The old brick salt-warehouses clustered at the upper end of the city

looked as they had always looked; warehouses which had had a kind of

Aladdin's lamp experience, however, since I had seen them; for when the

war broke out the proprietor went to bed one night leaving them packed

with thousands of sacks of vulgar salt, worth a couple of dollars a

sack, and got up in the morning and found his mountain of salt turned

into a mountain of gold, so to speak, so suddenly and to so dizzy a

height had the war news sent up the price of the article.

The vast reach of plank wharves remained unchanged, and there were as

many ships as ever: but the long array of steamboats had vanished; not

altogether, of course, but not much of it was left.

The city itself had not changed--to the eye. It had greatly increased

in spread and population, but the look of the town was not altered. The

dust, waste-paper-littered, was still deep in the streets; the deep,

trough-like gutters alongside the curbstones were still half full of

reposeful water with a dusty surface; the sidewalks were still--in the

sugar and bacon region--encumbered by casks and barrels and hogsheads;

the great blocks of austerely plain commercial houses were as dusty-

looking as ever.

Canal Street was finer, and more attractive and stirring than formerly,

with its drifting crowds of people, its several processions of hurrying

street-cars, and--toward evening--its broad second-story verandas

crowded with gentlemen and ladies clothed according to the latest mode.

Not that there is any 'architecture' in Canal Street: to speak in

broad, general terms, there is no architecture in New Orleans, except in

the cemeteries. It seems a strange thing to say of a wealthy, far-

seeing, and energetic city of a quarter of a million inhabitants, but it

is true. There is a huge granite U.S. Custom-house--costly enough,

genuine enough, but as a decoration it is inferior to a gasometer. It

looks like a state prison. But it was built before the war.

Architecture in America may be said to have been born since the war. New

Orleans, I believe, has had the good luck--and in a sense the bad luck--

to have had no great fire in late years. It must be so. If the

opposite had been the case, I think one would be able to tell the 'burnt

district' by the radical improvement in its architecture over the old

forms. One can do this in Boston and Chicago. The 'burnt district' of

Boston was commonplace before the fire; but now there is no commercial

district in any city in the world that can surpass it--or perhaps even

rival it--in beauty, elegance, and tastefulness.

However, New Orleans has begun--just this moment, as one may say. When

completed, the new Cotton Exchange will be a stately and beautiful

building; massive, substantial, full of architectural graces; no shams

or false pretenses or uglinesses about it anywhere. To the city, it will

be worth many times its cost, for it will breed its species. What has

been lacking hitherto, was a model to build toward; something to educate

eye and taste; a SUGGESTER, so to speak.

The city is well outfitted with progressive men--thinking, sagacious,

long-headed men. The contrast between the spirit of the city and the

city's architecture is like the contrast between waking and sleep.

Apparently there is a 'boom' in everything but that one dead feature.

The water in the gutters used to be stagnant and slimy, and a potent

disease-breeder; but the gutters are flushed now, two or three times a

day, by powerful machinery; in many of the gutters the water never

stands still, but has a steady current. Other sanitary improvements

have been made; and with such effect that New Orleans claims to be

(during the long intervals between the occasional yellow-fever assaults)

one of the healthiest cities in the Union. There's plenty of ice now

for everybody, manufactured in the town. It is a driving place

commercially, and has a great river, ocean, and railway business. At

the date of our visit, it was the best lighted city in the Union,

electrically speaking. The New Orleans electric lights were more

numerous than those of New York, and very much better. One had this

modified noonday not only in Canal and some neighboring chief streets,

but all along a stretch of five miles of river frontage. There are good

clubs in the city now--several of them but recently organized--and

inviting modern-style pleasure resorts at West End and Spanish Fort.

The telephone is everywhere. One of the most notable advances is in

journalism. The newspapers, as I remember them, were not a striking

feature. Now they are. Money is spent upon them with a free hand. They

get the news, let it cost what it may. The editorial work is not hack-

grinding, but literature. As an example of New Orleans journalistic

achievement, it may be mentioned that the 'Times-Democrat' of August 26,

1882, contained a report of the year's business of the towns of the

Mississippi Valley, from New Orleans all the way to St. Paul--two

thousand miles. That issue of the paper consisted of forty pages; seven

columns to the page; two hundred and eighty columns in all; fifteen

hundred words to the column; an aggregate of four hundred and twenty

thousand words. That is to say, not much short of three times as many

words as there are in this book. One may with sorrow contrast this with

the architecture of New Orleans.

I have been speaking of public architecture only. The domestic article

in New Orleans is reproachless, notwithstanding it remains as it always

was. All the dwellings are of wood--in the American part of the town, I

mean--and all have a comfortable look. Those in the wealthy quarter are

spacious; painted snow-white usually, and generally have wide verandas,

or double-verandas, supported by ornamental columns. These mansions

stand in the center of large grounds, and rise, garlanded with roses,

out of the midst of swelling masses of shining green foliage and many-

colored blossoms. No houses could well be in better harmony with their

surroundings, or more pleasing to the eye, or more home-like and

comfortable-looking.

One even becomes reconciled to the cistern presently; this is a mighty

cask, painted green, and sometimes a couple of stories high, which is

propped against the house-corner on stilts. There is a mansion-and-

brewery suggestion about the combination which seems very incongruous at

first. But the people cannot have wells, and so they take rain-water.

Neither can they conveniently have cellars, or graves,{footnote [The

Israelites are buried in graves--by permission, I take it, not

requirement; but none else, except the destitute, who are buried at

public expense. The graves are but three or four feet deep.]} the town

being built upon 'made' ground; so they do without both, and few of the

living complain, and none of the others.

Chapter 42 Hygiene and Sentiment

THEY bury their dead in vaults, above the ground. These vaults have a

resemblance to houses--sometimes to temples; are built of marble,

generally; are architecturally graceful and shapely; they face the walks

and driveways of the cemetery; and when one moves through the midst of a

thousand or so of them and sees their white roofs and gables stretching

into the distance on every hand, the phrase 'city of the dead' has all

at once a meaning to him. Many of the cemeteries are beautiful, and are

kept in perfect order. When one goes from the levee or the business

streets near it, to a cemetery, he observes to himself that if those

people down there would live as neatly while they are alive as they do

after they are dead, they would find many advantages in it; and besides,

their quarter would be the wonder and admiration of the business world.

Fresh flowers, in vases of water, are to be seen at the portals of many

of the vaults: placed there by the pious hands of bereaved parents and

children, husbands and wives, and renewed daily. A milder form of

sorrow finds its inexpensive and lasting remembrancer in the coarse and

ugly but indestructible 'immortelle'--which is a wreath or cross or some

such emblem, made of rosettes of black linen, with sometimes a yellow

rosette at the conjunction of the cross's bars--kind of sorrowful

breast-pin, so to say. The immortelle requires no attention: you just

hang it up, and there you are; just leave it alone, it will take care of

your grief for you, and keep it in mind better than you can; stands

weather first-rate, and lasts like boiler-iron.

On sunny days, pretty little chameleons--gracefullest of legged

reptiles--creep along the marble fronts of the vaults, and catch flies.

Their changes of color--as to variety--are not up to the creature's

reputation. They change color when a person comes along and hangs up an

immortelle; but that is nothing: any right-feeling reptile would do

that.

I will gradually drop this subject of graveyards. I have been trying

all I could to get down to the sentimental part of it, but I cannot

accomplish it. I think there is no genuinely sentimental part to it.

It is all grotesque, ghastly, horrible. Graveyards may have been

justifiable in the bygone ages, when nobody knew that for every dead

body put into the ground, to glut the earth and the plant-roots, and the

air with disease-germs, five or fifty, or maybe a hundred persons must

die before their proper time; but they are hardly justifiable now, when

even the children know that a dead saint enters upon a century-long

career of assassination the moment the earth closes over his corpse. It

is a grim sort of a thought. The relics of St. Anne, up in Canada, have

now, after nineteen hundred years, gone to curing the sick by the dozen.

But it is merest matter-of-course that these same relics, within a

generation after St. Anne's death and burial, MADE several thousand

people sick. Therefore these miracle-performances are simply

compensation, nothing more. St. Anne is somewhat slow pay, for a Saint,

it is true; but better a debt paid after nineteen hundred years, and

outlawed by the statute of limitations, than not paid at all; and most

of the knights of the halo do not pay at all. Where you find one that

pays--like St. Anne--you find a hundred and fifty that take the benefit

of the statute. And none of them pay any more than the principal of what

they owe--they pay none of the interest either simple or compound. A

Saint can never QUITE return the principal, however; for his dead body

KILLS people, whereas his relics HEAL only--they never restore the dead

to life. That part of the account is always left unsettled.

'Dr. F. Julius Le Moyne, after fifty years of medical practice, wrote:

"The inhumation of human bodies, dead from infectious diseases, results

in constantly loading the atmosphere, and polluting the waters, with not

only the germs that rise from simply putrefaction, but also with the

SPECIFIC germs of the diseases from which death resulted."

'The gases (from buried corpses) will rise to the surface through eight

or ten feet of gravel, just as coal-gas will do, and there is

practically no limit to their power of escape.

'During the epidemic in New Orleans in 1853, Dr. E. H. Barton reported

that in the Fourth District the mortality was four hundred and fifty-two

per thousand--more than double that of any other. In this district were

three large cemeteries, in which during the previous year more than

three thousand bodies had been buried. In other districts the proximity

of cemeteries seemed to aggravate the disease.

'In 1828 Professor Bianchi demonstrated how the fearful reappearance of

the plague at Modena was caused by excavations in ground where, THREE

HUNDRED YEARS PREVIOUSLY, the victims of the pestilence had been buried.

Mr. Cooper, in explaining the causes of some epidemics, remarks that the

opening of the plague burial-grounds at Eyam resulted in an immediate

outbreak of disease.'--NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, NO. 3, VOL. 135.

In an address before the Chicago Medical Society, in advocacy of

cremation, Dr. Charles W. Purdy made some striking comparisons to show

what a burden is laid upon society by the burial of the dead:--

'One and one-fourth times more money is expended annually in funerals in

the United States than the Government expends for public-school

purposes. Funerals cost this country in 1880 enough money to pay the

liabilities of all the commercial failures in the United States during

the same year, and give each bankrupt a capital of $8,630 with which to

resume business. Funerals cost annually more money than the value of the

combined gold and silver yield of the United States in the year 1880!

These figures do not include the sums invested in burial-grounds and

expended in tombs and monuments, nor the loss from depreciation of

property in the vicinity of cemeteries.'

For the rich, cremation would answer as well as burial; for the

ceremonies connected with it could be made as costly and ostentatious as

a Hindu suttee; while for the poor, cremation would be better than

burial, because so cheap {footnote [Four or five dollars is the minimum

cost.]}--so cheap until the poor got to imitating the rich, which they

would do by-and-bye. The adoption of cremation would relieve us of a

muck of threadbare burial-witticisms; but, on the other hand, it would

resurrect a lot of mildewed old cremation-jokes that have had a rest for

two thousand years.

I have a colored acquaintance who earns his living by odd jobs and heavy

manual labor. He never earns above four hundred dollars in a year, and

as he has a wife and several young children, the closest scrimping is

necessary to get him through to the end of the twelve months debtless.

To such a man a funeral is a colossal financial disaster. While I was

writing one of the preceding chapters, this man lost a little child. He

walked the town over with a friend, trying to find a coffin that was

within his means. He bought the very cheapest one he could find, plain

wood, stained. It cost him twenty-six dollars. It would have cost less

than four, probably, if it had been built to put something useful into.

He and his family will feel that outlay a good many months.

Chapter 43 The Art of Inhumation

ABOUT the same time, I encountered a man in the street, whom I had not

seen for six or seven years; and something like this talk followed. I

said--

'But you used to look sad and oldish; you don't now. Where did you get

all this youth and bubbling cheerfulness? Give me the address.'

He chuckled blithely, took off his shining tile, pointed to a notched

pink circlet of paper pasted into its crown, with something lettered on

it, and went on chuckling while I read, 'J. B----, UNDERTAKER.' Then he

clapped his hat on, gave it an irreverent tilt to leeward, and cried

out--

'That's what's the matter! It used to be rough times with me when you

knew me--insurance-agency business, you know; mighty irregular. Big

fire, all right--brisk trade for ten days while people scared; after

that, dull policy-business till next fire. Town like this don't have

fires often enough--a fellow strikes so many dull weeks in a row that he

gets discouraged. But you bet you, this is the business! People don't

wait for examples to die. No, sir, they drop off right along--there

ain't any dull spots in the undertaker line. I just started in with two

or three little old coffins and a hired hearse, and now look at the

thing! I've worked up a business here that would satisfy any man, don't

care who he is. Five years ago, lodged in an attic; live in a swell

house now, with a mansard roof, and all the modern inconveniences.'

'Does a coffin pay so well. Is there much profit on a coffin?'

'Go-way! How you talk!' Then, with a confidential wink, a dropping of

the voice, and an impressive laying of his hand on my arm; 'Look here;

there's one thing in this world which isn't ever cheap. That's a coffin.

There's one thing in this world which a person don't ever try to jew you

down on. That's a coffin. There's one thing in this world which a

person don't say--"I'll look around a little, and if I find I can't do

better I'll come back and take it." That's a coffin. There's one thing

in this world which a person won't take in pine if he can go walnut; and

won't take in walnut if he can go mahogany; and won't take in mahogany

if he can go an iron casket with silver door-plate and bronze handles.

That's a coffin. And there's one thing in this world which you don't

have to worry around after a person to get him to pay for. And that's a

coffin. Undertaking?--why it's the dead-surest business in Christendom,

and the nobbiest.

'Why, just look at it. A rich man won't have anything but your very

best; and you can just pile it on, too--pile it on and sock it to him--

he won't ever holler. And you take in a poor man, and if you work him

right he'll bust himself on a single lay-out. Or especially a woman.

