All his ambitions and plans seemed in a sense to have become meaningless, made so by the something which but ten days before had been unknown to him.  Like Moses he had seen the promised land.  But Moses died.  He had seen it, and must live on without it.  He saw nothing in the future worth striving for, except a struggle to forget, if possible, the sweetest and dearest memory he had ever known.  He thought of the epigram:  “Most men can die well, but few can live well.”  Three weeks before he had smiled over it and set it down as a bit of French cynicism.  Now—­on the verge of giving his mental assent to the theory, a pair of slate-colored eyes in some way came into his mind, and even French wit was discarded therefrom.

Peter was taking his disappointment very seriously, if quietly.  Had he only known other girls, he might have made a safe recovery, for love’s remedy is truly the homeopathic “similia similibus curantur,” woman plural being the natural cure for woman singular.  As the Russian in the “Last Word” says, “A woman can do anything with a man—­provided there is no other woman.”  In Peter’s case there was no other woman.  What was worse, there seemed little prospect of there being one in the future.

CHAPTER VIII.

Settling.

The middle of July found Peter in New York, eager to begin his grapple with the future.  How many such stormers have dashed themselves against its high ramparts, from which float the flags of “worldly success;” how many have fallen at the first attack; how many have been borne away, stricken in the assault; how many have fought on bravely, till driven back by pressure, sickness or hunger; how few have reached the top, and won their colors!

As already hinted, Peter had chosen the law as his ladder to climb these ramparts.  Like many another fellow he had but a dim comprehension of the struggle before him.  His college mates had talked over professions, and agreed that law was a good one in New York.  The attorney in his native town, “had known of cases where men without knowing a soul in a place, had started in and by hard work and merit had bunt up a good practice, and I don’t see why it can’t be done as well in New York as in Lawrence or Lowell.  If New York is bigger, then there is more to be done.”  So Peter, whose New York acquaintances were limited to Watts and four other collegians, the Pierces and their fashionables, and a civil engineer originally from his native town, had decided that the way to go about it was to get an office, hang up a sign, and wait for clients.

On the morning after his arrival, his first object was a lodging.  Selecting from the papers the advertisements of several boarding-houses, he started in search of one.  Watts had told him about where to locate, “so as to live in a decent part of the city,” but after seeing and pricing a few rooms near the “Avenue,” about Thirtieth Street, Peter saw that Watts had been thinking of his own purse, rather than of his friend’s.