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Updated: May 3, 2025
Here I was, still on the wrong side the only thing left to try was a village bridge. Again following the tow-path I neared some lights, which proved to be a hospital, and found myself in an apparently unoccupied station-yard, among a number of large heaps. On raising a corner of a tarpaulin which covered the nearest I recognised the familiar wicker crates, which contained something heavy.
Blame me not gentle reader, when I tell you that I stood upon the bank of the river with exultant joy; and, as I pursued my way along the tow-path, ready to spring into the water on the first indication of danger, I rejoiced over the disappointment of my pursuers in losing a servant who had done them so good service.
But the brilliant one has taken up with rich young cads who affect bull-terriers and boxing-gloves; he is not averse from a street-brawl in the foggy November days; he can take his part in questionable choruses; he yells on the tow-path or in the pit of the theatre, and he is often shaky in the morning after a dose of very bad wine.
We met many big keel-boats on their way up, using sails, mule power, and profanity a tedious and laborious business. A wire rope led from the foretopmast to the file of mules on the tow-path a hundred yards ahead, and by dint of much banging and swearing and urging, the detachment of drivers managed to get a speed of two or three miles an hour out of the mules against the stiff current.
I drifted past more barges coming up, and more steam-tugs; past river lawns, where gay parties were now sipping claret-cup or playing tennis. By-and-by, I began to meet pleasure-boats and to admire their manner of progress. First there came a gentleman in white flannels, walking on the tow-path, with a rope round his waist, towing a boat in which two ladies were comfortably seated.
A boy with such a head as you've got ought not to be on the tow-path." "What ought I to be doing, cousin?" "You ought to keep school. You're better qualified than I am to-day, and yet I taught for three winters in Indiana." James was pleased with this tribute to his acquirements, especially from a former schoolmaster. "I never thought of that," he said. "I'm too young to keep school.
The night dews and the snakes, and the dogs that kept sniffing and growling half the night in the near distance, had made me tired of sleeping in the fields. The dead were much better company. They minded their own business, and let a fellow alone. Before sun-up I was on the tow-path looking for a job. Mules were in demand there, not men.
A little girl peeking at me from an orchard beside the tow-path tossed me an apple a nice, red juicy apple. I caught it, and put it in my pocket. That evening we tied up at a landing and were delayed for an hour or so taking on freight. I slipped into the stable to eat my apple, knowing that Ace would pound me if he learned that I had kept anything from him, whether he really wanted it or not.
Their boat was down the canal a hundred yards or so at the end of the tow-line; and just before the boat itself drew even with ours she was laid over by her steersman to the opposite side of the ditch, her horses were checked so as to let her line so slacken as to drop down under our boat, her horses were whipped up by a sneering boy on a tall bay steed, her team went outside ours on the tow-path, and the passage was made.
I had heard women talk of greenhorns and backwoods boys in those days when I had lived a life in which women played an important, a disturbing, and a baleful part for every one but the boy who lived his strange life on the tow-path or in the rude cabin; and now these outcast women came back to me and through the very memories of them poisoned and corrupted my nature.
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