F'r instance: Mrs. O'Flaherty comes in--widow--wiping her eyes and kind

of moaning. Unhandkerchiefs one eye, bats it around tearfully over the

stock; says--

'"And fhat might ye ask for that wan?"

'"Thirty-nine dollars, madam," says I.

'"It 's a foine big price, sure, but Pat shall be buried like a

gintleman, as he was, if I have to work me fingers off for it. I'll have

that wan, sor."

'"Yes, madam," says I, "and it is a very good one, too; not costly, to

be sure, but in this life we must cut our garment to our clothes, as the

saying is." And as she starts out, I heave in, kind of casually, "This

one with the white satin lining is a beauty, but I am afraid--well,

sixty-five dollars is a rather--rather--but no matter, I felt obliged to

say to Mrs. O'Shaughnessy--"

'"D'ye mane to soy that Bridget O'Shaughnessy bought the mate to that

joo-ul box to ship that dhrunken divil to Purgatory in?"

'"Yes, madam."

'"Then Pat shall go to heaven in the twin to it, if it takes the last

rap the O'Flaherties can raise; and moind you, stick on some extras,

too, and I'll give ye another dollar."

'And as I lay-in with the livery stables, of course I don't forget to

mention that Mrs. O'Shaughnessy hired fifty-four dollars' worth of hacks

and flung as much style into Dennis's funeral as if he had been a duke

or an assassin. And of course she sails in and goes the O'Shaughnessy

about four hacks and an omnibus better. That used to be, but that's all

played now; that is, in this particular town. The Irish got to piling

up hacks so, on their funerals, that a funeral left them ragged and

hungry for two years afterward; so the priest pitched in and broke it

all up. He don't allow them to have but two hacks now, and sometimes

only one.'

'Well,' said I, 'if you are so light-hearted and jolly in ordinary

times, what must you be in an epidemic?'

He shook his head.

'No, you're off, there. We don't like to see an epidemic. An epidemic

don't pay. Well, of course I don't mean that, exactly; but it don't pay

in proportion to the regular thing. Don't it occur to you, why?'

No.

'Think.'

'I can't imagine. What is it?'

'It's just two things.'

'Well, what are they?'

'One's Embamming.'

'And what's the other?'

'Ice.'

'How is that?'

'Well, in ordinary times, a person dies, and we lay him up in ice; one

day two days, maybe three, to wait for friends to come. Takes a lot of

it--melts fast. We charge jewelry rates for that ice, and war-prices

for attendance. Well, don't you know, when there's an epidemic, they

rush 'em to the cemetery the minute the breath's out. No market for ice

in an epidemic. Same with Embamming. You take a family that's able to

embam, and you've got a soft thing. You can mention sixteen different

ways to do it--though there AIN'T only one or two ways, when you come

down to the bottom facts of it--and they'll take the highest-priced way,

every time. It's human nature--human nature in grief. It don't reason,

you see. Time being, it don't care a dam. All it wants is physical

immortality for deceased, and they're willing to pay for it. All you've

got to do is to just be ca'm and stack it up--they'll stand the racket.

Why, man, you can take a defunct that you couldn't GIVE away; and get

your embamming traps around you and go to work; and in a couple of hours

he is worth a cool six hundred--that's what HE'S worth. There ain't

anything equal to it but trading rats for di'monds in time of famine.

Well, don't you see, when there's an epidemic, people don't wait to

embam. No, indeed they don't; and it hurts the business like hell-th, as

we say--hurts it like hell-th, HEALTH, see?--Our little joke in the

trade. Well, I must be going. Give me a call whenever you need any--I

mean, when you're going by, sometime.'

In his joyful high spirits, he did the exaggerating himself, if any has

been done. I have not enlarged on him.

With the above brief references to inhumation, let us leave the subject.

As for me, I hope to be cremated. I made that remark to my pastor once,

who said, with what he seemed to think was an impressive manner--

'I wouldn't worry about that, if I had your chances.' Much he knew about

it--the family all so opposed to it.

Chapter 44 City Sights

THE old French part of New Orleans--anciently the Spanish part--bears no

resemblance to the American end of the city: the American end which lies

beyond the intervening brick business-center. The houses are massed in

blocks; are austerely plain and dignified; uniform of pattern, with here

and there a departure from it with pleasant effect; all are plastered on

the outside, and nearly all have long, iron-railed verandas running

along the several stories. Their chief beauty is the deep, warm,

varicolored stain with which time and the weather have enriched the

plaster. It harmonizes with all the surroundings, and has as natural a

look of belonging there as has the flush upon sunset clouds. This

charming decoration cannot be successfully imitated; neither is it to be

found elsewhere in America.

The iron railings are a specialty, also. The pattern is often

exceedingly light and dainty, and airy and graceful--with a large cipher

or monogram in the center, a delicate cobweb of baffling, intricate

forms, wrought in steel. The ancient railings are hand-made, and are

now comparatively rare and proportionately valuable. They are become

BRIC-A-BRAC.

The party had the privilege of idling through this ancient quarter of

New Orleans with the South's finest literary genius, the author of 'the

Grandissimes.' In him the South has found a masterly delineator of its

interior life and its history. In truth, I find by experience, that the

untrained eye and vacant mind can inspect it, and learn of it, and judge

of it, more clearly and profitably in his books than by personal contact

with it.

With Mr. Cable along to see for you, and describe and explain and

illuminate, a jog through that old quarter is a vivid pleasure. And you

have a vivid sense as of unseen or dimly seen things--vivid, and yet

fitful and darkling; you glimpse salient features, but lose the fine

shades or catch them imperfectly through the vision of the imagination:

a case, as it were, of ignorant near-sighted stranger traversing the rim

of wide vague horizons of Alps with an inspired and enlightened long-

sighted native.

We visited the old St. Louis Hotel, now occupied by municipal offices.

There is nothing strikingly remarkable about it; but one can say of it

as of the Academy of Music in New York, that if a broom or a shovel has

ever been used in it there is no circumstantial evidence to back up the

fact. It is curious that cabbages and hay and things do not grow in the

Academy of Music; but no doubt it is on account of the interruption of

the light by the benches, and the impossibility of hoeing the crop

except in the aisles. The fact that the ushers grow their buttonhole-

bouquets on the premises shows what might be done if they had the right

kind of an agricultural head to the establishment.

We visited also the venerable Cathedral, and the pretty square in front

of it; the one dim with religious light, the other brilliant with the

worldly sort, and lovely with orange-trees and blossomy shrubs; then we

drove in the hot sun through the wilderness of houses and out on to the

wide dead level beyond, where the villas are, and the water wheels to

drain the town, and the commons populous with cows and children; passing

by an old cemetery where we were told lie the ashes of an early pirate;

but we took him on trust, and did not visit him. He was a pirate with a

tremendous and sanguinary history; and as long as he preserved

unspotted, in retirement, the dignity of his name and the grandeur of

his ancient calling, homage and reverence were his from high and low;

but when at last he descended into politics and became a paltry

alderman, the public 'shook' him, and turned aside and wept. When he

died, they set up a monument over him; and little by little he has come

into respect again; but it is respect for the pirate, not the alderman.

To-day the loyal and generous remember only what he was, and charitably

forget what he became.

Thence, we drove a few miles across a swamp, along a raised shell road,

with a canal on one hand and a dense wood on the other; and here and

there, in the distance, a ragged and angular-limbed and moss-bearded

cypress, top standing out, clear cut against the sky, and as quaint of

form as the apple-trees in Japanese pictures--such was our course and

the surroundings of it. There was an occasional alligator swimming

comfortably along in the canal, and an occasional picturesque colored

person on the bank, flinging his statue-rigid reflection upon the still

water and watching for a bite.

And by-and-bye we reached the West End, a collection of hotels of the

usual light summer-resort pattern, with broad verandas all around, and

the waves of the wide and blue Lake Pontchartrain lapping the

thresholds. We had dinner on a ground-veranda over the water--the chief

dish the renowned fish called the pompano, delicious as the less

criminal forms of sin.

Thousands of people come by rail and carriage to West End and to Spanish

Fort every evening, and dine, listen to the bands, take strolls in the

open air under the electric lights, go sailing on the lake, and

entertain themselves in various and sundry other ways.

We had opportunities on other days and in other places to test the

pompano. Notably, at an editorial dinner at one of the clubs in the

city. He was in his last possible perfection there, and justified his

fame. In his suite was a tall pyramid of scarlet cray-fish--large ones;

as large as one's thumb--delicate, palatable, appetizing. Also deviled

whitebait; also shrimps of choice quality; and a platter of small soft-

shell crabs of a most superior breed. The other dishes were what one

might get at Delmonico's, or Buckingham Palace; those I have spoken of

can be had in similar perfection in New Orleans only, I suppose.

In the West and South they have a new institution--the Broom Brigade. It

is composed of young ladies who dress in a uniform costume, and go

through the infantry drill, with broom in place of musket. It is a very

pretty sight, on private view. When they perform on the stage of a

theater, in the blaze of colored fires, it must be a fine and

fascinating spectacle. I saw them go through their complex manual with

grace, spirit, and admirable precision. I saw them do everything which a

human being can possibly do with a broom, except sweep. I did not see

them sweep. But I know they could learn. What they have already learned

proves that. And if they ever should learn, and should go on the war-

path down Tchoupitoulas or some of those other streets around there,

those thoroughfares would bear a greatly improved aspect in a very few

minutes. But the girls themselves wouldn't; so nothing would be really

gained, after all.

The drill was in the Washington Artillery building. In this building we

saw many interesting relics of the war. Also a fine oil-painting

representing Stonewall Jackson's last interview with General Lee. Both

men are on horseback. Jackson has just ridden up, and is accosting Lee.

The picture is very valuable, on account of the portraits, which are

authentic. But, like many another historical picture, it means nothing

without its label. And one label will fit it as well as another--

First Interview between Lee and Jackson.

Last Interview between Lee and Jackson.

Jackson Introducing Himself to Lee.

Jackson Accepting Lee's Invitation to Dinner.

Jackson Declining Lee's Invitation to Dinner--with Thanks.

Jackson Apologizing for a Heavy Defeat.

Jackson Reporting a Great Victory.

Jackson Asking Lee for a Match.

It tells ONE story, and a sufficient one; for it says quite plainly and

satisfactorily, 'Here are Lee and Jackson together.' The artist would

have made it tell that this is Lee and Jackson's last interview if he

could have done it. But he couldn't, for there wasn't any way to do it.

A good legible label is usually worth, for information, a ton of

significant attitude and expression in a historical picture. In Rome,

people with fine sympathetic natures stand up and weep in front of the

celebrated 'Beatrice Cenci the Day before her Execution.' It shows what

a label can do. If they did not know the picture, they would inspect it

unmoved, and say, 'Young girl with hay fever; young girl with her head

in a bag.'

I found the half-forgotten Southern intonations and elisions as pleasing

to my ear as they had formerly been. A Southerner talks music. At least

it is music to me, but then I was born in the South. The educated

Southerner has no use for an r, except at the beginning of a word. He

says 'honah,' and 'dinnah,' and 'Gove'nuh,' and 'befo' the waw,' and so

on. The words may lack charm to the eye, in print, but they have it to

the ear. When did the r disappear from Southern speech, and how did it

come to disappear? The custom of dropping it was not borrowed from the

North, nor inherited from England. Many Southerners--most Southerners--

put a y into occasional words that begin with the k sound. For instance,

they say Mr. K'yahtah (Carter) and speak of playing k'yahds or of riding

in the k'yahs. And they have the pleasant custom--long ago fallen into

decay in the North--of frequently employing the respectful 'Sir.'

Instead of the curt Yes, and the abrupt No, they say 'Yes, Suh', 'No,

Suh.'

But there are some infelicities. Such as 'like' for 'as,' and the

addition of an 'at' where it isn't needed. I heard an educated gentleman

say, 'Like the flag-officer did.' His cook or his butler would have

said, 'Like the flag-officer done.' You hear gentlemen say, 'Where have

you been at?' And here is the aggravated form--heard a ragged street

Arab say it to a comrade: 'I was a-ask'n' Tom whah you was a-sett'n'

at.' The very elect carelessly say 'will' when they mean 'shall'; and

many of them say, 'I didn't go to do it,' meaning 'I didn't mean to do

it.' The Northern word 'guess'--imported from England, where it used to

be common, and now regarded by satirical Englishmen as a Yankee

original--is but little used among Southerners. They say 'reckon.' They

haven't any 'doesn't' in their language; they say 'don't' instead. The

unpolished often use 'went' for 'gone.' It is nearly as bad as the

Northern 'hadn't ought.' This reminds me that a remark of a very

peculiar nature was made here in my neighborhood (in the North) a few

days ago: 'He hadn't ought to have went.' How is that? Isn't that a

good deal of a triumph? One knows the orders combined in this half-

breed's architecture without inquiring: one parent Northern, the other

Southern. To-day I heard a schoolmistress ask, 'Where is John gone?'

This form is so common--so nearly universal, in fact--that if she had

used 'whither' instead of 'where,' I think it would have sounded like an

affectation.

We picked up one excellent word--a word worth traveling to New Orleans

to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy word--'lagniappe.' They

pronounce it lanny-yap. It is Spanish--so they said. We discovered it at

the head of a column of odds and ends in the Picayune, the first day;

heard twenty people use it the second; inquired what it meant the third;

adopted it and got facility in swinging it the fourth. It has a

restricted meaning, but I think the people spread it out a little when

they choose. It is the equivalent of the thirteenth roll in a 'baker's

dozen.' It is something thrown in, gratis, for good measure. The custom

originated in the Spanish quarter of the city. When a child or a servant

buys something in a shop--or even the mayor or the governor, for aught I

know--he finishes the operation by saying--

'Give me something for lagniappe.'

