zo Child."

XVI.

THE PILOT

For Samuel Clemens these were happy days--the happiest, in some respects,
he would ever know. He had plenty of money now. He could help his
mother with a liberal hand, and could put away fully a hundred dollars a
month for himself. He had few cares, and he loved the ease and romance
and independence of his work as he would never quite love anything again.

His popularity on the river was very great. His humorous stories and
quaint speech made a crowd collect wherever he appeared. There were
pilot-association rooms in St. Louis and New Orleans, and his appearance
at one of these places was a signal for the members to gather.

A friend of those days writes: "He was much given to spinning yarns so
funny that his hearers were convulsed, and yet all the time his own face
was perfectly sober. Occasionally some of his droll yarns got into the
papers. He may have written them himself."

Another old river-man remembers how, one day, at the association, they
were talking of presence of mind in an accident, when Pilot Clemens said:

"Boys, I had great presence of mind once. It was at a fire. An old man
leaned out of a four-story building, calling for help. Everybody in the
crowd below looked up, but nobody did anything. The ladders weren't long
enough. Nobody had any presence of mind--nobody but me. I came to the
rescue. I yelled for a rope. When it came I threw the old man the end
of it. He caught it, and I told him to tie it around his waist. He did
so, and I pulled him down."

This was a story that found its way into print, probably his own
contribution.

"Sam was always scribbling when not at the wheel," said Bixby, "but the
best thing he ever did was the burlesque of old Isaiah Sellers. He
didn't write it for print, but only for his own amusement and to show to
a few of the boys. Bart Bowen, who was with him on the "Edward J. Gay"
at the time, got hold of it, and gave it to one of the New Orleans
papers."

The burlesque on Captain Sellers would be of little importance if it were
not for its association with the origin, or, at least, with the
originator, of what is probably the best known of literary names--the
name Mark Twain.

This strong, happy title--a river term indicating a depth of two fathoms
on the sounding-line--was first used by the old pilot, Isaiah Sellers,
who was a sort of "oldest inhabitant" of the river, with a passion for
airing his ancient knowledge before the