In Life on the Mississippi
(1883), X provides an account of his pseudonym, which he claims
he took from the senior riverboat captain Isaiah Sellers. X describes Sellers as “a fine man, a high-minded man, and greatly
respected both ashore and on the river,” but he highlights the needling
pedantry Sellers showed in his observations of the Mississippi:
"The old gentleman was not of literary turn or capacity, but he used to jot down brief paragraphs of plain practical information about the river, and sign them “X,” and give them to the “New Orleans Picayune.” They related to the stage and condition of the river, and were accurate and valuable; and thus far, they contained no poison. But in speaking of the stage of the river to-day, at a given point, the captain was pretty apt to drop in a little remark about this being the first time he had seen the water so high or so low at that particular point for forty-nine years; and now and then he would mention Island so and so, and follow it, in parentheses, with some such observation as “disappeared in 1807, if I remember rightly.” In these antique interjections lay poison and bitterness for the other old pilots, and they used to chaff the “X” paragraphs with unsparing mockery
Id X.
"The old gentleman was not of literary turn or capacity, but he used to jot down brief paragraphs of plain practical information about the river, and sign them “X,” and give them to the “New Orleans Picayune.” They related to the stage and condition of the river, and were accurate and valuable; and thus far, they contained no poison. But in speaking of the stage of the river to-day, at a given point, the captain was pretty apt to drop in a little remark about this being the first time he had seen the water so high or so low at that particular point for forty-nine years; and now and then he would mention Island so and so, and follow it, in parentheses, with some such observation as “disappeared in 1807, if I remember rightly.” In these antique interjections lay poison and bitterness for the other old pilots, and they used to chaff the “X” paragraphs with unsparing mockery
Id X.
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Mark Twain.
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