e, as I
could easily have done at any time within an hour of boarding the boat.
I buried my face in the dirty pillow with no pillow-case on it, and
filled my mouth with the patchwork quilt. It seemed as though I should
die of weeping. My breath came in long spasmodic draughts, as much
deeper and bitterer than sighs as sighs are sadder and more pitiful than
laughter. My whipped back pained and smarted me, but that was not what
made me cry so dreadfully; I was in the depths of despair; I was
humiliated; I was suffering from injustice; I had lost my mother--and at
this thought my breath almost refused to come at all. Presently I opened
my eyes and found the captain throwing water in my face. He never
mentioned it afterward; but I suppose I had fainted away. Then I went to
sleep, and when I awoke it was dark and I did not know where I was, and
screamed. The captain himself quieted me for a few minutes, and I
dropped off to sleep again. He had moved me without my knowing it, from
the drivers' cabin forward to his own. But I must not spend our time on
these things.

The captain's name was Eben Sproule. He had been a farmer and sawmill
man, and still had a farm between Herkimer and Little Falls on the
Mohawk River. He owned his boat, and seemed to be doing very well with
her. The other driver was a boy named Asa--I forget his other name. We
called him Ace. He lived at Salina, or Salt Point, which is now a part
of Syracuse; and was always, in his talk to me, daring the captain to
discharge him, and threatening to get a job in the salt Works at Salina
if ever he quit the canal. He seemed to think this would spite Captain
Sproule very much. I expected him to leave the boat when we reached
Syracuse; but he never did, and I think he kept on driving after I quit.
Our wages cost the boat twenty dollars a month--ten dollars each--and
the two hands we carried must have brought the pay-roll up to about
seventy a month besides our board. We always had four horses, two in the
stable forward, and two pulling the boat. We plied through to Buffalo,
and back to Albany, carrying farm products, hides, wool, wheat, other
grain, and such things as potash, pearlash, staves, shingles, and salt
from Syracuse, and sometimes a good deal of meat; and what the railway
people call "way-freight" between all the places along the route. Our
boat was much slower than the packets and the passenger boats which had
relays of horses at stations and went pretty f