be found in boys as well as men, and in boot-blacks as well as those of a higher rank. The morning being a busy time with the boot-blacks, Dick's changed appearance had not as yet attracted much attention.
The doctor was struck with the curiously mottled crowd that jostled one another, waiting for the first cry of the opening quotations. Every walk and profession of life had its representative there merchants, lawyers, doctors, clerks, clergymen, barbers, boot-blacks, retired capitalists and capitalists about to retire permanently.
Some folks are never satisfied unless they are trying to make gentlemen out of gutter snipes. If we let such fellows get a foothold, there won't be any respectable society after a while; it will be all stable boys and boot-blacks."
The horses had not escaped, for a dozen boys had set after them, headed by the tall youth, and the boot-blacks and news-boys had proved themselves decidedly more efficient at stopping runaways than at making symmetrical hay-cocks. "If you have any regard for my pride," said Sally suddenly, when the load was half replaced, "you'll let me drive down to the barn."
I saw him being led and pulled by my office, calling out, 'Tell the 'Merican consul a good American is in the grip of the frogs." Within a month of the rubber-legged shiner's début, there were two other boot-blacks on the streets.
James Gilbert, for he was the young man in question, began to find that he was becoming rather ridiculous, and felt that he would rather let Micky go free than furnish a spectacle to the crowd of boot-blacks who were surveying the chase with eager interest. He accordingly stopped short, and, throwing down the "stub," prepared to leave the park. "Don't give it up, mister!
I discovered that Piazza San Marco is every morning swept by troops of ragged facchini, who gossip noisily and quarrelsomely together over their work. Boot-blacks, also, were in attendance, and several followed my progress through the square, in the vague hope that I would relent and have my boots blacked.
While he was despatching his supper, another boy came in, smaller and slighter than Dick, and sat down beside him. Dick recognized him as a boy who three months before had entered the ranks of the boot-blacks, but who, from a natural timidity, had not been able to earn much. He was ill-fitted for the coarse companionship of the street boys, and shrank from the rude jokes of his present associates.
He went up the outer steps of Saint Katherine's Dock House, the very steps from which he had some six weeks before surveyed the cabstand, the buildings, the policemen, the boot-blacks, the paint, gilt, and plate-glass of the Black Horse, with the eye of a Conqueror. "I hadn't any half-crowns to spare for tips," he remarked grimly. He had been afraid of being stopped by some rule of no-admittance.
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