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Page 61
One of the tickets for these books, for which Whittemore had given five
good dollars, was what he gave to me for my dictionary. And so we
parted. I loitered at Attica, hoping for a place where I could put in my
oar. But my hand was out at teaching, and in a time when all the world's
veneers of different kinds were ripping off, nobody wanted me to put on
more of my kind,--so that my cash ran low. I would not go in debt,--that
is a thing I never did. More honest, I say, to go to the poorhouse, and
make the Public care for its child there, than to borrow what you cannot
pay. But I did not come quite to that, as you shall see.
I was counting up my money one night,--and it was easily done,--when I
observed that the date on this Burrham order was the 15th of October,
and it occurred to me that it was not quite a fortnight before those
books were to be delivered. They were to be delivered at Castle Garden,
at New York; and the thought struck me that I might go to New York, try
my chance there for work, and at least see the city, which I had never
seen, and get my cyclop�dia and magazine. It was the least offer the
Public ever made to me; but just then the Public was in a collapse, and
the least was better than nothing. The plan of so long a journey was
Quixotic enough, and I hesitated about it a good deal. Finally I came to
this resolve: I would start in the morning to walk to the lock-station
at Brockport on the canal. If a boat passed that night where they would
give me my fare for any work I could do for them, I would go to Albany.
If not, I would walk back to Lockport the next day, and try my fortune
there. This gave me, for my first day's enterprise, a foot journey of
about twenty-five miles. It was out of the question, with my finances,
for me to think of compassing the train.
Every point of life is a pivot on which turns the whole action of our
after-lives; and so, indeed, of the after-lives of the whole world. But
we are so pur-blind that we only see this of certain special enterprises
and endeavors, which we therefore call critical. I am sure I see it of
that twenty-five miles of fresh autumnal walking. I was in tiptop
spirits. I found the air all oxygen, and everything "all right." I did
not loiter, and I did not hurry. I swung along with the feeling that
every nerve and muscle drew, as in the trades 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.
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