The transaction seemed to amuse some of the bystanders, and Ray heard one of them, who stood near him, say: “Well, that’s the coolest thing I’ve seen yet. I should have about as soon thought of asking the deacon to change a bill for me when he came round with the plate in church. Well, it takes all kinds to make a world!” He looked like a country merchant, on a first business visit to the city; his companion, who had an air of smart ease, as of a man who had been there often, said: “It takes all kinds to make a town like New York. You’ll see queerer things than that before you get home. If that old darkey makes much on that transaction, I’m no judge of human nature.” “Pshaw! You don’t mean it wasn’t a good bill?” The two men lost themselves in the crowd now pressing out of the cabin door. The boat was pushing into her slip. She bumped from one elastic side to the other, and settled with her nose at the wharf. The snarl of the heavy chains that held her fast was heard; the people poured off and the hollow thunder of the hoofs and wheels of the disembarking teams began. Ray looked about for a last glimpse of the two young women and their babies; but he could not see them. IV. Ray carried his bag himself when he left the elevated road, and resisted the offer of the small Italian dodging about his elbow, and proposing to take it, after he had failed to get Ray to let him black his boots. The young man rather prided himself on his thrift in denying the boy, whose naked foot came half through one of his shoes; he saw his tatters and nakedness with the indifference of inexperience, and with his country breeding he considered his frugality a virtue. His senses were not offended by the foulness of the streets he passed through, or hurt by their sordid uproar; his strong young nerves were equal to all the assaults that the city could make; and his heart was lifted in a dream of hope. He was going to a hotel that Sanderson had told him of, where you could get a room, on the European plan, for seventy-five cents, and then eat wherever you pleased; he had gone to an American hotel when he was in New York before, and he thought he could make a saving by trying Sanderson’s. It had a certain gayety of lamps before it, but the splendor diminished within, and Ray’s pride was further hurt by the clerk’s exacting advance payment for his room from him. The clerk said he could not give him an outside room that night, but he would try to change him in the morning; and Ray had either to take the one assigned him or go somewhere else. But he had ordered his trunk sent to this hotel by the express, and he did not know how he should manage about that if he left; so he staid, and had himself shown to his room. It seemed to be a large cupboard in the wall of the corridor; but it had a window near the bed, and the usual equipment of stand and bureau, and Ray did not see why he should not sleep very well there. Still, he was