46	LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI.
This creature's ca.reer could produce but one result, and it speedily
followed. Boy after boy managed to get on the river. The minister's
son became an engineer. The doctor's and the post-master's sons
became ' mud clerks;' the wholesale liquor dealer's son became a bar-
keeper on a boat; four sons of the chief merchant, and two sons of
the county judge, became pilots. Pilot was the grandest position of
all. The pilot, even in those days of trivial wages, had a princely
salary—from a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars a
month, and no board to pay. Two months of his wages would pay a
preacher's salary for a year. Now some of us were left disconsolate.
We could not get on. the river—at least our parents would not let us.
So by and by I ran away. I said I never would come home
again till I was a pilot and could come in glory. But somehow I
could not manage it. I went meekly aboard a few of the boats that
lay packed together like sardines at the long St. Louis whaif, and
very humbly inquired for the pilots, but got only a cold shoulder and
short words from mates and clerks. I had to make the best of this
sort of treatment for the time being, but I had comforting day-
dreams of a future when I should be a great and honoured pilot,
with plenty of money, and could kill some of these mates and clerks
and pay for them.