Tiffles and Patching lifted up the thin carpet bags which reposed at their feet, and which contained an exceedingly small amount of personal linen and other attire, and went on board the boat, followed by Marcus, who was unencumbered with baggage.  They entered the ladies’ cabin.  The thick crowd of people pressed into the cabin in their front and rear, and all about them, and scrambled for seats.  There was a general preference for the part forward of the wheelhouse, because it was a few feet nearer New Jersey than the aft part.  The rush to obtain these preferred places was like that of the opera-going world for the front row of boxes at a matinee.  Ladies who obtained eligible seats, settled themselves in them, spread out their dresses, put their gloved hands in position, and smiled with a sweet satisfaction at ladies who had got no seats.  Those ladies, in turn, looked reproachfully at the gentlemen who were comfortably seated.  And those gentlemen, with the exception of a few who rose and gracefully offered their seats to the youngest and prettiest of the ladies, in turn looked out of the windows, or at the floor, or at a paper, intently.

A stranger to the ferry boats and customs of the country would have supposed that the passengers were bound for Europe instead of the opposite shore of North River.

Marcus Wilkeson, Times, and Patching did not participate in this contest for seats, but walked through the fetid and stifling cabins to the forward deck, where fresh, bracing air, glorious sunlight, and a cheery view of the river were to be had.  But these charms of nature were apparently thrown away on the trio.  They all leaned over the railing, and, looked steadily into the water.  Times was thinking up his lecture, and other matters of the panorama.  Patching was misanthropically reviewing his career, and exulting in future triumphs over his professional enemies.  Marcus was engrossed with some sad theme which, once or twice, brought tears into his eyes.  A burst of noble music, a fine sentiment in a poem, a poor woman crying, keen personal disappointment, or any acute mental trouble, had this strange effect on the optics of Marcus Wilkeson.

The bell rang; voices shouted, “All aboard!” the gangplank was drawn in; several belated people jumped on, at the risk of their lives, after the boat had left the wharf, one man vaulting over ten feet; and the voyage for Jersey was commenced.

Three minutes later, the inmates of the cabins began to go forward and pick favorable positions for jumping off on the other side.  The scramble to evacuate the seats then was as sharp as the scramble to possess them, three minutes before.  A few more rounds of the wheels, and the boat thumped in the usual way against one row of piles at the entrance of the Jersey slip, and then caromed like a billiard ball on the other, each time nearly knocking the passengers off their feet, and shaking a small chorus of screams out of the ladies.