A distinct type of character and
of habit cannot fail to be evolved, which it might be well for ingenious
novelists at their wits' ends to study, even though it required a trial
of patience and a tribulation of stomach and cuticle for a voyage or
two. Dickens saw its possibilities, and made it an episode in Little
Nell's wanderings, and I am rather surprised that he did not work the
vein farther.

The river-barge is freighted for me with pleasant memories. Like
Cleopatra's,

From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense.

There are not many of them now that carry passengers, but in my boyhood
they were a common vehicle of travel on the Hudson, several of these
shapeless and unwieldy tubs being lashed to the sides or dragged at the
stern of a tow-boat. They are identified with summer vacations in the
country, than which a boy's memory holds no more honeyed recollections.
The hours before "turning in" (the very fact of an abnormal night and
bed was a joy to the juvenile mind, despite the incessant and unearthly
noises of the live-stock on board) were spent in wandering among the
mountains of "produce," inhaling the savor of Orange County butter and
baled hay and meal-bags, and listening to the plaintive bleat of
comfortless calves and desolate sheep. As night drew on, I would select
some snug little nook, where I could lie and dream as we glided along
the still and starlit river, through the Highlands, perhaps, or the
Palisades. The charm was mainly, of course, in the spell of youthful
fancy and expectancy, which touched and transfigured the homely scene,
as the moonlight touched and transfigured the silent river. But I
associate it all with the barges, and shall ever see in those uncouth
craft

Argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales.

In summer the excursion-boats add picturesqueness and a festive air to
the river, with their gay bunting and bands of music and salutes with
bell or steam-whistle, and, above all, their eager throngs of
Sunday-school children or the liberated denizens of foul and narrow
streets. At times the shipping along the docks and over the bay will
blossom with the flags and streamers of all nations, hung fore and aft
and extending in fluttering lines down the rigging, imparting a gala
aspect to the scene and perhaps thrilling one with patriotic or historic
memories. Perhaps we are crossing at the moment when