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The Newsboy Partners: or, Who Was Dick Box?
The Newsboy Partners; Or, Who Was Dick Box?
CHAPTER I
JIMMY IS IN LUCK
"Wuxtry! Wuxtry! Full account of de big f-i-r-e! Here ye are! Wuxtry! Woild, Joinal, Sun, Telegram! Here ye are, mister! Git de latest wuxtry! Wuxtry! Wuxtry!"
Jimmy Small was only one of a dozen newsboys crying the same thing in City Hall Park, New York. The lads, ragged little chaps, were rushing at all in whom they saw possible customers, thrusting the papers in their very faces, a fierce rivalry taking place whenever two of the boys reached the same man at the same time. But of all who cried none shouted louder than this same Jimmy Small, and none was more active in rushing here and there with papers.
"Wuxtry! Wuxtry!" yelled Jimmy, for that was how he and the other boys pronounced the word "Extra."
"What's the extra about?" asked a well-dressed man, stopping Jimmy.
"Wuxtry! Big fire! Dozen people burned to death! Here ye are! Wuxtry! Full account of de big f-i-r-e!"
Jimmy could not stop long to talk. He must sell papers. He snatched one from the bundle under his arm, thrust it into the man's hand, took the nickel the customer gave him, handed the man four pennies in change, and all the while was yelling at the top of his voice his war-cry:
"Wuxtry! Wuxtry!"
Jimmy had secured his bunch of papers from one of the delivery wagons on Park Row – Newspaper Row, as it is sometimes called. He had dashed across the park toward Broadway, selling as he ran. He wanted to reach a certain corner at Broadway and Barclay Street, where he could be sure of finding many customers who would buy papers on their way to take the ferry over to New Jersey. Jimmy usually made that corner his headquarters.
As he hurried on he was stopped several times by men who, attracted by his loud shouts, wanted to buy papers to see what the extra was about. As it happened, there had been a disastrous fire in New York that day in which a number of per-
"Well, I ain't yer son. Ner I ain't no signpost either. D'ye want a pape?"