The old proverb of the back-country should be changed "independent as a newsboy.?" Of all the classes of the great city, the newsboy is the very type of American independence. He has stood alone all his life. The first thing he can remember, is the peddling and bartering of the streets, on which his very bread and butter depended.

When other children were in nurseries or play-grounds, he was estimating debit and credit, laying by capital for the morrow, and elbowing through crowds, to sell his goods at the best possible rate. He was a man in business, when his mates in the better classes were spinning tops and flying kites; a business, too, in which bankruptcy was not an easy relief from obligations, but involved gnawing hunger and the chance of the prison cell.

He has spent most of his life learning what Carlyle calls "the great lesson of Self-Help;" and he has learnt very little else which is good. He sleeps where he can find a place in charcoal boxes, in printing-house alleys, or in the courts behind the newspaper offices. His meals he gets in coffee-collars and eating houses. He can live if necessary on his sixpence a day, but he earns often his four or six shillings; sometimes on the Sunday, even $2 or $3. Enough is put into one hidden mysterious pocket to be his capital, on which to start the next day; the rest goes for whatever suits his fancy. He must see the play, or have a supper, or gamble, or go to the races, if there are any, on Long island, or have a run to Hoboken, or get up "a spree." So long as the "M.P.s" and the missionaries let him alone, and he has four shillings to begin the day with, he is indifferent to all other earthly matters.

He knows that in one of the strata of the great City far down he is needed, and there is work and pay for him, and nobody can keep him out of it. he is sharp, of course; he will sometimes cheat strangers, like his older exemplars in business; he knows a "green one" from an "old one," and he has a capacity for making old papers look new.

He is rough, too. The kicks and cuffs of his life have not tended especially to soften him; and the world has not been so kind to him, that he feels much impulse to render back gentleness in return. Churches and schools, also, he knows little of. How should he? Who ever gave him the chance? It has been with him, twenty-five percent profit, or a turn in the Tombs as a vagrant. Yet, these newsboys show many kindly and generous traits. They help one another. We have known the last pennies, when bankruptcy was close on them, shared with each other. There is one now in California aided to reach there by a pressman in the Tribune office who sends back his $50 a month to his poor old mother and who sent $50, too, to his friend, who helped him when in need. they often want to learn. The persons engaged in the newspaper offices know that those boys frequently come to them, to teach them to read. And who doubts, too, that there is something in them as in us, which reaches out towards the Unknown and the Eternal. Vague passing instincts perhaps, a breath, a mere aspiration; yet an evidence of that Soul solemn and immortal, which lives into he poorest outcast boy, as in the best and most cultured of society. Such lads as these are worth saving. They would make keen, industrious, enterprising men. Give them a chance to learn; got them out of their vagrant, homeless habits; show them that there are some in the world who take an interest in them, and will lend them a hand; and try to bring a little of the great influences which are everywhere redeeming Society, to bear even on them, and see whether the newsboys do not turn out good citizens.

An attempt is now in progress to accomplish this and those engaged in it desire to lay their plan before the public, for its success will depend on their support.