Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/411

 A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

character, size, and position of the crossing-stones, and the varying depth of mud in each of those numberless places, you will have some idea of what the pilot must know in order to keep a Mississippi steamer out of trouble. Next, if you will take half of the signs in that long street and change their places once a month, and still manage to know their new positions accurately on dark nights, and keep up with these repeated changes without making any mistakes, you will understand what is required of a pilot s peerless memory by the fickle Mississippi.

&quot;I think a pilot s memory is about the most wonderful thing in the world. To know the Old and New Testaments by heart, and be able to recite them glibly, forward or backward, or begin at random anywhere in the book and recite both ways, and never trip or make a mistake, is no extravagant mass of knowledge, and no marvelous facility, compared to a pilot s massed knowledge of the Mississippi, and his marvelous facility in handling it. ...

&quot;And how easily and comfortably the pilot s mem ory does its work; how placidly effortless is its way; how unconsciously it lays up its vast stores, hour by hour, day by day, and never loses or mislays a single valuable package of them all! Take an instance. Let a leadsman say: Half twain! half twain! half twain! half twain! half twain! until it becomes as monotonous as the ticking of a clock; let conversa tion be going on all the time, and the pilot be doing his share of the talking, and no longer consciously listening to the leadsman; and in the midst of this endless string of half twains let a single quarter

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