The Chinese candy and cigar sellers are to be found between the Astor House and the South Ferry. No one ever seems to buy from them, but they continue in the business, and thus afford proof positive that they have their customers.
The dog and bird men haunt the neighborhood of the Astor House and St. Nicholas hotels. They get high prices for their pets. Dogs sell readily. It is the fashion in New York to discourage the increase of families, and to attempt to satisfy the half-smothered maternal instinct by petting these dumb creatures.
Little girls are numerous among the street venders. They sell matches, tooth-picks, cigars, newspapers, songs and flowers.
The flower-girls are hideous little creatures, but their wares are beautiful and command a ready sale. These are made into hand bouquets, and buttonhole bouquets, and command from ten cents to several dollars each. When the day is wet and gloomy, and the slush and the mud of Broadway are thick over everything animate and inanimate, and the sensitive soul shrinks within itself at the sight of so much discomfort, the flower-girls do a good business. The flower-stands then constitute the most attractive objects on the street, and men are irresistibly drawn to them by the sight of their exquisite adornments. It is very pleasant at such times to have a bright, fragrant nosegay in one’s buttonhole, or to carry a bouquet to one’s home. On such days you may see hundreds of splashed and muddy men on the great thoroughfare, utterly hopeless of preserving any outward semblance of neatness, but each with his nosegay in his buttonhole; and as he glances down at it, from time to time, you may see his weary face soften and brighten, and an expression of cheerfulness steal over it, which renders him proof against even the depressing influences of the mud and the rain.
LXXXIII. THE WHARVES.
No visitor to New York should omit visiting the wharves of the North and East rivers. A day may be profitably spent on the shore of each stream. The docks do not compare favorably with the massive structures of Liverpool, or London, or the other great seaports of the world. They are wretched, half decayed and dirty; but ere long they are to be replaced with a system of magnificent stone and iron piers, which will afford all the desired facilities, and render New York in this respect one of the best provided ports on the globe.
Beginning at the Battery on the North River side, we find first the pier of the famous Camden and Amboy Railway Company, from which passengers and freights are conveyed to the railway by steamer. Above this are the piers of the great European steamship lines, the coast steamers, and the steamboats plying between the city and the neighboring towns. The Boston boats, all of which run to points in Connecticut and Rhode Island, where they make connections with the railways to Boston, are fine steamers. Those of the Narragansett Steamship Company, the Bristol and Providence by name, are the most magnificent steamers in the world. They cost $1,250,000 apiece. They are simply floating palaces, as are also the Albany night boats. The foreign steamers are huge iron vessels, carrying thousands of tons of freight and hundreds of passengers. The sailing of one of these ships always draws a crowd to her pier, and though from five to eight of them leave the port every week, the attraction still continues.
The ferries to Jersey City and Hoboken are all located on this river, and are full of interest to the stranger. The Bethel,
or floating chapel for seamen, is also worth visiting. The ice trade of the city is carried on on this front, the principal supply of that article being obtained along the river, about one hundred miles above the city.
