Life in the printing office was too monotonous; I wanted a more exciting scene of action. I used to watch the great river steamers come and go, and wondered if I could hold any kind of a position on one of them, except carrying freight, when by accident one day there came an opportunity. The steamer “Dick Johnson” was lying at the wharf loading hogsheads of tobacco, when the freight clerk was injured by a fall of the stage plank. The captain wanted someone to take his place, and my schoolmaster recommended me. Here was a chance to put in practice the bookkeeping I had studied under him. It was what I wanted—I could now get a glimpse of the outside world.
The position on the “Dick Johnson” was a stepping-stone, for in another year I was the mate of the steamer “Rapidan,” plying between Florence, Alabama, and Evansville, Indiana, and had thirty negroes under my control.
It was historic country through which we passed. The trees on the islands near Pittsburgh Landing yet showed signs of shot and shell fired by federal gunboats. Ofttimes some passenger who had been a participant on one side or the other at Shiloh, would entertain his listeners for hours with stories of the fight, until some of us younger officers became imbued with the war spirit.
The autumn of 1875 had come when yellow fever broke out aboard our boat, and we lay in quarantine two miles below Savannah, Tennessee, for a month. I stayed with the boat until we were released, and then went to my home in Newburgh, ill with malarial fever.
Stories of rich gold finds in the Northwest had been circulated through the newspapers, and one day I resolved to try my luck. The things we believe we are doing for the last time, always cause a pang of sorrow, and as I packed my valise on Sunday afternoon to leave forever the home of childhood, my feelings can be better imagined than described. My grandparents came over from their Kentucky home to bid me good-bye. When I was ready to start, grandfather took from his pocket a roll of bills, and placing them in my hands, said: “Here, Mackey, is your mule money, and I have added interest enough to make the sum total $500. I paid Mr. Woods for his mule, but I wanted to teach you a lesson. Profit by it, and make good use of the money, and say, Mackey, whatever you do in life, never insult a blind man, never strike a cripple and never marry a fool.”
It was the last time I ever saw the noble old guardian of my youth. The first two of his parting injunctions I have religiously obeyed.
[II.]
OUT FOR A FORTUNE.