Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 August 1889 — An Old Boatman’s Lament. [ARTICLE]

An Old Boatman’s Lament.

An elderly grizzled man sat on the string of a wharf below Coenties slip the other evening just as it was growing dark, and gazed in a melancholy sort of a way over the several acres of canal boats lying in that part of the East river, says the New York Mail and Express. “Things is gettin’ wuss and wuss here all the time,” he remarked at last to a companion. “How is that?” inquired the listener. “How? How enuff,” was the gruff response. “Hev ye seen a fight ’round 1 here fer more’n a week ? Of course ye ain’t. I ain’t seed but one in more’n a month, and that wuzn’t a good one. I kin remember w’en we us’ter have ’em every night—two or three of ’em! Yes, sir; b’gosh! an’ they wuz good ones, too, “But there ain’t no more fun ’round here any more. There ain’t nothin’. Why, if you listen you can’t hear a sound on any of them boats; nary a sound. W’y, I kin remember a few years ago, w’en you could hear fifty ’cordeens goin’ on them boats. Every cannier that wuzn’t a fighter had a ’cordeen or a poll parrot, and es you did’t care for fightin’, why, you could have a dance on the dock or some of the boats, while the cap’n played on the ’cordeen. Similarly, if you wanted fightin’, yer could have oceans of it. “But there ain’t no more of it,” continued the veteran, with a sigh. “There ain’t no fightin’, there ain’t no parrots, there ain’t no ’cordeens nor dancin’, there ain’t no fun, there ain’t no nothin’. and b’gosh! I think I’ll give up the hull thing an’ go to drivin’ a truck.” With this the old man struck his pipe so viciously against the string piece that the head of it broke off and fell into the water, after which the veteran jAunged into a deep and dejected silence as he meditated on the days that are not any more.