Mr. Warner and I had an experience of the same sort when we wrote the book called ‘The Gilded Age.’  There is a character in it called ‘Sellers.’  I do not remember what his first name was, in the beginning; but anyway, Mr. Warner did not like it, and wanted it improved.  He asked me if I was able to imagine a person named ‘Eschol Sellers.’  Of course I said I could not, without stimulants.  He said that away out West, once, he had met, and contemplated, and actually shaken hands with a man bearing that impossible name—­’Eschol Sellers.’  He added—­

’It was twenty years ago; his name has probably carried him off before this; and if it hasn’t, he will never see the book anyhow.  We will confiscate his name.  The name you are using is common, and therefore dangerous; there are probably a thousand Sellerses bearing it, and the whole horde will come after us; but Eschol Sellers is a safe name—­it is a rock.’

So we borrowed that name; and when the book had been out about a week, one of the stateliest and handsomest and most aristocratic looking white men that ever lived, called around, with the most formidable libel suit in his pocket that ever—­well, in brief, we got his permission to suppress an edition of ten million {footnote [Figures taken from memory, and probably incorrect.  Think it was more.]} copies of the book and change that name to ‘Mulberry Sellers’ in future editions.

Chapter 48 Sugar and Postage

One day, on the street, I encountered the man whom, of all men, I most wished to see—­Horace Bixby; formerly pilot under me—­or rather, over me—­now captain of the great steamer ‘City of Baton Rouge,’ the latest and swiftest addition to the Anchor Line.  The same slender figure, the same tight curls, the same springy step, the same alertness, the same decision of eye and answering decision of hand, the same erect military bearing; not an inch gained or lost in girth, not an ounce gained or lost in weight, not a hair turned.  It is a curious thing, to leave a man thirty-five years old, and come back at the end of twenty-one years and find him still only thirty-five.  I have not had an experience of this kind before, I believe.  There were some crow’s-feet, but they counted for next to nothing, since they were inconspicuous.

His boat was just in.  I had been waiting several days for her, purposing to return to St. Louis in her.  The captain and I joined a party of ladies and gentlemen, guests of Major Wood, and went down the river fifty-four miles, in a swift tug, to ex-Governor Warmouth’s sugar plantation.  Strung along below the city, were a number of decayed, ram-shackly, superannuated old steamboats, not one of which had I ever seen before.  They had all been built, and worn out, and thrown aside, since I was here last.  This gives one a realizing sense of the frailness of a Mississippi boat and the briefness of its life.