Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/329

292 a canal-boat, and asked the man at the wheel where he was going to stop for the night.

"We don't stop; we go on all night," he said; "and if you fellows want to come on board, you can lift your boats on deck, and you're very welcome."

We thanked him; read "yes" in each other's eyes; and in five minutes the canoes were on board, and we were having a new and pleasant sensation.

The canal-boat is no greyhound: it moves solemnly and firmly at the rate of two miles an hour; but it pushes ahead day and night, and, like the tortoise of the fable, it might win a race against a heedless hare. The Susquehanna Canal Company's service employs about two thousand men and boys, and heaven knows how many mules. And splendid mules they are, big as horses almost, and comely to the eye. They impressed my companion so much that in his speech at Wilkesbarre, two days later, he made the audience gasp by opening with the emphatic assertion that the Democratic party was like a mule? "Because," said he, "it is patient, intelligent, good-humored, hard-working,—and handsome! "The Jeffersonians breathed a sigh of relief, and then enjoyed the simile.

Tom Elder was the captain's name, and he had