Then he poured all the story of that last tragic night.  It has been set down here because it accounts for much in his after-life.  It magnified his natural compassion for the weakness and blunders of humanity, while it increased the poor opinion implanted by the Scotchman Macfarlane of the human being as a divine invention.  Two of Mark Twain’s chief characteristics were—­consideration for the human species, and contempt for it.

In many ways he never overcame the tragedy of Henry’s death.  He never really looked young again.  Gray hairs had come, as he said, and they did not disappear.  His face took on the serious, pathetic look which from that time it always had in repose.  At twenty-three he looked thirty.  At thirty he looked nearer forty.  After that the discrepancy in age and looks became less notable.  In vigor, complexion, and temperament he was regarded in later life as young for his years, but never in looks.

XXVII

THE PILOT

The young pilot returned to the river as steersman for George Ealer, whom he loved, and in September of that year obtained a full license as Mississippi River pilot.—­[In Life on the Mississippi he gives his period of learning at from two to two and a half years; but documentary evidence as well as Mr. Bixby’s testimony places the apprenticeship at eighteen months]—­Bixby had returned by this time, and they were again together, first on the Crescent City, later on a fine new boat called the New Falls City.  Clemens was still a steersman when Bixby returned; but as soon as his license was granted (September 9, 1858) his old chief took him as full partner.

He was a pilot at last.  In eighteen months he had packed away in his head all the multitude of volatile statistics and acquired that confidence and courage which made him one of the elect, a river sovereign.  He knew every snag and bank and dead tree and reef in all those endless miles between St. Louis and New Orleans, every cut-off and current, every depth of water—­the whole story—­by night and by day.  He could smell danger in the dark; he could read the surface of the water as an open page.  At twenty-three he had acquired a profession which surpassed all others for absolute sovereignty and yielded an income equal to that then earned by the Vice-President of the United States.  Boys generally finish college at about that age, but it is not likely that any boy ever finished college with the mass of practical information and training that was stored away in Samuel Clemens’s head, or with his knowledge of human nature, his preparation for battle with the world.

“Not only was he a pilot, but a good one.”  These are Horace Bixby’s words, and he added: