Part 2

Thereafter, she only left the house at nightfall to walk down to the end of the pier opposite to the gin mill of her uncle. During one of these nocturnal rambles she met Patrick McShane. He was lying in drunken stupor on the very edge of the dock, and in danger of losing his balance. Mary woke him up, lectured him and then gave him money. Before sending him away, she told him to be there on the following evening.

Regular meetings were soon in order, and it was not long before Mary conceived the idea of reforming Patrick McShane.

McShane was willing, and, one day the entire ward was startled into unusual surprise by hearing of the marriage of Patrick McShane and Mary McNulty.

To give credit where credit is due, it must be recorded that McShane, for quite a while, inspired by the devotion of his wife, improved wonderfully in his habits and walked along the narrow road of sobriety with nary a stumble. But, after about a year of wedded life, he permitted himself occasional relapses into the old ways, multiplying them in time. It is hard to tell if all the hope of his ultimate reformation died out in the heart of his wife. She became very quiet, catering more carefully to his creature comforts and never offering any remonstrance.

But there must have been a void, a yearning to receive and to give a little affection, and when "the lady in front"--my mother--died and left her orphan, Mary McShane would not let it go to the "institution," but took it into her own humble home.

And for this dear little woman, whose entire life was one of self-sacrifice, devotion and humiliation, a prayer goes from me at every thought of her.

It can hardly be expected that I, a boy of seven years of age, grasped the full significance of the information imparted by my foster father. Only two points appeared very grave to me. Should the fact become known to my playmates that I was an orphan--not distinguished from a foundling by them--and that I had sailed, so to speak, under false colors, my fate would have been one full of persecution and sneering contempt. I silently prayed and then beseeched my foster mother to keep the matter a profound secret.

The other point of importance was that the street, "where I, by right, belonged," assumed a new aspect. Having had plenty of evidence of the impulsive spirit which ruled our household, something seemed to tell me that it was not improbable that the threat of my expulsion would be fulfilled, and I began to consider my ultimate fate from all sides.

The bootblacks and newsboys and other young chaps, who were making their precarious living in the streets, became personages of great interest to me. I watched their ways, and even found myself calculating their receipts. It was quite clear to me that, should my foster father drive me from the house, I should have to resort to some makeshift living in the streets.

All this put me in a preoccupied state of mind, which does not sit naturally on a child. I became more quiet than ever, and, in the evening, from the wood box behind the cooking range, watched our home proceedings. Most times they were very noisy, and my quietness seemed to grate on the ears of him whom I had ceased to call "father," and was then addressing more formally as "Mr. McShane," which also annoyed him.

Can you not read here between the lines and understand how a certain something became more and more stifled within me? Perhaps I was unreasonable or lacking in gratitude, but I was a child and still hungered and hungered and longed for that which, as yet, had not come into my share.

But if Mr. McShane would not listen to my plea for shoes, my good, dear "mum" had heard my request and understood the motive of my insistence. Happily, children's shoes do not involve enormous expenditure, and so, on a certain eventful day, "mum" went to her savings bank, the proverbial stocking, took the larger part of it and made me the proud possessor of a pair of real, new shoes, the first of my life. Bitterness, sulking and wailing were all forgotten and wiped away as if by magic, and my feet, in their new casings, seemed to step on golden rays of sunshine. If I add to this that I had never had a toy of any kind you will be able to measure my sensation.

The real, new shoes were not an altogether free gift. It had been agreed between "mum" and me that I was to pay the equivalent for them by increased collectibility in the retail coal business.

The following day saw me starting out for the coal docks with the very best of intentions. I began to fear that we would not be able to find room for all the coal I meant to carry home that day. Tons of coal began to heap themselves in my vision, until, perchance, my eyes fell on the real, new shoes.

It became my unavoidable duty to let my footgear be seen.

Many detours were made, and so much time was wasted in exhibiting my shoes to the thrilling envy of my comrades that the accumulation of coal suffered in consequence. The awakening from my dream of glory came with the end of the day, when it required all my remaining buoyant spirits to nerve me for my reception at home.

The coal basket was dreadfully light.

My home coming was very ill-timed. Mr. McShane was in the throes of another idle period, which did not preclude credit at the neighboring saloons. Had there been "company" I might have been able to escape his wrath, but, having sat there all alone--that is, without male companionship--and his wife never daring to reply to his sarcastic flings, I was just the red rag for the bull.

"Ah, and so you're home at last? Mary, have you no hot supper ready for this young gentleman, after him being hungry from working so hard at getting about ten pieces of coal? Oh, and new shoes are we wearing now, ain't that nice!" Then, with a quick change of tone and manner, "Come here, you brat, come here to me!"

"Leave the boy alone, Pat!" interposed "mum," but I knew, as she did, that it was futile.

I have no difficulty in remembering it all. In a dull, heavy way I felt that the crisis had come.

