see their first stage-coach put together. It had come from Boston in
pieces, for there was no one in Fairport that could make one. The
coach went away up into the country one day, and came back the
next. For a long time no one understood driving the horses
properly, and they came in day after day with the blood streaming
from them. The whiffletree would swing round and hit them, and
when their collars were taken off, their necks would be raw and
bloody. After a time, the men got to understand how to drive a
coach, and the horses did not suffer so much.

The other story was about a team-boat, not a steamboat. More than
seventy years ago, they had no steamers running between Fairport
and the island opposite where people went for the summer, but
they had what they called a team-boat, that is, a boat with
machinery to make it go, that could be worked by horses. There
were eight horses that went around and around, and made the boat
go. One afternoon, two dancing masters, who were wicked
fellows, that played the fiddle, and never went to church on
Sundays, got on the boat, and sat just where the horses had to pass
them as they went around.

Every time the horses went by, they jabbed them with their
penknives. The man who was driving the horses at last saw the
blood dripping from them, and the dancing masters were found
out. Some young men on the boat were so angry that they caught
up a rope's end, and gave the dancing masters a lashing, and then
threw them into the water and made them swim to the island.

When this boy took a seat, a young girl read some verses that she
had clipped from a newspaper: