Life Alone

When I was a very young man, I had occasion to travel two hundred miles down the valley of the Connecticut River. I had just finished a delightful summer excursion in the service of the State of New Hampshire as a geologist,--and I left the other geological surveyors at Haverhill.

I remembered John Ledyard. Do you, dear Young America? John Ledyard, having determined to leave Dartmouth College, built himself a boat, or digged for himself a canoe, and sailed down on the stream reading the Greek Testament, or "Plutarch's Lives," I forget which, on the way.

Here was I, about to go down the same river. I had ten dollars in my pocket, be the same more or less. Could not I buy a boat for seven, my provant for a week for three more, and so arrive in Springfield in ten days' time, go up to the Hardings' and spend the night, and go down to Boston, on a free pass I had, the next day?

Had I been as young as I am now, I should have done that thing. I wanted to do it then, but there were difficulties.

First, whatever was to be done must be done at once. For, if I were delayed only a day at Haverhill, I should have, when I had paid my bill, but eight dollars and a half left. Then how buy the provant for three dollars, and the boat for six?

So I went at once to the seaport or maritime district of that flourishing town, to find, to my dismay, that there was no boat, canoe, dug-out, or batteau,--there was nothing. As I remember things now, there was not any sort of coffin that would ride the waves in any sort of way.

There were, however, many pundits, or learned men. They are a class of people I have always found in places or occasions where something besides learning was needed. They tried, as is the fashion of their craft, to make good the lack of boats by advice.

First, they proved that it would have been of no use had there been any boats. Second, they proved that no one ever had gone down from Haverhill in a boat at that season of the year,--ergo, that no one ought to think of going. Third, they proved, what I knew very well before, that I could go down much quicker in the stage. Fourth, with astonishing unanimity they agreed, that, if I would only go down as far as Hanover, there would be plenty of boats; the river would have more water in it; I should be past this fall and that fall, this rapid and that rapid; and, in short, that, before the worlds were, it seemed predestined that I should start from Hanover.

All this they said in that seductive way in which a dry-goods clerk tells you that he has no checked gingham, and makes you think you are a fool that you asked for checked gingham; that you never should have asked, least of all, should have asked him.

So I left the beach at Haverhill, disconcerted, disgraced, conscious of my own littleness and folly, and, as I was bid, took passage in the Telegraph coach for Hanover, giving orders that I should