ON SOME LATE GREAT VICTORIES.


On the 18th day of April last I went to see a friend in a neighboring
Crescent, and on the steps of the next house beheld a group something
like that here depicted. A newsboy had stopped in his walk, and was
reading aloud the journal which it was his duty to deliver; a pretty
orange-girl, with a heap of blazing fruit, rendered more brilliant
by one of those great blue papers in which oranges are now artfully
wrapped, leant over the railing and listened; and opposite the nympham
discentem there was a capering and acute-eared young satirist of a
crossing-sweeper, who had left his neighboring professional avocation
and chance of profit, in order to listen to the tale of the little
newsboy.

That intelligent reader, with his hand following the line as he read
it out to his audience, was saying:--"And--now--Tom--coming up
smiling--after his fall--dee--delivered a rattling clinker upon
the Benicia Boy's--potato-trap--but was met by a--punisher on the
nose--which," &c. &c.; or words to that effect. Betty at 52 let me
in, while the boy was reading his lecture and, having been some twenty
minutes or so in the house and paid my visit, I took leave.

The little lecturer was still at work on the 51 doorstep, and his
audience had scarcely changed their position. Having read every word of
the battle myself in the morning, I did not stay to listen further;
but if the gentleman who expected his paper at the usual hour that day
experienced delay and a little disappointment I shall not be surprised.