A PILOT1 S NEEDS.

127

only in the Southern trade six months. That was thirteen years ago.
I made a trip with him. There was five feet in the upper river then ;
the " Henry Blake" grounded at the foot of Tower Island drawing
four and a half; the " George Elliott " unshipped her rudder on the
wreck of the " Sunflower "------'

' Why, the " Sunflower" didn't sink until-----'

* / know when she sunk; it was three years before that, on the
2nd of December; Asa Hardy was captain of her, and his brother
John was first clerk; and it
was his first trip in her, too ;
Tom Jones told me these
things a week afterward in
New Orleans; he was first
mate of the " Sunflower."
Captain Hardy stuck a nail
in his foot the 6th of July
of the nest year, and died
of the lockjaw on the 15th.
His brother John died two
years after—3rd of March,
—erysipelas. I never saw
either of the Hardys,—they
were Allegheny River men,
—but people who knew them
told me all these things.
And they said Captain Hardy
wore yarn socks winter and
summer just the same, and
his first wife's name was Jane
Shook—she was from New England—and his second one died in a
lunatic asylum. It was in the blood. She was from !Lexington,
Kentucky. Name was Horton before she was married.

And so on, by the hour, the man's tongue would go. He could
not forget any thing. It was simply impossible. The most trivial
details remained as distinct and luminous in his head, after they had
lain there for years, as the most memorable events. His was not
simply a pilot's memory; its grasp was universal. If he were talking

* OH, i KNEW SIM?