From 'Life on the Mississippi': copyright 1883, by James R.
Osgood and Company
The face of the water in time became a wonderful book--a book that was a
dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me
without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if
it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and
thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day. Throughout the
long twelve hundred miles there was never a page that was void of
interest, never one that you could leave unread without loss, never one
that you would want to skip, thinking you could find higher enjoyment in
some other thing. There never was so wonderful a book written by man;
never one whose interest was so absorbing, so unflagging, so sparklingly
renewed with every re-perusal. The passenger who could not read it was
charmed with a peculiar sort of faint dimple on its surface (on the rare
occasions when he did not overlook it altogether); but to the pilot
that was an _italicized_ passage; indeed it was more than that,--it was
a legend of the largest capitals, with a string of shouting
exclamation-points at the end of it; for it meant that a wreck or a rock
was buried there, that could tear the life out of the strongest vessel
that ever floated. It is the faintest and simplest expression the water
ever makes, and the most hideous to a pilot's eye. In truth, the
passenger who could not read this book saw nothing but all manner of
pretty pictures in it, painted by the sun and shaded by the clouds;
whereas to the trained eye these were not pictures at all, but the
grimmest and most dead-earnest of reading matter.
Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know
every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I
knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But
I had lost something too. I had lost something which could never be
restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had
gone out of the majestic river! I still kept in mind a certain wonderful
sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me. A broad
expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance the red
hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating,
black and conspicuous; in one place a long slanting mark lay sparkling
upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling tumbling
rings that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy flush was
faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful circles and
radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the shore on our left was
densely wooded, and the sombre shadow that fell from this forest was
broken in one place by a long ruffled trail that shone like silver; and
high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a single
leafy bough, that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed splendor that
was flowing from the sun. There were graceful curves, reflected images,
woody heights, soft distances; and over the whole scene, far and near,
the dissolving lights drifted steadily, enriching it every passing
moment with new marvels of coloring.
I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a speechless rapture. The
world was new to me, and I had never seen anything like this at home.
But as I have said, a day came when I began to cease from noting the
glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight
wrought upon the river's face; another day came when I ceased
altogether to note them. Then, if that sunset scene had been repeated, I
should have looked upon it without rapture and should have commented
upon it inwardly after this fashion: This sun means that we are going to
have wind to-morrow; that floating log means that the river is rising,
small thanks to it; that slanting mark on the water refers to a bluff
reef which is going to kill somebody's steamboat one of these nights, if
it keeps on stretching out like that; those tumbling "boils" show a
dissolving bar and a changing channel there; the lines and circles in
the slick water over yonder are a warning that that troublesome place is
shoaling up dangerously; that silver streak in the shadow of the forest
is the "break" from a new snag, and he has located himself in the very
best place he could have found to fish for steamboats; that tall dead
tree, with a single living branch, is not going to last long, and then
how is a body ever going to get through this blind place at night
without the friendly old landmark?
No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river. All the
value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it
could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat. Since
those days I have pitied doctors from my heart. What does the lovely
flush in a beauty's cheek mean to a doctor but a "break" that ripples
above some deadly disease? Are not all her visible charms sown thick
with what are to him the signs and symbols of hidden decay? Does he ever
see her beauty at all, or doesn't he simply view her professionally and
comment upon her unwholesome condition all to himself? And doesn't he
sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or lost most by learning his
trade?