 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. LIFE IN THE MISSISSIPPE. By Mark Twain. CHAPTER XXXI. A THUMB PRINT. AND WHAT CAME OF IT. We were approaching Napoleon, Arkansas, so I began to think about my errand there. Some noonday and bright and sunny. This was bad, not best anyway, for mine was not, preferably, a noonday kind of errand. The more I thought, the more that fact pushed itself upon me, now in one form, now in another. Finally, it took the form of a distinct question. Is it good common sense to do the errand in daytime, when by a little sacrifice of comfort and inclination, you can have night for it, and no inquisitive eyes around? This settled it. Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities. I got my friends into my stateroom and said I was sorry to create annoyance and disappointment, but that upon reflection it really seemed best that we put our luggage ashore and stop over at Napoleon. Their disapproval was prompt and loud, their language mutinous, their main argument was one which has always been the first to come to the surface, in such cases, since the beginning of time. But you decided and agreed to stick to this boat, et cetera, as if having determined to do an unwise thing, one is thereby bound to go ahead and make two unwise things of it, by carrying out that determination. I tried various mollifying tactics upon them, with reasonably good success, under which encouragement I increased my efforts, and to show them that I had not created this annoying errand, and was in no way to blame for it, I presently drifted into its history, substantially as follows. Toward the end of last year I spent a few months in Munich, Bavaria. In November I was living in Fraulein-Dallweiner's pension, 1A Karlstrasse, but my work-in-quarters were a mile from there, in the house of a widow who supported herself by taking lodgers. She and her two young children used to drop in every morning and talk German to me, by request. One day during a ramble about the city I visited one of the two establishments, where the government keeps and watches corpses, until the doctors decide that they are permanently dead, and not in a trance state. It was a grisly place, that spacious room. There were thirty-six corpses of adults in sight, stretched on their backs on slightly slanted boards, in three long rows, all of them with wax-white rigid faces, and all of them wrapped in white shrouds. Along the sides of the room were deep alcoves, like bay windows, and in each of these lay several marble-visaged babes, utterly hidden and buried under banks of fresh flowers, all but their faces, and crossed hands. Around a finger of each of these fifty still forms, both great and small, was a ring, and from the ring a wire led to the ceiling, and thence to a bell in a watchroom yonder, where day and night a watchman sits, all was alert and ready to spring to the aid of any of that pallid company, who, waking out of death, shall make a movement, for any, even the slightest movement, will twitch the wire and ring that fearful bell. I imagined myself, a death-sentinel, drowsing there alone, far in the dragging watches of some wailing, gusty night, and having, in a twinkling, all my body stricken to quivering jelly by the sudden clamor of that awful summons. So I inquired about this thing, asked what resulted usually, if the watchman died, and the restored corpse came, and did what it could to make his last moments easy. But I was rebuked for trying to feed an idle and frivolous curiosity in so solemn and so mournful a place, and went my way with a humbled crest. Next morning I was telling the widow my adventure, when she exclaimed, "'Come with me! I have a lodger who shall tell you all you want to know. He has been a night-watchman there. He was a living man, but he did not look it. He was a bed, and had his head propped high on pillows. His face was wasted and colorless. His deep sunken eyes were shut. His hand, lying on his breast, was taloned like it was so bony and long-fingered. The widow began her introduction of me. The man's eyes opened slowly, and glittered wickedly out from the twilight of their caverns. He frowned a black frown. He lifted his lean hand and waved us peremptorily away. But the widow kept straight on, till she had got out the fact that I was a stranger and an American. The man's face changed at once, brightened, became even eager, and the next moment he and I were alone together. I opened up in cast iron German. He responded in quite flexible English. Thereafter we gave the German language a permanent rest. This consumptive and I became good friends. I visited him every day, and we talked about everything. At least about everything but wives and children. Let anybody's wife or anybody's child be mentioned, and three things always followed. The most gracious and loving and tender light glimmered in the man's eyes for a moment, faded out the next, and in its place came that deadly look which had flamed there the first time I ever saw his lids unclose. Thirdly he ceased from speech there and then for that day. Lay silent, abstracted, and absorbed. Apparently heard nothing that I said, took no notice of my goodbyes, and plainly did not know by either sight or hearing when I left the room. When I had been this Carl Ritter's daily and soul intimate during two months, he one day said abruptly, I will tell you my story. A dying man's confession. Then he went on as follows. I have never given up until now, but now I have given up. I am going to die. I made up my mind last night that it must be and very soon too. You say you are going to revisit your river by and by when you find opportunity. Very well. That, together with a certain strange experience which fell to my lot last night, determines me to tell you my history, for you will see Napoleon, Arkansas, and for my sake you will stop there and do a certain thing for me, a thing which you will willingly undertake after you shall have heard my narrative. Let us shorten the story wherever we can, for it will need it being long. You already know how I came to go to America, and how I came to settle in that lonely region in the South, but you do not know that I had a wife. My wife was young, beautiful, loving, and oh so divinely good and blameless and gentle, and our little girl was her mother in miniature. It was the happiest of happy households. One night it was toward the close of the war. I woke up out of a sodden lethargy, and found myself bound and gagged, and the air tainted with chloroform. I saw two men in the room, and one was saying to the other, in a hoarse whisper, I told her I would, if she made a noise, and as for the child, the other man interrupted in a low, half-crying voice. You said we'd only gag them and rob them, not hurt them, or I wouldn't have come. Shut up your whining! Had to change the plan when they waked up. You'd done all you could to protect them. Now let that satisfy you. Come, help rummage." Both men were masked, and wore coarse, ragged, nigger clothes. They had a bullseye lantern, and by its light I noticed that the gentler robber had no thumb on his right hand. They rummaged around my poor cabin for a moment. The headband had then said in his stage whisper, It's a waste of time. He shall tell where it's hid. Undo his gag, and revive him up. The other said, All right, provided no clubbing. No clubbing it is, then. Provided he keeps still. They approached me. Just then there was a sound outside, a sound of voices and trampling hoofs. The robbers held their breath and listened. The sounds came slowly nearer and nearer. Then came a shout, Hello, the house! Show a light! We want water! The captain's voice by gah! said the stage whispering, Ruffian, and both robbers fled by the way of the back door, shutting off their bullseye as they ran. The strangers shouted several times more, then rode by. There seemed to be a dozen of the horses, and I heard nothing more. I struggled but could not free myself from my bonds. I tried to speak, but the gag was effective. I could not make a sound. I listened for my wife's voice and my child's, listened long and intently, but no sound came from the other end of the room where their bed was. This silence became more and more awful, more and more ominous every moment. Could you have endured an hour of it, do you think? Pity me, then, who had to endure three. Three hours? It was three ages. Whenever the clock struck it seemed as if years had gone by since I had heard it last. All this time I was struggling in my bonds, and at last about dawn I got myself free and rose up and stretched my stiff limbs. I was able to distinguish details pretty well. The floor was littered with things thrown there by the robbers during their search for my savings. The first object that caught my particular attention was a document of mine which I had seen the rougher of the two Ruffians glance at and then cast away. It had blood on it. I staggered to the other end of the room. Oh, my poor, unoffending, helpless ones! There they lay. Their troubles ended. Mine begun. Did I appeal to the law? I? Does it quench the pauper's thirst if the king drink for him? Oh, no, no, no! I wanted no impertinent interference of the law. Laws and the gallows could not pay the debt that was owing to me. Let the laws leave the matter in my hands and have no fears. I would find the debtor and collect the debt. How accomplish this, do you say? How accomplish it, and feel so sure about it when I had neither seen the robber's face nor heard their natural voices nor had any idea who they might be? Nevertheless I was sure, quite sure, quite confident. I had a clue. A clue which you would not have valued. A clue which would not have greatly helped even a detective, since he would lack the secret of how to apply it. I shall come to that presently. You shall see. Let us go on now, taking things in their due order. There was one circumstance which gave me a slant in a definite direction to begin with. Those two robbers were manifestly soldiers in tramp disguise and not new to military service. But old in it, regulars perhaps. They did not acquire their soldierly attitude, gestures, carriage, in a day nor a month, nor yet in a year. So I thought but said nothing, and one of them had said the captain's voice by car, the one whose life I would have. Two miles away several regiments were in camp and two companies of U.S. cavalry. When I learned that Captain Blakely of Company C had passed our way that night with an escort I said nothing, but in that company I resolved to seek my man. In conversation I studiously and persistently described the robbers as tramps, camp followers, and among this class the people made useless search, none suspecting the soldiers but me. Working patiently by night in my desolated home I made a disguise for myself out of various odds and ends of clothing. In the nearest village I bought a pair of blue goggles, and by and by when the military camp broke up and Company C was ordered a hundred miles north to Napoleon I secreted my small horde of money in my belt and took my departure in the night. When Company C arrived in Napoleon I was already there. Yes, I was there with a new trade, fortune teller. Not to seem partial I made friends and told fortunes among all the companies garrisoned there, but I gave Company C the great bulk of my attentions. I made myself limitlessly obliging to these particular men. They could ask me no favour, put upon me no risk which I would decline. I became the willing butt of their jokes. This perfected my popularity. I became a favourite. I early found a private who lacked a thumb, what joy it was to me, and when I found that he alone of all the company had lost a thumb