At first, Marcus thought he had seen this
man somewhere before; and then he thought he was mistaken. The man
evinced no recognition of Marcus, and, an instant after, his sharp
glance wandered to some other person in the large group waiting for
the boat.
Here the boat came into the slip, and, after bumping in an uncertain way
against the piles on either side, neared almost within leaping distance
of the wharf. A solid crowd of passengers stood at the edge of the boat,
with their eyes fixed on the landing place, as if it were the soil of a
new world upon which they were to leap for the first time, like a party
of Columbuses When the distance had been diminished to about four feet,
the front row of passengers jumped ashore, and rushed wildly up the
street, as if impelled by a rocket-like power from behind. These people
could not have been more eager to get ashore, if they had come from the
other side of the globe on business involving a million apiece, to be
transacted on that day only.
In fact, they were only lawyers, tradesmen, mechanics, and clerks,
living in Jersey City, and going over to New York on their daily,
humdrum business.
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