It is the most wonderful thing I ever heard of; by a long shot the most wonderful--and unexpected.' Mr.Thompson and Mr.Rogers had arrived, meantime, with satchels and umbrellas, and had silently listened to the captain's news.

Thompson put a half-dollar in my hand and said softly-- 'For my share of the chromo.' Rogers followed suit.
Yes, it was an astonishing thing to see the Mississippi rolling between unpeopled shores and straight over the spot where I used to see a good big self-complacent town twenty years ago.

Town that was county-seat of a great and important county; town with a big United States marine hospital; town of innumerable fights--an inquest every day; town where I had used to know the prettiest girl, and the most accomplished in the whole Mississippi Valley; town where we were handed the first printed news of the 'Pennsylvania's' mournful disaster a quarter of a century ago; a town no more--swallowed up, vanished, gone to feed the fishes; nothing left but a fragment of a shanty and a crumbling brick chimney!.