The World of Chance by William Dean Howells

In the morning, Ray determined that he would not breakfast at the / restaurant under the hotel, partly because he was ashamed to meet the / people who, he knew, suspected him of trying to beat them out of the / price of his supper, and partly because he had decided that it was / patronized chiefly by the country merchants who frequented the hotel, / and he wanted something that was more like New York. He had heard of / those foreign eating-houses where you got a meal served in courses at a / fixed price, and he wandered about looking for one. He meant to venture / into the first he found, and on a side street he came on a hotel with a / French name, and over the door in an arch of gilt letters the / inscription, Restaurant Francais. There was a large tub on each side of / the door, with a small evergreen tree in it; some strings or wires ran / from these tubs to the door-posts and sustained a trailing vine that / formed a little bower on either hand; a Maltese cat in the attitude of a / sphinx dozed in the thicket of foliage, and Ray's heart glowed with a / sense of the foreignness of the whole effect. He had never been abroad, / but he had read of such things, and he found himself at home in an / environment long familiar to his fancy.

The difference of things was the source of his romance, as it is with / all of us, and he looked in at the window of this French restaurant with / the feelings he would have had in the presence of such a restaurant in / Paris, and he began to imagine gay, light-minded pictures about it. At / the same time, while he was figuring inside at one of the small tables, / _vis-à-vis_ with a pretty actress whom he invented for the purpose, he / was halting on the sidewalk outside, wondering whether he could get / breakfast there so early as eight o'clock, and doubtful whether he / should not betray his strangeness to New York hours if he tried. When he / went in there was nobody there but one white-aproned waiter, who was / taking down some chairs from the middle table where they had been / stacked with their legs in the air while he was sweeping. But he did not / disdain to come directly to Ray, where he had sat down, with a plate and / napkin and knife and fork, and exchange a good-morning with him in / arranging them before him. Then he brought half a yard of French bread / and a tenuous, translucent pat of American butter; and asked Ray whether / he would have chops or beefsteak with his coffee. The steak came with a / sprig of water-cress on it, and the coffee in a pot; and the waiter, who / had one eye that looked at Ray, and another of uncertain focus, poured / out the coffee for him, and stood near, with a friendly countenance, and / a cordial interest in the young fellow's appetite. By this time a neat / _dame de comptoir_, whom Ray knew for a _dame de comptoir_ at once, / though he had never seen one before, took her place behind a little / desk in the corner, and the day had begun for the Restaurant Francais.

Ray felt that it was life, and he prolonged his meal to the last drop of / the second cup of coffee that his pot held, and he wished that he could / have Sanderson with him to show him what life really was in New York. / Sanderson had taken all his meals in the basement of that seventy-five / cent hotel, which Ray meant to leave at once. Where he was he would not / have been ashamed to have any of the men who had given him that farewell / dinner see him. He was properly placed, as a young New York literary / man; he was already a citizen of that great Bohemia which he had heard / and read so much of. He was sure that artists must come there, and / actors, but of course much later in the day. His only misgiving was lest / the taxes of Bohemia might be heavier than he could pay, and he asked / the waiter for his account somewhat anxiously. It was forty cents, and / his ambition leaped at the possibility of taking all his meals at that / place. He made the occasion of telling the cross-eyed waiter to keep the / change out of the half-dollar he gave him, serve for asking whether one / could take board there by the week, and the waiter said one could for / six dollars: a luncheon like the breakfast, but with soup and wine, and / a dinner of fish, two meats, salad, sweets, and coffee. "On Sundays," / said the waiter, "the dinner is something splendid. And there are rooms; / oh, yes, it is a hotel."

"Yes, I knew it was a hotel," said Ray.

The six dollars did not seem to him too much; but he had decided that he / must live on ten dollars a week in order to make his money last for a / full experiment of New York, or till he had placed himself in some / permanent position of profit. The two strains of prudence and of poetry / were strongly blended in him; he could not bear to think of wasting / money, even upon himself, whom he liked so well, and whom he wished so / much to have a good time. He meant to make his savings go far; with / those five hundred dollars he could live a year in New York if he helped / himself out on dress and incidental expenses with the pay for his / Midland _Echo_ letters. He would have asked to see some of the rooms in / the hotel, but he was afraid it was too early, and he decided to come to / dinner and ask about them. On his way back to the place where he had / lodged he rapidly counted the cost, and he decided, at any rate, to try / it for awhile; and he shut himself into his cupboard at the hotel, and / began to go over some pages of his manuscript for the last time, with a / lightness of heart which decision, even a wrong decision, often brings.