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BIG TREAT FOR WAIFS

Buffalo Bill Entertains thee Newsboys and Bootblacks.

THOUSANDS AT THE WILD WEST.

Filled with Food and Fun - Rough Riders Delight the Happy Street Arabs.

Buffalo Bill was a great man to-day. He was a greater man than the Rajai Rajagan Jajalijet Singh, the King of Siam, and Emperor William, all rolled into one. The Duke of Wellington in his palmy days, just after the battle of Waterloo, or George Washington, just after the election, was not quite up to the Buffaloan standard. The magnitude of the great scout and showman was attested by the utmost stretch of puerile voice and the wildest extravagance of infantile gesticulation. For this was "waif day" at the Wild West Show.

For or five thousand of the city's newsboy and bootblacks were entertained at the big arena down by the world's fair, and to say that the occasion was one of keen enjoyment in respect of both physical comfort and mental diversion is only to show up the English language in its puny weakness and shortness of scope.

Buffalo Bill is the man for the newsboys when it comes to a feast and a frolie. He has correct ideas of what is proper and pertinent amusement for juvenile mind, and especially the juvenile mind of that young American man of business, the newsboy or bootblack, who has been, for some inscrutable and alleged Christian purpose, called a "waif."

Just Suited Their Taste.

The waifs of Chicago have been "worked" in divers ways for many a year. They have been fed and filled and feted and entertained by numerous contrivances and devices, of which, having been accustomed to the hotter spice of the city theater, they have had their own opinion and have not been above expressing it to their kind benefactors. For you can't, to use their own lingo, "film-flam" a Chicago waif more than two or three consecutive hours with a show. He is a good judge and he knows first-class, prime amusement when he sees it. And he got it to-day to a degree never before known in the entire range and history of waifdom.

Buffalo Bill knows the American boy like a book. And when he drew aside the curtain to-day and showed him the life of the plain and the mountain, the color of the skin of the pesky Indian, the robbery of the mail coach and the wanton slaughter of untold numbers of the noble red men, he filled the American boy's cup of pure bliss of the brim and running over.

The programme of the day's jollity was well laid out and splendidly executed. The boys concentrated at Market and Madison streets at 9 o'clock this morning and were