Dodgeville chronicle. [volume] (Dodgeville, Wis.) 1862-current, 1868-05-22
SeIsfted Misfellany.
SOLD.
| HATE a steamboat.

| HATE a steamboat.
| don't mean particularly our own
steamboat-if we may call it our own.
That takes only its rateable proportion OF
the hatred which distribute over the en-
tire steam navy of the universe. | hate
everything which bears the name of
steamboat This feeling / at once allow
to be perfectly irrational, but that is not
the question. My antipathies are based on
set of circumstances which | shall be
happy-at least, which have no objection
Ito tell, if you will accept them as my
contribution to the narrative picnic of the
evening
Ny avocation is that of a solicitor. Now
/ am middle-aged man; but at the time
speak of / was seventeen years younger
than am at present
| don't know whether any of you have
ever been at Orsoya. Nobody claims ac
quaintance with that place? Very well,
you have lost nothing; but of course, you
all know where it is. However, to pre-
vent Mistakes will mention that it is on
the Danube, before you get down to the
Iron Gate, and that you stop there to be
put into wagons, and conveyed along the
left bank until you reach Skela Gladova,
where lie the big steamers for the Black
Sea.
Some business at Odessa took me down
the Danube to Orsova, whence | proposed
to 20 into Galatz, where the Russian vessel
awaited me- The business does not bear
upon my story. | was then the junior
member of the firm of which am now the
head and can afford to say that had
not then buckled to work with the ear
,nestness which my partners might have
liked TO see They could, at all events,
very well spare me for the six weeks trip !;
and though it was not, perhaps, exactly
hattering to be told that | could not do
better than undertake the Odessa affair,
instead of leaving it to clerk, | put up
with the implied hint, and went away in
excellent spirits. ] had never travelled
much, and was glad of the opportunity of
going where comparatively few English
men went in those days. A very short
time afterwards, you know, came incl
dents which sent thousands of Englishmen
into those parts, many of them never to
return; but in the year of which speak
most of us would have thought war with
Russia as unlikely as three years ago we
thought a war with Abyssinia
You can all see for yourselves that |
am gray, and that my figureis not that of
lady-killer But at the time l speak of /
was reasonably good looking young fel-
low, with probably as much consciousness
of the fact as was good for me- have
now son of whom the same things may
be said.
Well, the steamboat journey from vi
emma, whereI left the railway, had
amused me good deal | won't trouble
you with the slightest description of Dan
ube probably some of you have
got Mr.. Murray's "South Germany" in
your trunks, or if not, you can get it
when you go home, if my story interests
you up to the point of wishing to know
more of the district l am not vain
enough, now, to suppose that it will. The
Danube would be fine fellow, if he did
not try to do so very much, but he is in
places preposterously wide, and in others
not nearly deep enough The Iron Gate
illustrates the second of his weaknesses-
it is a sort of plateau of rock, over which
nothing but small craft can go; and those
often get wrecked, as happened in the case
of an American peddlar, who insisted on
rowing through the troubled waters He
had Knocked against too many snags, he
said to care for the feeble old rocks of the
Danube. He went off with all his miscel
laneous wares, and was singing at the tor
of his voice
Hail, Columbia, happy landr'
when his boat was cloven in twain, his
wares departed into the waves, and he
providentially caught on rock, gallantly
2 completed the couplet with rhyme thai
may be pardoned for its badness, but mo-
for its profanity:
.'If amt ruined, I'll be d
and so forth. / had a very good reasor
for wishing thatI had confined myself Il
hearing stories of that kind on board tn,
boat from Vienna vNo