Now, little book, I am going on a trip to Europe and this is my last letter till we come back in October. Pa and Levey Cohen have become personally interested in the queerest boy I ever saw. He is fourteen years of age, and a newsboy, from New York City, and Coney Island. He has bright gleaming red hair, large brown eyes, more freckles than Dr. Woodbridge could ever count, and two front teeth knocked down his throat in a fight in which he says, for once, he got licked by a Chink, which hurts his feelings more than the lickin’. Pa got him a new suit and a hair cut. You couldn’t tell where his hair began and his face left off. Pa says, like good whiskey, he will improve with age, and I should hope he might. Up to now he has slept in barrels and boxes mostly and never had a human being kind to him in his life. He’s got a common yellow dog named Teddy—he said he wouldn’t come unless Pa adopted Teddy, the dog, and Pa said there was room for the dog, so when “Jimmy Jones” got that letter he wired back to Pa saying: “Dear Sir: Your offer accepted, quicker than instantly. I telegraph you my answer, but I expect to get there before the telegram does.” He told the telegraph man to collect on the other end, that was the end the money pot was, and he sent the message, also the bill. Pa said he had great hopes of “Jimmy,” after he got that telegram. “Jimmy Jones” boards with our gardener, and Pa had a nice room fitted up for him, and when it was shown him he looked at the bed all made up nice, and white, and said: “Hully gee! what’s that? a dining-table! Gosh, but ain’t it grand?” When told it was a bed he said, “Gosh, I couldn’t get on to that, I would soil the top right off.” Pa told him after he had a bath and was scrubbed off—which he didn’t like at all—he was left to his first night’s rest in a bed that he could remember. He told Pa the next day that he could sleep a hundred years and never want to wake up to the bad world in that bed. He said he wondered why people wanted to go home, but now he said it was clear to his mind that they wanted to just sleep in a nice comfortable bed. He told every policeman he met to come and rest their lamps on his bed, said it was good for sore eyes, etc. Pa took Jimmy to Dr. Atwood on Boylston Street to have two teeth put in on a bridge. Jimmy didn’t like the process, but he stood it fine; the gardener says he’s a brave boy. Anyway, he looks better with the teeth in. Before he looked for all the world like that yellow kid boy I saw when I was a very little girl, that was before Buster Brown appeared in the Sunday papers. Pa says he will let Jimmy learn to drive his automobile—thinks he can learn in time, all but his slang. I never heard such a string of slang in all my life. The other day he was telling the gardener about his summer at Coney Island; I heard a part of what he said: “Yes, Coney Island is de place where all de swells go to dat tink they are swells. Hully gee! all that is swell about them is their heads. They are, all told, a rummy lot. Lots of times they steal a paper or a shoe shine. Yes, I blacked the President’s boots for him. Naw, not the President of the United States of freedom, but dis was a President of a peanut trust, he gave me Mary a handful of his hot peanuts and I don’t forget it, you bet your best hat. I have sold papers to the elete of New York. I can lick any kid on the Row. The policemen never tells me to move on, now, they know I’m de real ting, see? and a live wire. They don’t let on they see me, half of de time, ’cause I know a lot of de monkey shines going on and dey let me alone. I gits along wid de push all right. I stand up for all de newsboys, ’cause dey will be all men some day, and may even own a automobile. My! but dey are de live ting, don’t dey hum and kick up de dust, though. I sold papers for de sufferers of de Cal earthquake, and I got a heap of money. It would do your old lamps good to have seen de pile I took in. I got ever so much money—too much to count. I never seed so much all to once in my whole life. I most wish I had been killed in an earthquake, bad as it was, and got a handful of dat dough. I never kept a cent for myself, no sirree, I’m honest if I am only ‘Jimmy’ de newsboy. Dey all knows me in New York. I have found good friends here, just tink, I am going to school at night and git learning, so I can do tings and propel a automobile. Hully gee! you bet your last year’s top hat I’ll sit up straight and go like de dickens, no snale creeping for mine. I tink I will be a good driver for that kind of a water wagern. De Governor has a brass band on his wagern and dat takes my blinkers and thinkers, most awfully much. Hully gee! but the natives of this town will stare when dey sees ‘Jimmy’ go out for a spin up Tremont Street—dat’s de toney street of Boston, ain’t it, Cap? Oh, ye don’t tell me it’s Commonwealth Avenue, dat is de swellest, is it? Well, I’ve heard of Tremont Street and the Old Howard Theatre and of Austin and Stone’s and that’s all I know of Boston. I don’t read de papers much, you see, ’cause I’se too busy selling ’em, but now I am here and going to become a natural sized sitizen of dis United States of Boston America, why, cos I has to git on to de place wid both feet. Now don’t scowl and find fault wid me talk, for I let you say what ye like and I’ll do the same, unless de cops git on to me game and shut out me lights. I don’t tink I will ever want to vote, ’cause ye have to wait till yers are twenty-one and dat’s too long. I can’t git old but a year at a leap, and any furreigner can be natural and made a American sitizen here just before each election and vote. Some of dem get to be new natural Americans every voting time, so I will stick to de automobile and de papers, for my daily grub. Well, course, if de Governor says I am to keep shut up tight when I am on de box all right, I can. I can tink and say so to myself, quiet, so no one will hear me express myself only in silence. Well, good-bye, I am goin’ to try on me new suit the Governor sent me. I will be a real Tremont Street swell sure’s yer live.”

