never experienced.

If we set over beside this the remarkable descriptions of things seen,
as minutely evocative as instantaneous photographs--such, for example,
as the picture of a summer storm, or preferably, the picture of dawn on
the Mississippi, both from Huckleberry Finn--pictures Mark Twain had
seen and lived hundreds of times, we see at once the striking
superiority of the realistic impressionist over the imaginative artist.

I have always felt that the most lasting influence of his life--the
influence which has left the most pervasive impression upon his art and
thought--is portrayed in that classic and memorable passage in which he
portrays the marvellous spell laid upon him by that mistress of his
youth, the great river.

To the young pilot, the face of the water in time became a wonderful
book. For the uninitiated traveller it was a dead language, but to the
young pilot it gave up its most cherished secrets. He came to feel that
there had never been so wonderful a book written by man. To its
haunting beauty, its enfolding mystery, he yielded himself unreservedly
--drinking it in like one bewitched. But a day came when he began to
cease from noting its marvels. Another day came when he ceased
altogether to note them.

In time, he came to realize that, for him, the romance and the beauty
were gone forever from the river. If the early rapture was gone, in its
place was the deeper sense of knowledge and intimacy. He had learned
the ultimate secrets of the river--learned them with a knowledge, so
searching and so profound, that he was enabled to give them the enduring
investiture of art.