I LEARN AND DO SOME TEACHING
I lay in a bunk in one of the two little forward cabins next the stable,
shivering and sobbing, a pitiful picture of misery, I suppose, as any
one ever saw. I began bawling as soon as the captain commenced putting
arnica on my back--partly because it smarted so, and partly because he
was so very gentle about it; although all the time he was swearing at
John Rucker and wishing he had skinned him alive, as he pretty nearly
did. To feel a gentle hand on my shredded back, and to be babied a
little bit--these things seemed to break my heart almost, though while
Rucker was flogging me I bore it without a cry or a tear. The captain
dressed my back, and said, "There, there, Bubby!" and went away,
leaving me alone.
I could hear the ripple of the water against the side of the boat, and
once in a while a gentle lift as we passed another boat; but there was
nothing much in these things to cheer me up. I was leaving John Rucker
behind, it was true, but I was also getting farther and farther from my
mother every minute. What would she do without me? What should I do
without her? I should be free of the slavery of the factory; but I did
not think of that. I should have been glad to the bottom of my heart if
I could have blotted out of my life all this new tragedy and gone back
to the looms and spindles. The factory seemed an awful place now that I
was free, but it was familiar; and being free was awful, too; but I
never once thought of going back. I knew I could learn to drive the
horses, and I knew I should stay with the captain who had flogged John
Rucker. I who had never thought of running away was just as much
committed to the new life as if I had planned for it for years. Inside
my spirit I suppose I had been running away every time I had gone down
and watched the boats float by; and something stronger than my conscious
will floated me along, also. I fought myself to keep from crying; but I
never thought of running up on deck, jumping ashore and going home, as I
could easily have done at any time within an hour of boarding the boat.
I buried my face in the dirty pillow with no pillow-case on it, and
filled my mouth with the patchwork quilt. It seemed as though I should
die of weeping. My breath came in long spasmodic draughts, as much
deeper and bitterer than sighs as sighs are sadder and more pitiful than
laughter. My whipped back pained and smarted me, but that was not what
made me cry so dreadfully; I was in the depths of despair; I was
humiliated; I was suffering from injustice; I had lost my mother--and at
this thought my breath almost refused to come at all. Presently I opened
my eyes and found the captain throwing water in my face. He never
mentioned it afterward; but I suppose I had fainted away. Then I went to
sleep, and when I awoke it was dark and I did not know where I was, and
screamed. The captain himself quieted me for a few minutes, and I
dropped off to sleep again. He had moved me without my knowing it, from
the drivers' cabin forward to his own. But I must not spend our time on
these things.
The captain's name was Eben Sproule. He had been a farmer and sawmill
man, and still had a farm between Herkimer and Little Falls on the
Mohawk River. He owned his boat, and seemed to be doing very well with
her. The other driver was a boy named Asa--I forget his other name. We
called him Ace. He lived at Salina, or Salt Point, which is now a part
of Syracuse; and was always, in his talk to me, daring the captain to
discharge him, and threatening to get a job in the salt Works at Salina
if ever he quit the canal. He seemed to think this would spite Captain
Sproule very much. I expected him to leave the boat when we reached
Syracuse; but he never did, and I think he kept on driving after I quit.
Our wages cost the boat twenty dollars a month--ten dollars each--and
the two hands we carried must have brought the pay-roll up to about
seventy a month besides our board. We always had four horses, two in the
stable forward, and two pulling the boat. We plied through to Buffalo,
and back to Albany, carrying farm products, hides, wool, wheat, other
grain, and such things as potash, pearlash, staves, shingles, and salt
from Syracuse, and sometimes a good deal of meat; and what the railway
people call "way-freight" between all the places along the route. Our
boat was much slower than the packets and the passenger boats which had
relays of horses at stations and went pretty fast, and had good cabins
for the passengers, too, and cooks and stewards, serving fine meals;
while all our cooking was done by the captain or one of our hands,
though sometimes we carried a cook.
Bill, the man who answered "Ay, ay, sir!" when the captain asked him to
witness that he had refused me passage on the boat, was a salt-water
sailor who had signed on with the boat while drunk at Albany and now
said he was going to Buffalo to try sailing on the Lakes. The other man
was a green Irishman called Paddy, though I suppose that was not his
name. He was good only as a human derrick or crane. We used to look upon
all Irishmen as jokes in those days, and I suppose they realized it.
Paddy used to sing Irish comeallyes on the deck as we moved along
through the country; and usually got knocked down by a low bridge at
least once a day as he sang, or sat dreaming in silence. Bill despised
Paddy because he was a landsman, and used to drown Paddy's Irish songs
with his sailor's chanties roared out at the top of his voice. And
mingled with us on the boat would be country people traveling to or from
town, pedlers, parties going to the stopping-places of the passenger
boats, people loading and unloading freight, drovers with live stock for
the market, and all sorts of queer characters and odd fish who haunted
the canal as waterside characters infest the water-front of ports. If I
could live that strange life over again I might learn more about it; but
I saw very little meaning in it then. That is always the way, I guess.
