ABSTRACT
The most delightful part of the book is included in the autobiographical chapters-in the history of the author's early experience as a pilot's apprentice. These pages are full of laughing vividness, and paint the brighter side of old-fashioned river-life with such a delicate exaggeration of saliencies as that by which the peculiarities of English habits fifty years ago are perpetuated for us by the early artists of Pu11clt. But there is a kernel of curious fact in every richly-flavored incident of humor. Here the book is absolutely unique;-it contains the only realistic history of piloting on the Mississippi in existence, and written by perhaps the only author of the century whose genius is thoroughly adapted to the subject treated. Indeed, one must have followed for years some peculiar river-calling in order to comprehend what steamboat life is, and appreciate its various presentations of tragedy, comedy, and poetry-to all of which we find ample justice done in the book before us. It is the sum of the experience of years; and no little art has been shown in selecting specimens from such a
range of memoirs. The old-time flat boatmen and mftsmen-so famous in Mississippi River history-arc capitally drawn; and we have a rare sketch of the lordly pilots of ante-bellum days, who drew their $250 or more per month, and were idolized by the fair of numberless little river-towns. Not less interesting is the brief history of the Pilots' Association in those days-an imperious monopoly which sustained many furious campaigns against steamboat owners, and almost invariably won the fight at last by dint of certain ingenious devices pleasantly recounted in Chapter XV.
