WHEN I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades
in our village{footnote [1. Hannibal, Missouri]} on the west bank of the
Mississippi River. That was, to be a steamboatman. We had transient
ambitions of other sorts, but they were only transient. When a circus
came and went, it left us all burning to become clowns; the first negro
minstrel show that came to our section left us all suffering to try that
kind of life; now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good,
God would permit us to be pirates. These ambitions faded out, each in
its turn; but the ambition to be a steamboatman always remained.
Once a day a cheap, gaudy packet arrived upward from St. Louis, and
another downward from Keokuk. Before these events, the day was glorious
with expectancy; after them, the day was a dead and empty thing. Not
only the boys, but the whole village, felt this. After all these years I
can picture that old time to myself now, just as it was then: the white
town drowsing in the sunshine of a summer's morning; the streets empty,
or pretty nearly so; one or two clerks sitting in front of the Water
Street stores, with their splint-bottomed chairs tilted back against the
wall, chins on breasts, hats slouched over their faces, asleep--with
shingle-shavings enough around to show what broke them down; a sow and a
litter of pigs loafing along the sidewalk, doing a good business in
watermelon rinds and seeds; two or three lonely little freight piles
scattered about the 'levee;' a pile of 'skids' on the slope of the
stone-paved wharf, and the fragrant town drunkard asleep in the shadow
of them; two or three wood flats at the head of the wharf, but nobody to
listen to the peaceful lapping of the wavelets against them; the great
Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi, rolling its
mile-wide tide along, shining in the sun; the dense forest away on the
other side; the 'point' above the town, and the 'point' below, bounding
the river-glimpse and turning it into a sort of sea, and withal a very
still and brilliant and lonely one. Presently a film of dark smoke
appears above one of those remote 'points;' instantly a negro drayman,
famous for his quick eye and prodigious voice, lifts up the cry, 'S-t-e-
a-m-boat a-comin'!' and the scene changes! The town drunkard stirs, the
clerks wake up, a furious clatter of drays follows, every house and
store pours out a human contribution, and all in a twinkling the dead
town is alive and moving. Drays, carts, men, boys, all go hurrying from
many quarters to a common center, the wharf. Assembled there, the people
fasten their eyes upon the coming boat as upon a wonder they are seeing
for the first time. And the boat IS rather a handsome sight, too. She
is long and sharp and trim and pretty; she has two tall, fancy-topped
chimneys, with a gilded device of some kind swung between them; a
fanciful pilot-house, a glass and 'gingerbread', perched on top of the
'texas' deck behind them; the paddle-boxes are gorgeous with a picture
or with gilded rays above the boat's name; the boiler deck, the
hurricane deck, and the texas deck are fenced and ornamented with clean
white railings; there is a flag gallantly flying from the jack-staff;
the furnace doors are open and the fires glaring bravely; the upper
decks are black with passengers; the captain stands by the big bell,
calm, imposing, the envy of all; great volumes of the blackest smoke are
rolling and tumbling out of the chimneys--a husbanded grandeur created
with a bit of pitch pine just before arriving at a town; the crew are
grouped on the forecastle; the broad stage is run far out over the port
bow, and an envied deckhand stands picturesquely on the end of it with a
coil of rope in his hand; the pent steam is screaming through the gauge-
cocks, the captain lifts his hand, a bell rings, the wheels stop; then
they turn back, churning the water to foam, and the steamer is at rest.
Then such a scramble as there is to get aboard, and to get ashore, and
to take in freight and to discharge freight, all at one and the same
time; and such a yelling and cursing as the mates facilitate it all
with! Ten minutes later the steamer is under way again, with no flag on
the jack-staff and no black smoke issuing from the chimneys. After ten
more minutes the town is dead again, and the town drunkard asleep by the
skids once more.
My father was a justice of the peace, and I supposed he possessed the
power of life and death over all men and could hang anybody that
offended him. This was distinction enough for me as a general thing;
but the desire to be a steamboatman kept intruding, nevertheless. I
first wanted to be a cabin-boy, so that I could come out with a white
apron on and shake a tablecloth over the side, where all my old comrades
could see me; later I thought I would rather be the deckhand who stood
on the end of the stage-plank with the coil of rope in his hand, because
he was particularly conspicuous. But these were only day-dreams,--they
were too heavenly to be contemplated as real possibilities. By and by
one of our boys went away. He was not heard of for a long time. At last
he turned up as apprentice engineer or 'striker' on a steamboat. This
thing shook the bottom out of all my Sunday-school teachings. That boy
had been notoriously worldly, and I just the reverse; yet he was exalted
to this eminence, and I left in obscurity and misery. There was nothing
generous about this fellow in his greatness. He would always manage to
have a rusty bolt to scrub while his boat tarried at our town, and he
would sit on the inside guard and scrub it, where we could all see him
and envy him and loathe him. And whenever his boat was laid up he would
come home and swell around the town in his blackest and greasiest
clothes, so that nobody could help remembering that he was a
steamboatman; and he used all sorts of steamboat technicalities in his
talk, as if he were so used to them that he forgot common people could
not understand them. He would speak of the 'labboard' side of a horse in
an easy, natural way that would make one wish he was dead. And he was
always talking about 'St. Looy' like an old citizen; he would refer
casually to occasions when he 'was coming down Fourth Street,' or when
he was 'passing by the Planter's House,' or when there was a fire and he
took a turn on the brakes of 'the old Big Missouri;' and then he would
go on and lie about how many towns the size of ours were burned down
there that day. Two or three of the boys had long been persons of
consideration among us because they had been to St. Louis once and had a
vague general knowledge of its wonders, but the day of their glory was
over now. They lapsed into a humble silence, and learned to disappear
when the ruthless 'cub'-engineer approached. This fellow had money,
too, and hair oil. Also an ignorant silver watch and a showy brass watch
chain. He wore a leather belt and used no suspenders. If ever a youth
was cordially admired and hated by his comrades, this one was. No girl
could withstand his charms. He 'cut out' every boy in the village. When
his boat blew up at last, it diffused a tranquil contentment among us
such as we had not known for months. But when he came home the next
week, alive, renowned, and appeared in church all battered up and
bandaged, a shining hero, stared at and wondered over by everybody, it
seemed to us that the partiality of Providence for an undeserving
reptile had reached a point where it was open to criticism.
This creature's career could produce but one result, and it speedily
followed. Boy after boy managed to get on the river. The minister's son
became an engineer. The doctor's and the post-master's sons became 'mud
clerks;' the wholesale liquor dealer's son became a barkeeper on a boat;
four sons of the chief merchant, and two sons of the county judge,
became pilots. Pilot was the grandest position of all. The pilot, even
in those days of trivial wages, had a princely salary--from a hundred
and fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and no board to pay.
Two months of his wages would pay a preacher's salary for a year. Now
some of us were left disconsolate. We could not get on the river--at
least our parents would not let us.
So by and by I ran away. I said I never would come home again till I
was a pilot and could come in glory. But somehow I could not manage it.
I went meekly aboard a few of the boats that lay packed together like
sardines at the long St. Louis wharf, and very humbly inquired for the
pilots, but got only a cold shoulder and short words from mates and
clerks. I had to make the best of this sort of treatment for the time
being, but I had comforting daydreams of a future when I should be a
great and honored pilot, with plenty of money, and could kill some of
these mates and clerks and pay for them.