"Ever since I can remember."

 

"I wish you'd tell me a little about yourself. Have you got any father or mother?"

 

"I aint got no mother. She died when I wasn't but three years old. My father went to sea; but he went off before mother died, and nothin' was ever heard of him. I expect he got wrecked¹, or died at sea."

 

"And what became of you when your mother died?"

 

"The folks she boarded with took care of me, but they was poor, and they couldn't do much. When I was seven the woman died, and her husband went out West, and then I had to scratch for myself."

 

"At seven years old!" exclaimed Frank, in amazement².

 

"Yes," said Dick, "I was a little feller to take care of myself, but," he continued with pardonable pride, "I did it."

 

"What could you do?"

 

"Sometimes one thing, and sometimes another," said Dick. "I changed my business accordin' as I had to. Sometimes I was a newsboy, and diffused³ intelligence among the masses, as I heard somebody say once in a big speech he made in the Park. Them was the times when Horace Greeley and James Gordon Bennett made money."

 

"Through your enterprise?" suggested Frank.

 

"Yes," said Dick; "but I give it up after a while."

 

"What for?"

 

"Well, they didn't always put news enough in their papers, and people wouldn't buy 'em as fast as I wanted 'em to. So one mornin' I was stuck on a lot of Heralds⁴, and I thought I'd make a sensation. So I called out 'GREAT NEWS! QUEEN VICTORIA ASSASSINATED⁵!' All my Heralds went off like hot cakes, and I went off, too, but one of the gentlemen what got sold remembered me, and said he'd have me took up, and that's what made me change my business."

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