Therefore it followed that I must contrive a new career.

The 'Paul Jones' was now bound for St.Louis.I planned a siege against my pilot, and at the end of three hard days he surrendered.

He agreed to teach me the Mississippi River from New Orleans to St.Louis for five hundred dollars, payable out of the first wages I should receive after graduating.

I entered upon the small enterprise of 'learning' twelve or thirteen hundred miles of the great Mississippi River with the easy confidence of my time of life.

If I had really known what I was about to require of my faculties, I should not have had the courage to begin.