We must get away from a type of life or we can't see it plainly. That
has been the way as to our old prairie life in Iowa. It is only within
the past few years that I have begun to see a little more of what it
meant. It was not long though until even I began to feel the West
calling to me with a thousand voices which echoed back and forth along
the Erie Canal, and swelled to a chorus at the western gateway, Buffalo.
2
Captain Sproule had carried me aft from the drivers' cabin to his own
while I was in a half-unconscious condition, and out of pure pity, I
suppose; but that was the last soft treatment I ever got from him. He
came into the cabin just as I was thinking of getting up, and sternly
ordered me forward to my own cabin. I had nothing to carry, and it was
very little trouble to move. We were moored to the bank just then taking
on or discharging freight, and Ace was in the cabin to receive me.
"That upper bunk's your'n," he said. "No greenhorn gits my bunk away
from me!"
I stood mute. Ace glared at me defiantly.
"Can you fight?" he asked.
"I do' know," I was obliged to answer.
"Then you can't," said Ace, with bitter contempt. "I can lick you with
one hand tied behind me!"
He drew back his fist as if to strike me, and I wonder that I did not
run from the cabin and jump ashore, but I stood my ground, more from
stupor and what we Dutch call dumbness than anything else. Ace let his
fist fall and looked me over with more respect. He was a slender boy,
hard as a whip-lash, wiry and dark. He was no taller than I, and not so
heavy; but he had come to have brass and confidence from the life he
lived. As a matter of fact, he was not so old as I, but had grown
faster; and was nothing like as strong after I had got my muscles
hardened, as was proved many a time.
"You'll make a great out of it on the canal," he said.
"What?" said I.
"A boy that can't fight," said he, "don't last long drivin'. I've had
sixteen fights this month!"
A bell sounded on deck, and we heard the voice of Bill calling us to
breakfast. Ace yelled to me to come on, and all hands including the
captain gathered on deck forward, where we had coffee, good home-made
bread bought from a farmer's wife, fried cakes, boiled potatoes, and
plenty of salt pork, finishing with pie. All the cook had to do was to
boil potatoes, cook eggs when we had them and make coffee; for the most
of our victuals we bought as we passed through the country. The captain
had a basket of potatoes or apples on the deck which he used as cash
carriers. He would put a piece of money in a potato and throw it to
whoever on shore had anything to sell, and the goods, if they could be
safely thrown, would come whirling over to be caught by some of us on
deck. We got many a nice chicken or loaf of bread or other good victuals
in that way; and we lived on the fat of the land. All sorts of berries
and fruit, milk, butter, eggs, cakes, pies and the like came to the
canal without any care on our part; everything was cheap, and every meal
was a feast. This first breakfast was a trial, but I made a noble meal
of it. The sailor, Bill, pretended to believe that I had killed a man on
shore and had gone to sea to escape the gallows. Ace and Paddy to
frighten me, I suppose, talked about the dangers and difficulties of the
driver's life; while the captain gave all of us stern looks over his
meal and looked fiercely at me as if to deny that he had ever been kind.
When the meal was over he ordered Ace to the tow-path, and told him to
take me along and show me how to drive.
"Here," he snapped at me, "is where we make a spoon or spoil a horn. Go
'long with you!"
Ace climbed on the back of one of the horses. I looked up wondering what
I was to do.
"You'll walk," said Ace; "an' keep your eyes skinned."
So we started off. Each horse leaned into the collar, and slowly the
hundred tons or so of dead weight started through the water. The team
knew that it was of no use to surge against the load to get it started,
as horses do with a wagon; but they pulled steadily and slowly,
gradually getting the boat under way, and soon it was moving along with
the team at a brisk walk, and with less labor than a hundredth part of
the weight would have called for on land. I have always believed in
inland waterways for carrying the heavy freight of this nation; because
the easiest and cheapest way to transport anything is to put it in the
water and float it. This lesson I learned when Ace whipped up Dolly and
Jack and took our craft off toward Syracuse.
It was a hard day for me. We were passing boats all the time, and we had
to make speed to keep craft which had no right to pass us from getting
by, especially just before reaching a lock. To allow another boat to
steal our lockage from us was a disgrace; and many of the fights between
the driver boys grew out of the rights of passing by and the struggle to
avoid delays at the locks. Sometimes such affairs were not settled by
the boys on the tow-path--they fought off the skirmishes; the real
battles were between the captains or members of the crews.
