leave until three o'clock, and the express won't fail to have it there
before that."

Ford was all alive with the responsibilities of his position, as the
only boy in the party who had been born in the city, and had travelled
all over it, and a little out of it.

"Joe and Fuz," he said, "will want to take the night boat for Albany.
They've more time on their hands than we have. Joe?--Fuz?--why can't you
come along with us after you've checked your trunks? We'll be getting
dinner before long."

The Hart boys promptly assented, after a look at each other, and a sort
of chuckle.

"Might as well keep together," said Joe. "We'd like to take a look at
things."

"Come along. I'll show you."

Frank Harley had seen quite a number of great cities, and he could
hardly help saying something about them while they were going over on
the ferryboat. They were all as far forward as they could get.

"Did you ever see any thing just like this?" asked Dab.

"Well, no, not just like it"--

"In India, or in China, or in London, or in Africa?" said Ford.

"It's a little different from any thing I ever saw."

"Well, isn't it bigger?"

That was a question Frank might have undertaken to answer if there had
been proper time given him; but just then the boat was running into her
"slip," away down town, and Ford exclaimed,--

"Hurrah, boys! Now for Fulton Market and some oysters."

"Oysters?" said Dab.

"Yes, sir! There's more oysters in that old shanty than there are in
your bay."

"I don't know about that," said Dab, staring at the queer, huge, rickety
old mass of unsightly wood and glass that Ford was pointing at, after
they got ashore. "I'm hungry, anyhow."

"Hungry? So am I. But no man ought to say he's been in New York till
he's tried some Fulton-Market oysters."

"Let's take 'em raw," said Fuz. "Then we can go ahead."

Dick Lee had been in the city before, but never in such company, nor in
such very good clothes; and there was an expression on his face a good
deal like awe, when he actually found himself standing at an
"oyster-counter," in line with five well-dressed young white boys.

The man behind the counter served him, too, in regular turn; and Dick
felt it a point of honor to empty the half-shell before him as quickly
as any of the rest. There was no delay about that, anywhere along that
line of boys.

"Dick," said Ford, "where's your lemon? There it is!"

Ford had already explained to the rest that it was