Putting all things together, I begin to think I am rather lucky than otherwise—­a notion which I was slow to take up.  The other night I was about to round to for a storm—­but concluded that I could find a smoother bank somewhere.  I landed 5 miles below.  The storm came—­passed away and did not injure us.  Coming up, day before yesterday, I looked at the spot I first chose, and half the trees on the bank were torn to shreds.  We couldn’t have lived 5 minutes in such a tornado.  And I am also lucky in having a berth, while all the young pilots are idle.  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 awhile.  I have just discovered this morning that I am to go to New Orleans on the “Col.  Chambers”—­fine, light-draught, swift-running passenger steamer—­all modern accommodations and improvements—­through with dispatch—­for freight or passage apply on board, or to—­but—­I have forgotten the agent’s name—­however,