The shopman always responds; gives the child a bit of licorice-root,

gives the servant a cheap cigar or a spool of thread, gives the

governor--I don't know what he gives the governor; support, likely.

When you are invited to drink, and this does occur now and then in New

Orleans--and you say, 'What, again?--no, I've had enough;' the other

party says, 'But just this one time more--this is for lagniappe.' When

the beau perceives that he is stacking his compliments a trifle too

high, and sees by the young lady's countenance that the edifice would

have been better with the top compliment left off, he puts his 'I beg

pardon--no harm intended,' into the briefer form of 'Oh, that's for

lagniappe.' If the waiter in the restaurant stumbles and spills a gill

of coffee down the back of your neck, he says 'For lagniappe, sah,' and

gets you another cup without extra charge.

Chapter 45 Southern Sports

IN the North one hears the war mentioned, in social conversation, once a

month; sometimes as often as once a week; but as a distinct subject for

talk, it has long ago been relieved of duty. There are sufficient

reasons for this. Given a dinner company of six gentlemen to-day, it

can easily happen that four of them--and possibly five--were not in the

field at all. So the chances are four to two, or five to one, that the

war will at no time during the evening become the topic of conversation;

and the chances are still greater that if it become the topic it will

remain so but a little while. If you add six ladies to the company, you

have added six people who saw so little of the dread realities of the

war that they ran out of talk concerning them years ago, and now would

soon weary of the war topic if you brought it up.

The case is very different in the South. There, every man you meet was

in the war; and every lady you meet saw the war. The war is the great

chief topic of conversation. The interest in it is vivid and constant;

the interest in other topics is fleeting. Mention of the war will wake

up a dull company and set their tongues going, when nearly any other

topic would fail. In the South, the war is what A.D. is elsewhere: they

date from it. All day long you hear things 'placed' as having happened

since the waw; or du'in' the waw; or befo' the waw; or right aftah the

waw; or 'bout two yeahs or five yeahs or ten yeahs befo' the waw or

aftah the waw. It shows how intimately every individual was visited, in

his own person, by that tremendous episode. It gives the inexperienced

stranger a better idea of what a vast and comprehensive calamity

invasion is than he can ever get by reading books at the fireside.

At a club one evening, a gentleman turned to me and said, in an aside--

'You notice, of course, that we are nearly always talking about the war.

It isn't because we haven't anything else to talk about, but because

nothing else has so strong an interest for us. And there is another

reason: In the war, each of us, in his own person, seems to have sampled

all the different varieties of human experience; as a consequence, you

can't mention an outside matter of any sort but it will certainly remind

some listener of something that happened during the war--and out he

comes with it. Of course that brings the talk back to the war. You may

try all you want to, to keep other subjects before the house, and we may

all join in and help, but there can be but one result: the most random

topic would load every man up with war reminiscences, and shut him up,

too; and talk would be likely to stop presently, because you can't talk

pale inconsequentialities when you've got a crimson fact or fancy in

your head that you are burning to fetch out.'

The poet was sitting some little distance away; and presently he began

to speak--about the moon.

The gentleman who had been talking to me remarked in an 'aside:' 'There,

the moon is far enough from the seat of war, but you will see that it

will suggest something to somebody about the war; in ten minutes from

now the moon, as a topic, will be shelved.'

The poet was saying he had noticed something which was a surprise to

him; had had the impression that down here, toward the equator, the

moonlight was much stronger and brighter than up North; had had the

impression that when he visited New Orleans, many years ago, the moon--

Interruption from the other end of the room--

'Let me explain that. Reminds me of an anecdote. Everything is changed

since the war, for better or for worse; but you'll find people down here

born grumblers, who see no change except the change for the worse.

There was an old negro woman of this sort. A young New-Yorker said in

her presence, "What a wonderful moon you have down here!" She sighed

and said, "Ah, bless yo' heart, honey, you ought to seen dat moon befo'

de waw!"'

The new topic was dead already. But the poet resurrected it, and gave

it a new start.

A brief dispute followed, as to whether the difference between Northern

and Southern moonlight really existed or was only imagined. Moonlight

talk drifted easily into talk about artificial methods of dispelling

darkness. Then somebody remembered that when Farragut advanced upon

Port Hudson on a dark night--and did not wish to assist the aim of the

Confederate gunners--he carried no battle-lanterns, but painted the

decks of his ships white, and thus created a dim but valuable light,

which enabled his own men to grope their way around with considerable

facility. At this point the war got the floor again--the ten minutes not

quite up yet.

I was not sorry, for war talk by men who have been in a war is always

interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is

likely to be dull.

We went to a cockpit in New Orleans on a Saturday afternoon. I had never

seen a cock-fight before. There were men and boys there of all ages and

all colors, and of many languages and nationalities. But I noticed one

quite conspicuous and surprising absence: the traditional brutal faces.

There were no brutal faces. With no cock-fighting going on, you could

have played the gathering on a stranger for a prayer-meeting; and after

it began, for a revival--provided you blindfolded your stranger--for the

shouting was something prodigious.

A negro and a white man were in the ring; everybody else outside. The

cocks were brought in in sacks; and when time was called, they were

taken out by the two bottle-holders, stroked, caressed, poked toward

each other, and finally liberated. The big black cock plunged instantly

at the little gray one and struck him on the head with his spur. The

gray responded with spirit. Then the Babel of many-tongued shoutings

broke out, and ceased not thenceforth. When the cocks had been fighting

some little time, I was expecting them momently to drop dead, for both

were blind, red with blood, and so exhausted that they frequently fell

down. Yet they would not give up, neither would they die. The negro and

the white man would pick them up every few seconds, wipe them off, blow

cold water on them in a fine spray, and take their heads in their mouths

and hold them there a moment--to warm back the perishing life perhaps; I

do not know. Then, being set down again, the dying creatures would

totter gropingly about, with dragging wings, find each other, strike a

guesswork blow or two, and fall exhausted once more.

I did not see the end of the battle. I forced myself to endure it as

long as I could, but it was too pitiful a sight; so I made frank

confession to that effect, and we retired. We heard afterward that the

black cock died in the ring, and fighting to the last.

Evidently there is abundant fascination about this 'sport' for such as

have had a degree of familiarity with it. I never saw people enjoy

anything more than this gathering enjoyed this fight. The case was the

same with old gray-heads and with boys of ten. They lost themselves in

frenzies of delight. The 'cocking-main' is an inhuman sort of

entertainment, there is no question about that; still, it seems a much

more respectable and far less cruel sport than fox-hunting--for the

cocks like it; they experience, as well as confer enjoyment; which is

not the fox's case.

We assisted--in the French sense--at a mule race, one day. I believe I

enjoyed this contest more than any other mule there. I enjoyed it more

than I remember having enjoyed any other animal race I ever saw. The

grand-stand was well filled with the beauty and the chivalry of New

Orleans. That phrase is not original with me. It is the Southern

reporter's. He has used it for two generations. He uses it twenty times

a day, or twenty thousand times a day; or a million times a day--

according to the exigencies. He is obliged to use it a million times a

day, if he have occasion to speak of respectable men and women that

often; for he has no other phrase for such service except that single

one. He never tires of it; it always has a fine sound to him. There is a

kind of swell medieval bulliness and tinsel about it that pleases his

gaudy barbaric soul. If he had been in Palestine in the early times, we

should have had no references to 'much people' out of him. No, he would

have said 'the beauty and the chivalry of Galilee' assembled to hear the

Sermon on the Mount. It is likely that the men and women of the South

are sick enough of that phrase by this time, and would like a change,

but there is no immediate prospect of their getting it.

The New Orleans editor has a strong, compact, direct, unflowery style;

wastes no words, and does not gush. Not so with his average

correspondent. In the Appendix I have quoted a good letter, penned by a

trained hand; but the average correspondent hurls a style which differs

from that. For instance--

The 'Times-Democrat' sent a relief-steamer up one of the bayous, last

April. This steamer landed at a village, up there somewhere, and the

Captain invited some of the ladies of the village to make a short trip

with him. They accepted and came aboard, and the steamboat shoved out up

the creek. That was all there was 'to it.' And that is all that the

editor of the 'Times-Democrat' would have got out of it. There was

nothing in the thing but statistics, and he would have got nothing else

out of it. He would probably have even tabulated them, partly to secure

perfect clearness of statement, and partly to save space. But his

special correspondent knows other methods of handling statistics. He

just throws off all restraint and wallows in them--

'On Saturday, early in the morning, the beauty of the place graced our

cabin, and proud of her fair freight the gallant little boat glided up

the bayou.'

Twenty-two words to say the ladies came aboard and the boat shoved out

up the creek, is a clean waste of ten good words, and is also

destructive of compactness of statement.

The trouble with the Southern reporter is--Women. They unsettle him;

they throw him off his balance. He is plain, and sensible, and

satisfactory, until a woman heaves in sight. Then he goes all to

pieces; his mind totters, he becomes flowery and idiotic. From reading

the above extract, you would imagine that this student of Sir Walter

Scott is an apprentice, and knows next to nothing about handling a pen.

On the contrary, he furnishes plenty of proofs, in his long letter, that

he knows well enough how to handle it when the women are not around to

give him the artificial-flower complaint. For instance--

'At 4 o'clock ominous clouds began to gather in the south-east, and

presently from the Gulf there came a blow which increased in severity

every moment. It was not safe to leave the landing then, and there was a

delay. The oaks shook off long tresses of their mossy beards to the

tugging of the wind, and the bayou in its ambition put on miniature

waves in mocking of much larger bodies of water. A lull permitted a

start, and homewards we steamed, an inky sky overhead and a heavy wind

blowing. As darkness crept on, there were few on board who did not wish

themselves nearer home.'

There is nothing the matter with that. It is good description,

compactly put. Yet there was great temptation, there, to drop into

lurid writing.

But let us return to the mule. Since I left him, I have rummaged around

and found a full report of the race. In it I find confirmation of the

theory which I broached just now--namely, that the trouble with the

Southern reporter is Women: Women, supplemented by Walter Scott and his

knights and beauty and chivalry, and so on. This is an excellent report,

as long as the women stay out of it. But when they intrude, we have this

frantic result--

'It will be probably a long time before the ladies' stand presents such

a sea of foam-like loveliness as it did yesterday. The New Orleans

women are always charming, but never so much so as at this time of the

year, when in their dainty spring costumes they bring with them a

breath of balmy freshness and an odor of sanctity unspeakable. The stand

was so crowded with them that, walking at their feet and seeing no

possibility of approach, many a man appreciated as he never did before

the Peri's feeling at the Gates of Paradise, and wondered what was the

priceless boon that would admit him to their sacred presence. Sparkling

on their white-robed breasts or shoulders were the colors of their

favorite knights, and were it not for the fact that the doughty heroes

appeared on unromantic mules, it would have been easy to imagine one of

King Arthur's gala-days.'

There were thirteen mules in the first heat; all sorts of mules, they

were; all sorts of complexions, gaits, dispositions, aspects. Some were

handsome creatures, some were not; some were sleek, some hadn't had

their fur brushed lately; some were innocently gay and frisky; some were

full of malice and all unrighteousness; guessing from looks, some of

them thought the matter on hand was war, some thought it was a lark, the

rest took it for a religious occasion. And each mule acted according to

his convictions. The result was an absence of harmony well compensated

by a conspicuous presence of variety--variety of a picturesque and

entertaining sort.

All the riders were young gentlemen in fashionable society. If the

reader has been wondering why it is that the ladies of New Orleans

attend so humble an orgy as a mule-race, the thing is explained now. It

is a fashion-freak; all connected with it are people of fashion.

It is great fun, and cordially liked. The mule-race is one of the

marked occasions of the year. It has brought some pretty fast mules to

the front. One of these had to be ruled out, because he was so fast that

he turned the thing into a one-mule contest, and robbed it of one of its

best features--variety. But every now and then somebody disguises him

with a new name and a new complexion, and rings him in again.

The riders dress in full jockey costumes of bright-colored silks,

satins, and velvets.

The thirteen mules got away in a body, after a couple of false starts,

and scampered off with prodigious spirit. As each mule and each rider

had a distinct opinion of his own as to how the race ought to be run,

and which side of the track was best in certain circumstances, and how

often the track ought to be crossed, and when a collision ought to be

accomplished, and when it ought to be avoided, these twenty-six

conflicting opinions created a most fantastic and picturesque confusion,

and the resulting spectacle was killingly comical.

Mile heat; time 2:22. Eight of the thirteen mules distanced. I had a bet

on a mule which would have won if the procession had been reversed. The

second heat was good fun; and so was the 'consolation race for beaten

mules,' which followed later; but the first heat was the best in that

respect.

I think that much the most enjoyable of all races is a steamboat race;

but, next to that, I prefer the gay and joyous mule-rush. Two red-hot

steamboats raging along, neck-and-neck, straining every nerve--that is

to say, every rivet in the boilers--quaking and shaking and groaning

from stem to stern, spouting white steam from the pipes, pouring black

smoke from the chimneys, raining down sparks, parting the river into

long breaks of hissing foam--this is sport that makes a body's very

liver curl with enjoyment. A horse-race is pretty tame and colorless in

comparison. Still, a horse-race might be well enough, in its way,

perhaps, if it were not for the tiresome false starts. But then, nobody

is ever killed. At least, nobody was ever killed when I was at a horse-

race. They have been crippled, it is true; but this is little to the

purpose.

Chapter 46 Enchantments and Enchanters

THE largest annual event in New Orleans is a something which we arrived

too late to sample--the Mardi-Gras festivities. I saw the procession of

the Mystic Crew of Comus there, twenty-four years ago--with knights and

nobles and so on, clothed in silken and golden Paris-made

gorgeousnesses, planned and bought for that single night's use; and in

their train all manner of giants, dwarfs, monstrosities, and other

diverting grotesquerie--a startling and wonderful sort of show, as it

filed solemnly and silently down the street in the light of its smoking

and flickering torches; but it is said that in these latter days the

spectacle is mightily augmented, as to cost, splendor, and variety.

