ttan side of the North River, from Twenty-third Street down
for a mile there stretches a deafening region of cobblestones and
asphalt over which trucks by thousands go clattering each day. There are
long lines of freight cars here and snorting locomotives. Along the
shore side are many saloons, a few cheap decent little hotels and some
that are far from decent. And along the water side is a solid line of
docksheds. Their front is one unbroken wall of sheet iron and concrete.

I came up against this wall. Over the top I could see here and there the
great round funnels of the ships, but at every passenger doorway and at
every wide freight entrance I found a sign, "No Visitors Admitted," and
under the sign a watchman who would ungraciously take a cigar and then
go right on being a watchman. There seemed no way to get inside. The
old-fashioned mystery of the sea was replaced by the inscrutability of
what some muckrakers called "The Pool."

"Don't hurry," Eleanore's father had said. All very well, but I needed
money. While I had been making with Eleanore those long and delightful
explorations of the harbor and ourselves, at home my father's bank
account had been steadily dwindling, and all that I had been able to
make had gone into expenses.

"I don't know what to do," said Sue, alone with me that evening. "The
butcher says he won't wait any longer. He has simply got to be paid this
week."

"I'll see what I can do," I said.

I came back to my new hunting ground and all night long I prowled
about. I sipped large schooners of beer at bars, listening to the burly
dockers crowded close around me. I watched the waterfront, empty and
still, with acres of spectral wagons and trucks and here and there a
lantern. I had a long talk with a broken old bum who lay on his back in
an empty truck looking up at the stars and spun me yarns of his life as
a cook on ships all up and down the world. Now and again in the small
wee hours I met hurrying groups of men, women and children poorly clad,
and following them to one of the piers I heard the sleepy watchman
growl, "Steerage passengers over there." I saw the dawn break slowly and
everything around me grow bluish and unreal. I watched the teamsters
come tramping along leading horses, and harness them to the trucks. I
heard the first clatter of the day. I saw the figures of dockers appear,
more and more, I saw some of them drift to the docks. Soon there were
crowds of thousands, and as st