We camped on the boiler deck, and bought some
cheap literature to kill time with.
The vender was a venerable Irishman
with a benevolent face and a tongue that worked easily in the socket,
and from him we learned that he had lived in St. Louis thirty-four years
and had never been across the river during that period. Then he wandered
into a very flowing lecture, filled with classic names and allusions,
which was quite wonderful for fluency until the fact became rather
apparent that this was not the first time, nor perhaps the fiftieth,
that the speech had been delivered. He was a good deal of a character,
and much better company than the sappy literature he was selling. A
random remark, connecting Irishmen and beer, brought this nugget of
information out of him -
They don't drink it, sir. They can't drink it, sir. Give an Irishman
lager for a month, and he's a dead man. An Irishman is lined with
copper, and the beer corrodes it. But whiskey polishes the copper and is
the saving of him, sir.'
At eight o'clock, promptly, we backed out and crossed the river. As we
crept toward the shore, in the thick darkness, a blinding glory of white
electric light burst suddenly from our forecastle, and lit up the water
and the warehouses as with a noon-day glare. Another big change, this -
no more flickering, smoky, pitch-dripping, ineffectual torch-baskets,
now: their day is past.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 199 of 539
Words from 54918 to 55170
of 148123
