Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/412

 MARK TWAIN

twain! be interjected, without emphasis, and then the half -twain cry go on again, just as before: two or three weeks later that pilot can describe with precision the boat s position in the river when that quarter twain was uttered, and give you such a lot of head marks, stern marks, and side marks to guide you that you ought to be able to take the boat there and put her in that same spot again yourself! The cry of Quarter twain! did not really take his mind from his talk, but his trained faculties instantly photographed the bearings, noted the change of depth, and laid up the important details for future reference without requiring any assistance from him in the matter.&quot;

Young Clemens went through all that appalling training, stored away in his head the bewildering mass of knowledge a pilot s duties required, received the license that was the diploma of the river uni versity, entered into regular employment, and re garded himself as established for life, when the outbreak of the Civil War wiped out his occupation at a stroke, and made his weary apprenticeship a useless labor. The commercial navigation of the lower Mississippi was stopped by a line of fire, and black, squat gunboats, their sloping sides plated with railroad iron, took the place of the gorgeous white side- wheelers, whose pilots had been the envied aristocrats of the river towns. Clemens was in New Orleans when Louisiana seceded, and started North the next day. The boat ran a blockade every day of her trip, and on the last night of the voyage the batteries at the Jefferson barracks,

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