fastened with leather hinges, entered the pilot-house, and in a
peculiar, drawling voice, said--

"'Good mawnin, sir. Don't you want to take er piert young fellow and
teach 'im how to be er pilot?'

"'No sir; there is more bother about it than it's worth.'

"'I wish you would, mister. I'm er printer by trade, but it don't 'pear
to 'gree with me, and I'm on my way to Central America for my health. I
believe I'll make a tolerable good pilot, 'cause I like the river.'

"'What makes you pull your words that way?'

"'I don't know, mister; you'll have to ask my Ma. She pulls hern too.
Ain't there some way that we can fix it, so that you'll teach me how to
be er pilot?'

"'The only way is for money.'

"'How much are you going to charge?

"'Well, I'll teach you the river for $500.'

"'Gee whillikens! he! he! I ain't got $500, but I've got five lots in
Keokuk, Iowa, and 2000 acres of land in Tennessee that is worth two bits
an acre any time. You can have that if you want it.'

"I told him I did not care for his land, and after a while he agreed to
pay $100 in cash (borrowed from his brother-in-law, William A. Moffett,
of Virginia), $150 in twelve months, and the balance when he became a
pilot. He was with me for a long time, but sometimes took occasional
trips with other pilots." And he significantly adds "He was always
drawling out dry jokes, but then we did not pay any attention to him."

It cannot be thought accidental that Sam Clemens became a pilot. Bixby
became his mentor, the pilot-house his recitation-room, the steamboat
his university, the great river the field of knowledge.

In that stupendous course in nature's own college, he "learned the
river" as schoolboy seldom masters his Greek or his mathematics. With
the naive assurance of youth, he gaily enters upon the task of
"learning" some twelve or thirteen hundred miles of the great
Mississippi. Long afterwards, he confessed that had he really known
what he was about to require of his faculties, he would never have had
the courage to begin.

His comic sketches, published in the 'Hannibal Weekly Courier' in his
brother's absence, furnish the first link, his apprenticeship to Bixby
the second link in the chain of circumstance. For two years and a half
he sailed the river as a master pilot; his trustworthiness secured for
him the command of some of the best boats on the river, and he was so
skilful that he never met disaster on any of his trips