Chapter 4 — <br/> Chapter 4<br/>

WHEN I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades
in our village {footnote } on the west bank of the
Mississippi River. That was, to be a steamboatman. We had transient
ambitions of other sorts, but they were only transient. When a circus came
and went, it left us all burning to become clowns; the first negro
minstrel show that came to our section left us all suffering to try that
kind of life; now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good,
God would permit us to be pirates. These ambitions faded out, each in its
turn; but the ambition to be a steamboatman always remained.