“THE Irving train is expected to arrive at Jersey City from Boston at
about seven o’clock,” said a telegraphic dispatch which I received in
New York on Sunday. I had left the great New England city two days
before Irving’s special train, with the understanding that I should
join him at Jersey City, _en route_ for Baltimore.
At half-past six I was on the great steam ferry-boat that plies from
the bottom of Desbrosses street, New York, to the other side of the
river. A wintry wind was blowing up from the sea. I preferred the open
air to the artificial heat of the cabin. In ten minutes I was landed at
the station of the Pennsylvania Railroad.
“Inquire for the steamer ‘Maryland,’” continued that dispatch which
I have just quoted. “She conveys the train down the Harlem river to
connect on the Pennsylvania Road.”
The general waiting-room of the station, or depot, as our American
cousins call it, is a characteristic one. Seeing that I was allowed
plenty of time to observe it, I propose to describe it. A large
square hall, with a high-pitched roof, it has more of a Continental
than an English or American appearance. As you enter you find a
number of people waiting for the trains. They include a few colored
people and Chinamen. The centre of the room is filled with benches,
like the stalls of a London theatre. You wonder why two marble tombs
have been erected here. They turn out to be heat-distributers. The
hot air pours out from their grated sides. In case you should be in
danger of suffocation a drinking fountain is in handy proximity to
the blasts of heated air. The right-hand side of the hall is filled
with booking-offices, and a clock bell tolls, indicating the times
at which the various trains start. On the left is a _café_, and an
entrance from Jersey City. Opposite to you as you enter from the ferry
are two pairs of doors leading to the trains, and the space between
the portals is filled in with a handsome book-stall. The door-ways
here are jealously guarded by officials who announce the departure
of trains and examine your tickets. One of these guards sits near a
desk where a little library of city and State directories is placed
for the use of passengers. Each volume is chained to the wall. Near
the _café_ is a post-office box, and hanging hard by are the weather
bulletins of the day. A ladies’ waiting-room occupies a portion of the
hall on the booking-office side. The place is lighted with electric
lamps, which occasionally fiz and splutter, and once in a while go out
altogether. Nobody pays any attention to this. Everybody is used to the
eccentricities of the new and beautiful light.
Obtaining permission to pass the ticket portals, I reach the platform,
where I am to find the station-master. The outlook here reminds me of
the high-level station of the Crystal Palace. A dim gas-light exhibits
the outlines of a series of long cars, fenced in with gates, that are
every now and then thrown open to receive batches of passengers from
the waiting-room.
The Irving train has been delayed. She is reported “to arrive at the
Harlem river at half-past eight.” In that case she may be here at a
quarter to ten.
I return to the spluttering electric lamps and to the continually
coming and going multitudes of passengers. “No Smoking” is one of the
notices on the walls. Two men have lighted their cigars right under
it. They remind one of the duellists in “Marion de Lorme,” who fight
beneath the cardinal’s proclamation. The _café_ is bright and inviting,
and its chocolate is as comforting as the literature of the book-stall.
The novels of Howells and James and Braddon and Black are here, and the
Christmas numbers of the “Illustrated London News” and the “Graphic”;
so likewise are the Christmas and New Year’s cards of Marcus Ward, De
la Rue, and Lowell. I purchase the latest novelty in books, “John Bull
and His Island,” and try to read. I look up now and then to see the
crowd file off through the ticket-doors to go to Bethlehem, Catasauqua,
Lansdown, New Market, Bloomsbury, Waverly, Linden, Philadelphia, West
Point, Catskill, Albans, New Scotland, Port Jackson, Schenectady, and
other towns and cities, the names of which stir my thoughts into a
strange jumble of reflections, biblical, topographical, and otherwise.
Bethlehem and Bloomsbury! Were ever cues for fancy wider apart? “Over
here,” I read in “John Bull and His Island,” the writer referring to
London, “you are not locked up in a waiting-room until your train comes
in. You roam where you like about the station, and your friends may see
you off and give you a hand-shake as the train leaves the platform. The
functionary is scarcely known. There are more of them at the station of
_Fouilly les Epinards_ than in the most important station in London.
You see placards everywhere: ‘Beware of Pick-pockets’; ‘Ascertain
that your change is right before leaving the booking-desk.’ The
Englishman does not like being taken in hand like a baby.” Curiously
the American is treated on the railroads very much as in France. As to
placard-notices you see cautions against pick-pockets, and the London
warning as to change. Some of the other notifications in American
stations are curious: “No Loafing allowed in this Depot”; “Don’t Spit
on the Floor.” Douglas Jerrold’s joke about the two angry foreigners
who exclaimed, “I spit upon you!” has more point here than in England;
for no apartment is sacred enough in this free country to keep out
the spittoon, which, in some places, is designed in such a way as to
indicate a strong intention to make it ornamental as well as useful.