Not knowing routes or directions in New York, Eugene took a Desbrosses Street ferry, and coming into West Street wandered along that curious thoroughfare staring at the dock entrances. Manhattan Island seemed a little shabby to him from this angle but he thought that although physically¹, perhaps, it might not be distinguished², there must be other things which made it wonderful. Later when he saw the solidity of it, the massed houses, the persistent³ streams of people, the crush of traffic, it dawned on him that mere⁴ humanity in packed numbers makes a kind of greatness, and this was the island's first characteristic. There were others, like the prevailing⁵ lowness of the buildings in its old neighborhoods, the narrowness of the streets in certain areas, the shabbiness of brick and stone when they have seen an hundred years of weather, which struck him as curious or depressing. He was easily touched by exterior⁶ conditions.