a sailor feels of every rope and sail.  And so I was not tired, not thirsty, till the brook appeared where I was to drink; nor hungry till twelve o’clock came, when I was to dine.  I called myself as I walked “The Child of Good Fortune,” because the sun was on my right quarter, as the sun should be when you walk, because the rain of yesterday had laid the dust for me, and the frost of yesterday had painted the hills for me, and the northwest wind cooled the air for me.  I came to Wilkie’s Cross-Roads just in time to meet the Claremont baker and buy my dinner loaf of him.  And when my walk was nearly done, I came out on the low bridge at Sewell’s, which is a drawbridge, just before they raised it for a passing boat, instead of the moment after.  Because I was all right I felt myself and called myself “The Child of Good Fortune.”  Dear reader, in a world made by a loving Father, we are all of us children of good fortune, if we only have wit enough to find it out, as we stroll along.

The last stroke of good fortune which that day had for me was the solution of my question whether or no I would go to Babylon.  I was to go if any good-natured boatman would take me.  This is a question, Mr. Millionnaire, more doubtful to those who have not drawn their dividends than to those who have.  As I came down the village street at Brockport, I could see the horses of a boat bound eastward, led along from level to level at the last lock; and, in spite of my determination not to hurry, I put myself on the long, loping trot which the St. Regis Indians taught me, that I might overhaul this boat before she got under way at her new speed.  I came out on the upper gate of the last lock just as she passed out from the lower gate.  The horses were just put on, and a reckless boy gave them their first blow after two hours of rest and corn.  As the heavy boat started off under the new motion, I saw, and her skipper saw at the same instant, that a long new tow-rope of his, which had lain coiled on deck, was suddenly flying out to its full length.  The outer end of it had been carried upon the lock-side by some chance or blunder, and there some idle loafer had thrown the looped bight of it over a hawser-post.  The loafers on the lock saw, as I did, that the rope was running out, and at the call of the skipper one of them condescended to throw the loop overboard, but he did it so carelessly that the lazy rope rolled over into the lock, and the loop caught on one of the valve-irons of the upper gate.  The whole was the business of an instant, of course.  But the poor skipper saw, what we did not, that the coil of the rope on deck was foul, and so entangled round his long tiller, that ten seconds would do one of three things,—­they would snap his new rope in two, which was a trifle, or they would wrench his tiller-head off the rudder, which would cost him an hour to mend, or they would upset those two horses, at this instant on a trot, and put into the canal the rowdy youngster who had started them.  It was this complex certainty which gave fire to the double cries which he addressed aft to us on the lock, and forward to the magnet boy, whose indifferent intelligence at that moment drew him along.