"Going to sell papers?"
Again the affirmative.
"Got any money?"
Now a convincing negative.
Then, as now, our leader was sparing in the use of words. At the end of
our brief interview, I was "staked" to a nickel to buy my first stock of
papers, and those who know Tim Sullivan will also know that I was not
the first or the last to get "staked" by the Bowery statesman.
He not only furnished my working capital, but also taught me a few
tricks of the trade and advised me to invest my five pennies in just
one, the best selling paper of the period.
So, in less than twelve hours after leaving what had been for several
years my home, I was fully installed as a vendor of newspapers.
Then began the usual existence of "newsies," eating and "sleeping" when
lucky, and "pulling through somehow" when unlucky. I stuck to that
business for over ten years.
The life of the streets did not at all disagree with me. My childhood
had been full of bitterness, childish bitterness, and I had a dull
longing to make the world at large feel my revenge for having dealt so
unkindly with me. Whatever good traits there had been in me were
quickly and willingly transformed into viciousness. This helped me to
become a leading member of our gang of boys.
Among us there was none so absolutely orphaned as myself. Those who
were orphans had, at least, their memories. I did not even have them.
In odd, emotional moments, one or another would let his thoughts stray
back to some still loved and revered father or mother, or would confess
to having crept up to his former home, at some safe time, to have a peep
at forfeited comforts. I welcomed these references and day dreams of my
colleagues, but solely because they were utilized by me as pretenses for
inflicting my brutality on those who had uttered them.
There is a question, a number of questions, to be asked here. Why did I
do this? Was it because I was naturally vicious, or because I wanted to
stifle a certain gnawing in my heart by my ferociousness? A strange
reasoning, the last, perhaps; but in years I was still a child, and if a
child has but little in his life to love, and that little is taken out
of his life, that child can turn into a veritable little demon. Those,
whom I had believed my parents, turned out to be nothing more than
charitably inclined strangers; that what I had believed to be my home,
proved but a refuge, and my boyish logic saw in this sufficient cause to
envy those, who had all this behind them and to give vent to this envy
in the most ferocious manner.
That was the tenor of my life as a newsboy. I had enough callousness to
bear all the hardships without a murmur. One ambition took possession
of me. I wanted to be a power among newsboys. I wanted to be respected
or feared. As I did not care which, I succeeded in the latter at the
expense of the former. The heroes of newsboys are always men who owe
their prominence to physical prowess. I chose as my models the best
known fighters of the day.
As with all other "business men," there is keen rivalry and competition
among newsboys. The only difference is that, among the boys, the most
primitive and direct way is the most frequent one employed to settle
disputes. Some men, after great sorrows or disappointments, seek
forgetfulness in battle, being entirely indifferent to their ultimate
fate, and they always make good fighters. My position was not
altogether dissimilar from theirs. What little I had known of comfort
and affection was behind me; my mode of life at that time had no
particular attraction for me, and my only ambition was to conquer by
fight, and, therefore, I made a good fighter.
In all those long years I cannot recall more than one incident which
stirred the softer emotions of my heart.
A newcomer, a blue-eyed, light-haired little fellow, had come among us,
and was immediately chosen by me as my favorite victim. Certain traces
of refinement were discernible in him and this gave me many
opportunities to hold him up to the ridicule of our choice gang of young
ruffians. I hated him without knowing why.
One day I saw him standing at the corner of "the Row," offering his
wares with the unprofessional cry: "Please, won't you buy a paper?"
It was a glorious chance to "plant" a kick on one of his shins, and
thereby to relieve myself of some of my hatred. Stealthily I crept up
behind him, and was on the point of sending my foot on its mission, when
two motherly-looking women stopped to buy a paper from "the cherub."
Wits are quickly sharpened in a life on the streets, and I realized at
once that my intended assault, if witnessed by the two ladies, would
evoke a storm of indignation.
I immediately changed front, and endeavored to create the impression
that my hasty approach had been occasioned by my desire to sell a paper.
"Poipers, ladies, poipers," I cried, but was barely noticed.
The "cherub" claimed all their attention.
