at this thought my breath almost refused to come at all.  Presently I opened my eyes and found the captain throwing water in my face.  He never mentioned it afterward; but I suppose I had fainted away.  Then I went to sleep, and when I awoke it was dark and I did not know where I was, and screamed.  The captain himself quieted me for a few minutes, and I dropped off to sleep again.  He had moved me without my knowing it, from the drivers’ cabin forward to his own.  But I must not spend our time on these things.

The captain’s name was Eben Sproule.  He had been a farmer and sawmill man, and still had a farm between Herkimer and Little Falls on the Mohawk River.  He owned his boat, and seemed to be doing very well with her.  The other driver was a boy named Asa—­I forget his other name.  We called him Ace.  He lived at Salina, or Salt Point, which is now a part of Syracuse; and was always, in his talk to me, daring the captain to discharge him, and threatening to get a job in the salt Works at Salina if ever he quit the canal.  He seemed to think this would spite Captain Sproule very much.  I expected him to leave the boat when we reached Syracuse; but he never did, and I think he kept on driving after I quit.  Our wages cost the boat twenty dollars a month—­ten dollars each—­and the two hands we carried must have brought the pay-roll up to about seventy a month besides our board.  We always had four horses, two in the stable forward, and two pulling the boat.  We plied through to Buffalo, and back to Albany, carrying farm products, hides, wool, wheat, other grain, and such things as potash, pearlash, staves, shingles, and salt from Syracuse, and sometimes a good deal of meat; and what the railway people call “way-freight” between all the places along the route.  Our boat was much slower than the packets and the passenger boats which had relays of horses at stations and went pretty fast, and had good cabins for the passengers, too, and cooks and stewards, serving fine meals; while all our cooking was done by the captain or one of our hands, though sometimes we carried a cook.

Bill, the man who answered “Ay, ay, sir!” when the captain asked him to witness that he had refused me passage on the boat, was a salt-water sailor who had signed on with the boat while drunk at Albany and now said he was going to Buffalo to try sailing on the Lakes.  The other man was a green Irishman called Paddy, though I suppose that was not his name.  He was good only as a human derrick or crane.  We used to look upon all Irishmen as jokes in those days, and I suppose they realized it.  Paddy used to sing Irish comeallyes on the deck as we moved along through the country; and usually got knocked down by a low bridge at least once a day as he sang, or sat dreaming in silence.  Bill despised Paddy because he was a landsman, and used to drown Paddy’s Irish songs with his sailor’s chanties roared out at the top of his voice.  And mingled with us on the boat would be country people traveling to