If there were rules I don't know now what they were, and nobody paid
much attention to them. Of course we let the passenger boats pass
whenever they overtook us, unless we could beat them into a lock. We
delayed them then by laying our boat out into the middle of the canal
and quarreling until we reached the lock; under cover maybe of some
pretended mistake. Our laying the boat out to shut off a passing rival
was dangerous to the slow boat, for the reason that a collision meant
that the strongly-built stem-end of the boat coming up from behind could
crush the weaker stern of the obstructing craft. Such are some of the
things I had to learn.
3
The passing of us by a packet brought me my first grief. She came up
behind 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 understand it--which,
at first, I did not. If my mother knew, as I suppose she did, what sort
of occupation I had entered upon, I do not see how she could have been
anything but miserable as she thought of me--though she realized keenly
from what I had escaped.
Back on the tow-path, I was earning the contempt of Ace by dodging every
issue, like a candidate for office. I learned quickly to snub the boat
by means of a rope and the numerous snubbing-posts along the canal. This
was necessary in stopping, in entering locks, and in rounding some
curves; and my first glimmer of courage came from the fact that I seemed
to know at once how this was to be done--the line to be passed twice
about the post, and so managed as to slip around it with a great deal of
friction so as to bring her to.
4
I was afraid of the other drivers, however, and I was afraid of Ace. He
drove me like a Simon Legree. He ordered me to fight other drivers, and
when I refused, he took the fights off my hands or avoided them as the
case might require. He flicked at my bare feet with his whip. When we
were delayed by taking on or discharging freight, he would try to corner
me and throw me into the canal. He made me do all the work of taking
care of our bunks, and cuffed my ears whenever he got a chance. He made
me do his share as well as my own of the labor of cleaning the stables,
and feeding and caring for the horses, sitting by and giving orders with
a comical exaggeration of the manner of Captain Sproule. In short, he
was hazing me unmercifully--as every one on the boat knew, though some
of the things he did to me I do not think the captain would have
permitted if he had known about them.
I was more miserable with the cruelty and tyranny of Ace than I had been
at home; for this was a constant misery, night and day, and got worse
every minute. He ruled even what I ate and drank. When I took anything
at meal-times, I would first glance at him, and if he looked forbidding
or shook his head, I did not eat the forbidden thing. I knew on that
voyage from Syracuse to Buffalo exactly what servitude means. No slave
was ever more systematically cruelized[1], no convict ever more
brutishly abused--unless his oppressor may have been more ingenious than
Ace. He took my coverlets at night. He starved me by making me afraid to
eat. He worked, me as hard as the amount of labor permitted. He
committed abominable crimes against my privacy and the delicacy of my
feelings--and all the time I could not rebel. I could only think of
running away from the boat, and was nearly at the point of doing so,
when he crowded me too far one day, and pushed me to the point of one of
those frenzied revolts for which the Dutch are famous.
[1] The author insists that "cruelized" is the exact word to express his
meaning, and will consent to no change.--G.v.d.M.
A little girl peeking at me from an orchard beside the tow-path tossed
me an apple--a nice, red juicy apple. I caught it, and put it in my
pocket. That evening we tied up at a landing and were delayed for an
hour or so taking on freight. I slipped into the stable to eat my apple,
knowing that Ace would pound me if he learned that I had kept anything
from him, whether he really wanted it or not. Suddenly I grew sick with
terror, as I saw him coming in at the door. He saw what I was doing, and
glared at me vengefully. He actually turned white with rage at this
breach of his authority, and came at me with set teeth and doubled
fists. "Give me that apple, damn yeh!" he cried. "You sneakin' skunk,
you, I'll larn ye to eat my apples!"
He snatched at the apple, and was too successful; for before he reached
it I opened my hand in obedience to his onslaught; and the apple rolled
in the manure and litter of the stable, and was soiled and befouled.
"Throwin' my apple in the manure, will yeh!" he yelled. "I'll larn ye!
Pick that apple up!"
I reached for it with trembling hand, and held it out to him.
"It ain't fit for anything but the hogs!" he yelled. "Eat it, hog!"
I looked at the filthy thing, and raised my hand to my mouth; but before
I touched it with my lips a great change came over me. I trembled still
more, now; but it was not with fear. I suddenly felt that if I could
kill Ace, I would be willing to die. I was willing to die trying to kill
him. I could not get away from him because he was between me and the
door, but now suddenly I did not want to get away. I wanted to get at
him. I threw the apple down.
"Pick that apple up and eat it," he said in a low tone, looking me
straight in the eye, "or I'll pound you till you can't walk."
"I won't," said I.
