"Now, let me tell you," Mr. Hay continued, "of some rather interesting experiences I have had with respect to the ballads. One day at the Gilsey House, in New York, I received the card of a gentleman, and when he came to my room he said:
"'I am the son of the man whom you celebrated in one of your ballads as Jim Bludso, the engineer who stuck to his duty and declared he would "hold her nozzle agin the bank till the last galoot's ashore."'"
Mr. Hay added:
"This gave me an opportunity. Mark Twain had criticised the ballad, saying that Jim Bludso must have been a pilot, and not an engineer, for the reason that an engineer, having once set his engines going, could have no need to stay by them. In view of this criticism, I asked my visitor concerning it, telling him of what Mark Twain had said. For answer the caller assured me that the original Jim Bludso was in fact an engineer. He explained that as a Mississippi River steamboat has two engines, each turning an independent wheel, and as the current of the river is enormously swift, it was necessary for the engineer to remain at his post, working one engine and then the other, backing on one sometimes and going ahead on the other, if her nozzle was to be held 'agin the bank till the last galoot's ashore.'"
Some Anecdotes from John Hay
For reply to this I told Mr. Hay that I had seen in a Memphis cemetery a tombstone erected to a pilot, and inscribed with the story of his heroic death in precisely Jim Bludso's spirit. At the time that I read the inscription on it, "Jim Bludso" had not been written, but the matter interested me and I made inquiry for the exact facts. The story as I heard it was this: The boat being afire the pilot landed her, head-on against a bank that offered no facilities for making her fast with cables. The only way to get the "galoots ashore" was for the pilot to remain at his post and ring his engine bells for going ahead and backing, so as to "hold her nozzle agin the bank." But the flames were by that time licking the rear of the pilot house, and the captain frantically entreated the pilot to leap from the forward part of the structure to the deck below. This the heroic fellow refused to do so long as the safety of the passengers required his presence at his post. He stood there, calmly smoking his cigar and coolly ringing his bells as occasion required till at last every other human being on board had been saved. By that time the flames had completely enveloped the pilot-house, and there was left no possible way of escape. Then relinquishing his hold upon the wheel, the pilot folded his arms and stood like a statue until the floor beneath him gave way and he sank to a cruel death in the furnace-like fire below.
The details of the story were related to me by Captain John Cannon, of the steamer "Robert E. Lee," and the weather-beaten old navigator was not ashamed of the tears that trickled down his cheeks as he told the tale.
When I had finished, Mr. Hay said:
"That only means that we have two heroes to revere instead of one. Jim Bludso was an engineer."
Continuing his talk of coincidences, Mr. Hay said: