Saturday morning was an ideal autumn day; a day children delighted to
go into the woods after hickory-nuts.
A few moments before eight o’clock the gentleman was slowly walking
around the great lot when he saw Jimmy running at full speed down the
street towards him.
Under the great trees were a dozen little boys and girls, and the air
was filled with their merry laughter as they excitedly gathered into
their baskets the hickory-nuts that Jimmy had so kindly dropped for
their pleasure and happiness.
“They tell me, Jimmy, you’re a bad boy,” said the gentleman as they sat
on a stump of a tree, in sight of the children.
Jimmy made no reply.
“Well, I don’t care what any one says,” added the gentleman, “I don’t
believe it. Your little act with the hickory-nuts has taught me a
lesson I never learned in books. No boy would do that unless he has
some good qualities in him. I feel honored to have this privilege of
seeing those children so happy this morning, and to think who did all
this. Jimmy,” and he took his little hand in his, “I want you to make
me a promise—I want you always to be my friend. What do you say?”
This was something Jimmy never heard of before. He was accustomed to
being kicked, and censured, and for a man to ask him to be a friend
was, what he afterwards called, “a new deal.”
“Sure thing, I will,” he said frankly.
“Now I want you to come down to my office, Monday after school, and we
will talk over something that I want you to do for me.”
“I’ll be there,” replied Jimmy, and after a moments thought he asked.
“And can I bring some of my friends with me?”
“Certainly, that is exactly what I want you to do. Bring your gang, all
your friends, particularly the little toughs, and when you come into my
office don’t let any one stop you from seeing me.”
“Oh, don’t be afeared o’that, we knows as how to get there.”
A few other things were talked about and they separated for the day.
As the gentleman rode down town he thought of the events of the
morning, of the life of a newsboy. These little wiry, nervous street
boys, alert of eye, and lithe of limb, who flock the principal
thoroughfares of our great cities at almost all hours of the day.
Newsboys and bootblacks, boys whom the world seems to have forgotten.
By peculiar conditions these boys are used to being at odds with the
world. It need not be told that our newsboys, as a general rule,
as people know them, are regarded as a swearing, stealing, lying,
dishonest lot of young criminals, and these qualifications are
recognized adjuncts to their business. With these conditions is it
not a wonder that any of them ever succeed in working their way into
the ranks of respectibility? People who curse and kick them, as they
did Jimmy, never stop to think that these neglected newsboys, of
today, sharp, shrewd and keen, may be the thieves, the burglars, the
highwaymen; or the successful patriotic citizens of tomorrow.
No one will dispute the fact that, the street-boy is surrounded on
every hand by degraded and vicious men, with drunkenness regarded as a
desirable condition, and the indulgence in drink only limited by the
ability to procure it.
Among many, robbery is regarded as a fine art, and the tribute of
praise bestowed upon rascality. If christian people do not find
time, amid the rush and roar of the city, in their mighty struggle
for wealth, to lend a hand to lead him out on the highway of honest
success, what is to become of the street-boy?
Is it not true that many a boy is bad because the best part of him was
never developed?
It is not that a newsboy is so much worse than other boys, but simply
that the other half of him didn’t get a chance.
If you, dear reader, will take time to get into the real life of a
boy, as the gentleman did with Jimmy, you will be surprised, as he
was, at what you will discover. How quick he is to see an opportunity
to do something bad, and when discovered, his conscience brings the
blush of shame to his cheeks. Take boys like Jimmy, the leader of a
gang of toughs, his acts on the public highway, his language, his
ragged clothes all indicating neglect and evil designs, yet get his
friendship, his confidence, and he will prove, as did Jimmy, the best
and most faithful friend you ever had, not only in his youth, in his
teens, but long after you have forgotten him.
No matter how bad the boy is, how miserable his environment, that great
spark of good, that something, no one can explain its power, its
influence, is still there. To get into touch with that life, to draw
out the goodness of heart and make it a tangible blessing to the boys
of our land, is the work every man and woman ought to try to do. It was
this object the gentleman had in asking Jimmy and his friends to meet
at his office. He felt that opportunities of this nature come but once
in a life time.
George Eliot wrote: “The golden moments in the stream of life rush past
us and we see nothing but sand. The angels come to visit us and we
only know them when they are gone. How shall we live so as at the end
to have done the most for others and make the most of ourselves.” We
become good ourselves only in the measure that we do good to some other
soul. In Jimmy, the newsboy, no one stopped to see what was sleeping
under the cover of extreme mischievousness. They were always looking
for bad and they found it. Neglect is the mother of more calamities
than any other sin, and who are neglected more than the newsboys?