Excerpt from Life on the Mississippi, Chapter 4
by Mark Twain
When I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my
comrades in our village of the west bank of the Mississippi River. That was, to
steamboatman. We had transient ambitions of other sorts, but they were
transient. When a circus came and went, it left us all burning to be
lowas the first minstrel show that ever came to our section left us all
cong to try that kind of life; now and then we had a hope that, if we lived
et good. God would permit us to be pirates. These ambitions faded out,
i nts turn; but the ambition to be a steamboatman always remained.
L
does transient mean as it is used in the paragraph?
on your annotations, what does transient mean? What clues does the author give?