Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1892-12-29
A PROFESSIONAL "WEEPER."
A Young Scamp Who Finds Begging More
Profitable Than Working.


Profitable Than Working.
Jack the Weeper' is well known
about the lower part of the town. He
has been exploited in the newspapers in
connection with arrest and incarcera-
ton, has been interviewed and had his
picture taken, and on various occasions
has sworn off from professional weep
ing. Jack the Weeper" is a diminu-
tive looking specimen of seven-year-
Old boy with twenty-year-old face and
stock of experience and cunning rarely
accumulated by mankind this side Of
fifty. He is ostensibly a newsboy, but
the fraternity hold him in great con-
tempt or know him only to thump him.
HIS racket" has been to get bundle of
papers together late in the evening and
weep at the foot Of the elevated stairs
down town.
Sympathetic people cast him pennies
and nickels and dimes, and sometimes
an occasional quarter or half dollar
found an abiding place in the weeper's
inside pocket-all on the supposition
that he was an honest lad who had been
"stuck." Thus the weeper found that
tears could be coined into cash more
easily and proftably than by the ordi-
nary course of the news trade. But just
as Jack had worked up fairly regular
trade in came II policeman, a cold and
calculating man of the world, with a
club, and broke up business by arrest,
examination and consequent publicity.
AT the foot of down town stairway
of Il Sixth avenue elevated station in the
most fashionable part of New York re-
Gently occurred scene which demon
strated that Jack the Weeper'Nhad not
only not gone out of business, but had
vastly improved upon former methods.
1t was about the fashionable shopping
hour and the swell women and dilettanu.
young men were fiocking to the down
town trains. A delicate lad, with a con-
sumptive cough and d bundle of castof
morning newspapers, stood shivering at
the foot of the stairs, two great big
homemade tears plowing their way
through the dirt on his cheeks as the
muddy waters of the Missouri seek the
sea. Several of us stopped out of sym
pathy and began to question the boy
AT the same time nearly every hand
in the crowd instinctively sought for
change. An exceedingly sharp eyed lady
impulsively pulled out a bill and pushed
it into his trembling fingers, accompany
ing the act with an appealing look
around upon the rest of us. 1t worked
Everybody in sight gave silver, and an
old lady who came in later on the scene
pressed two dollar note upon the child.
missed two trains to note the goodly
sight, and | felt proud Of my fellow
creatures and the beautiful sympathy of
my kind The boy never said word.
He merely coughed and wept and scooped
in the coin. In the excitement of the
moment l forgot an errand l had at the
next station and went past it. Then l
got out, went up the other side and rode
back.
There was a little mob gathered on
the down town side at the foot of the
stairs. So nearly like the other mob
was it that at first thought had made
another mistake and gone back to my
starting point. But no; it was the next
station.
Well, "shiver my timbers!" as the old
salt says, if ahere wasn't the same boy
with the same graveyard cough, the
same weep, the same old papers, and,
what was more astonishing, here was the
same sharp eyed, benevolent lady in the
midst of a group of sympathetic women,
just starting liberal subscription.
My first impulse was to jump in and
grab her and yell for the police, but
conquered it and walked away, wonder
ing how much money there was in this
new snap of the woman and the weeper.
New York Herald.
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