Ace rushed at me, and as he rushed, he struck me in the face. I went
down, and he piled on me, hitting me as he could. I liked the feel of
his blows; it was good to realize that they did not hurt me half so much
as his abuse had done. I did not know how to fight, but I grappled with
him fiercely. I reached for his hair, and he tried to bite my thumb,
actually getting it in his mouth, but I jerked it aside and caught his
cheek in my grip, my thumb inside the cheek-pouch, and my fingers
outside. I felt a hot thrill of joy as my nails sank into his cheek
inside and out, and he cringed. I held him at arm's length, helpless,
and with his head drawn all askew; and still keeping my unfair hold, I
rolled him over, and coming on top of him, thrust the other thumb in the
other side of his mouth, frenziedly trying to rip his cheeks, and
pounding his head on the deck. We rolled back into the corner, where he
jerked my thumbs from his mouth, now bleeding at the corners, and
desperately tried to roll me. My hand came into touch with a horseshoe
on the stable floor, which I picked up, and filled with joy at the
consciousness that I was stronger than he, I began beating him over the
face and head with it, with no thought of anything but killing him. He
turned over on his face and began trying to shield his head with his
arms, at which I tore like a crazy boy, beating at arms, head, hands and
neck with the dull horseshoe, and screaming, "I'll kill you! I'll kill
you! I'll kill you!"
In the meantime, it gradually dawned on Ace that he was licked, and he
began yelling, "Enough! Enough!" which according to the rules of the
game entitled him to be let alone; but I knew nothing about the rules of
the game. I saw the blood spurting from one or two cuts in his scalp. I
felt it warm and slimy on my hands, and I rained my blows on him, madly
and blindly, but with cruel effect after all. I did not see the captain
when he came in. I only felt his grip on my right arm, as he seized it
and snatched the horseshoe from me. I did not hear what he said, though
I heard him saying something. When he caught both my hands, I threw
myself down on the cowering Ace and tried to bite him. When he lifted
me up I kicked the prostrate Ace in the face as a parting remembrance.
When he stood me up in the corner of the stable and asked me what in
hell I was doing, I broke away from him and threw myself on the
staggering Ace with all the fury of a bulldog. And when Bill came and
helped the captain hold me, I was crying like a baby, and deaf to all
commands. I struggled to get at Ace until they took him away; and then I
collapsed and had a miserable time of it while my anger was cooling.
"I thought Ace would crowd the mourners too hard," said the captain.
"Now, Jake," said he, "will you behave?"
There was no need to ask me. A baby could have held me then.
"Don't you know," said the captain, "that you ortn't to pound a feller
with a horseshoe? Do you always act like this when you fight?"
"I never had a fight before," I sobbed.
"Well, you won't have another with Ace," said the captain. "You damned
near killed him. And next time fight fair!"
That night I drove alone, which I had been doing now for some time,
taking my regular trick; and when we tied up at some place west of
Lockport, I went to my bunk expecting to find Ace ready to renew his
tyrannies, and determined to resist to the death. He was lying in the
lower bunk asleep, and his bandaged head looked rather pitiful. For all
that my anger flamed up again as I looked at him. I shook him roughly by
the shoulder. He awakened with a moan.
"Get out of that bunk!" I commanded.
"Let me alone," he whimpered, but he got out as I told him to do.
"Climb into that upper bunk," I said.
He looked at me a moment, and climbed up. I turned in, in the lower
bunk, but I could not sleep. I was boss! It was Ace now who would be the
underling. It was not a cold night; but pretty soon I thought of the
quilts in the upper berth, and imitating Ace's cruelty, I called up to
him fiercely, awakening him again. "Throw down that quilt," I said,
"I want it."
"You let me alone," whimpered Ace, but the quilt was thrown down on the
deck, where I let it lie. Ace lay there, breathing occasionally with a
long quivering sigh--the most pitiful thing a child ever does--and we
were both children, remember, put in a most unchildlike position. I
dropped asleep, but soon awakened. It had grown cold, and I reached for
the quilt; but something prompted me to reach up and see whether Ace was
still there. He lay there asleep, and, as I could feel, cold. I picked
up the quilt, threw it over him, tucked him in as my mother used to tuck
me in,--thinking of her as I did it--and went back to my bunk. I was
sorry I had cut Ace's head, and had already begun to forget how cruelly
he had used me. I seemed to feel his blood on my hands, and got up and
washed them. The thought of Ace's bandages, and the vision of wounds
under them filled me with remorse--but I was boss! Finally I dropped
asleep, and awoke to find that Ace had got up ahead of me. I was
embarrassed by my new authority; and sorry for what I had been obliged
to do to get it; but I was a new boy from that day.
It never pays to be a slave. It never benefits a man or a people to
submit to tyranny. A slave is a man forgotten of God. If only the
negroes, when they were brought to this country, had refused to work,
and elected to die as other races of men have done, what a splendid
thing it would have been for the world. That fight against slavery was a
beautiful, a joyful thing to me, with all its penalties of compassion
and guilty feeling afterward. I think the best thing a man or boy can do
is to find out how far and to whom he is a slave, and fight that
servitude tooth and nail as I fought Ace. It would make this a different
world.