449

OHAPTEE LL
REMINISCENCES.
WB left for St. Louis in the * City of Baton Rouge,* on a delightfully
Lot day, but with the main purpose of my visit but lamely accom-
plished. I had hoped to hunt up and talk with a hundred steam-
boatmen, but got so pleasantly involved in the social life of the town
that I got nothing more than mere five-minute talks with a couple of
dozen of the craft.
I was on the bench of the pilot-house when we backed out and
* straightened up * for the start—the boat pausing for a * good ready/
in the old-fashioned way, and the Hack smoke piling out of the
chimneys equally in the old-fashioned way. Then we began to
gather momentum, and presently were fairly under way and
booming along. It was all as natural and familiar—and so were
the shoreward sights—as if there had been no break in my river life.
There was a ' cub/ and I judged that he would take the wheel now j
and he did. Captain Bixby stepped into the pilot-house. Presently
the cub closed up on the rank of steamships* He made me nervous,
for he allowed too much water to show between our boat and the ships.
I knew quite well what was going to happen, because I could date
back in my own life and inspect the record. The captain looked on,
during a silent half-minute, then took the wheel himself , and crowded
the boat in, till she went scraping along within a hand-breadth of the
ships. It was exactly the favour which he had done me, about a
quarter of a century before, in that same spot, the first time I ever
steamed out of the port of New Orleans. It was a very great and
sincere pleasure to me to see the thing repeated—with somebody
else as victim.