More than half of these boys were orphans, and it was not a good place for any boy, no matter how many parents or guardians he might have.

Five hundred or more convicts in the New York State Penitentiary were men who, as I learned from a missionary who came aboard to pray with us, sing hymns and exhort us to a better life, had been canal-boat drivers.

The boys were at the mercy of their captains, and were often cheated out of their wages.
There were stories of young boys sick with cholera, when that disease was raging, or with other diseases, being thrown off the boats and allowed to live or die as luck might determine.

There were hardship, danger and oppression in the driver's life; and every sort of vice was like an open book before him as soon as he came to understand it--which, at first, I did not.

If my mother knew, as I suppose she did, what sort of occupation I had entered upon, I do not see how she could have been anything but miserable as she thought of me--though she realized keenly from what I had escaped.
Back on the tow-path, I was earning the contempt of Ace by dodging every issue, like a candidate for office.