On the steamer, of which the cabins seemed to me as dazzling, beautiful and wonderful as the constellation of Orion does now, the cabin porter got our cow-hide boots, while we were asleep, and shined them and then demanded ten cents for each boot, but we compromised on ten cents for the whole lot, and threatened to throw him overboard at that. When we landed at Peck Slip, New York, we at once inquired for the office where sailors were enlisted for three-year voyages catching whales. The agent was a man probably seventy years old and began inquiring our names and where we were from, and then he said he knew about Square Pond, as he once drove stage right along its shore on the old route from Hartford to Boston. Then he said: "Sit down, boys," and he talked to us to this effect: "Now, boys, you do not want to enlist for a three years' voyage. If you have got the fishing fever I can get you all a chance on a smack for three months, off the coast of Newfoundland, catching codfish. Then if you are not sick of the job you can go whaling." We listened to him kindly and finally gave up, not only the whaling, but the fishing altogether. We then began canvassing the book stores for a book which Lyman had heard about, which boys ought not to read, and that was why he wanted it. The title was "Fanny Hill," and when we inquired at the book stores we were turned down, until we struck a Yankee who sold second-hand books, who inquired where we were from, and when our boat would leave New York, and then said he hardly dare sell it to us for fear he would be arrested. [Illustration: BEAUTIFUL WOMEN, WORTHY MEN, CHARMING OLD WABBAQUASSETT. CENTRAL LOWER LADY FIGURE, JULIA NEWELL WARNER, MY LIFE-LONG ESTEEMED FRIEND.] The price he said was $1.00, and he would run the risk, if we would come around just before the boat started and then promise, all of us, not to open the package until the boat had left the dock. To this we readily agreed and then went on taking in the town, thinking more about the book than we did about the giants, pygmies, monkeys and elephants which we found at Barnum's Museum. We were now hungry again, so we took another oyster stew and then started up the Bowery, when we heard music and were invited in where a wheel table was turning. One could put down ten cents and might win $100.00. We were going shares in everything, so decided to risk ten cents, and the other boys allowed me to try. "Forty dollars," cried the man, and then discovered his mistake, that it was only forty cents, and then began telling of folks from the country winning money, and this was one of the stories which did not take: