(...)"WATERWAYS
LIKE the prudent elderly person I am, I arrived at the boat only a half-hour ahead of time. "Better never than early," I remarked — with a certain waggish air — to the ticket-seller, a man of informal manners, who dispensed with a booth and disposed of pasteboards in the open. This lent to the transaction an al fresco character that also smacked of adventure. What an adventure!
I never mounted the gang-plank of an oceangoing steamer with the same trepidation that I crossed the deck of the little yacht on a summer afternoon at the Battery. For one thing I was never, even during a mid-ocean storm, on such a wabbly boat. Every wash from passing craft made it shake like a bowlful of jelly. A sensitive nautical organism. But I was not afraid. It was just two o'clock, and two people were on board. Fifteen minutes later there were eleven first-class passengers, and at three o'clock we received our full complement and lifted anchor for a long and perilous cruise up the East River, through the(...)".
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