"Doc-tor Ferguson's, selly-brated, double X, Philadelphia cough-drops, for coughs and colds, sore throat or hoarseness; five cents a package."
Innumerable signs invited him to "meals at 15 and 25 cts." "Rolls and French drip coffee, 10 cts." "Oysters in every style," etc.
The oyster saloons were, in general, very attractive to him, as a Western man, but specifically he did not like the looks of the places in which they were served. He came at last to a place which seemed clean and free from a bar, and ventured to call for a twenty-five cent stew.
After eating this, he again took his way to the street, and walked along, looking for a moderate-priced hotel. He did not think of going to a hotel that charged more than seventy-five cents for a room. He came at length to quite a decent-looking place, which advertised rooms for fifty cents and upwards. He registered under the clerk's calm misprision, and the brown and wonderfully freckled colored boy showed him to his room.
It was all quite familiar to him—this hotel to which a man of moderate means is forced to go in the city. The dingy walls and threadbare carpet got geometrically shabbier at each succeeding flight of stairs, until at length the boy ushered him into a little room at the head of the stairway. It was unwarmed and had no lock on the door; but the bed was clean, and, as he soon found, very comfortable.
[XXIV.]
Radbourn shows Bradley about the Capital.
He woke in the morning from his dreamless sleep with that peculiar familiar sensation of not knowing where he had lain down the night before. There was something boyish in the soundness of his sleep. He heard the newsboys calling outside, although it was apparently the early dawn. Their voices made him think of Des Moines, for the reason that Des Moines was the only city in which he had ever heard the newsboys cry. He sprang from his bed at the thought of Radbourn. He would hunt him up at once! He was surprised to find that it had snowed during the night, and everywhere the darkies were cleaning the walks.
Walking thus a perfect stranger in what seemed to him a great city he did not feel at all like a rising young man. In fact the farther he got from Rock River the smaller his importance grew, for he had the imagination that comprehends relative values.