with the cruets all complete.  Uncle Mumford said that Cape Girardeau was the Athens of Missouri, and contained several colleges besides those already mentioned; and all of them on a religious basis of one kind or another.  He directed my attention to what he called the ’strong and pervasive religious look of the town,’ but I could not see that it looked more religious than the other hill towns with the same slope and built of the same kind of bricks.  Partialities often make people see more than really exists.

Uncle Mumford has been thirty years a mate on the river.  He is a man of practical sense and a level head; has observed; has had much experience of one sort and another; has opinions; has, also, just a perceptible dash of poetry in his composition, an easy gift of speech, a thick growl in his voice, and an oath or two where he can get at them when the exigencies of his office require a spiritual lift.  He is a mate of the blessed old-time kind; and goes gravely damning around, when there is work to the fore, in a way to mellow the ex-steamboatman’s heart with sweet soft longings for the vanished days that shall come no more.  ’Git up there you!  Going to be all day?  Why d’n’t you say you was petrified in your hind legs, before you shipped!’

He is a steady man with his crew; kind and just, but firm; so they like him, and stay with him.  He is still in the slouchy garb of the old generation of mates; but next trip the Anchor Line will have him in uniform—­a natty blue naval uniform, with brass buttons, along with all the officers of the line—­and then he will be a totally different style of scenery from what he is now.

Uniforms on the Mississippi!  It beats all the other changes put together, for surprise.  Still, there is another surprise—­that it was not made fifty years ago.  It is so manifestly sensible, that it might have been thought of earlier, one would suppose.  During fifty years, out there, the innocent passenger in need of help and information, has been mistaking the mate for the cook, and the captain for the barber—­and being roughly entertained for it, too.  But his troubles are ended now.  And the greatly improved aspect of the boat’s staff is another advantage achieved by the dress-reform period.

Steered down the bend below Cape Girardeau.  They used to call it ‘Steersman’s Bend;’ plain sailing and plenty of water in it, always; about the only place in the Upper River that a new cub was allowed to take a boat through, in low water.

Thebes, at the head of the Grand Chain, and Commerce at the foot of it, were towns easily rememberable, as they had not undergone conspicuous alteration.  Nor the Chain, either—­in the nature of things; for it is a chain of sunken rocks admirably arranged to capture and kill steamboats on bad nights.  A good many steamboat corpses lie buried there, out of sight; among the rest my first friend the ‘Paul Jones;’ she knocked her bottom out, and went down like a pot, so the historian told me—­Uncle Mumford.  He said she had a gray mare aboard, and a preacher.  To me, this sufficiently accounted for the disaster; as it did, of course, to Mumford, who added—­