d association with
Lubeck and Europe; while, in addition, he had directed his letters from
home to be sent to the "Poste Restante, New York," and if he left that
city, why he would never hear how Madaleine and his mother were getting
on in his absence!

So, for days and days he patrolled the town in vain; seeking for work,
and finding none. The place, as his candid informer had said, was
filled with clerks like himself in search of employment; and they,
linguists especially, were a drug in the market--the cessation of the
Franco-German War having flooded the country with foreign labour.

What should he do?

Before making a move, as everybody advised him, he determined to await
the next mail steamer. This would bring him a letter from home, in
answer to the one he had written, immediately on landing, telling of his
safe arrival in the New World. He was dying to have, if only, a line
from those dear ones he had left with a good-bye in the Gulden Strasse,
recounting all that had happened since he had started from home--his
passage across the Atlantic having lasted, according to his morbid
imagination, at least as long as the war he had lately served through!

At last, a letter came; and, as it really put fresh heart in him--
cheering up his drooping energies and banishing a sort of despondent
feeling which had begun to prey upon him, altering him completely from
his former buoyant self--he made up his mind in his old prompt fashion
to visit some of the other seaports on the coast, "Down East," as
Americans say, in order to try whether he might not be able there to get
a billet.

He had very little money left now; for, he had not brought much with him
from home, originally and the greater part of what he had in his pockets
when he came ashore had melted away in paying for his board and lodging
while remaining in New York. Although he had put up at the cheapest
boarding-house he could find, it was far dearer than the most expensive
accommodation in Lubeck or even at a first-class hotel in any large town
on the Continent. Living in such a city was actually like eating hard
cash!

Fritz saw that he would have to proceed on his journey along the coast
as cheaply as possible:-- he had not much to spare for railway and
steamboat fares.

With this resolution staring him in the face, he made his way one
afternoon to the foot of Canal Street, from the quays facing which, on
the North River, start the huge floating pala