WHEN I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades in our village {footnote [1.

Hannibal, Missouri]} on the west bank of the Mississippi River.

That was, to be a steamboatman.

We had transient ambitions of other sorts, but they were only transient.

When a circus came and went, it left us all burning to become clowns; the first negro minstrel show that came to our section left us all suffering to try that kind of life; now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.