g over Jordan, Jacob at the brook Jabbok,
and John the Baptist at the fords of Bethabara! The ancients conceived
of death under the figure of a ferry, and transmitted it to us with such
vividness that we are still half pagan in our imagination. And I can
easily believe that the battle of life may be essentially influenced by
having a river to cross each day. The change from land to water, from
narrow and stony streets to the wide, free outlook and uplook of a great
river, the varied life of a crowded ferry-boat and of a busy harbor, the
magnetic sympathies of a multitude let loose from toil and perforce at a
stand-still for the time,--all this insures a transition of mind as well
as transfer of body. I could appreciate the exclamation of an impulsive
English girl while waiting one sultry day on a North-River pier, as she
spread open her arms and rushed to the edge of the dock: "I feel as if
I'd like to take a barth!" It was not the dirty scum under the piles
that set her longing, but the general sense of refreshment which the
broad and breezy river suggested to her imagination. Why should not
those tides wash out some of the lines which a day in the city has left
to deepen on a man's mind and brow?--especially if he pushes on to
"sweet fields beyond the swelling flood" and enters "that dear hut," his
home, under a vine-wreathed porch and along a gravel walk through a
grassy lawn, and not down "area steps," or even through the ponderous
and marble jaws of some city "palace." Therefore it is that the suburban
hath the promise, above his mewed-up fellow-citizen, that his days shall
be long in the land which the Lord God giveth him. And hence even the
narrow-neckedness of land which distinguishes New York and pushes most
of its population over the sides may have its compensations.

The ferry makes itself felt long before one gets there. There is a sort
of undertow in the city tides far up from the river-front. There is a
greater tangle of travel as you approach the streets leading to the
ferry. There is a perceptible assimilation of trade to the supposed
demands of householders living out of town. The retail Mammon dethrones
his proud wholesale rival. The sidewalk- or gutter-stand thrusts itself
out in advance of the store. The peripatetic dealer in small wares, the
newsboy, the apple-woman, the bootblack, and the mendicant marshal you
the way. The whole vicinity acquires the look and stir of a bazaar.
Baskets and paper parc