None of the letters Clemens must have written during the next nine months is known to survive. He re-created his experiences of this period in “Old Times on the Mississippi” (SLC 1875) and again in 1883 in Life on the Mississippi (especially chapters 5–13). In brief, he continued as Horace Bixby’s cub pilot aboard the Crescent City until 7 July 1857, when the boat laid up in St. Louis. Probably at that time Bixby transferred to a Missouri River packet and assigned Clemens, who (according to Bixby) did not wish to learn the Missouri River, to the pilot of another St. Louis–New Orleans steamer (Life on the Mississippi, chapter 13; MTB , 1:128). The pilot is unknown, but the boat evidently was the R. J. Lackland, a mammoth freighter rated at 710 tons and launched in March 1857 under the command of William B. Miller (Way 1983, 384). Apparently Clemens made one round trip on the Lackland between 11 July and 3 August; he recorded river data for part of that trip in his notebook ( N&J1 , 46; Branch 1982, 500, 503–4). His next assignment, probably also arranged by Bixby, was to the John J. Roe. The Roe was captained by Mark Leavenworth and piloted by his brother Zebulon (1830–77) and by Sobieski (Beck) Jolly (1831–1905), both of whom became close friends of Clemens’s. A large freighter, rated at 691 tons, the Roe frequently took “guests” of the captain, but was not licensed to carry passengers (Way 1983, 252). Clemens remembered that it was “a delightful old tug, and she had a very spacious boiler-deck—just the place for moonlight dancing and daylight frolics, and such things were always happening.” He recalled Mark and Zeb Leavenworth as “hospitable and good-natured,” and said that the “clerks, the mates, the chief steward, and all officials, big and little, of the John J. Roe, were simple-hearted folk and overflowing with good-fellowship and the milk of human kindness. . . . It was the same delight to me to meet and shake hands with the Leavenworths and the rest of that dear family of steamboating backwoodsmen and hay-seeds as if they had all been blood kin to me” (AD, 30 July 1906, CU-MARK, in AMT , 79–80).

Clemens’s convivial tenure aboard the Roe was short, lasting for only two St. Louis–New Orleans round trips, between 5 August and 24 September, at which time the boat laid up. Bixby may have returned about then for “a trip or two” with his cub, but if so, the boat they piloted has not been identified ( MTB , 1:129). There is some possibility that it was the William M. Morrison, captained by John N. Bofinger, and that Clemens and Bixby were aboard it between 9 and 26 October. At any rate, probably by 2 November, and certainly by 18 November, Bixby had assigned Clemens to William Brown, pilot of the Pennsylvania, the “ignorant, stingy, malicious, snarling, fault-finding, mote-magnifying tyrant” so vividly portrayed in chapters 13, 18, and 19 of Life on the Mississippi. A passenger and mail carrier built in 1854, the Pennsylvania was noted for its “beautiful proportions” and “magnificent style” (“River News,” Pittsburgh Gazette, 15 Feb 54, 3). Its master, John S. Klinefelter (1810–85), captained many steamboats on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers between 1835 and his retirement in 1863.

On 26 November the Pennsylvania was severely damaged in a collision with the Vicksburg thirty miles above New Orleans. It was then laid up for nearly eleven weeks near New Orleans, for repairs and a general overhauling and refitting. How Clemens supported himself during this period is not known. He later recalled that during his apprenticeship he “always had a job” in New Orleans between the arrival and departure of his boats: “It was my privilege to watch the freight piles from seven in the evening until seven in the morning, and get three dollars for it” (AD, 13 Jan 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA , 1:309). Nevertheless, such employment could not have been congenial or remunerative enough to keep him in New Orleans for the entire period the Pennsylvania was out of commission. It is probable that Clemens returned to his family in St. Louis, and that he did so by accepting a berth as steersman aboard the D. A. January, captained by Patrick Yore and piloted by Joseph Edward Montgomery. (Clemens possibly had this trip in mind when, in chapter 49 of Life on the Mississippi, he recalled steering for Montgomery, who was usually a boat captain and only infrequently a pilot; see 27? June 60 to OC, n. 3click to open link.) The January left New Orleans on 13 December and arrived in St. Louis nine days later. Clemens presumably would have remained with his family for the Christmas and New Year’s holidays before returning to New Orleans to resume his post on a repaired Pennsylvania. He may have made the downriver trip on the recently built New Falls City, commanded by Montgomery, possibly doing some steering in exchange for his passage. The News Falls City left St. Louis on 14 January 1858 and arrived in New Orleans on the twentieth of the month. Clemens was aboard the Pennsylvania when it went back into service on 6 February 1858, departing New Orleans on that date and reaching St. Louis eight days later. The harrowing return trip is described at the beginning of the following letter.