Captain Sproule gazed at me in disgust. Ace laughed loudly away out
ahead on the horse. Bill said that if it had been in the middle of the
ocean I never would have been shamed by being hauled up on deck. He was
sorry for my sake, as I never would live this thing down.

"Go change your clothes," said the captain, "and try not to be such a
lummox next time."

I had no change of clothes, and therefore, I took the first opportunity
to get out on the tow-path, wet as I was, and begin again to learn my
first trade. It was a lively occupation. There were some four thousand
boats on the Erie Canal at that time, or an average of ten boats to the
mile. I suppose there were from six to eight thousand boys driving then
on the "Grand Canal" alone, as it was called. More than half of these
boys were orphans, and it was not a good place for any boy, no matter
how many parents or guardians he might have. Five hundred or more
convicts in the New York State Penitentiary were men who, as I learned
from a missionary who came aboard to pray with us, sing hymns and exhort
us to a better life, had been canal-boat drivers. The boys were at the
mercy of their captains, and were often cheated out of their wages.
There were stories of young boys sick with cholera, when that disease
was raging, or with other diseases, being thrown off the boats and
allowed to live or die as luck might determine. There were hardship,
danger and oppression in the driver's life; and every sort of vice was
like an open book before him as soon as he came to understand it--which,
at first, I did not. If my mother knew, as I suppose she did, what sort
of occupation I had entered upon, I do not see how she could have been
anything but miserable as she thought of me--though she realized keenly
from what I had escaped.