of Latin progress, and they met
Italian faces, French faces, Spanish faces, as they strolled over
the asphalt walks, under the thinning shadows of the autumn-stricken
sycamores. They met the familiar picturesque raggedness of Southern
Europe with the old kindly illusion that somehow it existed for their
appreciation, and that it found adequate compensation for poverty in
this. March thought he sufficiently expressed his tacit sympathy in
sitting down on one of the iron benches with his wife and letting a
little Neapolitan put a superfluous shine on his boots, while their
desultory comment wandered with equal esteem to the old-fashioned
American respectability which keeps the north side of the square in
vast mansions of red brick, and the international shabbiness which
has invaded the southern border, and broken it up into lodging-houses,
shops, beer-gardens, and studios.

They noticed the sign of an apartment to let on the north side, and as
soon as the little bootblack could be bought off they went over to look
at it. The janitor met them at the door and examined them. Then he said,
as if still in doubt, "It has ten rooms, and the rent is twenty-eight
hundred dollars."

"It wouldn't do, then," March replied, and left him to divide the
responsibility between the paucity of the rooms and the enormity of the
rent as he best might. But their self-love had received a wound, and
they questioned each other what it was in their appearance made him
doubt their ability to pay so much.

"Of course, we don't look like New-Yorkers," sighed Mrs. March, "and
we've walked through the Square. That might be as if we had walked along
the Park Street mall in the Common before we came out on Beacon. Do you
suppose he could have seen you getting your boots blacked in that way?"

"It's useless to ask," said March. "But I never can recover from this
blow."

"Oh, pshaw! You know you hate such things as badly as I do. It was very
impertinent of him."

"Let us go back and 'ecraser l'infame' by paying him a year's rent in
advance and taking immediate possession. Nothing else can soothe my
wounded feelings. You were not having your boots blacked: why shouldn't
he have supposed you were a New-Yorker, and I a country cousin?"

"They always know. Don't you remember Mrs. Williams's going to a Fifth
Avenue milliner in a Worth dress, and the woman's asking her instantly
what hotel she should send her hat to?"

"Yes; these things drive one to d