CHAPTER IV.
THE BOYS' AMBITION.
WHEN I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades in our village[1] on the west bank of the Mississippi River. That was, to be a steamboatman. We had transient ambitions of other sorts, but they were only transient.
"OUR PERMANENT AMBITION."
When a circus came and went, it left us all burning to become clowns; the first negro minstrel show that came to our section left us all suffering to try that kind of life; now and
- ↑ Hannibal, Missouri.
