Read the passage. My father was a justice of the peace, and I supposed he possessed the power of life and death over all men and could hang anybody that
offended him. This was distinction enough for me as a general thing but the desire to be a steamboatman kept intruding, nevertheless. I first
wanted to be a cabin-boy, so that I could come out with a white apron on and shake a tablecloth over the side, where all my old comrades could see
me; later I thought I would rather be the deckhand who stood on the end of the stage-plank with the coil of rope in his hand, because he was
particularly conspicuous. But these were only day-dreams--they were too heavenly to be contemplated as real possibilities. By and by one of our
boys went away. He was not heard of for a long time. At last he turned up as apprentice engineer or 'striker' on a steamboat. This thing shook the
bottom out of all my Sunday-school teachings. That boy had been notoriously worldly, and I just the reverse; yet he was exalted to this eminence,
and I left in obscurity and misery. There was nothing generous about this fellow in his greatness. He would always manage to have a rusty bolt to
scrub while his boat tarried at our town, and he would sit on the inside guard and scrub it, where we could all see him and envy him and loathe him.
And whenever his boat was laid up he would come home and swell around the town in his blackest and greasiest clothes, so that nobody could help
remembering that he was a steamboatman: and he used all sorts of steamboat technicalities in his talk, as if he were so used to them that he forgot
common people could not understand them.
(from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain)
Based on the passage, which is the greatest reward of getting a job on a steamboat?
1. making the other boys jealous
O 2. escaping small town boredom
03. getting away from a demanding father
O 4. experiencing adventure on the river