“At any minute now,” he continued, “a bundle of drift or logs or weeds is like to come along and foul us, and then if that there wire gave way, where’d we be?”
I felt a little uncomfortable at the thought, I confess—Franklin’s good machine, his inability to swim, the eddying swiftness of this stream.
Fortunately, at this rate, the center was soon passed and we began to near the other shore. The current drove us up into a deep-cut shallow inlet, where they poled the punt close to shore and fastened it.
Then Bert had to make a swift run with the machine, for just beyond the end of the boat was a steep incline up which we all had to clamber.
“Don’t let ’er slip back on yer,” he cautioned. “If yer do, she’s like to go back in the water” ... and Bert sent “her” snorting uphill.
We paid the bill—fifty cents—(twentyfive of that being tacked on as a penalty for routing him out “tar-erd as he was” and fifteen cents extra for disturbing observations about drifts, lost automobiles, and the like). Then we bustled up and through an interesting, cleanly looking place called Hazleton (population twentyfive hundred) and so on toward Evansville, which we hoped surely to reach by midnight.
CHAPTER LV
A MINSTREL BROTHER
But we didn’t reach Evansville, for all our declaration and pretence of our need. A delightful run along a delightful road, overhung with trees (and now that we were out of the valley between the two rivers, cut between high banks of tree shaded earth), brought us to Princeton, a town so bright and clean looking that we were persuaded, almost against our wishes, to pass the night here. Some towns have just so much personality. They speak to you of pleasant homes and pleasant people—a genial atmosphere. Here, as elsewhere, indeed, in all but the poorest of these small midwestern towns, the center of it was graced by the court house, a very presentable building, and four brightly lighted business sides. The walks about the square were outlined, every fifty feet or less, by a five-lamp standard. The stores were large and clean and bright. A drug store we visited contained such an interesting array of postcards that I bought a dozen—pictures of great grain elevators, four or five of which we had seen on entering the town, sylvan scenes along the banks of the Patoka, a small lake or watering place called “Long Pond,” and scenes along tree sheltered roads. I liked the spirit of these small towns, quite common everywhere today, which seeks out the charms of the local life and embodies them in colored prints, and I said so.
Walk into any drug or book store of any up to date small town today, and you will find in a trice nearly every scene of importance and really learn the character and charms of the vicinity. Thus at Conneaut, Ohio, but for the picture postcards which chronicled the fact, we would never have seen the giant cranes which emptied steel cars like coalscuttles. Again, except for the picture postcards displayed, I would never have sensed the astonishing charms of Wilkes-Barré, Sandusky, or even my native Terre Haute. The picture cards told all, in a group, of what there was to see.
We discovered a most interesting and attractive quick lunch here, quite snowy and clean, with a bright, open grill at the back, and here, since we now were hungry again, we decided to eat. Franklin saw cantaloupes in the window and I announced that I had bought a picture card of a cantaloupe packing scene in a town called Cantaloupe, which, according to my ever ready map, was back on the road we had just come through.