On leaving, I casually mentioned my desire to photograph the family on the porch, where the light was good. While I walked around the house outside, they passed through the front room, which seemed to be the common dormitory as well as parlor. To my surprise and chagrin, the girls and their dowdy mother had, in those brief moments of transition, contrived to arrange their hair and dress to a degree which took from them all those picturesque qualities with which they had been invested at the time of my arrival. The father was being reproved, as he emerged upon the porch, for not "slick'n' his ha'r, and wash'n' and fix'n' up, afore hay'n' his pictur' taken;" but the old fellow was obdurate, and joined me in remonstrance against this transformation to the commonplace, on the part of his women-folk. However, there was no profit in arguing with them, and I took my snap-shot with a conviction that the film was being wasted.
We were in several small towns to-day, in pursuance of the policy of distributing our shopping, so as to see as much of the shore life as practicable. Chief among them have been New Matamoras (141 miles) and St. Mary's (154 miles), in West Virginia, and Newport, in Ohio (155 miles). Rather dingy villages, these—each, after their kind, with a stone wharf thick-grown with weeds; a flouring mill at the head of the landing; a few cheap-looking, battlemented stores; boys and men lounging about with that air of comfortable idling which impresses one as the main characteristic of rustic hamlets, where nobody seems ever to have anything to do; a ferry running to the opposite shore—for cattle and wagons, a heavy flat, with railings, made to drift with the current; and for foot passengers, a lumbering skiff, with oars chucking noisily in their roomy locks.
Every now and then we run across bunches of oil and gas wells; and great signs, like those advertising boards which greet railway travelers approaching our large cities, are here and there perched upon the banks, notifying steamboat pilots, in letters a foot high, that a pipe line here crosses the river, the vicinity being consequently unsafe for mooring.
Our camp, to-night, is on a bit of grassy ledge at the summit of a rocky bank, ten miles above Marietta, on the Ohio side. A rod or so back of us is the country road, which winds along at the foot of a precipitous steep. It is narrow quarters here, and too near the highway for comfort, but nothing better seemed to offer at the time we needed it; and the outlook is pleasant, through the fringing oaks and elms, across the broad river into West Virginia.
We had not yet pitched tent, and all hands were still clambering over the rocks with Pilgrim's cargo, rather glad that there was no more of it, when our first camp-bore appeared—a middling-sized man, florid as to complexion, with a mustache and goatee, and in a suit of seedy black, surmounted by a crushed-in Derby hat; and, after the fashion of the country, giving evidence, on his collarless white shirt, of a free use of chewing tobacco. I have seldom met a fellow with better staying qualities. He was a strawberry grower, he said, and having been into Newport, a half dozen miles up river, was walking to his home, which was a mile or two off in the hills. Would we object if, for a few moments, he tarried here by the roadside? and perhaps we could accommodate him with a drink of water? Patiently did he watch the preparation of dinner, and spice each dish with commendations of W——'s skill at making the most of her few utensils.
Right glibly he chattered on; now about the decadence of womankind; now about strawberry-growing upon these Ohio hills—with the crop just coming on, and berries selling at a shilling to-day, in Marietta, when they ought to be worth twenty cents; now on politics, and of course he was a Populist; now on the hard times, and did we believe in free silver? He would take no bite with us, but sat and talked and talked, despite plain hints, growing plainer with the progress of time, that his family needed him at nightfall. Dinner was eaten, and dishes washed; the others left on a botanical round-up, and I produced my writing materials, with remarks upon the lateness of the hour. At last our guest arose, shook the grass from his clothes, with a shake of hands bade me good-night, wishing me to convey his "good-bye" to the rest of our party, and as politely as possible expressed the great pleasure which the visit had given him.
Some farmer boys came down the hillside to fish at the bank, and talked pleasantly of their work and of the ever-changing phases of the river. Other farmers passed our roadside door, in wagons, on buckboards, by horseback, and on foot; in neighborly tone, but with ill-disguised curiosity in their eyes, wishing me good evening. When the long twilight was almost gone, and the moon an hour high over the purple dusk of the West Virginia hills, the botanists returned, aglow with their exercise, and rich with trophies of blue and dwarf larkspur, pink and white stone-crop, trailing arbutus, and great laurel.
And then, as we were preparing to retire, a sleek and dapper fellow, though with clothes rather the worse for wear, came trudging along the road toward Marietta. Seeing our camp, he asked for a drink. Being apparently disposed to tarry, the Doctor, to get him started, offered to walk a piece with him. Our comrade staid out so long, that at last I went down the road in search of him, and found the pair sitting on a moonlit bank, as cozily as if they had been always friends. The stranger had revealed to the Doctor that he was a street fakir, "by perfesh," and had "struck it rich" in Chicago during the World's Fair, but somehow had lost the greater part of his gains, and was now associated with his brother, who had a junk-boat; the brother was "well heeled," and staid and kept store at the boat, while the fakir, as the walking partner, "rustled 'round 'mong th' grangers, to stir up trade." The Doctor had, in their talk, let slip something about certain Florida experiences, and when I arrived on the scene was being skillfully questioned by his companion as to the probabilities of "a feller o' my perfesh ketch'n' on, down thar?" The result of this pumping process must have been satisfactory: for when we parted with him, the fakir declared he was "go'n' try't on thar, next winter, 'f I bust me bottom dollar!"