Complete Letters of Mark Twain, page 49 by Mark Twain
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le. This is the luckiest circumstance that ever befell me. Not on account of the wages-- for that is a secondary consideration--but from the fact that the City of Memphis is the largest boat in the trade and the hardest to pilot, and consequently I can get a reputation on her, which is a thing I never could accomplish on a transient boat. I can "bank" in the neighborhood of $100 a month on her, and that will satisfy me for the present (principally because the other youngsters are sucking their fingers.) Bless me! what a pleasure there is in revenge! and what vast respect Prosperity commands! Why, six months ago, I could enter the "Rooms," and receive only a customary fraternal greeting--but now they say, "Why, how are you, old fellow--when did you get in?"
And the young pilots who used to tell me, patronizingly, that I could never learn the river cannot keep from showing a little of their chagrin at seeing me so far ahead of them. Permit me to "blow my horn," for I derive a living pleasure from these things, and I must confess that when I go to pay my dues, I rather like to let the d---d rascals get a glimpse of a hundred dollar bill peeping out from amongst notes of smaller dimensions, whose face I do not exhibit! You will despise this egotism, but I tell you there is a "stern joy" in it.....
Pilots did not remain long on one boat, as a rule; just why it is not so easy to understand. Perhaps they liked the experience of change; perhaps both captain and pilot liked the pursuit of the ideal. In the light- hearted letter that follows--written to a friend of the family, formerly of Hannibal--we get something of the uncertainty of the pilot's engagements.
To Mrs. Elizabeth W. Smith, in Jackson, Cape Girardeau County, Mo.:
ST. Louis, Oct. 31 [probably 1859]. DEAR AUNT BETSEY,--Ma has not written you, because she did not know when I would get started down the river again.....
You see, Aunt Betsey, I made but one trip on the packet after you left, and then concluded to remain at home a