The Boys' Life of Mark Twain. Paine Albert Bigelow
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Название: The Boys' Life of Mark Twain

Автор: Paine Albert Bigelow

Издательство: Public Domain

Жанр: Биографии и Мемуары

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СКАЧАТЬ there must have been hard places all along, for to learn every crook and turn and stump and snag and bluff and bar and sounding of that twelve hundred miles of mighty, shifting water was a gigantic task. Mark Twain tells us how, when he was getting along pretty well, his chief one day turned on him suddenly with this "settler":

      "What is the shape of Walnut Bend?"

      He might as well have asked me my grandmother's opinion of protoplasm. I replied respectfully and said I didn't know it had any particular shape. My gun-powdery chief went off with a bang, of course, and then went on loading and firing until he was out of adjectives ….I waited. By and by he said:

      "My boy, you've got to know the shape of the river perfectly. It is all that is left to steer by on a very dark night. Everything else is blotted out and gone. But mind you, it hasn't got the same shape in the night that it has in the daytime."

      "How on earth am I going to learn it, then?"

      "How do you follow a hall at home in the dark? Because you know the shape of it. You can't see it."

      "Do you mean to say that I've got to know all the million trifling variations of shape in the banks of this interminable river as well as I know the shape of the front hall at home?"

      "On my honor, you've got to know them better than any man ever did know the shapes of the halls in his own house."

      "I wish I was dead!"

      But the reader must turn to Chapter VIII of "Life on the Mississippi" and read, or reread, the pages which follow this extract—nothing can better convey the difficulties of piloting. That Samuel Clemens had the courage to continue is the best proof, not only of his great love of the river, but of that splendid gift of resolution that one rarely fails to find in men of the foremost rank.

      XIV.

      RIVER DAYS

      Piloting was only a part of Sam Clemens's education on the Mississippi. He learned as much of the reefs and shallows of human nature as of the river-bed. In one place he writes:

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      1

      John Briggs died in 1907; earlier in the same year the writer of this memoir spent an afternoon with him and obtained from him most of the material for this chapter.

      2

      Horace Bixby lived until 1912 and remained at the wheel until within a short time of his death, in his eighty-seventh year. The writer of this memoir visited him in 1910 and took down from his dictation the dialogue that follows.

      3

      Depth of water. One-quarter less than

1

John Briggs died in 1907; earlier in the same year the writer of this memoir spent an afternoon with him and obtained from him most of the material for this chapter.

2

Horace Bixby lived until 1912 and remained at the wheel until within a short time of his death, in his eighty-seventh year. The writer of this memoir visited him in 1910 and took down from his dictation the dialogue that follows.

3

Depth of water. One-quarter less than three fathoms.

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