Letcher, who is still living in Bryan, Ohio, gives the following account of his talk with the boy as they were passing the locks:
"I thought I'd sound Jim on education—in the rudiments of geography, arithmetic and grammar. For I was just green enough in those days to imagine I knew it all. I had been teaching school for three months in the backwoods of Steuben County, Indiana. So I asked him several questions, and he answered them all; and then he asked me several that I could not answer. I told him he had too good a head to be a common canal-hand."
One evening when the "Evening Star" was drawing near the twenty-one locks of Akron, the captain sent his bowsman to make the first lock ready. Just as he got there, a voice hailed him through the darkness. It was from a boat above that had reached the locks first.
"We are just around the bend," said her bowsman, "all ready to enter."
"Can't help it!" shouted the bowsman of the "Evening Star," with a volley of oaths; "we've got to hev this lock first!"
The captain was so used to these contests on the canal that he did not often interfere, but it was a new experience to James. He tapped his cousin Amos on the shoulder, and said,—
"Does that lock belong to us?"
"Well, I suppose not, according to law," was the answer, "but we will have it, anyhow."
"No! we will not!" he exclaimed.
"But why?" said the captain.