James Ewing Ritchie

About London James Ewing Ritchie

Book Excerpt: ...tement among the newspaper boys was very great. I heard some of them, on the last day of the trial, confess to having been too excited all that day to do anything; their admiration of the speech of Edwin James was intense. A small enthusiast near me said to another, "That ere James is the fellow to work 'em; didn't he pitch hin to the hemperor?""Yes," said a sadder and wiser boy; "yes, he's all werry well, but he'd a spoke on t'other side just as well if he'd been paid.""No; would he?""Yes, to be sure.""Well, that's wot I call swindling.""No, it ain't. They does their best. Them as pays you, you works for."Whether the explanation was satisfactory I can't say, as the small boy's master's name was called, and he vanished with "two quire" on his youthful head. But generally these small boys prefer wit to politics; they are much given to practical jokes at each other's expense, and have no mercy for individual peculiarities. Theirs is a hard life, from five in the m...