CHAPTER XXXVL
THE PROFESSOR'S YARN.
IT was in the e&rly days. I was not a college professor then. I waa
a humble-minded young land-surveyor, with the world before me—to
survey, in case anybody wanted it done. I had a contract to survey
a route for a great mining-ditch in California, and I was on my way
thither, by sea—a three or four weeks* voyage. There were a good
many passengers, but I had very little to say to them; reading and
dreaming were my passions, and I avoided conversation in order to
indulge these appetites. There were three professional gamblers on
board—rough, repulsive fellows. I never had any talk with them,
yet I could not help seeing them with some frequency, for they
gambled in an upper-deck state-room every day and night, and in my
promenades I often had glimpses of them through their door, which
stood a little ajar to let out the surplus tobacco smoke and profanity.
They were an evil and hateful presence, but I had to put up with it,
of course.
There was one other passenger who fell under my eye a good deal,
for he seemed determined to be friendly with me, and I could not
have gotten rid of him without running some chance of hurting his
feelings, and I was far from wishing to do that. Besides, there was
something engaging in his countrified simplicity and M« beaming
good-nature. The first time I saw this Mr. John Backus, I guessed,
from his clothes and his looks, that he was a grazier or farmer from
the backwoods of some western State—doubtless Ohio—and afterward
when he dropped into his personal history and I discovered that la
was a cattle-raiser from interior Ohio, I was so pleased with my own
penetration that I warmed toward him for verifying my instinct.