York, the city of my future career.

CHAPTER II

My arrival in the metropolis was unaccompanied by any newspaper
comment or by any particular excitement on the part of the inhabitants.
I simply landed, after a seven hours' journey from Boston, with a
considerable quantity of fine raiment--rather too fine, as I soon
discovered, for the ordinary uses of a serious-minded, working
youth--some fifty odd dollars, and a well-developed bump of self-
confidence that was supported by a strong reserve resolution not
to let anybody get ahead of me. I had all the assurance of a man
double my years and an easy way of making acquaintances that was
destined to stand me in good stead, but I do not wish to be understood
as admitting that my manners were offensive or that I was in any
degree supercilious. I was simply a good fellow who had always
enjoyed the comradeship of other good fellows, and as a result felt
reasonably sure that the rest of the world would treat him kindly.
Moreover, I could dissemble without difficulty and, if occasion
arose, could give the impression of being a diffident and modest
young man, ready and anxious to order himself "lowly and humbly
before his betters."

Yet I had seen enough of the world to know that unless a man puts
a high appraisal upon his attainments and ability no one else is
likely to do so, and that the public takes one, nine times out of
ten, at his own valuation. Coming on the clay itself: I wore my
hair rather long, with an appreciable modicum of bear's grease well
rubbed in, side whiskers and white beaver, and carried a carpet
bag on which was embroidered a stag's head in yellow on a background
of green worsted. And the principal fact to be observed in this
connection is that, instead of creating a smile as I passed out of
the Grand Central Station, I was probably regarded as a rather
smart and stylishly dressed young man.

I had a card to some young actors in the city, given me by my
Thespian friends in Boston, and it proved but a short trip on the
horse-cars down Fourth Avenue to the locality, near the Academy of
Music, then as now frequented by the fraternity. I began my
professional career, then, by taking lodgings in an actors' boarding-
house, and I am free to confess that at the time I was undecided
whether to follow the bar or the boards. I have since frequently
observed that the same qualities make for success in both, and had
it not been for the fact that I found m