Even the fresh blue water of the bay, which laughs and dances beyond, by
its very contrast gives greater emphasis to the melancholy and forlorn
appearance of the Battery.

All places that fashion has once loved and abandoned are very melancholy;
but of all such places, I think the Battery is the most forlorn. Are there
some sickly locust trees there that cast a tremulous and decrepit shade
upon the mangy grass plots? I believe so, but I do not make sure; I am
certain only of the mangy grass plots, or rather the spaces between the
paths, thinly overgrown with some kind of refuse and opprobrious weed, a
stunted and pauper vegetation proper solely to the New York Battery. At
that hour of the summer morning when our friends, with the aimlessness of
strangers who are waiting to do something else, saw the ancient promenade,
a few scant and hungry-eyed little boys and girls were wandering over this
weedy growth, not playing, but moving listlessly to and fro, fantastic in
the wild inaptness of their costumes. One of these little creatures wore,
with an odd, involuntary jauntiness, the cast-off best dress of some
happier child, a gay little garment cut low in the neck and short in the
sleeves, which gave her the grotesque effect of having been at a party the
night before. Presently came two jaded women, a mother and a grandmother,
that appeared, when they crawled out of their beds, to have put on only so
much clothing as the law compelled. They abandoned themselves upon the
green stuff, whatever it was, and, with their lean hands clasped outside
their knees, sat and stared, silent and hopeless, at the eastern sky, at
the heart of the terrible furnace, into which in those days the world
seemed cast to be burnt up, while the child which the younger woman had
brought with her feebly wailed unheeded at her side. On one side of the
women were the shameless houses out of which they might have crept, and
which somehow suggested riotous maritime dissipation; on the other side
were those houses in which had once dwelt rich and famous folk, but which
were now dropping down to the boarding-house scale through various
unhomelike occupations to final dishonor and despair. Down nearer the
water, and not far from the castle that was once a playhouse and is now
the depot of emigration, stood certain express wagons, and about these
lounged a few hard-looking men. Beyond laughed and danced the fresh blue
water of the bay, dotted with sails and s