The thing that reminded me of it now, when I was alone at the wheel, was the spectacle of this young fellow standing in the pilot-house door, with the knob in his hand, silently and severely inspecting me.  I don’t know when I have seen anybody look so injured as he did.  He did not say anything—­simply stood there and looked; reproachfully looked and pondered.  Finally he shut the door, and started away; halted on the texas a minute; came slowly back and stood in the door again, with that grieved look in his face; gazed upon me awhile in meek rebuke, then said—­

‘You let me learn you all about a steamboat, didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I confessed.

‘Yes, you did—­didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘You are the feller that—­that—­’

Language failed.  Pause—­impotent struggle for further words—­then he gave it up, choked out a deep, strong oath, and departed for good.  Afterward I saw him several times below during the trip; but he was cold—­would not look at me.  Idiot, if he had not been in such a sweat to play his witless practical joke upon me, in the beginning, I would have persuaded his thoughts into some other direction, and saved him from committing that wanton and silly impoliteness.

I had myself called with the four o’clock watch, mornings, for one cannot see too many summer sunrises on the Mississippi.  They are enchanting.  First, there is the eloquence of silence; for a deep hush broods everywhere.  Next, there is the haunting sense of loneliness, isolation, remoteness from the worry and bustle of the world.  The dawn creeps in stealthily; the solid walls of black forest soften to gray, and vast stretches of the river open up and reveal themselves; the water is glass-smooth, gives off spectral little wreaths of white mist, there is not the faintest breath of wind, nor stir of leaf; the tranquillity is profound and infinitely satisfying.  Then a bird pipes up, another follows, and soon the pipings develop into a jubilant riot of music.  You see none of the birds; you simply move through an atmosphere of song which seems to sing itself.  When the light has become a little stronger, you have one of the fairest and softest pictures imaginable.  You have the intense green of the massed and crowded foliage near by; you see it paling shade by shade in front of you; upon the next projecting cape, a mile off or more, the tint has lightened to the tender young green of spring; the cape beyond that one has almost lost color, and the furthest one, miles away under the horizon, sleeps upon the water a mere dim vapor, and hardly separable from the sky above it and about it.  And all this stretch of river is a mirror, and you have the shadowy reflections of the leafage and the curving shores and the receding capes pictured in it.  Well, that is all beautiful; soft and rich and beautiful; and when the sun gets well up, and distributes a pink flush here and a powder of gold yonder and a purple haze where it will yield the best effect, you grant that you have seen something that is worth remembering.