od 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.

I was stepping upon the gate-head to walk across it. It took but an
instant, not nearly all the ten seconds, to swing down by my arms into
the lock, keeping myself ha