Life on the Mississippi eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 531 pages of information about Life on the Mississippi.

Life on the Mississippi eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 531 pages of information about Life on the Mississippi.

It was in the early days.  I was not a college professor then.  I was a humble-minded young land-surveyor, with the world before me—­to survey, in case anybody wanted it done.  I had a contract to survey a route for a great mining-ditch in California, and I was on my way thither, by sea —­a three or four weeks’ voyage.  There were a good many passengers, but I had very little to say to them; reading and dreaming were my passions, and I avoided conversation in order to indulge these appetites.  There were three professional gamblers on board—­rough, repulsive fellows.  I never had any talk with them, yet I could not help seeing them with some frequency, for they gambled in an upper-deck stateroom every day and night, and in my promenades I often had glimpses of them through their door, which stood a little ajar to let out the surplus tobacco smoke and profanity.  They were an evil and hateful presence, but I had to put up with it, of course,

There was one other passenger who fell under my eye a good deal, for he seemed determined to be friendly with me, and I could not have gotten rid of him without running some chance of hurting his feelings, and I was far from wishing to do that.  Besides, there was something engaging in his countrified simplicity and his beaming good-nature.  The first time I saw this Mr. John Backus, I guessed, from his clothes and his looks, that he was a grazier or farmer from the backwoods of some western State—­doubtless Ohio—­and afterward when he dropped into his personal history and I discovered that he was a cattle-raiser from interior Ohio, I was so pleased with my own penetration that I warmed toward him for verifying my instinct.

He got to dropping alongside me every day, after breakfast, to help me make my promenade; and so, in the course of time, his easy-working jaw had told me everything about his business, his prospects, his family, his relatives, his politics—­in fact everything that concerned a Backus, living or dead.  And meantime I think he had managed to get out of me everything I knew about my trade, my tribe, my purposes, my prospects, and myself.  He was a gentle and persuasive genius, and this thing showed it; for I was not given to talking about my matters.  I said something about triangulation, once; the stately word pleased his ear; he inquired what it meant; I explained; after that he quietly and inoffensively ignored my name, and always called me Triangle.

What an enthusiast he was in cattle!  At the bare name of a bull or a cow, his eye would light and his eloquent tongue would turn itself loose.  As long as I would walk and listen, he would walk and talk; he knew all breeds, he loved all breeds, he caressed them all with his affectionate tongue.  I tramped along in voiceless misery whilst the cattle question was up; when I could endure it no longer, I used to deftly insert a scientific topic into the conversation; then my eye fired and his faded; my tongue fluttered, his stopped; life was a joy to me, and a sadness to him.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Life on the Mississippi from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.