H

AD there been an element of Gallic fancifulness in the temperament of those who selected names for New York's landing-stairs, South Street and West Street, or, perhaps, had they been able to see from their years into ours, -they certainly would not have so named them; instead they would have made the ship-hedged highways one, given it some such appellation as "The Street of the Nations," and gone prophets to their graves. Were such a name bestowed now there would be nothing of vainglory in it, because to these two streets come the peoples and the wares of the world. They have called to the dwellers over-seas with promises they knew they could fulfil, and from North, South, East, and West the answer has been borne in the throbbing, headlong liner, in the dawdling "tramp," the striving, dauntless ship of sails, and the heavy-laden coaster. And it is in these streets one comes to fullest realization that the port of New York is a port of all the world.

Along its wharves one walks from clime to clime, hearing the speech and the slang of many tongues, seeing fellow mortals of every known shade of skin. It is a geographical jumble, a sort of international fair presided over by one goddess -Commerce. Little does it seem to her that only the breadth of a pier should

separate Orient from Occident, the cool northland from the tropics. She has marshalled her forces from the limits of her widespread empire, hastened them along converging ways, and then permitted her glad servant, Man, to give them bidingplace. And in New York the glad servant has no alternative save to berth them where he may, for ships are many and berths are few, and Commerce brooks no waiting. From ten to twelve vessels arrive in port, day in, day out, through the year. In one recent month 261 deep-sea craft with tight-stowed holds came to their piers along South and West streets, and the flags they flew were American, British, German, Norwegian, French, Danish, Italian, Dutch, Cuban, Belgian, Spanish, Austrian, and Portuguese. They brought the people and the merchandise of twice a hundred ports, and some, the China ships, had come through a hundred and sixty days of sea to deliver up their chests and bales.

In becoming a port of all the world, New York has only attained its manifest destiny. Mother Nature arranged it all when the waters receded. She planned the great, quiet water-court of the bay, and drew the gates almost together to yield the weary, thankful sailorman a fuller knowledge that his voyage was at an end. Within the gates she gave him generous

sea-room wherein to draw aside from the highway and rest craft and self. Far off his bows she set an island like a rugged hand for man to build a wonder city in its palm. Then Commerce, who had been awaiting the call, went to the gates and summoned her legions. By this time prosaic man had dubbed the gateway The Narrows, and named two fingers of the close-held hand South Street and West Street.

The reason the cosmopolitanism of the port is more appreciable along the water streets is that there it has its beginning; one sees it before its ever-widening ripples are all save obliterated in the turbulence of the city. Whatever comes to the port from foreign shores, be it fish or flesh or good red herring, comes to one or the other of the water-stairs, and although it may be lost as soon as it leaves Bowling Green astern, for a brief space at least it is part of the hurly-burly of the wharves.

But as West and South differ and yet are related, so is there difference and yet relationship between the two cardinal highways. West Street is of this year and last year, South Street is of this year and fifty years ago; and each, after its own fashion. is striving day and night, to the racking cough of donkey-engines and the tramp of endless files of bow-backed, shuffling men, to handle the commerce of the port.

STRAINING

Paris leans eagerly against the rail in frills and flounces, and waves a very small scented handkerchief in a very small tightly gloved hand under the admiring protection of a waved mustache, peg-top trousers, and shoulders of the Farnese Hercules; London stands quite straight in a tailor-made gown and flat boots, and makes indifferent comment upon the row to a stolid, florid companion-piece in tweeds; Berlin, rosy and round, catches sight of Wilhelmina and Heinrich hailing from the pier long before Gottfried has ceased wondering at the towering buildings; Rome surveys the scene through dark homesick eyes, and darts a glance at radiant St. Peters

West Street is the haven of the long, swift liners, with their polite passengers and perishable goods. There one strikes hands with the capitals of the Old World.

