“Well, at any rate, some one has to pay for your lodging. Don't you think you'd come cheaper to your friends, if, instead of going to a hotel every night, you'd take a room somewhere, and pay for it by the month?” “I've thought of that. If I could get a good bed, I'd try it awhile anyhow. You see the hotels have raised. I used to get a lodgin' and a nice breakfast for a half a dollar, but now it is as much as you can do to get a lodgin' for the money, and it's just as dear in the Port as it is in the city. I've tried hotels pretty much everywhere, and one's about as bad as another.” If he had been a travelled Englishman writing a book, he could not have spoken of hotels with greater disdain. “You see, the trouble with me is, I ain't got any relations around here. Now,” he added, with the life and eagerness of an inspiration, “if I had a mother and sister livin' down at the Port, say, I wouldn't go hunting about for these mean little jobs everywheres. I'd just lay round home, and wait till something come up big. What I want is a home.” At the instigation of a malignant spirit I asked the homeless orphan, “Why don't you get married, then?” He gave me another smile, sadder, fainter, sweeter than before, and said: “When would you like to see me again, so I could work out this dollar?” A sudden and unreasonable disgust for the character which had given me so much entertainment succeeded to my past delight. I felt, moreover, that I had bought the right to use some frankness with the veteran, and I said to him: “Do you know now, I shouldn't care if I _never_ saw you again?” I can only conjecture that he took the confidence in good part, for he did not appear again after that. A PEDESTRIAN TOUR.