There is a chief personage--'Rex;' and if I remember rightly, neither

this king nor any of his great following of subordinates is known to any

outsider. All these people are gentlemen of position and consequence;

and it is a proud thing to belong to the organization; so the mystery in

which they hide their personality is merely for romance's sake, and not

on account of the police.

Mardi-Gras is of course a relic of the French and Spanish occupation;

but I judge that the religious feature has been pretty well knocked out

of it now. Sir Walter has got the advantage of the gentlemen of the cowl

and rosary, and he will stay. His medieval business, supplemented by

the monsters and the oddities, and the pleasant creatures from fairy-

land, is finer to look at than the poor fantastic inventions and

performances of the reveling rabble of the priest's day, and serves

quite as well, perhaps, to emphasize the day and admonish men that the

grace-line between the worldly season and the holy one is reached.

This Mardi-Gras pageant was the exclusive possession of New Orleans

until recently. But now it has spread to Memphis and St. Louis and

Baltimore. It has probably reached its limit. It is a thing which could

hardly exist in the practical North; would certainly last but a very

brief time; as brief a time as it would last in London. For the soul of

it is the romantic, not the funny and the grotesque. Take away the

romantic mysteries, the kings and knights and big-sounding titles, and

Mardi-Gras would die, down there in the South. The very feature that

keeps it alive in the South--girly-girly romance--would kill it in the

North or in London. Puck and Punch, and the press universal, would fall

upon it and make merciless fun of it, and its first exhibition would be

also its last.

Against the crimes of the French Revolution and of Bonaparte may be set

two compensating benefactions: the Revolution broke the chains of the

ANCIEN REGIME and of the Church, and made of a nation of abject slaves a

nation of freemen; and Bonaparte instituted the setting of merit above

birth, and also so completely stripped the divinity from royalty, that

whereas crowned heads in Europe were gods before, they are only men,

since, and can never be gods again, but only figureheads, and answerable

for their acts like common clay. Such benefactions as these compensate

the temporary harm which Bonaparte and the Revolution did, and leave the

world in debt to them for these great and permanent services to liberty,

humanity, and progress.

Then comes Sir Walter Scott with his enchantments, and by his single

might checks this wave of progress, and even turns it back; sets the

world in love with dreams and phantoms; with decayed and swinish forms

of religion; with decayed and degraded systems of government; with the

sillinesses and emptinesses, sham grandeurs, sham gauds, and sham

chivalries of a brainless and worthless long-vanished society. He did

measureless harm; more real and lasting harm, perhaps, than any other

individual that ever wrote. Most of the world has now outlived good

part of these harms, though by no means all of them; but in our South

they flourish pretty forcefully still. Not so forcefully as half a

generation ago, perhaps, but still forcefully. There, the genuine and

wholesome civilization of the nineteenth century is curiously confused

and commingled with the Walter Scott Middle-Age sham civilization; and

so you have practical, common-sense, progressive ideas, and progressive

works; mixed up with the duel, the inflated speech, and the jejune

romanticism of an absurd past that is dead, and out of charity ought to

be buried. But for the Sir Walter disease, the character of the

Southerner--or Southron, according to Sir Walter's starchier way of

phrasing it--would be wholly modern, in place of modern and medieval

mixed, and the South would be fully a generation further advanced than

it is. It was Sir Walter that made every gentleman in the South a Major

or a Colonel, or a General or a Judge, before the war; and it was he,

also, that made these gentlemen value these bogus decorations. For it

was he that created rank and caste down there, and also reverence for

rank and caste, and pride and pleasure in them. Enough is laid on

slavery, without fathering upon it these creations and contributions of

Sir Walter.

Sir Walter had so large a hand in making Southern character, as it

existed before the war, that he is in great measure responsible for the

war. It seems a little harsh toward a dead man to say that we never

should have had any war but for Sir Walter; and yet something of a

plausible argument might, perhaps, be made in support of that wild

proposition. The Southerner of the American Revolution owned slaves; so

did the Southerner of the Civil War: but the former resembles the latter

as an Englishman resembles a Frenchman. The change of character can be

traced rather more easily to Sir Walter's influence than to that of any

other thing or person.

One may observe, by one or two signs, how deeply that influence

penetrated, and how strongly it holds. If one take up a Northern or

Southern literary periodical of forty or fifty years ago, he will find

it filled with wordy, windy, flowery 'eloquence,' romanticism,

sentimentality--all imitated from Sir Walter, and sufficiently badly

done, too--innocent travesties of his style and methods, in fact. This

sort of literature being the fashion in both sections of the country,

there was opportunity for the fairest competition; and as a consequence,

the South was able to show as many well-known literary names,

proportioned to population, as the North could.

But a change has come, and there is no opportunity now for a fair

competition between North and South. For the North has thrown out that

old inflated style, whereas the Southern writer still clings to it--

clings to it and has a restricted market for his wares, as a

consequence. There is as much literary talent in the South, now, as ever

there was, of course; but its work can gain but slight currency under

present conditions; the authors write for the past, not the present;

they use obsolete forms, and a dead language. But when a Southerner of

genius writes modern English, his book goes upon crutches no longer, but

upon wings; and they carry it swiftly all about America and England, and

through the great English reprint publishing houses of Germany--as

witness the experience of Mr. Cable and Uncle Remus, two of the very few

Southern authors who do not write in the Southern style. Instead of

three or four widely-known literary names, the South ought to have a

dozen or two--and will have them when Sir Walter's time is out.

A curious exemplification of the power of a single book for good or harm

is shown in the effects wrought by 'Don Quixote' and those wrought by

'Ivanhoe.' The first swept the world's admiration for the medieval

chivalry-silliness out of existence; and the other restored it. As far

as our South is concerned, the good work done by Cervantes is pretty

nearly a dead letter, so effectually has Scott's pernicious work

undermined it.

Chapter 47 Uncle Remus and Mr. Cable

MR. JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS ('Uncle Remus') was to arrive from Atlanta at

seven o'clock Sunday morning; so we got up and received him. We were

able to detect him among the crowd of arrivals at the hotel-counter by

his correspondence with a description of him which had been furnished us

from a trustworthy source. He was said to be undersized, red-haired, and

somewhat freckled. He was the only man in the party whose outside

tallied with this bill of particulars. He was said to be very shy. He

is a shy man. Of this there is no doubt. It may not show on the

surface, but the shyness is there. After days of intimacy one wonders

to see that it is still in about as strong force as ever. There is a

fine and beautiful nature hidden behind it, as all know who have read

the Uncle Remus book; and a fine genius, too, as all know by the same

sign. I seem to be talking quite freely about this neighbor; but in

talking to the public I am but talking to his personal friends, and

these things are permissible among friends.

He deeply disappointed a number of children who had flocked eagerly to

Mr. Cable's house to get a glimpse of the illustrious sage and oracle of

the nation's nurseries. They said--

'Why, he 's white!'

They were grieved about it. So, to console them, the book was brought,

that they might hear Uncle Remus's Tar-Baby story from the lips of Uncle

Remus himself--or what, in their outraged eyes, was left of him. But it

turned out that he had never read aloud to people, and was too shy to

venture the attempt now. Mr. Cable and I read from books of ours, to

show him what an easy trick it was; but his immortal shyness was proof

against even this sagacious strategy, so we had to read about Brer

Rabbit ourselves.

Mr. Harris ought to be able to read the negro dialect better than

anybody else, for in the matter of writing it he is the only master the

country has produced. Mr. Cable is the only master in the writing of

French dialects that the country has produced; and he reads them in

perfection. It was a great treat to hear him read about Jean-ah

Poquelin, and about Innerarity and his famous 'pigshoo' representing

'Louisihanna RIF-fusing to Hanter the Union,' along with passages of

nicely-shaded German dialect from a novel which was still in manuscript.

It came out in conversation, that in two different instances Mr. Cable

got into grotesque trouble by using, in his books, next-to-impossible

French names which nevertheless happened to be borne by living and

sensitive citizens of New Orleans. His names were either inventions or

were borrowed from the ancient and obsolete past, I do not now remember

which; but at any rate living bearers of them turned up, and were a good

deal hurt at having attention directed to themselves and their affairs

in so excessively public a manner.

Mr. Warner and I had an experience of the same sort when we wrote the

book called 'The Gilded Age.' There is a character in it called

'Sellers.' I do not remember what his first name was, in the beginning;

but anyway, Mr. Warner did not like it, and wanted it improved. He asked

me if I was able to imagine a person named 'Eschol Sellers.' Of course I

said I could not, without stimulants. He said that away out West, once,

he had met, and contemplated, and actually shaken hands with a man

bearing that impossible name--'Eschol Sellers.' He added--

'It was twenty years ago; his name has probably carried him off before

this; and if it hasn't, he will never see the book anyhow. We will

confiscate his name. The name you are using is common, and therefore

dangerous; there are probably a thousand Sellerses bearing it, and the

whole horde will come after us; but Eschol Sellers is a safe name--it is

a rock.'

So we borrowed that name; and when the book had been out about a week,

one of the stateliest and handsomest and most aristocratic looking white

men that ever lived, called around, with the most formidable libel suit

in his pocket that ever--well, in brief, we got his permission to

suppress an edition of ten million {footnote [Figures taken from memory,

and probably incorrect. Think it was more.]} copies of the book and

change that name to 'Mulberry Sellers' in future editions.

Chapter 48 Sugar and Postage

ONE day, on the street, I encountered the man whom, of all men, I most

wished to see--Horace Bixby; formerly pilot under me--or rather, over

me--now captain of the great steamer 'City of Baton Rouge,' the latest

and swiftest addition to the Anchor Line. The same slender figure, the

same tight curls, the same springy step, the same alertness, the same

decision of eye and answering decision of hand, the same erect military

bearing; not an inch gained or lost in girth, not an ounce gained or

lost in weight, not a hair turned. It is a curious thing, to leave a man

thirty-five years old, and come back at the end of twenty-one years and

find him still only thirty-five. I have not had an experience of this

kind before, I believe. There were some crow's-feet, but they counted

for next to nothing, since they were inconspicuous.

His boat was just in. I had been waiting several days for her,

purposing to return to St. Louis in her. The captain and I joined a

party of ladies and gentlemen, guests of Major Wood, and went down the

river fifty-four miles, in a swift tug, to ex-Governor Warmouth's sugar

plantation. Strung along below the city, were a number of decayed, ram-

shackly, superannuated old steamboats, not one of which had I ever seen

before. They had all been built, and worn out, and thrown aside, since I

was here last. This gives one a realizing sense of the frailness of a

Mississippi boat and the briefness of its life.

Six miles below town a fat and battered brick chimney, sticking above

the magnolias and live-oaks, was pointed out as the monument erected by

an appreciative nation to celebrate the battle of New Orleans--Jackson's

victory over the British, January 8, 1815. The war had ended, the two

nations were at peace, but the news had not yet reached New Orleans. If

we had had the cable telegraph in those days, this blood would not have

been spilt, those lives would not have been wasted; and better still,

Jackson would probably never have been president. We have gotten over

the harms done us by the war of 1812, but not over some of those done us

by Jackson's presidency.

The Warmouth plantation covers a vast deal of ground, and the

hospitality of the Warmouth mansion is graduated to the same large

scale. We saw steam-plows at work, here, for the first time. The

traction engine travels about on its own wheels, till it reaches the

required spot; then it stands still and by means of a wire rope pulls

the huge plow toward itself two or three hundred yards across the field,

between the rows of cane. The thing cuts down into the black mold a foot

and a half deep. The plow looks like a fore-and-aft brace of a Hudson

river steamer, inverted. When the negro steersman sits on one end of it,

that end tilts down near the ground, while the other sticks up high in

air. This great see-saw goes rolling and pitching like a ship at sea,

and it is not every circus rider that could stay on it.

The plantation contains two thousand six hundred acres; six hundred and

fifty are in cane; and there is a fruitful orange grove of five thousand

trees. The cane is cultivated after a modern and intricate scientific

fashion, too elaborate and complex for me to attempt to describe; but it

lost $40,000 last year. I forget the other details. However, this

year's crop will reach ten or twelve hundred tons of sugar, consequently

last year's loss will not matter. These troublesome and expensive

scientific methods achieve a yield of a ton and a half and from that to

two tons, to the acre; which is three or four times what the yield of an

acre was in my time.

The drainage-ditches were everywhere alive with little crabs--

'fiddlers.' One saw them scampering sidewise in every direction

whenever they heard a disturbing noise. Expensive pests, these crabs;

for they bore into the levees, and ruin them.

The great sugar-house was a wilderness of tubs and tanks and vats and

filters, pumps, pipes, and machinery. The process of making sugar is

exceedingly interesting. First, you heave your cane into the

centrifugals and grind out the juice; then run it through the

evaporating pan to extract the fiber; then through the bone-filter to

remove the alcohol; then through the clarifying tanks to discharge the

molasses; then through the granulating pipe to condense it; then through

the vacuum pan to extract the vacuum. It is now ready for market. I

have jotted these particulars down from memory. The thing looks simple

and easy. Do not deceive yourself. To make sugar is really one of the

most difficult things in the world. And to make it right, is next to

impossible. If you will examine your own supply every now and then for a

term of years, and tabulate the result, you will find that not two men

in twenty can make sugar without getting sand into it.

We could have gone down to the mouth of the river and visited Captain

Eads' great work, the 'jetties,' where the river has been compressed

between walls, and thus deepened to twenty-six feet; but it was voted

useless to go, since at this stage of the water everything would be

covered up and invisible.

We could have visited that ancient and singular burg, 'Pilot-town,'

which stands on stilts in the water--so they say; where nearly all

communication is by skiff and canoe, even to the attending of weddings

and funerals; and where the littlest boys and girls are as handy with

the oar as unamphibious children are with the velocipede.

We could have done a number of other things; but on account of limited

time, we went back home. The sail up the breezy and sparkling river was

a charming experience, and would have been satisfyingly sentimental and

romantic but for the interruptions of the tug's pet parrot, whose

tireless comments upon the scenery and the guests were always this-

worldly, and often profane. He had also a superabundance of the

discordant, ear-splitting, metallic laugh common to his breed--a

machine-made laugh, a Frankenstein laugh, with the soul left out of it.

He applied it to every sentimental remark, and to every pathetic song.

He cackled it out with hideous energy after 'Home again, home again from

a foreign shore,' and said he 'wouldn't give a damn for a tug-load of

such rot.' Romance and sentiment cannot long survive this sort of

discouragement; so the singing and talking presently ceased; which so

delighted the parrot that he cursed himself hoarse for joy.

Then the male members of the party moved to the forecastle, to smoke and

gossip. There were several old steamboatmen along, and I learned from

them a great deal of what had been happening to my former river friends

during my long absence. I learned that a pilot whom I used to steer for

is become a spiritualist, and for more than fifteen years has been

receiving a letter every week from a deceased relative, through a New

York spiritualist medium named Manchester--postage graduated by

distance: from the local post-office in Paradise to New York, five

dollars; from New York to St. Louis, three cents. I remember Mr.

Manchester very well. I called on him once, ten years ago, with a couple

of friends, one of whom wished to inquire after a deceased uncle. This

uncle had lost his life in a peculiarly violent and unusual way, half a

dozen years before: a cyclone blew him some three miles and knocked a

tree down with him which was four feet through at the butt and sixty-

five feet high. He did not survive this triumph. At the seance just

referred to, my friend questioned his late uncle, through Mr.

Manchester, and the late uncle wrote down his replies, using Mr.

Manchester's hand and pencil for that purpose. The following is a fair

example of the questions asked, and also of the sloppy twaddle in the

way of answers, furnished by Manchester under the pretense that it came

from the specter. If this man is not the paltriest fraud that lives, I

owe him an apology--

QUESTION. Where are you?

ANSWER. In the spirit world.

Q. Are you happy?

A. Very happy. Perfectly happy.

Q. How do you amuse yourself?

A. Conversation with friends, and other spirits.

Q. What else?

A. Nothing else. Nothing else is necessary.

Q. What do you talk about?

A. About how happy we are; and about friends left behind in the earth,

and how to influence them for their good.

Q. When your friends in the earth all get to the spirit land, what shall

you have to talk about then?--nothing but about how happy you all are?

No reply. It is explained that spirits will not answer frivolous

questions.

Q. How is it that spirits that are content to spend an eternity in

frivolous employments, and accept it as happiness, are so fastidious

about frivolous questions upon the subject?

No reply.

Q. Would you like to come back?

A. No.

Q. Would you say that under oath?

A. Yes.

Q. What do you eat there?

A. We do not eat.

Q. What do you drink?

A. We do not drink.

Q. What do you smoke?

A. We do not smoke.

Q. What do you read?

A. We do not read.

Q. Do all the good people go to your place?

A. Yes.

Q. You know my present way of life. Can you suggest any additions to

it, in the way of crime, that will reasonably insure my going to some

other place.

A. No reply.

Q. When did you die?

A. I did not die, I passed away.

Q. Very well, then, when did you pass away? How long have you been in

the spirit land?

A. We have no measurements of time here.

Q. Though you may be indifferent and uncertain as to dates and times in

your present condition and environment, this has nothing to do with your

former condition. You had dates then. One of these is what I ask for.

You departed on a certain day in a certain year. Is not this true?

A. Yes.

Q. Then name the day of the month.

(Much fumbling with pencil, on the part of the medium, accompanied by

violent spasmodic jerkings of his head and body, for some little time.

Finally, explanation to the effect that spirits often forget dates, such

things being without importance to them.)

Q. Then this one has actually forgotten the date of its translation to

the spirit land?

This was granted to be the case.

Q. This is very curious. Well, then, what year was it?

(More fumbling, jerking, idiotic spasms, on the part of the medium.

Finally, explanation to the effect that the spirit has forgotten the

year.)

Q. This is indeed stupendous. Let me put one more question, one last

question, to you, before we part to meet no more;--for even if I fail to

avoid your asylum, a meeting there will go for nothing as a meeting,

since by that time you will easily have forgotten me and my name: did

you die a natural death, or were you cut off by a catastrophe?

A. (After long hesitation and many throes and spasms.) NATURAL DEATH.

This ended the interview. My friend told the medium that when his

relative was in this poor world, he was endowed with an extraordinary

intellect and an absolutely defectless memory, and it seemed a great

pity that he had not been allowed to keep some shred of these for his

amusement in the realms of everlasting contentment, and for the

amazement and admiration of the rest of the population there.

This man had plenty of clients--has plenty yet. He receives letters

from spirits located in every part of the spirit world, and delivers

them all over this country through the United States mail. These letters

are filled with advice--advice from 'spirits' who don't know as much as

a tadpole--and this advice is religiously followed by the receivers.

One of these clients was a man whom the spirits (if one may thus

plurally describe the ingenious Manchester) were teaching how to

contrive an improved railway car-wheel. It is coarse employment for a

spirit, but it is higher and wholesomer activity than talking for ever

about 'how happy we are.'

Chapter 49 Episodes in Pilot Life

IN the course of the tug-boat gossip, it came out that out of every five

of my former friends who had quitted the river, four had chosen farming

as an occupation. Of course this was not because they were peculiarly

gifted, agriculturally, and thus more likely to succeed as farmers than

in other industries: the reason for their choice must be traced to some

other source. Doubtless they chose farming because that life is private

and secluded from irruptions of undesirable strangers--like the pilot-

house hermitage. And doubtless they also chose it because on a thousand

nights of black storm and danger they had noted the twinkling lights of

solitary farm-houses, as the boat swung by, and pictured to themselves

the serenity and security and coziness of such refuges at such times,

and so had by-and-bye come to dream of that retired and peaceful life as

the one desirable thing to long for, anticipate, earn, and at last

enjoy.

But I did not learn that any of these pilot-farmers had astonished

anybody with their successes. Their farms do not support them: they

support their farms. The pilot-farmer disappears from the river

annually, about the breaking of spring, and is seen no more till next

frost. Then he appears again, in damaged homespun, combs the hayseed out

of his hair, and takes a pilot-house berth for the winter. In this way

he pays the debts which his farming has achieved during the agricultural

season. So his river bondage is but half broken; he is still the

river's slave the hardest half of the year.

One of these men bought a farm, but did not retire to it. He knew a

trick worth two of that. He did not propose to pauperize his farm by

applying his personal ignorance to working it. No, he put the farm into

the hands of an agricultural expert to be worked on shares--out of every

three loads of corn the expert to have two and the pilot the third. But

at the end of the season the pilot received no corn. The expert

explained that his share was not reached. The farm produced only two

loads.

Some of the pilots whom I had known had had adventures--the outcome

fortunate, sometimes, but not in all cases. Captain Montgomery, whom I

had steered for when he was a pilot, commanded the Confederate fleet in

the great battle before Memphis; when his vessel went down, he swam

ashore, fought his way through a squad of soldiers, and made a gallant

and narrow escape. He was always a cool man; nothing could disturb his

serenity. Once when he was captain of the 'Crescent City,' I was

bringing the boat into port at New Orleans, and momently expecting

orders from the hurricane deck, but received none. I had stopped the

wheels, and there my authority and responsibility ceased. It was

evening--dim twilight--the captain's hat was perched upon the big bell,

and I supposed the intellectual end of the captain was in it, but such

was not the case. The captain was very strict; therefore I knew better

than to touch a bell without orders. My duty was to hold the boat

steadily on her calamitous course, and leave the consequences to take

care of themselves--which I did. So we went plowing past the sterns of

steamboats and getting closer and closer--the crash was bound to come

very soon--and still that hat never budged; for alas, the captain was

napping in the texas.... Things were becoming exceedingly nervous and

uncomfortable. It seemed to me that the captain was not going to appear

in time to see the entertainment. But he did. Just as we were walking

into the stern of a steamboat, he stepped out on deck, and said, with

heavenly serenity, 'Set her back on both'--which I did; but a trifle

late, however, for the next moment we went smashing through that other

boat's flimsy outer works with a most prodigious racket. The captain

never said a word to me about the matter afterwards, except to remark

that I had done right, and that he hoped I would not hesitate to act in

the same way again in like circumstances.

One of the pilots whom I had known when I was on the river had died a

very honorable death. His boat caught fire, and he remained at the

wheel until he got her safe to land. Then he went out over the breast-

board with his clothing in flames, and was the last person to get

ashore. He died from his injuries in the course of two or three hours,

and his was the only life lost.

The history of Mississippi piloting affords six or seven instances of

this sort of martyrdom, and half a hundred instances of escapes from a

like fate which came within a second or two of being fatally too late;

BUT THERE IS NO INSTANCE OF A PILOT DESERTING HIS POST TO SAVE HIS LIFE

WHILE BY REMAINING AND SACRIFICING IT HE MIGHT SECURE OTHER LIVES FROM

DESTRUCTION. It is well worth while to set down this noble fact, and

well worth while to put it in italics, too.

The 'cub' pilot is early admonished to despise all perils connected with

a pilot's calling, and to prefer any sort of death to the deep dishonor

of deserting his post while there is any possibility of his being useful

in it. And so effectively are these admonitions inculcated, that even

young and but half-tried pilots can be depended upon to stick to the

wheel, and die there when occasion requires. In a Memphis graveyard is

buried a young fellow who perished at the wheel a great many years ago,

in White River, to save the lives of other men. He said to the captain

that if the fire would give him time to reach a sand bar, some distance

away, all could be saved, but that to land against the bluff bank of the

river would be to insure the loss of many lives. He reached the bar and

grounded the boat in shallow water; but by that time the flames had

closed around him, and in escaping through them he was fatally burned.

He had been urged to fly sooner, but had replied as became a pilot to

reply--

'I will not go. If I go, nobody will be saved; if I stay, no one will

be lost but me. I will stay.'

There were two hundred persons on board, and no life was lost but the

pilot's. There used to be a monument to this young fellow, in that

Memphis graveyard. While we tarried in Memphis on our down trip, I

started out to look for it, but our time was so brief that I was obliged

to turn back before my object was accomplished.

The tug-boat gossip informed me that Dick Kennet was dead--blown up,

near Memphis, and killed; that several others whom I had known had

fallen in the war--one or two of them shot down at the wheel; that

another and very particular friend, whom I had steered many trips for,

had stepped out of his house in New Orleans, one night years ago, to

collect some money in a remote part of the city, and had never been seen

again--was murdered and thrown into the river, it was thought; that Ben

Thornburgh was dead long ago; also his wild 'cub' whom I used to quarrel

with, all through every daylight watch. A heedless, reckless creature

he was, and always in hot water, always in mischief. An Arkansas

passenger brought an enormous bear aboard, one day, and chained him to a

life-boat on the hurricane deck. Thornburgh's 'cub' could not rest till

he had gone there and unchained the bear, to 'see what he would do.' He

was promptly gratified. The bear chased him around and around the deck,

for miles and miles, with two hundred eager faces grinning through the

railings for audience, and finally snatched off the lad's coat-tail and

went into the texas to chew it. The off-watch turned out with alacrity,

and left the bear in sole possession. He presently grew lonesome, and

started out for recreation. He ranged the whole boat--visited every part

of it, with an advance guard of fleeing people in front of him and a

voiceless vacancy behind him; and when his owner captured him at last,

those two were the only visible beings anywhere; everybody else was in

hiding, and the boat was a solitude.

I was told that one of my pilot friends fell dead at the wheel, from

heart disease, in 1869. The captain was on the roof at the time. He saw

the boat breaking for the shore; shouted, and got no answer; ran up, and

found the pilot lying dead on the floor.

Mr. Bixby had been blown up, in Madrid bend; was not injured, but the

other pilot was lost.

George Ritchie had been blown up near Memphis--blown into the river from

the wheel, and disabled. The water was very cold; he clung to a cotton

bale--mainly with his teeth--and floated until nearly exhausted, when he

was rescued by some deck hands who were on a piece of the wreck. They

tore open the bale and packed him in the cotton, and warmed the life

back into him, and got him safe to Memphis. He is one of Bixby's pilots

on the 'Baton Rouge' now.

Into the life of a steamboat clerk, now dead, had dropped a bit of

romance--somewhat grotesque romance, but romance nevertheless. When I

knew him he was a shiftless young spendthrift, boisterous, goodhearted,

full of careless generosities, and pretty conspicuously promising to

fool his possibilities away early, and come to nothing. In a Western

city lived a rich and childless old foreigner and his wife; and in their

family was a comely young girl--sort of friend, sort of servant. The

young clerk of whom I have been speaking--whose name was not George

Johnson, but who shall be called George Johnson for the purposes of this

narrative--got acquainted with this young girl, and they sinned; and the

old foreigner found them out, and rebuked them. Being ashamed, they

lied, and said they were married; that they had been privately married.

Then the old foreigner's hurt was healed, and he forgave and blessed

them. After that, they were able to continue their sin without

concealment. By-and-bye the foreigner's wife died; and presently he

followed after her. Friends of the family assembled to mourn; and among

the mourners sat the two young sinners. The will was opened and

solemnly read. It bequeathed every penny of that old man's great wealth

to MRS. GEORGE JOHNSON!

