WE took passage in one of the fast boats of the St. Louis and St. PaulPacket Company, and started up the river.

When I, as a boy, first saw the mouth of the Missouri River, it was twenty-twoor twenty-three miles above St. Louis, according to the estimate of pilots;the wear and tear of the banks have moved it down eight miles since then;and the pilots say that within five years the river will cut through andmove the mouth down five miles more, which will bring it within ten milesof St. Louis.

About nightfall we passed the large and flourishing townof Alton, Illinois; and before daylight next morning the townof Louisiana, Missouri, a sleepy village in my day, but a briskrailway center now; however, all the towns out there arerailway centers now. I could not clearly recognize the place.

This seemed odd to me, for when I retired from the rebel armyin '61 I retired upon Louisiana in good order; at least in goodenough order for a person who had not yet learned how to retreataccording to the rules of war, and had to trust to native genius.

It seemed to me that for a first attempt at a retreat it wasnot badly done. I had done no advancing in all that campaignthat was at all equal to it.

There was a railway bridge across the river here well sprinkledwith glowing lights, and a very beautiful sight it was.

At seven in the morning we reached Hannibal, Missouri, where my boyhoodwas spent. I had had a glimpse of it fifteen years ago, and another glimpsesix years earlier, but both were so brief that they hardly counted.

The only notion of the town that remained in my mind was the memoryof it as I had known it when I first quitted it twenty-nine years ago.

That picture of it was still as clear and vivid to me as a photograph.

I stepped ashore with the feeling of one who returns out of adead-and-gone generation. I had a sort of realizing sense of whatthe Bastille prisoners must have felt when they used to come outand look upon Paris after years of captivity, and note how curiouslythe familiar and the strange were mixed together before them.

I saw the new houses--saw them plainly enough--but they did notaffect the older picture in my mind, for through their solid bricksand mortar I saw the vanished houses, which had formerly stood there,with perfect distinctness.

It was Sunday morning, and everybody was abed yet. So I passedthrough the vacant streets, still seeing the town as it was,and not as it is, and recognizing and metaphorically shakinghands with a hundred familiar objects which no longer exist;and finally climbed Holiday's Hill to get a comprehensive view.

The whole town lay spread out below me then, and I could mark and fixevery locality, every detail. Naturally, I was a good deal moved.

I said, 'Many of the people I once knew in this tranquil refuge of mychildhood are now in heaven; some, I trust, are in the other place.'

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