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Updated: June 12, 2025
All search had proved fruitless. Some tormenting bootblacks had told Gringoire about meeting her that same evening near the Pont Saint-Michel, going off with an officer; but this husband, after the fashion of Bohemia, was an incredulous philosopher, and besides, he, better than any one else, knew to what a point his wife was virginal.
He is promptly warned that he must work for the regular price, or "quit work." If he declines to do either, his head, in the elegant language of the society, is "punched," and he is driven from the street. The affairs of the society are managed by a "Captain of the bootblacks," whose word is supreme, and who wields his power as all arbitrary rulers do.
Once again on the pavement, he looked along the street toward up-town beneath the crisp, cold electric lights, and three little bootblacks gathered where he stood and cried "Shine? Shine?" at him.
She did not merely attend the showing of every "feature film;" she also read the motion-picture magazines, those extraordinary symptoms of the Age of Pep-monthlies and weeklies gorgeously illustrated with portraits of young women who had recently been manicure girls, not very skilful manicure girls, and who, unless their every grimace had been arranged by a director, could not have acted in the Easter cantata of the Central Methodist Church; magazines reporting, quite seriously, in "interviews" plastered with pictures of riding-breeches and California bungalows, the views on sculpture and international politics of blankly beautiful, suspiciously beautiful young men; outlining the plots of films about pure prostitutes and kind-hearted train-robbers; and giving directions for making bootblacks into Celebrated Scenario Authors overnight.
Arab urchins, whose hands may have once been clean, offered picture postal cards for sale; bootblacks solicited patronage and beggars asked for alms; match peddlers endeavored to dispose of their little boxes; flower sellers thrust their bouquets forward into notice; dealers in scarabs and miniature mummy cases proclaimed the virtues of their charms; and venders of beads offered endless varieties of their fanciful, colored Egyptian wares.
They were splendid bricklayers, and bootblacks, and apple-women." He bent his gaze on the boy for a few seconds in silence. The fact was that a new thought was coming to him, and though, perhaps, it was not prompted by the noblest emotions, it was not a bad thought. "Come here," he said, at last. Fauntleroy went and stood as near to him as possible without encroaching on the gouty foot.
Besides these are the newsboys, bootblacks, and messengers of the cities, children in domestic and personal service, and the child laborers on the farms. The causes of child labor lie in the poverty and greed of parents, the demands of employers, and often the desire of the children to escape from school and earn money.
The Tammany Mayor who came in the year after said that we had as much authority as "a committee of bootblacks" about the City Hall, no more. So that it seems as if there is a something that governs those things which survives the accidents of politics, and which mere citizens are not supposed to understand or meddle with. Anyway, it was best so.
It was the era of the grandiose. Even conversation reflected this characteristic. The myriad bootblacks had grand outfits and stands. The captain of a ship offered ten dollars to a negro to act as his cook. The negro replied, "If you will walk up to my restaurant, I'll set you to work at twenty-five dollars immediately."
All the mines immediately in and about Johannesburg are practically exhausted. The large development today is in the eastern section. People do everything but eat gold in Johannesburg. Cooks, maids, waiters, bootblacks indeed the whole population are interested, or at some time have had an interest in a gold mine. Some historic shoestrings have become golden cables.
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