my last misgivings vanished. I was sure I was on the right track. This man's name was Kruger, a German. There were nine Germans in the company. I watched to see who might be his intimates, but he seemed to have no special intimates. But I was his intimate, and I took care to make the intimacy grow. Sometimes I so hungered for my revenge that I could hardly restrain myself from going on my knees and begging him to point out the man who had murdered my wife and child, but I managed to bridle my tongue. I bided my time and went on telling fortunes as opportunity offered. My apparatus was simple, a little red paint and a bit of white paper. I painted the ball of the client's thumb, took a print of it on the paper, studied it that night, and revealed his fortune to him next day. What was my idea in this nonsense? It was this. When I was a youth I knew an old Frenchman who had been a prison-keeper for thirty years, and he told me that there was one thing about a person which never changed from the cradle to the grave, the lines in the ball of the thumb, and he said that these lines were never exactly alike in the thumbs of any two human beings. In these days we photographed the new criminal and hang his picture in the rogues gallery for future reference. But that Frenchman in his day used to take a print of the ball of a new prisoner's thumb and put that away for future reference. He always said that pictures were no good. Future disguises could make them useless. The thumb's the only sure thing, said he. You can't disguise that. And he used to prove his theory too, on my friends and acquaintances. It all was succeeded. I went on telling fortunes. Every night I shut myself in all alone and studied the day's thumb prints with a magnifying glass. Imagine the devouring eagerness with which I poured over those mazy red spirals with that document by my side which bore the right-hand thumb and finger marks of that unknown murderer printed with the dearest blood to me that was ever shed on this earth. And many and many a time I had to repeat the same old disappointed remark will they never correspond. But my reward came at last. It was the print of the thumb of the forty-third man of Company C whom I had experimented on. Private Franz Adler. An hour before I did not know the murderer's name or voice or figure or face or nationality, but now I knew all these things. I believed I might feel sure, the Frenchman's repeated demonstrations being so good a warranty. Still there was a way to make sure. I had an impression of Kruger's left thumb. In the morning I took him aside when he was off duty, and when we were out of sight and hearing of witnesses I said impressively, a part of your fortune is so grave that I thought it would be better for you if I did not tell it in public. You and another man whose fortune I was studying last night, Private Adler, have been murdering a woman and a child. You are being dogged. Within five days both of you will be assassinated. He dropped on his knees, frightened out of his wits, and for five minutes he kept pouring out the same set of words like a demented person and in the same half-crying way which was one of my memories of that murderous night in my cabin. I didn't do it. Upon my soul I didn't do it, and I tried to keep him from doing it. I did, as God is my witness, he did it alone. This was all I wanted, and I tried to get rid of the fool, but no he clung to me imploring me to save him from the assassin. He said, I have money! Ten thousand dollars hid away the fruit of loot and thievery. Save me. Tell me what to do, and you shall have it every penny. Two-thirds of it is my cousin Adler's, but you can take it all. We hid it when we first came here, but I hid it in a new place yesterday and have not told him, shall not tell him. I was going to desert and get away with it all. It is gold and too heavy to carry when one is running and dodging, but a woman who has been gone over the river two days to prepare my way for me is going to follow me with it, and if I got no chance to describe the hiding place to her I was going to slip my silver watch into her hand or send it to her, and she would understand. There's a piece of paper in the back of the case which tells it all. Here, take the watch. Tell me what to do. He was trying to press his watch upon me and was exposing the paper and explaining it to me when Adler appeared on the scene about a dozen yards away. I said to poor Kruger, Put up your watch. I don't want it. You shan't come to any harm. Go now. I must tell Adler his fortune. Presently I will tell you how to escape the assassin. Meantime I shall have to examine your thumb-mark again. Say nothing to Adler about this thing, say nothing to anybody. He went away, filled with fright and gratitude, poor devil. I told Adler a long fortune, purposely so long that I could not finish it, promised to come to him on guard that night and tell him the really important part of it, the tragical part of it, I said. So must be out of reach of eavesdroppers. They always kept a picket watch outside the town, mere discipline and ceremony, no occasion for it, no enemy around. Toward midnight I set out, equipped with the countersign, and picked my way toward the lonely region where Adler was to keep his watch. It was so dark that I stumbled right on a dim figure almost before I could get out a protecting word. The sentinel hailed and I answered, both at the same moment. I added, It's only me, the fortune-teller. Then I slipped to the poor devil's side, and without a word I drove my dirk into his heart. Yeah, whoa! laughed I. It was the tragedy part of his fortune indeed, as he fell from his horse, he clutched at me, and my blue goggles remained in his hand, and away plunged the beast dragging him with his foot in the stirrup. I fled through the woods and made good my escape, leaving the accusing goggles behind me in that dead man's hand. This was fifteen or sixteen years ago. Since then I have wandered aimlessly about the earth, sometimes at work, sometimes idle, sometimes with money, sometimes with none, but always tired of life and wishing it was done, for my mission here was finished, with the act of that night, and the only pleasure, solace, satisfaction I had in all those tedious years was in the daily reflection I have killed him. Four years ago my health began to fail. I had wandered into Munich, in my purposeless way. Being out of money I sought work and got it, did my duty faithfully about a year, and was then given the birth of night-watchman Yonder in that dead house which you visited lately. The place suited my mood. I liked it. I liked being with the dead, liked being alone with them. I used to wander among those rigid corpses and peer into their austere faces by the hour. The later the time, the more impressive it was. I preferred the late time. Sometimes I turned the lights low. This gave perspective, you see, and the imagination could play. Always the dim receding ranks of the dead inspired one with weird and fascinating fancies. Two years ago, I had been there a year then, I was sitting all alone in the watchroom one gusty winter's night, chilled, numb, comfortless, drowsing gradually into unconsciousness. The sobbing of the wind and the slamming of distant shutters falling fainter and fainter upon my dulling ear each moment when sharp and subtly that dead bell rang out a blood-curdling alarm over my head. The shock of it nearly paralyzed me, for it was the first time I had ever heard it. I gathered myself together and flew to the corpse-room. About midway down the outside rank a shrouded figure was sitting upright, wagging its head slowly from one side to the other, a grisly spectacle. Its side was toward me. I hurried to it and peered into its face. Heavens! It was Adler! Can you divine what my first thought was? Put into words it was seems then you escaped me once. There will be a different result this time. Evidently this creature was suffering unimaginable terrors. Think what it must have been to wake up in the midst of that voiceless hush and look out over that grim congregation of the dead. What gratitude shone in his skinny white face when he saw a living form before him, and how the fervency of this mute gratitude was augmented when his eyes fell upon the life-giving cordials which I carried in my hands. Then imagine the horror which came into his pinched face when I put the cordials behind me and said mockingly, Speak up, France, Adler. Call upon these dead. Doubtless they will listen and have pity, but here there is none else that will. He tried to speak, but that part of the shroud which bound his jaws held firm and would not let him. He tried to lift imploring hands, but they were crossed upon his breast and tied. I said, Shout, France, Adler. Make the sleepers in the distant streets hear you and bring help. Shout and lose no time, for there is little to lose. What, you cannot? That is a pity. But it is no matter. It does not always bring help. When you and your cousin murdered a helpless woman and child in a cabin in Arkansas, my wife it was and my child. They shrieked for help, you remember. But it did no good. You remember that it did no good. Is it not so? Your teeth chatter, then why cannot you shout? Loosen the bandages with your hands. Then you can. Ah, I see your hands are tied. They cannot age you. How strangely things repeat themselves after long years. For my hands were tied that night, you remember? Yes, tied much as yours are now. How odd that is. I could not pull free. It did not occur to you to untie me. It does not occur to me to untie you. Shh! There's a late footstep. It is coming this way. Hark! How near it is. One can count the footfalls. One, two, three. There it is just outside. Now is the time. Shout, man. Shout! It is the one-soul chance between you and Eternity. Ah, you see you have delayed too long. It is gone by. There it is dying out. It is gone. Think of it. Reflect upon it. You have heard a human footstep for the last time. How curious it must be to listen to so common a sound as that and know that one will never hear the fellow to it again. Oh, my friend! The agony in that shrouded face was ecstasy to me. I thought of a new torture and applied it, assisting myself with a trifle of lying invention. That poor Kruger tried to save my wife and child, and I did him a grateful good turn for it when the time came. I persuaded him to rob you, and I and a woman helped him to desert and got him away in safety. A look as of surprise and triumph shone out dimly through the anguish in my victim's face. I was disturbed, disquieted. I said, What then? Didn't he escape? A negative shake of the head. No. What happened then? The satisfaction in the shrouded face was still plainer. The man tried to mumble out some words, could not succeed, tried to express something with his obstructed hands, failed, paused a moment, then feebly tilted his head in a meaning-way toward the corpse that lay nearest him. Dead, I asked, failed to escape, caught in the act and shot. Negative shake of the head. How then? Again the man tried to do something with his hands. I watched closely but could not guess the intent. I bent over and watched still more closely. He had twisted a thumb around and was weakly punching at his breast with it. Ah! What do you mean? Affirmative nod. Accompanied by a spectral smile of such peculiar devilishness that it struck an awakening light through my dull brain and I cried, Did I stab him, mistaking him for you? For that stroke was meant for none but you. The affirmative nod of the re-dying rascal was as joyous as his failing strength was able to put into its expression. Oh, miserable, miserable me! To slaughter the pitying soul