The employment footing made good, the newcomer’s spare time for the first few days was spent looking for a boarding place, the West Denver hotel, regarded from the thrifty New England point of view, proving far too expensive. The after-hours’ search gave him his earliest impressions of a city at the moment figuring as a Mecca, not only for eager fortune seekers of all ranks and castes, but also for mining-rush camp followers of every description. With the railroads daily pouring new throngs into the city, housing was at a fantastic premium, and many of the open squares were covered with the tents of those for whom there was no shelter otherwise. Having certain well-defined notions of what a self-respecting bachelor’s quarters should be, Philip searched in vain, and was finally constrained to accept the invitation of a fellow clerk in the railroad office to take him as a room-mate--this though the acceptance involved a rather rude shattering of the traditions. Instead of figuring as a paying guest in a home-like private house--no small children--with at least two of the daily meals at the family table, he found himself sharing dingy sleeping quarters on the third floor of a down-town business block, with the option of eating as he could in the turmoil of the dairy lunches and restaurants or going hungry. “No home-sheltered coddling for you in this live man’s burg. The quicker you get over your tenderfoot flinchings, the happier you’ll be,” advised Middleton, with whom the down-town refuge was shared, and who, by virtue of a six-weeks’ longer Western residence than Philip’s, postured, in his own estimation at least, as an “old-timer.” “‘When you’re in Rome’--you know the rest of it. And let me tell you: you’ll have to chase your feet to keep up with the procession here, Philly, my boy. These particular Romans are a pretty swift lot, if you’ll let me tell it.” Philip winced a little at the familiar “Philly.” He had known Middleton less than a week and was still calling him “Mister.” But familiarity of the nick-naming and back-slapping variety seemed to be the order of the day; a boisterous, hail-fellow-well-met freedom breezily brushing aside the conventional preliminaries to acquaintanceship. It was universal and one had to tolerate it; but Philip told himself that toleration need not go the length of imitation or approval.