Her loyalty to her husband rather modified the expression of her views, yet she often expatiated to her eldest on his advantages, beginning, "There's your father, Connor--I hope you'll be as good a man! remember it wasn't the fashion in the ould country to bother over the little black letters--people don't _have_ to read there--but you just mind your books, and some day you may come to be a conductor, and snap a punch of your own." No doubt Connor made good resolutions, but when he sat by the window in the school-room and looked at the dimpling, sparkling river, so suggestive of fishing, or at the green trees filled with birds, he was not as devoted to literature as a free-born expectant American citizen ought to be. The teacher was somewhat strict, and it may have been in some of her passes with Connor, the "bubblingoverest" of all her youngsters, that she earned the name of a "daisy lammer." But the boy knew some things by heart that could not be learned at school. To his ear, the steam whistle of each boat spoke its name as plainly as if it could talk. He need not look to tell whether a passing train was on the O. & M. or on the I.C. & L. He knew the name of every fiery engine, and felt an admiration--a real friendship for the resistless creatures. To climb a tree was as easy for him as if he were a cat; there were rumors that he had worked himself to the top of the tall flag-staff--which was as smooth as a greased pole--but I will not vouch for their truth. He could swim like a duck, and paddled about on a board in the river till an ill-natured flat-boatman often snarled out that "that youngster would certain be drowned, if he wasn't born to be hanged." But the delight of Connor's life was to "catch the first wave" from a big steamer. Dennis Maloney was his comrade in this perilous game. They rowed their egg-shell of a boat close to the wheel. Drenched with spray--for a moment they felt the wild excitement of danger. Four alert eyes, four steady hands kept them from being sucked under--then came the triumph of meeting the first wave that left the steamboat, and the extatic rocking motion of the skiff as she rode the other waves in the wake--but to catch the first was the point in the frolic! Connor was known to many of the pilots as an adept in "catching the first wave." Sometimes he was "tipped" by an unlooked for motion of the machinery, but was as certain as an india-rubber ball to rise to the surface, and a swim to shore was but fun to the young Magan.