nging by my hands, to catch with my right
foot the bight of the rope and lift it off the treacherous iron, to kick
the whole into the water, and then to scramble up the wet lock-side
again. I got a little wet, but that was nothing. I ran down the
tow-path, beckoned to the skipper, who sheered his boat up to the shore,
and I jumped on board.

At that moment, reader, Fausta was sitting in a yellow chair on the
deck of that musty old boat, crocheting from a pattern in _Godey's
Lady's Book._ I remember it as I remember my breakfast of this morning.
Not that I fell in love with her, nor did I fall in love with my
breakfast; but I knew she was there. And that was the first time I ever
saw her. It is many years since, and I have seen her every day from that
evening to this evening. But I had then no business with her. My affair
was with him whom I have called the skipper, by way of adapting this
fresh-water narrative to ears accustomed to Marryat and Tom Cringle. I
told him that I had to go to New York; that I had not time to walk, and
had not money to pay; that I should like to work my passage to Troy, if
there were any way in which I could; and to ask him this I had come on
board.

"Waal," said the skipper, "'taint much that is to be done, and Zekiel
and I calc'late to do most of that; and there's that blamed boy
beside--"

This adjective "blamed" is the virtuous oath by which simple people, who
are improving their habits, cure themselves of a stronger epithet, as
men take to flagroot who are abandoning tobacco.

"He ain't good for nothin', as you see," continued the skipper
meditatively, "and you air, anybody can see that," he added. "Ef you've
mind to come to Albany, you can have your vittles, poor enough they are
too; and ef you are willing to ride sometimes, you can ride. I guess
where there's room for three in the bunks there's room for four. 'Taint
everybody would have cast off that blamed hawser-rope as neat as you
did."

From which last remark I inferred, what I learned as a certainty as we
travelled farther, that but for the timely assistance I had rendered him
I should have plead for my passage in vain.

This was my introduction to Fausta. That is to say, she heard the whole
of the conversation. The formal introduction, which is omitted in no
circle of American life to which I have ever been admitted, took place
at tea half an hour after, when Mrs. Grills, who always voyaged with her
husband, brought in the