Round the Block: An American Novel

by John Bell Bouton

Tiffles and Patching lifted up the thin carpet bags which reposed at their feet, and which contained an exceedingly small amount of personal linen and other attire, and went on board the boat, followed by Marcus, who was unencumbered with baggage. They entered the ladies' cabin. The thick crowd of people pressed into the cabin in their front and rear, and all about them, and scrambled for seats. There was a general preference for the part forward of the wheelhouse, because it was a few feet nearer New Jersey than the aft part. The rush to obtain these preferred places was like that of the opera-going world for the front row of boxes at a matinée. Ladies who obtained eligible seats, settled themselves in them, spread out their dresses, put their gloved hands in position, and smiled with a sweet satisfaction at ladies who had got no seats. Those ladies, in turn, looked reproachfully at the gentlemen who were comfortably seated. And those gentlemen, with the exception of a few who rose and gracefully offered their seats to the youngest and prettiest of the ladies, in turn looked out of the windows, or at the floor, or at a paper, intently.

A stranger to the ferry boats and customs of the country would have supposed that the passengers were bound for Europe instead of the opposite shore of North River.

Marcus Wilkeson, Times, and Patching did not participate in this contest for seats, but walked through the fetid and stifling cabins to the forward deck, where fresh, bracing air, glorious sunlight, and a cheery view of the river were to be had. But these charms of nature were apparently thrown away on the trio. They all leaned over the railing, and, looked steadily into the water. Times was thinking up his lecture, and other matters of the panorama. Patching was misanthropically reviewing his career, and exulting in future triumphs over his professional enemies. Marcus was engrossed with some sad theme which, once or twice, brought tears into his eyes. A burst of noble music, a fine sentiment in a poem, a poor woman crying, keen personal disappointment, or any acute mental trouble, had this strange effect on the optics of Marcus Wilkeson.

The bell rang; voices shouted, "All aboard!" the gangplank was drawn in; several belated people jumped on, at the risk of their lives, after the boat had left the wharf, one man vaulting over ten feet; and the voyage for Jersey was commenced.

Three minutes later, the inmates of the cabins began to go forward and pick favorable positions for jumping off on the other side. The scramble to evacuate the seats then was as sharp as the scramble to possess them, three minutes before. A few more rounds of the wheels, and the boat thumped in the usual way against one row of piles at the entrance of the Jersey slip, and then caromed like a billiard ball on the other, each time nearly knocking the passengers off their feet, and shaking a small chorus of screams out of the ladies.

When the boat was within a yard of the wharf, the jumping commenced; and all the able-bodied men, most of the boys, and some of the ladies, were off before the boat butted with tremendous force against the wharf, shaking both wharf and boat to their foundations, and giving to the people on both a parting jar, which they carried in their bones for the rest of the day.

Once safely on the wharf, the scramble was continued in various directions and for various objects. Marcus, Tiffles, and Patching indulged in the eccentricity of not scrambling; and, when they reached the Erie Railroad cars, they found every seat taken, some by two persons, but many by one lady and a bandbox or carpet bag, which was intended to signify to the inquiring eye that the lawful human occupant of that half of the seat was absent, but might be expected to come in and claim it at any moment.

The three companions understood this conventional imposture, and politely claimed the spare half seats from the nearest ladies. The fair occupants looked forbidding, and slowly removed their bandboxes, baskets, and other parcels, to the floor beneath, or the rack overhead; and the disturbers of their peace and comfort ruthlessly took the vacated seats, with a bow, signifying "Thank you."

The seats thus procured were some distance apart; and so the three companions were precluded from conversing with each other. This suited the taciturn mood of each that morning. As for the ladies who filled the other half of the three seats, they might as well have been lay figures from a Broadway drygoods store; conversation with them being prohibited by the etiquette of railway travelling. A man may journey two hundred and fifty miles in a car, with his elbow unavoidably jogging a lady's all the way, and still be as far from her acquaintance (unless she is graciously inclined to say something first) as if the pair were leagues apart. This is proper, but peculiar.

The strange sadness that possessed Marcus that morning was intensified as the ears rolled on. There is something in the monotonous vibration of the train, and the recurring click of the wheels against the end of the rails, that provokes melancholy. Marcus looked out of the window at the flying landscape, and the distant patches of wood which seemed to be slowly revolving about each other, and was profoundly wretched. He was totally unconscious of the sharp, pale, nervous face by his side.