heir astonishment was
redoubled at the splendor of the interior furnishings. Each was
assigned a room, where they were bathed and groomed and dressed in
garments suitable for their surroundings. Dinner was served by the
time they were ready, and into the glittering _salle a manger_ they
were duly ushered. A fashionable _table d'hote_ was a new sensation to
every man of them, and they certainly astonished the _table d'hote_.
It (the _table d'hote_) never realized before what it was to be fully
appreciated. An evening of cigars, wine, and billiards followed; and
then they stretched their tough and sinewy workmen's legs between the
whitest of silken sheets, spread over the springiest of hair
mattresses, on the brightest of brass bedsteads. There we leave them
to such dreams as their surroundings invited, to turn our attention to
four bachelor brokers on the stock exchange, whose apartments at the
club our bachelor workingmen were inhabiting.

With as little thought of the reality of the great King's edict as the
workingmen themselves, they were sauntering forth from the exchange
at the hour of 3 P. M., when they were pounced upon by a quarter score
of stalwart policemen and landed inside a rough luggage conveyance.
Baxter Street was a Garden of Eden compared to the slums to which they
were driven, and they were finally sheltered in a dirty tenement that
arose in a series of rickety stories to a dizzy height. Their
fastidious taste would not permit them to indulge in sleep amid such
commonplace surroundings, where the only furniture of their room
consisted of two dirty beds and a filthy sink. So they sat up all
night smoking the cigars they happened to have in their clothes when
captured, and muttering deep curses against their eccentric ruler.

The following morning the awakening of the laborers resembled that of
Christopher Sly in "The Taming of the Shrew." They were bewildered
with astonishment at the appointments of their surroundings and the
service of their attendants. A champagne headache was a natural
accompaniment to the previous night's drinking and gorging; so that
fashionable "coffee and rolls," though served in the most delicate of
faience, seemed but meagre fare upon which to commence the arduous
labors of the day. At precisely 5:30 A. M. the same carriage they had
occupied the previous evening, with its crested panels, its liveried
coachman, and its spanking span of bays, was at the door to convey
them back