PENNINGS AND PENCILLINGS, IN AND ABOUT TOWN. nv JOEPH c. NEAL, AUTHOR or “CHARCOAL sxsrcnas.” With Illustmtiona by Darley. No. I. THE NEWS-BOY.
ARMS have had their day. The age of steel is past. The thunders of Mont St. Jean formed the grand finale to the melo-drama of military exploit, and the curtain fell, never to rise again, upon the last scene of martial greatness, when the laurelled warriors of France cast aside the baton of command to have recourse to their spurs. Bellona then went to boarding-school, and learned to comb her refractory looks into the pliant graces of the toilet, while Mars obtained a situation in a counting-house, and, seated upon a three-legged stool, still nibs his pen to gain a livelihood. Romance expired at Waterloo. Chivalry expended itself when Ney was foiled, and the Belgian peasant unconsciously depicted the moral of the fall of the empire, when he boiled potatoes in the helmet of the knight, and cooked his mutton in the breastplate of the “ Guard.” The world is tired of slaughter—the poetry of the shambles is exhausted. Ve live as long as we can now, and find existence none the worse for having a full supply of arms and legs. A body like a colander is not essential to re putation, and death has become so un popular that it is only by special favor that ambition can get itself hanged. New elements produce new combi nations. When the musket rusts in a garret, and glory puzzles over the multiplication-table and retails brown sugar, the restless impulses of humani ty seek excitements before unknown. Strategy exhibits itself in the marts of trade. Napoleons are financiers. The sun of Austerlitz bursts through the clouds which overhang the stock ex change. Bulls and bears constitute the contending hosts of modern times, and there is no analogy to the “ maraud,” unless we find it in embezzlement and defalcation. We are “smart” now—
exceeding smart, and pugnacity is thrown to the dogs. Learning, too, leaves its solidity in the cloister, and, no longer frighted by trumpets and sulphurous vapors, spreads itself thinly abroad. Being in haste, the world reads as it runs, so that heavy books, like heavy artillery, remain in the arsenals. Man, commercial man, speculating man, financial man—man,
heedless of gory greatness, but eager for cash, must know all that is in. agitation. Having ceased to kill his neighbor, he is anxious to ascertain what his neighbor is about, that he may turn him and his doings to profit able account; and hence, in the place
of those gaudy banners which used to flout the sky, instead of the oriflamme of nations, which once rallied their
battalia, we gather round the news paper, not with sword, and shield, and casque, but with ink-stained jacket and with pen in ear. Our clarion now, more potent than the Fontarabian horn, is the shrill voice of the news-boy, that modern Minerva, who leaped full-blown from the o’erfraught head ofjournalism ; and as the news-boy is in some respects the type of the time—an incarnation of the spirit of the day—a few words. devoted to his consideration may not be deemed amiss. As the true Corinthian metal was. formed from the meltings of the devoted city, thus the news-boy is the product of the exigencies of the era. The requirements of the age always bring forth that which is wanted. The dra gon-teeth of tyranny have often caused; the earth to crop with armed men; and the nineteenth century, thirsting for information and excitement, finds its Ganymede in the news-boy. He is its walking idea, its symbol, its personifi— cation. Humanity, in its new shape, is yet young and full of undefined en
