Pawtucket Tribune

a news store.
A STUDY OF CHARACTER.
All Sorts Will Be Found Among the Sturdy Paper Carriers.

If a person desired to see what is, for a few minutes, a veritable bee-hive of industry, he should step inside a fair sized news store at the time the evening papers are coming in. If he will stand there for a few minutes, and watch and listen to the buzzing of the little bees of the establishment he will find much to amuse him, with probably many an object lesson previously untaught. There is a hustling and a bustling in the rush to get through with the work and out on to the streets with their wares, for with an eye to business, they all learn that "it is the early bird that catches the worm." What a variety of individuality this observer will see; what an opportunity for character study. From the little rag-a-muffin of the street to the more sedate and better clad High School youth, to whom fair fortune has evidently been more generous. Here each one plays his part and plays it certainly to nature.

It was in one of these stores a few days ago that the following scene was enacted: Boys coming in from the trains and elsewhere on the run, with bundles of papers on their shoulders. Then to work they went, some on all fours, opening and separating, and folding and counting, then piling and arranging for sale. One youth, a little more active than the others, has his pile all arranged and is crushing them into his paper-bag, and in a minute will be out. Among all the proprietor moves, and like the general that he is, turns here, there and everywhere, directing, aiding, guiding, the little troup about him. It might be imagined from reading this that all the foregoing was done in silence and with mechanical precision.

It is not. Newspaper boys, as a class, are the hustlers of the community; and the hustling boy makes the hustling man. In this group of ten, where was represented an equal variety of natures, there was the quiet boy and the funny boy, the wit and student, the pugnacious youth and bully; also the sly gamin with all the precociousness of his Americanism and possessing a keen wit to help him out of difficulties. There was one who whistled and sang as he worked; the funny youth delighted to tell the latest joke and to plague the smaller boys. There was another who is genius for shirking, and would do anything rather than work; yet will make a most agonizing appeal for "help to fold his papers" when he sees the other boys are done and he hardly begun. There also was the sedate or studiously inclined youth who, while working, catches a glimpse at the doings of the city fathers or the condition at Nicaragua, or probably the aspect of the war clouds over China. "Music hath its charms for all," we are told, but here the pugnacious youth tells the musical one to close up, as he is scanning the head lines of the sporting column while he works, which he would sooner do than to hear all the songs that Julia Mackey ever sang. While above all this babble the voice of the proprietor was frequently heard calling, "Silence!" and not always in the most approved English.

First he will stir the slow boy up who would sooner talk than work. Then another in telling his jokes got twisted on his count and had to be straightened out. Each one requires his attention in one way or another; both by way of keeping matters straight and preserving peace in the establishment. Soon, however, all is over, as the boys have nearly finished the work and will soon be dodging among the people on the street with their "paper mister?" query, or wending their way along a regular route. Thus it goes on one day after another with slight variations, until they enter other walks of life, which they will pursue all the more successfully, on account of the experience gained in many things while a newsboy.