New York City Tours

e' the balance due of forty cents. This 'little game,' so profitable to himself, was carried on for some time triumphantly, but retribution came at last, and unexpectedly and very cleverly. The clerk, seeing how matters stood, commenced to keep an account on a piece of paper of the sums due and sums _paid_ on each successive day at his establishment by this ingenious customer, and on one occasion, when the bank clerk had deposited his check for one dollar and a quarter and a ten dollar note in payment upon the counter (as he wished on this particular occasion to procure some small change for his own purposes), the clerk quietly took the note and then handed out two dollars and twenty cents in change. 'There must be some mistake,' said the bank clerk. 'Oh! none at all.' said the cashier. 'Did I not hand you a ten dollar note?' 'You did, sir.' 'And did not my check call for one dollar and a quarter?' 'It did, sir.' 'Then where is my change?' asked the bank clerk. 'It is _there_, sir' replied the cashier, pointing to a piece of paper which he handed to the astonished bank clerk. 'What is this paper?' 'It is your account.' '_My_ account!' 'Yes, sir, you will find it correct in every particular,' said the cashier; 'I will go over the items with you. On such and such a day your check called for such and such a sum; you paid only so and so, leaving such and such balance. The next day you ordered so and so, only paid so much, and left, of course, you see, this balance. Altogether, sir, you owe the establishment, as back balances due for food and liquors, up to date, just seven dollars and a half. I have taken out this amount, and you will find the change correct.' "Words were useless--the bank clerk was outwitted, and left in disgust, and from that day to this has never set foot inside of that restaurant again." CHAPTER XX. BOARDING HOUSES. As we have said elsewhere, it has been remarked that New York is a vast boarding-house. If any one doubts this, he has only to turn to the columns of the _Herald_, and see the long rows of advertisements on the subject. The better class houses of the city are equal to any in the world, but there are scores here within the pale of respectability which are a trial to the fortitude and philosophy of any man. A really desirable house is a rarity here, as elsewhere, and very hard to find. He who is so lucky as to be domesticated in one of these is wise if he remains there. FINDING A BOARDING HOUSE. Some years ago there appeared a work on the subject of boarding houses, from which we extract the following description of the experience of a person looking for board in New York. He either inserts in the _Herald_, _Tribune_, or _Times_, an advertisement specifying his particular requirements, or consults those addressed to humanity in general through the medium of their columns-- perhaps adopts both measures. In the former case, the next morning puts him in possession of a vast amount of correspondence, from the daintily-penned and delicately-enveloped _billets_ of up-towndom to the ill-spelled, pencil-scrawled, uncovered notes of Greenwich and Hudson streets. It matters not that he has indicated any definite locality; sanguine householders in remote Brooklyn districts clutch at him, Hoboken residents yearn toward him, and the writer of a stray Williamsburg epistle is 'confident that an arrangement can be made,' if he will favor _her_ with a visit. After laying aside as ineligible as many letters as there are _Smiths_ in a New York Directory, he devotes a morning to the purposes of inspection and selection. He becomes acquainted with strange localities and bell-handles. He scrutinizes informatory scraps of paper wafered up beside doorways. He endures tedious waiting at thresholds--it being a curious fact in connection with boarding-houses that a single application for admission through the usual medium never procures it. And according as his quest be high or low, so will his experience vary. If the former, he may expect to be ushered into spacious and luxuriously-furnished parlors, where, seated in comfortably-padded rocking-chairs, and contemplating marble tables, on which gorgeously- bound volumes are