Not many minutes walk from Broadway, situated¹ on one of the cross streets intersecting the great thoroughfare, is a large building not especially inviting² in its aspect, used as a lodging³ and boarding-house. It is very far from fashionable, since, with hardly an exception, those who avail themselves of its accommodations belong to the great class who are compelled to earn their bread before they eat it. Mechanics, working-men, clerks on small salaries, seamstresses, and specimens⁴ of decayed gentility, all find a place beneath its roof, forming a somewhat miscellaneous assemblage. It must not be supposed, however, that perfect equality exists even here. It is often remarked, that social distinctions are more jealously maintained in the lower ranks than in the higher. Here, for instance, Alphonso Eustace, a dashing young clerk, who occupies the first floor front, looks down with hauteur⁵ upon the industrious⁶ mechanic, who rooms in the second story back. Mademoiselle Fanchette, the fashionable modiste, occupying the second story front, considers it beneath her dignity to hold much intercourse⁷ with Martha Grey, the pale seamstress, whose small room at the head of the third landing affords a delightful⁹ prospect¹⁰ of the back 4yard. Even the occupants of the fourth story look down, which indeed their elevated position enables them to do, upon the basement lodgers¹² across the way.