On the Ferry

A crowd presses against a folding ferry gate, rendered in Gibson's confident crosshatched ink line. At center, a top-hatted man in formal black frock coat dominates; flanking him are a bearded figure in a checked suit and, at far right, an elderly man with a broad-brimmed hat and bow tie. A small child leans against the gate at left, surrounded by women in elaborate hats and a crowd receding into the background. The composition captures the democratic crush of New York harbor transit—merchant, laborer, and leisure class momentarily leveled by the same wooden barrier. Gibson's eye is sociological rather than savage here; the satire is mild, the observation acute, the ferry crowd a compressed cross-section of 1890s urban life.