But spiritual sustenance is not quite enough for a seventeen-year-old, especially one who is beginning to be hungry and tired. I was desperately anxious to hoard the three precious dollars in my pocket, for I had little idea how to go about replacing them, once they were spent. I could not do without eating, however, so I stopped in at the first gaslit bakery, buying, after some consideration, a penny loaf, and walked on through the entrancing streets, munching at it and feeling like an historical character. Now the fronts of the tinugraph lyceums were lit up by porters with long tapers, so that they glowed yellow and inviting, each heralded with a boldly lettered broadside or dashingly drawn cartoon advertising the amusement to be found within. I was tempted to see for myself this magical entertainment of pictures taken so close together they gave the illusion of motion, but the lowest admission price was five cents. Some of the more garish theaters, which specialized in the incredible phonotos—tinugraphs ingeniously combined with a sound-producing machine operated by compressed air, so that the pictures seemed not only to move but to talk—actually charged ten or even fifteen cents for an hour’s spectacle. By this time I ached with tiredness; the insignificant bundle of shirt and books had become a burden. I was pressed by the question of where to sleep and began thinking more kindly than I would have believed possible of last night’s slum. I didnt connect my need with the glass transparencies behind which gaslight shone through the unpainted letters of BEDS, ROOMS, or HOTEL, for my mind was hazily fixed on some urban version of the inn at Wappinger Falls or the Poughkeepsie Commercial House. I became more and more confused as fatigue blurred impressions of still newer marvels, so that I am not entirely sure whether it was one or a succession of girls who offered delights for a quarter. I know I was solicited by crimps for the Confederate Legion who operated openly in defiance of United States law, and an incredible number of beggars accosted me. At last I thought of asking directions. But without realizing it I had wandered from the thronged wooden or granite sidewalks of the brightly lit avenues into an unpeopled, darkened area where the buildings were low and frowning, where the flicker of a candle or the yellow of a kerosene lamp in windows far apart were uncontested by any streetlights. All day my ears had been pressed by the clop of hooves, the rattling of iron tires or the puffing of minibiles; now the empty street was unnaturally still. The suddenly looming figure of another walker seemed the luckiest of chances. “Excuse me, friend,” I said. “Can you tell me where’s the nearest inn, or anywhere I can get a bed for the night cheap?” I felt him peering at me. “Rube, huh? Much money you got?” “Th—Not very much. That’s why I want to find cheap lodging.” “OK, Reuben. Come along.”