About a year later my pilot-master, Bixby, transferred me from his own steamboat to the _Pennsylvania_, and placed me under the orders and instructions of George Ealer--dead now, these many, many years.

I steered for him a good many months--as was the humble duty of the pilot-apprentice: stood a daylight watch and spun the wheel under the severe superintendence and correction of the master.

He was a prime chess player and an idolater of Shakespeare.

He would play chess with anybody; even with me, and it cost his official dignity something to do that.

Also--quite uninvited--he would read Shakespeare to me; not just casually, but by the hour, when it was his watch, and I was steering.