but the railroad birds sat on the bough, and wouldn't
come down. They are not so easy as they used to be, and I had so little
time to work it. Then the last of the cheap trains to the San Francisco
Midwater Fair were running, and if I played too long for a pass and got
euchred after all, I should have to pay ninety dollars instead of
forty-five. Then I should be the very sickest sort of traveller that
ever was. In the end I bought a cheap ticket on the very last cheap
train. By the very next post I got a pass over one of the lines. It made
me very mad, and if I had been wise I should have sold it. I am very
glad to say I withstood the temptation, and kept the pass as a warning
not to hurry in future. I started out of New York with twenty-two pounds
in my pocket. For I had found a beautiful, trustful New Yorker, who
cashed me a cheque for fifteen pounds with a child-like and simple faith
which was not unrewarded in the end.

My affairs stood thus. I had to stay in San Francisco for a fortnight
till the next steamer, and as I have said even a steerage fare to Sydney
was twenty pounds. I had two pounds to see me through the
transcontinental journey of nearly five days and the time in the city of
the Pacific slope. I looked for hard times and some rustling to get
through it all. I had to rustle.

As a beginning of hard times I could not afford to take a sleeper. I was
on the fast West-bound express, and the emigrant sleepers are on the
slow train, which takes nearly two days more. The high-toned Pullman was
quite beyond me, so I stuck to the ordinary cars and put in a mighty
rough time. After twenty-four hours of the Lehigh Valley Road, which
runs into Canada, I came to Chicago. There I had to do a shift from one
station to another, and after half-an-hour's jolting I was landed at the
depot of the Chicago and North-Western Railroad. I hated Chicago always;
I had starved in it once, and slept in a box car in the old days. And
now I didn't love it. I tried to get a wash at the station, for I was
like a buried city with dust and cinders.

"There used to be a wash-place here a year or two back," said a friendly
porter, "but it didn't pay and was abolished."

Of course they only cared about the money. The comfort of passengers
mattered little. This porter took me down into a rat-and-beetle-haunted
basement, and gave me soap and a clean towel. I sluiced off the mud, and
discovered somebody underneath that at anyrate reminded