Chapter 36

Chapter 36
The Professor's Yarn

IT was in the early days. I was not a college professor then.
I was a humble-minded young land-surveyor, with the world before me--
to survey, in case anybody wanted it done. I had a contract to survey
a route for a great mining-ditch in California, and I was on my way thither,
by sea--a three or four weeks' voyage. There were a good many passengers,
but I had very little to say to them; reading and dreaming were my passions,
and I avoided conversation in order to indulge these appetites.
There were three professional gamblers on board--rough, repulsive fellows.
I never had any talk with them, yet I could not help seeing them
with some frequency, for they gambled in an upper-deck stateroom every
day and night, and in my promenades I often had glimpses of them
through their door, which stood a little ajar to let out the surplus
tobacco smoke and profanity. They were an evil and hateful presence,
but I had to put up with it, of course,

There was one other passenger who fell under my eye a good deal,
for he seemed determined to be friendly with me, and I could not have
gotten rid of him without running some chance of hurting his feelings,
and I was far from wishing to do that. Besides, there was something engaging
in his countrified simplicity and his beaming good-nature. The first time
I saw this Mr. John Backus, I guessed, from his clothes and his looks,
that he was a grazier or farmer from the backwoods of some western State--
doubtless Ohio--and afterward when he dropped into his personal history
and I discovered that he WAS a cattle-raiser from interior Ohio,
I was so pleased with my own penetration that I warmed toward him for
verifying my instinct.

He got to dropping alongside me every day, after breakfast,
to help me make my promenade; and so, in the course of time,
his easy-working jaw had told me everything about his business,
his prospects, his family, his relatives, his politics--
in fact everything that concerned a Backus, living or dead.
And meantime I think he had managed to get out of me everything
I knew about my trade, my tribe, my purposes, my prospects,
and myself. He was a gentle and persuasive genius, and this thing
showed it; for I was not given to talking about my matters.
I said something about triangulation, once; the stately word
pleased his ear; he inquired what it meant; I explained;
after that he quietly and inoffensively ignored my name,
and always called me Triangle.

What an enthusiast he was in cattle! At the bare name of a bull or a cow,
his eye would light and his eloquent tongue would turn itself loose. As long
as I would walk and listen, he would walk and talk; he knew all breeds,
he loved all breeds, he