Before leaving Europe, I had been provided with the New York addresses of friends from Loebau, and my first duty was to look them up. One of these, named Lindauer, kept a boarding-house on Bayard Street near the Five Points, now, I believe, in the neighborhood of Chinatown; and as I had no desire to frequent high-priced hotels, I made my temporary abode with him. I also located the house of Rich Brothers, associated with the San Francisco concern of the same name and through whom I was to obtain funds from my brother with which to continue my journey; but as I had to remain in New York three weeks until their receipt, I could do little more in furthering my departure than to engage second-cabin passage _via_ Nicaragua by a line running in opposition to the Panamá route, and offering cheapness as its principal attraction. Having attended to that, I spent the balance of the time visiting and seeing the city, and in making my first commercial venture in the New World. In my impatience to be doing something, I foolishly relieved Samuel, a brother of Kaspare Cohn, and a nephew of mine, of a portion of his merchandise; but in a single day I decided to abandon peddling--a difficult business for which, evidently, I was never intended. After that, a painful experience with mosquitoes was my only unpleasant adventure. I did not know until later that an excited crowd of men were just then assembled in the neighborhood, in what was styled the Universal Ice-Water Convention, and that not far away a crowd of women, quite as demonstrative, excluded from the councils of men and led by no less a personality than P. T. Barnum, the showman, were clamoring for both Prohibition and Equal Suffrage! CHAPTER III NEW YORK--NICARAGUA--THE GOLDEN GATE 1853