=1.= From where the year’s last keelboat hove in view
The keelboat, shaped with keel and hence so called, from forty
to sixty feet long, carrying as much as sixty tons and pulled by
fifteen to twenty-five men, was used on the Missouri and other
navigable rivers before the day of the steamboat.
=10.= Until the tipsy Bourgeois bawled for Glass
The head of a trading post in the fur trading period was called
Bourgeois, a French word meaning tradesman.
=12.= The graybeard, sitting where the light was blear, etc.
The whole account of Hugh’s telling of this great tragedy is of
the highest excellence. We already know that Hugh is a story
teller; we have seen him composing this very tale (page 58), and
we know how his imagination sometimes carries him beyond the
actual, as when he saw Jamie dead (page 60). The effect of his
face, with its changing expressions suiting all the moods
associated with love and betrayal, his chanting songlike tones,
is shown in the muscular responses of the listeners and their
shudders when the story ends. The supreme touch comes when Hugh
tells of the slaying of Jamie as if already done.
=19.= And his the purpose that is art’s, etc.
To centre attention on human experience at the crucial moment
and so render it immortal.
=20.= Whereby men make a vintage of their hearts etc.
Turn sorrow into beauty. Is there comfort in a sad story well
told?