Well, now Jimmy has disappeared and I will just note that I am perfectly shocked at his way of talking, but Pa and Levey Cohen both says he is a diamond in the rough, and I do hope they can polish off some of the rough corners soon. Pa has always wanted to take just such a character and tame him. Now he has got the raw material and I shall be waiting anxiously to see what comes up next. Uncle Smith is coming soon and I expect when he sees the boy Jimmy—well, Uncle Smith will say words I won’t write. I can hear that Jimmy talking yet with the gardener, that is, Jimmy is talking and the gardener just listening. I will put down what I can hear: “Say, Harvard College is a swell place I guess. I have read in de papers dis mornin’ dat dey want twenty million dollars to make de place solid. Gee whiz! what do dey do wid all de money dey gets? I know a lot of dem Harvard fellows; in New York dey always gives a fellow a few extra pennies and dinner, on holidays. I likes dem Harvard fellows ’cause dey has got a generous vein in der hand. Guess dey are taught to be generous to us kids in college, dat’s why dey need so much money to carry dem along. Say, wouldn’t you like to get your lamps on twenty million dollars all in one bunch? Don’t it make ye faint to think of it? Gives me a hungry pain in de left side of me liver. Say, Mr. Gardner, dat waking suit of yourn (scuse me for saying so) in New York would be called loud enough for a talking machine reckord. Say, I’se got a best girl, I has. She’s a cracker jack; she’s got the beautifullest hair yer ever saw. It’s a high-toned shade; they call it ashes and roses, but I don’t see why, but they do. Her eyes are violet, oh, so find. Hully gee! but they snap when she gits mad. She boxed my ears one day ’cause I tried to kiss her. She got awful mad and threw a wash-tub at my head, but I dodged it and it went plunk into a big policeman who was stooping down to look into a barroom window. Peg said it served him right for snooping, but she run like anything and so did I, and when de policeman got up we war way off. He took de wash-tub wid him, but no one saw any one fire it, so it was never reclaimed. Peg said the tub cost a dollar and twenty-five cents and if she claimed it, why, she was likely to get pinched, and get thirty days, so she said the policeman was welcome to de tub; said she bet a button de next time dat policeman stooped down to look at anything he would hire a man to watch behind him. Oh, I tell you what, de papers are all de time having excitement. Why don’t all de people go to Sunday school and be good? If dey would de papers would be put out of biz. Dey are watching all de time for de man or womans dat do wicked. All de good ones are never spoken of except when dey die, and den only a few lines way back in de paper in small print, but let a man give a lot of money like some fellows rocks I heard of, and dey will put de heading in capital letters, a little bigger den de common readin’, den you notice dat de oil we use to feed our lamps on goes up, perhaps only a quarter of a cent, but if you can get a few billion quarter of cents together all to once it would buy a good many turkeys for Thanksgiving. Say, mister, Christmas and Thanksgiving are de only two days in de year I can git full. Naw, I don’t mean full of liquor. (I never drink anyting but milk and cold water.) I mean get full of grub, wid all de good tings de rich people has. Wouldn’t I like to be rich? No, I don’t tink money is all dare is, but it is a whole lot to fill in wid. A pocket full of greenbacks would make me feel better than a pocket full of emptiness with a big appetite. Say, mister, I can sing and dance to beat the cars. I singed ‘De Pride of Newspaper Row,’ last winter in New York and I got an applecore to sing another verse. Ought to be encore? They said I did fine. Say, mister, if you saw an automobile coming down the street at sixty miles an hour and a deaf man crossing the street, what’s the answer? Not yet, but soon! Did you hear about the new Irishman over to East Boston last week? Well, Mike McCarthy told me about it. He said he and Pat Murphy was working on Mr. Smith’s house, the one that married Mary Jones, of Salem, and Pat was working on the roof when all of a sudden the staging broke and Pat slipped and slid, till at the very edge he caught on to the tin gutter and hung in the air, six stories from the ground. Mike and the other yelled to Pat to hold on till they got something to catch him in. In a couple of minutes they had a big canvas sheet by the corners and told Pat to drop into the canvas, and Pat cried: ‘How in the devil can I let go when it’s all I can do to hold on?’ Oh, did yer hear the one about Pat and the ants? Well, Pat, after eating his lunch, lay down under a tree to get forty winks before the whistle for one o’clock blew and he layed on top of an ants’ nest, which he didn’t dream of, but pretty soon the whole ant family came out to see what kind of a lobster was in their yard, so they crawled all over Pat and bit him to see if he was good eating, etc., and pretty soon Pat brushed them off and went to sleep again as best he could. They all came for another look at Pat, and he brushed them all off again, till bime by a big spider dropped on Pat’s bald head and bit him good. That was enough for Pat. He got up and said: ‘Now, then, all of yers get off.’ Did you hear about Mr. Burbank’s Jersey cow? Well, a vishus dog bit off her tail so she looked so funny that Burbank concluded to fat her and sell her for beef, so in four months she was in prime order and he took her to the stock yard to sell her, but when the man saw her he said, ‘Mr. Burbank, we don’t retail any cows here.’ Oh, did you hear the description of Noah’s wife? Well, the minister read that Noah took unto himself a wife; her hight was three hundred cubits, her breadth fifty cubits, made of Gopher wood, pitched within and without with pitch. He looked rather surprised as he read on, then paused, and in a solemn voice said, ‘’Tis true, we are fearfully and wonderfully made.’ (Some bad boys had pasted the leaves together, hence the good old man’s surprise.) Oh, say, mister, I know a real funny piece about balls. Ever hear it? Well, here it is. I went to the newsboys’ ball in New York last spring given by Mr. Frank Ball, of Chicago. I know of several kinds, for instance, there are snow balls, foot balls, rubber balls, rifle balls, base balls, cartridge balls, cannon balls, basket balls, croquet balls, Ping Pong balls, pool balls, fish balls, billiard balls, tennis balls, bowling balls, camphor balls, and some policeman bawls, and if you miss hearing me bawl you will want to eat some raw dough balls to make you remember to go to our ball next year, sir.”

Good night, I’m twenty-three for bed.

ELSIE.