Canal Reminiscences / Recollections of Travel in the Old Days on the James River & Kanawha Canal

Recollections of Travel in the Old Days ON THE James River & Kanawha Canal.
BY GEORGE W. BAGBY.
RICHMOND: West, Johnston & Co., Publishers. 1879.
Copyright Secured. Printed by Whittet & Shepperson, Richmond, Va.

My first thought was to print these reminiscences in a newspaper. But our papers are unable to pay for contributions. It was not so in the former days. Well do I remember when the Dispatch cheerfully gave me its dollars, not merely for stories and sketches, but for trifles like the “ Weekly Rekord uv amewsments ,” which I then kept, and which seemed to please our good people of Richmond, who were then doing so well in business that they were easily pleased. And truly in those times they were a liberal, open-hearted set. So would they be now were they able.
Will we ever see good times and plenty of money again? I think so. And yet often I get very blue, apprehending still greater business troubles, culminating in I know not what of civil disaster. It is touching to me, going around, as I have had to do a great deal of late, among our business men, to see their sad faces, and yet their evident anxiety in the midst of worries and cares, to help one who is even worse off than themselves. We have good stock here—men who would honor any city in the land, and who make up a community in which it is a pleasure to live. Here and there you find one, two, or three close-fisted fellows, who dodge you for fear you will ask them for something. That is to their credit, for it shows that they have feeling and a sense of shame. And again you meet positive brutes, who are not merely stingy and mean, but ill-mannered and under-bred to boot. But these serve as foils to set off their better brethren to more advantage; and I, for one, am not the man to abuse stingy people. They have one magnificent trait to counterpoise their littleness—they pay their debts, and pay them promptly. So, take it all in all, Richmond is about as good a place to live in as a man will find on this globe, as I have learned by playing book-canvasser,—an excellent school for the study of men.