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Show ioo Early Western Travels [ Vol. 26 coffin'd " in the Mississippi, with a broad grin upon his phiz. In alluding to the race which took place during our passage, honourable mention was made of a certain worthy individual whose vocation was to feed the furnaces; and one bright morning, when all the others of our company had bestowed themselves in their berths because of the intolerable [ 71] heat, I took occasion to visit the sooty Charon in the purgatorial realms over which he wielded the sceptre. " Grievous work this building fires under a sun like that," was the salutation, as my friend the fireman had just completed the toilsome operation once more of stuffing the furnace, while floods of perspiration were coursing down a chest hairy as Esau's in the Scripture, and as brawny. Hereupon honest Charon lifted up his face, and drawing a dingy shirt sleeve with emphasis athwart his eyes, bleared with smut, responded, " Ay, ay, sir; it's a sin to Moses, such a trade;" and seizing incontinently upon a fragment of tin, fashioned by dint of thumping into a polygonal dipper of unearthly dimensions, he scooped up a quantity of the turbid fluid through which we were moving, and deep, deep was the potation which, like a succession of rapids, went gurgling down his throat. Marvellously refreshed, the worthy genius dilated, much to my edification, upon the glories of a fireman's life. " Upon this hint I spake " touching the topic of our recent race; and then were the strings of the old worthy's tongue let loose; and vehemently amplified he upon " our smart chance of a gallop " and " the slight sprinkling of steam he had managed to push up." " Ah, stranger, I'll allow, and couldn't I have teetotally obfusticated her, and right mightily used her up, hadn't it been I was sort of bashful as to keeping path with such a cursed old mud- turtle 1 But it's all done gone;" and the droughty Charon seized another swig from the un- |
