In all our American history, possibly nothing has been more romantic than the sailing of a Mississippi river boat. From an hour before sailing, they would be burning pitch and rosin, and from the double smoke stacks, columns of coal black smoke would rise, and hang in the air like the flags flying from the jack staffs. The last bells would clang out the end of the feverish loading, the gangways were snatched away, and the majestic boat would move out into the stream. This is the world Mark Twain wrote about, twenty years after being a river boat pilot and this is one of the stories he tells of a voyage.