A Heedless, Reckless Creature
He Was, And Always In Hot Water, Always In Mischief.
An Arkansas
passenger brought an enormous bear aboard, one day, and chained him to a
life-boat on the hurricane deck.
Thornburgh's 'cub' could not rest till
he had gone there and unchained the bear, to 'see what he would do.' He
was promptly gratified. The bear chased him around and around the deck,
for miles and miles, with two hundred eager faces grinning through the
railings for audience, and finally snatched off the lad's coat-tail and
went into the texas to chew it. The off-watch turned out with alacrity,
and left the bear in sole possession. He presently grew lonesome, and
started out for recreation. He ranged the whole boat - visited every part
of it, with an advance guard of fleeing people in front of him and a
voiceless vacancy behind him; and when his owner captured him at last,
those two were the only visible beings anywhere; everybody else was in
hiding, and the boat was a solitude.
I was told that one of my pilot friends fell dead at the wheel, from
heart disease, in 1869. The captain was on the roof at the time. He saw
the boat breaking for the shore; shouted, and got no answer; ran up, and
found the pilot lying dead on the floor.
Mr. Bixby had been blown up, in Madrid bend; was not injured, but the
other pilot was lost.
George Ritchie had been blown up near Memphis - blown into the river from
the wheel, and disabled. The water was very cold; he clung to a cotton
bale - mainly with his teeth - and floated until nearly exhausted, when he
was rescued by some deck hands who were on a piece of the wreck. They
tore open the bale and packed him in the cotton, and warmed the life
back into him, and got him safe to Memphis. He is one of Bixby's pilots
on the 'Baton Rouge' now.
Into the life of a steamboat clerk, now dead, had dropped a bit of
romance - somewhat grotesque romance, but romance nevertheless. When I
knew him he was a shiftless young spendthrift, boisterous, goodhearted,
full of careless generosities, and pretty conspicuously promising to
fool his possibilities away early, and come to nothing. In a Western
city lived a rich and childless old foreigner and his wife; and in their
family was a comely young girl - sort of friend, sort of servant. The
young clerk of whom I have been speaking - whose name was not George
Johnson, but who shall be called George Johnson for the purposes of this
narrative - got acquainted with this young girl, and they sinned; and the
old foreigner found them out, and rebuked them. Being ashamed, they
lied, and said they were married; that they had been privately married.
Then the old foreigner's hurt was healed, and he forgave and blessed
them. After that, they were able to continue their sin without
concealment.
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