had, or dinner they call it here. You see, dad thought this was about a
three-dollar-a-day house, and that the meals were included, like they do
at Oshkosh, and so when we went down to dinner dad said we wouldn't do
a thing to old Astor. He let me order the dinner, but told me to order
everything on the bill-of-sale, because we wanted to get the worth of
our three dollars a day. Well, honest, I couldn't order all there was,
'cause you couldn't have got it all on a billiard table. Say, that list
they gave me had everything on it that was ever et or drunk, but I told
dad they would fire us out if we ordered the whole prescription, so all
I ordered was terrapin, canvasback duck, oysters, clams, crabs, a lot of
new kinds of fish, and some beef and mutton, and turkey, and woodcock,
and partridge, and quail, and English pheasant, and lobster and salads
and ices, and pie and things, just to stay our stomachs, and when it
came to wine, dad weakened, because he didn't want to set a bad example
to me, so he ordered hard cider for hisself and asked me if I wanted
anything to drink, and I ordered brown pop. You'd a been tickled to see
the waiter when he took that order, 'cause I don't s'pose anybody ever
ordered cider and brown pop there since Astor skinned muskrats for a
living, when he was a trapper up north. Gosh, but when they brought that
dinner in, you ought to have seen the sensation it created. Most of the
people in the great dining hall looked at dad as though he was a Crases,
or a Rockefeller, and the head waiter bowed low to dad, and dad thought
it was Astor, and dad looked dignified and hurt at being spoken to by a
common tavern keeper. Well, we et and et, but we couldn't get away with
hardly any of it, and dad wanted to wrap some of the duck and lobsters
and things in a newspaper and take it to the room for a lunch, but the
waiter wouldn't have it. But the cyclone struck the house when dad and
I got up to go out of the dining-room, and the waiter brought dad the
check.

[Illustration: The waiter brought dad the check 063]

"What is this?" said dad, as he put on his glasses and looked at the
check which was $43 and over.

"Dinner check, sir," said the waiter, as he straightened back and held
out his hand.

"Why, ain't this house run on the American plan?" said dad, as his chin
began to tremble.

"No, sir, on the Irish plan," said the waiter. "You pays for what you
horders," and dad began to dig up. He looked at me