CHUMS

New Zealand Tablet, 6 June 1912, Page 61

CHUMS

This pathetic little story in a Detroit paper might have been told by Dickens: A newsboy sat on the curbstone crying, when a pedestrian halted and laid his hand on the youngster’s shoulder. 6 ‘What’s wrong, sonny?’ ‘ I ain’t your sonny.’ ' -• .4 ‘Well, what’s wrong, my boy?’ ‘Ain’t your boy either.’ ‘Lost five cents in the gutter?’ ' t Naw, I ain’t. Oh, oh, oh ! Me chum’s dead.’ Oh, that s another thing. How did he happen to die?’ . “ Runned over. - ‘Cheer, up. You can find another chum.’ , ‘You wouldn’t talk that . way if you’d knowed Dick. He was the best friend I ever had. There warn’t nothing Dick wouldn’t a-done for me. An' now he’s d-d-dead. I’m a-wishin’ I was, too.’ Look here,’ said, the man, *go and sell your papers and take some poor little ragged boy and be a chum to him. It’ll help you and do him good,’ / ‘Pshaw, mister, where’s there a boy wot’d go around nights with me an’ be cold an’ 'hungry an’ outen doors an’ sleep on the groun’ like Dick? An’ he wouldn’t tech a bite till I’d had enuff. He were a Christian, Dick were.’ : - ‘Then you can feel that he’s all right if he was such a faithful friend and good boy.’ ‘Boy? Dick a boy? Dick warn’t a good-for-nothing human boy, mister. Dick were a dbg.’