Most of the women were crying when they
came aboard at Naples or Palermo or Gibraltar. Now they are all
smiling. Their dunnage is piled in heaps and sailors, busy with
ropes and chains and things, stumble over it and swear big round
German oaths.
Why, gracious! We are actually off Sandy Hook. Dear old Sandy
- how one loves those homely Scotch names! The Narrows are nigh
and Brooklyn, the City Beautiful, awaits us around the second
turning to the left. The pilot boat approaches. Brave little
craft! Gallant pilot! Do you suppose by any chance he has brought
any daily papers with him? He has - hurrah for the thoughtful pilot!
Did you notice how much he looked like the pictures of Santa Claus?
We move on more slowly and twice again we stop briefly. The
quarantine officers have clambered up the sides and are among us;
and to some of us they give cunning little thermometers to hold
in our mouths and suck on, and of others they ask chatty, intimate
questions with a view to finding out how much insanity there is
in the family at present and just what percentage of idiocy
prevails? Three cheers for the jolly old quarantine regulations.
Even the advance guard of the customhouse is welcomed by one and
all - or nearly all.
Between wooded shores which seem to advance to meet her in kindly
greeting, the good ship shoves ahead. For she is a good ship, and
later we shall miss her, but at this moment we feel that we can
part from her without a pang. She rounds a turn in the channel.
What is that mass which looms on beyond, where cloud-combing office
buildings scallop the sky and bridges leap in far-flung spans from
shore to shore? That's her - all right - the high picketed gateway
of the nation. That's little old New York. Few are the art centers
there, and few the ruins; and perhaps there is not so much culture
lying round loose as there might be - just bustle and hustle, and
the rush and crush and roar of business and a large percentage of
men who believe in supporting their own wives and one wife at a
time. Crass perhaps, crude perchance, in many ways, but no matter.
All her faults are virtues now. Beloved metropolis, we salute
thee! And also do we turn to salute Miss Liberty.
This series of adventure tales began with the Statue of Liberty
fading rearward through the harbor mists. It draws to a close
with the same old lady looming through those same mists and drawing
ever closer and closer. She certainly does look well this afternoon,
doesn't she? She always does look well, somehow.
We slip past her and on past the Battery too; and are nosing up
the North River.
