Various

“ Whoever thought we should meet away off here in a strange house and a strange city, where all is so different? I believe things are really going to come right after all, and that day I was perfectly certain they never would. Here is Edith well and strong when I thought she was surely going to die, and mamma has seen Neal and seems as happy as a lark, and Neal himself looks fine. Somehow he seems more like a man. I'm proud of him."
All of which train of thought took place while Cynthia was indulging in an unwonted fit of silence. ”

“ The horse-car driver has hard work to get much speed out of his team; the gripman of the cable-car can go no faster than the cable will drag him; but the motorman of the trolley-car can with a twirl of his wrist send his heavy car bounding on like a thing of life. The temptation to "speed up" when it is so easily done is too much for human nature. ”

“ But he has broad ideas, and insists upon doing, accommodating the space in some way, whatever others do. The asphalt pavements are of the greatest blessing—far better than roof-gardens, and since we cannot have many parks, they are of greater importance to all concerned than the little squares that dot our city. At evening-time, when the street-organs have not gathered all the girls of the block for a dance and during the day on the sunny side of the street one may find a most energetic crowd of boys, eager, and intensely excited over a game. ”

“ But still it is something of a mystery to many people how the slender wire stretched along the street takes the place of the hundreds of tugging horses or of the rattling, whirring cable that glides ceaselessly through the long iron trough under the pavement. ”

“ Our happy lad of the tenement, until he is fourteen when he leaves school and goes to work, is compelled to play in crowded streets where hundreds of children swarm like bees, and necessarily within a narrow space. ”

“ Being a boy in a crowded city and being a boy in a village are two different things, though boys the world over are always boys. The balance of fun and sport is, after all, in favor of the city lad, the offspring of the tenement-house. ”

“ If it were my hair, and I were the dear young girl who finds it a bother and a burden, I would coil it on top of my head and wear it like a crown. I wouldn't mind its having the effect of making me look taller, and I would stand up very straight, and look as tall as I could. In my opinion height is a beauty, and I never care about a girl's being tall, except to admire her. Tall girls must mind that they carry themselves well, and do not stoop nor crane their heads forward as if they had lost something and were perpetually looking for it. ”

“ Right now, my delightful friend under the tree, shouts of merriment ring in my ears from boys who last night slept in a close room, or possibly on the fire-escape, whose breakfast was most meagre because their parents are poor and honest. They are as happy as the day is long. ”

“ A hand-car is a good lift for two men at any time, but it seemed as if made of pine wood instead of heavy iron wheels and bars. He rolled it to the track, and up-ended it as easily as a laborer would throw over a wheel-barrow. ”

“ I have taken children to the Park, far up to the Bronx, where everything is delightfully free, and they have sat down and rubbed the grass, and petted it as a child will a tender animal. But they have their ball games and get excited over them, although the diamond is on stone, and not two feet square. ”

“ These, however, form only a small portion of the business enterprises in New York. There are banking houses, manufacturing concerns, publishing houses, insurance companies, and hosts of agents for anything and everything, not to mention the great number of retail stores, all of which employ clerical assistance, and in any one of which the country lad looking for work may suddenly find himself employed. It is a saying, as true as it is old, that it is the unexpected that happens.
I know a boy who had lived all his life in the city, whose parents were people of position and influence. ”

“ That same word "home," too, is a great stumbling-block to the boy from away. "You don't live at home? Well, I'm afraid we can't engage any boy who doesn't live home," will become a too familiar sentence to the inexperienced lad looking for work in a strange city. Yet this is perfectly natural and proper. "Home" implies some older person to be responsible for the boy out of business hours. It implies the ties of church and of school and of social life. For this reason the country boy who wishes to come to New York and get a situation would better first try to get a situation nearer home. ”

“ Bang! went a second chamber of the revolver.
"Ha! ha!" laughed Bouchardy again, and again he dropped a bullet from his mouth.
"Ha! ha!" chuckled a big dromedary at the right of the Sheik, and the man turned in startled fright and fired at the animal.
"Ha! ha!" said the dromedary, and Bouchardy stepped up to it, and opening its mouth, produced the bullet.
"Ha! ha!" said the dromedary. "Ha! ha!" said the donkey of the Sheik's favorite wife. "Ha! ha!" said the horse of the vizier.
"Dogs, scoundrels, cowards!" sneered the dromedary. ”

“ A great deal depends upon the boy. Some boys will rise more quickly in one place than in another. The boy who is bound to rise will get to the top no matter where he finds himself. Few boys would take a position behind the counter in a retail store if they could get anything better, yet some clerks rise to be floor-walkers, and some floor-walkers rise to be buyers, and some buyers become partners and proprietors and amass great wealth.
I know one young man who had a good position in a wholesale hardware house, who gave it up to take a place at lower wages in a retail store. ”

“ He usually works in with a partner who runs a mythical business, and engages the victim at an unexpectedly large salary. The happy boy pays over all his savings to the agent, and suddenly finds himself discharged on some trumped-up charge, or comes down-town next day to find the office locked and employer and "business" flown. Sometimes this game is worked by the "employer" alone, who requires a deposit, usually accurately gauged to the amount the victim has or can raise, as a guarantee of faithfulness in a position of trust. ”

