And imagine the feelings of those bald-heads,and the exultation of their recent audience when the ancient captain would begin to drop casual and indifferent remarks of a reminiscent nature--about islands that had disappeared,and cutoffs that had been made,a generation before the oldest bald-head in the company had ever set his foot in a pilot-house!
Many and many a time did this ancient mariner appear on the scene in the above fashion,and spread disaster and humiliation around him.
If one might believe the pilots,he always dated his islands back to the misty dawn of river history;and he never used the same island twice;and never did he employ an island that still existed,or give one a name which anybody present was old enough to have heard of before.
If you might believe the pilots,he was always conscientiously particular about little details;never spoke of 'the State of Mississippi,'for instance--no,he would say,'When the State of Mississippi was where Arkansas now is,"and would never speak of Louisiana or Missouri in a general way,and leave an incorrect impression on your mind--no,he would say,'When Louisiana was up the river farther,'or 'When Missouri was on the Illinois side.'
The old gentleman was not of literary turn or capacity,but he used to jot down brief paragraphs of plain practical information about the river,and sign them 'MARK TWAIN,'and give them to the 'New Orleans Picayune.'
They related to the stage and condition of the river,and were accurate and valuable;and thus far,they contained no poison.
But in speaking of the stage of the river to-day,at a given point,the captain was pretty apt to drop in a little remark about this being the first time he had seen the water so high or so low at that particular point for forty-nine years;and now and then he would mention Island So-and-so,and follow it,in parentheses,with some such observation as 'disappeared in 1807,if I remember rightly.'
In these antique interjections lay poison and bitterness for the other old pilots,and they used to chaff the 'Mark Twain' paragraphs with unsparing mockery.
It so chanced that one of these paragraphs became the text for my first newspaper article.I burlesqued it broadly,very broadly,stringing my fantastics out to the extent of eight hundred or a thousand words.I was a 'cub'at the time.
I showed my performance to some pilots,and they eagerly rushed it into print in the 'New Orleans True Delta.'It was a great pity;for it did nobody any worthy service,and it sent a pang deep into a good man's heart.
There was no malice in my rubbish;but it laughed at the captain.
It laughed at a man to whom such a thing was new and strange and dreadful.
I did not know then,though I do now,that there is no suffering comparable with that which a private person feels when he is for the first time pilloried in print.
Captain Sellers did me the honor to profoundly detest me from that day forth.
When I say he did me the honor,I am not using empty words.
It was a very real honor to be in the thoughts of so great a man as Captain Sellers,and I had wit enough to appreciate it and be proud of it.
It was distinction to be loved by such a man;but it was a much greater distinction to be hated by him,because he loved scores of people;but he didn't sit up nights to hate anybody but me.
He never printed another paragraph while he lived,and he never again signed 'Mark Twain'to anything.At the time that the telegraph brought the news of his death,I was on the Pacific coast.
I was a fresh new journalist,and needed a nom de guerre;so I confiscated the ancient mariner's discarded one,and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands--a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth;how Ihave succeeded,it would not be modest in me to say.
The captain had an honorable pride in his profession and an abiding love for it.He ordered his monument before he died,and kept it near him until he did die.
It stands over his grave now,in Bellefontaine cemetery,St.Louis.
It is his image,in marble,standing on duty at the pilot wheel;and worthy to stand and confront criticism,for it represents a man who in life would have stayed there till he burned to a cinder,if duty required it.
The finest thing we saw on our whole Mississippi trip,we saw as we approached New Orleans in the steam-tug.This was the curving frontage of the crescent city lit up with the white glare of five miles of electric lights.
It was a wonderful sight,and very beautiful.