That is all there is of it—­simply touch and go—­no dwelling upon it.  Nevertheless it was intended for an eye that would be swift to see it; and it was meant to move a kind heart to try to effect the liberation of a poor reformed and purified fellow lying in the fell grip of consumption.

When I for the first time heard that letter read, nine years ago, I felt that it was the most remarkable one I had ever encountered.  And it so warmed me toward Mr. Brown of St. Louis that I said that if ever I visited that city again, I would seek out that excellent man and kiss the hem of his garment if it was a new one.  Well, I visited St. Louis, but I did not hunt for Mr. Brown; for, alas! the investigations of long ago had proved that the benevolent Brown, like ‘Jack Hunt,’ was not a real person, but a sheer invention of that gifted rascal, Williams—­ burglar, Harvard graduate, son of a clergyman.

Chapter 53 My Boyhood’s Home

We took passage in one of the fast boats of the St. Louis and St. Paul Packet Company, and started up the river.

When I, as a boy, first saw the mouth of the Missouri River, it was twenty-two or twenty-three miles above St. Louis, according to the estimate of pilots; the wear and tear of the banks have moved it down eight miles since then; and the pilots say that within five years the river will cut through and move the mouth down five miles more, which will bring it within ten miles of St. Louis.

About nightfall we passed the large and flourishing town of Alton, Illinois; and before daylight next morning the town of Louisiana, Missouri, a sleepy village in my day, but a brisk railway center now; however, all the towns out there are railway centers now.  I could not clearly recognize the place.  This seemed odd to me, for when I retired from the rebel army in ’61 I retired upon Louisiana in good order; at least in good enough order for a person who had not yet learned how to retreat according to the rules of war, and had to trust to native genius.  It seemed to me that for a first attempt at a retreat it was not badly done.  I had done no advancing in all that campaign that was at all equal to it.

There was a railway bridge across the river here well sprinkled with glowing lights, and a very beautiful sight it was.

At seven in the morning we reached Hannibal, Missouri, where my boyhood was spent.  I had had a glimpse of it fifteen years ago, and another glimpse six years earlier, but both were so brief that they hardly counted.  The only notion of the town that remained in my mind was the memory of it as I had known it when I first quitted it twenty-nine years ago.  That picture of it was still as clear and vivid to me as a photograph.  I stepped ashore with the feeling of one who returns out of a dead-and-gone generation.  I had a sort of realizing sense of what the Bastille prisoners must have felt when they used to come out and look upon Paris after years of captivity, and note how curiously the familiar and the strange were mixed together before them.  I saw the new houses—­ saw them plainly enough—­but they did not affect the older picture in my mind, for through their solid bricks and mortar I saw the vanished houses, which had formerly stood there, with perfect distinctness.