Transatlantic voyages -- Fiction; Venice (Italy) -- Fiction; Voyages and travels -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
Lydia and her grandfather reached Boston at four o'clock, and the old
man made a bargain, as he fancied, with an expressman to carry her
baggage across the city to the wharf at which the Aroostook lay. The
expressman civilly offered to take their small parcels without charge,
and deliver them with the trunk and large bag; but as he could not check
them all her grandfather judged it safest not to part with them, and he
and Lydia crowded into the horse-car with their arms and hands full. The
conductor obliged him to give up the largest of these burdens, and hung
the old-fashioned oil-cloth sack on the handle of the brake behind,
where Mr. Latham with keen anxiety, and Lydia with shame, watched it as
it swayed back and forth with the motion of the car and threatened
to break loose from its hand-straps and dash its bloated bulk to the
ground. The old man called out to the conductor to be sure and stop in
Scollay's Square, and the people, who had already stared uncomfortably
at Lydia's bundles, all smiled. Her grandfather was going to repeat his
direction as the conductor made no sign of having heard it, when his
neighbor said kindly, “The car always stops in Scollay's Square.”
“Then why couldn't he say so?” retorted the old man, in his high
nasal key; and now the people laughed outright. He had the nervous
restlessness of age when out of its wonted place: he could not remain
quiet in the car, for counting and securing his parcels; when they
reached Scollay's Square, and were to change cars, he ran to the
car they were to take, though there was abundant time, and sat down
breathless from his effort. He was eager then that they should not be
carried too far, and was constantly turning to look out of the window to
ascertain their whereabouts. His vigilance ended in their getting aboard
the East Boston ferry-boat in the car, and hardly getting ashore before
the boat started. They now gathered up their burdens once more, and
walked toward the wharf they were seeking, past those squalid streets
which open upon the docks. At the corners they entangled themselves in
knots of truck-teams and hucksters' wagons and horse-cars; once
they brought the traffic of the neighborhood to a stand-still by the
thoroughness of their inability and confusion. They wandered down the
wrong wharf amidst the slime cast up by the fishing craft moored in the
dock below, and made their way over heaps of chains and cordage, and
through the hand-carts pushed hither and thither with their loads of
fish, and so struggled back to the avenue which ran along the top of
all the wharves. The water of the docks was of a livid turbidity, which
teemed with the gelatinous globes of the sun-fish; and people were
rowing about there in pleasure-boats, and sailors on floats were
painting the hulls of the black ships. The faces of the men they met
were red and sunburned mostly,--not with the sunburn of the fields, but
of the sea; these men lurched in their gait with an uncouth heaviness,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account