It is that day of the Mississippi
that is best known in our literature. Mark Twain has put forever on the
map of letters (where the Euphrates, the Nile, the Ilyssus, the Tiber, the
Seine, the Thames long have been) the Mississippi, the river which the
French first traced upon the maps of geography. So we are especially
indebted to the French for Mark Twain, who began his career as a "cub"
pilot on the river which in turn gave him the name by which the world is
ever to know him.
It was he who once wrote of this river: "The face of the water, in time,
became a wonderful book--a book that was a dead language to the uneducated
passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its
most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And
it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story
to tell every day. Throughout the long twelve hundred miles there was
never a page that was void of interest, never one that you could leave
unread without loss, never one that you would want to skip, thinking you
could find higher enjoyment in some other thing.
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