n the bale and packed him in the cotton, and warmed the life
back into him, and got him safe to Memphis. He is one of Bixby's pilots
on the 'Baton Rouge' now.

Into the life of a steamboat clerk, now dead, had dropped a bit of
romance--somewhat grotesque romance, but romance nevertheless. When I
knew him he was a shiftless young spendthrift, boisterous, goodhearted,
full of careless generosities, and pretty conspicuously promising to
fool his possibilities away early, and come to nothing. In a Western
city lived a rich and childless old foreigner and his wife; and in their
family was a comely young girl--sort of friend, sort of servant. The
young clerk of whom I have been speaking--whose name was not George
Johnson, but who shall be called George Johnson for the purposes of this
narrative--got acquainted with this young girl, and they sinned; and
the old foreigner found them out, and rebuked them. Being ashamed, they
lied, and said they were married; that they had been privately married.
Then the old foreigner's hurt was healed, and he forgave and blessed
them. After that, they were able to continue their sin without
concealment. By-and-bye the foreigner's wife died; and presently he
followed after her. Friends of the family assembled to mourn; and among
the mourners sat the two young sinners. The will was opened and solemnly
read. It bequeathed every penny of that old man's great wealth to MRS.
GEORGE JOHNSON!

And there was no such person. The young sinners fled forth then, and did
a very foolish thing: married themselves before an obscure Justice of
the Peace, and got him to antedate the thing. That did no sort of good.
The distant relatives flocked in and exposed the fraudful date with
extreme suddenness and surprising ease, and carried off the fortune,
leaving the Johnsons very legitimately, and legally, and irrevocably
chained together in honorable marriage, but with not so much as a penny
to bless themselves withal. Such are the actual facts; and not all
novels have for a base so telling a situation.

Chapter 50 The 'Original Jacobs'

WE had some talk about Captain Isaiah Sellers, now many years dead. He
was a fine man, a high-minded man, and greatly respected both ashore and
on the river. He was very tall, well built, and handsome; and in his old
age--as I remember him--his hair was as black as an Indian's, and his
eye and hand were as strong and steady and his nerve and judgment as
firm and clear as a