It had been fifty-three years since Tom Nash and I had had that adventure.

When I was at the railway station ready to leave Hannibal, there was a crowd of citizens there.

I saw Tom Nash approaching me across a vacant space, and I walked toward him, for I recognized him at once.

He was old and white-headed, but the boy of fifteen was still visible in him.

He came up to me, made a trumpet of his hands at my ear, nodded his head toward the citizens and said confidentially--in a yell like a fog-horn-- "Same damned fools, Sam!" _From Susy's Biography._ Papa was about twenty years old when he went on the Mississippi as a pilot.