Canal Town

by Samuel Hopkins Adams

Genres: Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

A classic historical novel of a young doctor and the Erie Canal, which brought with it to Western New York not only progress and prosperity but unforeseen upheavals.

“[An] elaborate, colorful, and affectionate portrait of a canal town in its growing pains. Obviously [Samuel Hopkins] Adams has not only gone back to the sources but has lived with them for a long time before writing his account of a young doctor setting up his practice.”—The Atlantic

“Mr. Adams knows his Erie lore so well and has boned up so thoroughly on American medical history in the early part of the [eighteenth] century that nobody who reads the book can fail to learn a great deal about what life was like in general and the practice of medicine in particular was like in a boom town.”—The New Yorker

“His villains are strongly delineated and actuated by very human motives, his minor figures are picturesque and drawn with gusto, even his sympathetic characters come alive with personal crochets and idiosyncrasies.”—Carl Carmer, Saturday Review of Literature

Release date: May 15, 2013

Publisher: Random House

Print pages: 464

Sample

1 –
 
 
 
A new Young Gentleman came to Town today. He has a very Serious Asspeckt.
 
(ENTRY IN THE DIARY OF MISS ARAMINTA JERROLD)
 
Gray mists suspired from the stream called Mud Creek by the cultured settlers and Ganargwa by the dull, unlettered Indians. The sun stood clear above the earthy thimble known as Winter Green Knob. On every side for miles around similar protuberances jutted up from the level, all sloping gently from the south and dropping in clifflike abruptness at the northern end. It was a landscape the geologic like of which exists nowhere else upon the face of earth.
 
The young man on the wagon seat did not appreciate this. Nevertheless, he was interested in his surroundings which he surveyed with an observant eye. Here was a countryside very different from the Oneida Hills of his birthplace with their harsh acclivities and turbulent watercourses, a region more suave and friendly. Palmyra village, too, as he approached it from the east, was comfortable to the apprehensions of a stranger about to make his venture in life.
 
No fewer than three church spires thrust upward into the scented June air. The main thoroughfare along which his mare daintily picked her way was a generous five rods in breadth. The crude log cabins of the environs had been succeeded by trim frame houses, white with green shutters, topped by brick chimneys and gay, gilded weathercocks brave in the slanted sunlight. Beyond these, the stores and mills stretched in ordered array, substantial as fortifications. A prosperous town; an up-and-coming town. His Scottish grandmother would have had a word to put to it. The word was “couthy.”
 
“Hospitality, Clean & Decent, for Man & Beast” announced the Eagle Tavern in red letters picked out with white against a background of true blue. “L. St. John, Prop’r” was authority for the promise. Above, the symbolic bird spread gleaming pinions.
 
“Come in. A good morning to you.”
 
The stranger looked up into a seamed and ruddy face.
 
“Good morning,” he answered pleasantly.
 
“Are you for breakfast, sir?” inquired the host.
 
“Yes. And accommodations for the night.”
 
“You come none too soon. By evening we shall be full-taken. Not a room will be vacant and we shall be charging two shillings for standees in the halls.”
 
He pointed to a newspaper advertisement affixed to the posting board.
 
June the Twenty-sixth, 1820.
 
Upon this Evening and the Following,
a Superior Theatrical Entertainment
will be Presented in the Great Ballroom of this House.
The Lyceum Dramatic Company
in the Moral Tragedy
GEORGE BARNWELL,
or the London Apprentice.
To be Followed by the Comic Glee,
Dame Durden.
 
Saturday Evening, The Spectre Bridegroom.
 
Admission, 50 Cents—Children, Half-price.
 
The new arrival gave it an incurious glance.
 
“What is your charge for a chamber, by the week?”
 
Mr. St. John conned him with shrewd appraisal. “A dollar a day,” he said boldly.
 
“Surely that is very dear.”
 
“My dear sir, consider the character of my house,” returned the host warmly. “The Eagle is the regular victualing-stop for all stages. You can be sure of your fare here.” He reflected. “I’ve to keep your animal, too. Make it six dollars the week, and no more said.”
 
“Very good. What’s for breakfast?”
 
“A pork pie, fine and hot. Tender-boiled steak. Sausages. Eggs to taste. Flannel cakes with honey. Well-burned coffee, all the way from Albany. Will you have a dram of liquor?”
 
“No. I’ll have a wash.”
 
He went to the pump in the yard. Mr. St. John watched with surprise as he took from one pocket a horn toothbrush and from another a stick of chalk which he rubbed upon the bristles, preparatory to cleansing his teeth.
 
“Proud pertickler, ain’t he!” commented the host to himself. He was not sure that he approved such extreme measures. They served, however, to whet his interest. Presently he drew a chair to the table and seated himself opposite the guest.
 
“Where you from, Mister?”
 
“Clinton Settlement in Oneida County.”
 
“Quite a piece of travel. Got a tetch of the Western fever, huh?”
 
The other smiled. Food had ameliorated his reserve. “I find the region interesting.”
 
“If you were minded to take up land, you couldn’t find better. Rich soil and easy to subdue. Once the trees are cleared, it’ll grow anything. Thriving commerce. Look at our mills. Look at our stores. Look at our asheries.”
 
“I intend to.”
 
“Are you farming, then?”
 
“No.”
 
“What is your business, make-so-bold?”
 
“I am a practitioner of physic and surgery. Horace Amlie, M.D. Certified by state and county boards.”
 
