newsboys always, and
shoeblacks, and timber-merchants in a small way by sellin' matches? If
ye do you'll stay in New York, but if you don't you'll go out West, and
begin to be farmers, for the beginning of a farmer, my boys, is the
making of a Congressman, and a President. Do you want to be rowdies, and
loafers, and shoulder-hitters? If ye do, why, ye can keep around these
diggins. Do you want to be gentlemen and independent citizens? You
do--then make tracks for the West, from the Children's Aid Society. If
you want to be snoozers, and rummeys, and policy-players, and Peter
Funks men, why you'll hang up your caps and stay round the groceries and
jine fire-engine and target companies, and go firin' at haystacks for
bad quarters; but if ye want to be the man who will make his mark in the
country, ye will get up steam, and go ahead, and there's lots on the
prairies a waitin' for yez.

"'You haven't any idear of what ye may be yet, if you will only take a
bit of my advice. How do you know but, if you are honest, and good, and
industerous, you may get so much up in the ranks that you won't call a
gineral or a judge your boss. And you'll have servants ov all kinds to
tend you, to put you to bed when you are sleepy, and to spoon down your
vittles when you are gettin' your grub. Oh, boys! won't that be great!
Only think--to have a feller to open your mouth, and put great slices of
punkin pie and apple dumplings into it. You will be lifted on hossback
when you go for to take a ride on the prairies, and if you choose to go
in a wagon, or on a 'scursion, you will find that the hard times don't
touch you there; and the best of it will be that if 'tis good to-day,
'twill be better to-morrow.

"But how will it be if you don't go, boys? Why, I'm afraid when you grow
too big to live in the Lodging-house any longer, you'll be like lost
sheep in the wilderness, as we heard of last Sunday night here, and
you'll maybe not find your way out any more. But you'll be found
somewhere else. The best of you will be something short of judges and
governors, and the feller as has the worst luck--and the worst behaver
in the groceries-will be very sure to go from them to the prisons.

"I will now come from the stump. I am booked for the West in the next
company from the Lodging-house. I hear they have big school-houses and
colleges there, and that they have a place for me in the winter time; I
want to be somebody, and somebody don't live here, no