If you, dear reader, will take time to get into the real life of a boy, as the gentleman did with Jimmy, you will be surprised, as he was, at what you will discover. How quick he is to see an opportunity to do something bad, and when discovered, his conscience brings the blush of shame to his cheeks. Take boys like Jimmy, the leader of a gang of toughs, his acts on the public highway, his language, his ragged clothes all indicating neglect and evil designs, yet get his friendship, his confidence, and he will prove, as did Jimmy, the best and most faithful friend you ever had, not only in his youth, in his teens, but long after you have forgotten him. No matter how bad the boy is, how miserable his environment, that great spark of good, that something, no one can explain its power, its influence, is still there. To get into touch with that life, to draw out the goodness of heart and make it a tangible blessing to the boys of our land, is the work every man and woman ought to try to do. It was this object the gentleman had in asking Jimmy and his friends to meet at his office. He felt that opportunities of this nature come but once in a life time. George Eliot wrote: “The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand. The angels come to visit us and we only know them when they are gone. How shall we live so as at the end to have done the most for others and make the most of ourselves.” We become good ourselves only in the measure that we do good to some other soul. In Jimmy, the newsboy, no one stopped to see what was sleeping under the cover of extreme mischievousness. They were always looking for bad and they found it. Neglect is the mother of more calamities than any other sin, and who are neglected more than the newsboys? CHAPTER III. On the following Monday morning, at the appointed, hour, Jimmy, with eight other boys, was at the office of his newly-made friend. It was an interesting picture, an exciting scene. Noisy, loud talking, several answering questions at the same time, some turning over books, papers, investigating everything in sight. Sharp, shrewd, busy at every moment, quick to answer any question and the replies always satisfactory, and to the point. “Don’t you know anything,” said Jimmy to a friend, who was trying to investigate how a typewriter was made, “let that meechine alone.” It was soon in evidence that Jimmy’s word meant something, for each boy obeyed him without saying a word, except a little grunt of dissatisfaction, to show he hated to obey. Not one of the eight boys had clean hands. Not one a coat with a button. Three safety-pins held holding positions in some of their coats. Not one used a handkerchief, and the slang would puzzle many a lawyer. As one of the boys lost his cap he said: “Some kid five-fingered it.—took it with his hand.” It was an interesting crowd.