And there was no such person. The young sinners fled forth then, and

did a very foolish thing: married themselves before an obscure Justice

of the Peace, and got him to antedate the thing. That did no sort of

good. The distant relatives flocked in and exposed the fraudful date

with extreme suddenness and surprising ease, and carried off the

fortune, leaving the Johnsons very legitimately, and legally, and

irrevocably chained together in honorable marriage, but with not so much

as a penny to bless themselves withal. Such are the actual facts; and

not all novels have for a base so telling a situation.

Chapter 50 The 'Original Jacobs'

WE had some talk about Captain Isaiah Sellers, now many years dead. He

was a fine man, a high-minded man, and greatly respected both ashore and

on the river. He was very tall, well built, and handsome; and in his

old age--as I remember him--his hair was as black as an Indian's, and

his eye and hand were as strong and steady and his nerve and judgment as

firm and clear as anybody's, young or old, among the fraternity of

pilots. He was the patriarch of the craft; he had been a keelboat pilot

before the day of steamboats; and a steamboat pilot before any other

steamboat pilot, still surviving at the time I speak of, had ever turned

a wheel. Consequently his brethren held him in the sort of awe in which

illustrious survivors of a bygone age are always held by their

associates. He knew how he was regarded, and perhaps this fact added

some trifle of stiffening to his natural dignity, which had been

sufficiently stiff in its original state.

He left a diary behind him; but apparently it did not date back to his

first steamboat trip, which was said to be 1811, the year the first

steamboat disturbed the waters of the Mississippi. At the time of his

death a correspondent of the 'St. Louis Republican' culled the following

items from the diary--

'In February, 1825, he shipped on board the steamer "Rambler," at

Florence, Ala., and made during that year three trips to New Orleans and

back--this on the "Gen. Carrol," between Nashville and New Orleans. It

was during his stay on this boat that Captain Sellers introduced the tap

of the bell as a signal to heave the lead, previous to which time it was

the custom for the pilot to speak to the men below when soundings were

wanted. The proximity of the forecastle to the pilot-house, no doubt,

rendered this an easy matter; but how different on one of our palaces of

the present day.

'In 1827 we find him on board the "President," a boat of two hundred and

eighty-five tons burden, and plying between Smithland and New Orleans.

Thence he joined the "Jubilee" in 1828, and on this boat he did his

first piloting in the St. Louis trade; his first watch extending from

Herculaneum to St. Genevieve. On May 26, 1836, he completed and left

Pittsburgh in charge of the steamer "Prairie," a boat of four hundred

tons, and the first steamer with a STATE-ROOM CABIN ever seen at St.

Louis. In 1857 he introduced the signal for meeting boats, and which

has, with some slight change, been the universal custom of this day; in

fact, is rendered obligatory by act of Congress.

'As general items of river history, we quote the following marginal

notes from his general log--

'In March, 1825, Gen. Lafayette left New Orleans for St. Louis on the

low-pressure steamer "Natchez."

'In January, 1828, twenty-one steamers left the New Orleans wharf to

celebrate the occasion of Gen. Jackson's visit to that city.

'In 1830 the "North American" made the run from New Orleans to Memphis

in six days--best time on record to that date. It has since been made in

two days and ten hours.

'In 1831 the Red River cut-off formed.

'In 1832 steamer "Hudson" made the run from White River to Helena, a

distance of seventy-five miles, in twelve hours. This was the source of

much talk and speculation among parties directly interested.

'In 1839 Great Horseshoe cut-off formed.

'Up to the present time, a term of thirty-five years, we ascertain, by

reference to the diary, he has made four hundred and sixty round trips

to New Orleans, which gives a distance of one million one hundred and

four thousand miles, or an average of eighty-six miles a day.'

Whenever Captain Sellers approached a body of gossiping pilots, a chill

fell there, and talking ceased. For this reason: whenever six pilots

were gathered together, there would always be one or two newly fledged

ones in the lot, and the elder ones would be always 'showing off' before

these poor fellows; making them sorrowfully feel how callow they were,

how recent their nobility, and how humble their degree, by talking

largely and vaporously of old-time experiences on the river; always

making it a point to date everything back as far as they could, so as to

make the new men feel their newness to the sharpest degree possible, and

envy the old stagers in the like degree. And how these complacent

baldheads WOULD swell, and brag, and lie, and date back--ten, fifteen,

twenty years,--and how they did enjoy the effect produced upon the

marveling and envying youngsters!

And perhaps just at this happy stage of the proceedings, the stately

figure of Captain Isaiah Sellers, that real and only genuine Son of

Antiquity, would drift solemnly into the midst. Imagine the size of the

silence that would result on the instant. And imagine the feelings of

those bald-heads, and the exultation of their recent audience when the

ancient captain would begin to drop casual and indifferent remarks of a

reminiscent nature--about islands that had disappeared, and cutoffs that

had been made, a generation before the oldest bald-head in the company

had ever set his foot in a pilot-house!

Many and many a time did this ancient mariner appear on the scene in the

above fashion, and spread disaster and humiliation around him. If one

might believe the pilots, he always dated his islands back to the misty

dawn of river history; and he never used the same island twice; and

never did he employ an island that still existed, or give one a name

which anybody present was old enough to have heard of before. If you

might believe the pilots, he was always conscientiously particular about

little details; never spoke of 'the State of Mississippi,' for instance

--no, he would say, 'When the State of Mississippi was where Arkansas now

is,' and would never speak of Louisiana or Missouri in a general way,

and leave an incorrect impression on your mind--no, he would say, 'When

Louisiana was up the river farther,' or 'When Missouri was on the

Illinois side.'

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 'MARK TWAIN,' 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 'Mark Twain' paragraphs with unsparing mockery.

It so chanced that one of these paragraphs--{footnote [The original MS.

of it, in the captain's own hand, has been sent to me from New Orleans.

It reads as follows--

VICKSBURG May 4, 1859.

'My opinion for the benefit of the citizens of New Orleans: The water is

higher this far up than it has been since 8. My opinion is that the

water will be feet deep in Canal street before the first of next June.

Mrs. Turner's plantation at the head of Big Black Island is all under

water, and it has not been since 1815.

'I. Sellers.']}

became the text for my first newspaper article. I burlesqued it

broadly, very broadly, stringing my fantastics out to the extent of

eight hundred or a thousand words. I was a 'cub' at the time. I showed

my performance to some pilots, and they eagerly rushed it into print in

the 'New Orleans True Delta.' It was a great pity; for it did nobody

any worthy service, and it sent a pang deep into a good man's heart.

There was no malice in my rubbish; but it laughed at the captain. It

laughed at a man to whom such a thing was new and strange and dreadful.

I did not know then, though I do now, that there is no suffering

comparable with that which a private person feels when he is for the

first time pilloried in print.

Captain Sellers did me the honor to profoundly detest me from that day

forth. When I say he did me the honor, I am not using empty words. It

was a very real honor to be in the thoughts of so great a man as Captain

Sellers, and I had wit enough to appreciate it and be proud of it. It

was distinction to be loved by such a man; but it was a much greater

distinction to be hated by him, because he loved scores of people; but

he didn't sit up nights to hate anybody but me.

He never printed another paragraph while he lived, and he never again

signed 'Mark Twain' to anything. At the time that the telegraph brought

the news of his death, I was on the Pacific coast. I was a fresh new

journalist, and needed a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the ancient

mariner's discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it

was in his hands--a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found

in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how I

have succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say.

The captain had an honorable pride in his profession and an abiding love

for it. He ordered his monument before he died, and kept it near him

until he did die. It stands over his grave now, in Bellefontaine

cemetery, St. Louis. It is his image, in marble, standing on duty at the

pilot wheel; and worthy to stand and confront criticism, for it

represents a man who in life would have stayed there till he burned to a

cinder, if duty required it.

The finest thing we saw on our whole Mississippi trip, we saw as we

approached New Orleans in the steam-tug. This was the curving frontage

of the crescent city lit up with the white glare of five miles of

electric lights. It was a wonderful sight, and very beautiful.

Chapter 51 Reminiscences

WE left for St. Louis in the 'City of Baton Rouge,' on a delightfully

hot day, but with the main purpose of my visit but lamely accomplished.

I had hoped to hunt up and talk with a hundred steamboatmen, but got so

pleasantly involved in the social life of the town that I got nothing

more than mere five-minute talks with a couple of dozen of the craft.

I was on the bench of the pilot-house when we backed out and

'straightened up' for the start--the boat pausing for a 'good ready,' in

the old-fashioned way, and the black smoke piling out of the chimneys

equally in the old-fashioned way. Then we began to gather momentum, and

presently were fairly under way and booming along. It was all as natural

and familiar--and so were the shoreward sights--as if there had been no

break in my river life. There was a 'cub,' and I judged that he would

take the wheel now; and he did. Captain Bixby stepped into the pilot-

house. Presently the cub closed up on the rank of steamships. He made

me nervous, for he allowed too much water to show between our boat and

the ships. I knew quite well what was going to happen, because I could

date back in my own life and inspect the record. The captain looked on,

during a silent half-minute, then took the wheel himself, and crowded

the boat in, till she went scraping along within a hand-breadth of the

ships. It was exactly the favor which he had done me, about a quarter

of a century before, in that same spot, the first time I ever steamed

out of the port of New Orleans. It was a very great and sincere pleasure

to me to see the thing repeated--with somebody else as victim.

We made Natchez (three hundred miles) in twenty-two hours and a half--

much the swiftest passage I have ever made over that piece of water.

The next morning I came on with the four o'clock watch, and saw Ritchie

successfully run half a dozen crossings in a fog, using for his guidance

the marked chart devised and patented by Bixby and himself. This

sufficiently evidenced the great value of the chart.

By and by, when the fog began to clear off, I noticed that the

reflection of a tree in the smooth water of an overflowed bank, six

hundred yards away, was stronger and blacker than the ghostly tree

itself. The faint spectral trees, dimly glimpsed through the shredding

fog, were very pretty things to see.

We had a heavy thunder-storm at Natchez, another at Vicksburg, and still

another about fifty miles below Memphis. They had an old-fashioned

energy which had long been unfamiliar to me. This third storm was

accompanied by a raging wind. We tied up to the bank when we saw the

tempest coming, and everybody left the pilot-house but me. The wind bent

the young trees down, exposing the pale underside of the leaves; and

gust after gust followed, in quick succession, thrashing the branches

violently up and down, and to this side and that, and creating swift

waves of alternating green and white according to the side of the leaf

that was exposed, and these waves raced after each other as do their

kind over a wind-tossed field of oats. No color that was visible

anywhere was quite natural--all tints were charged with a leaden tinge

from the solid cloud-bank overhead. The river was leaden; all distances

the same; and even the far-reaching ranks of combing white-caps were

dully shaded by the dark, rich atmosphere through which their swarming

legions marched. The thunder-peals were constant and deafening;

explosion followed explosion with but inconsequential intervals between,

and the reports grew steadily sharper and higher-keyed, and more trying

to the ear; the lightning was as diligent as the thunder, and produced

effects which enchanted the eye and sent electric ecstasies of mixed

delight and apprehension shivering along every nerve in the body in

unintermittent procession. The rain poured down in amazing volume; the

ear-splitting thunder-peals broke nearer and nearer; the wind increased

in fury and began to wrench off boughs and tree-tops and send them

sailing away through space; the pilot-house fell to rocking and

straining and cracking and surging, and I went down in the hold to see

what time it was.

People boast a good deal about Alpine thunderstorms; but the storms

which I have had the luck to see in the Alps were not the equals of some

which I have seen in the Mississippi Valley. I may not have seen the

Alps do their best, of course, and if they can beat the Mississippi, I

don't wish to.

On this up trip I saw a little towhead (infant island) half a mile long,

which had been formed during the past nineteen years. Since there was so

much time to spare that nineteen years of it could be devoted to the

construction of a mere towhead, where was the use, originally, in

rushing this whole globe through in six days? It is likely that if more

time had been taken, in the first place, the world would have been made

right, and this ceaseless improving and repairing would not be necessary

now. But if you hurry a world or a house, you are nearly sure to find

out by and by that you have left out a towhead, or a broom-closet, or

some other little convenience, here and there, which has got to be

supplied, no matter how much expense and vexation it may cost.

We had a succession of black nights, going up the river, and it was

observable that whenever we landed, and suddenly inundated the trees

with the intense sunburst of the electric light, a certain curious

effect was always produced: hundreds of birds flocked instantly out from

the masses of shining green foliage, and went careering hither and

thither through the white rays, and often a song-bird tuned up and fell

to singing. We judged that they mistook this superb artificial day for

the genuine article. We had a delightful trip in that thoroughly well-

ordered steamer, and regretted that it was accomplished so speedily. By

means of diligence and activity, we managed to hunt out nearly all the

old friends. One was missing, however; he went to his reward, whatever

it was, two years ago. But I found out all about him. His case helped

me to realize how lasting can be the effect of a very trifling

occurrence. When he was an apprentice-blacksmith in our village, and I a

schoolboy, a couple of young Englishmen came to the town and sojourned a

while; and one day they got themselves up in cheap royal finery and did

the Richard III swordfight with maniac energy and prodigious powwow, in

the presence of the village boys. This blacksmith cub was there, and

the histrionic poison entered his bones. This vast, lumbering,

ignorant, dull-witted lout was stage-struck, and irrecoverably. He

disappeared, and presently turned up in St. Louis. I ran across him

there, by and by. He was standing musing on a street corner, with his

left hand on his hip, the thumb of his right supporting his chin, face

bowed and frowning, slouch hat pulled down over his forehead--imagining

himself to be Othello or some such character, and imagining that the

passing crowd marked his tragic bearing and were awestruck.

I joined him, and tried to get him down out of the clouds, but did not

succeed. However, he casually informed me, presently, that he was a

member of the Walnut Street theater company--and he tried to say it with

indifference, but the indifference was thin, and a mighty exultation

showed through it. He said he was cast for a part in Julius Caesar, for

that night, and if I should come I would see him. IF I should come! I

said I wouldn't miss it if I were dead.

