Loaf the Bootblack

“Shine ’em up? On’y five cents!”

This was Loaf the bootblack.

He was nicknamed “Loaf” by his friends because he was the hardest working, toughest little bootblack known to the fraternity. The “On’y five cents!” was a call for trade, and not by any means intended to be taken in a literal sense; and most of Loaf’s customers saw it in that light, especially when aided by the miraculous polish which the boy invariably brought to the surface of the most disheartening clodhoppers; and few ever refused the “tenner,” or asked change.

Loaf’s legitimate appellation was Clem (short for Clement) Brown.

His mother was an American woman, whose husband had gone the way of many other good Americans in his national pride of country, as exemplified by his fondness for the national beverage, Bourbon!

The senior Brown, who had been a handsome, meritorious, and successful barkeeper, had discovered Annie Carter, the daughter of a wealthy man in a retired country village, Malden by name, and in the guise of a “young man about town”—“town” being supposed to represent the metropolitan city of New York—had wooed and won that rustic maiden, with the hope of setting up a bar, billiard-room, and bowling-alley himself, as near to Broadway as might be, on the elder Carter’s money.

But, unhappily for these dreams of future bliss, the elder Carter, having discovered the character of the youthful Brown’s calling, and thereupon refused his consent to the match, had, on discovering that the matrimonial plan had been completed, presented his daughter with twenty-five dollars, and a repetition of an ancient proverb referring to the chamber-maid’s art, and beginning, “as you make your bed”—had thereupon announced his intention of… Read More