These he generally signed "Mark Twain."
Naturally, the younger pilots amused themselves by imitating Sellers, and
when Sam Clemens wrote abroad burlesque of the old man's contributions,
relating a perfectly impossible trip, supposed to have been made in 1763
with a Chinese captain and a Choctaw crew, it was regarded as a
masterpiece of wit.
It appeared in the "True Delta" in May, 1859, and broke Captain Sellers's
literary heart. He never wrote another paragraph. Clemens always
regretted the whole matter deeply, and his own revival of the name
afterward was a sort of tribute to the old man he had thoughtlessly and
unintentionally wounded.
Old pilots of that day remembered Samuel Clemens as a slender,
fine-looking man, well dressed, even dandified, generally wearing blue
serge, with fancy shirts, white duck trousers, and patent-leather shoes.
A pilot could do that, for his surroundings were speckless.
The pilots regarded him as a great reader--a student of history, travels,
and the sciences. In the association rooms they often saw him poring
over serious books. He began the study of French one day in New Orleans,
when he had passed a school of languages where French, German, and
Italian were taught, one in each of three rooms.
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