vessel.  In Life on the Mississippi we have his story of how he met Horace Bixby and decided to become a pilot instead of a South American adventurer—­jauntily setting himself the stupendous task of learning the twelve hundred miles of the Mississippi River between St. Louis and New Orleans—­of knowing it as exactly and as unfailingly, even in the dark, as one knows the way to his own features.  It seems incredible to those who knew Mark Twain in his later years—­dreamy, unpractical, and indifferent to details—­that he could have acquired so vast a store of minute facts as were required by that task.  Yet within eighteen months he had become not only a pilot, but one of the best and most careful pilots on the river, intrusted with some of the largest and most valuable steamers.  He continued in that profession for two and a half years longer, and during that time met with no disaster that cost his owners a single dollar for damage.

Then the war broke out.  South Carolina seceded in December, 1860 and other States followed.  Clemens was in New Orleans in January, 1861, when Louisiana seceded, and his boat was put into the Confederate service and sent up the Red River.  His occupation gone, he took steamer for the North—­the last one before the blockade closed.  A blank cartridge was fired at them from Jefferson Barracks when they reached St. Louis, but they did not understand the signal, and kept on.  Presently a shell carried away part of the pilot-house and considerably disturbed its inmates.  They realized, then, that war had really begun.

In those days Clemens’s sympathies were with the South.  He hurried up to Hannibal and enlisted with a company of young fellows who were recruiting with the avowed purpose of “throwing off the yoke of the invader.”  They were ready for the field, presently, and set out in good order, a sort of nondescript cavalry detachment, mounted on animals more picturesque than beautiful.  Still, it was a resolute band, and might have done very well, only it rained a good deal, which made soldiering disagreeable and hard.  Lieutenant Clemens resigned at the end of two weeks, and decided to go to Nevada with Orion, who was a Union abolitionist and had received an appointment from Lincoln as Secretary of the new Territory.

In ‘Roughing It’ Mark Twain gives us the story of the overland journey made by the two brothers, and a picture of experiences at the other end —­true in aspect, even if here and there elaborated in detail.  He was Orion’s private secretary, but there was no private-secretary work to do, and no salary attached to the position.  The incumbent presently went to mining, adding that to his other trades.