Now and then Mr. Bixby called my attention to certain things. Said he, “This is Six-Mile Point.” I assented. It was pleasant enough information, but I could not see the bearing of it. I was not conscious that it was a matter of any interest to me. Another time he said, “This is Nine-Mile Point.” Later he said, “This is Twelve-Mile Point.” They were all about level with the water’s edge; they all looked about alike to me; they were monotonously unpicturesque. I hoped Mr. Bixby would change the subject...
[Clemens and Bixby moved up the river and on the next watch, Bixby decided to quiz his young cub:]
“What’s the name of the first point above New Orleans?”
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.
“Don’t know... What’s the name of the next point?”
Once more I didn’t know.
“Well, this beats anything. Tell me the name of any point or place I told you.”
I studied a while and decided that I couldn’t.
“Look here! What do you start out from, above Twelve-Mile Point, to cross over?”
“I—I—don't know.”
“You—you—don’t know?" mimicking my drawling manner of speech. “What do you know?”
“I—I—nothing, for certain.”
“By the great Cæsar’s ghost, I believe you...The idea of you being a pilot—you! Why, you don’t know enough to pilot a cow down a lane... Look here! What do you suppose I told you the names of those points for?”
I tremblingly considered a moment, and then the devil of temptation provoked me to say:—
“Well—to—to—be entertaining, I thought.”
This was a red rag to the bull. He raged and stormed so (he was crossing the river at the time) that I judge it made him blind, because he ran over the steering-oar of a trading-scow. Of course the traders sent up a volley of red-hot profanity. Never was a man so grateful as Mr. Bixby was... He threw open a window, thrust his head out, and such an irruption followed as I never had heard before...When he closed the window he was empty. You could have drawn a seine through his system and not caught curses enough to disturb your mother with. Presently he said to me in the gentlest way:—
“My boy, you must get a little memorandum-book, and every time I tell you a thing, put it down right away. There’s only one way to be a pilot, and that is to get this entire river by heart. You have to know it just like A B C.”
Mark Twain, “Old Times on the Mississippi,” 1875. Later reprinted in Life on the Mississippi, 1883
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