I took that book back to the kitchen.  The Professor had a lamp burning on the table beside him, and I sat down in its light.  In a few seconds I was following the adventures of the hero,—­a hero whose foot, it seemed “had pressed the summits of the Andes, and climbed the Cordilleras of the Sierra Madre.”  He had “steamed it down the Mississippi, and sculled it up the Orinoco.”

The Orinoco!  That magic river with the musical name!  I knew it too, and could see it in my mind’s eye as I read.  The branches of the trees met across the stream,—­parrots screamed, monkeys chattered, and scampered from one tree to another.  The kitchen, the Professor, vanished from my sight.  I was unconscious of the hard, uncomfortable chair in which I sat, and of the dim, sputtering light of the badly trimmed lamp.

What else had he done?  He told you about his past adventures, before he began upon the new one.  “I had hunted buffaloes with the Pawnees of the Platte, and ostriches upon the Pampas of the Plata; I had eaten raw meat with the trappers of the Rocky Mountains, and roast monkey among the Mosquito Indians.”  Now, it seemed, he was off for the war in Mexico,—­and I could come along with him, if I liked.

I did like, and it was two hours later when I suddenly heard an oily voice saying:  “Why, it’s half past nine,—­James, you’re not going to read all night, are you?” Then I came back to Rogers’s Island with a bump, and saw the obnoxious face of Mr. Snider looking down at me.  The Professor had left the room, though I had not noticed when he went.

“What is that book, James?  Something improving, I trust?”

“It’s a fine book,” said I.

He took it and looked it over, making a clicking sound of disapproval with his tongue.

“How much better it would be,” he observed, “to read some book of useful information, or something with a moral!  Such a book as this teaches you nothing.  Couldn’t you find anything better?”

I was sorry that the Professor wasn’t there, to tell him to shut up.  I had no patience to stay and hear a book of brave adventure decried by this sanctimonious looking hum-bug,—­whose mouth watered when he talked about old Fillmore and his ninety million dollars.  Fillmore, so everybody said, was so stingy that he cut his own hair, and went around looking like a fright, rather than pay a barber.  Worse than that, he was hated like fury by all the people who worked for him because he screwed their wages down to the lowest possible figure.  But Mr. Snider thought him a great man, and boasted to me of knowing him within ten minutes of the time we met.

I told Mr. Snider that I was ready to go to bed, if he would show me where I was to sleep.  He led me upstairs, past two or three rooms, to one in the rear.  The floors were all bare, but the rooms had some furniture,—­four-post beds, wash-stands, and one or two hair-cloth chairs.  The bed in my room had a mattress and blankets, but no other bed-clothes.  Mr. Snider bade me good-night, tried to shake hands with me—­an attempt in which I foiled him—­and softly departed down stairs.