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 or from
town, pedlers, parties going to the stopping-places of the passenger
boats, people loading and unloading freight, drovers with live stock for
the market, and all sorts of queer characters and odd fish who haunted
the canal as waterside characters infest the water-front of ports. If I
could live that strange life over again I might learn more about it; but
I saw very little meaning in it then. That is always the way, I guess.
We must get away from a type of life or we can't see it plainly. That
has been the way as to our old prairie life in Iowa. It is only within
the past few years that I have begun to see a little more of what it
meant. It was not long though until even I began to feel the West
calling to me with a thousand voices which echoed back and forth along
the Erie Canal, and swelled to a chorus at the western gateway, Buffalo.



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