Page:Life on the Mississippi (IA lifeonmississipptwai).pdf/93

Rh floor was hot. He would boil a while to himself, and then overflow and scald me again,

"Look here! What do you suppose I told you the names of those points for?"

I tremblingly considered a moment, and then the devil of temptation provoked me to say:—"Well—to—to—be entertaining, I thought."

This was a red rag to the bull. He raged and stormed so (he was crossing the river at the time) that I judge it made him blind, beeausebecause [sic] he ran over the steering-oar of a trading-scow. Of course the traders sent up a volley of red-hot profanity.

Never was a man so grateful as Mr. Bixby was: because he was brim full, and here were subjects who would talk back. He threw open a window, thrust his head out, and such an irruption followed as I never had heard before. The fainter and farther away the seowmen'sscowmen's [sic] curses drifted, the higher Mr. Bixby lifted his voieevoice [sic] and the wcighticrweightier [sic] his adjeetivesadjectives [sic] grew. When he closed the window he was empty. You could have drawn a seine through his system and not caught curses enough to disturb your mother with. Presently he said to me in the gentlest way:—

"My boy, you must get a little memorandum-book, and every time I tell you a thing, put it down right away. There's only once way to be a pilot, and that is to get this