“Likely you’d pick up a bit of practice by exhibiting a card on my post-board. All the township consults my post-board. Half a dollar to you, since you are a guest of the house.”
 
“Not too fast. I must look about me first.”
 
A formidable voice bellowed, “Taproom! Taproom! Bar, there! Can a man get a drink, by God? Or is this a temperance house?”
 
“Coming. Coming,” cried Mr. St. John, bouncing out of his chair.
 
A moment later Dr. Amlie heard the robustious tones demanding, “A fipsworth of the ardent, and don’t scamp the brim, old cock.”
 
Having made a satisfactory meal, Dr. Amlie returned to the veranda. His mare had been taken to the shed. Where she had been tied, four sturdy horses stood with their night blankets of oilcloth still over their flanks. A legend, gaudily painted on the side of the wagon to which they were hitched, read:
JED PARRIS. PALMYRA TO ALBANY.
Merchandise Teamed. Prices on Request.
 
The man himself came out wiping his lips, a heavy-bearded, jovial ruffian of thirty-odd. To the proprietor who followed, he was saying with a grin, “Thirty cents a gallon for your whisky? You may keep it to rot your own fat gut. I can buy my wagon full in Schenectady for two shilling.”
 
“Prices are up,” grumbled the other. “There’s no profit in anything. What do you make on your drawing?”
 
“One hundred dollars the ton on the through haul,” replied the teamster with satisfaction.
 
“Wait till the canal comes through,” said Mr. St. John with a gleam of malice. “You’ll touch no such price then.”
 
“The canawl! The canawl!” jeered Jed Parris. “I’ll spit you all the canawl you’ll get.” He ejected a welter of tobacco juice over the rail and lifted a hoarse basso.
 
“Clinton, the federal son-of-a-bitch,
Taxes our dollars to build him a ditch.
Bury old Clinton so deep in the mud …”
 
A metallic peal cut him short. The door swung wide, revealing the slim and elegant figure of a man in his early twenties. His handsome, hawkish face was framed in luxuriant side whiskers, sprouting upward to meet the long, silky hair that wholly screened the upper part of his ears. He wiped the mouthpiece of a shining bugle.
 
“Who sings that weevily, Bucktail ditty?” he demanded.
 
Jed Parris bristled. “I do. And what’s that to you?”
 
“An offense,” returned the other coolly.
 
“Mr. Silverhorn Ramsey is a canaller by trade,” put in the host.
 
The bulky teamster seemed struck by the name. “Mr. Silverhorn Ramsey?” he repeated.
 
“Captain Silverhorn Ramsey,” corrected the other. “A hot rumbullion for me, if you please, my worthy host.”
 
“Just the same, this here canal talk is east wind in a man’s belly, as Scripture says,” blustered Parris.
 
“This gentleman might tell us otherwise,” said the innkeeper, interpreting the stranger’s wise smile. “He’s from a county where it’s already operating—Oneida.”
 
“Is he a boatee, too?” asked the teamster disgustedly.
 
“He is a practitioner of physic and surgery,” explained Mr. St. John with respect.
 
Silverhorn Ramsey lifted wet lips from his glass. “Young Æsculapius, eh?”
 
“What do you know of Æsculapius?” asked the other curiously.
 
“Oh, I tried my hand at the pellet-and-bolus trade. Not good enough,” said the canal man negligently. “Have you a sure medic for the pox?”
 
Horace Amlie, M.D., stiffened. He held a high and prickly regard for his chosen profession, the more so in that he was so new to it. His look measured the other steadily.
 
“Do you seek a professional consultation, sir?”
 
Silverhorn cackled with arrogant mirth. “Not I! But I could put you in the way of a thriving trade, so be you could warrant a three-day cure as the almanach promises. The turnpike coffee taps are no better than fancy kens, and the teamers still have money in their pockets.”
 
“I am neither an itinerant nor an almanach healer,” said the young medico coldly.
 
“You could do no better than sport your shingle here,” averred Mr. St. John with conviction. “Our commerce increases daily. We are the nation’s center for the mint industry. Our hemp establishes the market price. Our ash, both pot and pearl, has no superior. Mud Creek teems with traffic. When Governor Clinton’s waterway is projected here and beyond, Auburn may swallow its pride and Geneva and Canandaigua wring their hands over lost glories, for we shall indeed be the Golden Emporium of the Growing West.”
 
“I read it all in the newspaper,” said Silverhorn. “Hunca-munca to your Palmyra, say I. The canal’s the thing.”
 
“The canal will establish Palmyra at the very heart of the new prosperity,” declared the local man. “The day the first boat comes, I enlarge my accommodations.”
 
“You may rent them to the chintzes for all the good you’ll get of the ditch,” snorted the teamster.
 
“No man ever found a chintz in my beds that he did not bring there himself,” said St. John, reddening.
 
“Why are you so assured that the boats will not come here?” the physician asked the teamster.
 
“Boats run on water, don’t they?”
 
“They do.”
 
“Can water run uphill?”
 
“Did you never hear of a lock?”
 
“Aye. And seen ’em, too. And the pent water breaking through their ruinated sides. It’s agin nature, so it is. You can’t go agin nature. Water seeks its level and God help what stands in its way,” said the teamster, using the hackneyed argument of the opposition.
 
“It is true that defective locks have broken through,” conceded the physician. “They have been rebuilt. The commerce goes on. Mr. St. John will do well to enlarge his facilities in advance.”