He Is Supplied With Fresh Newspapers Three Or Four
Times A Day As He Passes By The Towns At Which They Are Published;
He Eats A Large Assortment Of Gum-Drops And Apples, And Is Quite As
Much At Home As In His Own House.
On board the river boats it is
the same with him, with this exception, that when there he can get
whisky when he wants it.
He knows nothing of the ennui of
traveling, and never seems to long for the end of his journey, as
travelers do with us. Should his boat come to grief upon the river,
and lay by for a day or a night, it does not in the least disconcert
him. He seats himself upon three chairs, takes a bite of tobacco,
thrusts his hand into his trowsers pockets, and revels in an elysium
of his own.
I was told that the stockholders in these boats were in a bad way at
the present time. There were no dividends going. The same story
was repeated as to many and many an investment. Where the war
created business, as it had done on some of the main lines of
railroad and in some special towns, money was passing very freely;
but away from this, ruin seemed to have fallen on the enterprise of
the country. Men were not broken hearted, nor were they even
melancholy; but they were simply ruined. That is nothing in the
States, so long as the ruined man has the means left to him of
supplying his daily wants till he can start himself again in life.
It is almost the normal condition of the American man in business;
and therefore I am inclined to think that when this war is over, and
things begin to settle themselves into new grooves, commerce will
recover herself more quickly there than she would do among any other
people.
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