DATS,

165

In the c flush times' of steamboating, a race between two notori-
ously fleet steamers was an event of vast importance. The date was
set for it several weeks in advance, and from that time forward, the
whole Mississippi Valley was in a state of consuming excitement.
Politics and the weather were dropped, and people talked only of the
coming race. As the time approached, the two steamers fi stripped
and got ready. Every incumbrance that added weight, or exposed a
resisting surface
to wind or water,
was removed, if
the boat could
possibly do with-
out -it, The
* spars,' and some-
times even their
supporting der-
ricks, were sent
ashore, and no
means left to set
the boat afloat in
case she got a-
ground. When
the * Eclipse' and
the <A. L. Shot-
well ' ran their
great race many
.years ago, it was
said that pains
were taken to
scrape the gilding

off the fanciful device which hung between the * Eclipse's ' chimneys,
and that for that one trip the captain left off his kid gloves and had
his head shaved. But I always doubted these things.

If the boat was known to make her best speed when drawing five
and a half feet forward and five feet aft, she was carefully loaded to
that exact figure—she wouldn't enter a dose of homoeopathic pills on.
her manifest after that. Hardly any passengers were taken, because

DROWSY ENGINEERS.