This is the tired city's playground.—Page [399].
Washington Bridge and the Speedway—Harlem River looking south.
For the little scenes that are not inspiring or awful, but simply quaint and lovable, one goes down along the South Street water-front. Fulton Market with its memorable smells and the marketeers and 'longshoremen; and behind it the slip where clean-cut American-model smacks put in, and sway excitedly to the wash from the Brooklyn ferry-boats, which is not noticed by the sturdy New Haven line steamers nearby. On the edge of the street and the water are the oyster-floats, half house and half boat, which look like solid shops, with front doors, from the street side until the seas hitting them they, too, begin to sway awkwardly and startle the unaccustomed passer-by.
It is down around here that you find slouching idly in front of ship-stores, loafing on cables and anchors, the jolly jack tar of modern days. From all parts of the world he comes, any number of him if you can tell him when you see him, for he is seldom tarry and less often jolly, unless drunk on the very poor stuff he gets in the variously evil-looking dives thickly strewn along the water-fronts. Some of these are modern plate-glass saloons, but here and there is a cosy old-time tavern (with a step-down at the entrance instead of a step-up), low ceiling, dark interior, and in the window a thickly painted ship's model with flies on the rigging.
Farther down, near Wall Street ferry, where the smells of the world are gathered, you may see the stevedores unloading liqueurs and spices from tropical ports, and coffees and teas; nearby are the places where certain men make their livings tasting these teas all day long, while the horse-cars jangle by.
Old Slip and other odd-named streets are along here, where once the water came before the city outgrew its clothes, before Water Street, now two or three blocks back, had lost all right to its name. Here the big slanting bowsprits hunch away in over South Street as if trying to be quits with the land for its encroachment, and the plain old brick buildings huddled together across the way have no cornices for fear of their being poked off. Queer old buildings they are, sail lofts with their peculiar roofs, and sailors' lodging-houses, and the shops where the seaman can buy everything he needs from suspenders to anchor cables, so that after a ten-thousand mile cruise he can spend all his several months' pay within two blocks of where he first puts foot on shore and within one night from when he does so. Very often he has not energy enough to go farther or money to buy anything, thanks to the slavery system which conducts the sailors' lodging-houses across the way. There is nothing very picturesque about our modern merchant marine and its ill-used and over-worked sailors; it is only pathetic.
Those are some of the reasons, I think, why East River is more interesting to most of us than North River. Another reason, perhaps, is that East River is not a river at all, but an arm of the ocean which makes Long Island, and true to its nature in spite of man's error it holds the charm of the sea. The North River side of the town in the old days had less to do with the business of those who go down to the sea in ships; was more rural and residential and now its water-front is so jammed with railway ferry-houses and ocean steamship docks that there is little room for anything else.
However, these long, roofed docks of famous Cunarders and American and White Star Liners, and of the French steamers (which have a round roof dock of a sort all their own) are interesting in their way, too, and the names of the foreign ports at the open entrance cause a strange fret to be up and going; especially on certain days of the week when thick smoke begins to pour from the great funnels which stick out so enormously above the top story of the now noisy piers. Cabs and carriages with coachmen almost hidden by trunks and steamer-rugs crowd in through the dock-gates, while, within, the hold baggage-derricks are rattling and there is an excited chatter of good-by talk....
