Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1871-04-26

LITTLE BEN, THE NEWSBOY.
A TOUCHING LITTLE SKETCH.


for don't remember times and seasons
very well-two people were walking down
street one day. A big, burly newsboy.
very rough looking. very dirty and un-
combed he was, walked slowly along,
just before the two people, crying in a
hoarse, brazen voice -
.Yer's yer evening pippers, O'Clock e
-dish-ing'
just as hundreds of rough looking un-
coined newsboys do, every day. But
few feet behind the big boy, another boy,
a little one, was walking timidly He
was the merest mite of little boy, not
more than seven years old, think, and
small of his age too. He was fragile
looking little fellow, with pale face and
slender little hands His hair was comb
ed and curled carefully, in long, yellow
curls, almost like girl's.-None but
mothers hand can comb and curl boys
hair just that way. have noticed.
The small boy had few papers under
his arm, trying to hold them as the big
boy held his. And when the big boy sang
out his cry, evening papers, o'clock
e-dish-ing' in his loud, rough voice,
he would turn Immediately around to the
little one, and nod encouragingly and tell
him -
Now you say it, Baby
Then the pale little fellow, with the
long, yellow curls, would take up his cry
family and feebly, and try to say it in his
weak, childish quaver. Somehow it made
one feel queer about the throat, to hear
that poor little voice.
The large boy was teaching the small
one how to be newsboy. Next after
noon the two boys had another reahersal.
and the next, and that time the little boy
ventured to cross the street, and 90 down
the other side, family and timidly echoing
the cry of his big, rough friend opposite.
Hundreds of people must have noticed the
two, am sure.
The small boy was little Ben.
have not much saving faith in the race
of newsboys, as a general thing. l am
afraid that, in spite of Sunday schools
and night schools, and savings banks, and
even newsboys' homes,' they remain
class of the most depraved little wretches
under the sun. know should be SO my
self in their place. 1t is not their fault.
1t is the fault of the barbarous civilization
which turns children out of their cradles
to earn their living. Learned doctors say
that the moral faculties, being the highest
endowment. of human nature, are there
that is why children are mostly such un-
merciful, cruel little heathens, and pinch
and torture each other, and steal, and tell
lies, and have to have ideas of right and
wrong educated into them, so to speak.
SO that it is not until children approach
manhood and womanhood that they begin
to be truthful and honest and tender heart
ed Indeed, | have known even full
grown men and women who did not seem
to have any very vivid ideas of wrong,
not yet being fully developed mentally.
So when cruel necessity lays the burden of
bearded men on the shoulders of weak
children, we cannot expect anything else
of them than they will be miniature shar-
pers and wicked little wretches. But
never meant to preach. l only meant to
tell the simple and sorrowful story of
Little Ben. 1t is true story, too. If
could have made it up myself, God knows
would have given it different ending!
He was newsboy, as told you. Not
one of the angel kind either. He some-
times said words, little as he was, which
would have shocked you, / am afraid, if
you had heard them. And l know the
only reason in the world why he did not
knock down the big boys who used to kick
and cuff him when he went to take his
turn in the row of boys in the newspaper
office, was simply because he was too
little to do it. Patsey Hagans did it for
him, and Patsey was the bully of the news
boys, the toughest, toughest, most reck-
less of them all, the hardest case in town,
who always slept rolled up in blanket on
the floor and who knew how to swear
when he was two years old. Patsey train
ed Little Ben to be a newsboy, and called
him his baby. So Patsey had a soft spot
in his hard heart after all,
Ben was the smallest newsboy you ever
saw. Such little mite of fellow he
was, that you wondered how he could
sell papers at ALL and how any mother
could trust him out of her sight. Fine
ladies said sometimes that it was a pity
such pretty child should be ancwshoy,
and that his mother surely did not care
much for him, letting him run about the
streets so in constant danger of being
knocked down and killed. If he were
their boy he shouldn't do it for anything.
For little Ben was a very pretty child, with
his slender hands and long, golden curls.
How was it? Did not his mother care
for her child? Aye she did; for he was
the only comfort she had in the world
Her only comfort and her only child.
Little Ben had father, but he might bet
ter have had no father. This father was a
poor, pitiful wreck of humanity, fallen so
low that l think scarcely the angels of
heaven could have reached him in the
depth of degradation to which he had
sunk! l am sure nobody except an angel
could have reached him, away down in
the pool of slime and filth which was all
over him. For no beast is so beastly as a
human beast.
Time was when this weak, bad man had
been well to do in the world, and respect
able, and had friends. But it must have
been always in him to be weak and bad,
or he would not have fallen so easily when
temptation came. An old tradition, which
tells how the angels fell from Paradise.
says that the thread which drew them in
to evil "was at first as thin as a cobweb,
but they did not resist it, and it grew
strong as a cable. So with little bens
father. He did not resist the cob-weo :.
first, and now the cable bound him manu-
and foot, and left him no power, nor even