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We touched the stairs lightly for a single moment, and he was on board, and we were off again. He had a boat-cloak with him, and a black canvas bag; and he looked as like a river-pilot as my heart could have wished. "Dear boy!" he said, putting his arm on my shoulder, as he took his seat. "Faithful dear boy, well done. Thankye, thankye!"
The regular skipper was glad to have a furlough; and I retained on board no one of the proper crew but the river-pilot; a man who could not be dispensed with; By this arrangement, we cleared the cabin from company that was not desirable for the circumstances.
They spoke feelingly of state prison and the gallows. But the boys were a disappointing lot. Will Bowen became a fine river-pilot. Will Pitts was in due time a leading merchant and bank president. John Briggs grew into a well-to-do and highly respected farmer. Huck Finn which is to say, Tom Blankenship died an honored citizen and justice of the peace in a Western town.
The plow was rusty and the point was not in the very best condition; but after the first few rounds the share was cleaned off, and it began to slip through the moist earth and roll it over in a long, brown ribbon behind him. Hiram Strong clung to the plow handles, a rope-rein in each hand, and watched the plow and the horse and the land ahead with an eye as keen as that of a river-pilot.
Born in Missouri in 1835, the son of an impractical emigrant from Virginia, the youth had lived from his fourth until his eighteenth year on the banks of the Mississippi. He had learned the printer's trade, had wandered east and back again, had served for four years as a river-pilot on the Mississippi, and had tried to enter the Confederate army.
Even a river-pilot has to serve an apprenticeship before he gets a license, and yet we are allowed to take just as great risks, and only because we want to take them. It's awful, and it's all wrong." "Well, I don't see what one is going to do about it," commented young Sloane, lightly, "except to get divorced. That road is always open."
1831 Works for himself: boatbuilding and sailing, carpentering, hog-sticking, sawmilling, blacksmithing, river-pilot, logger, etc., in Menard County, Indiana. 1831 Election clerk at New Salem. Store clerk and merchant, New Salem. Studies for the law. 1832 First political speech. Henry Clay, Whig platform. Defeated through strong local vote. Deputy surveyor, at three dollars a day, Sangamon County.
From the standpoint of the man of letters, the evolution of Mark Twain from a journeyman printer to a great author, from a merry-andrew to a world-humorist, from a river-pilot to a trustworthy navigator on the vast and uncharted seas of human experience, may be taken as symbolic of the romance of American life.
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