It So Chanced That One Of These Paragraphs - {Footnote [The Original MS.
Of It, In The Captain's Own Hand, Has Been Sent To Me From New Orleans.
It Reads As Follows -
VICKSBURG May 4, 1859.
'My opinion for the benefit of the citizens of New Orleans: The water is
higher this far up than it has been since 8. My opinion is that the
water will be feet deep in Canal street before the first of next June.
Mrs. Turner's plantation at the head of Big Black Island is all under
water, and it has not been since 1815.
'I. Sellers.']}
became the text for my first newspaper article. I burlesqued it
broadly, very broadly, stringing my fantastics out to the extent of
eight hundred or a thousand words. I was a 'cub' at the time. I showed
my performance to some pilots, and they eagerly rushed it into print in
the 'New Orleans True Delta.' It was a great pity; for it did nobody
any worthy service, and it sent a pang deep into a good man's heart.
There was no malice in my rubbish; but it laughed at the captain. It
laughed at a man to whom such a thing was new and strange and dreadful.
I did not know then, though I do now, that there is no suffering
comparable with that which a private person feels when he is for the
first time pilloried in print.
Captain Sellers did me the honor to profoundly detest me from that day
forth.
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