The Pioneer gets
first to the mountain, and waits for the Express people to come up;
both sets of passengers being conveyed across it at the same time.
We were the Express company; but when we had crossed the mountain,
and had come to the second boat, the proprietors took it into their
beads to draft all the Pioneers into it likewise, so that we were
five-and-forty at least, and the accession of passengers was not at
all of that kind which improved the prospect of sleeping at night.
Our people grumbled at this, as people do in such cases; but
suffered the boat to be towed off with the whole freight aboard
nevertheless; and away we went down the canal. At home, I should
have protested lustily, but being a foreigner here, I held my
peace. Not so this passenger. He cleft a path among the people on
deck (we were nearly all on deck), and without addressing anybody
whomsoever, soliloquised as follows:
'This may suit YOU, this may, but it don't suit ME. This may be
all very well with Down Easters, and men of Boston raising, but it
won't suit my figure nohow; and no two ways about THAT; and so I
tell you. Now! I'm from the brown forests of Mississippi, I am,
and when the sun shines on me, it does shine - a little.
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