ciful device which hung between the 'Eclipse's' chimneys, and that
for that one trip the captain left off his kid gloves and had his head
shaved. But I always doubted these things.

If the boat was known to make her best speed when drawing five and a
half feet forward and five feet aft, she was carefully loaded to that
exact figure--she wouldn't enter a dose of homoeopathic pills on her
manifest after that. Hardly any passengers were taken, because they not
only add weight but they never will 'trim boat.' They always run to
the side when there is anything to see, whereas a conscientious and
experienced steamboatman would stick to the center of the boat and part
his hair in the middle with a spirit level.

No way-freights and no way-passengers were allowed, for the racers would
stop only at the largest towns, and then it would be only 'touch and
go.' Coal flats and wood flats were contracted for beforehand, and
these were kept ready to hitch on to the flying steamers at a moment's
warning. Double crews were carried, so that all work could be quickly
done.

The chosen date being come, and all things in readiness, the two great
steamers back into the stream, and lie there jockeying a moment, and
apparently watching each other's slightest movement, like sentient
creatures; flags drooping, the pent steam shrieking through
safety-valves, the black smoke rolling and tumbling from the chimneys
and darkening all the air. People, people everywhere; the shores, the
house-tops, the steamboats, the ships, are packed with them, and you
know that the borders of the broad Mississippi are going to be fringed
with humanity thence northward twelve hundred miles, to welcome these
racers.

Presently tall columns of steam burst from the 'scape-pipes of both
steamers, two guns boom a good-bye, two red-shirted heroes mounted
on capstans wave their small flags above the massed crews on the
forecastles, two plaintive solos linger on the air a few waiting
seconds, two mighty choruses burst forth--and here they come! Brass
bands bray Hail Columbia, huzza after huzza thunders from the shores,
and the stately creatures go whistling by like the wind.

Those boats will never halt a moment between New Orleans and St. Louis,
except for a second or two at large towns, or to hitch thirty-cord
wood-boats alongside. You should be on board when they take a couple of
those wood-boats in tow and turn a swarm of men into each; by the time
you have wiped y