Then the reception room, for passengers waiting--life illustrated thoroughly. Take a March picture I jotted there two or three weeks since. Afternoon, about 3-1/2 o'clock, it begins to snow. There has been a matinee performance at the theater--from 4-1/2 to 5 comes a stream of homeward bound ladies. I never knew the spacious room to present a gayer, more lively scene--handsome, well-drest Jersey women and girls, scores of them, streaming in for nearly an hour--the bright eyes and glowing faces, coming in from the air--a sprinkling of snow on bonnets or dresses as they enter--the five or ten minutes' waiting--the chatting and laughing--(women can have capital times among themselves, with plenty of wit, lunches, jovial abandon)--Lizzie, the pleasant-manner'd waiting-room woman--for sound, the bell-taps and steam-signals of the departing boats with their rhythmic break and undertone--the domestic pictures, mothers with bevies of daughters, (a charming sight)--children, countrymen--the railroad men in their blue clothes and caps--all the various characters of city and country represented or suggested. Then outside some belated passenger frantically running, jumping after the boat. Towards six o' clock the human stream gradually thickening--now a pressure of vehicles, drays, piled railroad crates--now a drove of cattle, making quite an excitement, the drovers with heavy sticks, belaboring the steaming sides of the frighten'd brutes. Inside the reception room, business bargains, flirting, love-making, _eclaircissements_, proposals--pleasant, sober-faced Phil coming in with his burden of afternoon papers--or Jo, or Charley (who jump'd in the dock last week, and saved a stout lady from drowning,) to replenish the stove, and clearing it with long crow-bar poker. Besides all this "comedy human," the river affords nutriment of a higher order. Here are some of my memoranda of the past winter, just as pencill'd down on the spot. _A January Night_.--Fine trips across the wide Delaware to-night. Tide pretty high, and a strong ebb. River, a little after 8, full of ice, mostly broken, but some large cakes making our strong-timber'd steamboat hum and quiver as she strikes them. In the clear moonlight they spread, strange, unearthly, silvery, faintly glistening, as far as I can see. Bumping, trembling, sometimes hissing like a thousand snakes, the tide-procession, as we wend with or through it, affording a grand undertone, in keeping with the scene. Overhead, the splendor indescribable; yet something haughty, almost supercilious, in the night. Never did I realize more latent sentiment, almost _passion_, in those silent interminable stars up there. One can understand, such a night, why, from the days of the Pharaohs or Job, the dome of heaven, sprinkled with planets, has supplied the subtlest, deepest criticism on human pride, glory, ambition.