fact becomes more and more sartin every day. I've know'd chaps, now,
as timersome as settlement girls, that were always in such a mortal
funk about what _was_ to happen, or _might_ happen, that they were
never fit for anything that _did_ happen; always lookin' ahead, and
never around them. Of coorse, I don't mean that a man shouldn't look
ahead at all, but their great mistake was that they looked out too
far ahead, and always kep' their eyes nailed there, just as if they
had the fixin' o' everything, an' Providence had nothin' to do with
it at all. I mind a Canadian o' that sort that travelled in company
with me once. We were goin' just as we are now, Mr. Charles, two
canoes of us; him and a comrade in one, and me and a comrade in
t'other. One night we got to a lot o' rapids that came one after
another for the matter o' three miles or thereabouts. They were all
easy ones, however, except the last; but it _was_ a tickler, with a
sharp turn o' the land that hid it from sight until ye were right
into it, with a foamin' current, and a range o' ragged rocks that
stood straight in front o' ye, like the teeth of a cross-cut saw. It
was easy enough, however, if a man _knew_ it, and was a cool hand.
Well, the _pauvre_ Canadian was in a terrible takin' about this shoot
long afore he came to it. He had run it often enough in boats where
he was one of a half-dozen men, and had nothin' to do but look on;
but he had never _steered_ down it before. When he came to the top o'
the rapids, his mind was so filled with this shoot that he couldn't
attend to nothin', and scraped agin' a dozen rocks in almost smooth
water, so that when he got a little more than half-way down, the
canoe was as rickety as if it had just come off a six months' cruise.
At last we came to the big rapid, and after we'd run down our canoe I
climbed the bank to see them do it. Down they came, the poor Canadian
white as a sheet, and his comrade, who was brave enough, but knew
nothin' about light craft, not very comfortable. At first he could