As they pursued their
jog-trot journey along the Salt Hay Road, and came to Ephraim Morse's
cottage, they saw Susan sitting in a shady little porch, at the front
door, shelling peas, and looking down the bay.
"How is everything, Susan?" called out Captain Seth; "'bout time for Eph
to be gitt'n' in?"
"Yes," she answered, nodding and smiling, and pointing with a pea-pod;
"that's our boat, just coming up to the wharf, with her peak down."
THE DENVER EXPRESS.
BY A.A. HAYES.
I.
Any one who has seen an outward-bound clipper ship getting under way and
heard the "shanty-songs" sung by the sailors as they toiled at capstan
and halliards, will probably remember that rhymeless but melodious
refrain--
"I'm bound to see its muddy waters
Yeo ho! that rolling river;
Bound to see its muddy waters
Yeo ho! the wild Missouri."
Only a happy inspiration could have impelled Jack to apply the adjective
"wild" to that ill-behaved and disreputable river, which, tipsily
bearing its enormous burden of mud from the far North-west, totters,
reels, runs its tortuous course for hundreds on hundreds of miles; and
which, encountering the lordly and thus far well-behaved Mississippi at
Alton, and forcing its company upon this splendid river (as if some
drunken fellow should lock arms with a dignified pedestrian),
contaminates it all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.
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