Now and then a boy takes to the river so strongly that he makes his life work out of its teachings. The captains and engineers of most of our river and harbor steamers, and of bigger craft, too, began life as riverbank boys. Some of them take to fishing in earnest, some become lumbermen, or go into the Coast-Survey service, or the Rivers and Harbors; and the winter work on the ice leads to an interesting life for a good many others. Once in a while one of these boys goes far from home. We have had word of one and another, serving as pilot or engineer in Japanese, Brazilian, and East Indian waters.
The three Tucker brothers, Joel, Reuel, and Amos, three finely-built men, all worked up to be registered pilots. Joel, the eldest, was pilot of an ocean-going steamer all his life. He grew very stout, and had a fine nautical presence, in blue cloth and brass buttons. Reuel was lazy. He never went higher than small raft-towing tugs, and he often gave up his work and loafed about, fishing. He was the man who swam five miles down river, and stopped then because he was bored, not because he was tired. Amos, the finest of them, a gallant looking fellow, with very bright blue eyes, was a pilot for a good many years, and then a foreman in the ice business. He was a man of such shining kindness that he was always up to the handle in work in the heart of his town, as selectman, honorary and volunteer overseer of the poor, and helper-out in general. In a case of all-night nursing, in a poor family, where a man’s strength was needed, Amos was on hand, rubbing his eyes, but watchful and ready. Once, when a neighbor’s wife had to be taken to the Insane Hospital, Amos undertook the sad task, and his gentleness made it just bearable. Parents looked to him for help in the care of a bad or unruly boy.
Then there were the Tracys, who ran—and still run—a queer little ferry at Jonestown, “according to seasons.” When the ice begins to break up they row the passengers across, somehow, in a heavy flat-boat, between the ice cakes. Their regular boat, in which they embark wagons and even a motor, is a large scow pulled across by a chain, with a sail to help when the wind serves. The Tracys’ ferry is, I think, unique for one regulation; man and wife go as one fare.