Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 June 1890 — Life on the Canal. [ARTICLE]

Life on the Canal.

From the opening of summer nntil the end of autumn, five thousand families voyage on the New York canals, in the winter taking up a habitation in the harbor. Then the children go to the public schools, and the young people to dances; the lovers to courting aud the old folks visit. Five blessed months are speut in enjoying life, and if the earnings from the seven busy months on the water do not permit of the snug little sum of five hundred dollars being l»id aside for a rainy day, after the 1 ving and pleasures of the winter’s vacation have been paid for, the season is lamented as having been a very poor one. The c nil boatman knows the world better than the world knows him. His daughters are in Vassar; his sons in Yale and Harvard and Princeton. He is perhaps a college graduate himself, and, indeed, many of the boatmen are. He has a comfortable fortune accumulated, or a good foundation for it laid. He has spending money in no mean measure, and he is happy. When his sons and daughters have graduated they will come hack to the canal for a summer vacation, but when tbe winter sets in future doctors, lawyers, ministers, missionaries—perhaps another President —will go out from the old canal-boat home aud bid it a tearful farewell forever. Many of the children, though, ire satisfied with the e lsy-go-lucky life, and grow up in the shoes of their fathers.