d offers of
hospitality were numberless. There was great rivalry between some of the
towns as to which would get the voyager to stop off, and the arguments
used by the inhabitants to induce him to favor them, were very funny. A
citizen of Parker come to the front with a statement which he thought
would surely be a winner.

"Tell Boyton," he said to one of the newspaper men who followed by train
from one station to the other along the river, "that he should stop
off at Parker instead of Kittanning, because Parker is an incorporated
town and Kittanning is not."

Paul was not greatly refreshed by his rest at Emlenton. He arose in the
morning, stiff and swollen, his hands and face very much so, being
slightly frost bitten and very painful. He was somewhat depressed in
spirits and said he could not reach Pittsburgh until Sunday. He
bravely entered the water, however, and that day he shot over Parker's
Falls.

Before he reached Mahoning, a big crowd lined the bank awaiting his
approach. In the crowd was one of those wise bodies who are never to
be fooled and who knows a thing or two about the ways of the world. This
individual made himself exceedingly conspicuous in the gathering and
confidentially told everybody that would listen to him, that he was
smart enough to size up the whole affair and that they were all fools to
be taken in by the report that a man was going to swim down such an icy
current.

"I'm on to the whole thing," he said, with a real knowing look, "this is
gotten up by the newspaper men. They have a block of wood dressed up
in a rubber suit and let it float down, while this 'ere Boyton sneaks
along the river with the reporters. They can't close my eye, not much."

He was one of the front line on the bank when Paul arrived. He had made
up his mind to grab the rubber covered chunk of wood and expose the
whole thing to the public, and then it would be seen that he was "jest a
leetle smarter than the rest of mankind." As Boyton drew in at that
point and walked up on the land, the clever fellow's eyes looked as
though they would burst from their sockets, and he beat a
precipitate retreat, followed by the derisive shouts of the crowd.

Paul was much interested during a great part of the cold, cheerless
trip, in the immense pillars of fire that belch from the natural gas
wells that are numerous along the river, which runs through the famous
oil country of Pennsylvania.

A re