And Then You Have The
Shining River, Winding Here And There And Yonder, Its Sweep Interrupted
At Intervals By Clusters
Of wooded islands threaded by silver channels;
and you have glimpses of distant villages, asleep upon capes; and of
stealthy
Rafts slipping along in the shade of the forest walls; and of
white steamers vanishing around remote points. And it is all as tranquil
and reposeful as dreamland, and has nothing this-worldly about it -
nothing to hang a fret or a worry upon.
Until the unholy train comes tearing along - which it presently does,
ripping the sacred solitude to rags and tatters with its devil's
warwhoop and the roar and thunder of its rushing wheels - and straightway
you are back in this world, and with one of its frets ready to hand for
your entertainment: for you remember that this is the very road whose
stock always goes down after you buy it, and always goes up again as
soon as you sell it. It makes me shudder to this day, to remember that
I once came near not getting rid of my stock at all. It must be an awful
thing to have a railroad left on your hands.
The locomotive is in sight from the deck of the steamboat almost the
whole way from St. Louis to St. Paul - eight hundred miles. These
railroads have made havoc with the steamboat commerce. The clerk of our
boat was a steamboat clerk before these roads were built. In that day
the influx of population was so great, and the freight business so
heavy, that the boats were not able to keep up with the demands made
upon their carrying capacity; consequently the captains were very
independent and airy - pretty 'biggity,' as Uncle Remus would say.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 469 of 539
Words from 129197 to 129493
of 148123
