From this talk and the big white felt hat that he wore, the boy with the parcel gathered that the other was a stranger to the town and town ways. He felt quite superior and determined to make the most of it. "Come on down the street with me," he said, and John followed, elbowing his way among the people as he saw the other boy do. They went along together, Charley Braton (John soon learned his name) pointing out the principal buildings, grandiloquently. Charley, who was an errand boy in a dry-goods store, reached his destination and invited his new-found friend to come up, so both stepped into the hallway and then through an iron doorway into a sort of cage, where several other people were already standing. John wondered what it was all about, and was just framing a question when a man slammed the gate and grasped a wire rope that ran through floor and ceiling of the cage. Of a sudden the floor began to rise, not smoothly, but with a jerk that drove the boy's heels into the floor. John's breath caught and he clutched Charley's arm. "Seven," called out the latter, and the car stopped with a jar.
"Elevator?" inquired John.
"Yep. 'Fraid?" questioned the other with a grin.
"Nah. Little bit surprised though; never rode on one before."
"Lots of people get scared, though," said Charley, and began a long account of how an old ranchman and Indian fighter lost his nerve completely during his first elevator ride, and finally pulled his pistol on the elevator man to make him "stop the thing."
Charley's errand done, they entered the elevator again, which descended so suddenly that John felt as if the bottom had dropped out of his stomach. Both stairs and elevators were new to our country boy, and he concluded that he did not care for either, but he was far too proud to show any trepidation before his new acquaintance.
The boys separated, Charley returning to the store and John to the group of tramps at the saloon. It was not an attractive circle round the beer keg that the boy joined, and even he realized that they were more dirty and shiftless than any men he had known. But one at least of them had been kind to him, and he was grateful.
"Well, kid, wha'd'ye see?" shouted Jimmy as he drew near.
John told the story with gusto of all the wonders he had seen, and especially his view of the "carriage teamster."
"That's nothin'," said one man. "You see them on every corner in N'York." Immediately there arose an animated discussion as to the possessions of this or that millionaire, and there was not one of the tramps who did not know some one in the household of a plutocrat. The talk grew apace, and each narrator put forth all his available knowledge of the traits and habits of millionaires. All referred familiarly to individuals of seven-figure fame as "Tom" or "Joe" or "George."