“The very identical moment the first drop of Erie water entered the canal at Buffalo, a cannon was fired. Eight miles away stood another cannon and the minute that cannoneer heard the first shot, he fired the second cannon. Eight miles away was another, and so on all the way to Sandy Hook. For more than five hundred miles the cannon were lined up eight miles apart and it took only an hour and twenty minutes for the news to reach New York, and then they sent the news back to Buffalo the same way; and so it took less than three hours to send a message more than a thousand miles. Wasn’t that wonderful?”
The children wriggled impatiently and said, “Please, grampa, the bands are playing. We’d better hurry.”
The old man held them tighter and went on:
“When the canal boats reached New York there was a grand procession of ships, and there were two elegant kegs of Erie water with gold hoops and Governor Clinton emptied one of them into the ocean to marry the sea to the lakes; and another man poured in phials of water from the Elbe, the Rhine, the Rhone, and all the rivers and seas. And the land parade, you should have seen that! All the societies had wagons: the Hatters’ Society with men making hats before your very eyes; the Rope-makers with a ropewalk in operation; the comb-makers, the cordwainers, the printers printing an ode. To-day will be nothing to what people did when I was young, for in those days——”
But the children had broken away from his sharp knees and his fat stomach and his mildewed legends. The band outside was irresistible, and their father was waiting to say good-by to them.
Keith was mighty proud of his father in his fireman’s uniform. But when RoBards seized Immy, tossed her aloft and brought her down to the level of his lips, she was as wildly afraid as Hector’s child had been of him in his great helmet. Immy was easily frightened now. Her scream pierced the air, and she almost had a fit, squirming in her father’s arms and kicking him in the breast as he turned her over to Patty, who received her, wondering like another Andromache.
“What’s the matter? what on earth?” Patty cried. And Immy sobbed:
“I thought Papa was Jud Lasher.”
“What a funny thought! Why should you——”
Patty’s father called to her opportunely, demanding with senile querulousness, who had hidden his walking stick and where. RoBards forgave the old man much for playing providence this once.