suddenly in New York and faced with the prospect of earning his living
there, is likely to quail for a moment. New York is not like other
cities. London greets the stranger with a sleepy grunt. Paris giggles.
New York howls. A gladiator, waiting in the center of the arena while
the Colosseum officials fumbled with the bolts of the door behind which
paced the noisy tiger he was to fight, must have had some of the
emotions which John experienced during his first hour as a masterless
man in Gotham.

A surface car carried him up Broadway. At Times Square the Astor Hotel
loomed up on the left. It looked a pretty good hotel to John. He
dismounted.

Half an hour later he decided that he was acclimated. He had secured a
base of operations in the shape of a room on the seventh floor, his
check was safely deposited in the hotel bank, and he was half-way
through a lunch which had caused him already to look on New York not
only as the finest city in the world, but also, on the whole, as the
one city of all others in which a young man might make a fortune with
the maximum of speed and the minimum of effort.

After lunch, having telegraphed his address to his uncle in case of
mail, he took the latter's excellent advice and went to the polo
grounds. Returning in time to dress, he dined at the hotel, after which
he visited a near-by theater, and completed a pleasant and strenuous
day at one of those friendly restaurants where the music is continuous
and the waiters are apt to burst into song in the intervals of their
other duties.

A second attempt to find Smith next morning failed, as the first had