Search results

Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues -- north, east, south, and west.

And there they stand -- miles of them -- leagues.

They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in.

No.

Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice.

Strange!

But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive.

What do they here?

Are the green fields gone?

How then is this?

But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster -- tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks.

Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep.

What do you see? -- Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries.

Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence by Whitehall, northward.

Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon.

Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.

Its extreme down-town is the Battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land.

Right and left, the streets take you waterward.

There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs -- commerce surrounds it with her surf.

If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.