The julep was now "mixed"--which fact was made known to me by the glass
being pushed a little nearer, across the marble surface of the counter.
"Have a straw?" was the laconic inquiry.
"Yes; thank you."
A joint of wheaten straw was plunged into the glass, and taking this
between my lips I drew in large draughts of perhaps the most delicious
of all intoxicating drinks--the mint-julep.
The aromatic liquid had scarce passed my lips when I began to feel its
effects. My pulse ceased its wild throbbing. My blood became cool, and
flowed in a more gentle current through my veins, and my heart seemed to
be bathing in the waters of Lethe. The relief was almost instantaneous,
and I only wondered I had not thought of it before. Though still far
from happy, I felt that I held in my hands what would soon make me so.
Transitory that happiness might be, yet the reaction was welcome at the
moment, and the prospect of it pleasant to my soul. I eagerly swallowed
the inspiring beverage--swallowed it in large draughts, till the straw
tube, rattling among the fragments of ice at the bottom of the glass,
admonished me that the fluid was all gone.
"Another, if you please!"
"You liked it, I guess?"
"Most excellent!"
"Said so. I reckon, stranger, we can get up a mint-julep on board this
here boat equal to either Saint Charles or Verandah, if not a leetle
superior to either."
"A superb drink!"
"We can mix a sherry-cobbler too, that ain't hard to take."
"I have no doubt of it, but I'm not fond of sherry. I prefer this."
"You're right. So do I. The pine-apple's a new idea, but an
improvement, I think."
"I think so too."
"Have a fresh straw?"
"Thank you."
This young fellow was unusually civil. I fancied that his civility
proceeded from my having eulogised his mint-juleps. It was not that, as
I afterwards ascertained. These Western people are little accessible to
cheap flattery. I owed his good opinion of me to a far different
cause--_the discomfiture I had put on the meddling passenger_! I
believe he had also learnt, that it was I who had chastised the Bully
Larkin! Such "feats of arms" soon become known in the region of the
Mississippi Valley, where strength and courage are qualities of high
esteem. Hence, in the bar-keeper's view, I was one who deserved a civil
word; and thus talking together on the best of terms, I swallowed my
second julep, and called upon him for a third, Aurore was for the moment
forgotten, or when remembered, it was with less of bitterness. Now and
then that parting scene came uppermost in my thoughts; but the pang that
rose with it was each moment growing feebler, and easier to be endured.