But what fun it was! In
after years a steam whistle woke the echoes of these quiet waters.
It was the first one, and the last. The railroad, indeed, came
to town, long after I had grown to be a man, and a cotton-mill
interjected its bustle into the drowsy hum of the waterwheels that
had monopolized the industry of the tovn before, disturbing its
harmony for a season. But the steamboat had no successors.
[Illustration: The gossip benches are filled]
The river that had once borne large ships gradually sanded up at
the mouth, and nothing heavier than a one-masted lighter has come
up, in the memory of man, to the quay where grass grows high among
the cobblestones and the lone customs official smokes his pipe
all day long in unbroken peace. The steamer was a launch of the
smallest. It had been brought across country on a wagon. Some
one had bought it at an auction for a lark; and a huge lark was
its year on the waters of the Nibs River. The whole town took a
sail in it by turns, always with one aft whose business it was to
disentangle the rudder from the mass of seaweed which with brief
intervals suspended progress, and all hands ready to get out and
lift the steamer off when it ran on a bank.
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