day.--[See Appendix B,
at the end of the last volume.]

The burlesque delighted Bart Bowen, who was Clemens's pilot partner on
the Edward J. Gay at the time. He insisted on showing it to others
and finally upon printing it. Clemens was reluctant, but consented.
It appeared in the True Delta (May 8 or 9, 1859), and was widely and
boisterously enjoyed.

It broke Captain Sellers's literary heart. He never contributed another
paragraph. Mark Twain always regretted the whole matter deeply, and
his own revival of the name was a sort of tribute to the old man he
had thoughtlessly wounded. If Captain Sellers has knowledge of material
matters now, he is probably satisfied; for these things brought to
him, and to the name he had chosen, what he could never himself have
achieved--immortality.

XXVIII. PILOTING AND PROPHECY

Those who knew Samuel Clemens best in those days say that he was a
slender, fine-looking man, well dressed--even dandified--given to patent
leathers, blue serge, white duck, and fancy striped shirts. Old for his
years, he heightened his appearance at times by wearing his beard in
the atrocious mutton-chop fashion, then popular, but becoming to no
one, least of all to him. The pilots regarded him as a great reader--a
student of history, travels, literature, and the sciences--a young man
whom it was an education as well as an entertainment to know. When
not at the wheel, he was likely to be reading or telling yarns in the
Association Rooms.

He began the study of French one day when he passed a school of
languages, where three tongues, French, German, and Italian, were
taught, one in each of three rooms. The price was twenty-five dollars
for one language, or three for fifty dollars. The student was provided
with a set of cards for each room and supposed to walk from one
apartment to another, changing tongues at each threshold. With his
unusual enthusiasm and prodigality, the young pilot decided to take all
three languages, but after the first two or three round trips concluded
that for the present French would do. He did not return to the school,
but kept his cards and bought text-books. He must have studied pretty
faithfully when he was off watch and in port, for his river note-book
contains a French exercise, all neatly written, and it is from the
Dialogues of Voltaire.

This old note-book is interesting for other things. The notes are no
longer timid, hesitating memoranda, but vigorous records ma