that stood a friend to my darlings when they were helpless and would have saved them if he could. Miserable, oh, miserable, miserable me! I fancied I heard the muffled gurgle of a mocking laugh. I took my face out of my hands and saw my enemy sinking back upon his inclined board. He was a satisfactory long time dying. He had a wonderful vitality, an astonishing constitution. Yes, he was a pleasant long time at it. I got a chair and a newspaper and sat down by him and read. Occasionally I took a sip of brandy. This was necessary on account of the cold. But I did it partly because I saw that along at first, whenever I reached for the bottle, he thought I was going to give him some. I read aloud, mainly imaginary accounts of people snatched from the grave's threshold and restored to life and vigor by a few spoonful of liquor and a warm bath. Yes, he had a long, hard death of it three hours and six minutes from the time he rang his bell. It is believed that in all these eighteen years that have relapsed since the institution of the corpse watch no shrouded occupant of the Bavarian dead houses has ever rung its bell. Well, it is a harmless belief. Let it stand at that. The chill of that death-room had penetrated my bones. It revived and fastened upon me the disease which had been afflicting me, but which up to that night had been steadily disappearing. That man murdered my wife and child, and in three days hence he will have added me to his list. No matter. God, how delicious the memory of it! I caught him escaping from his grave and thrust him back into it. After that night I was confined to my bed for a week, but as soon as I could get about I went to the dead house books and got the number of the house which Adler had died in, a wretched lodging-place it was. It was my idea that he would naturally have gotten hold of Kruger's effects, being his cousin, and I wanted to get Kruger's watch if I could. But while I was sick Adler's things had been sold and scattered all except a few old letters and some odds and ends of no value. However, through those letters I traced out a son of Kruger's, the only relative left. He is a man of thirty now, a shoemaker by trade, and living at number fourteen Konigsstraße, Mannheim, widower with several small children. Without explaining to him why, I have furnished two-thirds of his support ever since. Now as to that watch, see how strangely things happen. I traced it around and about Germany for more than a year at considerable cost in money and vexation, and at last I got it, got it, and was unspeakably glad, opened it, and found nothing in it. Why, I might have known that that bit of paper was not going to stay there all this time. Of course I gave up that ten thousand dollars then, gave it up, and dropped it out of my mind. And, most sorrowfully, for I wanted it, for Kruger's son. Last night, when I consented at last that I must die, I began to make ready. I proceeded to burn all useless papers, and sure enough, from a batch of Adlers, not previously examined with thoroughness, out-dropped that long-desired scrap. I recognized it in a moment. Here it is. I will translate it. Brick livery stable, stone foundation, middle of town, corner of Orleans and market, corner toward courthouse, third stone, fourth row, stick notice there, saying how many are to come. There. Take it and preserve it. Kruger explained that that stone was removable, and that it was in the north wall of the foundation fourth row from the top, and third stone from the west. The money is secreted behind it. He said the closing sentence was a blind, to mislead in case the paper should fall into wrong hands. It probably performed that off as for Adler. Now I want to beg that when you make your intended journey down the river, you will hunt out that hidden money and send it to Adam Kruger, care of the Mannheim address which I have mentioned. It will make a rich man of him, and I shall sleep the sounder in my grave for knowing that I have done what I could for the son of the man who tried to save my wife and child, albeit my hand ignorantly struck him down, whereas the impulse of my heart would have been to shield and serve him. What was Ritter's narrative? said I to my two friends. There was a profound and impressive silence which lasted a considerable time. Then both men broke into a fuselad of exciting and admiring ejaculations over the strange incidents of the tale, and this, along with a rattling fire of questions, was kept up until all hands were about out of breath. Then my friends began to cool down and draw off, under shelter of occasional volleys, into silence and abysmal reverie. For ten minutes now there was stillness. Then Rogers said dreamily, Ten thousand dollars, adding, after a considerable pause, ten thousand. It is a heap of money. Presently the poet inquired, Are you going to send it to him right away? Yes, I said. It is a queer question. No reply, after a little Rogers asked, hesitatingly. All of it? That is, I mean, certainly all of it. I was going to say more, but stopped. Was stopped by a train of thought which started up in me. Thompson spoke, but my mind was absent, and I did not catch what he said, but I heard Rogers' answer. Yes, it seems so to me. It ought to be quite sufficient, for I don't see that he has done anything. Presently the poet said, When you come to look at it, it is more than sufficient. Just look at it, five thousand dollars. Why, he couldn't spend it in a lifetime. And it would injure him too, perhaps ruin him. You ought to look at that. In a little while he would throw his last away, shut up his shop, maybe take to drinking, maltreat his motherless children, drift into other evil courses, go steadily from bad to worse. Yes, that's it," interrupted Rogers fervently. I've seen it a hundred times. Yes, more than a hundred. You put money into the hands of a man like that, if you want to destroy him. That's all. Just put money into his hands. It's all you've got to do. And if it don't pull him down and take all the usefulness out of him and all their self-respect and everything, well, then I don't know human nature. Ain't that so, Thompson? And even if we were to give him a third of it, why, in less than six months—less than six weeks, you'd better say, said I, warming up and breaking in, unless he had that three thousand dollars in safe hands where he couldn't touch it, he would no more last you six weeks than—of course he wouldn't, said Thompson. I've edited books for that kind of people, and the moment they get their hands on the royalty, maybe it's three thousand, maybe it's two thousand. What business is that shoemaker with two thousand dollars I should like to know, broken Rogers earnestly? A man perhaps perfectly contented now, there in Mannheim, surrounded by his own class, eating his bread with the appetite which laborious industry alone can give, enjoying his humble life, honest, upright, pure in heart, and blessed—yes, I say blessed—blessed above all the myriads that go in silk attire and walk the empty artificial round of social folly. But just you put that temptation before him once, just you lay fifteen hundred dollars before a man like that, and say fifteen hundred devils, cried I, five hundred would rot his principles, paralyze his industry, drag him to the rum-shop, thence to the gutter, thence to the alms-house, thence to—why put up on yourself this crime, gentlemen? Interrupted the poeturnously and appealingly, he is happy where he is, and as he is. Every sentiment of honor, every sentiment of charity, every sentiment of high and sacred benevolence warns us, beseeches us, commands us to leave him undisturbed. That is real friendship, that is true friendship. We could follow other courses that would be more showy, but none that would be so truly kind and wise depend upon it. After some further talk it became evident that each of us, down in his heart, felt some misgivings over this settlement of the matter. It was manifest that we all felt that we ought to send the poor shoemaker something. There was long and thoughtful discussion of this point, and we finally decided to send him a chromo. Well, now that everything seemed to be arranged satisfactorily to everybody concerned a new trouble broke out. It transpired that these two men were expecting to share equally in the money with me. That was not my idea. I said that if they got half of it between them they might consider themselves lucky. Rogers said, Who would have had any if it hadn't been for me? I flung out the first hint, but for that it would all have gone to the shoemaker. Thompson said that he was thinking of the thing himself at the very moment that Rogers had originally spoken. I retorted that the idea would have occurred to me plenty soon enough, and without anybody's help. I was slow about thinking maybe, but I was sure. This matter warmed up into a quarrel, then, into a fight, and each man got pretty badly battered. As soon as I had got myself mended up after a fashion I ascended to the hurricane-deck in a pretty sour humor. I found Captain McCord there, and said as pleasantly as my humor would permit. I have come to say good-bye, Captain. I wish to go ashore at Napoleon. Go ashore where? Napoleon. The Captain laughed, but seeing that I was not in a jovial mood stopped that, and said, But are you serious? Serious? I certainly am. The Captain glanced up at the pilot house and said, He wants to get off at Napoleon! Napoleon? That's what he says! Great Caesar's ghost! Uncle Mumford approached along the deck. The Captain said, Uncle, here's a friend of yours wants to get off at Napoleon! Well, bye! I said, Come! What is all this about? Can't a man go ashore at Napoleon if he wants to? Why, hang it, don't you know? There isn't any Napoleon any more. Hasn't been for years and years. The Arkansas River burst through it, tore it all to rags, and emptied it into the Mississippi. Carried the whole town away? Banks? Churches? Jails? Newspaper offices? Courthouse? Theatre? Fire department? Livry stable? Everything? Everything! Just a fifteen minute job. Or such a matter. Didn't leave hide nor hair, shred nor shingle of it, except the fag end of a shanty and one brick chimney. This boat is paddling along right now where the dead center of that town used to be. Yonder is the brick chimney, all that's left of Napoleon. These dense woods on the right used to be a mile back of the town. Take a look behind you, upstream. Now you begin to recognize this country, don't you? Yes, I do recognize it now. It is the most wonderful thing I ever heard of, by a long shot, the most wonderful and unexpected. Mr. Thompson and Mr. Rogers had arrived, meantime, with satchels and umbrellas, and had silently listed into the captain's news. Thompson put a half-dollar in my hand and said softly, for my share of the Chromo. Rogers followed suit. Yes, it was an astonishing thing to see the Mississippi rolling between unpeopled shores and straight over the spot where I used to see a good big self- complacent town twenty years ago. Town that was county seat of a great and important county. Town with a big United States Marine hospital. Town of innumerable fights, an inquest every day. Town where I had used to know the prettiest girl and the most accomplished in the whole Mississippi Valley. Town where we were handed the first printed news of the Pennsylvania's mournful disaster a quarter of a century ago. A town no more. Swallowed up. Vanished. Gone to feed the fishes. Nothing left but a fragment of a shanty and a crumbling brick chimney. End of Chapter 32 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer visit LibriVox.org. Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain Chapter 33 Refreshments and Ethics In regard to Island 74, which is situated not far from the former Napoleon, a freak of the river here has sorely perplexed the laws of men and made them a vanity and a jest. When the State of Arkansas was chartered, she controlled to the center of the river, a most unstable line. The State of Mississippi claimed to the Channel, another shifty and unstable line. Number 74 belonged to Arkansas. By and by a cut-off through this big island out of Arkansas and yet not within Mississippi. Middle of the river on one side of it, Channel on the other. That is, as I understand the problem, whether I have got the details right or wrong, this fact remains that here is this big and exceedingly valuable island of four thousand acres thrust out in the cold and belonging to neither the one State nor the other, paying taxes to neither, owing allegiance to neither. One man owns the whole island and of right is the man without a country. Island 92 belongs to Arkansas. The river moved it over and joined it to Mississippi. A chap established a whiskey shop there without a Mississippi license and enriched himself upon Mississippi custom under Arkansas protection, where no license was, in those days required. We glided steadily down the river in the usual privacy, steamboat or other moving things seldom seen. Scenery as always, stretch upon stretch of almost unbroken forest, on both sides of the river, soundless solitude. Here and there, a cabin or two, standing in small openings on the gray and grassless banks, which had formerly stood a quarter or half-mile farther to the front and gradually been pulled farther and farther back as the shores caved in. As at Pilcher's Point, for instance, where the cabins had been moved back three hundred yards in three months, so we were told. But the caving banks had already caught up with them, and they were being conveyed rearward once more. Napoleon had but small opinion of Greenville, Mississippi in the old times, but behold, Napoleon has gone to the catfishes, and here is Greenville full of life and activity, and making a considerable flourish in the valley, having three thousand inhabitants, it is said, and doing a gross trade of two and a half million dollars annually. A growing town. There was much talk on the boat about the Calhoun Land Company, an enterprise which is expected to work wholesome results. Colonel Calhoun, a grandson of the statesman, went to Boston and formed a syndicate which purchased a large tract of land on the river in Shico County, Arkansas, some ten thousand acres, for cotton growing. The purpose is to work on a cash basis, buy at first hands, and handle their own product. Supply their Negro laborers with provisions and necessaries at a trifling profit, say, eight or ten percent. Finish them comfortable quarters, etc., and encourage them to save money and remain on the place. If this proves a financial success, as seems quite certain, they propose to establish a banking house in Greenville, and lend money at an unburden some rate of interest six percent, as spoken of. The trouble heretofore has been, I am quoting remarks of planters and steamboatmen, that the planters, although owning the land, were without cash capital, had to hypothecate both land and crop to carry on the business. Consequently, the commission dealer who furnishes the money takes some risk and demands big interest, usually ten percent, and two half percent, for negotiating the loan. The planter has also to buy his supplies through the same dealer, paying commissions and profits. Then, when he ships his crop, the dealer adds his commissions, insurance, etc. So, taking it by and large and first and last, the dealer's share of that crop is about twenty-five percent. Footnote. But what can the state do where the people are under subjection to rates of interest ranging from eighteen to thirty percent, and are also under the necessity of purchasing their crops in advance, even of planting at these rates for the privilege of purchasing all their supplies at one hundred percent profit? Edward Atkinson. A cotton planter's estimate of the average margin of profit on planting in his section. One man and mule will raise ten acres of cotton, giving ten bales of cotton, worth say five hundred dollars. Cost of production say three hundred and fifty. Net profit one hundred and fifty, or fifteen dollars per acre. There is also a profit now from the cotton seed which formerly had little value, none where much transportation was necessary. In sixteen hundred pounds crude cotton four hundred are lint, worth say ten cents a pound, and twelve hundred pounds of seed, worth twelve or thirteen dollars per ton. Maybe in future even the stams will not be thrown away. Mr. Edward Atkinson says that for each bale of cotton there are fifteen hundred pounds of stams, and that these are very rich in phosphate of lime and potash, that when ground and mixed with ensalage or cotton seed meal, which is too rich for use as fodder in large quantities, the stem mixture makes a superior food, rich in all the elements needed for the production of milk, meat, and bone, here to fore the stems have been considered a nuisance. Complaint is made that the planter remains grouty toward the former slave since the war. We'll have nothing but a chill business relation with him, no sentiment permitted to intrude, will not keep a store himself, and supply the negro's wants, and thus protect the negro's pocket and make him able and willing to stay on the place, and an advantage to him to do it, but let's that privilege to some thrifty Israelite, who encourages the thoughtless negro and wife to buy all sorts of things which they could do without, buy on credit at big prices month after month, credit based on the negro's share of the growing crop, and at the end of the season the negro's share belongs to the Israelite. The negro is in debt besides, is discouraged, dissatisfied, restless, and both he and the planter are injured, for he will take steamboat and migrate, and the planter must get a stranger in his place who does not know him, does not care for him, will fatten the Israelite a season, and follow his predecessor per steamboat. It is hoped that Calhoun Company will show, by its humane and protective treatment of its laborers, that its method is the most profitable for both planter and negro, and it is believed that a general adoption of that method will then follow. And where so many are saying their say, shall not the barkeeper testify? He is thoughtful, observant, never drinks, endeavours to earn his salary, and would earn it if there were custom enough. He says the people along here in Mississippi and Louisiana will send up the river to buy vegetables rather than raise them, and they will come aboard at the landings and buy fruits of the barkeeper. Thinks they don't know anything but cotton. Believes they don't know how to raise vegetables and fruit. At least the most of them. Says a nigger will go to H. for a watermelon. H. is all I find in the stenographer's report. Means Halifax probably, though that seems a good way to go for a watermelon. Barkeeper buys a watermelon for five cents up the river, brings them down, and sells them for fifty. Why does he mix such elaborate and picturesque drinks for the nigger hands on the boat? Because they won't have any other. They want a big drink. Don't make any difference what you make it of. They want the worth of their money. You give a nigger a plain gill of half a dollar brandy for five cents. Will he touch it? No. Ain't size enough to it. But you put up a pint of all kinds of worthless rubbish, and heave in some red stuff to make it beautiful, read's the main thing, and he wouldn't put down that glass to go to a circus. All the bars on this anchor line are rented and owned by one firm. They furnish the liquors from their own establishment, and hire the barkeepers on salary. Good liquors? Yes, on some of the boats, where there are the kind of passengers that want it and can pay for it. On the other boats? No. Nobody but the deck hands and the fireman to drink it. Brandy? Yes. I've got brandy, plenty of it. But you don't want any of it unless you've made your will. It isn't as it used to be in the old times. Then everybody traveled by steamboat. Everybody drank, and everybody treated everybody else. Now most everybody goes by railroad, and the rest don't drink. In the old times the barkeeper owned the bar himself, and was gay and smarty and talky and all jeweled up, and was the tonyest aristocrat on the boat. Used to make two thousand dollars on a trip. A father who left his son a steamboat bar left him a fortune. Now he leaves him bored and lodging. Yes, and washing. If a short trip will do. Yes, indeedy times are changed. Why, do you know, on the principal line of boats on the Upper Mississippi they don't have any bar at all. Sounds like poetry, but it's the petrified truth. Stack Island. I remembered Stack Island. Also Lake Providence, Louisiana, which is the first distinctly southern-looking town you come to, downward bound, lies level and low, shade trees hung with venerable gray beards of Spanish moss, restful, pensive, Sunday aspect about the place, comments Uncle Mumford with feeling, also with truth. A Mr. H. furnished some minor details of fact concerning this region which I would have hesitated to believe if I had not known him to be a steamboat mate. He was a passenger of ours, a resident of Arkansas City, and bound to Vicksburg to join his boat, a little sunflower packet. He was an austere man, and had the reputation of being singularly unworldly for a river-man. Among other things he said that Arkansas had been injured and kept back by generations of exaggerations concerning the mosquitoes here. One may smile, said he, and turn the matter off as being a small thing. But when you come to look at the effects produced in the way of discouragement of immigration and diminished values of property, it was quite the opposite of a small thing, or thing in any wise to be coughed down or sneered at. These mosquitoes had been persistently represented as being formidable and lawless, whereas the truth is they are feeble, insignificant in size, diffident to a fault, sensitive, and so on and so on. You would have supposed he was talking about his family, but if he was soft on the Arkansas mosquitoes he was hard enough on the mosquitoes of Lake Providence to make up for it. Those Lake Providence colossi, as he finally called them, he said that two of them could whip a dog and that four of them could hold a man down, and except help come they would kill him. Butcher him, as he expressed it. Referred in a sort of casual way, and yet significant way, to the fact that the life-policy in its simplest form is unknown in Lake Providence. They take out a mosquito-policy besides. He told many remarkable things about those lawless insects. Among others said he had seen them try to vote, noticing that this statement seemed to be a good deal of a strain on us, he modified it a little, said he might have been mistaken, as to that particular, but knew he had seen them around the poles canvassing. There was another passenger, friend of H's, who backed up the harsh evidence against those mosquitoes, and detailed some stirring adventures which he had had with them. The stories were pretty sizable, merely pretty sizable, yet Mr. H was continually interrupting, with a cold, inexorable, wait, knock off twenty-five percent of that, now go on, or wait, you are getting that too strong, cut it down, cut it down, you get a little too much costumery onto your statements, always dress a fact in tights, never in an Ulster, or pardon once more, if you are going to load anything more onto that