els and travelling-bags are conspicuous and
general. Perhaps you find yourself on the greasy edge of some huge
market. The hacks accumulate like croton-bugs about a kitchen sink. You
feel as if you were being sucked into some valve or vortex.

There is a test of character in the mode of going to the ferry. It is
almost impossible not to be in a hurry, such is the swirl of the tide in
which you find yourself. In my three years of almost daily transit I
never ceased to revere the moral superiority of the admirable few who
day after day could proceed with leisurely step and serene brow amid
the heated, breathless, tugging, anxious multitude. It seemed to
indicate a steadiness of nerve, a systematic habit, a wise and
deliberate forecast, a self-control and self-confidence, and a belief in
their watches, to which I never hope to attain this side of Old Charon's
ferry itself. And yet somebody is nearly always late. Quite as likely,
however, it is somebody who is too early,--because he really belongs to
the next boat, and not to the one which is just leaving the dock as he
tears into the ferry-house.

There is a good deal of condensed life and human nature to be found at a
ferry by one who himself is in no hurry to cross. Take your stand just
where you can see up the street and at the same time can command the
whole interior. The waiting-room is deserted, except by some such
lounger as yourself, or a passenger left by the last boat or "too
previous" for the next. Well for you if you are sufficiently respectable
to pass muster with the official whose duty it is to see that no one
secures a day's lodging for two cents. There is a slow dribble of
wayfarers, who seldom spend their time in the dismal and dingy
waiting-room unless in very cold weather or to stand guard over their
parcels which they have piled upon the seats. But all at once
(especially if the next boat is to connect with some train on the other
side) you observe a thickening of the living current far up the
sidewalk, as when the gutters are swollen by the turning on of a
hydrant. Down comes the hurrying mass, fretting at the manifold
obstructions, its component parts struggling together and almost seeming
to go over each other's heads. No time now for the small courtesies, or
even charities, of life. The sturdy and malodorous beggar knows too well
to run alongside with his "Help a poor boy; I'm a stranger in the city."
And the man whose abridged and distorted legs