I went away stupefied with astonishment, and saying to myself, 'How

strange it is! WE always thought this fellow a fool; yet the moment he

comes to a great city, where intelligence and appreciation abound, the

talent concealed in this shabby napkin is at once discovered, and

promptly welcomed and honored.'

But I came away from the theater that night disappointed and offended;

for I had had no glimpse of my hero, and his name was not in the bills.

I met him on the street the next morning, and before I could speak, he

asked--

'Did you see me?'

'No, you weren't there.'

He looked surprised and disappointed. He said--

'Yes, I was. Indeed I was. I was a Roman soldier.'

'Which one?'

'Why didn't you see them Roman soldiers that stood back there in a rank,

and sometimes marched in procession around the stage?'

'Do you mean the Roman army?--those six sandaled roustabouts in

nightshirts, with tin shields and helmets, that marched around treading

on each other's heels, in charge of a spider-legged consumptive dressed

like themselves?'

'That's it! that's it! I was one of them Roman soldiers. I was the next

to the last one. A half a year ago I used to always be the last one;

but I've been promoted.'

Well, they told me that that poor fellow remained a Roman soldier to the

last--a matter of thirty-four years. Sometimes they cast him for a

'speaking part,' but not an elaborate one. He could be trusted to go

and say, 'My lord, the carriage waits,' but if they ventured to add a

sentence or two to this, his memory felt the strain and he was likely to

miss fire. Yet, poor devil, he had been patiently studying the part of

Hamlet for more than thirty years, and he lived and died in the belief

that some day he would be invited to play it!

And this is what came of that fleeting visit of those young Englishmen

to our village such ages and ages ago! What noble horseshoes this man

might have made, but for those Englishmen; and what an inadequate Roman

soldier he DID make!

A day or two after we reached St. Louis, I was walking along Fourth

Street when a grizzly-headed man gave a sort of start as he passed me,

then stopped, came back, inspected me narrowly, with a clouding brow,

and finally said with deep asperity--

'Look here, HAVE YOU GOT THAT DRINK YET?'

A maniac, I judged, at first. But all in a flash I recognized him. I

made an effort to blush that strained every muscle in me, and answered

as sweetly and winningly as ever I knew how--

'Been a little slow, but am just this minute closing in on the place

where they keep it. Come in and help.'

He softened, and said make it a bottle of champagne and he was

agreeable. He said he had seen my name in the papers, and had put all

his affairs aside and turned out, resolved to find me or die; and make

me answer that question satisfactorily, or kill me; though the most of

his late asperity had been rather counterfeit than otherwise.

This meeting brought back to me the St. Louis riots of about thirty

years ago. I spent a week there, at that time, in a boarding-house, and

had this young fellow for a neighbor across the hall. We saw some of

the fightings and killings; and by and by we went one night to an armory

where two hundred young men had met, upon call, to be armed and go forth

against the rioters, under command of a military man. We drilled till

about ten o'clock at night; then news came that the mob were in great

force in the lower end of the town, and were sweeping everything before

them. Our column moved at once. It was a very hot night, and my musket

was very heavy. We marched and marched; and the nearer we approached the

seat of war, the hotter I grew and the thirstier I got. I was behind my

friend; so, finally, I asked him to hold my musket while I dropped out

and got a drink. Then I branched off and went home. I was not feeling

any solicitude about him of course, because I knew he was so well armed,

now, that he could take care of himself without any trouble. If I had

had any doubts about that, I would have borrowed another musket for him.

I left the city pretty early the next morning, and if this grizzled man

had not happened to encounter my name in the papers the other day in St.

Louis, and felt moved to seek me out, I should have carried to my grave

a heart-torturing uncertainty as to whether he ever got out of the riots

all right or not. I ought to have inquired, thirty years ago; I know

that. And I would have inquired, if I had had the muskets; but, in the

circumstances, he seemed better fixed to conduct the investigations than

I was.

One Monday, near the time of our visit to St. Louis, the 'Globe-

Democrat' came out with a couple of pages of Sunday statistics, whereby

it appeared that 119,448 St. Louis people attended the morning and

evening church services the day before, and 23,102 children attended

Sunday-school. Thus 142,550 persons, out of the city's total of 400,000

population, respected the day religious-wise. I found these statistics,

in a condensed form, in a telegram of the Associated Press, and

preserved them. They made it apparent that St. Louis was in a higher

state of grace than she could have claimed to be in my time. But now

that I canvass the figures narrowly, I suspect that the telegraph

mutilated them. It cannot be that there are more than 150,000 Catholics

in the town; the other 250,000 must be classified as Protestants. Out

of these 250,000, according to this questionable telegram, only 26,362

attended church and Sunday-school, while out of the 150,000 Catholics,

116,188 went to church and Sunday-school.

Chapter 52 A Burning Brand

ALL at once the thought came into my mind, 'I have not sought out Mr.

Brown.'

Upon that text I desire to depart from the direct line of my subject,

and make a little excursion. I wish to reveal a secret which I have

carried with me nine years, and which has become burdensome.

Upon a certain occasion, nine years ago, I had said, with strong

feeling, 'If ever I see St. Louis again, I will seek out Mr. Brown, the

great grain merchant, and ask of him the privilege of shaking him by the

hand.'

The occasion and the circumstances were as follows. A friend of mine, a

clergyman, came one evening and said--

'I have a most remarkable letter here, which I want to read to you,

if I can do it without breaking down. I must preface it with some

explanations, however. The letter is written by an ex-thief and

ex-vagabond of the lowest origin and basest rearing, a man all stained with

crime and steeped in ignorance; but, thank God, with a mine of pure gold

hidden away in him, as you shall see. His letter is written to a burglar

named Williams, who is serving a nine-year term in a certain State

prison, for burglary. Williams was a particularly daring burglar, and

plied that trade during a number of years; but he was caught at last and

jailed, to await trial in a town where he had broken into a house at

night, pistol in hand, and forced the owner to hand over to him $8,000

in government bonds. Williams was not a common sort of person, by any

means; he was a graduate of Harvard College, and came of good New

England stock. His father was a clergyman. While lying in jail, his

health began to fail, and he was threatened with consumption. This fact,

together with the opportunity for reflection afforded by solitary

confinement, had its effect--its natural effect. He fell into serious

thought; his early training asserted itself with power, and wrought with

strong influence upon his mind and heart. He put his old life behind

him, and became an earnest Christian. Some ladies in the town heard of

this, visited him, and by their encouraging words supported him in his

good resolutions and strengthened him to continue in his new life. The

trial ended in his conviction and sentence to the State prison for the

term of nine years, as I have before said. In the prison he became

acquainted with the poor wretch referred to in the beginning of my talk,

Jack Hunt, the writer of the letter which I am going to read. You will

see that the acquaintanceship bore fruit for Hunt. When Hunt's time was

out, he wandered to St. Louis; and from that place he wrote his letter

to Williams. The letter got no further than the office of the prison

warden, of course; prisoners are not often allowed to receive letters

from outside. The prison authorities read this letter, but did not

destroy it. They had not the heart to do it. They read it to several

persons, and eventually it fell into the hands of those ladies of whom I

spoke a while ago. The other day I came across an old friend of mine--a

clergyman--who had seen this letter, and was full of it. The mere

remembrance of it so moved him that he could not talk of it without his

voice breaking. He promised to get a copy of it for me; and here it is

--an exact copy, with all the imperfections of the original preserved. It

has many slang expressions in it--thieves' argot--but their meaning has

been interlined, in parentheses, by the prison authorities'--

St. Louis, June 9th 1872.

Mr. W---- friend Charlie if i may call you so: i no you are surprised

to get a letter from me, but i hope you won't be mad at my writing to

you. i want to tell you my thanks for the way you talked to me when i

was in prison--it has led me to try and be a better man; i guess you

thought i did not cair for what you said, & at the first go off I

didn't, but i noed you was a man who had don big work with good men &

want no sucker, nor want gasing & all the boys knod it.

I used to think at nite what you said, & for it i nocked off swearing

months before my time was up, for i saw it want no good, nohow--the day

my time was up you told me if i would shake the cross (QUIT STEALING) &

live on the square for months, it would be the best job i ever done in

my life. The state agent give me a ticket to here, & on the car i

thought more of what you said to me, but didn't make up my mind. When

we got to Chicago on the cars from there to here, I pulled off an old

woman's leather; (ROBBED HER OF HER POCKETBOOK) i hadn't no more than

got it off when i wished i hadn't done it, for awhile before that i made

up my mind to be a square bloke, for months on your word, but forgot it

when i saw the leather was a grip (EASY TO GET)--but i kept clos to her

& when she got out of the cars at a way place i said, marm have you lost

anything. & she tumbled (DISCOVERED) her leather was off (GONE)--is this

it says i, giving it to her--well if you aint honest, says she, but i

hadn't got cheak enough to stand that sort of talk, so i left her in a

hurry. When i got here i had $1 and 25 cents left & i didn't get no work

for 3 days as i aint strong enough for roust about on a steam bote (FOR

A DECK HAND)--The afternoon of the 3rd day I spent my last 10 cts for

moons (LARGE, ROUND SEA-BISCUIT) & cheese & i felt pretty rough & was

thinking i would have to go on the dipe (PICKING POCKETS) again, when i

thought of what you once said about a fellows calling on the Lord when

he was in hard luck, & i thought i would try it once anyhow, but when i

tryed it i got stuck on the start, & all i could get off wos, Lord give

a poor fellow a chance to square it for 3 months for Christ's sake,

amen; & i kept a thinking, of it over and over as i went along--about an

hour after that i was in 4th St. & this is what happened & is the cause

of my being where i am now & about which i will tell you before i get

done writing. As i was walking along herd a big noise & saw a horse

running away with a carriage with 2 children in it, & I grabed up a

peace of box cover from the side walk & run in the middle of the street,

& when the horse came up i smashed him over the head as hard as i could

drive--the bord split to peces & the horse checked up a little & I

grabbed the reigns & pulled his head down until he stopped--the

gentleman what owned him came running up & soon as he saw the children

were all rite, he shook hands with me and gave me a $50 green back, & my

asking the Lord to help me come into my head, & i was so thunderstruck i

couldn't drop the reigns nor say nothing--he saw something was up, &

coming back to me said, my boy are you hurt? & the thought come into my

head just then to ask him for work; & i asked him to take back the bill

and give me a job--says he, jump in here & lets talk about it, but keep

the money--he asked me if i could take care of horses & i said yes, for

i used to hang round livery stables & often would help clean & drive

horses, he told me he wanted a man for that work, & would give me $16 a

month & bord me. You bet i took that chance at once. that nite in my

little room over the stable i sat a long time thinking over my past life

& of what had just happened & i just got down on my nees & thanked the

Lord for the job & to help me to square it, & to bless you for putting

me up to it, & the next morning i done it again & got me some new togs

(CLOTHES) & a bible for i made up my mind after what the Lord had done

for me i would read the bible every nite and morning, & ask him to keep

an eye on me. When I had been there about a week Mr. Brown (that's his

name) came in my room one nite and saw me reading the bible--he asked me

if i was a Christian & i told him no--he asked me how it was i read the

bible instead of papers & books--Well Charlie i thought i had better

give him a square deal in the start, so i told him all about my being in

prison & about you, & how i had almost done give up looking for work &

how the Lord got me the job when I asked him; & the only way i had to

pay him back was to read the bible & square it, & i asked him to give me

a chance for 3 months--he talked to me like a father for a long time, &

told me i could stay & then i felt better than ever i had done in my

life, for i had given Mr. Brown a fair start with me & now i didn't fear

no one giving me a back cap (EXPOSING HIS PAST LIFE) & running me off

the job--the next morning he called me into the library & gave me

another square talk, & advised me to study some every day, & he would

help me one or 2 hours every nite, & he gave me a Arithmetic, a spelling

book, a Geography & a writing book, & he hers me every nite--he lets me

come into the house to prayers every morning, & got me put in a bible

class in the Sunday School which i likes very much for it helps me to

understand my bible better.

Now, Charlie the 3 months on the square are up 2 months ago, & as you

said, it is the best job i ever did in my life, & i commenced another of

the same sort right away, only it is to God helping me to last a

lifetime Charlie--i wrote this letter to tell you I do think God has

forgiven my sins & herd your prayers, for you told me you should pray

for me--i no i love to read his word & tell him all my troubles & he

helps me i know for i have plenty of chances to steal but i don't feel

to as i once did & now i take more pleasure in going to church than to

the theater & that wasnt so once--our minister and others often talk

with me & a month ago they wanted me to join the church, but I said no,

not now, i may be mistaken in my feelings, i will wait awhile, but now i

feel that God has called me & on the first Sunday in July i will join

the church--dear friend i wish i could write to you as i feel, but i

cant do it yet--you no i learned to read and write while prisons & i

aint got well enough along to write as i would talk; i no i aint spelled

all the words rite in this & lots of other mistakes but you will excuse

it i no, for you no i was brought up in a poor house until i run away, &

that i never new who my father and mother was & i dont no my right name,

& i hope you wont be mad at me, but i have as much rite to one name as

another & i have taken your name, for you wont use it when you get out i

no, & you are the man i think most of in the world; so i hope you wont

be mad--I am doing well, i put $10 a month in bank with $25 of the $50--

if you ever want any or all of it let me know, & it is yours. i wish you

would let me send you some now. I send you with this a receipt for a

year of Littles Living Age, i didn't know what you would like & i told

Mr. Brown & he said he thought you would like it--i wish i was nere you

so i could send you chuck (REFRESHMENTS) on holidays; it would spoil

this weather from here, but i will send you a box next thanksgiving any

way--next week Mr. Brown takes me into his store as lite porter & will

advance me as soon as i know a little more--he keeps a big granary

store, wholesale--i forgot to tell you of my mission school, sunday

school class--the school is in the sunday afternoon, i went out two

sunday afternoons, and picked up seven kids (LITTLE BOYS) & got them to

come in. two of them new as much as i did & i had them put in a class

where they could learn something. i dont no much myself, but as these

kids cant read i get on nicely with them. i make sure of them by going

after them every Sunday hour before school time, I also got 4 girls to

come. tell Mack and Harry about me, if they will come out here when

their time is up i will get them jobs at once. i hope you will excuse

this long letter & all mistakes, i wish i could see you for i cant write

as i would talk--i hope the warm weather is doing your lungs good--i was

afraid when you was bleeding you would die--give my respects to all the

boys and tell them how i am doing--i am doing well and every one here

treats me as kind as they can--Mr. Brown is going to write to you

sometime--i hope some day you will write to me, this letter is from your

very true friend

C---- W----

who you know as Jack Hunt.

