In his dress Abel was costly and elegant.  With the other men of his day, he read “Pelham” with an admiration of which his life was the witness.  Pelham was the Byronic hero made practicable, purged of romance, and adapted to society.  Mr. Newt, Jun., was one of a small but influential set of young men about town who did all they could to repair the misfortune of being born Americans, by imitating the habits of foreign life.

It was presently clear to him that residence under the parental roof was incompatible with the habits of a strictly fashionable man.

“There are hours, you know, mother, and habits, which make a separate lodging much more agreeable to all parties.  I have friends to smoke, or to drink a glass of punch, or to play a game of whist; and we must sing, and laugh, and make a noise, as young men will, which is not seemly for the paternal mansion, mother mine.”  With which he took his admiring mother airily under the chin and kissed her—­not having mentioned every reason which made a separate residence desirable.

So Abel Newt hired a pleasant set of rooms in Grand Street, near Broadway, in the neighborhood of other youth of the right set.  He furnished them sumptuously, with the softest carpets, the most luxurious easy-chairs, the most costly curtains, and pretty, bizarre little tables, and bureaus, and shelves.  Various engravings hung upon the walls; a profile-head of Bulwer, with a large Roman nose and bushy whiskers, and one of his Majesty George IV., in that famous cloak which Lord Chesterfield bought at the sale of his Majesty’s wardrobe for eleven hundred dollars, and of which the sable lining alone originally cost four thousand dollars.  Then there were little vases, and boxes, and caskets standing upon all possible places, with a rare flower in some one of them often, sent by some kind dowager who wished to make sure of Abel at a dinner or a select soiree.  Pipes, of course, and boxes of choice cigars, were at hand, and in a convenient closet such a beautiful set of English cut glass for the use of a gentleman!

It was no wonder that the rooms of Abel Newt became a kind of club-room and elegant lounge for the gay gentlemen about town.  He even gave little dinners there to quiet parties, sometimes including two or three extremely vivacious and pretty, as well as fashionably dressed, young women, whom he was not in the habit of meeting in society, but who were known quite familiarly to Abel and his friends.

Upon other occasions these little dinners took place out of town, whither the gentlemen drove alone in their buggies by daylight, and, meeting the ladies there, had the pleasure of driving them back to the city in the evening.  The “buggy” of Abel’s day was an open gig without a top, very easy upon its springs, but dangerous with stumbling horses.  The drive was along the old Boston road, and the rendezvous, Cato’s—­Cato Alexander’s—­near the present shot-tower.  If the gentlemen returned alone, they finished the evening at Benton’s, in Ann Street, where they played a game of billiards; or at Thiel’s retired rooms over the celebrated Stewart’s, opposite the Park, where they indulged in faro.  Abel Newt lost and won his money with careless grace—­always a little glad when he won, for somebody had to pay for all this luxurious life.