“ The first thing that the country boy will have to consider is where and how to live. As a matter of fact it is a question which rapidly resolves itself into a choice of hall bedrooms in boarding-houses. For in no other way can he live so well within the income that he is likely to earn. The best way is to spend as little as is consistent with decency and getting enough to eat, at least until employment is secured, and then the style of living can be improved if the wages warrant it. ”

“ The Sheik of that tribe was my nephew, and even if he were no kin of mine, you infidel dogs should die for robbing true believers."
"When death is a punishment," said Bouchardy, "it is where the man desires to live and cannot, for if he desires to die, death can be no punishment. Now when you subject us to the slow torture of being pulled apart by these horses, we hail death with delight as a relief to pain, and your punishment has failed." ”

“ Nobody has ever been killed by a shock from a trolley-wire. The current used for electric railways, although great power is conveyed by it, has not the property of giving a fatal shock to the human system. There are just as great differences between the electric currents used for different purposes as there are between streams of water. Some streams have great volume, but very slow flow, others fly out of a half-inch nozzle with sufficient velocity to drill a hole through a man's body as cleanly as a rifle bullet. ”

“ The prettiest way to arrange your hair? Especially if it is very long, very thick, and a most beautiful color, yet cannot be worn hanging down in braids, because you are too tall for anything so childish, nor fastened up in a graceful Psyche knot at the back of the head, quite near the neck, because it is too heavy, and comes tumbling down at inconvenient seasons. Lovely hair, but an embarrassment of riches, is it not? ”

“ Many of these salesmen are very influential men in the houses where they are employed; some of them are men who find it more profitable to sell goods on commission than to accept partnerships in the firms for which they work. I have known of several boys who have attracted the attention of New York salesmen by their bright and attractive manners, and by their evident knowledge of their business, and have secured employment in New York through their influence. This, however, is not a way that it would be safe for a boy to count on. ”

“ So the story of the cruise and its double mutiny had to be told then and there to Tom and the other canoe-boys, who listened with envious interest.
"Well!" declared Tom, when from the confused recital of half a dozen Rangers at once he had gleaned the main points of the story. "It beats anything I ever heard of outside of a book, and I only wish I'd waited in Berks so as to come with you. But look here! You fellows haven't been over to our camp yet. ”

“ It is the office, however, which is very apt to capture the country boy, because it offers wages on which a boy can at least sustain life. Almost any boy who has worked in a country store has picked up some knowledge of book-keeping, and book-keeping is taught theoretically in many high-schools, as well as in the countless business "colleges" of the country. It is not difficult, therefore, for a boy to obtain sufficient knowledge of its rudiments to be able to take the first position above that of office-boy. ”

“ By doing anything of this kind a captain not only attempts to conquer his opponents by unfair means and false representations, but he stultifies himself. He admits that he has not men good enough, or is incapable to training players who shall be strong enough, to defeat the eleven with whom he has agreed to play. ”

“ This is the age of the summer boarder, and the country boy may be so fortunate as to be thrown every summer into acquaintance with city people who, if they become interested enough, may help him in his ambitions. But, after all, few country boys can command enough influence to get places in the city. The country boy, then, must go to New York armed with the best recommendations that he can obtain from his former employers, and with as much experience as possible. ”

“ As a rule electric railways are provided with but a single wire from which the motors obtain their supply of current, and this system has come to be called the single trolley system in distinction to the double trolley, or double wire system, which was tried in the early days but has been abandoned in all but one or two places. The single wire hung over the centre of the track carries the current out from the station where the dynamos are placed, and the rails and the earth carry it back to the dynamos after it has passed through the motors and has done its work. ”

“ A third boy in the same office is now an editor. A fourth is a successful life-insurance canvasser, and has lately insured the lives of the other three. All four of these boys would rather have been in the stock, but they couldn't afford to live on the low wages they would have had to take. They were too ambitious to remain clerks, and so fitted themselves for other employments. A fifth boy had not sufficient application or ambition to follow their example, and a short time ago he was still a book-keeper, and was making not over twenty dollars a week—not a rapid advance in fourteen years. ”

“ Of course I do not mean by this that he will come to New York penniless. He must, of course, expect to have enough money saved or spared him to live on until he gets a place. But he will expect to support himself as soon as he finds work. On this account, unless he has had some previous experience, or has some special knowledge that he can make useful, he would better stay at home. For he will at once find himself competing against the city boy, who lives at home, and who therefore can work for little and sometimes no wages. ”

“ Eight dollars a week is about the smallest sum on which a self-respecting boy, well brought up, and accustomed to decent living, can keep himself going. For the first year, if he is well stocked with clothes, he could perhaps, with a little assistance from home, manage to scrape along on seven or even six, but such an experience would be pleasanter to look back on than to pass through. ”

“ Boys beginning at the beginning in large commercial houses generally get about three or four dollars a week if they are in the stock, and from five to seven dollars if they are in the office. But a boy who goes into the stock and learns it, and how to sell it to customers, has acquired a knowledge of a business, while a boy who goes into the office learns how to become a book-keeper only. ”

“ Having got your electric motor it would seem a comparatively easy job to mount it on a car, to fix up a moving connection with an electric wire, and to make the motor turn the car-wheels. It looks easy enough to-day in places where hundreds of horseless cars are running about in all directions as if by magic. ”