own, one of the pilots of the "Pennsylvania," by my owner, Mr.
Horace E. Bixby, and I had been steering for Brown about eighteen
months, I think. Then in the early days of May, 1858, came a tragic
trip--the last trip of that fleet and famous steamboat. I have told all
about it in one of my books called "Old Times on the Mississippi." But
it is not likely that I told the dream in that book. It is impossible
that I can ever have published it, I think, because I never wanted my
mother to know about the dream, and she lived several years after I
published that volume.

I had found a place on the "Pennsylvania" for my brother Henry, who was
two years my junior. It was not a place of profit, it was only a place
of promise. He was "mud" clerk. Mud clerks received no salary, but they
were in the line of promotion. They could become, presently, third clerk
and second clerk, then chief clerk--that is to say, purser. The dream
begins when Henry had been mud clerk about three months. We were lying
in port at St. Louis. Pilots and steersmen had nothing to do during the
three days that the boat lay in port in St. Louis and New Orleans, but
the mud clerk had to begin his labors at dawn and continue them into the
night, by the light of pine-knot torches. Henry and I, moneyless and
unsalaried, had billeted ourselves upon our brother-in-law, Mr. Moffet,
as night lodgers while in port. We took our meals on board the boat. No,
I mean _I_ lodged at the house, not Henry. He spent the _evenings_ at
the house, from nine until eleven, then went to the boat to be ready for
his early duties. On the night of the dream he started away at eleven,
shaking hands with the family, and said good-by according to custom. I
may mention that hand-shaking as a good-by was not merely the custom of
that family, but the custom of the region--the custom of Missouri, I may
say. In all my life, up to that time, I had never seen one member of the
Clemens family kiss another one--except once. When my father lay dying
in our home in Hannibal--the 24th of March, 1847--he put his arm around
my sister's neck and drew her down and kissed her, saying "Let me die."
I remember that, and I remember the death rattle which swiftly followed
those words, which were his last. These good-bys of Henry's were always
executed in the family sitting-room on the second floor, and Henry went
from that room and down-stairs without further ceremony. But this time
my mother went with him to t