The Jack-Knife Man by Ellis Parker Butler

"NO, siree, Buddy! " said Peter, shaking his head, "my jack-knife is one thing you can't have to play with. There's two things a man oughtn't to trust to anybody; one's his jack-knife and one's his soul. He ought to keep both of them nice and sharp and clean. If I been letting my soul get dull and rusty and all nicked up, it's no sign I'm going to let my jack-knife get that way. What I got to do is to polish up my soul, and I guess there ain't no better place to do it than down here where there ain't nobody to bother me whilst I do it. You hain't no idee what a soul is, but you will have some day, maybe. I ain't right sure I know that, myself."

The shanty-boat was moored in Rapp's slough, and had been there three days. The cold weather, which continued unabated, had sealed the boat in by spreading a sheet of ice over the surface of the slough, but Peter did not like the way the river was behaving. Between the new-formed ice and the shore a narrow strip of water appeared faster than the cold could freeze it and the ice that covered the slough cracked now and then in long, irregular lines, all telling that the river was rising, and rising rapidly. This meant that the cold snap was merely local and that up the river unseasonably warm weather had brought rains or a great thaw. There was no great danger of a long period of high water so late in the season, for cold waves were sure to freeze the North soon, but the present high water was not only apt to be inconvenient but actually dangerous for the shanty-boat.