Their parents, who were ever worrying about how to properly provide for
their family, had--as nowadays so many other parents do--entirely
overlooked the fact that growing boys should be permitted to travel,
even if only upon an excursion, to curb within them the inborn and
almost irresistible desire to roam, which all have inherited from
ancestors, who attired in wooden shoes and coarse apparel, and carrying
gunny sacks, had landed not so many years ago at Castle Garden, after
having crossed the stormy Atlantic in the steerage of a sailing vessel,
and who instead of bringing along a fancy "family tree", had brought
with them a pair of calloused, but willing hands, intending to win with
them a way to wealth and fame, in the New World, for their own humble
selves and their "proud" descendants.

The "Call of the City" found in the twins willing listeners as the
cessation of their school duties, the enforced idleness at the
reservation, and the monotony of their existence became a bane to them.
They hearkened to the call that had already conquered a vast army of
other boys, sons of those who till the soil and labor out-of-doors
earning a fair competence, which although it demands hard toil, gives in
exchange pure air, healthy food and every comfort and luxury that
willing hands backed by intelligence can produce.

For months prior to their departure on their trip, whenever they could
gallop beyond ear shot of their elder brother, while riding to and from
school, and at night when alone in their bedroom, Joe and Jim pictured
to each other the grand future which they thought every city offered to
them, comparing it favorably with the drudge of the life of monotonous
toil that would be theirs at the section reservation. They repeated the
stories of success they had read in the newspapers, the magazines and