od news and me the bad.

Putting all things together, I begin to think I am rather lucky than
otherwise--a notion which I was slow to take up. The other night I
was about to round to for a storm--but concluded that I could find a
smoother bank somewhere. I landed 5 miles below. The storm came--passed
away and did not injure us. Coming up, day before yesterday, I looked
at the spot I first chose, and half the trees on the bank were torn to
shreds. We couldn't have lived 5 minutes in such a tornado. And I am
also lucky in having a berth, while all the young pilots are idle. This
is the luckiest circumstance that ever befell me. Not on account of the
wages--for that is a secondary consideration--but from the fact that
the City of Memphis is the largest boat in the trade and the hardest to
pilot, and consequently I can get a reputation on her, which is a
thing I never could accomplish on a transient boat. I can "bank" in the
neighborhood of $100 a month on her, and that will satisfy me for the
present (principally because the other youngsters are sucking their
fingers.) Bless me! what a pleasure there is in revenge! and what vast
respect Prosperity commands! Why, six months ago, I could enter the
"Rooms," and receive only a customary fraternal greeting--but now they
say, "Why, how are you, old fellow--when did you get in?"

And the young pilots who used to tell me, patronizingly, that I could
never learn the river cannot keep from showing a little of their chagrin
at seeing me so far ahead of them. Permit me to "blow my horn," for I
derive a living pleasure from these things, and I must confess that
when I go to pay my dues, I rather like to let the d---d rascals get
a glimpse of a hundred dollar bill peeping out from amongst notes of
smaller dimensions, whose face I do not exhibit! You will despise this
egotism, but I tell you there is a "stern joy" in it.....

Pilots did not remain long on one boat, as a rule; just why it is not so
easy to understand. Perhaps they liked the experience of change;
perhaps both captain and pilot liked the pursuit of the ideal. In the
light-hearted letter that follows--written to a friend of the family,
formerly of Hannibal--we get something of the uncertainty of the pilot's
engagements.

To Mrs. Elizabeth W. Smith, in Jackson, Cape Girardeau County, Mo.:

ST. Louis, Oct. 31 [probably 1859].

DEAR AUNT BETSEY,--Ma has not written you, because she d