.

XIV.

RIVER DAYS

Piloting was only a part of Sam Clemens's education on the Mississippi.
He learned as much of the reefs and shallows of human nature as of the
river-bed. In one place he writes:

In that brief, sharp schooling I got personally and familiarly
acquainted with all the different types of human nature that are to
be found in fiction, biography, or history.

All the different types, but most of them in the rough. That Samuel
Clemens kept the promise made to his mother as to drink and cards during
those apprentice days is well worth remembering.

Horace Bixby, answering a call for pilots from the Missouri River,
consigned his pupil, as was customary, tonne of the pilots of the "John
J. Roe," a freight-boat, owned and conducted by some retired farmers, and
in its hospitality reminding Sam of his Uncle John Quarles's farm. The
"Roe" was a very deliberate boat. It was said that she could beat an
island to St. Louis, but never quite overtake the current going
down-stream. Sam loved the "Roe." She was not licensed to carry
passengers, but she always had a family party of the owners' relations
aboard, and there was a big deck for dancing and a piano in the cabin.
The young pilot could play the chords, and sing, in his own fashion,
about a grasshopper that; sat on a sweet-potato vine, and about--

An old, old horse whose name was Methusalem,
Took him down and sold him in Jerusalem,
A long time ago.

The "Roe" was a heavenly place, but Sam's stay there did not last. Bixby
came down from the Missouri, and perhaps thought he was doing a fine
thing for his pupil by transferring him to a pilot named Brown, then on a
large passenger-steamer, the "Pennsylvania." The "Pennsylvania" was new
and one of the finest boats on the river. Sam Clemens, by this time, was
accounted a good steersman, so it seemed fortunate and a good arrangement
for all parties.

But Brown was a tyrant. He was illiterate and coarse, and took a dislike
to Sam from the start. His first greeting was a question, harmless
enough in form but offensive in manner.

"Are you Horace Bigsby's cub?"--Bixby being usually pronounced "Bigsby"
in river parlance.

Sam answered politely enough that he was, and Brown proceeded to comment
on the "style" of his clothes and other personal matters.

He had made an effort to please Brown, but it was no use. Brown was
never satisfied. At a moment when Sam was steering, Brown, sitting