On one of these wooden benches I sat one evening at sunset, looking out across to the docks on the opposite side of the river. Busy little motor boats were sputtering hither and thither between the shipping, bent upon the fulfillment of their last missions of the day. A few hundred yards farther up, a couple of gloomy-looking steam ferries, built like Rhine river tugs, transferred their deck loads of workmen from the different docks and machine shops on the Feijenoord to the Westplein landing in Rotterdam. From out in the stream came the rattle of chain through hawse pipe, as a Portuguese tramp, having entered the harbor too late for a stranger to dock, was preparing an anchorage for the night. Close by lay a Norwegian “wind jammer”--so close that the two of them might easily have rubbed figure-heads. A big cargo boat, bound out, preceded by a tiny tug to herald her approach and followed by its twin to help keep her straight while passing, an exact fit, through the draw to one of the many “havens,” bayed sonorously for the less conspicuous craft to get out of her way; while alongside the Wilhelminakade the upper decks of a great passenger-carrying leviathan, already electric lighted, showed through the rigging of the intermediate vessels. Out of respect for the tide, she was to sail at three the next morning, and her passengers, when they awakened, would find themselves well down the English Channel on their way back to New York after a summer in Europe. Presently, two young women, pushing a baby-coach between them, came strolling along, and took up positions at the railing just in front of me. Plainly they were English, and, although I strained every nerve to overhear their conversation (which was mean of me), but could not, I divined the reason for their coming. The same thing occurs a dozen times a day in Liverpool, in ’Frisco, in Sydney, in Valparaiso, in every port of any consequence in the world. One was the wife, and the other perhaps the sister, or her sister, or maybe a close friend. And there was also the kiddy. Their vigil was not long in being rewarded, for during the three weeks’ absence--three months’, more likely, if the voyage had been a long one--they had perused the Lloyd reports daily and diligently, and with the additional aid of a letter or two, had calculated the time of arrival to a nicety.