h Avenue
and the Great White Way. There they are today, insolent-eyed and
"walk-the-plank" mannered to all but the few whom they feel they can
hold to high ransom. To those of us who do not belong to that few of the
race of Dives there is satisfaction in turning over the old
bills-of-fare, and musing on the repasts that were once within the reach
of the purses of the humble.

When Horace Greeley arrived in New York in 1831, he had ten dollars in
his pocket and knew no one in the city. He entered a tavern. The
bartender looked him over superciliously. "We are too high for you. We
charge six a week." Horace agreed with him, and found shelter in a
boarding-house where he paid two dollars and a half a week.
Occasionally, when the table there palled, he and the other boarders
sought a change by repairing to a Sixpenny Dining Saloon in Beekman
Street where a splendid feast was to be had for a shilling (twelve and a
half cents).

Two years after Horace Greeley arrived in New York Holt's Hotel opened
its doors. It was the wonder of the town, the largest and most
magnificent inn erected up to that time. Even by rich people its prices
were thought exorbitant. They were one dollar and a half a day. That, of
course, meant the American plan. Even the panic years, from 1835 to
1837, when prices soared in a manner that brought consternation to the
breasts of careful housekeepers, do not very much startle us who are
living in the present Anno Domini 1918. Philip Hone, in his "Diary,"
wrote of living in New York in 1835 as exorbitantly dear, and went on to
say: "it falls pretty hard on persons like me who live upon their
incomes, and harder still upon that large and respectable class whose
support is derived from fixed salaries." The sweat of the brow of New
York all ran into the pockets of the farmers. Hone laid in a winter
stock of butter at twenty-nine cents a pound. "In the course of
thirty-four years housekeeping I have never buttered my bread at so
extravagant a rate." In March, 1836, he recorded: "The market was higher
this morning than I have ever known it. Beef, twenty-five cents; mutton
and veal, fifteen to eighteen; small turkeys, one dollar and a half.
Poor New York!"

A few years later and the prices were back to what was then held to be
normal. According to a Guide Book of the city issued in 1846, there were
one hundred and twenty-three eating-houses in the town, besides the
oyster-houses. At the cheaper places the pri