oes making their way to the soup factory are a jocund sight across
the river just now.

Every ferry passenger is familiar with the rapid tinkling of the ratchet
wheel that warps the landing stage up to the level of the boat's deck. I
asked the man who was running the wheel where I would find the
_Wenonah_. "She lays over in the old Market Street slip," he replied,
and cheerfully showed me just where to find her. "Is she still used?" I
asked. "Mostly on Saturday nights and holidays," he said, "when there's
a big crowd going across."

The _Wenonah_, as all Camden seafarers know, is a ferryboat, one of the
old-timers, and I was interested in her because she and her sister, the
_Beverly_, were Walt Whitman's favorite ferries. He crossed back and
forth on them hundreds of times and has celebrated them in several
paragraphs in _Specimen Days_. Perhaps this is the place to quote his
memorandum dated January 12, 1882, which ought to interest all lovers of
the Camden ferry:

"Such a show as the Delaware presented an hour before sundown yesterday
evening, all along between Philadelphia and Camden, is worth weaving
into an item. It was full tide, a fair breeze from the southwest, the
water of a pale tawny color, and just enough motion to make things
frolicsome and lively. Add to these an approaching sunset of unusual
splendor, a broad tumble of clouds, with much golden haze and profusion
of beaming shaft and dazzle. In the midst of all, in the clear drab of
the afternoon light, there steamed up the river the large new boat, the
_Wenonah_, as pretty an object as you could wish to see, lightly and
swiftly skimming along, all trim and white, covered with flags,
transparent red and blue streaming out in the breeze. Only a new
ferryboat, and yet in its fitness comparable with the prettiest product
of Nature's cunning, and rivaling it. High up in the transparent ether
gracefully balanced and circled four or five great sea hawks, while here
below, mid the pomp and picturesqueness of sky and river, swam this
creature of artificial beauty and motion and power, in its way no less
perfect."

You will notice that Walt Whitman describes the _Wenonah_ as being
white. The Pennsylvania ferryboats, as we know them, are all the
brick-red color that is familiar to the present generation. Perhaps
older navigators of the Camden crossing can tell us whether the boats
were all painted white in a less smoky era?

The _Wenonah_ and the _Beverly_ wer