considerable difficulty that the pilot balanced himself in any such position. While they were stooping, off started Dan in their rear, and, to keep up the scene, off they started in pursuit; Dan, according to plot, hid behind the r. h. wing, front--his pursuers should here pass him and cross the stage, allowing him, by a Yankee trick, to escape; but that portion of the plot Gus, the pilot, had forgotten; he, therefore, came to a dead halt and looked round for Dan; there he was, and out shouted Gus: “Come out, old fellar--I see you!” Dan shook his head and signed for them to go on. “No you don't,” says the pilot; “we caught you fair, and I'm be d--d if you shan't treat!” The effect was irresistible; Dan had to give in, and the curtain dropped before a delighted audience--a-collapsed pair of deer-skin breeches, and upon the first night of the drama in Grand River. The owner of the cat-skin cap and deer-skin breeches maintains, to this day, that the pilot was Dan Marble. “Them other fellars,” says he, “done pooty well, but any 'coon, with half an eye, could see that that fat fellar did the naturalest acting!” A CANAL ADVENTURE. “Oh hapless our fate was, each one and all, For we were wreck-ed on the Erie Canal,” Old Ballad. |On an evening in the month of July, 1836, I embarked at Lockport, in company with some fourteen passengers, on board an Erie Canal packet, destined for Rochester. It will be remembered that this was during the great migrating period in the United States, when all nations and pursuits had representatives on our principal travelling routes. Our party was no sooner aboard than the “bold captain” gave the word, the horses were got “under weigh,” the feathers set, and all hands called to pick out their shelf--a six foot-by-one convenience, suspended by cords--upon which they stowed away passengers for the night. Babel never heard a greater confusion of tongues than this call set wagging. But above them all was heard the silver tone of a travelling exquisite, piping out:-- “I-aw am first, cap'en, really,--I claim pwior choice, I do, dem if I don't.” Happening to be first on the register, it was accorded, and the captain suggested a locker berth, as the most comfortable. “No! no!--dem,--beg you-a pawden, cap'en,” shouted the exquisite, “some gwos, fat individual, might get on the upa shelf and bweak down,--I should be mangled howibly.” “Be jabers, I'd like to hev the squazin of him, me-silf,” said a burly Irishman. “They'd better spill a leettle smellin' stuff on the pesky animal, or he'll spile before mornin',” chimed in a Yankee.