As he was accustomed to the Mississippi style of waiting at the various towns he thought he would go up and take a look at the “hill.”  The boat was off and “so was he”; with wife and children shaking their hands and handkerchiefs in an excited manner from the gang-plank.  Some one at the stern of the steamer shouted to him to cross the river and take the train to Poughkeepsie.

Every one was on the lookout for him at the Poughkeepsie landing, and, just as the steamer was leaving the dock, he came dashing down Main street from the railroad station, but too late.  Then not only wife and children but the entire boat saluted him and the crowded deck blossomed with handkerchiefs.  Some one shouted “catch us at Rhinebeck.”  After leaving Rhinebeck the train appeared, and on passing the steamer, a lone handkerchief waved from the rear of the platform.  At Hudson an excited but slightly disorganized gentleman appeared to the great delight of his family, and every one else, for the passengers had all taken a lively interest in the chase.  “Well,” he says, “I declare, the way this boat lands, and gets off again, beats anything I ever see, and I have lived on the Mississippi nigh on to a quarter of a century.”

* * *

    While drinking in the scene, my mind goes back upon
    the tide of years, and lo, a vision!  On its upward
    path the “Half-Moon” glides.

    Alfred B. Street.

* * *

=The “Hendrick Hudson."= In these centennial days of discovery and invention, a description of the steamers will be of interest, furnished by the Hudson River Day Line.  The “Hendrick Hudson” was built at Newburgh by the Marvel Company, under contract with the W. & A. Fletcher Company of New York, who built her engines, and under designs from Frank E. Kirby.  Her principal dimensions are:  length, 400 feet; breadth over all, 82 feet; depth of hold, 14 feet 5 inches, and a draft of 7 feet 6 inches.  Her propelling machinery is what is known as the 3-cylinder compound direct acting engine, and her power (6,500-horse) is applied through side wheels with feathering buckets, and steam is supplied from eight boilers.

Steel has been used in her construction to such an extent that her hull, her bulk-heads (7 in all), her engine and boiler enclosures, her kitchen and ventilators, her stanchions, girders, and deck beams, and in fact the whole essential frame work of the boat is like a great steel building.  Where wood is used it is hard wood, and in finish probably has no equal in marine work.

Her scheme of decoration, ventilation and sanitation is as artistic and scientific as modern methods can produce, and at the same time her general lay out for practical and comfortable operation is the evolution of the long number of years in which the Day Line has been conducting the passenger business.