ueer of taste that even Frank complained. But we ate with a
terrifying premonition of trouble. "This meal will cost us at least
thirty-five cents each!" I said.

"No matter, it's an experience," my spendthrift brother retorted.

At last when the limp lettuce, the amazing cheese and the bitter coffee
were all consumed, I asked the soiled, outlandish waiter the price.

In reply he pencilled on a slip as though we were deaf, and finally laid
the completed bill face down beside my plate. I turned it over and grew
pale.

It totalled _one dollar and twenty cents_!

I felt weak and cold as if I had been suddenly poisoned. I trembled,
then grew hot with indignation. "Sixty cents apiece!" I gasped. "Didn't
I warn you?"

Frank was still in reckless mood. "Well, this is the only time we have
to do it. They won't catch us here again."

I paid the bill and hurried out, bitterly exclaiming, "No more New York
for me. I will not stay in such a robbers' den another night."

And I didn't. At sunset we crossed the ferry and took the train for New
Brunswick, New Jersey. Why we selected this town I cannot say, but I
think it must have been because it was half-way to Philadelphia--and
that we were just about as scared of Philadelphia as we were resentful
of New York.

After a night battle with New Jersey mosquitoes and certain plantigrade
bed-fellows native to cheap hotels, we passed on to Philadelphia and to
Baltimore, and at sunset of the same day reached Washington, the storied
capital of the nation.

Everything we saw here was deeply significant, national, rousing our
patriotism. We were at once and profoundly interested by the negro life
which flowered here in the free air of the District as under an African
sun; the newsboys, the bootblacks, the muledrivers, all amused us. We
spent that first night in Washington in a little lodging house just at
the corner of the Capitol grounds where beds were offered for
twenty-five cents. It was a dreadful place, but we slept without waking.
It took a large odor, a sharp lance to keep either of us awake in those
days.

Tramping busily all the next day, we climbed everything that could be
climbed. We visited the Capitol, the war building, the Treasury and the
White House grounds. We toiled through all the museums, working harder
than we had ever worked upon the farm, till Frank cried out for mercy. I
was inexorable. "Our money is getting low. We must be very saving of
carfare," I insist