American citizen., 1875-05-08
A River Pilots Memory.

A River Pilots Memory.
FIRST of all, there is one faculty which
a pilot must necessarily cultivate until
he has brought it to absolute perfection
Nothing short of perfection will do
That faculty is memory. He cannot stop
with merely thinking a thing is so and
so; he must k,,oo it; for this is eminently
one of the "eXact" sciences. With what
scorn pilot was looked upon in the old
| times if he ever ventured to deal in that
feeble phrase g think" instead of the
vigorous one Il know" Ore cannot
easily realize what a tremendous thing
1t is to know every trivial detail of POO
miles of river and know it with absolute
exactness. If you will take the longest
| street in New York and travel up and
down it, coming its features patiently
until you know every house and window
and door and lamppOst and big and
| little sign by heart, and know them so
| accurately that you can instantly name
the one you are abreast of when you are
set down at random in the street in the
middle of an inky black night, you will
| then have tolerable notion of the
| amount and the eXactness of pilots
knowledge who carries the Mississippi
| River in his head. And then if you will
| go on until you know every street cross
ing, the character, size and position of
| the crossing stones, and the varying
depth of mud in each of those number
| less places, you will have some idea of
what the pilot must know in order to
keep Mississippi steamer out of trouble.
Next, if you will take half of the signs in
that long street and change their places
once month, and still manage to know
their new positions accurately on dark
nights, and keep up with these repeated
changes without making any mistakes,
you will understand what is required of
pilots peerless memory by the tickle
Mississippi.
l think a pilots memory is about the
most wonderful thing in the world To
know the Old and New Testaments by
heart and be able to recite them glibly,
forward or backward, or begin at random
anywhere in the book and recite both
ways and never trip or make mistake,
is no extravagant mass of knowledge,
and no marvellous facility, compared to
pilots massed knowledge OF the Missis-
sippi and his marvellous facility in The
handling of it. l make this comparison
deliberately. and believe l am not ex-
psnding the truth when do it. Many
will think my figure too strong, but
pilots will not.
pilots memory does it's work! how plac-
idly effortless is its way! how uncon-
sctousty it lays up its vast stores, hour by
hour, day by day, and never loses or mis-
lays single valuable package of them
all! Take an instance. Let leadsman
cry, " Half twain! half twaini half twain!
half twain! half twain" until it becomes
as monotonous as the ticking of clock;
let conversation be going on all the time
and the pilot be doing his share of the
talking and no longer listening to the
leadsman; and in the midst of this end
less string of half twains let single
quarter twain" be interjected without
emphasis, and then the half twain cry go
on again just as before; two or three
weeks later that pilot can describe with
precision the boats position in the river
when that quarter twain was uttered,
and give you such lot of head-marks,
stern-marks and side-marks to guide you
that you ought to be able to take the
boat there and put her in that same spot
again yourself! The cry of quarter
his talk, but his trained faculties in
stantly photographed the bearings, noted
the change of depth and laid up the i'm
pOrtant details for future reference with
out requiring any assistance from him in
the matter. If you were walking and
talking with a friend, and another friend
at your side kept up monotonous repe
tltiOH VI tuc NOWcl sOuHu "A lOT u COuplc
of blocks and then in the midst inter
jected an r, thus: A, A, A, A, A, X, A,
A, A, etc, and gave the r no emphasis,
you would not be able to state, two or
three weeks afterward, that the r had
been put in nor be able to tell what OBJ
jects you were passing at the moment it
was done. But you could if your men,
ory had been patiently and laboriously
trained to do that sort of thing mechan-
ically.
Give a man a tolerable fair memory
to start with, and plotting will develop
it into a very Colossus of capability. But
only IN the matters it is daily drilled in. A
time would come when the mans facul-
ties could not help noticing landmarks
and soundings, and his memory could
not help holding on to them with the
grip of wise; but if you ask that same
man at noon what he had had for break
fast, it would be ten chances to one that
he could not tell you. Astonishing things
can be done with the human memory if
you will devote it faithfully to one par
ticular line of business.
At the time that wages scared so high
on the Missouri River, my chief, Mr..
B, went up there and learned more
than a thousand miles of that stream with
an ease and rapidity that were astonish-
ing. When he had seen each division
once in the daytime and once at night his
education was SO nearly complete that
he took out a " daylight" license; few
trips later he took out a full license, and
went to plotting day and highland he
ranked A /, toO.-Mark Toain, in atlantic
lfo,fIy,,