The pilots regarded him as a great reader—­a student of history, travels, and the sciences.  In the association rooms they often saw him poring over serious books.  He began the study of French one day in New Orleans, when he had passed a school of languages where French, German, and Italian were taught, one in each of three rooms.  The price was twenty-five dollars for one language, or three for fifty.  The student was provided with a set of conversation cards for each, and was supposed to walk from one apartment to another, changing his nationality at each threshold.  The young pilot, with his usual enthusiasm, invested in all three languages, but after a few round trips decided that French would do.  He did not return to the school, but kept the cards and added text-books.  He studied faithfully when off watch and in port, and his old river note-book, still preserved, contains a number of advanced exercises, neatly written out.

Still more interesting are the river notes themselves.  They are not the timid, hesitating memoranda of the “little book” which, by Bixby’s advice, he bought for his first trip.  They are quick, vigorous records that show confidence and knowledge.  Under the head of “Second high-water trip—­Jan., 1861 ‘Alonzo Child,’” the notes tell the story of a rising river, with overflowing banks, blind passages, and cut-offs—­a new river, in fact, that must be judged by a perfect knowledge of the old—­guessed, but guessed right.

Good deal of water all over Cole’s Creek Chute, 12 or 15 ft. bank—­could have gone up above General Taylor’s—­too much drift . . . .

Night—­didn’t run either 77 or 76 towheads—­8-ft. bank on main shore Ozark chute.

To the reader to-day it means little enough, but one may imagine, perhaps, a mile-wide sweep of boiling water, full of drift, shifting currents with newly forming bars, and a lone figure in the dark pilot-house, peering into the night for blind and disappearing landmarks.

But such nights were not all there was of piloting.  There were glorious nights when the stars were blazing out, and the moon was on the water, and the young pilot could follow a clear channel and dream long dreams.  He was very serious at such times—­he reviewed the world’s history he had read, he speculated on the future, he considered philosophies, he lost himself in a study of the stars.  Mark Twain’s love of astronomy, which never waned until his last day, began with those lonely river watches.  Once a great comet blazed in the sky, a “wonderful sheaf of light,” and glorified his long hours at the wheel.

Samuel Clemens was now twenty-five, full of health and strong in his courage.  In the old notebook there remains a well-worn clipping, the words of some unknown writer, which he may have kept as a sort of creed: