And mingled with us on the boat would be country people traveling to or from town, pedlers, parties going to the stopping-places of the passenger boats, people loading and unloading freight, drovers with live stock for the market, and all sorts of queer characters and odd fish who haunted the canal as waterside characters infest the water-front of ports.

If I could live that strange life over again I might learn more about it; but I saw very little meaning in it then.

That is always the way, I guess.
We must get away from a type of life or we can't see it plainly.

That has been the way as to our old prairie life in Iowa.

It is only within the past few years that I have begun to see a little more of what it meant.