Our Boys and Girls.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1037, 15 January 1892, Page 6

Our Boys and Girls.

AMERICAN NEWSBOYS. It makes a father’s heart ache to watch the little shavers who dare death for a living in this city (says Erances B. Merrill, in tbe New York Commercial Advertiser). It makes the heart of even a childless man ache as well to watch the little fellows when disease or accident has handicapped them further yet for their struggle.

Barely does an ugly conductor yell at a mite of a newsboy who dares to stick his snub nose in the doors without a sharp reprimand from some man or woman in the car. More rarely yet, since that little rascal was run over in Post Office Square two years ago, has a conductor in that part of the town made a jump for a youngster swinging on or off the step.

Three of these tiny bread-winners scampered through Union Square in the midst of the smart shower that caught the six o’clock home-comers the other evening. Each had a damp wad of papers under his arm, and every now and again they lustily yelled their cry of ‘ Last edishin 1 Last edisliin 1’

Two of the boys were swarthy, sturdy little fellows, who showed the marks of the good fights they had fought. The Lhird was a cripple. One small, striped trousers leg swung empty from the thigh, frayed and rough from tubbing against the crutch. Only five or six papers were left to him as his share, and these he offered to a halfdozen persons as they hurried around the corner of Seventeenth street. Some brushed by all unheeding, the rest scowled and shook their heads. ‘ Confound the boy 1 Couldn’t he see that it was raining and they were in a hurry? Just like these little guttersnipes !’

So on they pushed, and the little crippled boy with his delicate oval face, with his big appealing brown eyes, was left a block behind his two comrades.

On he flew after them —rap-rap, shuffleshuffle —one blue leg, and one wooden crutch doing valiant duty. At Sixteenth street ho was still a dozen steps behind them, when, splash ! his crutch slipped, and down ho went a helpless little heap in the flooded gutter. He yelled a warning ‘ Hi, there !’ as he went, and made a good struggle for his feet. It was no use. His boy friends looked back, and in a second, with a jovial * Brace up I' had him ou the curb. One mopped his spattered face, the other restored to him his crutch.

The Crippled boy took it, and then, with eyes suspiciously red and a chin that was none too steady, ho reached for his muddy papers, and held them up to his friends. The expression of that boy’s faoe would have been a whole half-dozen extra laurel leaves in the crown of J. G. Brown. It was like James Russell Lowell’s doscription of Huldy, ‘ Sorter smiley round the lips and teary round the lashes.’ The tableau those three boys made there in the softly-falling rain attracted the attention of many a passer-by. One by one the dripping papers were gingerly acquired at a nickel apiece and gently dropped in the gutter, and when the small crutch again went plodding off toward Fifteenth street there was quite a newsboy’s fortune in the dirt-bespattered trousers pocket. Among those who had helped to swell this small relief fund there was a young woman in very spotty-looking yellow shoes. She was young enough to have a softening of the heart toward boys about the small-broblier age, but she was not so young as not to have more or Jess experience in the ways of the wily newsboy- . , , ‘ Soft words butter no parsnips, she thought to herself, ‘ and those two young tramps are perfectly capable of going out of our sight with their arms around poor little Handicap, and on the. next block taking every cent away from him. These yellow shoes can never be more spoffcy than they a-i’e. 111 follow on. If I have any force of character at all that dear little cripple shall carry those nickels home with him.’ It was but a half hour later that she of tlie ruined yellow shoes sat in the home sittingroom, and, with a pair of neat but not gaudy red slippers on the fender, told her mother and her little brother the story ju3t as it has been related. • She paused and crossed the red slippers in the light of two small sticks that blazed on the hearth. Brother Johnny sat and watched her, his fine eye 3 ablaze. ‘Ob, I say, sis I’ he cried, ‘go on ! Did they make him cough it up !’ ‘ No, Johnny,’ replied his big sister, with never a look of reproach. ‘ I regret to say they didn’t. He sab down in the vory next puddle he came to, aud got twenty-five cents more.’

QUEER SAYINGS. Little Horace was telling his grandmother what he had learned in Sunday school. ‘Adam was the first man, Methuselah was the oldest man, Job was the most patient man, Moses was the worst man—’ ‘ Why, Horace!’ ‘Yes’m, he was. He broke all the ten commandments at once.’ Charlie W., aged four, had two pets—a canary and a cot. One unlucky day the door of the cage was left open, and the oat was caught swallowing the last morsel of poor birdie. Little Charlie gazed at the cab a few momenta in sorrowful meditation, then suddenly queried :— i Mamma, will kitty sing now ?’

This is the latest contribution to the sayings of young folks: A little, boy of five years old stood with his father in the varddoor, looking at the moon, and spoke of its brightness. ‘ Yes,’ said his father, it has not been so bright for some time. ‘ Papa, said the little fellow, ‘l guess Hod’s washed the moon, hasn’t he ?’ The five-year-old boy had seen his first wedding, and naturally the family asked him what he thought of it. ‘Pooh,’ he said disdainfully, * it’s nothing but a prayer meeting with a sociable after it.’