statement you want to get a couple of lighters and tow the rest, because it's drawing all the water there is in the river already, stick to facts, just stick to the cold facts. What these gentlemen want for a book is the frozen truth, ain't that so, gentlemen? He explained privately that it was necessary to watch this man all the time, and keep him within bounds, it would not do to neglect this precaution, as he, Mr. H, knew to his sorrow, said he, I will not deceive you, he told me such a monstrous lie once, that it swelled my left ear up, and spread it so, that I was actually not able to see out around it, and remained so for months, and people came miles to see me fan myself with it. We used to plow past the lofty hill-city, Vicksburg, downstream, but we cannot do that now. A cut-off has made a country town of it, like Osceola, St. Genevieve, and several others. There is currentless water, also a big island, in front of Vicksburg now. You come down the river or the other side of the island, then turn, and come up to the town, that is, in high water. In low water you can't come up, but must land some distance below it. Signs and scars still remain, as reminders of Vicksburg's tremendous war experiences. Earthworks, trees crippled by the cannonballs, cave refuges in the clay precipices, etc. The caves did good service during the six weeks bombardment of the city, May 8th to July 4th, 1863. They were used by the non-combatants, mainly by the women and children, not to live in constantly, but to fly to for safety on occasion. They were mere holes, tunnels driven into the perpendicular clay bank, then branched Y-shape within the hill. Life in Vicksburg during the six weeks was, perhaps, but wait, here are some materials out of which to reproduce it. Population, twenty-seven thousand soldiers, three thousand non-combatants, the city utterly cut off from the world, walled solidly in, the frontage by gun boats, the rear by soldiers and batteries, hence no buying and selling with the outside, no passing to and fro, no God-speeding aparting guest, no welcoming a coming one, no printed acres of worldwide news to be read at breakfast mornings, a tedious dull absence of such matter instead, hence also no running to see steam boats smoking interview in the distance up or down and plowing toward the town, for none came, the river lay vacant and undisturbed, no rush and turmoil around the railway station, no struggling over bewildered swarms of passengers by noisy mobs of hack-men, all quiet there, flour two hundred dollars a barrel, sugar thirty, corn ten dollars a bushel, bacon five dollars a pound, rum a hundred dollars a gallon, other things in proportion, consequently no roar and racket of drays and carriages tearing along the streets, nothing for them to do, among that handful of non-combatants of exhausted means, at three o'clock in the morning silence, silence so dead that the measured tramp of a sentinel can be heard a seemingly impossible distance. Out of hearing of this lonely sound perhaps the stillness is absolute. All in a moment come ground-shaking thunder-crashes of artillery, the sky is cobwebbed with the criss-crossing red lines streaming from soaring bombshells, and a rain of iron fragments descends upon the city, descends upon the empty streets, which are not empty a moment later, but mottled with dim figures of frantic women and children scurrying from home in bed toward the cave-dungeons, encouraged by the humorous grim soldiery who shout, RATS TO YOUR HOLES! and laugh. The cannon thunder rages, shells scream and crash overhead, the iron rain pours down one hour, two hours, three, possibly six, then stops. Silence follows, but the streets are still empty, the silence continues, by and by a head projects from a cave here and there and yonder and reconnoiters cautiously. The silence still continuing. Bodies follow heads and jaded half-smothered creatures group themselves about, stretch their cramped limbs, draw in deep drafts of the grateful fresh air, gossip with the neighbors from the next cave, maybe straggle off home presently, or take a lounge through the town if the stillness continues, and we'll scurry to the holes again, by and by, when the war tempest breaks forth once more. There being but three thousand of these cave-dwellers, merely the population of a village, would they not come to know each other after a week or two, and familiarly, in so much that the fortunate or unfortunate experiences of one would be of interest to all? Those are the materials furnished by history. From them might not almost anybody reproduce for himself the life of that time in Vicksburg. Could you, who did not experience it, come nearer to reproducing it to the imagination of another non-participant than could a Vicksburger who did experience it? It seems impossible, and yet there are reasons why it might not really be. When one makes his first voyage in a ship, it is an experience which multitudinously bristles with striking novelties. Novelties which are in such sharp contrast with all this person's former experiences, that they take a seemingly deathless grip upon his imagination and memory. By tongue or pen he can make a landsman live that strange and stirring voyage over with him, make him see it all and feel it all. But if he wait? If he make ten voyages in succession, what then? Why, the thing has lost color, snap, surprise, and has become commonplace. The man would have nothing to tell that would quicken a landsman's pulse. Years ago I talked with a couple of the Vicksburg non-combatants, a man and his wife, left to tell their story in their own way, those people told it without fire, almost without interest. A week of their wonderful life there would have made their tongues eloquent for ever, perhaps. But they had six weeks of it, and that wore the novelty all out. They got used to being bombshelled out of home and into the ground. The matter became commonplace. After that the possibility of their ever being startlingly interesting in their talks about it was gone. What the man said was to this effect. It got to be Sunday all the time, seven Sundays in the week, to us anyway. We hadn't anything to do, and time hung heavy. Seven Sundays. And all of them broken up at one time or another, in the day or in the night, by a few hours of the awful storm of fire and thunder and iron. At first we used to shin for the holes a good deal faster than we did afterwards. The first time I forgot the children, and Maria fetched them both along. When she was all safe in the cave she fainted. Two or three weeks afterwards, when she was running for the holes one morning, through a shell-shower, a big shell burst near her and covered her all over with dirt, and a piece of the iron carried away her game-bag of false hair from the back of her head. Well, she stopped to get that game-bag before she shoved along again. Was getting used to things already, you see. We all got so that we could tell a good deal about shells, and after that we didn't always go under shelter if it was a light shower. Us men would loaf around and talk, and a man would say, there she goes, and name the kind of shell it was from the sound of it, and go on talking if there wasn't any danger from it. If a shell was bursting close over us we stopped talking and stood still. Uncomfortable, yes, but it wasn't safe to move. When it let go we went on talking again if nobody hurt, maybe saying, that was a ripper, or some such commonplace comment before we resumed, or maybe we would see a shell poisoning itself away high in the air overhead. In that case every fellow just whipped out a sudden, see you again, gents, and shoved. Often and often I saw gangs of ladies promonating the streets, looking as cheerful as you please, and keeping an eye canted up, watching the shells. And I've seen them stop still when they were uncertain about what a shell was going to do, and wait and make certain, and after that they sat along again, or lit out for shelter according to the verdict. Streets in some towns have a litter of pieces of paper, and odds and ends of one sort or another lying around. Ours hadn't. They had iron litter. Sometimes a man would gather up all the iron fragments and unburst shells in his neighborhood, and pile them into a kind of monument in his front yard. A ton of it, sometimes. No glass left, glass couldn't stand such a bombardment. It was all shivered out. Windows of the houses vacant. Looked like eye holes in a skull. Whole pains were as scarce as news. We had church Sundays, not many there along at first, but by and by pretty good turnouts. I've seen service stop a minute, and everybody sit quiet, no voice heard, pretty funeral-like then, and all the more so on account of the awful boom and crash going on outside and overhead. And pretty soon when a body could be heard, service would go on again. Organs and church music mixed up with a bombardment is a powerful, queer combination along at first. Coming out of church one morning we had an accident, the only one that happened around me on a Sunday. I was just having a hearty handshake with a friend I hadn't seen for a while and saying, Drop into our cave tonight after bombardment. We've got hold of a pint of prime whee! Whiskey I was going to say, you know, but a shell interrupted. A chunk of it cut the man's arm off, and left it dangling in my hand. And do you know the thing that is going to stick the longest in my memory and outlast everything else, little and big, I reckon, is the mean thought I had then. It was, the whiskey is saved. And yet, don't you know, it was kind of excusable. Because it was as scarce as diamonds and we had only just that little. Never had another taste during the siege. Sometimes the caves were desperately crowded and all was hot and close. Sometimes a cave had twenty or twenty-five people packed into it. No turning room for anybody. Air so foul sometimes you couldn't have made a candle burn in it. A child was born in one of those caves one night. Think of that. Why, it was like having it born in a trunk. Twice we had sixteen people in our cave, and a number of times we had a dozen. Pretty suffocating in there. We always had eight. Eight belonged there. Hunger and misery and sickness and fright and sorrow and, I don't know what all, got so loaded into them that none of them were ever rightly their old cells after the siege. They all died but three of us within a couple of years. One night a shell burst in front of the hole and caved it in and stopped it up. It was lively times for a while digging out. Some of us came near smothering. After that we made two openings. ought to have thought of that at first. Mule meat. No, we only got down to that the last day or two. Of course it was good, anything as good when you're starving. This man had kept a diary during six weeks? No. Only the first six days. The first day, eight closed pages. The second, five. The third, one. Loosely written. The fourth, three or four lines. A line or two the fifth and six days. Seventh day, diary abandoned. Life in terrific Vicksburg having now become commonplace and matter of course. The war history of Vicksburg has more about it to interest the general reader than that of any other of the Rivertowns. It is full of variety, full of incident, full of the picturesque. Vicksburg held out longer than any other important Rivertown and saw warfare in all its phases, both land and water. The siege, the mine, the assault, the repulse, the bombardment, sickness, captivity, famine. The most beautiful of all the national cemeteries is here. Over the great gateway is this inscription. Here rest in peace 16,600 who died for their country in the years 1861 to 1865. The grounds are nobly