"Did you pay nothing?"
"Pay! of course not. Who ever thinks of paying anything to the Government?"
"You do not understand."
"What?"
"You have been into a restaurant," says he.
"That's more than I know of, never having been in one in my born days."
"And have come away with this!"
"Look a-here, Cousin Dempster," says I; "does this great nation keep a boarding-house, or a tavern, in its Capitol? That's what I want to know. Do you think I mean to insult the country I was born in?"
"It keeps a restaurant for the accommodation of members," says he, "and you've been in it. Just give me that check; the country don't feed its statesmen—at any rate, directly."
I gave him the square bit of paper, and, when he left me alone, just sat down on those marble steps and waited.