it as highly
as any one can, and am grateful for it, but I should stand in a sort of
terror of the honors themselves. So long as we remain alive we are
not safe from doing things which, however righteously and honorably
intended, can wreck our repute and extinguish our friendships.

I hope that no society will be named for me while I am still alive, for
I might at some time or other do something which would cause its members
to regret having done me that honor. After I shall have joined the dead
I shall follow the custom of those people, and be guilty of no conduct
that can wound any friend; but until that time shall come I shall be a
doubtful quantity, like the rest of our race.

The committee, still hoping for his consent, again appealed to him. But
again he wrote:

While I am deeply touched by the desire of my friends of Hannibal to
confer these great honors upon me I must still forbear to accept them.
Spontaneous and unpremeditated honors, like those which came to me at
Hannibal, Columbia, St. Louis, and at the village stations all down the
line, are beyond all price and are a treasure for life in the memory,
for they are a free gift out of the heart and they come without
solicitation; but I am a Missourian, and so I shrink from distinctions
which have to be arranged beforehand and with my privity, for I then
become a party to my own exalting. I am humanly fond of honors that
happen, but chary of those that come by canvass and intention.

Somewhat later he suggested a different feature for the fair; one that
was not practical, perhaps, but which certainly would have aroused
interest--that is to say, an old-fashioned six-day steamboat-race from
New Orleans to St. Louis, with the old-fashioned accessories, such as
torch-baskets, forecastle crowds of negro singers, with a negro on the
safety-valve. In his letter to President Francis he said:

As to particulars, I think that the race should be a genuine
reproduction of the old-time race, not just an imitation of it, and that
it should cover the whole course. I think the boats should begin the
trip at New Orleans, and side by side (not an interval between), and end
it at North St. Louis, a mile or two above the Big Mound.

In a subsequent letter to Governor Francis he wrote:

It has been a dear wish of mine to exhibit myself at the great Fair &
get a prize, but circumstances beyond my control have interfered....

I suppose you will get a prize, because you have c