470 ZZZ-ff ON THE MISSISSIPPI.

CHAPTER MIL
MY BOYHOOD'S HOME.
"WE took passage in one of the fast boats of the St. Louis and St. Paul
Packet Company, and started up the river.
When I, as a boy, first saw the mouth of the Missouri Biver, it
was twenty-two or twenty-three miles abovp St, Louis, accordiog to
the estimate of pilots; the wear and tear of the banks have moved it
down eight miles since then; and the pilots say that within five
years the river will cut through and move the mouth down five miles
more, which will bring it within ten m51es of St. Louis.
About nightfall we passed the large and flourishing town of Alton,
Illinois; and before daylight next morning the town of Louisiana,
Missouri, a sleepy village in my day, but a brisk railway centre now;
however, all the towns out there are railway centres now. I conld
not clearly recognise the place. This seemed odd to me, for when I
retired from the rebel army in '61 I retired upon Louisiana in good
order; at least in good enough order for a person who had not yet
learned how to retreat according to the rules of war, and had to trust
to native genius. It seemed to me that for a first attempt at a retreat
it was not badly done. I had done no advancing in all that campaign
that was at all equal to it.
There was a railway bridge across the river here well sprinkled
with glowing lights, and a very beautiful sight it was.
At seven in the morning we reached Hannibal, Missouri, where
my boyhood was spent. I had had a glimpse of it fifteen years ago,
and another glimpse six years earlier, but both were so brief that tbey
hardly counted. The only notion of the town that remained in my
mind was the memory of it as I had known it when I first quitted it