They got out in the livery stable of the City Hotel and at the desk of the latter asked about the price of board.  It was three dollars a day and no politeness in the offer.

“It’s purty steep,” said Samson.  “But I’m too hungry for argument or delay and I guess we can stand it to be nabobs for a day or so.”

“I shall have to ask you to pay in advance,” the clerk demanded.

Samson drew out the pig’s bladder in which he carried his money and paid for a day’s board.

Samson writes that Harry spent half an hour washing and dressing himself in the clean clothes and fine shoes which he had brought in his saddle-bags and adds: 

* * * * *

“He was a broad-shouldered, handsome chap those days, six feet and an inch high and straight as an arrow with a small blond mustache.  His clothes were rumpled up some and he wore a gray felt hat instead of a tall one but there was no likelier looking lad in the new city.”

* * * * *

After supper the office of the hotel was crowded with men in tall hats and tail coats smoking “seegars” and gathered in groups.  The earnestness of their talk was signalized by little outbursts of profanity coupled with the name of Jackson.  Some denounced the President as a traitor.  One man stood in the midst of a dozen others delivering a sort of oration, embellished with noble gestures, on the future of Illinois.  His teeth were clenched on his “seegar” that tilted out of the corner of his mouth as he spoke.  Now and then he would pause and by a deft movement of his lips roll the “seegar” to the other corner of his mouth, take a fresh grip on it and resume his oration.

Samson wrote in his diary: 

  “He said a lot of foolish things that made us laugh.”

Twenty years later he put this note under that entry: 

  “The funny thing about it was really this; they all came true.”

The hotel clerk had a Register of the Residents of the City of Chicago wherein they found the name and address of John Kelso.  They went out to find the house.  Storekeepers tried to stop them as they passed along the street with offers of land at bargains which would make them millionaires in a week.  In proceeding along the plank sidewalks they were often ascending or descending steps to another level.

They went to a barber shop and got “trimmed and shaved.”  For change the barber gave them a sort of shinplaster money, each piece of which bore the legend:  “Good for one shave or ten cents at the Palace Shaving Parlors, 16 Dearborn Street, Chicago, Ill.”  The barber assured them it was as good as coin anywhere in the city which they found to be true.  The town was flooded with this “red dog money” issued by stores or work-shops and finding general acceptance among its visitors and inhabitants.  On the sidewalks were emigrant families the older members of which carried heavy bags and bundles.  They were followed by troops of weary, dirty children.