Sometimes (as at present writing,) middle of sunny afternoon, the old
"Vanderbilt" steamer stalking ahead--I plainly hear her rhythmic,
slushing paddles--drawing by long hawsers an immense and varied
following string, ("an old sow and pigs," the river folks call it.)
First comes a big barge, with a house built on it, and spars towering
over the roof; then canal boats, a lengthen'd, clustering train,
fasten'd and link'd together--the one in the middle, with high staff,
flaunting a broad and gaudy flag--others with the almost invariable
lines of new-wash'd clothes, drying; two sloops and a schooner aside
the tow--little wind, and that adverse--with three long, dark, empty
barges bringing up the rear. People are on the boats: men lounging,
women in sun-bonnets, children, stovepipes with streaming smoke.
TWO CITY AREAS, CERTAIN HOURS
NEW YORK, _May 24, '79_.--Perhaps no quarters of this city (I have
return'd again for awhile,) make more brilliant, animated, crowded,
spectacular human presentations these fine May afternoons than the two
I am now going to describe from personal observation. First: that
area comprising Fourteenth street (especially the short range between
Broadway and Fifth avenue) with Union square, its adjacencies, and so
retrostretching down Broadway for half a mile. All the walks here are
wide, and the spaces ample and free--now flooded with liquid gold from
the last two hours of powerful sunshine. The whole area at 5 o'clock,
the days of my observations, must have contain'd from thirty to
forty thousand finely-dress'd people, all in motion, plenty of them
good-looking, many beautiful women, often youths and children,
the latter in groups with their nurses--the trottoirs everywhere
close-spread, thick-tangled, (yet no collision, no trouble,) with
masses of bright color, action, and tasty toilets; (surely the women
dress better than ever before, and the men do too.
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