There is a good deal of condensed life and human nature to be found at a ferry by one who himself is in no hurry to cross. Take your stand just where you can see up the street and at the same time can command the whole interior. The waiting-room is deserted, except by some such lounger as yourself, or a passenger left by the last boat or "too previous" for the next. Well for you if you are sufficiently respectable to pass muster with the official whose duty it is to see that no one secures a day's lodging for two cents. There is a slow dribble of wayfarers, who seldom spend their time in the dismal and dingy waiting-room unless in very cold weather or to stand guard over their parcels which they have piled upon the seats. But all at once (especially if the next boat is to connect with some train on the other side) you observe a thickening of the living current far up the sidewalk, as when the gutters are swollen by the turning on of a hydrant. Down comes the hurrying mass, fretting at the manifold obstructions, its component parts struggling together and almost seeming to go over each other's heads. No time now for the small courtesies, or even charities, of life. The sturdy and malodorous beggar knows too well to run alongside with his "Help a poor boy; I'm a stranger in the city." And the man whose abridged and distorted legs are his stock in trade waits for the return-tide to enact his shrewd and pantomimic morality-play by a hurried shuffle up and down the pavement. The news-dealers--even the enterprising female who summons mercy to the aid of commerce by her absurdly lugubrious visage--have the paper and the change all ready to thrust into their customer's hand. The scene at the crossing of the street baffles description. Talk of the day of miracles being past! One who can watch this scene of scare and scamper and hair-breadth escape and not believe in a particular Providence must be incorrigibly heterodox. The tide reaches the outer gate in a state of lively congestion. The person in front of you as you pass the toll-taker's booth is quite sure to have forgotten his ticket, and has to set down his parcels while he fumbles through all his pockets for it. You are sure you hear the inner gate closing. You dash through the ferry-house in the most undignified manner and unphilosophic mood--to find that you have five minutes to spare! And you take your stand beside your double, who has been all this time enjoying the little woes and absurdities of others,--including yourself.