The following description of a newsboys' Christmas "feast," as reported in the New York Tribune, illustrates another type of work which the reporter is called upon to do:
A game dinner where the eaters
were game,—that was the newsboys'
Christmas feast, provided last night
in the Brace Memorial Newsboys'
Lodging House, No. 14 New Chambers
street, by William M. Fliess, Jr. The
happiness of poverty without responsibility,
of boyhood unchecked, of
sporting blood untamed, of divine independence,
shone from the eyes of
those noisy "newsies," thrilled in
their laughter, barked in their shouts.
And envy, not pity, stirred the hearts
of the men and women who had left
comfortable homes, in immaculate attire,
to watch the children of the
street absorb their little mountains of
food.
No separate courses, no cocktails and caviar, no after-dinner speeches were needed to make that dinner palatable, to separate mind from stomach, to create buoyancy of spirits. A big bowl of thick, steaming soup; a plate heaped with turkey, potatoes and mashed turnips; a cupful of smoking coffee and a whole pie, as round as the smiling face of the sun, greeted each separate appetite simultaneously, and caused no gorge to rise. Not a bit of space was wasted on those long, white tables, flanked by their narrow, red benches. Big bunches of celery took the place of inedible decorations, and appealed infinitely more to the artistic souls of the grimy little guests than would flowers or ferns.
All ages from five to twenty were represented, and big boy and infant sat side by side in perfect comradeship, since age counts for little in the
