The Opelousas courier., 1893-06-24
BROOKLYN BRIDGE.
a TREMENDOUS RUSH ON EVERY
Weekday EVENING".
People Homeward Bound Form q
Human Torrent on the New York
Gide=A Wonderful Scene.

OS1 az d SuIlulcE THlu UeStuS WiIn
big drops out of half clear sky,
~ so the rush to Brooklyn sets in
around the New York end of the
East River bridge on every work-day
evening. The gaping nav of the bridge
aas been at work laz;ly during the after
aoon sucking in a few stragglers and
throwing out little squads Of folk from
che trains that run behind it. But when
i've o'clock comes the drops of the ap~
preaching tempest OF humanity that is to
storm the place like a revolutionary mob
around a Bastille begin to appear in
Printing house Square. They come faster,
and run together in little rivulets up
Park Row, down Chatham street, along
Centre street, and across the City Hall
Park-all turned one way, oil streaming
toward the bridge Even then they
give no warning of what is to come, ex.
cept to those who know that the torrent
Is as certain to develop and as sure to
become tremendous as that tidal bore
which daily swells the Saguenay with its
overwhelming flood.
The black drops come faster and
thicker. They splash in sudden numbers
from the nearby Office buildings and the
horse cars. The little streams now
lengthen out, and from far up aud down
the streets and across the park in Broad
way. 1t is 5 o'clock, and the Offices in
the buildings that hold villagefuls are
closing. It is no longer a sprinkle.
It is a shower. Farther and farther
away the human drops mingle; bigger
grow the converging streams. At half
past five the wholesale stores and the
warehouses are closing. It is a torrent
now. At six the factories and the work
shops thrust a myriad toilers upon the
streets. The very clouds of the citY's
humanity appear to have gathered over
one spot. The usual confines no longer
hold the two legged drops which now
jostle one another of the sidewalks, into
the cutters, out upon the roadways, all
over the parks asphaltum. The outlook
from the upper stories of the neighbor-
hood is upon a sea of people, in droves
like wild cattle, coming up as if out OF
the earth from every direction, pushing,
hurrying, covering every open space like
locusts. Now it is a peIting rain. Half
an hour passes, and the elevated trains,
which come like breathing, absorb half
the crowd SO fast that the station stairs
become as the beds of inverted cataracts
up which the dark torrent climbs resist
tessly. The horse cars from both direc-
lions stop aud discharge people as guns
are wheeled up, fired, and dragged
away on a battlefield. 1t is a cloudburst,
and it has made a mill race-sonething
far bigger than that-the swollen drain
of a human ireshet.
Thirty thousand men, women aad
children are in the torrent, thirty thou
sand pedestrians in a ninety minute down.
pour; for though the rush is between
five o'clock and seven, it is thinned at
both ends, and the bulk Of it is con-
pressed in a period of between sixty aud
ninety minutes. This is not counting
the almost equal numbers that'seek tha
elevated cars. The surging black waves,
white-capped with human faces, hurl
themselves against the granite steps that
lead to the yawning iron thro1t of the
bridge and spread over them. There is
no more sign Of individual motion than
there is in the herds of sheep that oue
looks down upon from the Colorado
Mountains when tae droves are moving
along the valleys like floating brown isl.
| ands, as clouds move against the sky.
Overhead on a trestle that crosses from
the City Hall Park, another black cur
rent, from the steam-cars, keeps pace
with the tide below. In that way the
exodus to Brooklyn moves over every
thing ahead of it, as if, were the bridge
TO fall, the people would still keep
straight on, filling the river, and press
| ing forward upon. the undermost bodies.
We read about the European capitals,
treated with the skill of artists, clothed
with the glamour of tradition, and col
ored by the fancy that grows richer
With the distance of its subject. But
what has London to show like that
daily congestion at the Brooklyn Bridget
What crowds in Paris are to be meas
uret with this7 What e lropean city has
even one of the many strange conditions
that produce this scene? Here come the
elevated railways that carry three
quarters of a million souls a day, the
surface vehicles Of the million and siz
hundred thousand people Of Manhattan
the streets leading from the deasest pop
ulation in America, all meeting in one
little square, all pouring out people, and
all the people streaming into a grea
trumpetlike mouth Of iron in order Il
be shot across q hanging cobweb o
metal threads into a city that has not its
mate or counterpart on earth-Brooklyn
It is like a city in some things. 1t is a
vast aggregation Of homes and street:
and shops, with a government OF it,
own. Yet many things it has not got
things with which many a little town
could put 1t to the blush. And ever!
other city earns its own way, Will
Brooklyn works for New York, ant
aud is paid of like a shop.girl on Satur'
day nights.
"stop showing sol" "Look out wiz
you're pushingl' "Don't try to run owe
NE, I say" These are notes from til
chorus of the solid mass of persons thai
crowd up the stairs to the bridge cars
On the upper platform the train sweep
away regiments at a time. Burly bridg,
policemen are there urging every on
forward, aud at tines-lntil the news
pspers cry out, periodically-puttin
their hands on their betters and wedgiuc
than ;nka the cars. throloh three door