quite understand yet who makes the appointment to be a
street man or what influence it takes or what it means
to have a territory, but Mr. Peters explained that there
is a man who is retiring from being a street man and that
Uncle can take his place and can have both sides of the
Bowery, which sounds very pretty indeed.

At first I didn't understand--because Mr. Peters hesitated
a good deal in telling me about it--that if Uncle gets
this appointment, it will mean that he will sell things
in the street. But as soon as I understood this I felt
that Uncle William would scorn to do anything like this,
as the degradation would be the same as being President
of the Steel Corporation. So I was much surprised to find
that when Uncle came in he didn't look at it that way at
all. He looked at the box of badges and buttons and
things, and he said at once, "Ha! Orders of Distinction!
An excellent idea." He picked up a silly little white
button with the motto "Welcome to New York," and he said
"Admirable! That shall be the first class." And there
was a little lead spoon with "Souvenir of the Bowery"
that he made the second class. He started arranging and
rearranging all the things in the box, just as he used
to arrange the orders and decorations at the Palace. Only
those were REAL things such as the Order of the Red
Feather, and The Insignia of the Black Duck, and these
were only poor tin baubles. But I could see that Uncle
no longer knows the difference, and as his fingers fumbled
among these silly things he was quite trembling and eager
to begin, like a child waiting for to-morrow.