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.