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 morning, when the daily papers commence publishing, to seven in the evening, when the second edition of the _Sun_ with the _Gazette_ appears. What becomes of them when they cease to be newspaper boys, must be left to conjecture. Surely such riotous youths can never become tradesmen in a small way, retailers of greens, itinerant dealers in coal. Do not offend these gentry if you are a newspaper proprietor. Their power for mischief is great. At the _Illustrated __News_ office I have seen a policeman required to reduce them to order. Finally, of all newspaper people, high or low, let me ask the public to speak charitably. They are hard-worked, they are not over-paid, and some of them die prematurely old. Ten years of night-work in the office of a daily newspaper is enough to kill any man, even if he has the constitution of a horse; one can’t get on without them; and it is a sad day for his family when Paterfamilias misses his paper. Whigs, tories, prelates, princes, valiant warriors, and great lawyers, are not so essential to the daily weal of the public, as newspaper people. In other ways they are useful—the great British naturalist, Mr. Yarell, was a newspaper vendor. CHAPTER II. SPIRITUALISM.