Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 March 1886 — The Grumbling Ferryman. [ARTICLE]

The Grumbling Ferryman.

Driving up the banks of the Androscoggin or of almost any large Maine river, you Occasionally come across a small stake driven into the ground, and •wearing like a night-cap, a tin horn thrust ovet its topmost end.' Blow this horn at any time of day or night and a ferryman comes out to set you across the river. The boats are secured with rigging to a cable stretched 'over the river and are propelled by the current. There are fifteen or twenty . of these ferries between Lewiston and the lakes. A Lewiston lawyer, on a recent hurried drive to the lakes, reached a ferry on the upper Androscoggin at 12 o’clock at night. He groped around in the darkness, found the horn and sounded a blast on it In five er ten minutes a man < ame out of a house near by swearing and grumbling and buttoning. After the boat had reached mid-stream, and the lawyer had become tired of the ferryman’s grumbling, he asked him, “How much toll do you get?” “Four cents,” said the boatman, crisply. “Well, I don’t blame you for swearing,” said the lawyer, and to prove his sympathy he gave the ferryman all the loose change lie had in his pockets. Ten' cents; however, is the usual rate of toll on these boats, and some of the ferrymen have made a snug fortune out of their franchise. —Lewiston (Me.) Journa’. ' 3 r i The only thing that can make money without advertising—the mint *