[Illustration: Swooping silently, confidently across from one city to the other....
The sky-line and its constant change can be watched to best advantage from the point of view of the Jersey commuter on the ferry; he also has some wonderful coloring to look at and some uncommon, weird effects, such as that of a late autumn afternoon (when he has missed the 5.15 and has to go out on the 6.26) and it is already quite dark, but the city is still at work and the towering office-buildings are lighted--are brilliant indeed with many perfectly even rows of light dots. The dark plays tricks with the distance, and the water is black and snaky and smells of the night. All sorts of strange flares of light and puffs of shadow come from somewhere, and altogether the commuter, if he were not so accustomed to the scene, ought not to mind being late for dinner. However, the commuter is used to this, too.
That scene is spectacular. There is another from the water that is dramatic. Possibly the pilots on the Fall River steamers become hardened, but to most of us there is an exciting delight in creeping up under that great bridge of ours and daringly slipping through without having it fall down this time; and then looking rather boastfully back at it, swooping silently, confidently across from one city to the other, as graceful and lean and characteristically American in its line as our cup defenders, and as overwhelmingly powerful and fearless as Niagara Falls. However much like the Thames Embankment is the bit of East Fifty-ninth Street in a yellow fog, and however skilful you may be in making an occasional acre of the Bronx resemble the Seine, our big bridges cannot very well remind anyone of anything abroad, because there aren't any others.
[Illustration: Looking up the East River from the Foot of Fifty-ninth Street.]
For the little scenes that are not inspiring or awful, but simply quaint and lovable, one goes down along the South Street water-front. Fulton Market with its memorable smells and the marketeers and 'longshoremen; and behind it the slip where clean-cut American-model smacks put in, and sway excitedly to the wash from the Brooklyn ferry-boats, which is not noticed by the sturdy New Haven Line steamers nearby. On the edge of the street and the water are the oyster floats, half house and half boat, which look like solid shops, with front doors, from the street side until, the seas hitting them, they, too, begin to sway awkwardly and startle the unaccustomed passer-by.