"There's plenty of gilding," he said, "but it's very thin. It's all finished, too. I don't see what more they could do, now the roof's on and it's all painted. He must have been joking when he said that."
Jack roamed all over the Capitol, for the Legislature was not in session, and the building was open to sight-seers. There were many of them, and from visitors, workmen, and some boys whom he met, Jack managed to find out many interesting things.
The Assembly Chamber seemed to him a truly wonderful room, and upon the floor were several groups of people admiring it.
He saw one visitor seat himself in the Speaker's chair. "There's room in that chair for two or three small men," said Jack; "I'll try it by and by."
"The Speaker was a boy once, too, and so was the Governor," he said to himself aloud.
"Yes, my boy," said a lady, who was near enough to hear him; "so they were. So were all the presidents, and some went barefoot and lived in log-cabins."
"Well, I've often gone barefoot," said Jack, laughing.
"Many boys go barefoot, but they can't all become governors," she said, pleasantly.
She looked at Jack for a moment, and then said with a smile, "You look like a bright young man, though. Do you suppose you could ever be Governor?"
"Perhaps I could," he said. "It can't be harder to learn than any other business."
The lady laughed, and her friends laughed, and Jack arose from the Speaker's chair and walked away.
He had seen enough of that vast State House. It wearied him, there was so much of it, and it was so fine.
"To build this house cost twenty tons of gold!" he said, as he went out through the lofty doorway. "I wish I had some of it. I've kept my nine dollars yet, anyway. The Governor's right. I don't know what he meant, but I'll never be just the same fellow again."
It was so. But it was not merely seeing the Capitol that had changed him. He was changing from a boy who had never seen anything outside of Crofield and Mertonville, into a boy who was walking right out into the world to learn what is in it.
"I'll go to the hotel and write to father and mother," he said; "and I have something to tell them."
It was the first real letter he had ever written, and it seemed a great thing to do--ten times more important than writing a composition, and almost equal to editing the _Eagle_.