So guessed the youth, well pleased.
Presently, as if she too had guessed something, she asked if the boat's
master was not this man's son.
He now running it? Yes, he was.
"And was he, too, born in England?--or in Holland?"
"In Philadelphia, 1803."
"And did he, too, marry a--Dutch--wife?"
"No, a young lady of Philadelphia, in 1832; an American."
"Did you ever see Andrew Jackson?"
"Yes, I knew him."
"Were you in the battle of New Orleans?"
"Yes, I commanded a battery."
"Did you know anybody else besides Jackson? Who else?"
"Oh, I knew them all; Claiborne, Livingston, Duncan, Touro, Sheppard,
Grimes, the two Lafittes, Dominique You, Coffee, Villere, Roosevelt----"
"I know about Roosevelt; he brought the first steamboat down the
Mississippi. My grandfather knew him. Did you ever have any
grandchildren?"
Yes, he had had several, but before she could inquire what had become of
them the attention of every one was arrested by the second approach of
the cab bearing the two hotspurs who had missed the boat at Canal
Street. All the way up from there their labored gallop, by turns hid,
seen, and hid again, had amused many of her passengers, and now, as the
pair shouldered their angry way across the ship's crowded deck and down
the steep gang-plank, a general laugh from the boat's upper rails galled
them none the less for being congratulatory.
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