I.
“The Irving train is expected to arrive at Jersey City from Boston at about seven o’clock,” said a telegraphic dispatch which I received in New York on Sunday. I had left the great New England city two days before Irving’s special train, with the understanding that I should join him at Jersey City, en route for Baltimore.
At half-past six I was on the great steam ferry-boat that plies from the bottom of Desbrosses street, New York, to the other side of the river. A wintry wind was blowing up from the sea. I preferred the open air to the artificial heat of the cabin. In ten minutes I was landed at the station of the Pennsylvania Railroad.
“Inquire for the steamer ‘Maryland,’” continued that dispatch which I have just quoted. “She conveys the train down the Harlem river to connect on the Pennsylvania Road.”
The general waiting-room of the station, or depot, as our American cousins call it, is a characteristic one. Seeing that I was allowed plenty of time to observe it, I propose to describe it. A large square hall, with a high-pitched roof, it has more of a Continental than an English or American appearance. As you enter you find a number of people waiting for the trains. They include a few colored people and Chinamen. The centre of the room is filled with benches, like the stalls of a London theatre. You wonder why two marble tombs have been erected here. They turn out to be heat-distributers. The hot air pours out from their grated sides. In case you should be in danger of suffocation a drinking fountain is in handy proximity to the blasts of heated air. The right-hand side of the hall is filled with booking-offices, and a clock bell tolls, indicating the times at which the various trains start. On the left is a café, and an entrance from Jersey City. Opposite to you as you enter from the ferry are two pairs of doors leading to the trains, and the space between the portals is filled in with a handsome book-stall. The door-ways here are jealously guarded by officials who announce the departure of trains and examine your tickets. One of these guards sits near a desk where a little library of city and State directories is placed for the use of passengers. Each volume is chained to the wall. Near the café is a post-office box, and hanging hard by are the weather bulletins of the day. A ladies’ waiting-room occupies a portion of the hall on the booking-office side. The place is lighted with electric lamps, which occasionally fiz and splutter, and once in a while go out altogether. Nobody pays any attention to this. Everybody is used to the eccentricities of the new and beautiful light.
Obtaining permission to pass the ticket portals, I reach the platform, where I am to find the station-master. The outlook here reminds me of the high-level station of the Crystal Palace. A dim gas-light exhibits the outlines of a series of long cars, fenced in with gates, that are every now and then thrown open to receive batches of passengers from the waiting-room.
The Irving train has been delayed. She is reported “to arrive at the Harlem river at half-past eight.” In that case she may be here at a quarter to ten.
I return to the spluttering electric lamps and to the continually coming and going multitudes of passengers. “No Smoking” is one of the notices on the walls. Two men have lighted their cigars right under it. They remind one of the duellists in “Marion de Lorme,” who fight beneath the cardinal’s proclamation. The café is bright and inviting, and its chocolate is as comforting as the literature of the book-stall. The novels of Howells and James and Braddon and Black are here, and the Christmas numbers of the “Illustrated London News” and the “Graphic”; so likewise are the Christmas and New Year’s cards of Marcus Ward, De la Rue, and Lowell. I purchase the latest novelty in books, “John Bull and His Island,” and try to read. I look up now and then to see the crowd file off through the ticket-doors to go to Bethlehem, Catasauqua, Lansdown, New Market, Bloomsbury, Waverly, Linden, Philadelphia, West Point, Catskill, Albans, New Scotland, Port Jackson, Schenectady, and other towns and cities, the names of which stir my thoughts into a strange jumble of reflections, biblical, topographical, and otherwise. Bethlehem and Bloomsbury! Were ever cues for fancy wider apart? “Over here,” I read in “John Bull and His Island,” the writer referring to London, “you are not locked up in a waiting-room until your train comes in. You roam where you like about the station, and your friends may see you off and give you a hand-shake as the train leaves the platform. The functionary is scarcely known. There are more of them at the station of Fouilly les Epinards than in the most important station in London. You see placards everywhere: ‘Beware of Pick-pockets’; ‘Ascertain that your change is right before leaving the booking-desk.’ The Englishman does not like being taken in hand like a baby.” Curiously the American is treated on the railroads very much as in France. As to placard-notices you see cautions against pick-pockets, and the London warning as to change. Some of the other notifications in American stations are curious: “No Loafing allowed in this Depot”; “Don’t Spit on the Floor.” Douglas Jerrold’s joke about the two angry foreigners who exclaimed, “I spit upon you!” has more point here than in England; for no apartment is sacred enough in this free country to keep out the spittoon, which, in some places, is designed in such a way as to indicate a strong intention to make it ornamental as well as useful.
