hat for?"

"He didn't like it 'cause I patronized a different tailor from him."

"Well, it seems to me you _are_ dressed pretty smart for a
boot-black," said the policeman.

"I wish I wasn't a boot-black," said Dick.

"Never mind, my lad. It's an honest business," said the policeman,
who was a sensible man and a worthy citizen. "It's an honest
business. Stick to it till you get something better."

"I mean to," said Dick. "It aint easy to get out of it, as the
prisoner remarked, when he was asked how he liked his residence."

"I hope you don't speak from experience."

"No," said Dick; "I don't mean to get into prison if I can
help it."

"Do you see that gentleman over there?" asked the officer, pointing
to a well-dressed man who was walking on the other side of the
street.

"Yes."

"Well, he was once a newsboy."

"And what is he now?"

"He keeps a bookstore, and is quite prosperous."

Dick looked at the gentleman with interest, wondering if he should
look as respectable when he was a grown man.

It will be seen that Dick was getting ambitious. Hitherto he had
thought very little of the future, but was content to get along as
he could, dining as well as his means would allow, and spending the
evenings in the pit of the Old Bowery, eating peanuts between the
acts if he was prosperous, and if unlucky supping on dry bread or
an apple, and sleeping in an old box or a wagon. Now, for the first
time, he began to reflect that he could not black boots all his
life. In seven years he would be a man, and, since his meeting with
Frank, he felt that he would like to be a respectable man. He could
see and appreciate the difference between Frank and such a boy as
Micky Maguire, and it was not strange that he preferred the society
of the former.

In the course of the next morning, in pursuance of his new
resolutions for the future, he called at a savings bank, and held
out four dollars in bills besides another dollar in change. There
was a high railing, and a number of clerks busily writing at desks
behind it. Dick, never having been in a bank before, did not know
where to go. He went, by mistake, to the desk where money was paid
out.

"Where's your book?" asked the clerk.

"I haven't got any."

"Have you any money deposited here?"

"No, sir, I want to leave some here."

"Then go to the next desk."

Dick followed directions, and presented himself before an elderly
man with gray hair, who looked at him over