Putting all things together, I begin to think I am rather lucky than
otherwise--a notion which I was slow to take up. The other night I was
about to round to for a storm--but concluded that I could find a smoother
bank somewhere. I landed 5 miles below. The storm came--passed away and
did not injure us. Coming up, day before yesterday, I looked at the spot
I first chose, and half the trees on the bank were torn to shreds. We
couldn't have lived 5 minutes in such a tornado. And I am also lucky in
having a berth, while all the young pilots are idle. This is the
luckiest circumstance that ever befell me. Not on account of the wages
--for that is a secondary consideration--but from the fact that the City
of Memphis is the largest boat in the trade and the hardest to pilot, and
consequently I can get a reputation on her, which is a thing I never
could accomplish on a transient boat. I can "bank" in the neighborhood
of $100 a month on her, and that will satisfy me for the present
(principally because the other youngsters are sucking their fingers.)
Bless me! what a pleasure there is in revenge! and what vast respect
Prosperity commands! Why, six months ago, I could enter the "Rooms," and
receive only a customary fraternal greeting--but now they say, "Why, how
are you, old fellow--when did you get in?"

And the young pilots who used to tell me, patronizingly, that I could
never learn the river cannot keep from showing a little of their chagrin
at seeing me so far ahead of them. Permit me to "blow my horn," for I
derive a living pleasure from these things, and I must confess that when
I go to pay my dues, I rather like to let the d---d rascals get a glimpse
of a hundred dollar bill peeping out from amongst notes of smaller
dimensions, whose face I do not exhibit! You will despise this egotism,
but I tell you there is a "stern joy" in it.....

Pilots did not remain long on one boat, as a rule; just why it is not so