I send you Mr. Brown's card. Send my letter to him.

Here was true eloquence; irresistible eloquence; and without a single

grace or ornament to help it out. I have seldom been so deeply stirred

by any piece of writing. The reader of it halted, all the way through,

on a lame and broken voice; yet he had tried to fortify his feelings by

several private readings of the letter before venturing into company

with it. He was practising upon me to see if there was any hope of his

being able to read the document to his prayer-meeting with anything like

a decent command over his feelings. The result was not promising.

However, he determined to risk it; and did. He got through tolerably

well; but his audience broke down early, and stayed in that condition to

the end.

The fame of the letter spread through the town. A brother minister came

and borrowed the manuscript, put it bodily into a sermon, preached the

sermon to twelve hundred people on a Sunday morning, and the letter

drowned them in their own tears. Then my friend put it into a sermon and

went before his Sunday morning congregation with it. It scored another

triumph. The house wept as one individual.

My friend went on summer vacation up into the fishing regions of our

northern British neighbors, and carried this sermon with him, since he

might possibly chance to need a sermon. He was asked to preach, one day.

The little church was full. Among the people present were the late Dr.

J. G. Holland, the late Mr. Seymour of the 'New York Times,' Mr. Page,

the philanthropist and temperance advocate, and, I think, Senator Frye,

of Maine. The marvelous letter did its wonted work; all the people were

moved, all the people wept; the tears flowed in a steady stream down Dr.

Holland's cheeks, and nearly the same can be said with regard to all who

were there. Mr. Page was so full of enthusiasm over the letter that he

said he would not rest until he made pilgrimage to that prison, and had

speech with the man who had been able to inspire a fellow-unfortunate to

write so priceless a tract.

Ah, that unlucky Page!--and another man. If they had only been in

Jericho, that letter would have rung through the world and stirred all

the hearts of all the nations for a thousand years to come, and nobody

might ever have found out that it was the confoundedest, brazenest,

ingeniousest piece of fraud and humbuggery that was ever concocted to

fool poor confiding mortals with!

The letter was a pure swindle, and that is the truth. And take it by and

large, it was without a compeer among swindles. It was perfect, it was

rounded, symmetrical, complete, colossal!

The reader learns it at this point; but we didn't learn it till some

miles and weeks beyond this stage of the affair. My friend came back

from the woods, and he and other clergymen and lay missionaries began

once more to inundate audiences with their tears and the tears of said

audiences; I begged hard for permission to print the letter in a

magazine and tell the watery story of its triumphs; numbers of people

got copies of the letter, with permission to circulate them in writing,

but not in print; copies were sent to the Sandwich Islands and other far

regions.

Charles Dudley Warner was at church, one day, when the worn letter was

read and wept over. At the church door, afterward, he dropped a

peculiarly cold iceberg down the clergyman's back with the question--

'Do you know that letter to be genuine?'

It was the first suspicion that had ever been voiced; but it had that

sickening effect which first-uttered suspicions against one's idol

always have. Some talk followed--

'Why--what should make you suspect that it isn't genuine?'

'Nothing that I know of, except that it is too neat, and compact, and

fluent, and nicely put together for an ignorant person, an unpractised

hand. I think it was done by an educated man.'

The literary artist had detected the literary machinery. If you will

look at the letter now, you will detect it yourself--it is observable in

every line.

Straightway the clergyman went off, with this seed of suspicion

sprouting in him, and wrote to a minister residing in that town where

Williams had been jailed and converted; asked for light; and also asked

if a person in the literary line (meaning me) might be allowed to print

the letter and tell its history. He presently received this answer--

Rev. ---- ----

MY DEAR FRIEND,--In regard to that 'convict's letter' there can be no

doubt as to its genuineness. 'Williams,' to whom it was written, lay in

our jail and professed to have been converted, and Rev. Mr. ----, the

chaplain, had great faith in the genuineness of the change--as much as

one can have in any such case.

The letter was sent to one of our ladies, who is a Sunday-school

teacher,--sent either by Williams himself, or the chaplain of the

State's prison, probably. She has been greatly annoyed in having so

much publicity, lest it might seem a breach of confidence, or be an

injury to Williams. In regard to its publication, I can give no

permission; though if the names and places were omitted, and especially

if sent out of the country, I think you might take the responsibility

and do it.

It is a wonderful letter, which no Christian genius, much less one

unsanctified, could ever have written. As showing the work of grace in

a human heart, and in a very degraded and wicked one, it proves its own

origin and reproves our weak faith in its power to cope with any form of

wickedness.

'Mr. Brown' of St. Louis, some one said, was a Hartford man. Do all whom

you send from Hartford serve their Master as well?

P.S.--Williams is still in the State's prison, serving out a long

sentence--of nine years, I think. He has been sick and threatened with

consumption, but I have not inquired after him lately. This lady that I

speak of corresponds with him, I presume, and will be quite sure to look

after him.

This letter arrived a few days after it was written--and up went Mr.

Williams's stock again. Mr. Warner's low-down suspicion was laid in the

cold, cold grave, where it apparently belonged. It was a suspicion based

upon mere internal evidence, anyway; and when you come to internal

evidence, it's a big field and a game that two can play at: as witness

this other internal evidence, discovered by the writer of the note above

quoted, that 'it is a wonderful letter--which no Christian genius, much

less one unsanctified, could ever have written.'

I had permission now to print--provided I suppressed names and places

and sent my narrative out of the country. So I chose an Australian

magazine for vehicle, as being far enough out of the country, and set

myself to work on my article. And the ministers set the pumps going

again, with the letter to work the handles.

But meantime Brother Page had been agitating. He had not visited the

penitentiary, but he had sent a copy of the illustrious letter to the

chaplain of that institution, and accompanied it with--apparently

inquiries. He got an answer, dated four days later than that other

Brother's reassuring epistle; and before my article was complete, it

wandered into my hands. The original is before me, now, and I here

append it. It is pretty well loaded with internal evidence of the most

solid description--

STATE'S PRISON, CHAPLAIN'S OFFICE, July 11, 1873.

DEAR BRO. PAGE,--Herewith please find the letter kindly loaned me. I am

afraid its genuineness cannot be established. It purports to be

addressed to some prisoner here. No such letter ever came to a prisoner

here. All letters received are carefully read by officers of the prison

before they go into the hands of the convicts, and any such letter could

not be forgotten. Again, Charles Williams is not a Christian man, but a

dissolute, cunning prodigal, whose father is a minister of the gospel.

His name is an assumed one. I am glad to have made your acquaintance. I

am preparing a lecture upon life seen through prison bars, and should

like to deliver the same in your vicinity.

And so ended that little drama. My poor article went into the fire; for

whereas the materials for it were now more abundant and infinitely

richer than they had previously been, there were parties all around me,

who, although longing for the publication before, were a unit for

suppression at this stage and complexion of the game. They said: 'Wait

--the wound is too fresh, yet.' All the copies of the famous letter

except mine disappeared suddenly; and from that time onward, the

aforetime same old drought set in in the churches. As a rule, the town

was on a spacious grin for a while, but there were places in it where

the grin did not appear, and where it was dangerous to refer to the

ex-convict's letter.

A word of explanation. 'Jack Hunt,' the professed writer of the letter,

was an imaginary person. The burglar Williams--Harvard graduate, son of

a minister--wrote the letter himself, to himself: got it smuggled out

of the prison; got it conveyed to persons who had supported and

encouraged him in his conversion--where he knew two things would happen:

the genuineness of the letter would not be doubted or inquired into; and

the nub of it would be noticed, and would have valuable effect--the

effect, indeed, of starting a movement to get Mr. Williams pardoned out

of prison.

That 'nub' is so ingeniously, so casually, flung in, and immediately

left there in the tail of the letter, undwelt upon, that an indifferent

reader would never suspect that it was the heart and core of the

epistle, if he even took note of it at all, This is the 'nub'--

'i hope the warm weather is doing your lungs good--I WAS AFRAID WHEN YOU

WAS BLEEDING YOU WOULD DIE--give my respects,' etc.

That is all there is of it--simply touch and go--no dwelling upon it.

Nevertheless it was intended for an eye that would be swift to see it;

and it was meant to move a kind heart to try to effect the liberation of

a poor reformed and purified fellow lying in the fell grip of

consumption.

When I for the first time heard that letter read, nine years ago, I felt

that it was the most remarkable one I had ever encountered. And it so

warmed me toward Mr. Brown of St. Louis that I said that if ever I

visited that city again, I would seek out that excellent man and kiss

the hem of his garment if it was a new one. Well, I visited St. Louis,

but I did not hunt for Mr. Brown; for, alas! the investigations of long

ago had proved that the benevolent Brown, like 'Jack Hunt,' was not a

real person, but a sheer invention of that gifted rascal, Williams--

burglar, Harvard graduate, son of a clergyman.

Chapter 53 My Boyhood's Home

WE took passage in one of the fast boats of the St. Louis and St. Paul

Packet Company, and started up the river.

When I, as a boy, first saw the mouth of the Missouri River, it was

twenty-two or twenty-three miles above St. Louis, according to the

estimate of pilots; the wear and tear of the banks have moved it down

eight miles since then; and the pilots say that within five years the

river will cut through and move the mouth down five miles more, which

will bring it within ten miles of St. Louis.

About nightfall we passed the large and flourishing town of Alton,

Illinois; and before daylight next morning the town of Louisiana,

Missouri, a sleepy village in my day, but a brisk railway center now;

however, all the towns out there are railway centers now. I could not

clearly recognize the place. This seemed odd to me, for when I retired

from the rebel army in '61 I retired upon Louisiana in good order; at

least in good enough order for a person who had not yet learned how to

retreat according to the rules of war, and had to trust to native

genius. It seemed to me that for a first attempt at a retreat it was not

badly done. I had done no advancing in all that campaign that was at

all equal to it.

There was a railway bridge across the river here well sprinkled with

glowing lights, and a very beautiful sight it was.

At seven in the morning we reached Hannibal, Missouri, where my boyhood

was spent. I had had a glimpse of it fifteen years ago, and another

glimpse six years earlier, but both were so brief that they hardly

counted. The only notion of the town that remained in my mind was the

memory of it as I had known it when I first quitted it twenty-nine years

ago. That picture of it was still as clear and vivid to me as a

photograph. I stepped ashore with the feeling of one who returns out of

a dead-and-gone generation. I had a sort of realizing sense of what the

Bastille prisoners must have felt when they used to come out and look

upon Paris after years of captivity, and note how curiously the familiar

and the strange were mixed together before them. I saw the new houses--

saw them plainly enough--but they did not affect the older picture in my

mind, for through their solid bricks and mortar I saw the vanished

houses, which had formerly stood there, with perfect distinctness.

It was Sunday morning, and everybody was abed yet. So I passed through

the vacant streets, still seeing the town as it was, and not as it is,

and recognizing and metaphorically shaking hands with a hundred familiar

objects which no longer exist; and finally climbed Holiday's Hill to get

a comprehensive view. The whole town lay spread out below me then, and I

could mark and fix every locality, every detail. Naturally, I was a

good deal moved. I said, 'Many of the people I once knew in this

tranquil refuge of my childhood are now in heaven; some, I trust, are in

the other place.' The things about me and before me made me feel like a

boy again--convinced me that I was a boy again, and that I had simply

been dreaming an unusually long dream; but my reflections spoiled all

that; for they forced me to say, 'I see fifty old houses down yonder,

into each of which I could enter and find either a man or a woman who

was a baby or unborn when I noticed those houses last, or a grandmother

who was a plump young bride at that time.'

From this vantage ground the extensive view up and down the river, and

wide over the wooded expanses of Illinois, is very beautiful--one of the

most beautiful on the Mississippi, I think; which is a hazardous remark

to make, for the eight hundred miles of river between St. Louis and St.

Paul afford an unbroken succession of lovely pictures. It may be that

my affection for the one in question biases my judgment in its favor; I

cannot say as to that. No matter, it was satisfyingly beautiful to me,

and it had this advantage over all the other friends whom I was about to

greet again: it had suffered no change; it was as young and fresh and

comely and gracious as ever it had been; whereas, the faces of the

others would be old, and scarred with the campaigns of life, and marked

with their griefs and defeats, and would give me no upliftings of

spirit.

An old gentleman, out on an early morning walk, came along, and we

discussed the weather, and then drifted into other matters. I could not

remember his face. He said he had been living here twenty-eight years.

So he had come after my time, and I had never seen him before. I asked

him various questions; first about a mate of mine in Sunday school--what

became of him?

'He graduated with honor in an Eastern college, wandered off into the

world somewhere, succeeded at nothing, passed out of knowledge and

memory years ago, and is supposed to have gone to the dogs.'

'He was bright, and promised well when he was a boy.'

'Yes, but the thing that happened is what became of it all.'