'
"'Gee whillikens! he! he! I ain't got $500, but I've got five lots in
Keokuk, Iowa, and 2000 acres of land in Tennessee that is worth two bits
an acre any time. You can have that if you want it.'
"I told him I did not care for his land, and after a while he agreed to
pay $100 in cash (borrowed from his brother-in-law, William A. Moffett,
of Virginia), $150 in twelve months, and the balance when he became a
pilot. He was with me for a long time, but sometimes took occasional
trips with other pilots." And he significantly adds "He was always
drawling out dry jokes, but then we did not pay any attention to him."
It cannot be thought accidental that Sam Clemens became a pilot. Bixby
became his mentor, the pilot-house his recitation-room, the steamboat
his university, the great river the field of knowledge.
In that stupendous course in nature's own college, he "learned the
river" as schoolboy seldom masters his Greek or his mathematics. With
the naive assurance of youth, he gaily enters upon the task of
"learning" some twelve or thirteen hundred miles of the great
Mississippi.
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