situated, being very high and commanding a wide prospect of land and river. They are tastefully laid out in broad terraces with winding roads and paths, and there is profuse adornment in the way of semi-tropical shrubs and flowers, and in one part is a piece of native wild wood left just as it grew, and therefore perfect in its charm. Everything about this cemetery suggests the hand of the national government. The government's work is always conspicuous for excellence, solidity, thoroughness, neatness. The government does its work well in the first place and then takes care of it. By winding roads, which were often cut to so great a depth between perpendicular walls that they were mere roofless tunnels, we drove out a mile or two and visited the monument which stands upon the scene of the surrender of Vicksburg to General Grant by General Pemberton. Its metal will preserve it from the hackings and chippings which so defaced its predecessor, which was of marble, but the brick foundations are crumbling, and it will tumble down by and by. It overlooks a picturesque region of wooded hills and ravines, and is not unpicturesque itself being well smothered in flowering weeds. The battered remnant of the marble monument has been removed to the national cemetery. On the road, a quarter of a mile townward, an aged colored man showed us, with pride, an unexploded bombshell which has lain in his yard since the day it fell there during the siege. I was a standing hare, and a dog was a standing hare. The dog he went for the shell, going to pick up a fuss with it, but I didn't. I says, just make yourself at home, Haya. Lay still while you is, or bust up the place, just as you's a mind to, but I's got business out in the woods I has. Vicksburg is a town of substantial business streets and pleasant residences. It commands the commerce of the yazu and the sunflower rivers. It's pushing railways in several directions through rich agricultural regions, and has a promising future of prosperity and importance. Apparently nearly all the river towns, big and little, have made up their minds that they must look mainly to railroads for wealth and up-building, henceforth they are acting upon this idea. The signs are that the next twenty years will bring about some noteworthy changes in the valley, in the direction of increased population and wealth, and in the intellectual advancement and the liberalizing of opinion which go naturally with these. And yet, if one may judge by the past, the river towns will manage to find and use a chance, here and there, to cripple and retard their progress. They kept themselves back in the days of steam-boating supremacy by a system of wharfage dues so stupidly graded as to prohibit what may be called small retail traffic in freight and passengers. Boats were charged such heavy wharfage that they could not afford to land for one or two passengers or a light load of freight. Instead of encouraging the bringing of trade to their doors, the towns diligently and effectively discouraged it. They could have made many boats and low rates, but their policy rendered few boats and high rates compulsory. It was a policy which extended and extends from New Orleans to St. Paul. We had a strong desire to make a trip up the Yazoo and the Sunflower, an interesting region at any time, but additionally interesting at this time, because up there the great inundation was still to be seen in force. But we were nearly sure to have to wait a day or more for a New Orleans boat on our return, so we were obliged to give up the project. Here is a story which I picked up on board the boat that night. I insert it in this place merely because it is a good story, not because it belongs here, for it doesn't. It was told by a passenger, a college professor, and was called to the surface in the course of a general conversation which began with Talk About Horses, drifted into Talk About Astronomy, then into Talk About the lynching of the gamblers in Vicksburg half a century ago, then into Talk About Dreams and Superstitions, and ended, after midnight, in a dispute over free trade and protection. CHAPTER XXXVI. The Professor's Yarn. It was in the early days—I was not a college professor then—I was a humble-minded young land surveyor, with a world before me, to survey in case anybody wanted it done. I had a contract to survey a root for a great mining ditch in California, and I was on my way thither, by sea, a three or four weeks voyage. There were a good many passengers, but I had very little to say to them. Reading and dreaming were my passions, and I avoided conversation in order to indulge these appetites. There were three professional gamblers on board—rough, repulsive fellows. I never had any talk with them. Yet I could not help seeing them with some frequency, for they gambled in an upper-deck stateroom every day and night, and in my promenades I often had glimpses of them through their door, which stood a little ajar to let out the surplus tobacco smoke and profanity. They were an evil and hateful presence, but I had to put up with it, of course. There was one other passenger who fell under my eye a good deal, for he seemed determined to be friendly with me, and I could not have gotten rid of him without running some chance of hurting his feelings, and I was far from wishing to do that. Besides, there was something engaging in his contrived simplicity and his beaming good nature. The first time I saw this Mr. John Backus, I guessed, from his clothes and his looks, that he was a grazer or farmer from the backwoods of some western state, doubtless Ohio, and afterward when he dropped into his personal history and I discovered that he was a cattle-raiser from interior Ohio, I was so pleased with my own penetration that I warmed toward him for verifying my instinct. He got to dropping alongside me every day after breakfast to help me make my promenade, and so, in the course of time, his easy-working jaw had told me everything about his business, his prospects, his family, his relatives, his politics, in fact everything that concerned a Backus living or dead, and meantime I think he had managed to get out of me everything I knew about my trade, my tribe, my purposes, my prospects, and myself. He was a gentle and persuasive genius, and this thing showed it, for I was not given to talking about my matters. I said something about triangulation once, the stately word pleased his ear. He inquired what it meant. I explained. After that he quietly and inoffensively ignored my name, and always called me triangle. What an enthusiast he was in cattle. At the bare name of a bull or a cow, his eye would light, and his eloquent tongue would turn itself loose. As long as I would walk and listen, he would walk and talk. He knew all breeds. He loved all breeds. He caressed them all with his affectionate tongue. I tramped along in voiceless misery whilst the cattle-question was up. When I could endure it no longer I used to deftly insert a scientific topic into the conversation. Then my eye fired, and his faded. My tongue fluttered. His stopped. Life was a joy to me, and a sadness to him. One day he said, a little hesitatingly, and was somewhat of diffidence, Triangle, would you mind coming down to my state-room a minute and have a little talk on a certain matter? I went with him at once. Arrived there he put his head out, glanced up and down the saloon thoroughly, then closed the door and locked it. He sat down on the sofa and he said, I'm going to make a little proposition to you. And if it strikes you favourable, it'll be a middling good thing for both of us. You ain't going out to California for fun. Neither am I. It's business. Ain't that so? Well, you can do me a good turn, and so can I you, if we see fit. I've raked and scraped and saved a considerable many years, and I've got it all here. He unlocked an old hair-trunk, tumbled a chaos of shabby clothes aside, and drew a short stout bag into view for a moment, then buried again and relocked the trunk. Dropping his voice to a cautious low tone he continued, She's all there. Around ten thousand dollars in yellow boys. Now this is my little idea. What I don't know about raising cattle ain't worth knowing. There's mints of money in it in California. Well, I know, and you know, that all along a line that's being surveyed, there's little dabs of land that they call gores that fall to the surveyor-free gratis for nothing. All you've got to do on your side is to survey in such a way that the gores will fall on good fat land, then you turn them over to me. I stock them with cattle, in rolls the cash, I plank out your share of the dollars regular right along, and I was sorry to wither his blooming enthusiasm, but it could not be helped. I interrupted and said severely, I am not that kind of a surveyor. Let us change the subject, Mr. Bacchus. It was pitiful to see his confusion and hear his awkward and shame-faced apologies. I was as much distressed as he was, especially as he seemed so far from having suspected that there was anything improper in his proposition, so I hastened to console him and lead him on to forget his mishap in a conversational orgy about cattle and butchery. We were lying at Acapulco, and as we went on deck it happened luckily that the crew were just beginning to hoist some beaves aboard in slings. Bacchus' melancholy vanished instantly, and with it the memory of his late mistake. Now only look at that, cried he. My goodness, Triangle, what would they say to it in Ohio? Wouldn't their eyes bug out to see him handle like that? Wouldn't they, though? All the passengers were on deck to look, even the gamblers, and Bacchus knew them all, and had afflicted them all with his pet-topic. As I moved away I saw one of the gamblers approach and accost him, then another of them, and the third. I halted, waited, watched. The conversation continued between the four men. It grew earnest. Bacchus drew gradually away. The gamblers followed, and kept at his elbow. I was uncomfortable. However as they passed me presently I heard Bacchus say with a tone of persecuted annoyance, but it ain't any use, gentlemen. I tell you again, as I've told you a half-dozen times before, I weren't raised to it, and I ain't a going to risk it. I felt relieved. His level head will be his sufficient protection, I said to myself. During the fortnight's run from Acapulco to San Francisco I several times saw the gamblers talking earnestly with Bacchus, and once I threw out a gentle warning to him. He chuckled comfortably and said, Oh yes, they tag around after me considerable. Want me to play a little, just for amusement, they say. But lozamy, if my folks have told me once to look out for that sort of livestock, they've told me a thousand times, I reckon. By and by, in due course, we were approaching San Francisco. It was an ugly black night with a strong wind blowing. But there was not much sea. I was on deck alone. For ten I started below. A figure issued from the gambler's den and disappeared in the darkness. I experienced a shock, for I was sure it was Bacchus. I flew down the companion way, looked about for him, could not find him, then returned to the deck just in time to catch a glimpse of him as he re-entered that confounded nest of rascality. Had he yielded at last? I feared it. What had he gone below for? His bag of coin? Possibly. I drew near the door, full of boatings. It was a crack, and I glanced in and saw a sight that made me bitterly wish I had given my attention to saving my poor cattle-friend instead of reading and dreaming my foolish time away. He was gambling. Worse still, he was being plied with champagne and was already showing some effect from it. He praised the cider, as he called