“Can you tell me where the cheaper boarding-houses are?” he asked the woman who had done the honors of the last house.

“If it’s cheapness you want, you’d better go to Bleecker Street,” said the woman with a certain contemptuousness.

Peter thanked her, and, walking away, accosted the first policeman.

“It’s Blaker Strate, is it?  Take the Sixth Avenue cars, there beyant,” he was informed.

“Is it a respectable street?” asked Peter.

“Don’t be afther takin’ away a strate’s character,” said the policeman, grinning good-naturedly.

“I mean,” explained Peter, “do respectable people live there?”

“Shure, it’s mostly boarding-houses for young men,” replied the unit of “the finest.”  “Ye know best what they’re loike.”

Reassured, Peter, sought and found board in Bleecker Street, not comprehending that he had gone to the opposite extreme.  It was a dull season, and he had no difficulty in getting such a room as suited both his expectations and purse.  By dinner-time he had settled his simple household gods to his satisfaction, and slightly moderated the dreariness of the third floor front, so far as the few pictures and other furnishings from his college rooms could modify the effect of well-worn carpet, cheap, painted furniture, and ugly wall-paper.

Descending to his dinner, in answer to a bell more suitable for a fire-alarm than for announcing such an ordinary occurrence as meals, he was introduced to the four young men who were all the boarders the summer season had left in the house.  Two were retail dry-goods clerks, another filled some function in a butter and cheese store, and the fourth was the ticket-seller at one of the middle-grade theatres.  They all looked at Peter’s clothes before looking at his face, and though the greetings were civil enough, Peter’s ready-made travelling suit, bought in his native town, and his quiet cravat, as well as his lack of jewelry, were proof positive to them that he did not merit any great consideration.  It was very evident that the ticket-seller, not merely from his natural self-assertion but even more because of his enviable acquaintance with certain actresses and his occasional privileges in the way of free passes, was the acknowledged autocrat of the table.  Under his guidance the conversation quickly turned to theatrical and “show” talk.  Much of it was vulgar, and all of it was dull.  It was made the worse by the fact that they all tried to show, off a little before the newcomer, to prove their superiority and extreme knowingness to him.  To make Peter the more conscious of this, they asked him various questions.

“Do you like—?” a popular soubrette of the day.

“What, never seen her?  Where on earth have you been living?”

“Oh?  Well, she’s got too good legs to waste herself on such a little place.”

They would like to have asked him questions about himself, but feared to seem to lower themselves from their fancied superiority, by showing interest in Peter.  One indeed did ask him what business he was in.