se enough to figure, you are surely strong enough to
hustle."

The agents of the steamboat-line were J. W. Bass and Company. Hill got
along all right. He was day-clerk or night-clerk, just as the boats came
in. And it is wonderful how steamboats on the Mississippi usually arrive
at about two o'clock in the morning.

Jim slept on a cot in the office, so as to be on hand when a boat
arrived and to help unload. It was the duty of the shipping-clerk to
check off the freight as it was brought ashore. Also, it was the law of
steamboating that clerks took their meals on board the boat, if they
were helping to unload her. Now, as Jim had food and a place to sleep
when a Dubuque and Saint Paul steamboat was tied at the levee, all the
meals he had to buy were those when no steamboat was in sight.

Being essentially Scotch, Jim managed to time his meals so as to last
over. And sometimes if a boat was stuck on a sand-bar he did the
MacFadden act for a whole day. It became a sort of joke in the office,
and we hear of Mr. Bass, the agent, shouting up to the pilot-house of a
steamboat, "Avast there, sir, for five minutes until Jim Hill stows his
hold."

A part of Jim's work was to get wood for fuel for the boats. This was
quite a business in itself. He once got a big lot of fuel and proudly
piled it on the levee, mountain-high, in anticipation of several
steamboats. A freshet came one night, the river rose and carried off
every stick, so that when the "Mary Ann" arrived there was no fuel.
"Wait until Jim Hill eats his breakfast and perhaps he'll get an armful
of wood for us," shouted down the captain in derision. After that, Jim
managed to load up a flatboat or two, and always had a little wood in
reserve.

The young man was now fairly launched in business. The mystery of
manifesting, billing, collecting; the matter of "shorts," "overs," and
figuring damages were to him familiar.

The Territory of Minnesota was organized in Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine,
and did not become a State until Eighteen Hundred Fifty-eight. In
Eighteen Hundred Fifty-seven there was not a single mile of railway in
the Territory. But in that year, Congress authorized the Territory to
give alternate sections of public lands to any company that would build
a railway through them. Through this stimulus, in the latter part of
Eighteen Hundred Fifty-seven, there was organized a company with the
ambitious title of "The Minnesota and Pacific Railroad Company." It