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But I waited a minute still; it was seldom the sumptuous coaches rolled through this by-way which they had taken to-night in their gay procession, since the pavers had left the broad street beyond blocked up for the nonce, and I liked to glimpse this little opening into a life just beyond my sphere.
I never supposed I was a moral coward, but I must be; otherwise I would weeks ago have called an open-air mass-meeting of the apple-tree agents, the fire-underwriters, the patent pavers and the others, and confessed to them that their attentions were misdirected, and that I was not in fact the fortunate being whose lot they sought to better.
One day a contractor met Paul on the bank and said: "Say, son, could not you boys gather a lot of pavers? I will buy them from you and give you thirty cents per hundred." The offer was eagerly accepted.
Spring came on and the longing increased to enjoy again the piney smell of the newly arrived rafts, to dive into the clear depths, and revisit his old friends the "pavers." He took off his shoes and felt the water's temperature. "In two weeks," he thought with rapture, "In two weeks I can take a plunge."
This occupation was pursued with varying success during the summer months of '59. The contractor came down every week to cart the "pavers" away; and many a dispute the boys had with him over the count. The dispute was generally decided by the carts driving off, and the contractor paying whatever he pleased. The boys discovered a rich pocket right near the old Aqueduct bridge.
They had their place among shovels, hand-carts, wheelbarrows, and measuring-tapes; and to all this company the news had come that the Maidens were no longer to be called "maidens," but "hand-rammers," which word was the newest and the only correct designation among the pavers for the thing we all know from the old times by the name of "the maiden."
Next day the "Eagle" was anchored with a piece of rail-road iron, over a pocket, and the crew engaged in diving through the transparent water to the bottom, where they would gather one or two pavers, return to the top, and drop them into the boat. Paul had much difficulty in teaching his companions to keep their eyes open while under water.
I mean what our pavers call a maiden, a thing with which they ram down the paving-stones in the roads. A maiden of this kind is made altogether of wood, broad below, and girt round with iron rings. At the top she is narrow, and has a stick passed across through her waist, and this stick forms the arms of the maiden. In the shed stood two Maidens of this kind.
At the end of four blocks, the pavers had given it up and the last stage to the summit was a winding path. On the very top, a colony of artists lived in little villas of houses whose windows got the whole panorama of the bay. Luckily for these people, a cable car scaled the hill on the other side, so that it was not much of a climb to home.
All leaped aboard, and the "Eagle" headed for Alleghany, where the wood was carefully stored, far beyond the reach of a probable invasion by the Pittsburghers. About this time a new enterprise opened for the commander and crew of the "Gray Eagle." The city commenced to pave the streets with large round stones called "Pavers," many of which were found in pockets at the bottom of the river.
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