Persons living in a rented house are constantly apprehensive. Except in cases of long leases, no one knows how much his rent may be increased the next year. This causes a constant shifting of quarters, and is expensive and vexatious in the highest degree. It is partly due to the unsettled condition of the currency, but mainly to the scarcity of houses. Many--indeed; the majority of the better class of inhabitants--prefer to board. Hotels and boarding houses pay well in New York. They are always full, and their prosperity has given rise to the remark that, "New York is a vast boarding house." We shall discuss this portion of our subject more fully in another chapter. To persons of means, New York offers more advantages as a place of residence than any city in the land. Its delightful climate, its cosmopolitan and metropolitan character, and the endless variety of its attractions, render it the most delightful home in America. That this is true is shown by the fact that few persons who have lived in New York for twelve months ever care to leave it. Even those who could do better else where are powerless to resist its fascinations. [Illustration: Broadway, as seen from The St. Nicholas Hotel.] CHAPTER II. THE STREETS OF NEW YORK. The City of New York has been regularly laid out and surveyed for a distance of twelve miles from the Battery. It has over two hundred miles of paved streets. Most of the streets in the old Dutch city are crooked and narrow, but above that they are broader, and better laid on; and after passing Fulton street, they become quite regular. Above Fourteenth street, the city is laid off in regular squares. First street is located about a mile and four fifths above the Battery. From this the cross streets extend to Two hundred and twenty-eighth street. The lengths of the blocks, between First and One-hundred and twenty- first streets, vary from one hundred and eighty-one to two hundred and eleven feet eleven inches. Those between the avenues (which run at right angles to the streets), vary from four hundred and five to nine hundred and twenty feet. The avenues are all one hundred feet wide, excepting Lexington and Madison, which are seventy-five, and Fourth Avenue, above Thirty-fourth street, which is one hundred and forty feet wide. The numerical streets are all sixty feet wide, excepting Fourteenth, Twenty-third, Thirty-fourth, Forty-second, and eleven others, north of these, which are one hundred feet wide. There are twelve fine avenues at parallel distances apart of about eight hundred feet. They begin about First or Fourth street, and run to the end of the island. Second and Eighth are the longest, and Fifth and Madison the most fashionable. BROADWAY.