it, and said, now that he got a taste of it, he almost believed he would drink it if it was spirits, if it was so good and so ahead of anything he had ever run across before. Seraptitious smiles at this passed from one rascal to another, and they filled all the glasses, and whilst Bacchus honestly drained his to the bottom, they pretended to do the same, but threw the wine over their shoulders. I could not bear the scene, so I wandered forward and tried to interest myself in the sea and the voices of the wind. But no, my uneasy spirit kept dragging me back at quarter-hour intervals, and all was I saw Bacchus drinking his wine, fairly and squarely, and the others throwing theirs away. It was the painfulest night I ever spent. The only hope I had was that we might reach our anchorage with speed, that would break up the game. I helped the ship along all I could with my prayers. Alas, we went booming through the golden gate, and my pulses leapt for joy. I hurried back to that door and glanced in. Alas, there was small room for hope. Bacchus's eyes were heavy and bloodshot. His sweaty face was crimson. His speech maudlin and thick. His body sawed drunkenly about with the weaving motion of the ship. He drained another glass to the dregs whilst the cards were being dealt. He took his hand, glanced at it, and his dull eyes lit up for a moment. The gamblers observed it and showed their gratification by hardly perceptible signs. How many cards? None, said Bacchus. One villain named Hank Wiley discarded one card, the others three each. The betting began. Here to fore the bets had been trifling a dollar or two, but Bacchus started off with an eagle now. Wiley hesitated a moment, then saw it, and went ten dollars better. The other two threw up their hands. Bacchus went twenty better. Wiley said, I see that, and go you a hundred better, then smiled and reached for the money. Let it alone, said Bacchus, with drunken gravity. What? You mean to say you're going to cover it? Cover it? Well, I reckon I am. I lay another hundred on top of it, too. He reached down inside his overcoat and produced the required sum. Oh! that's your little game, is it? I see you'll raise and raise it five hundred, said Wiley. Five hundred better, said the foolish bull-driver, and pulled out the sum and showered it on the pile. The three conspirators hardly tried to conceal their exaltation. All diplomacy and pretense were dropped now, and the sharp exclamations came thick and fast as the yellow pyramid grew higher and higher. At last ten thousand dollars lay in view. Wiley cast a bag of coin on the table, and said with mocking gentleness, five thousand dollars better, my friend, from the rural districts. What do you say now? I call you, said Bacchus, heaving his golden shot-bag on the pile. What have you got? Four kings, you ding fool, and Wiley threw down his cards and surrounded the stakes with his arms. Four aces, you ass, thundered Bacchus, covering his man with a cocked revolver. I'm a professional gambler myself, and I've been laying for you, duffers, all this voyage. Down went the anchor, rumbly dum-dum, and the long trip was ended. Well, well, it is a sad world. One of the three gamblers was Bacchus' pal. It was he that dealt the fateful hands. According to an understanding with the two victims, he was to have given Bacchus four queens. But alas, he didn't. A week later I stumbled upon Bacchus, arrayed in the height of fashion in Montgomery Street. He said cheerily, as we were parting. Ah! By the way, you needn't mind about those gores. I don't really know anything about cattle, except when I was able to pick up in a week's apprenticeship over in Jersey just before we sailed. My cattle culture and cattle enthusiasm have served their turn. I shan't need them any more. Next day we reluctantly parted from the gold dust and her officers, hoping to see that boat and all those officers again some day. A thing which the fates were to render tragically impossible. Chapter 37 The end of the gold dust For three months later, August 8, while I was writing one of these foregoing chapters, the New York papers brought this telegram. A terrible disaster! Seventeen persons killed by an explosion on the steamer gold dust. Nashville, August 7. A dispatch from Hickman, Kentucky, says, the steamer gold dust exploded her boilers at three o'clock today, just after leaving Hickman. Forty-seven persons were scalded and seventeen are missing. The boat was landed in the eddy just above the town, and through the exertions of the citizens, the cabin passengers, officers, and part of the crew and deck passengers were taken ashore and removed to the hotels and residences. Twenty-four of the injured were lying in Holkman's dry-good store at one time, where they received every attention before being removed to more comfortable places. A list of the names followed, whereby it appeared that of the seventeen dead one was the barkeeper, and among the forty-seven wounded were the captain, chief mate, second mate, and second and third clerks. Also Mr. Lem S. Gray, pilot, and several members of the crew. In answer to a private telegram we learned that none of these was severely hurt except Mr. Gray. Letters received afterward confirmed this news, and said that Mr. Gray was improving and would get well. Later Letters spoke less hopefully of his case, and finally came one announcing his death. A good man, a most companiable and manly man, and worthy of a kindlier fate. THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL We took passage in a Cincinnati boat for New Orleans, or on a Cincinnati boat, either is correct. The former is the eastern form of putting it, the latter is the western. Mr. Dickens declined to agree that the Mississippi steamboats were magnificent, or that they were floating palaces, terms which had always been applied to them, terms which did not over-express the admiration with which the people viewed them. Mr. Dickens' position was unassailable possibly. The people's position was certainly unassailable. If Mr. Dickens was comparing these boats with the crown jewels, or with the Taj, or with the Matterhorn, or with some other priceless or wonderful thing which he had seen, then they were not magnificent he was right. The people compared them with what they had seen, and thus measured, thus judged, the boats were magnificent. The term was the correct one. It was not at all too strong. The people were as right as was Mr. Dickens. The steamboats were finer than anything on shore. Compared with superior dwelling-houses and first-class hotels in the valley, they were indubitably magnificent. They were palaces. To a few people living in New Orleans and St. Louis they were not magnificent, perhaps, not palaces, but to the great majority of those populations and to the entire population spread over both banks between Baton Rouge and St. Louis they were palaces. They tallied with the citizen's dream of what magnificence was and satisfied it. Every town and village along that vast stretch of double river frontage had a best dwelling, finest dwelling, mansion, the home of its wealthiest and most conspicuous citizen. It is easy to describe it, large grassy yard with paling, fence, painted white, in fair repair, brick walk from gate to door, big, square, two-story frame-house, painted white and porticoed like a Grecian temple with this difference that the imposing fluted columns and Corinthian capitals were a pathetic sham being made of white pine and painted. Iron knocker, brass doorknob, discolored for lack of polishing, within an uncarpeted hall of planed boards, opening out of it a parlor, fifteen feet by fifteen, in some instances five or ten feet larger, ingrained carpet, mahogany center-table, lamp on it with green paper shade, standing on a gridiron, so to speak, made of high-colored yarns by the young ladies of the house, and called a lamp mat. Several books piled and disposed with cast iron exactness, according to an inherited and unchangeable plan, among them tupper, much penciled, also friendship's offering, and affection's wreath, with their sappy inanities illustrated in Dioe-mesitants, also Ocean, Alonzo and Melissa, maybe Ivanhoe, also Album, full of original poetry of the thou hast wounded the spirit that loved thee, breed. Two or three goody-goody works, shepherd of Salisbury Plain, etcetera, current number of the chaste and innocuous goodies' ladies' book, with painted fashion-plate of wax-figure women with mouths all alike, lips and eyelids the same size, each five-foot woman with a two-inch wedge sticking from under her dress and letting on to be half of her foot, polished airtight stove, new and deadly invention, with pipe passing through a board which closes up the discarded old fireplace. On each end of the wooden mantle over the fireplace a large basket of peaches and other fruits, natural size all done in plaster, rudely, or in wax, and painted to resemble the originals, which they don't, over middle of mantle and graving, Washington crossing the Delaware, on the wall by the door, copy of it done in thunder and lightning-cruels by one of the young ladies, work of art which would have made Washington hesitate about crossing if he could have foreseen what advantage was going to be taken of it. Piano, kettle in disguise, with music, bound and unbound, piled on it and on a stand nearby. Battle of Prague, Birdwalls, Arkansas Traveller, Rosin the Bow, Marseille Hymn, on a lone barren isle, St. Helena, the last link is broken. She wore a wreath of roses the night when last we met. Go, forget me, why should sorrow or that brow a shadow fling? Hours there were to memory, dearer. Long, long ago, days of absence, a life on the ocean wave, a home on the rolling deep, bird at sea, and spread open on the rack where the plaintive singer has left it, row, hold on, silver moon, guide the Traveller, his way, etc. Tilted pensively against the piano, a guitar, guitar capable of playing the Spanish Fandango by itself, if you give it a start, frantic work of art on the wall, pious motto, done on the premises, sometimes in colored yarns, sometimes in faded grasses, progenitor of the God bless our home of modern commerce. Framed in black moldings on the wall, other works of arts, conceived and committed on the premises by the young ladies, being grim, black and white crayons, landscapes mostly, lake, solitary, sailboat, petrified clouds, pre-geological trees on shore, anthracite precipice, name of criminal conspicuous in the corner, lithograph, Napoleon crossing the Alps, lithograph, the grave at St. Helena, steel plates, Trumbull's Battle of Bunker Hill, and a sally from Gibraltar, copper plates, Moses smiting the rock, and return of the prodigal son. In the big gilt frame, slander the family in oil, papa holding a book, Constitution of the United States, guitar leaning against mama, blue ribbons fluttering from its neck, the young ladies as children in slippers and scalloped pantalettes, one embracing toy horse, the other beguiling kitten with ball of yarn, and both simpering up at mama, who simpers back. These persons, all fresh, raw and red, apparently skinned. Opposite, in gilt frame, grandpa and grandma, at thirty and twenty-two, stiff, old-fashioned high-collard puff-sleeved, glaring pallidly out from a background of solid Egyptian night. Under a glass French clock-dome, large bouquet of stiff flowers, done in corpsy white wax, pyramidal whatnot in the corner, the shells occupied chiefly with bric-a-brac of the period, disposed with an eye to best effect. Shell, with the Lord's Prayer carved on it, another shell of the long oval sort, narrow, straight orifice, three inches long, running from end to end, portrait of Washington carved on it, not