Short Stories and Essays

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But they could not, and there was nothing more surprising and delightful
in this blissful voyage than the evident fact that the old river traffic
had strongly survived, and seemed to be more strongly reviving. Perhaps
it was not; perhaps the fondness of those Ohio-river-born passengers was
abused by an illusion (as subjective as that of the buds and birds) of a
vivid variety of business and pleasure on the beloved stream. But again,
perhaps not. They were seldom out of sight of the substantial proofs of
both in the through or way packets they encountered, or the nondescript
steam craft that swarmed about the mouths of the contributory rivers, and
climbed their shallowing courses into the recesses of their remotest
hills, to the last lurking-places of their oil and coal.




VI.

The Avonek was always stopping to put off or take on merchandise or men.
She would stop for a single passenger, plaited in the mud with his
telescope valise or gripsack under the edge of a lonely cornfield, or to
gather upon her decks the few or many casks or bales that a farmer wished
to ship. She lay long hours by the wharf-boats of busy towns, exchanging
one cargo for another, in that anarchic fetching and carrying which we
call commerce, and which we drolly suppose to be governed by laws. But
wherever she paused or parted, she tested the pilot's marvellous skill;
for no landing, no matter how often she landed in the same place, could
be twice the same. At each return the varying stream and shore must be
studied, and every caprice of either divined. It was always a triumph,
a miracle, whether by day or by night, a constant wonder how under the
pilot's inspired touch she glided softly to her moorings, and without a
jar slipped from them again and went on her course.

But the landings by night were of course the finest. Then the wide fan
of the search-light was unfurled upon the point to be attained and the
heavy staging lowered from the bow to the brink, perhaps crushing the
willow hedges in it's fall, and scarcely touching the land before a
black, ragged deck-hand had run out through the splendor and made a line
fast to the trunk of the nearest tree. Then the work of lading or
unlading rapidly began in the witching play of the light that set into
radiant relief the black, eager faces and the black, eager figures of the
deck-hands struggling up or down the staging under boxes of heavy wares,
or kegs of nails, or bales of straw, or blocks of stone, steadily mocked
or cursed at in their shapeless effort, till the last of them reeled back
to the deck down the steep of the lifting stage, and dropped to his
broken sleep wherever he could coil himself, doglike, down among the
heaps of freight.

No dog, indeed, leads such a hapless life as theirs; and ah! and ah! why
should their sable shadows intrude in a picture that was meant to be all
so gay and glad? But ah! and ah! where, in what business of this hard
world, is not prosperity built upon the struggle of toiling men, who
still endeavor their poor best, and writhe and writhe under the burden of
their brothers above, till they lie still under the lighter load of their
mother earth?




PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:


Absence of distinction
Advertising
Aim at nothing higher than the amusement of your readers
Anise-seed bag
Any man's country could get on without him
Begun to fight with want from their cradles
Blasts of frigid wind swept the streets
Clemens is said to have said of bicycling
Could not, as the saying is, find a stone to throw at a dog
Disbeliever in punishments of all sorts
Do not want to know about such squalid lives
Early self-helpfulness of children is very remarkable
Encounter of old friends after the lapse of years
Even a day's rest is more than most people can bear
Eyes fixed steadfastly upon the future
Face that expresses care, even to the point of anxiety
For most people choice is a curse
General worsening of things, familiar after middle life
Happy in the indifference which ignorance breeds in us
Hard to think up anything new
Heart of youth aching for their stoical sorrows
Heighten our suffering by anticipation
If one were poor, one ought to be deserving
Lascivious and immodest as possible
Literary spirit is the true world-citizen
Look of challenge, of interrogation, almost of reproof
Malevolent agitators
Meet here to the purpose of a common ostentation
Neatness that brings despair
Noble uselessness
Openly depraved by shows of wealth
People have never had ideals, but only moods and fashions
People might oftener trust themselves to Providence
People of wealth and fashion always dissemble their joy
Plagiarism carries inevitable detection with it
Pure accident and by its own contributory negligence
Refused to see us as we see ourselves
Should be very sorry to do good, as people called it
So many millionaires and so many tramps
So touching that it brought the lump into my own throat
Solution of the problem how and where to spend the summer
Some of it's good, and most of it isn't
Some of us may be toys and playthings without reproach
Superiority one likes to feel towards the rich and great
Take our pleasures ungraciously
The old and ugly are fastidious as to the looks of others
They are so many and I am so few
Those who decide their fate are always rebelling against it
Those who work too much and those who rest too much
Unfailing American kindness
Visitors of the more inquisitive sex
We cannot all be hard-working donkeys
We who have neither youth nor beauty should always expect it
Whatever choice you make, you are pretty sure to regret it