"What a pretty boy!" exclaimed one. "Have you no home, no parents? Too
bad, too bad!"
All this was noted and registered by me for a future reckoning with the
recipient of so much kindness.
My heart was shivering with acid bitterness.
"Never me, never me!" and the misery of many loveless years rang as a
wail in my soul.
Just as the woman, who had spoken, was about to hand a dime to my
intended scapegoat, her companion happened to turn and see me.
"Oh, just look at the other poor fellow."
The exclamation was justified. I was a sight. However, my dilapidated
clothes and scratched face owed their pitiful condition to much
"scrapping" and not to deprivations.
Again she spoke.
"Here, poor boy, here is a penny for you."
With a light pat on my grimy cheek and one of the sunniest smiles ever
shed on me, she was gone before I could realize what had happened.
There, penny in hand, I stood, dreaming and stroking the cheek she had
touched, and asking myself why she had done so.
Somehow, I felt that, were she to come back, I could just have said to
her: "Say, lady, I ain't got much to give, but I'll give you all me
poipers, and me pennies, and me knife, if you'll only say and do that
over again."
The "cherub" also was a gainer by this little touch of nature. I forgot
to kick and abuse him that night.
There was nothing dwarfish about me, and my temperament made me enjoy
the many "scraps" which belong to a street arab's routine.
Park Row was and is frequented by the lesser lights of the sporting
world. Our boyish fights were not fought in seclusion, but anywhere.
Being a constant participant in these "goes," as I was almost daily
called upon to defend my sounding title of "Newsboy Champion of Park
Row" against new aspirants for the honor, myself and my fighting "work"
soon became familiar to the "sports," who were the most interested of
the spectators.
I was of large frame, my face was of the bulldog type, my muscles were
strong, my constitution hardened by my outdoor existence in all sorts of
weather, and, without knowing it, my advance in the art of fisticuffs
was eagerly watched, with the hope of discovering in me a new "dark
horse" for the prize ring.
Among the men who had followed my progress in boxing were such renowned
sports as Steve Brodie, Warren Lewis, "Fatty" Flynn, "Pop" Kaiser and
others of equal prominence. In due time overtures were made to me. I
was properly "tried out" on several third-rate boxers, and said good-by
to the newsboy life to blossom out as a full-fledged pugilist.
Before long I began to have _higher_ ambitions. It was the day of
smaller purses and more fighting, and I determined to fight often so as
to accumulate money quickly. I had no definite idea why I wanted to
accumulate money with such feverish haste. I had some dim desire _to
wanting_ to have a lot of it, to having the sensation of being the
possessor of a roll of bills, and, this being the only road open to me
toward that goal, I was eager to travel it.
That was my ambition at the age of seventeen, the age when boys prepare
themselves to be men in the fullest and only sense of the word. My
boyhood, dreary as my childhood, closed behind me without a pang of
regret on my part. I was aspiring according to my lights and my
aspirations spelled nothing more or less than degradation.
*LIVING BY MY MUSCLE.*
*CHAPTER IV.*
*LIVING BY MY MUSCLE.*
The manly art of self-defense, as practised then, was unhampered by much
law or refinement. Still, with all this license, I was too brutish to
make a successful prizefighter. My sponsor in this sporting life soon
learned that I had a violent temper.
Time and time again I was matched to fight men who were not physically
my equals, only to be defeated by them. It was useless to endeavor to
impress me with the argument that these fighting matches were merely
business engagements, in the same way as the playing of a part by an
actor.
I fully understood all that was pointed out to me; would adhere to my
instructions for two, perhaps three, rounds of fighting, then would
forget all, rules, time limits and all else, to "sail in" with most
deadly determination to "do" my opponent at all hazards.
During my brief career as pugilist I only met one man who was of the
same brutish temperament as myself--Tommy Gibbons, of Pittsburg--and we
fought four encounters.
Of the same age as myself, Gibbons had earned for himself a well-founded
reputation for viciousness. He had never been defeated in his own state,
and the promoters of this "manly" form of sport were anxious to find a
more vicious brute than he to vanquish him.