hind us with her horses at the full trot. Their boat was down the
canal a hundred yards or so at the end of the tow-line; and just before
the boat itself drew even with ours she was laid over by her steersman
to the opposite side of the ditch, her horses were checked so as to let
her line so slacken as to drop down under our boat, her horses were
whipped up by a sneering boy on a tall bay steed, her team went outside
ours on the tow-path, and the passage was made. They made, as was always
the case, a moving loop of their line, one end hauled by the packet, and
the other by the team. I was keeping my eye skinned to see how the thing
was done, when the tow-line of the packet came by, tripped me up and
threw me into the canal, from which I was fished out by Bill as our boat
came along. There was actual danger in this unless the steersman
happened to be really steering, and laid the boat off so as to miss me.

Captain Sproule gazed at me in disgust. Ace laughed loudly away out
ahead on the horse. Bill said that if it had been in the middle of the
ocean I never would have been shamed by being hauled up on deck. He was
sorry for my sake, as I never would live this thing down.

"Go change your clothes," said the captain, "and try not to be such a
lummox next time."

I had no change of clothes, and therefore, I took the first opportunity
to get out on the tow-path, wet as I was, and begin again to learn my
first trade. It was a lively occupation. There were some four thousand
boats on the Erie Canal at that time, or an average of ten boats to the
mile. I suppose there were from six to eight thousand boys driving then
on the "Grand Canal" alone, as it was called. More than half of these
boys were orphans, and it was not a good place for any boy, no matter
how many parents or guardians he might have. Five hundred or more
convicts in the New York State Penitentiary were men who, as I learned
from a missionary who came aboard to pray with us, sing hymns and exhort
us to a better life, had been canal-boat drivers. The boys were at the
mercy of their captains, and were often cheated out of their wages.
There were stories of young boys sick with cholera, when that disease
was raging, or with other diseases, being thrown off the boats and
allowed to live or die as luck might determine. There were hardship,
danger and oppression in the driver's life; and every sort of vice was
like an open book before him as soon as he came to understa