I was small for my age, and like most runts I was stronger than I
looked, and gave many a driver boy a bad surprise. I never was whipped,
though I was pummeled severely at times. When the fight grew warm enough
I began to see red, and to cry like a baby, boring in and clinching in a
mad sort of way; and these young roughs knew that a boy who fought and
cried at the same time had to be killed before he would say enough. So I
never said enough; and in my second year I found I had quite a
reputation as a fighter--but I never got any joy out of it.
If I could have forgotten my wish to see my mother it would have been in
many ways a pleasant life to me. I was never tired of the new and
strange things I saw--new regions, new countries. I was amazed at the
Montezuma Marsh, with its queer trade of selling flags, for chair seats
and the like--and I was almost eaten alive by the mosquitoes while
passing through it. Our boat floated along through the flags, the horses
on a tow-path just wide enough to enable the teams to pass, with bog on
one side and canal on the other, water birds whistling and calling,
frogs croaking, and water-lilies dotting every open pool. My spirits
soared as I passed spots where the view was not shut off by the reeds,
and I could look out over the great expanse of flags, just as my heart
rose when I first looked upon the Iowa prairies. The Fairport level gave
me another thrill--an embankment a hundred feet high with the canal on
the top of it, a part of a seventeen-mile level, like a river on
a hilltop.
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