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Updated: July 12, 2025
Crawford's and Roswell's spirits revived wonderfully, and Mr. Gilbert, too, seemed unusually lively. And all because poor Dick had got into difficulties, and seemed in danger of losing both his place and his good name. "It's lucky I left Hall & Turner's just as I did!" thought Roswell, complacently. "May be they'd like to engage the boot-black when he gets out of prison.
"I can earn as much as the boot-black, I should hope," said Roswell. "He didn't earn ten dollars a week." "He got it." "That's a very different thing." "Well, if I get it, I don't care if I don't earn it."
"I shouldn't think that they would have taken you." "Why not?" "There are not many firms that would hire a boot-black, when they could get plenty of boys from nice families." "Perhaps they might have secured your services if they had applied," said Dick, good-humoredly. "I've got a place," said Roswell, in rather an important manner. "I'm very glad I didn't go into Henderson's hat and cap store.
The sage looked mildly over his spectacles upon Israel and replied: "My good friend, never permit yourself to be jocose upon pecuniary matters. Never joke at funerals, or during business transactions. The affair between us two, you perhaps deem very trivial, but trifles may involve momentous principles. But no more at present. You had better go immediately and find the boot-black.
At noon last, Saturday there was no one in the world who would have considered acquaintanceship with him a thing worth claiming or mentioning; no one would have been vain of such an acquaintanceship; the humblest honest boot-black would not have valued the fact that he had met him or seen him at some time or other; he was sunk in abysmal obscurity, he was away beneath the notice of the bottom grades of officialdom.
"Has she made acquaintance with the boot-black, then?" asked Roswell, with a sneer. "Yes, he visited them last evening at their house." "Did he tell you so?" "Yes." "I should think they'd feel honored by such a visitor." "Probably they did, for Mrs. Rockwell made him a present of a gold watch." "WHAT!" exclaimed Roswell and his mother in concert. "It's true.
She learns English from the Kid, the rubber-legged boot-black, and other gentleman adventurers and tars of America and Europe, and she pours out bad words I cannot mention them in innocent faith in their propriety. In French or Tahitian she speaks correctly.
"It's strange I can't think where," said the young man, who had not the least idea that the well-dressed boy before him was the boot-black who had brushed his boots near the Park railings the Monday previous. Dick did not think proper to enlighten him. He was not ashamed of his past occupation; but it was past, and he wanted to be valued for what he might become, not for what he had been.
Young and handsome and of the gentry, unfavored by the owner of the wealth which some day would be his own possession, stopping "gentry-way" at a cottage door to speak good-naturedly to a pale young mother, handing over the magnificence of a whole sovereign to be saved for a new-born child, going away to vaguely understood disgrace, leaving his own country to hide himself in distant lands, meeting death amid snow and ice and surrounded by gold-mines, leaving his empty place to be filled by a boot-black newsboy true there was enough to lie and think over and to try to follow with the help of maps and excited questions.
He envied the purple-nosed old cab-drivers on the stand, the boot-black boys at the edge of the pavement, the two large bobbies pacing slowly along the Tower Gardens railings in the consciousness of their infallible might, and the bright scarlet sentries walking smartly to and fro before the Mint. He envied them their places in the scheme of world's labour.
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