It was a hot and dusty ride to Morrison, where I found a brass band serenading a leading citizen. "This won't do," said I; and making Mac bray, I blew my bugle, and at once turned the tide of popularity in our favor. The fickle crowd soon gathered and cheered me to the hotel, while the jilted band had the brass to march down the street past me, blowing itself with might and main until lost to view, not once thinking that distance lent enchantment to my ear. Next day we made slow headway to the Mississippi.
As I approached the "Father of Waters" the land, as well as my donkeys, were more rolling. Several times when wading through a pool of dust, Cheese III, alias Poodle, would suddenly stop, circle about, kneel and roll with all the paraphernalia he was carrying. Then my steed would follow suit, before I could get out of the saddle.
Thirteen miles from Morrison lay the village of Fulton, on the banks of the Mississippi, and it was 4:30 P. M. before we arrived at the big high bridge. The bridge approach on each side of the river crosses a broad stretch of lowlands which at certain seasons is inundated. My donkeys refused to pass the toll-gate, although I had paid the toll. I demanded of Mac an explanation. He maintained silence, as did Cheese, and neither of them would budge. A squad of laborers, amused at my plight, asserted their donkey nature by imitating an ass's bray, and so perfect was the imitation that my animals took them for donkeys disguised in human apparel, and joined in the awful chorus. Presently a timid woman following us with a terpsichorean horse called to me and gesticulated wildly. I feared a runaway and was at a loss to know how to urge my contrary animals on, but before long a double dray team came to my assistance. The teamster roped Mac to the rear axle of his wagon, cracked his whip, and drove on, dragging the obdurate donkey on his haunches across the bridge, while Cheese crept closely behind in fear and trembling.
When I had crossed the Mississippi it was exactly seventeen minutes past five.
As we wended our way into Clinton, Ia., cheers greeted us from every quarter. "The streets were rife with people pacing restless up and down;" but soon all footsteps followed in one direction, to the Reviere House, where I took advantage of the favorable circumstances to make a speech, and to dispose of a host of my chromos.
I had traveled thirteen hundred and sixty miles, about one-third of the distance by trail from New York to San Francisco, and had consumed one hundred and sixty days; and there was left me only one hundred and eighty-one days in which to accomplish the remaining two-thirds of my journey.
[CHAPTER XXIII.]
Mac crosses the Mississippi
BY MAC A'RONY.
Hell is paved with good intentions.—Samuel Johnson.