hird year I had made up my mind that I would get work on a
passenger boat so as to be able to see and talk with more people who
were going up and down the Lakes and the canal. I went from one to
another as I met folks who were coming back from the West, and asked
every one if he had known a man out west named John Rucker; but, though
I found traces of two or three Ruckers in the course of the three years,
it did not take long in each case to find out that it was not the man I
hated so, and so much wanted to find. People used to point me out as the
boy who was trying to find a man named Rucker; and two or three came to
me and told me of men they had met who might be my man. I became known
to many who traveled the canal as being engaged in some mysterious
quest. I suppose I had an anxious and rather strange expression as I
made my inquiries.

It took me two years to make up my mind to change to a passenger boat,
so slow was I to alter my way of doing things. I have always been that
way. My wife read _Knickerbocker's History of New York_ after the
children were grown up and she had more time for reading, and always
told the children that she was positive their father must be descended
from that ancient Dutchman[4] who took thirteen months to look the
ground over before he began to put up that well-known church in
Rotterdam of which he was the builder. After smoking over it to the tune
of three hundred pounds of Virginia tobacco, after knocking his head--to
jar his ideas loose, maybe--and breaking his pipe against every church
in Holland and parts of France and Germany; after looking at the site of
his church from every point of view--from land, from water, and from the
air which he went up into by climbing other towers; this good old Dutch
contractor and builder pulled off his coat and five pairs of breeches,
and laid the corner-stone of the church. I think that this delay was a
credit to him. Better be slow than sorry. The church was, according to
my wife, a very good one; and if the man had jumped into the job on the
first day of his contract it might have been a very bad one. So, when I
used to take a good deal of time to turn myself before beginning any
job, and my wife would say to one of the boys: "Just wait! He'll start
to build that church after a while!" I always took it as a compliment.
Finally I always did the thing, if after long study it seemed the right
thing to do, or if some one else had not done it in the m