At the ending of the scene, my shoes, my real, new shoes, were torn from my feet. Everything within me rebelled against that. Life without those shoes was not worth living, and I stormed myself into a frenzy, which did not leave me until I found myself, propelled by a swift leg movement, on the floor of the dark hallway--minus my shoes.

The long expected had come. I had thought myself prepared for this moment, yet found myself stunned and bewildered. What was I to do? The street "where I belonged" now seemed to belong to me, but I did not look quite as stoically as before at the prospect before me.

"Besides, how can I go out without shoes?" I reasoned, forgetting the fact that, only quite recently, shoes had become necessities to me.

But the truth was--and will you blame me?--that from the crack at the bottom of the door came a tiny streak of light, which told a vivid tale of all I was in danger of forfeiting. How often I had growled at my fate; now, behind that door, lay a paradise.

I crouched there in the dark corner of the stairs leading to the roof. How long I shivered there I do not know. All my senses were alert and ready for the slightest alarm. Once I heard pleading and emphatic denial within, and then all was still--still for a long while.

My gaze was fixed on the door. It seemed hours--perhaps it was--before I heard a slight creaking and saw the reflection of more light on the hallway floor. It disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, and then it was dark and quiet again.

But why was that door opened? Something must have happened. I dragged myself to the threshold of my lost home, felt around and found--my shoes, my real, new shoes. And then I tried hard to cry, but could not. The crust had become too hardened.

The crisis had come, was passed, and the curtain fell on my childhood. Ages cannot be measured by years.

*A NOMAD OF THE STREETS.*

*CHAPTER III.*

*A NOMAD OF THE STREETS.*

Seven years old, I stepped into the street, where, by right, I belonged, no longer a child, to begin the journey, which, through many years in the valley, led me to the heights.

It was a bleak December night.

Can you not draw yourself the picture of the boy starting on his way--whither?

I stood for some time in the doorway. A policeman loomed in the distance. Boys cannot bear them in day time, how much less at night. To be "collared" by a "cop" at this hour meant a stay in the station house and a visit to the police court. I put myself in motion.

With cap pulled over my ears and hands pushed into my pockets, I started in the direction of the Bowery and Chatham Street, now called Park Row. I halted under a lamp-post to determine on my course.

"Uptown" was an entirely unknown region to me. "Downtown" was not much more familiar, but, somehow, I knew that that was the place where all the newsboys came from.

I turned to the left and walked and ran--the night was bitterly cold--down Chatham street until I came within view of the City Hall. So far I had been once or twice before on some adventurous trip, but not beyond that. Though I did not realize it at the time, I stood on my jumping-off place, ready to jump into the unknown.

I paused for a while, looking into the darkness before me. In those days, before the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge, City Hall Square was not as brilliantly lighted as now. I stood there until the biting cold made me move on.

My eyes were watery from the meeting blasts, and, stumbling on, I almost fell on top of a layer of diminutive humanity. Before I had time to draw my stiffened hands from the pockets to wipe my eyes, I felt a welcome sensation of warmth, thick, intense, damp, ink-permeated warmth.

The warm current came from the grating over the pressroom of a newspaper. This open-air radiator only measured a few feet, yet, at least, fifteen boys were hugging it as closely as their mothers' breasts. The iron frame was entirely invisible, and my share of warmth coming from it was very trifling. But, even so, only a few minutes of this straggling cheer was afforded to me.

Just as some of the numbness began to thaw out of my limbs, the cry--ever and ever familiar to the newsboy--"Cheese it, the cop!" rang out, and, like a horde of frightened sprites, the boys scampered away, I bringing up the rear.

We raced around the corner into Frankfort street and stopped in a dark hallway, which seemed to be the headquarters of this particular crowd. It was not warm in there, but, at any rate, it was a shelter against the cutting gusts of night winds, playing their stormy games of "hide-and-seek" around the blocks facing Park Row.

Following the example of the others, I cuddled up in a corner, and tried to forget my troubles in sleep. Just dozing, preliminary to falling into sounder sleep, I was suddenly and swiftly aroused by a grasp and a kick, and informed that I had usurped a corner "beeslonging" to a habitue of this dismal hostelry.

I had yet to learn that a newsboy will claim everything in sight, to relinquish it only by defeat in fight, and meekly submitted to my dispossession. The late comer took a bundle of newspapers from under his arm and carefully proceeded to prepare his bed. First, he spread a number of sheets on the floor; then built a pillow from the major part, and, at last, proceeded to cover himself with the remaining papers.

The light was dim, still, it was enough to show him my discomfiture.

"Say," he addressed me, "what's the matter, ain't you got no place to sleep? I'll tell you what I'll do. If you don't kick in your sleep, I'll let you lie down longside o' me." Then, as an afterthought, "It'll keep me warmer, anyhow."