VOL. CVII.-No. 639-24

burg and marvels at her English. Then they come bustling down the gangplank, sandwiched between innumerable stewards in shell jackets straining under great loads of multilabelled luggage. New York is waiting for them at the foot of the incline to welcome them as Argonauts-for the Fleece is still seen golden in the Westland-or as homeseekers, and, after the customs ordeal, whirls them away in car and carriage and loses them among the masses of her people. No sooner has the stream of passengers begun pouring down the gangplank than Covers are whisked from hoisting engines, and the stevedore with

his whistle takes command. Up from the warm holds comes the cosmopolitan cargo,-bales of rugs from the tedious looms of the East, silks from France, plethoric barrels of German pottery, boxes of English cloths, wines in cask

A BEWITCHING SENORITA

and case, all the wares which competition demands shall reach their destination with the greatest possible despatch. Sailing-ships are slow and wet, and not for such as these, wherefore steam lords it over sail and decrees a new romance of its own.

Close on each hand of the express liners are the river and Sound boats, and a cable-length away the coasters and

the West-Indian and South-American steamers. These last, like the Spanish ships and the fruiters, are the ones which bring the air of their South ports with them, not only in the scent of their laden decks, but in the figures which crowd them, and talk and talk and smoke and smoke with many gestures and undeniable grace. The fruiters come in mainly at the southern end of West Street, and the blacks who break out the huge, odorous bunches of green bananas keep up a loud conversation, which seems to be addressed to every one within hearing, since answers come from all directions. The squat, deep-chested black with the straw skull-cap-a hat shorn of its brim -is calling to another in the strange, soft patois of Martinique, and not a dozen feet away a St. Vincent negro shouts down the hatchway with the broadest of broad a's and a cockney disregard for h's. Meanwhile the stevedore is telling the visitor about a man who was bitten by a tarantula in a bunch of bananas that day six weeks ago, and that his arm swelled up as big as his leg;-now, you ask the skipper if that isn't so; sure, it often happens. And after that the visitor watches the men who shoulder the bunches with infinitely more interest.

The lemon-ships are redolent of the warm South. The bulging boxes with their elaborate purple lettering and stencilled figures of impossibly ugly signorinas are often adrip from the crushing of the fruit, and the air about is heavy with the pungent odor. One hears little else save Italian, unless it be a full-mouthed Irish oath at the slowness of some darkskinned, dumpy man in brown velveteen trousers, who mutters "Si, si!" and "shakes a leg" rather less quickly than before. These cheerful, undersized men can carry prodigious loads from sunrise to nightfall, and then shuffle homeward in their much too large coats and picturesque hats-there are few swaggerers of the stage who can wear their wide hats with half the dash of the Italian longshoreman-chattering for all the world as if they were just going to their labors.

It is when a Spanish ship arrives that color and mirth and music come into the port. There is no need then, for the sake of that iridescent, misapplied thing called "local color," to drag in by the heels

such enhancing "props as "oliveskinned sons of Spain thrumming guitars," and "bewitching señoritas with midnight hair," and the like, because they are there, courting all the euphonious adjectives of verse and as merry as the four-and-twenty black birds. When the Spaniard comes to her pier, the señorita in her marvellous pompadour is likely to be hatless, unless the day be cold, while the señor seems all ashiver at her side. Color is often as conspicuous among the men as among the women, for the men cling to blankets and serapes, save in midsummer. They congregate aft in a noisy crowd while the steamer is being made fast, and chatter and roll cigarettes. The blankets, which they wear in brigand fashion, are bordered with gay colors if they are not already blue or red, and muffle their wearers to the ears. Some of the men have coarse woollen capes which sweep the deck. No one ceases smoking for an instant, and there is a prodigious amount of "borrowing" of lights. The women have eyes for everything and such eyes!-and many are not quite so slender as they might be; but that is

no fault in Spain - Carmen has not been a slip of a girl these many years!

In voyaging to Spain the Spanish ships set an Irish course; they go first to Havana, gather passengers and cargo, and steam back to New York to fill their holds; then, when all is snug, they sail for their destined port. Two or three days are sometimes required to stow the American goods, and it is during this period that the ships add most to the cosmopolitan character of the port. They become hotels for the time, the women passengers making occasional sallies into the city in the brightest hues their wardrobes afford, evidently bent on demonstrating that Spain acknowledges no such thing as a clash of colors. If South Street, where the Spanish piers are set, were not quite accustomed to what those who navigate above the Fourteenth Street parallel deem extraordinary, these brilliant birds of passage would undoubtedly create a commotion. As it is they attract little attention, because the street is too much occupied to do more than turn its head when the swish of skirts and wake of