It bequeathed every penny of that old man’s great wealth to MRS.
GEORGE JOHNSON!
And there was no such person. The young sinners fled forth then,
and did a very foolish thing: married themselves before an
obscure Justice of the Peace, and got him to antedate the thing.
That did no sort of good. The distant relatives flocked in and exposed
the fraudful date with extreme suddenness and surprising ease,
and carried off the fortune, leaving the Johnsons very legitimately,
and legally, and irrevocably chained together in honorable marriage,
but with not so much as a penny to bless themselves withal.
Such are the actual facts; and not all novels have for a base so
telling a situation.
Chapter 50
The ‘Original Jacobs’
WE had some talk about Captain Isaiah Sellers, now many years dead.
He was a fine man, a high-minded man, and greatly respected both ashore and on
the river. He was very tall, well built, and handsome; and in his old age–
as I remember him–his hair was as black as an Indian’s, and his eye
and hand were as strong and steady and his nerve and judgment as firm
and clear as anybody’s, young or old, among the fraternity of pilots.
He was the patriarch of the craft; he had been a keelboat pilot before the day
of steamboats; and a steamboat pilot before any other steamboat pilot,
still surviving at the time I speak of, had ever turned a wheel.
Consequently his brethren held him in the sort of awe in which illustrious
survivors of a bygone age are always held by their associates.
He knew how he was regarded, and perhaps this fact added some trifle
of stiffening to his natural dignity, which had been sufficiently stiff
in its original state.
He left a diary behind him; but apparently it did not date back
to his first steamboat trip, which was said to be 1811, the year
the first steamboat disturbed the waters of the Mississippi.
At the time of his death a correspondent of the ‘St. Louis Republican’
culled the following items from the diary–
‘In February, 1825, he shipped on board the steamer “Rambler,” at Florence,
Ala., and made during that year three trips to New Orleans and back–
this on the “Gen. Carrol,” between Nashville and New Orleans. It was during
his stay on this boat that Captain Sellers introduced the tap of the bell
as a signal to heave the lead, previous to which time it was the custom
for the pilot to speak to the men below when soundings were wanted.
The proximity of the forecastle to the pilot-house, no doubt, rendered this
an easy matter; but how different on one of our palaces of the present day.
‘In 1827 we find him on board the “President,” a boat of two
hundred and eighty-five tons burden, and plying between Smithland
and New Orleans. Thence he joined the “Jubilee” in 1828,
and on this boat he did his first piloting in the St. Louis trade;
his first watch extending from Herculaneum to St. Genevieve.
On May 26, 1836, he completed and left Pittsburgh in charge
of the steamer “Prairie,” a boat of four hundred tons, and the
first steamer with a STATE-ROOM CABIN ever seen at St. Louis.
In 1857 he introduced the signal for meeting boats, and which has,
with some slight change, been the universal custom of this day;
in fact, is rendered obligatory by act of Congress.
‘As general items of river history, we quote the following marginal
notes from his general log–
‘In March, 1825, Gen. Lafayette left New Orleans for St. Louis
on the low-pressure steamer “Natchez.”
‘In January, 1828, twenty-one steamers left the New Orleans wharf
to celebrate the occasion of Gen. Jackson’s visit to that city.
‘In 1830 the “North American” made the run from New Orleans
to Memphis in six days–best time on record to that date.
It has since been made in two days and ten hours.
‘In 1831 the Red River cut-off formed.
‘In 1832 steamer “Hudson” made the run from White River
to Helena, a distance of seventy-five miles, in twelve hours.
This was the source of much talk and speculation among