Most emphatically and impressively did I assure him that my sleep was absolutely motionless, and from that night dated a partnership and friendship which lasted for many years.

In later years I have often wondered why I and all the other boys who comprised the newspaper-selling fraternity of that day always landed in Park Row, and in the midst of the future colleagues? It seemed to be a well defined destiny. Behind the coming of each new recruit was the little tragedy, which had made the leading actor therein a stray waif of the streets. And, no matter where the tragedy had happened, whether in Harlem or in the First Ward, the district along and above the Battery, they all found their way to Park Row.

The life of the newsboy is full of action. His personal struggle and business is so absorbing that he has no time for useless speculation. The advent of a newcomer is not signalized by a very warm reception. He is neither hampered by professional jealousy or suffered by tolerance. The field is open to all, and it rests with the boy how he will fare. However, in spite of this almost essential selfishness, impulsive outbursts of good nature are a characteristic of this most emotional creature, the newsboy. My apprenticeship in the fraternity owed its beginning to one of these spontaneous outbursts.

It was quite early when, chilled to the marrow, I awoke in the drafty hallway. My new and independent existence was begun with my first great sorrow. Here the temptation is very strong upon me to tell you that remorse, anguish and despair were racking my soul; that it was homesickness or a great longing for all I had left behind me. But putting this temptation behind me, I must confess that my sorrow was of the most material kind. I missed my coffee.

Across the street was Hitchcock's coffee and cake saloon. Through the shivery morning air, every time a patron entered or left the place, a cloud of greasy, spicy aromas came wafting to the frozen little troupe leaving their dreary abiding place. My future colleagues had so often had this torture inflicted on them that, now, with just an envious sniff, they could bear it with stoical fortitude. I, still a weakling, stopped, as if transfixed, inhaled the perfumed currents and most solemnly swore that, with my very first money, I would buy the entire stock; yes, even the entire coffee and cake saloon.

Alas, Hitchcock's is still doing business.

The next question presenting itself was, how was I to get the "first" money?

Newsboys work and play in cliques. The particular gang, with which I had thrown my lot, had its rendezvous in Theatre Alley. It was the assembling and meeting place for all the members, those who had slept in "regular" beds and those who had "carried the banner"[#] in the Frankfort street hallway. This distinction did by no means establish two different social strata among us. Fate was so uncertain that the aristocrat of the night before, who had rested his weary limbs on a "regular" bed, was very apt to fight on the following night for the possession of the corner in the hallway, which "beeslonged" to him.

[#] To spend the night without a bed.

Beyond giving me a scrutinizing look, none of the boys took heed of me, and did not object to my following them. Arrived in Theatre Alley, we met the leader of the gang, who had the proud distinction of being about the only one who had a "home to go to" whenever he felt like doing so. The same qualities, which, since then, have made him a leader in politics and have led him to membership in legislative bodies, were even in that day in evidence.

In parenthesis let me say that I am not blessed with personal beauty. Add to this that my appearance presented itself rather grotesquely and disheveled on that eventful morning, and you will understand why the leader's searching eye singled me out from the rest.

"Are you a new one?" he asked me.

I answered in the affirmative.

"Going to sell papers?"

Again the affirmative.

"Got any money?"

Now a convincing negative.

Then, as now, our leader was sparing in the use of words. At the end of our brief interview, I was "staked" to a nickel to buy my first stock of papers, and those who know Tim Sullivan will also know that I was not the first or the last to get "staked" by the Bowery statesman.

He not only furnished my working capital, but also taught me a few tricks of the trade and advised me to invest my five pennies in just one, the best selling paper of the period.

So, in less than twelve hours after leaving what had been for several years my home, I was fully installed as a vendor of newspapers.

Then began the usual existence of "newsies," eating and "sleeping" when lucky, and "pulling through somehow" when unlucky. I stuck to that business for over ten years.

The life of the streets did not at all disagree with me. My childhood had been full of bitterness, childish bitterness, and I had a dull longing to make the world at large feel my revenge for having dealt so unkindly with me. Whatever good traits there had been in me were quickly and willingly transformed into viciousness. This helped me to become a leading member of our gang of boys.

Among us there was none so absolutely orphaned as myself. Those who were orphans had, at least, their memories. I did not even have them.

In odd, emotional moments, one or another would let his thoughts stray back to some still loved and revered father or mother, or would confess to having crept up to his former home, at some safe time, to have a peep at forfeited comforts. I welcomed these references and day dreams of my colleagues, but solely because they were utilized by me as pretenses for inflicting my brutality on those who had uttered them.

