CHAPTER 4

The Boys' Ambition

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.