Year: 1878




little street. l call it q street simply
out OF compliment-it being in reality
only an alley that had started out to be
street and finding itself too narrow by
half had stopped at the end of two
blocks and never gone any further
lived o shabby old man, called by his
neighbors "Mr. Waste Paper" and by
prdo beys ~'-1 gins VI Ulle IlolB lBnDoInootl
cold Miser" and "Queer Eyes"


He bought and sold waste paper, and
all the four rooms in his house-he was
the only one in the street that occupied
whole house and was looked upon with
great respect on that account-in fact.
think if he had only rented a room or
two like the rest of the inhabitants he
would have been "Waste Paper John, 4"
instead of "Mr. Waste Paper" were
almost filed with it.


One, indeed, the largest, was filed to
the very ceiling, only narrow pathway
being left in the center like small val
ley between two steep mountains.


A deep drift like snow lay upon the
floors of two of the other rooms, and
hundreds of books from which the cov-
ers had departed forever, old magazines,
used-up ledgers, torn hand-bills and
circulars, were stacked along the walls
and in the fourth room, where the old
man ate and slept, all the furniture,
with the exception of tiny stove, a
gridiron, saucepan, and a tea-kettle;
was made of paper. Ottomans formed
out of newspapers laid neatly one upon
the other, bed built of some twenty
large bundles of coarse brown paper
with an old Webster's Unabridged
for pillow; table made by placing six
big account books on the floor, six
more on the top of them, and SO on until
enough had been used. ALI legless, Of
course, but serving Mr.. Waste Paper as
well as though they had any number Of
legs.
You never saw such queer place in
your life, and never heard such con-
tinual rustling and cracking as the
furniture kept up, and very likely you
never met such very odd old man.


One shoulder was o little higher
and one leg little shorter than the
other, and he had one black eye and one
blue one. And when he was good
natured he looked at you with the blue
one, and when he was cross he looked al
you with the black one, and I dont
think there could ever have been two
more expressive eyes in the whole world
--one could look so cross and the other
so kind.


Well, nobody in Sam street-that il
what they called the ambitious alley,
after old Sam Junkman, who built the
first house there fifty years ago-knev
anything about Mr.. Waste Paper, ex
cept that he had lived in that four
roomed house for the last ten years, and
that the only person he was at all friend
ly with was Mrs. Dolf, the kid-glovt
cleaner, who lived next door, and who
boiled the water for his tea on summer
evenings, when he had no fire at home
/ Mrs. DoIf's children, Amos and Cher
ry, liked the old man very we'll, for HI
used often to give them pretty pictures
which he cut from the picture-paperI
which fell in his possession, and, NOR
rarely, penny or two; but the othe
| Sam street children called him "olc
miser," because he gave them nothing
and because they heard their father
and mothers say, Waste Paper has
good sum of money in some bank o
other, you may bet, for he's been buy
ing and selling for ton years and neve
had days sickness, and wearing tn
rarne old clothes, summer and winter
and not chick or child, or dog, o
o cat to look after, and never askin