Excerpt from The Man at the Wheel

"In story, and in common parlance, the pioneer boatmen of the Mississippi occupied somewhat the position of the Bedouin Arabs of the East - though with a home three thousand miles long, and with a life which compelled them to combine the accomplishments of the sailor, the whaler, the backwoodsman and the Yankee, they were vastly superior to those mere mounted loafers of the desert. Probably no avocation in the world so taxed every kind of bodily dexterity, so disciplined the courage, so called upon the sharpness of the wits. Their constitutions were not only subjected to the changes of all climates, but their intercourse was with the inhabitants of all latitudes. They vibrated between the icicle and the sugar cane, familiarized on the way with every variety of produce, of soil, of merchandise and of character. They ate anything, toiled anyhow, slept anywhere. The particular neighborhood to which any of them were responsible for character - the spot in the wilderness where his chimney smoked and his wife waited for him - were trifles lost in the vastness of his range. His credit was the length of his visible purse, his reputation the length of his visible shadow. From the overlapping reciprocities and influences that constrained other men he was completely isolated. His strength was what he could show, what he could do, what he had got and what he was - for the moment. He depended wholly and habitually on himself."

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