CHAPTER Seventeen--How We Astonished the Rivermouthians.
Sailor Ben's arrival partly drove the New Orleans project from my brain.
Besides, there was just then a certain movement on foot by the Centipede Club which helped to engross my attention.
Pepper Whitcomb took the Captain's veto philosophically, observing that he thought from the first the governor wouldn't let me go.

I don't think Pepper was quite honest in that.
But to the subject in hand.
Among the few changes that have taken place in Rivermouth during the past twenty years there is one which I regret.

I lament the removal of all those varnished iron cannon which used to do duty as posts at the corners of streets leading from the river.

They were quaintly ornamental, each set upon end with a solid shot soldered into its mouth, and gave to that part of the town a picturesqueness very poorly atoned for by the conventional wooden stakes that have deposed them.
These guns ("old sogers" the boys called them) had their story, like everything else in Rivermouth.

When that everlasting last war--the War of 1812, I mean--came to an end, all the brigs, schooners, and barks fitted out at this port as privateers were as eager to get rid of their useless twelve-pounders and swivels as they had previously been to obtain them.
Many of the pieces had cost large sums, and now they were little better than so much crude iron--not so good, in fact, for they were clumsy things to break up and melt over.