Desk and Debit by Oliver Optic

When I reached the house of Mrs. Whippleton, I took my writing materials from my bag, and wrote a long letter to my father, detailing the incidents of my journey, and explaining the motives which had induced me to take the situation in the counting-room of Collingsby and Whippleton. I was satisfied that he would not object, though he might not fully approve the course I had taken. I was up very early the next morning, and made a hurried survey of the city before breakfast. I walked from Washington Street, where my boarding-house was located, through Halstead Street, to the north branch of the Chicago River, where I found the lumber-yard of the firm. I read the sign and examined the locality with interest.

I ate my breakfast at half past six; and though the beefsteak was very tough, and the butter very strong, I sustained my reputation as a good eater. I had lived too long in the wilderness, where we did not often have any butter, to be thrown off my balance by the accident of a rancid article, and I had certainly eaten buffalo meat that was as much tougher than any beef as sole leather is tougher than brown paper. Strong butter and tough beef are not good, I allow; but they are by no means the sum total of human misery. I had a clean conscience, and I ate a hearty breakfast.