THE JBOYS* AMBITION.

negro minstrel show that came to our section left us all suffering to
try that kind of life ; now and then' we had a hope that if we lived
and were good, God would permit us to be pirates. These ambi-
tions faded out, each in its turn; but the ambition to be a steam-
boatman always remained.

Once a day a
cheap, gaudy packet
arrived upward from
St. Louis, and an-
other downward from
Iveokuk. Before
these events, the day
was glorious with ex-
pectancy ; after them,
the day was a dead
and empty thing.
Not only the boys,
but the whole village,
felt this. After all
these years I can pic-
ture that old time to
myself now, just as it
was then : the white
town drowsing in the
sunshine of a sum-
mer's morning; the
streets empty, or
pretty nearly so; one
or two clerks sitting
in front of the "Water
Street stores, with

their splint-bottomed chairs tilted back against the wall, chins on
breasts, hats slouched over their faces, asleep—with shingle-shavings
enough around to show what broke them down ; a sow and a litter of
pigs loafing along the sidewalk, doing a good business in watermelon
rinds and seeds; two or three lonely little freight piles scattered
about the * levee;' a pile of * skids' on the slope of the stone-paved

' WATEB-STREET CLERKS.'