But are you one of those persons who, not being under a daily compulsion, rides upon a ferry boat for the love of the trip?  Being in this class myself, I laid my case the other night before the gateman, and asked his advice regarding routes.  He at once entered sympathetically into my distemper and gave me a plan whereby with but a single change of piers I might at an expense of fourteen cents cross the river four times at different angles.

It was at the end of day and a light fog rested on the water.  Nothing was entirely lost, yet a gray mystery wrapped the ships and buildings.  If New Jersey still existed it was dim and shadowy as though its real life had gone and but a ghost remained.  Ferry boats were lighted in defiance of the murk, and darted here and there at reckless angles.  An ocean liner was putting out, and several tugs had rammed their noses against her sides.  There is something engaging about a tug.  It snorts with eagerness.  It kicks and splashes.  It bursts itself to lend a hand.  And how it butts with its nose!  Surely its forward cartilages are of triple strength, else in its zest it would jam its nasal passages.

Presently we came opposite lower New York.  Although the fog concealed the outlines of the buildings, their lights showed through.  This first hour of dark is best, before the day’s work is done and while as yet all of the windows are lighted.  The Woolworth Tower was suffused in a soft and shadowy light.  The other buildings showed like mountains of magic pin-pricks.  It was as though all the constellations of heaven on a general bidding had met for conference.

The man of Grub Street, having by this time somewhat dispelled the fumes of dullness from his head, descends from his ferry boat and walks to his quiet park.  There is a dull roar from the elevated railway on Third Avenue where the last of the day’s crowd goes home.  The sidewalks are becoming empty.  There is a sheen of water on the pavement.  In the winter murk there is a look of Thackeray about the place as though the Sedleys or the Osbornes might be his neighbors.  If there were a crest above his bell-pull he might even expect Becky Sharp in for tea.

Now that Spring is here

When the sun set last night it was still winter.  The persons who passed northward in the dusk from the city’s tumult thrust their hands deep into their pockets and walked to a sharp measure.  But a change came in the night.  The north wind fell off and a breeze blew up from the south.  Such stars as were abroad at dawn left off their shrill winter piping—­if it be true that stars really sing in their courses—­and pitched their voices to April tunes.  One star in particular that hung low in the west until the day was up, knew surely that the Spring had come and sang in concert with the earliest birds.  There is a dull belief that these early birds shake off their sleep to get the worm.  Rather, they come forth at this hour