XIV
river days
PILOTING was only a part of Sam Clemens's education on the Mississippi. He learned as much of the reefs and shallows of human nature as of the river-bed. In one place he writes:
In that brief, sharp schooling I got personally and familiarly acquainted with all the different types of human nature that are to be found in fiction, biography, or history.
All the different types, but most of them in the rough. That Samuel Clemens kept the promise made to his mother as to drink and cards during those apprentice days is well worth remembering.
Horace Bixby, answering a call for pilots from the Missouri River, consigned his pupil, as was customary, to one of the pilots of the John J. Roe, a freight-boat, owned and conducted by some retired farmers, and in its hospitality reminding Sam of his Uncle John Quarles's farm. The Roe was a very deliberate boat. It was said that she could beat an island to St. Louis, but never quite overtake the current going down-stream. Sam loved the Roe. She was not licensed to carry passengers, but she always had
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