The Fact Is Daily Borne In Upon Me,
That The Average Shore-Employment Requires As Much As Forty Years To
Equip A Man With This Sort Of An Education.
When I say I am still
profiting by this thing, I do not mean that it has constituted me a
judge of men - no, it has not done that; for judges of men are born, not
made.
My profit is various in kind and degree; but the feature of it
which I value most is the zest which that early experience has given to
my later reading. When I find a well-drawn character in fiction or
biography, I generally take a warm personal interest in him, for the
reason that I have known him before - met him on the river.
The figure that comes before me oftenest, out of the shadows of that
vanished time, is that of Brown, of the steamer 'Pennsylvania' - the man
referred to in a former chapter, whose memory was so good and tiresome.
He was a middle-aged, long, slim, bony, smooth-shaven, horse-faced,
ignorant, stingy, malicious, snarling, fault hunting, mote-magnifying
tyrant. I early got the habit of coming on watch with dread at my heart.
No matter how good a time I might have been having with the off-watch
below, and no matter how high my spirits might be when I started aloft,
my soul became lead in my body the moment I approached the pilot-house.
I still remember the first time I ever entered the presence of that man.
The boat had backed out from St. Louis and was 'straightening down;' I
ascended to the pilot-house in high feather, and very proud to be semi-
officially a member of the executive family of so fast and famous a
boat.
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