Theodore Winthrop

“ It was an amusing sight, as all crowds are, unless the looker-on turns up his nose so much at vulgarity as to obstruct his vision.
It was a compact little crowd, well snugged together to keep warm. Plenty of good-natured hustle was going on in it. The hustle might have been ill-natured scuffle except for that spontaneous police which always keeps the peace and looks after fair-play in crowds that are not mobs. The brutal boys who would have pounded the weakly boys, and rendered them ineligible by black eyes and bloody noses, neutralized each other. ”

“ Every boy knew that he had only one fiftieth of one chance of success, and that each boy within reach had only a fiftieth. The natural dislike of competitors, subdivided into fractions with such a denominator, lost intensity, and expended itself in nudges of the elbows and shoves with the hips, instead of running down into the hands and electrifying them into pugilistic fists, or filling the boots with the idea, kick. ”

“ A block before he arrived at his corner, he saw that a regiment of boys had collected in answer to his advertisement. “Wanted immediately, an office-boy, by John Brightly, Wall Street,” — this notice had called out from their holes and caves fifty or sixty chaps of all sizes, shapes, tints, and toggery.
Brightly’s office was on a corner, three steps below the level of the street. The throng of aspirants completely blockaded the door and filled the sidewalk. Brightly passed around them and took his stand on the high steps to the first floor of the building. ”

“ How old is Bary, Bister Doak!”
“Thirteen and a half.”
“Thirteen ad a half. Just the age for the orridge and apple business. I could set her up byself, if gapital is wanted. Id’s daggerous business for the borals; but the borals of good girls takes gare of theirselves. I couldn’t reside od Bary’s aggout. But there’s Jelling. How old is she?”
“Eight,” replied Bevel.
“Eight is just the age for the batch business; ad id reguires very liddle gapidal, though the profids is small. Batches without sulphur is dow id deband. But the batch business is low and ibboral. ”

“ Sassiger, ‘that Bevel be the first boy at that John Brightly’s door to-morrow morning.’ That motion was kerried quite unanimous, and here I was, sir, at sunrise, and about three minutes before Moses, — Mr. Moses. That’s a long story, sir,” Bevel perorated, a little abashed at himself; “but I got going, and couldn’t stop.”
Brightly looked very kindly at the earnest little chap; then, turning to the other, who was listening with a critical ear, he asked: “Well, Moses, what do you think of Doak’s application?”
“I reside,” replied Moses. ”

“ Man can work; but woman is in danger of brooding.”
And so, with his busy brain full of schemes for his wife’s happiness, full of schemes for comforting , and helping all the people he knew who needed help and comfort, full of schemes for bringing the great powers and untiring energies he was conscious of to bear, to ease, speed, and better the world. ”

“ But times is dull, and ’prentices can’t make money; so last night, Mrs. Sassiger —”
“I’be aggquainded with her,” says Mr. Moses. “She zells the faddest durkeys in the Washington Market.”
“That’s her,” rejoins Doak. “Well, Mrs. Sassiger showed mother the advertisement of ‘Boy Wanted’; and says Mrs. Sassiger, ‘Mrs. Doak, my eyes was drawed to that Wanted.’ ‘How?’ says mother. ‘By the name, Brightly,’ says Mrs. Sassiger. ‘A wide-awake kind of a name,’ says mother. ‘What you state is correct,’ says Mrs. Sassiger ”