Chapter 18

Chapter 18
I Take a Few Extra Lessons

DURING the two or two and a half years of my apprenticeship,
I served under many pilots, and had experience of many
kinds of steamboatmen and many varieties of steamboats;
for it was not always convenient for Mr. Bixby to have me
with him, and in such cases he sent me with somebody else.
I am to this day profiting somewhat by that experience;
for in that brief, sharp schooling, I got personally and familiarly
acquainted with about all the different types of human nature
that are to be found in fiction, biography, or history.
The fact is daily borne in upon me, that the average shore-employment
requires as much as forty years to equip a man with this sort
of an education. When I say I am still profiting by this thing,
I do not mean that it has constituted me a judge of men--
no, it has not done that; for judges of men are born, not made.
My profit is various in kind and degree; but the feature of it
which I value most is the zest which that early experience has
given to my later reading. When I find a well-drawn character
in fiction or biography, I generally take a warm personal
interest in him, for the reason that I have known him before--
met him on the river.

The figure that comes before me oftenest, out of the shadows of that
vanished time, is that of Brown, of the steamer 'Pennsylvania'--the man
referred to in a former chapter, whose memory was so good and tiresome.
He was a middle-aged, long, slim, bony, smooth-shaven, horse-faced, ignorant,
stingy, malicious, snarling, fault hunting, mote-magnifying tyrant.
I early got the habit of coming on watch with dread at my heart.
No matter how good a time I might have been having with the off-watch below,
and no matter how high my spirits might be when I started aloft, my soul
became lead in my body the moment I approached the pilot-house.

I still remember the first time I ever entered the presence of that man.
The boat had backed out from St. Louis and was 'straightening down;'
I ascended to the pilot-house in high feather, and very proud
to be semi-officially a member of the executive family of so fast
and famous a boat. Brown was at the wheel. I paused in the middle
of the room, all fixed to make my bow, but Brown did not look around.
I thought he took a furtive glance at me out of the corner of his eye,
but as not even this notice was repeated, I judged I had been mistaken.
By this time he was picking his way among some dangerous 'breaks' abreast
the woodyards; therefore it would not be proper to interrupt him; so I
stepped softly to the high bench and took a seat.

There was silence for ten minutes; then my new boss turned
and inspected me deliberately and painstakingly from head