house on the hurricane deck and looked out over the curving expanses of

the river sparkling in the sunlight. Sometimes the boat fought the

mid-stream current, with a verdant world on either hand, and remote from

both; sometimes she closed in under a point, where the dead water and the

helping eddies were, and shaved the bank so closely that the decks were

swept by the jungle of over-hanging willows and littered with a spoil of

leaves; departing from these "points" she regularly crossed the river

every five miles, avoiding the "bight" of the great binds and thus

escaping the strong current; sometimes she went out and skirted a high

"bluff" sand-bar in the middle of the stream, and occasionally followed

it up a little too far and touched upon the shoal water at its head--and

then the intelligent craft refused to run herself aground, but "smelt"

the bar, and straightway the foamy streak that streamed away from her

bows vanished, a great foamless wave rolled forward and passed her under

way, and in this instant she leaned far over on her side, shied from the

bar and fled square away from the danger like a frightened thing--and the

pilot was lucky if he managed to "straighten her up" before she drove her

nose into the opposite bank; sometimes she approached a solid wall of

tall trees as if she meant to break through it, but all of a sudden a

little crack would open just enough to admit her, and away she would go

plowing through the "chute" with just barely room enough between the

island on one side and the main land on the other; in this sluggish water

she seemed to go like a racehorse; now and then small log cabins appeared

in little clearings, with the never-failing frowsy women and girls in

soiled and faded linsey-woolsey leaning in the doors or against woodpiles

and rail fences, gazing sleepily at the passing show; sometimes she found

The Gilded Age