WHEN I was a boy,there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades in our village on the west bank 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 us all suffering to try that kind of life;now and then we had a hope that 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 a steamboatman always remained.
Once a day a cheap,gaudy packet arrived upward from St.Louis,and another downward from Keokuk.Before these events,the day was glorious with expectancy;after them,the day was a dead and empty 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 sunshine of 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 or three 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 nobody to 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 dense forest away on the other side;the 'point'above the town,and the 'point'below,bounding the river-glimpse and turning it into a sort of sea,and withal a very still and brilliant and lonely one.Presently a film of dark smoke appears above one of those remote 'points;'instantly a negro drayman,famous for his quick eye and prodigious voice,lifts up the cry,'S-t-e-a-m-boat a-comin'!'and the scene changes!
The town drunkard stirs,the clerks wake up,a furious clatter of drays follows,every house and store pours out a human contribution,and all in a twinkling the dead town is alive and moving.Drays,carts,men,boys,all go hurrying from many quarters to a common center,the wharf.
Assembled there,the people fasten their eyes upon the coming boat as upon a wonder they are seeing for the first time.
And the boat IS rather a handsome sight,too.She is long and sharp and 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 top of the 'texas'deck behind them;the paddle-boxes are gorgeous with a picture or with gilded rays above the boat's name;the boiler deck,the hurricane deck,and the texas deck are 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 stands by the big bell,calm,imposing,the envy of all;great volumes of the blackest smoke are rolling and tumbling out of the chimneys--a husbanded grandeur created with a bit of pitch pine just before arriving at a town;the crew are grouped on the forecastle;the broad stage is run far out over the port bow,and an envied deckhand stands picturesquely on the end of it with a coil of rope in his hand;the pent steam is screaming through the 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 there is to get aboard,and to get ashore,and to take in freight and to discharge freight,all at one and the same time;and such a yelling and cursing as the mates facilitate it all with!
Ten minutes later the steamer is under way again,with no flag on the jack-staff and no black smoke issuing from the chimneys.
After ten more minutes the town is dead again,and the town drunkard asleep by the skids once more.
