Living in Brooklyn or New York city from this time forward, my life,
then, and still more the following years, was curiously identified with
Fulton ferry, already becoming the greatest of its sort in the world
for general importance, volume, variety, rapidity, and picturesqueness.
Almost daily, later, ('50 to '60,) I cross'd on the boats, often up
in the pilot-houses where I could get a full sweep, absorbing
shows, accompaniments, surroundings. What oceanic currents, eddies,
underneath--the great tides of humanity also, with ever-shifting
movements. Indeed, I have always had a passion for ferries; to me they
afford inimitable, streaming, never-failing, living poems. The river
and bay scenery, all about New York island, any time of a fine day--the
hurrying, splashing sea-tides--the changing panorama of steamers, all
sizes, often a string of big ones outward bound to distant ports--the
myriads of white-sail'd schooners, sloops, skiffs, and the marvellously
beautiful yachts--the majestic sound boats as they rounded the Battery
and came along towards 5, afternoon, eastward bound--the prospect off
towards Staten Island, or down the Narrows, or the other way up the
Hudson--what refreshment of spirit such sights and experiences gave me
years ago (and many a time since.) My old pilot friends, the Balsirs,
Johnny Cole, Ira Smith, William White, and my young ferry friend, Tom
Gere--how well I remember them all.