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A young boy’s ambition   (Mark Twain 1835-1910)  

       Mark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, one of the best-known American writers. He was very typically American in both his life and his writing style. He grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, a Mississippi River town witch happened to be at the geographical center of the United State at the time. Hannibal was the frontier town when Mark Twain was the boy there, and the Mississippi was the route to and from rest of the nation, bringing all sorts of the exciting visitors. Twain shared with other boys the burning ambition to be a riverboat pilot, as he recalled in “A Young Boy‘s Ambition “. In 1856 he realized the ambition, be coming an apprentice for eighteen months and, finally, a pilot. He continued in his occupation until the Civil War, when he began traveling And writing, published his name work under the name “Mark Twain”, which was divided from the phrase meaning “two fathoms deep”, use by riverboat sailor. He gained national fame with the Celebrated Jumping Frog Of Calaveras County, and Other Sketch in 1867, but his best-known books are The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer, The Prince And The pauper, and The adventures Of Huckleberry Finn.  

                      The Story:  

         When I was a boy, there was and only permanent ambition among my comrades in our villages in the west bank of the Mississippi River that was to be a steam boatman. We had a transient ambition of the other sorts, but they were only transient. When a circus, came and went, it left us all burning to be a clowns, now and then we had a hope that, if we lived and left good, God would permit us to be a pirates. These from life on Mississippi. 

       steam boatmen always remained. Once a day a cheap, gaudy steamboat arrived from St. Louis, Missouri and Ambition faded, each in its turn, but the ambitions to be another from Keokuk, Iowa. Before these events, the day was glorious expectation. After then, the day of the dead and empty thing. Not only the boy’s but the whole village felt this. After all these years I can picture that old time to my self now, just at it was then: the white town drowsing in the sunship of summer morning, the streets empty or nearly so. One or tow clerks would sitting in front of stores, with their chairs tilted back against the wall, chin on breasts, hats pulled down over their faces, asleep. There was the great Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi rolling its mile- wide way along, shining in the sun. Presently a film of the dark smoke appears above the one of the remote points. Instantly, a Negro wagon driver, famous for his quick eyes &powerful voice, lifts up the cry,’S-t-e-a-m- boat coming! And the sense changing.The town drunkard stirs, the clerks wake up, a furious clatter of wagons follows. Every houses and stores pours out a human contribution, and in an instant the dead town is alive & moving.Wagons, carts, mens, boys, all go hurrying from many quarters to a common center, the Wharf. Assembled there, the people fasten their eyes on the coming boats they would wonder they are seeing for the first time. The boat is rather a handsome sight, too. She is long, sharp, trim and pretty; she has two tall chimneys with a gilded device of some kind swung between them, and fancy pilot-house.The paddle-boxes are gorgeous with a picture above his name.                                      

       The upper desks are black with passengers; the captain stands by the big bell, the envy of all. Great volumes of the blackest smoke are rolling and tumbling out of chimneys, grandeur created by adding a bit of pine-wood to the fair just before arriving at a town. An envied desk-hand stands picturesquely at the front with a coil of a rope in his hand. The captain lifts his hand, a bell rings, and the wheels stop. Then they turn back, churning the water to foam, and the steamer is at rest. Then there is a scramble to get abroad, and to get ashore and to take on freight, and to discharge it, all at the same time, & what a yelling & coursing the mates facilitate it all with! Ten minuets liter the steamer is under way again, with no black smoke issuing from the chimney. Ten minutes after that, the town is dead again, and the town drunkard is asleep once more. My father was the justice of the peace, & I believed that he possessed the power of death over all man, could hang any body that offended him. Usually, this was distinction enough for me, but the desire to be steam boatman kept intruding, nevertheless. First I want to be cabin-boy, so that I could come out with white apron on and shake a tablecloth over the side, where my old comrades could see me. Later I thought I would rather be the desk-hand who stood on &the end of the boat with coil of rope on his hand, because he was particularly conspicuous. By & by one of our boys went away. He was not heart for aLong time. At least he turned up as an apprentice engineer on a steamboat. This thing shook the bottom out of all my Sunday-school teachings. 

         This boy had been notoriously wordly, and I just the reverse; yet he was raised to this eminence, and I was left in obscurity & misery.There was nothing generous about this fellow in his greatness. He would always manage to have a rusty bolt to scrub while his boat was docked at our town, and he would sit by the rail and scrub it, where we could all see him and loathe him. Whenever his boat was laid up he would come home and strut around the town in his blackest and greasiest clothes, so that nobody could help remembering that he was a steamboatman.He used all sorts of steamboat technicalities in his talk, as if he were used to them that he had forgotten that common people could not understand them. He would speak of the ‘starboard’ side of a horse in an easy, natrul way that would make one wish he were dead.He was always talking about ‘St Looy’ like an old citizen. He would refer causally to occasions when he was’ coming down Fourth Street’ of when he was ‘passing the planter’s house’, and he would lie about all of his adventures there. Two or three of boys had long been persons of consideration among us because they had been to St.Louis once and had a vague general knowledge of its wonders, but the day of their glory was over now. They lapsed into humble silence and learned to disappear when the ruthless ‘cup’-engineer approached.This fellow had money, too, and hair oil; also a gaudy silver watch and a showy brass watch-chain. He wore a leather belt and used no suspenders.If any youth was ever cordially admired and hated by his companions, this one was. No girl could withstand his charm. When his boat blew up at last, it diffused a tranquil contentment among us such as we had not known for months. But when he came home the next week, and renowned, and appeared in church all battered up and bandaged, a shiny hero, stared at and wondered over by everybody, it seems to us that the partiality of Providence for an undeserving reptile had reached a point where it was open to criticism.This creature’s career could produce only one result and it speedily followed. Boy after boy managed to get on the river. The minister’s son became an engineer. The doctor’s son and postmaster ‘sons became clerks.                                                   

           The wholesale liquor dealer’s son became a barkeeper on a boat. Four sons of the chief merchant, and two sons of the county judge, became pilots.Being a pilot was the grandest position of all. A pilot, even in those days of trivial wages, had a princely salary-from a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and no board to pay. Two months of his wages would pay a preacher’s salary for a year. Some of us were left inconsolable. We could not get on the river –at least our parents would not let us.So, by & by, I ran away. I said I would never come home again till I was pilot and could come in glory. But somehow I could not manage it. Meekly I went aboard a few of the boats that lay packed together like sardines at the long St.Louis wharf, and humbly inquired for the pilots, but got only a cold shoulder and short words from mates and clerks. I had to make the best of this sort of treatment for the time being, but I had comforting day-dreams of a future when I would be a great and honored pilot, with plenty of money, and could buy and sell some of those mates and clerks.      (The End)