ON THE MISSISSIPPI.
deep into a good man's heart. There was no malice in my rubbish *
but it laughed at the captain. It laughed at a man to whom such
a thing was new and strange and dreadful. I did not know then,
though I do now, that there is no suffering comparable with iihat
which a private person feels when he is for the first time pilloried in
print.
Captain Sellers did me the honour to profoundly detest me from
that day forth. When I say he did me the honour, I am not using
empty words. It was a very real honour to be in the thoughts of so
great a man as Captain Sellers, and I had wit enough to appreciate
it and be proud of it. It was distinction to be loved by such a man;
but it was a much greater distinction to be hated by him, because he
loved scores of people ] but he didn't sit up nights to hate anybody
but me.
He never printed another paragraph while he lived, and he never
again signed * Mark Twain' to anything. At the time that the
telegraph brought the news of his death, I was on the Pacific coast
I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre; so I con-
fiscated the ancient mariner's discarded one, and have done my best
to make it remain what it was in his hands—a sign and symbol and
warrant fchat whatever is found in its company may be gambled on
as being the petrified truth; how I have succeeded, it would not be
modest in me to say.
The captain had an honourable pride in his profession and an
abiding love for it. He ordered his monument before he died, and
kept it near him until he did die. It stands over his grave now, in
Bellefontaine cemetery, St. Louis, It is his image, in marble,
standing on duty at the pilot wheel; and worthy to stand and
confront criticism, for it represents a man who in life would haw
stayed there till he burned to a cinder, if duty required it.
The finest thing we saw on our whole Mississippi trip, we saw as
we approached New Orleans in the steam-tug. This was the curving
frontage of the crescent city lit up with the white glare of five miles
of electric lights, It wv a wonderful sight, and very beautifoL