Further Gossip; - After Which, Everybody Went Below To Get Afternoon
Coffee, And Left Me At The Wheel, Alone, Something Presently Reminded Me
Of Our Last Hour In St. Louis, Part Of Which I Spent On This Boat's
Hurricane Deck, Aft.
I was joined there by a stranger, who dropped into
conversation with me - a brisk young fellow, who said he was born in a
town in the interior of Wisconsin, and had never seen a steamboat until
a week before.
Also said that on the way down from La Crosse he had
inspected and examined his boat so diligently and with such passionate
interest that he had mastered the whole thing from stem to rudder-blade.
Asked me where I was from. I answered, New England. 'Oh, a Yank!' said
he; and went chatting straight along, without waiting for assent or
denial. He immediately proposed to take me all over the boat and tell me
the names of her different parts, and teach me their uses. Before I
could enter protest or excuse, he was already rattling glibly away at
his benevolent work; and when I perceived that he was misnaming the
things, and inhospitably amusing himself at the expense of an innocent
stranger from a far country, I held my peace, and let him have his way.
He gave me a world of misinformation; and the further he went, the wider
his imagination expanded, and the more he enjoyed his cruel work of
deceit. Sometimes, after palming off a particularly fantastic and
outrageous lie upon me, he was so 'full of laugh' that he had to step
aside for a minute, upon one pretext or another, to keep me from
suspecting.
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