New York Sketches (1902) (e-book) (used book) | bookbook.eu

Description

DOWN along the Battery sea-wall is the place to watch the ships go by. Coastwise schooners, lumber-laden, which can get far up the river under their own sail; big, full-rigged clipper ships that have to be towed from the lower bay, their topmasts down in order to scrape under the Brooklyn Bridge; barques, brigs, brigantines-all sorts of sailing craft, with cargoes from all seas, and flying the flags of all nations. White-painted river steamers that seem all the more flimsy and riverish if they happen to churn out past the dark, compactly built ocean liners, who come so deliberately and arrogantly up past the Statue of Liberty, to dock after the long, hard job of crossing, the home-comers on the decks already waving handkerchiefs. Plucky little tugs (that whistle on the slightest provocation), pushing queer, bulky floats, which bear with ease whole trains of freight-cars, dirty cars looking frightened and out of place, which the choppy seas try to reach up and wash. And still queerer old sloop scows, with soiled, awkward canvas and no shape to speak of, bound for no one seems to know where and carrying you seldom see what. And always, everywhere, all day and night, whistling and pushing in and out between everybody, the ubiquitous, faithful, narrow-minded old ferry-boats, with their wonderful helmsmen in the pilot-house, turning the wheel and looking unexcitable....