The Last of the Flatboats

by George Cary Eggleston

  CHAPTER VII

  TALKING

  The pleasantest part of the day, under this arrangement, was thatbetween five o'clock and bedtime.

  The boys talked then, and talking is about the very best thing thatanybody ever does. It is by talk that we come to know those about us andmake ourselves known to them. It is by talk that we learn to like ourfellows, by learning what there is in them worth liking. And it is bytalk mainly that we find out what we think and correct our thinking.

  Ed Lowry was reading a book one day, when suddenly he looked up andsaid:--

  "I say, fellows, this is good. Lord Macaulay said he never knew what hethought about any subject until he had talked about it. Of course that'sso with all of us, when you come to think of it."

  "Well, I don't know," said Phil. "I often talk about things and don'tknow what I think about 'em even after I've talked. Here's this bigbond robbery, for example. I've read all about it in the Cincinnatinewspapers and I've talked you fellows deaf, dumb, and blind concerningit. Yet, I don't know even now what I think about it."

  "I know what I think," said Will Moreraud. "I think the detectives are'all off.'"

  "How?" asked all the boys in chorus.

  "Well, they're trying to find the man who is supposed to be carrying theplunder. It seems to me they'd better look for the other fellows first;for if they were caught, they'd soon enough tell where the man thatcarries it is. They wouldn't go to jail and leave him with the stuff."

  "The worst of it is they're publishing descriptions of the fellow andeven of what they've noticed concerning his clothes and beard, as if athief that was up to a game like that wouldn't change his clothes andpart his hair differently and wear a different sort of beard, especiallyafter he's been told what they're looking for."

  "Yes, that's so," said Irving Strong, reading from one of Phil'sCincinnati newspapers:

  "'Red hair'--a man might dye that--'parted on the left side and brushedforward'--he might part it in the middle and brush it back, or have itall cut off with one of those mowing machines the barbers use, just asJim Hughes does with his--"

  "Now I come to think of it," continued Irv, after a moment's thought,"Jim answers the description in several ways,--limps a little with hisleft leg, has red hair when he permits himself to have any hair at all,has lost a front tooth, and speaks with a slight lisp."

  "Oh, Jim Hughes isn't a bank burglar," exclaimed Will Moreraud. "Hehasn't sense enough for anything of that sort."

  "Of course not," said Irv. "I didn't mean to suggest anything of thekind. I merely cited his peculiarities to show how easily a detective'sdescription might lead men into mistakes. Why, Jim might even bearrested on that description."

  "But all that isn't what Macaulay meant," said Ed. "He meant that a mannever really knows what he thinks about any subject till he has put histhought into words and then turned it over and looked at it and foundout exactly what it is."

  "I guess that's so," drawled Irv. "I notice that whenever I try to thinkseriously--"

  The boys all laughed. The idea of Irv Strong's thinking seriously seemedpeculiarly humorous to them.

  "Well, I do try sometimes," said Irv, "and whenever I do, I put thewhole thing into the exactest words I can find. Very often, when I getit into exact words, I find that my opinions won't hang together andI've got to reconstruct them."

  "Exactly!" said Ed Lowry. "And that is the great difficulty animals havein trying to think. They haven't any words even in their minds. Theycan't put their thoughts into form so as to examine them. It seems to methat language is necessary to any real thinking, and that it is thepossession of language more than anything or everything else that makesman really the lord of creation."

  "Yes," said Phil. "Even Bre'r Rabbit and Bre'r Fox and all the rest ofthem are represented as putting their thoughts into words."

  "Perhaps," said Irv, "that's the reason why educated people think moresoundly than uneducated ones. They have a nicer sense of the meaning ofwords."

  "Of course," said Ed. "I suppose that is what President Eliot ofHarvard meant when he said that 'the object of education is to teach aman to express his thought clearly in his own language.'"

  "Very well," said Phil. "My own thought, clearly expressed in my ownlanguage, is that it's time for supper. Come, stir your stumps, yephilosophical pundits! Bring me the skillet and the frying-pan, the saltpork to fry, and prepare the apples and potatoes and eggs to cook in thefat thereof. In the classic language of our own time, get a move on you,and don't forget the coffeepot; nor yet the coffee that is to be steepedtherein!"

  The boys were ready enough to respond. Their appetites, sharpenedby hard work in the open air, were clamorously keen. The supperpromised--fried pork, fried apples, fried eggs, and coffee with ashort-cake--seemed to them quite all that could be desired in the way ofluxury. They could eat it with relish, and sleep in entire comfortafterward. Probably not one of my readers in a hundred could digest sucha supper at all. That is because not one reader in a hundred giveshimself a chance for robust health by working nine hours a day andliving almost entirely in the open air.

  Jim came out when supper was ready and helped eat it there on the shore.At other than mealtimes it was his custom to stay on board the flatboat,and not only so, but to keep himself below decks, although the weatherwas still very warm. He had got over his drunkenness, but he was stillmoody, apparently in resentment of the rough-and-ready treatment he hadreceived at Phil's hands.

  He rarely talked at all; when he did talk, it was usually in the dialectof an entirely uneducated person. But now and then he used expressionsthat no such person would employ.

  "He seems to slip into his grammar now and then," was Irv Strong's wayof putting it.