The Canton mail. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 18??-1882, 1875-01-02

What happy woman I should be ="
Looking up from his ledger, spoke merchant John
stately form In velvet dressed
diamond cleaning on her breast
Nothing but tod for fashion, she said,
" Till sometimes wish that were dead;
Or long cast this wealth aside,
And be once more the poor mans br.dei"
From his easy chair spoke gentleman John.
I" We meier see well what we're standing on"
OLD TIMES ON THE MISSISSIPPI.
When I WAS boy there was but one
permanent ambition among my COM
rades in our village on the west bank Of
the Mississippi river. That was, to be
. steamboatman. We had transient am
billions of other sorts, but they were
only transient. When q circus came
and went, it left us all burning to be-
come clowns; the first negro minstrel
show that came to our section left us all
suffering to try that kind of life; now
and then we had hope that If we lived
and were good, God would permit us to
be pirates. These ambitions faded out,
each in its turn but the ambition to be
. steamhoatman always remained.
Once q day cheap, gaudy packet ar
rived upward from St. Louis, and an
other downward from Keokuk. Be8ofe
these events had transpii ed the d~y was
glorious with expectancy; after they
had transpired the day was dead and
empty thing. Not only the boys, but
the whole village, fels this. After all
these years I can picture that old time
to myself now jest as it was then the
white town browsing in the sunshine of
Q summers morning; the streets empty,
or pretty nearly SO ; one or two clerks
sitting in front Of the Water street stores,
with their splint bottomed chairs tilted
back against the wall, chins on breasts,
Eats slouched over their faces. asleep-
with shingle- shavings enough around to
show what broke them down q SOW and
q litter of pigs loafing along the side
walk. doing q good business in water
melon rinds and seeds; two or three
lonely little freight piles scattered about
the "levee;" pile of "skids" on the
slope Of the stone-paved wharf, and the
fragrant town drunkard asleep in the
flats at the head Of the wharf, but no
body to listen to the peaceful tapping of
the wavelets against them; the great
Mississippi, the majestic, the magnifi-
cent Mississippi, rolling its mile-wide
tide along, shining in the sun the dense
forest away on the other side; the
"point" above the town and the ''point"
below, bounding the river glimpse, and
turning it into q sort of sea, and withal
q very still and brilliant and lonely one.
Presently Q film of dark smoke appears
above one of those remote "points :"
instantly o negro drayman, famous for
his quick eye and prodigious voice, lifts
up the cry, /" S-te-a-m-boat a-comin' 1"
and the scene changes. The town drunk
ard stirs, the clerks wake up, furious
clatter of drays follows, every house
and store pours out human coptribu-
ton, and all in twinkling the dead
town is alive and moving. Drays, carts,
men, boys, all go hurryipg from many
quarters to q common centre, the wharf.
Assembled there, the people fasten their
eyes NJ on the coming boat as upon q
wonder they are seeing for the first
time. And the boat 10 rather . hand
some sight, too. She is long, and sharp,
and trim, and pretty she has two tall,
fancy-topped chimneys, with q gilded
device Of some kind swung between
them; q fanciful pilot house, all glass
and gingerbread" perched on top of
the "texas" deck behind them the
paddle-boxes are gorgeous with pic
ture or with gilded rays above the
boats name the boiler deck, the hur-
ricane deck and the texas deck are
fenced and ornamented with clean white
ratings there is = flag calamity flying
from the jack-staff; the furnace doors
are open and the fires glaring bravely !;
the upper decks are black with passen-
rusn.; ;j-vut,-ea~S-vSa-eszs r5as
volumes of the blacklist smoke are roll
ing and tumbline out of the chimneys-
q husbanded grandeur created with a
bit of pitch pine Just before arriving at
. town; the crew are gyoupsd on the
forecastle the broad stage is run far
out over the port bow, and an envied
deck-hand stands picturesquely on the
81 d of it with q coil of rope in his hand;
the pent steam is screaming through the
gauge-cocks the captain lifts his hand,
Q bell rings, the wheels stop then they
turn back, cunning the water to foam,
and the steamer is at rest. Then such
Q scramble as there is to get aboard, and
to get ashore, and to take In freight and
to discharge freight. al at one and the
same time; and suoi.sa yelling and
cursing as the mates facii,s-s.-:t a4i
with Ten minutes later the ssea{
is under way again, with no flag 0Y tha
iack-staff and no black smoke M
from the chimneys. AfteEten more
minutes the town is deadx and the
town drunkard asleep ~ the sfids once
more.
MY father wes4 justice of the peace,
and su 'posef he possessed the power
OF me I'D death over all men, and
c2R6 hang any body that offended him.
This was distinction enough for me as a
general thing but the desire to be a
steambr Altman kept intruding, neverthe-
less. first wanted to be q cabin-boy, 80
that I could come out with white
apron on and shake q table-cloth over
the side, where all my old comrades
could see me later thought would
rather be the deck-hand who stood on
the end of the stage plank with the coil
of rope in his hand, because he was
particularly conspicuous. But these
were only day-dreams-they were too
heavenly to be contemplated as real
possibilities. By and by one of our
boys went away. He was not heard OF
for long time. At last he turned up
Is apprentice engineer or striker" on q
steamboat. This thing shook the bot
tom ont of all my Sundsy-school teach
ings. That boy had been VIGOROUSLY
worldly. and just the reverse yet he
was emitted to this eminence, and ]
left IN obscurity and misery. There
was nothing generous about this fellow
in his greatness. He would always
manage to have a rusty bolt to scrub
while his boat tarried at our town, and
he would sit on the inside guard and
scrub it where We could all see him and
envy him and losthe him. And when
ever his boat was laid mp he would
come hons and Awell around the town
in his blacklist and greasieet clothes, "a
that nobody could help remembering
that he was q steanboatman and he
used all sorts of steamboat technical
tiles in his talk, as if se were so used
to them that he forgot common people
could not understand them. He would
speak of the larboard side of horse in
an easy, natural way that would make
one wish he was dead. And he was al.
ways talking about "St. Losy" like ar
old citizen he World refer caaualIv tr