WHEN I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among mycomrades in our village on the westbank of the Mississippi River. That was, to be a steamboatman.

We had transient ambitions of other sorts, but they were only transient.

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 usall suffering to try that kind of life; now and then we had a hopethat if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.

These ambitions faded out, each in its turn; but the ambition to be asteamboatman always remained.

Once a day a cheap, gaudy packet arrived upward from St. Louis,and another downward from Keokuk. Before these events, the daywas glorious with expectancy; after them, the day was a dead andempty thing. Not only the boys, but the whole village, felt this.

After all these years I can picture that old time to myself now,just as it was then: the white town drowsing in the sunshineof a summer's morning; the streets empty, or pretty nearly so;one or two clerks sitting in front of the Water Street stores,with their splint-bottomed chairs tilted back against the wall,chins on breasts, hats slouched over their faces, asleep--with shingle-shavings enough around to show what broke them down;a sow and a litter of pigs loafing along the sidewalk,doing a good business in watermelon rinds and seeds; two orthree lonely little freight piles scattered about the 'levee;'

a pile of 'skids' on the slope of the stone-paved wharf,and the fragrant town drunkard asleep in the shadow of them;two or three wood flats at the head of the wharf, but nobodyto listen to the peaceful lapping of the wavelets against them;the great Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi,rolling its mile-wide tide along, shining in the sun; the denseforest away on the other side; the 'point' above the town,and the 'point' below, bounding the river-glimpse and turningit into a sort of sea, and withal a very still and brilliantand lonely one. Presently a film of dark smoke appears aboveone of those remote 'points;' instantly a negro drayman,famous for his quick eye and prodigious voice, lifts upthe cry, 'S-t-e-a-m-boat a-comin'!' and the scene changes!

The town drunkard stirs, the clerks wake up, a furiousclatter of drays follows, every house and store poursout a human contribution, and all in a twinkling the deadtown is alive and moving. Drays, carts, men, boys, all gohurrying from many quarters to a common center, the wharf.

Assembled there, the people fasten their eyes upon the comingboat as upon a wonder they are seeing for the first time.

And the boat IS rather a handsome sight, too. She is long and sharpand trim and pretty; she has two tall, fancy-topped chimneys,with a gilded device of some kind swung between them;a fanciful pilot-house, a glass and 'gingerbread', perched on topof the 'texas' deck behind them; the paddle-boxes are gorgeouswith a picture or with gilded rays above the boat's name;the boiler deck, the hurricane deck, and the texas deckare fenced and ornamented with clean white railings;there is a flag gallantly flying from the jack-staff;the furnace doors are open and the fires glaring bravely;the upper decks are black with passengers; the captain standsby the big bell, calm, imposing, the envy of all; great volumesof the blackest smoke are rolling and tumbling out of the chimneys--a husbanded grandeur created with a bit of pitch pine just beforearriving at a town; the crew are grouped on the forecastle;the broad stage is run far out over the port bow, and an envieddeckhand stands picturesquely on the end of it with a coilof rope in his hand; the pent steam is screaming throughthe gauge-cocks, the captain lifts his hand, a bell rings,the wheels stop; then they turn back, churning the water to foam,and the steamer is at rest. Then such a scramble as thereis to get aboard, and to get ashore, and to take in freightand to discharge freight, all at one and the same time;and such a yelling and cursing as the mates facilitate it all with!

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