So I was thinking, when the pilot asked-- 'Do you know what this rope is for ?' I managed to get around this question, without committing myself.
'Is this the first time you were ever in a pilot-house ?' I crept under that one.
'Where are you from ?' 'New England.' 'First time you have ever been West ?' I climbed over this one.
'If you take an interest in such things, I can tell you what all these things are for.' I said I should like it.
'This,' putting his hand on a backing-bell rope, 'is to sound the fire-alarm; this,' putting his hand on a go-ahead bell, 'is to call the texas-tender; this one,' indicating the whistle-lever, 'is to call the captain'-- and so he went on, touching one object after another, and reeling off his tranquil spool of lies.
I had never felt so like a passenger before.

I thanked him, with emotion, for each new fact, and wrote it down in my note-book.

The pilot warmed to his opportunity, and proceeded to load me up in the good old-fashioned way.

At times I was afraid he was going to rupture his invention; but it always stood the strain, and he pulled through all right.

He drifted, by easy stages, into revealments of the river's marvelous eccentricities of one sort and another, and backed them up with some pretty gigantic illustrations.