Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 84, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1909 — A Victim. [ARTICLE]

A Victim.

Horace Bixey, the doyen of Mississippi pilots, is still at the wheel at 82. To him Mark Twain served his apprenticeship. A Vicksburg reporter asked Mr. Bixey a recipe for a hale old age. “Temperance, young man," the pilot replied. “Intemperance is what kills us off. Oh, the victims,’,’ he said, in his whimsical way, “the sad victims of intemperance I have seen! “Once, I remember, a passenger of ours fell overboard. We fished him out with a boathook after he had been soaking on the bottom half an hour or so. We laid him limp and sopping on the deck, and a Bteward ran for the whiskey bottle. “As I pried the man’s mouth open to pour some whiskey down his throat his lips moved. A kind of murmur came from them. I put my ear down close to listen, and I heard the halfdrowned wretch say: “ ’Roll mo on a bar’l fust to git some o’ this water out It’ll weaken the licker.’ ’’ —Washington Star.