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Usually a group of planted evergreens half hides the house from the boat, but its inmates will not lose any detail of the show, and come down to the gate of the paling fence to watch the 'Avonek' float by: motionless men and women, who lean upon the supporting barrier, and rapt children who hold by their skirts and hands.
They claimed the river where they passed, and the 'Avonek' bowed to an unwritten law in giving them the full right of way, from the time when their low bulk first rose in sight, with the chimneys of their steamer towering above them and her gay contours gradually making themselves seen, till she receded from the encounter, with the wheel at her stern pouring a cataract of yellow water from its blades.
A rigider sincerity than shall be practised here might own that the table of the good steamboat 'Avonek' left something to be desired, if tested by more sophisticated cuisines, but in the article of corn-bread it was of an inapproachable preeminence.
Usually a group of planted evergreens half hides the house from the boat, but its inmates will not lose any detail of the show, and come down to the gate of the paling fence to watch the 'Avonek' float by: motionless men and women, who lean upon the supporting barrier, and rapt children who hold by their skirts and hands.
The Avonek was always stopping to put off or take on merchandise or men. She would stop for a single passenger, plaited in the mud with his telescope valise or gripsack under the edge of a lonely cornfield, or to gather upon her decks the few or many casks or bales that a farmer wished to ship.
A rigider sincerity than shall be practised here might own that the table of the good steamboat 'Avonek' left something to be desired, if tested by more sophisticated cuisines, but in the article of corn-bread it was of an inapproachable preeminence.
At the start, when with an acceptable observance of Western steamboat tradition the 'Avonek' left her wharf eight hours behind her appointed time, there were very few passengers; but they began to come aboard at the little towns of both shores as she swam southward and westward, till all the tables were so full that, in observance of another Western steamboat tradition; one did well to stand guard over his chair lest some other who liked it should seize it earlier.
The only thing that seemed strangely, that seemed sadly, anomalous in a land flowing with ham and bacon was that the 'Avonek' had not imagined providing either for the guests, no one of whom could have had a religious scruple against them. The thing, indeed, which was first and last conspicuous in the passengers, was their perfectly American race and character.
The rafts were very well, and the house-boats and the traders' boats, but the most majestic feature of the riverlife was the tow of coal-barges which, going or coming, the 'Avonek' met every few miles.
The only thing that seemed strangely, that seemed sadly, anomalous in a land flowing with ham and bacon was that the 'Avonek' had not imagined providing either for the guests, no one of whom could have had a religious scruple against them. The thing, indeed, which was first and last conspicuous in the passengers, was their perfectly American race and character.
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