490 LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI.
he led me down to the carpenter's shop, gave the carpenter a jeering
and scornful lecture upon his-silly pretensions, slapped his face, made
frirn get down on his knees and beg—then went off and left me to
contemplate the cheap and pitiful ruin of what, in ray eyes, had so
lately been a majestic and incomparable hero. The carpenter blus-
tered, flourished his knife, and doomed this Lynch in his usual
volcanic style, the size of his fateful words undiminished \ but it was
all wasted upon me; he was a hero to me no longer, but only a poor
foolish, exposed humbug. I was ashamed of him, and ashamed of
myself; I took no further interest in him, and never went to hig
shop any more. He was a heavy loss to me, for he was the greatest
hero I had ever known. The fellow must have had some talent; for
some of his imaginary murders were so vividly and dramatically
described that I remember all their details yet.
The people of Hannibal are not more changed than is the town
It is no longer a village ; it is a city, with a mayor, and a council,
and water-works, and probably a debt. It has fifteen thousand
people, is a thriving and energetic place, and is paved like the resfe of
the west and south—where a well-paved street and a good sidewalk j
are things so seldom seen, that one doubts them when he does see i
them. The customary half-dozen railways centre in Hannibal no*,
and there is a new depot which cost a hundred thousand dollars. IB
my time the town had no specialty, and no commercial grandeur;
the daily packet usually landed a passenger and bought a catfish, an£
took away another passenger and a hatful of freight; but now a
huge commerce in lumber has grown up and a large miscellaneous
commerce is one of the results. A deal of money changes hands
there now*
Bear Creek—so called, perhaps, because it was- always so p®.
tieularly bare of bears—is hidden out of sight now, under islands
and continents of piled lumber, and nobody but an expert can fisd
it. I used to get drowned in it every summer regularly, and be
drained out, and inflated and set going again by some chance enemjj
but not enough of it is unoccupied now to drown a person in.
It was a famous breeder of chills and fever in its day. I rememfcer
one summer when everybody in town had this disease at oam
Many chimneys were shaken down, and all the houses were so racked