After a while he will find a place and give a sigh of relief as he
settles away from the city's sights behind his cosey blinds. It is
better here, and the city is cruel and cold and unfeeling. This he will
feel, perhaps, for the first half-hour, and then he will be out in it
all again. He will be glad to strike elbows with the bustling mob and be
happy at their indifference to him, so that he may look at them and
study them. After it is all over, after he has passed through the first
pangs of strangeness and homesickness, yes, even after he has got beyond
the stranger's enthusiasm for the metropolis, the real fever of love for
the place will begin to take hold upon him. The subtle, insidious wine
of New York will begin to intoxicate him. Then, if he be wise, he will
go away, any place,--yes, he will even go over to Jersey. But if he be a
fool, he will stay and stay on until the town becomes all in all to him;
until the very streets are his chums and certain buildings and corners
his best friends. Then he is hopeless, and to live elsewhere would be
death. The Bowery will be his romance, Broadway his lyric, and the Park
his pastoral, the river and the glory of it all his epic, and he will
look down pityingly on all the rest of humanity.

It was the afternoon of a clear October day that the Hamiltons reached
New York. Fannie had some misgivings about crossing the ferry, but once
on the boat these gave way to speculations as to what they should find
on the other side. With the eagerness of youth to take in new
impressions, Joe and Kitty were more concerned with what they saw about
them than with what their future would hold, though they might well have
stopped to ask some such questions. In all the great city they knew
absolutely no one, and had no idea which way to go to find a
stopping-place.

They looked about them for some coloured face, and finally saw one among