“When I was
a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades in our village.
That was to
be a steam boatman. We had transient ambitions of other sorts, but they were
only transient.
When a
circus came and went, it let us all burning to become clowns.
The first
Negro Minstrel show that came to our section left us all suffering to try that
kind of life.
Now and
then, we had a hope if we lived and were good, god would permit us to be
pirates.
These
ambitions faded out, each in its turn, but the ambition to be a steam boatman
always remained.”
Mark Twain.
