And so on. Yates’s life became a burden
to him. He could not escape his debtor and his
debtor’s awful sufferings on account of not being
able to pay. He dreaded to show himself in the
street, lest he should find Stephen lying in wait
for him at the corner.
Bogart’s billiard saloon was a great resort
for pilots in those days. They met there about
as much to exchange river news as to play. One
morning Yates was there; Stephen was there, too, but
kept out of sight. But by and by, when about
all the pilots had arrived who were in town, Stephen
suddenly appeared in the midst, and rushed for Yates
as for a long-lost brother.
’Oh, I am so glad to see you! Oh
my soul, the sight of you is such a comfort to my
eyes! Gentlemen, I owe all of you money; among
you I owe probably forty thousand dollars. I
want to pay it; I intend to pay it every last cent
of it. You all know, without my telling you,
what sorrow it has cost me to remain so long under
such deep obligations to such patient and generous
friends; but the sharpest pang I suffer—by
far the sharpest—is from the debt I owe
to this noble young man here; and I have come to this
place this morning especially to make the announcement
that I have at last found a method whereby I can pay
off all my debts! And most especially I wanted
him to be here when I announced it. Yes,
my faithful friend,—my benefactor, I’ve
found the method! I’ve found the method
to pay off all my debts, and you’ll get your
money!’ Hope dawned in Yates’s eye; then
Stephen, beaming benignantly, and placing his hand
upon Yates’s head, added, ’I am going
to pay them off in alphabetical order!’
Then he turned and disappeared. The full significance
of Stephen’s ‘method’ did not dawn
upon the perplexed and musing crowd for some two minutes;
and then Yates murmured with a sigh—
’Well, the Y’s stand a gaudy chance.
He won’t get any further than the C’s
in this world, and I reckon that after a good
deal of eternity has wasted away in the next one,
I’ll still be referred to up there as “that
poor, ragged pilot that came here from St. Louis in
the early days!”
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
