It was a happy thought to build the Hudson river railroad right along the shore. The grade is already made by nature; you are sure of ventilation one side--and you are in nobody's way. I see, hear, the locomotives and cars, rumbling, roaring, flaming, smoking, constantly, away off there, night and day--less than a mile distant, and in full view by day. I like both sight and sound. Express trains thunder and lighten along; of freight trains, most of them very long, there cannot be less than a hundred a day. At night far down you see the headlight approaching, coming steadily on like a meteor. The river at night has its special character-beauties. The shad fishermen go forth in their boats and pay out their nets--one sitting forward, rowing, and one standing up aft dropping it properly-marking the line with little floats bearing candles, conveying, as they glide over the water, an indescribable sentiment and doubled brightness. I like to watch the tows at night, too, with their twinkling lamps, and hear the husky panting of the steamers; or catch the sloops' and schooners' shadowy forms, like phantoms, white, silent, indefinite, out there. Then the Hudson of a clear moonlight night. But there is one sight the very grandest. Sometimes in the fiercest driving storm of wind, rain, hail or snow, a great eagle will appear over the river, now soaring with steady and now overbended wings--always confronting the gale, or perhaps cleaving into, or at times literally _sitting_ upon it. It is like reading some first-class natural tragedy or epic, or hearing martial trumpets. The splendid bird enjoys the hubbub--is adjusted and equal to it--finishes it so artistically. His pinions just oscillating--the position of his head and neck--his resistless, occasionally varied flight--now a swirl, now an upward movement--the black clouds driving--the angry wash below--the hiss of rain, the wind's piping (perhaps the ice colliding, grunting)--he tacking or jibing--now, as it were, for a change, abandoning himself to the gale, moving with it with such velocity--and now, resuming control, he comes up against it, lord of the situation and the storm--lord, amid it, of power and savage joy.