Between wooded shores which seem to advance to meet her in kindly greeting, the good ship shoves ahead.  For she is a good ship, and later we shall miss her, but at this moment we feel that we can part from her without a pang.  She rounds a turn in the channel.  What is that mass which looms on beyond, where cloud-combing office buildings scallop the sky and bridges leap in far-flung spans from shore to shore?  That’s her—­all right—­the high picketed gateway of the nation.  That’s little old New York.  Few are the art centers there, and few the ruins; and perhaps there is not so much culture lying round loose as there might be—­just bustle and hustle, and the rush and crush and roar of business and a large percentage of men who believe in supporting their own wives and one wife at a time.  Crass perhaps, crude perchance, in many ways, but no matter.  All her faults are virtues now.  Beloved metropolis, we salute thee!  And also do we turn to salute Miss Liberty.

This series of adventure tales began with the Statue of Liberty fading rearward through the harbor mists.  It draws to a close with the same old lady looming through those same mists and drawing ever closer and closer.  She certainly does look well this afternoon, doesn’t she?  She always does look well, somehow.

We slip past her and on past the Battery too; and are nosing up the North River.  What a picturesque stream it is, to be sure!  And how full of delightful rubbish!  In twenty minutes or less we shall be at the dock.  Folks we know are there now, waiting to welcome us.

As close as we can pack ourselves, we gather in the gangways.  Some one raises a voice in song.  ’Tis not the Marseillaise hymn that we sing, nor Die Wacht am Rhein, nor Ava Maria, nor God Save the King; nor yet is it Columbia the Gem of the Ocean.  In their proper places these are all good songs, but we know one more suitable to the occasion, and so we all join in.  Hark!  Happy voices float across the narrowing strip of rolly water between ship and shore: 

“’Mid pleasures and palaces,
Though we may roam,

(Now then, altogether, mates:)

Be it ever so humble,
There’s no place like
home!”