CHAPTER XI HERBERT IS AWED AND AMAZED BY HIS FIRST SIGHT OF A GREAT CITY
The train made good time, and in two hours arrived in Jersey City. From the shed to the two story ferry-boat which plied between the two shores was but a step. When the boat pulled out into the stream, Herbert was dazzled by the sight that met his eyes. Through force of circumstances over which he had no control, he had never visited New York, and so it came about that this was to be his first view of the wonderful city of the Western Continent. His gaze rested first on the magnificent Statue of Liberty enlightening the world--that colossal bit of statuary placed in New York harbor not only to typify the grandeur of American institutions, but also to emphasize the long friendship existing between America and France. Beyond this he beheld that great piece of engineering known as the Brooklyn Bridge, the girdle, the connecting link which is the visible bond uniting the two great cities of Greater New York.
In the harbor boats were coming and going in every direction, carrying people and merchandise from the four corners of the earth. A monster ocean steamer plowing its way majestically through the waves, its deck literally black with people eager for the first glimpse of land, was making towards the new Castle Garden, there to empty upon the shores of America more men and women than there were in the entire population of Cleverly. Another magnificent ocean greyhound just going down the bay was filled with rich Americans, millionaires and men made suddenly rich who were embarking for foreign shores to spend the money they had dug from the bowels of the earth, or cleverly obtained by ingenuity or trade from their fellow countrymen.
Herbert felt as he gazed out on this constantly moving panorama, as if the whole world had suddenly burst on his view. From the time he left the Jersey City shore until he reached the New York side, his mind was in a whirl trying to grasp and comprehend all the strange sights that were constantly coming within his view. No time was lost in landing, and in a minute or two the country-reared boy found himself in the midst of what seemed to be a hopeless confusion of trucks and drays and cursing drivers. A policeman with uplifted club soon straightened out this tangle, and Herbert proceeded on his way up Cortlandt Street. The rush and roar of the elevated trains, the shouts and protests of the wagon drivers, the yells of the cabmen and peddlers, and the never ceasing hum of talk from the hurrying pedestrians, made Herbert feel as if this were all some wonderful dream.