Early on a Friday morning the train landed Dick in Cincinnati; and after eating breakfast in the railway restaurant he went down to the river front to look for a boat. The river was much larger than at Pittsburgh or Wheeling, but he was disappointed in the boats. He had read of the palatial Ohio and Mississippi steamboats running to New Orleans, with their luxurious cabins, hundreds of passengers, bands playing, cargo on all the decks. But, as far as he could see, in Cincinnati there was no boat to equal even the third-rate boats of the Hudson River. They were all stern wheelers, large enough but clumsy in shape, with their passenger accommodations all on the upper deck, which was supported by posts that looked entirely too small for the weight. On every boat the whole lower deck was open, exposing to view the engines and all the machinery. The Belle of the River, one of the largest of the Ohio River boats, was to start for New Orleans that afternoon, and Dick determined to take passage in her, at any rate as far as Memphis. The fare to Memphis, he learned, was only twelve dollars, including meals and stateroom, and the voyage might be made in a week, or it might take three times as long, according to circumstances. He could not buy a ticket, as he was in the habit of doing at home. There was a clerk in the little office on board; and the clerk kept a register in which each passenger wrote his name, just as in a hotel, and opposite the name the clerk wrote the passenger’s destination and the amount paid. “Oh, I wouldn’t start with you for anything, captain!” he heard one of the ladies of a large party say to the captain later in the day, when he had his trunk on board and was settled in his stateroom. “What in the world makes you start on a Friday? Such an unlucky day. We’re going to take the train to Louisville in the morning, and go on board there. None of us would think of starting on a journey on Friday.” “There’s a point!” Dick said to himself. “I wonder whether people are more superstitious down this way than they are at home. I must keep an eye open for that.” He had a chance to see more of it before he started. There were fifteen or twenty passengers that he saw or heard of, and perhaps more that he knew nothing about, who would not start on Friday, but waited to take the morning train and catch the boat at Louisville. And of those who did go many spoke of the unlucky day, and hoped that something would delay the boat until Saturday. Naturally Dick laughed at this folly; for a bright newspaper man has no superstitions about Friday or anything else. It is not luck that he relies upon, but pluck.