ons to
such patient and generous friends; but the sharpest pang I suffer--by
far the sharpest--is from the debt I owe to this noble young man here;
and I have come to this place this morning especially to make the
announcement that I have at last found a method whereby I can pay off
all my debts! And most especially I wanted HIM to be here when I
announced it. Yes, my faithful friend,--my benefactor, I've found the
method! I've found the method to pay off all my debts, and you'll get
your money!' Hope dawned in Yates's eye; then Stephen, beaming
benignantly, and placing his hand upon Yates's head, added, 'I am going
to pay them off in alphabetical order!'

Then he turned and disappeared. The full significance of Stephen's
'method' did not dawn upon the perplexed and musing crowd for some two
minutes; and then Yates murmured with a sigh--

'Well, the Y's stand a gaudy chance. He won't get any further than the
C's in THIS world, and I reckon that after a good deal of eternity has
wasted away in the next one, I'll still be referred to up there as "that
poor, ragged pilot that came here from St. Louis in the early days!"

Chapter 18 I Take a Few Extra Lessons

DURING the two or two and a half years of my apprenticeship, I served
under many pilots, and had experience of many kinds of steamboatmen and
many varieties of steamboats; for it was not always convenient for Mr.
Bixby to have me with him, and in such cases he sent me with somebody
else. I am to this day profiting somewhat by that experience; for in
that brief, sharp schooling, I got personally and familiarly acquainted
with about all the different types of human nature that are to be found
in fiction, biography, or history. The fact is daily borne in upon me,
that the average shore-employment requires as much as forty years to
equip a man with this sort of an education. When I say I am still
profiting by this thing, I do not mean that it has constituted me a
judge of men--no, it has not done that; for judges of men are born, not
made. My profit is various in kind and degree; but the feature of it
which I value most is the zest which that early experience has given to
my later reading. When I find a well-drawn character in fiction or
biography, I generally take a warm personal interest in him, for the
reason that I have known him before--met him on the river.

The figure that comes before me oftenest, out of the shadows of that
vanished time, is that of