At this point an impulse injected me into the discussion.
“You are wrong about the Coxeyites,” I said. “At least as to those from Massillon. I marched with them all the way. A few were tramps. There were no criminals. A great majority of them were men willing to work and honestly unemployed.”
Both of them stared at me, and I went on for a long time, not knowing how to stop and wishing I hadn’t begun. The younger man heard me through with a bored air and turned away. But the other asked me some questions and thanked me for my information.
The episode closed suddenly. We were running into the Jersey City railroad terminal, on the west bank of the Hudson River, and all fellow-traveler contacts began to break up without ceremony in the commotion of arrival. I saw no more of the disputants and forgot them entirely in the thrill of approaching New York for the first time.
It was early evening. Slowly I made headway up the platform against the tide of New Jersey commuters returning from work. With a scuffling roar of feet, and no vocal sound whatever, they came racing through the terminal in one buffalo mass, then divided into hasty streams, flowed along the platforms and boarded the westbound trains, strangely at ease with extraordinary burdens, such as reels of hose, boxes of tomato plants, rakes, scythes, hand cultivators, bags of bulbs, carpentering tools and bits of lumber.
Beating my way up the current, wondering how so many people came, by what means they could be delivered in such numbers continuously, I came presently into view of the cataract. Great double-decked ferryboats, packed to the rails with self-loading and unloading cargoes, were arriving two or three at a time and berthing in slips which lay side by side in a long row, like horse stalls.
We, the eastbound passengers from the Washington train, gathered at one of the empty slips. Through the gates I saw a patch of water. Suddenly a stealthy mass up-heaved, hesitated, then made up its mind and came head on with terrific momentum. At the breathless moment the engines were reversed, there was a gnashing of waters, and the boat came fast with a soft bump. The gates burst open and the people decanted themselves with a headlong rush. We stood tight against the wall to let them pass. As the tail of the spill filed by we were sent aboard, the gates banged to behind us, and the boat was off toward the other shore for another load. This was before the unromantic convenience of Hudson River tunnels.
I stood on the bow to have my first look at New York.
One’s inner sense does not perceive the thing in the moment of experience, but films it, to be afterward developed in fluid recollection. I see it now in memory as I only felt it then.