For this reason: whenever six pilots were gathered together, there would always be one or two newly fledged ones in the lot, and the elder ones would be always 'showing off' before these poor fellows; making them sorrowfully feel how callow they were, how recent their nobility, and how humble their degree, by talking largely and vaporously of old-time experiences on the river; always making it a point to date everything back as far as they could, so as to make the new men feel their newness to the sharpest degree possible, and envy the old stagers in the like degree. And how these complacent baldheads WOULD swell, and brag, and lie, and date back--ten, fifteen, twenty years,--and how they did enjoy the effect produced upon the marveling and envying youngsters!
And perhaps just at this happy stage of the proceedings, the stately figure of Captain Isaiah Sellers, that real and only genuine Son of Antiquity, would drift solemnly into the midst. Imagine the size of the silence that would result on the instant. And imagine the feelings of those bald-heads, and the exultation of their recent audience when the ancient captain would begin to drop casual and indifferent remarks of a reminiscent nature-- about islands that had disappeared, and cutoffs that had been made, a generation before the oldest bald-head in the company had ever set his foot in a pilot-house!
Many and many a time did this ancient mariner appear on the scene in the above fashion, and spread disaster and humiliation around him. If one might believe the pilots, he always dated his islands back to the misty dawn of river history; and he never used the same island twice; and never did he employ an island that still existed, or give one a name which anybody present was old enough to have heard of before. If you might believe the pilots, he was always conscientiously particular about little details; never spoke of 'the State of Mississippi,' for instance--no, he would say, 'When the State of Mississippi was where Arkansas now is," and would never speak of Louisiana or Missouri in a general way, and leave an incorrect impression on your mind-- no, he would say, 'When Louisiana was up the river farther,' or 'When Missouri was on the Illinois side.'
The old gentleman was not of literary turn or capacity, but he used to jot down brief paragraphs of plain practical information about the river, and sign them 'MARK TWAIN,' and give them to the 'New Orleans Picayune.' They related to the stage and condition of the river, and were accurate and valuable; and thus far, they contained no poison. But in speaking of the stage of the river to-day, at a given point, the captain was pretty apt to drop in a little remark about this being the first time he had seen the water so high or so low at that particular point for forty-nine years; and now and then he would mention Island So-and-so, and follow it, in parentheses, with some such observation as 'disappeared in 1807, if I remember rightly.' In these antique interjections lay poison and bitterness for the other old pilots, and they used to chaff the 'Mark Twain' paragraphs with unsparing mockery.
It so chanced that one of these paragraphs
VICKSBURG May 4, 1859.
'My opinion for the benefit of the citizens of New Orleans:
The water is higher this far up than it has been since 8.
My opinion is that the water will be feet deep in Canal street
before the first of next June. Mrs. Turner's plantation at
the head of Big Black Island is all under water, and it has not
been since 1815.
'I. Sellers.']>
became the text for my first newspaper article. I burlesqued
it broadly, very broadly, stringing my fantastics out to the extent
of eight hundred or a thousand words. I was a 'cub' at the time.
I showed my performance to some pilots, and they eagerly rushed it into
print in the 'New Orleans True Delta.' It was a great pity; for it did
nobody any worthy service, and it sent a pang deep into a good man's heart.
There was no malice in my rubbish; but it laughed at the captain.
It laughed at a man to whom such a thing was new and strange and dreadful.
I did not know then, though I do now, that there is no suffering comparable
with that which a private person feels when he is for the first time
pilloried in print.