Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: VIGNETTES OF CITY STREETS H the bewilderment of a first view of a big hustling American city! To be dropped off the ferry into the very center of the maelstrom of life, where every mortal is bent upon his own task, where streams and counter- streams of humanity hurry in and out and round about, and all seem at first glance like the chaos of life. After the repose of the country, the wide serenity of the hill-encircled bay, to grapple with the noise and stir of the city! But what a sensation of exhilaration, this elbowing with the eager crowd, this trotting with the pack after the quarry, this pressing on with the tumult of men in the rush for place! Here life and effort are focused, and the great organic forces of the State are centralized and defined. The wheels of the Juggernaut Progress roll along the street and their victims are many, but the victories of peace atone for all the strife, and humanity goes its way, cursing and praying, weeping and singing, fighting and loving, but on the whole advancing from the beast to the angel. At the foot of Market Street the long low Ferry Building of gray Colusa stone commands the view, and its graceful clock-tower rises above the commotion of the city highways. To right and left stretches the waterfront street, where big docks and wharfs are lined with shipping. Heavy freight vans rattle and bang over the cobble-stones. Bells are clanging on cable cars, newsboys are piping the sensation of the hour; there is an undertone of many voices, a scuffling of hundreds of feet on the cement walks, a hurrying of the crowd for first place on the cars. From this point of vantage one might parody the well-known lines of Tennyson into: Cars to right of you, Cars to left of you, Cars in front of you clatter and rumble. The Market Stre...