"This city," Frederick thought, "is obsessed by a craze for money making." The idea was suggested to him chiefly by the advertisements staring on all sides, those shrill, over-spiced, over-charged asseverations, compared with which the same thing in Europe was delicate as a violet, innocent as a newborn babe. Wherever he turned his eyes, gigantic placards glared at him, gigantic letters, gigantic, garishly coloured pictures, gigantic fingers and hands pointing to something. Twenty negroes carrying bill-boards, a carriage drawn by twelve horses harnessed like circus horses passed by. It was a shrieking, greedy war of competition, waged with every conceivable means, a wild, shameless orgy of acquisitiveness, but for that very reason not lacking in a certain greatness. There was no hypocrisy about it. It was honest in its outspokenness. The cab stopped at a telegraph office, and Frederick cabled to his father, "I am safe, sound, and well;" Ingigerd to her mother in Paris, "I am safe. Papa's fate uncertain." While Ingigerd was writing, Frederick took the chance to tell Willy Snyders that she had probably lost her father in the wreck. Several times newsboys thrust a paper under Frederick's nose, calling out the great sensation, "All about the sinking of the _Roland_! All about the sinking of the _Roland_!" In large, catching headlines he read: "The _Roland_ leaves Bremen. Slight accident compels her to return. _Roland_ starts on trip again. Constant storms. Dead man on board. Nine hundred drowned. Heroic conduct of a servant-girl. Doctor Frederick von Kammacher performs miracles of bravery." Frederick started, reflected, but could not recall anything of the sort. "Child dies in life-boat. Captain Butor of the _Hamburg_ sights castaways. Report of survivors. Arthur Stoss, champion armless marksman, helped into life-boat by faithful valet," and so on. It was an invaluable supply of fresh, sensational, gratuitously obtained material, to be served for a week in generous portions to readers in both the old and the new worlds. The cab rolled up Broadway, that main thoroughfare of New York stretching along for miles, with two apparently unbroken chains of street-cars moving by each other. At that time the cars were propelled by an endless cable travelling in a conduit under the roadway. The traffic all along Broadway was enormous, and the contrast was the more surprising when the cab, after traversing another lively street, turned into a deserted-looking side street, where almost country-like quiet prevailed.