I seek the station-master again.
“Not sooner than a quarter to eleven,” he says.
“Does the weather obstruct the train?”
“Yes, it’s a queer night; snow falling very thickly; makes the river journey slower than usual; snow is as bad as fog.”
The entire train of eight enormous cars, containing the Lyceum company and their baggage, is transported by boat right down the Harlem river, a distance of several miles, the raft and train being attached to a tug-boat. The train is run upon the floating track at Harlem, and connected with the main line again at Jersey City.
“I was to ask for the steamer ‘Maryland.’”
“Yes, her quay is outside the depot. I will let you know when she is reported. You will hear her whistle.”
Trying to return to the waiting-room I find I am locked in. Presently a good-natured official lets me out. In the meantime the café has closed, the book-stall has fastened its windows and put out its lights. The waiters on trains have thinned in numbers. Two poor Chinamen who have been here are talking pigeon English to a porter.
“You missed it at seven,” he says; “no more train till twelve.”
“Twelfy!” says John, calmly counting his fingers; “no morey go tilly twelf.”
“That’s so,” says the porter.
The two celestials sit down quietly to wait; the ferry-boats give out their hoarse signals, and presently a number of other people come in, covered with snow, a bitter wind accompanying them, as the doors open and shut. They stamp their feet and shake the snow from off their garments, and you hear the jingle of sleigh-bells without. A farmer whose dress suggests Mathias, in “The Bells,” comes in. He carries a bundle. There is a slip of green laurel in his button-hole. I avail myself of the supposed privilege of the country, and talk to him.
“Yes,” he says. “Christmas presents; I guess that’s what I’ve been to New York for. I live at Katskill. No, not much in the way of farming. My father had land in Yorkshire. Guess I am an Englishman, as one may say, though born on the Hudson. Did I ever hear of Rip Van Winkle at Katskill? I guess so. Live there now? No, sir; guess it’s a story, aint it? But there was a sort of a hermit feller lived on the Hudson till a year or two ago. He was English. A scholar, they said, and learned. His grandchild, a girl, lived with him. Did nothing but read. Built the hut hisself. Never seen except when he and the girl went to buy stores. It was in the papers, when he died, a year or two back. Broke his heart, ‘cause his girl skipped.”
“‘Skipped!’ I repeated.
“You are fresh, sir, green; as you say in England, run away,—that’s skipping. I bought one of his books when his things were sold, because I have a grandchild, and know what it is. Good-night! A merry Christmas to you!”
No other hint of Christmas in the depot, among the people, or on the walls, except the cards and illustrated English papers inside the book-stall windows. I turn to “John Bull and His Island,” and wonder if any English writer will respond with “Jean Crapeaud and His City.” No country is more open to satire than France; no people accept it with so little patience. There are some wholesome truths in Max O’Rell’s brochure. It is good to see ourselves as others see us.
A quarter to eleven. It is surely time to go forth in search of the “Maryland.”
“Better have a guide,” says a courteous official; “you can’t find it without; and, by thunder, how it snows! See ‘em?”
He points to several new-comers.
“Only a few feet from the ferry,—and they’re like walking snow-drifts. See ‘em!”
The guide, as sturdy as a Derbyshire ploughboy, comes along with his lantern.
“There are three ladies,” I tell him, “in the private waiting-room, who are to come with us.”