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.
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