will the atmosphere of this realm work its desperate results in the soul of man.  It is like a chemical reagent.  One day of it, like one drop of the other, will so affect and discolor the views, the aims, the desire of the mind, that it will thereafter remain forever dyed.  A day of it to the untried mind is like opium to the untried body.  A craving is set up which, if gratified, shall eternally result in dreams and death.  Aye! dreams unfulfilled—­ gnawing, luring, idle phantoms which beckon and lead, beckon and lead, until death and dissolution dissolve their power and restore us blind to nature’s heart.

A man of Hurstwood’s age and temperament is not subject to the illusions and burning desires of youth, but neither has he the strength of hope which gushes as a fountain in the heart of youth.  Such an atmosphere could not incite in him the cravings of a boy of eighteen, but in so far as they were excited, the lack of hope made them proportionately bitter.  He could not fail to notice the signs of affluence and luxury on every hand.  He had been to New York before and knew the resources of its folly.  In part it was an awesome place to him, for here gathered all that he most respected on this earth—­ wealth, place, and fame.  The majority of the celebrities with whom he had tipped glasses in his day as manager hailed from this self-centered and populous spot.  The most inviting stories of pleasure and luxury had been told of places and individuals here.  He knew it to be true that unconsciously he was brushing elbows with fortune the livelong day; that a hundred or five hundred thousand gave no one the privilege of living more than comfortably in so wealthy a place.  Fashion and pomp required more ample sums, so that the poor man was nowhere.  All this he realized, now quite sharply, as he faced the city, cut off from his friends, despoiled of his modest fortune, and even his name, and forced to begin the battle for place and comfort all over again.  He was not old, but he was not so dull but that he could feel he soon would be.  Of a sudden, then, this show of fine clothes, place, and power took on peculiar significance.  It was emphasized by contrast with his own distressing state.

And it was distressing.  He soon found that freedom from fear of arrest was not the sine qua non of his existence.  That danger dissolved, the next necessity became the grievous thing.  The paltry sum of thirteen hundred and some odd dollars set against the need of rent, clothing, food, and pleasure for years to come was a spectacle little calculated to induce peace of mind in one who had been accustomed to spend five times that sum in the course of a year.  He thought upon the subject rather actively the first few days he was in New York, and decided that he must act quickly.  As a consequence, he consulted the business opportunities advertised in the morning papers and began investigations on his own account.