Hither, on the morning after his departure from the home gate, came Silas Jackson, a little foot-sore and weary, but hopeful withal. In spite of the pains that he had put upon his dressing, he was a quaint figure on the city streets. Many an amused smile greeted him as he went his way, but he saw them not. Inquiring the direction, he kept on, until the many windows and broad veranda of the great hotel broke on his view, and he gasped in amazement and awe at the sight of it, and a sudden faintness seized him. He was reluctant to go on, but the broad grins with which some colored men who were working about the place regarded him, drove him forward, in spite of his embarrassment. He found his way to the kitchen, and asked in trembling tones for the head waiter. Breakfast being over, that individual had leisure to come to the kitchen. There, with the grinning waiters about him, he stopped and calmly surveyed Silas. He was a very pompous head waiter. Silas had never been self-conscious before, but now he became distressfully aware of himself--of his awkwardness, of his clumsy feet and dangling hands, of the difference between his clothes and the clothes of the men about him. After a survey, which seemed to the boy of endless duration, the head waiter spoke, and his tone was the undisputed child of his looks. "I pussoom," said Mr. Buckner, "that you are the pusson Mistah Ma'ston spoke to the p'op'ietor about?" "Yes, suh, I reckon I is. He p'omised to git me a job up hyeah, an' I got yo' lettah--" here Silas, who had set his bundle on the floor in coming into the Presence, began to fumble in his pockets for the letter. He searched long in vain, because his hands trembled, and he was nervous under the eyes of this great personage who stood unmoved and looked calmly at him. Finally the missive was found and produced, though not before the perspiration was standing thick on Silas's brow. The head waiter took the sheet. "Ve'y well, suh, ve'y well. You are evidently the p'oper pusson, as I reco'nize this as my own chirography." The up-country boy stood in awed silence. He thought he had never heard such fine language before. "I ca'culate that you have nevah had no experience in hotel work," pursued Mr. Buckner somewhat more graciously. "I's nevah done nuffin' but wo'k on a farm; but evahbody 'lows I's right handy." The fear that he would be sent back home without employment gave him boldness. "I see, I see," said the head waiter. "Well, we'll endeavor to try an' see how soon you can learn. Mistah Smith, will you take this young man in charge, an' show him how to get about things until we are ready to try him in the dinin'-room?" A rather pleasant-faced yellow boy came over to Silas and showed him where to put his things and what to do. "I guess it'll be a little strange at first, if you've never been a hotel man, but you'll ketch on. Just you keep your eye on me."