"Well, James, what are you doing here?" said the canal-boat captain.
"Anything to make a living. I came here to ship on the lake, but they bluffed me off and called me a country greenhorn."
"You'd better try your hand on smaller waters first," said his cousin; "I should like to have you work for me, but I've nothing better to offer you than a driver's berth at twelve dollars a month."
"I must do something," answered James, "and if that is the best you can offer me, I'll take the team."
"It was imagination that took me upon the canal," he said, years after; and it is easy to see how fascinating the trips from Cleveland to Pittsburgh seemed at that time to the inquiring boy.
The "Evening Star" had a capacity of seventy tons, and it was manned, as most of the canal-boats were, with two steersmen, two drivers, a bowsman, and a cook. The bowsman stood in the forward part of the boat, made ready the locks, and threw the bow-line around the snubbing-post. The drivers had two mules each, which were driven tandem, and, after serving a number of hours on the tow-path, they took turns in going on board with their mules.
James had hardly taken his place behind "Kit and Nance," as his team was called, when he heard the captain call out,--
"Careful, Jim, there's a boat coming." The boy had seen it, and was trying to pass it to the best of his ability. But his inexperience and haste occasioned a sudden tightening of the reins, and, before any one quite knew what had happened, both driver and mules were jerked into the canal. For a few seconds it seemed as if they would go to the bottom, but James was equal to the emergency, and, getting astride the forward mule, kept his head above water until rescue came. This was his initiation in canal-boat driving, and the adventure was a standing joke among his comrades for a long time.
When they came to the "Eleven-Mile Lock," the captain ordered a change of teams, and James went on board with his mules.
Letcher, who is still living in Bryan, Ohio, gives the following account of his talk with the boy as they were passing the locks:
"I thought I'd sound Jim on education--in the rudiments of geography, arithmetic and grammar. For I was just green enough in those days to imagine I knew it all. I had been teaching school for three months in the backwoods of Steuben County, Indiana. So I asked him several questions, and he answered them all; and then he asked me several that I could not answer. I told him he had too good a head to be a common canal-hand."