Presently he turned to me and said: "What's the name of the first point above New Orleans?" I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know. "Don't know!" His manner jolted me. I was down at the foot again, in a moment. But I had to say just what I had said before. "Well, you're a smart one," said Mr. Bixby. "What's the name of the next point?" Once more I didn't know. "Well, this beats anything! Tell me the name of any point or place I told you." I studied awhile and decided that I couldn't. "Look here! What do you start from, above Twelve Mile Point, to cross over?" "I--I--don't know." "'You--you don't know,"' mimicking my drawling manner of speech. "What do you know?" "I--I--Nothing, for certain." Bixby was a small, nervous man, hot and quick-firing. He went off now, and said a number of severe things. Then: "Look here, what do you suppose I told you the names of those points for?" I tremblingly considered a moment--then the devil of temptation provoked me to say: "Well--to--to--be entertaining, I thought." This was a red flag to the bull. He raged and stormed so (he was crossing the river at the time) that I judged it made him blind, because he ran over the steering-oar of a trading-scow. Of course the traders sent up a volley of red-hot profanity. Never was a man so grateful as Mr. Bixby was, because he was brimful, and here were subjects who would talk back. He threw open a window, thrust his head out, and such an irruption followed as I had never heard before . . . . When he closed the window he was empty. Presently he said to me, in the gentlest way: "My boy, you must get a little memorandum-book, and every time I tell you a thing, put it down right away. There's only one way to be a pilot, and that is to get this entire river by heart. You have to know it just like A-B-C." The little memorandum-book which Sam Clemens bought, probably at the next daylight landing, still exists--the same that he says "fairly bristled with the names of towns, points, bars, islands, bends, reaches, etc."; but it made his heart ache to think he had only half the river set down, for, as the watches were four hours off and four hours on, there were the long gaps where he had slept. It is not easy to make out the penciled notes today. The small, neat writing is faded, and many of them are in an abbreviation made only for himself. It is hard even to find these examples to quote: MERIWETHER'S BEND One-fourth less 3[3]--run shape of upper bar and go into the low place in the willows about 200 (ft.) lower down than last year. OUTSIDE OF MONTEZUMA Six or eight feet more water. Shape bar till high timber on towhead gets nearly even with low willows. Then hold a little open on right of low willows--run 'em close if you want to, but come out 200 yards when you get nearly to head of towhead.