There is a question, a number of questions, to be asked here. Why did I do this? Was it because I was naturally vicious, or because I wanted to stifle a certain gnawing in my heart by my ferociousness? A strange reasoning, the last, perhaps; but in years I was still a child, and if a child has but little in his life to love, and that little is taken out of his life, that child can turn into a veritable little demon. Those, whom I had believed my parents, turned out to be nothing more than charitably inclined strangers; that what I had believed to be my home, proved but a refuge, and my boyish logic saw in this sufficient cause to envy those, who had all this behind them and to give vent to this envy in the most ferocious manner.

That was the tenor of my life as a newsboy. I had enough callousness to bear all the hardships without a murmur. One ambition took possession of me. I wanted to be a power among newsboys. I wanted to be respected or feared. As I did not care which, I succeeded in the latter at the expense of the former. The heroes of newsboys are always men who owe their prominence to physical prowess. I chose as my models the best known fighters of the day.

As with all other "business men," there is keen rivalry and competition among newsboys. The only difference is that, among the boys, the most primitive and direct way is the most frequent one employed to settle disputes. Some men, after great sorrows or disappointments, seek forgetfulness in battle, being entirely indifferent to their ultimate fate, and they always make good fighters. My position was not altogether dissimilar from theirs. What little I had known of comfort and affection was behind me; my mode of life at that time had no particular attraction for me, and my only ambition was to conquer by fight, and, therefore, I made a good fighter.

In all those long years I cannot recall more than one incident which stirred the softer emotions of my heart.

A newcomer, a blue-eyed, light-haired little fellow, had come among us, and was immediately chosen by me as my favorite victim. Certain traces of refinement were discernible in him and this gave me many opportunities to hold him up to the ridicule of our choice gang of young ruffians. I hated him without knowing why.

One day I saw him standing at the corner of "the Row," offering his wares with the unprofessional cry: "Please, won't you buy a paper?"

It was a glorious chance to "plant" a kick on one of his shins, and thereby to relieve myself of some of my hatred. Stealthily I crept up behind him, and was on the point of sending my foot on its mission, when two motherly-looking women stopped to buy a paper from "the cherub." Wits are quickly sharpened in a life on the streets, and I realized at once that my intended assault, if witnessed by the two ladies, would evoke a storm of indignation.

I immediately changed front, and endeavored to create the impression that my hasty approach had been occasioned by my desire to sell a paper.

"Poipers, ladies, poipers," I cried, but was barely noticed.

The "cherub" claimed all their attention.

"What a pretty boy!" exclaimed one. "Have you no home, no parents? Too bad, too bad!"

All this was noted and registered by me for a future reckoning with the recipient of so much kindness.

My heart was shivering with acid bitterness.

"Never me, never me!" and the misery of many loveless years rang as a wail in my soul.

Just as the woman, who had spoken, was about to hand a dime to my intended scapegoat, her companion happened to turn and see me.

"Oh, just look at the other poor fellow."

The exclamation was justified. I was a sight. However, my dilapidated clothes and scratched face owed their pitiful condition to much "scrapping" and not to deprivations.

Again she spoke.

"Here, poor boy, here is a penny for you."

With a light pat on my grimy cheek and one of the sunniest smiles ever shed on me, she was gone before I could realize what had happened. There, penny in hand, I stood, dreaming and stroking the cheek she had touched, and asking myself why she had done so.

Somehow, I felt that, were she to come back, I could just have said to her: "Say, lady, I ain't got much to give, but I'll give you all me poipers, and me pennies, and me knife, if you'll only say and do that over again."

The "cherub" also was a gainer by this little touch of nature. I forgot to kick and abuse him that night.

There was nothing dwarfish about me, and my temperament made me enjoy the many "scraps" which belong to a street arab's routine.

Park Row was and is frequented by the lesser lights of the sporting world. Our boyish fights were not fought in seclusion, but anywhere. Being a constant participant in these "goes," as I was almost daily called upon to defend my sounding title of "Newsboy Champion of Park Row" against new aspirants for the honor, myself and my fighting "work" soon became familiar to the "sports," who were the most interested of the spectators.

I was of large frame, my face was of the bulldog type, my muscles were strong, my constitution hardened by my outdoor existence in all sorts of weather, and, without knowing it, my advance in the art of fisticuffs was eagerly watched, with the hope of discovering in me a new "dark horse" for the prize ring.

Among the men who had followed my progress in boxing were such renowned sports as Steve Brodie, Warren Lewis, "Fatty" Flynn, "Pop" Kaiser and others of equal prominence. In due time overtures were made to me. I was properly "tried out" on several third-rate boxers, and said good-by to the newsboy life to blossom out as a full-fledged pugilist.

Before long I began to have _higher_ ambitions. It was the day of smaller purses and more fighting, and I determined to fight often so as to accumulate money quickly. I had no definite idea why I wanted to accumulate money with such feverish haste. I had some dim desire _to wanting_ to have a lot of it, to having the sensation of being the possessor of a roll of bills, and, this being the only road open to me toward that goal, I was eager to travel it.