well done. The shell had Washington's mouth originally, artists should have built to that. These two are memorials of the long ago bridal trip to New Orleans and the French market. Other bric-a-brac, California specimens, quartz with gold wart adhering, old guinea-gold locket with circulative ancestral hair in it, Indian arrowheads of flint, pair of bead moccasins from uncle who crossed the plains, three alum baskets of various colors, being a skeleton frame of wire, clothed on with cubes of crystallized alum in the rock candy style, works of art which were achieved by the young ladies, their doubles and duplicates to be found upon all what-nots in the land, convention of desiccated bugs and butterflies pinned to a card, painted toy dog seated upon bellows attachment, drops its under-jaw and squeaks when pressed upon, sugar candy rabbit, limbs and features merged together not strongly defined, pewter presidential campaign medal, miniature cardboard wood-soyer to be attached to the stove-pipe and operated by the heat, small Napoleon done in wax, spread open daguerra types of dim children, parents, cousins, aunts and friends, in all attitudes but customary ones, no templeed portico at back and manufactured landscapes stretching away in the distance, that came in later, with the photograph, all these vague figures lavishly chained and ringed, metal indicated and secured from doubt by stripes and splashes of vivid gold bronze, all of them too much combed, too much fixed up, and all of them uncomfortable in inflexible Sunday clothes of a pattern which the spectator cannot realize could ever have been in fashion. Husband and wife generally grouped together, husband sitting, wife standing, with hand on his shoulder, and both preserving all these fading years, some traceable effect of the daguerra types brisk, now smile if you please. Bracketed over what-not, place of special sacredness, an outrage in water-color done by the young niece that came on a visit long ago and died, pity too, for she might have repented of this in time. Horse-hair chairs, horse-hair sofa which keeps sliding from under you, window shades of oil-stuff, with milk-maids and ruined castles stenciled on them in fierce colors, lamborchins dependent from gaudy boxings of beaten tin, gilded bedrooms with rag carpets, bedsteads of corded sort with a sag in the middle, the cords needing tightening. Snuffy feather-bed, not aired often enough. Cain-seep chairs, splint-bottomed rocker, looking-glass on wall, school slate size, veneered frame, inherited bureau, wash-bowl and pitcher, possibly, but not certainly. Brass candlestick, tallow candle, snuffers, nothing else in the room, not a bathroom in the house, and no visitor likely to come along who has ever seen one. That was the residence of the principal citizen all the way from the suburbs of New Orleans to the edge of St. Louis. When he stepped aboard a big fine steamboat, he entered a new and marvelous world. Chimney-tops cut to counterfeit a spraying crown of plumes and maybe painted red. Pilot-house, hurricane-deck, boiler-deck guards, all garnished with white wooden filigree work of fanciful patterns. With acorns topping the derecks. Guilt deer-horns over the big bell. Gaudy, symbolical picture on the paddle-box, possibly. Big, roomy boiler-deck painted blue and furnished with Windsor arm-shares. Inside a far-receding snow-white cabin. Porcelain knob and oil picture on every stateroom door. Curving patterns of filigree work touched up with gilding. Stretching overhead all down the converging vista. Big chandeliers every little way. Each an April shower of glittering glass drops. Lovely rainbow light falling everywhere from the colored glazing of the skylights. The whole a long drawn, resplendent tunnel. A bewildering and soul-satisfying spectacle. In the ladies' cabin a pink and white Wilton carpet. A soft as mush and glorified with a ravishing pattern of gigantic flowers. Then the bridal chamber. The animal that invented that idea was still alive and unhanged at that day. Bridal chamber whose pretentious flummery was necessarily over-oing to the now tottering intellect of that Hosanna-ing citizen. Every stateroom had its couple of cozy clean bunks and perhaps a looking-glass and a snug closet. And sometimes there was even a wash-bowl and pitcher and part of a towel, which could be told from mosquito-netting by an expert, though generally these things were absent and the shirt-sleeved passengers cleansed themselves at a long row of stationary bowls in the barbershop where were also public towels, public combs, and public soap. Take the steamboat, which I have just described, and you have her in her highest and finest and most pleasing and comfortable and satisfactory estate. Now cake her over with a layer of ancient and obdurate dirt, and you have the Cincinnati steamer a while ago referred to. Not all over, only inside, for she was ably officer in all departments except the stewards. But wash that boat and repaint her, and she would be about the counterpart of the most complemented boat of the old flush-times. For the steamboat architecture of the West has undergone no change. Neither has steamboat furniture and ornamentation undergone any. Where the river, in the Vicksburg region, used to be corkscrewed, it is now comparatively straight, made so by Cutthorff. A former distance of seventy miles is reduced to thirty-five. It is a change which threw Vicksburg's neighbor, Delta Louisiana, out into the country, and ended its career as a river-town. Its whole river-frontage is now occupied by a vast sand-bar, thickly covered with young trees, a growth which will magnify itself into a dense forest by and by, and completely hide the exiled town. In due time we passed Grand Gulf and Rodney of Warfame, and reached Natchez, the last of the beautiful hill-cities. For Baton Rouge, yet to come, is not on a hill, but only on a high ground. Famous Natchez under the hill has not changed notably in twenty years. In outward aspect, judging by the descriptions of the ancient procession of foreign tourists, it has not changed in sixty, for it is still small, straggling, and shabby. It had a desperate reputation, morally, in the old keel-boating and early steam-boating times, plenty of drinking, carousing, fisticuffing, and killing there, among the riff-raff of the river, in those days. But Natchez on top of the hill is attractive, has always been attractive. Even Mrs. Trollop, eighteen-twenty-seven, had to confess its charms. At one or two points the weary some level line is relieved by bluffs, as they call the short intervals of high ground. The town of Natchez is beautifully situated on one of those high spots. The contrast that its bright green hill forms with a dismal line of black forest that stretches on every side, the abundant growth of the paw-paw, palmetto, and orange, the copious variety of sweet-scented flowers that flourish there, all make it appear like an oasis in the desert. Natchez is the furthest point to the north at which oranges ripen in the open air or endure the winter without shelter. With the exception of this sweet spot I thought all the little towns and villages we passed wretched looking in the extreme. Natchez, like her near and far river neighbors, has railways now, and is adding to them, pushing them hither and thither into all the rich, outlying regions that are naturally tributary to her. And like Vicksburg and New Orleans she has her ice-factory. She makes thirty tons of ice a day. In Vicksburg and Natchez in my time ice was jewelry. None but the rich could wear it. But anybody and everybody can have it now. I visited one of the ice-factories in New Orleans to see what the polar regions might look like when lugged into the edge of the tropics. But there was nothing striking in the aspect of the place. It was merely a spacious house, with some innocent steam machinery in one end of it, and some big porcelain pipes running here and there. No, not porcelain, they merely seemed to be. They were iron. But the ammonia which was being breathed through them had coated them to the thickness of your hand with solid milk-white ice. It ought to have melted, for one did not require winter clothing in that atmosphere, but it did not melt. The inside of the pipe was too cold. Sunk into the floor were numberless tin boxes, a foot square and two feet long, and open at the top end. These were full of clear water, and around each box salt and other proper stuff was packed. Also, the ammonia gases were applied to the water in some way which will always remain a secret to me, because I was not able to understand the process. While the water in the boxes gradually froze, men gave it a stir or two with a stick occasionally, to liberate the air bubbles, I think. Other men were continually lifting out boxes whose contents had become hard-frozen. They gave the box a single dip into a vat of boiling water to melt the block of ice free from its tin coffin. Then they shot the block out upon a platform car, and it was ready for market. These big blocks were hard, solid, and crystal clear. In certain of them big bouquets of fresh and brilliant tropical flowers had been frozen in, in others beautiful silken clad French dolls, and other pretty objects. These blocks were to be set on end in a platter, in the center of dinner tables, to cool the tropical air, and also to be ornamental, for the flowers and things imprisoned in them could be seen as through plate glass. I was told that this factory could retail its ice by wagon throughout New Orleans, in the humblest dwelling-house quantities at six or seven dollars a ton, and make a sufficient profit. This being the case, there is business for ice factories in the North, for we get ice on no such terms there, if one take less than three hundred and fifty pounds at a delivery. The Rosalie Yarn Mill of Natchez has the capacity of six thousand spindles and one hundred and sixty looms, and employs one hundred hands. The Natchez Cotton Mill's company began operations four years ago in a two-story building of fifty by one hundred and ninety feet, with four thousand spindles and one hundred and twenty-eight looms. Capital one hundred and five thousand dollars all subscribed in the town. Two years later the same stockholders increased their capital to two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. Added a third story to the mill, increased its length to three hundred and seventeen feet, added machinery to increase the capacity to ten thousand three hundred spindles and three hundred and four looms. The company now employs two hundred and fifty operatives, many of whom are citizens of Natchez. The mill works five thousand bales of cotton annually and manufactures the best standard quality of brown shirtings and sheetings and drills, turning out five million yards of these goods per year. Footnote. Norlins Times Democrat 26 August 1882. A close corporation, stock held at five thousand dollars per share, but none in the market. The changes in the Mississippi River are great and strange, yet were to be expected, but I was not expecting to live to see Natchez and these other river towns become manufacturing strongholds and railway centers. Speaking of manufactures, reminds me of a talk upon that topic which I heard, which I overheard, on board the Cincinnati boat. I woke out of a fretted sleep with a dull confusion of voices in my ears. I listened to men were talking. Subject, apparently, the great inundation. I looked out through the open transom. The two men were eating a late breakfast, sitting opposite each other, nobody else around. They closed up the inundation with a few words, having used it, evidently, as a mere icebreaker and acquaintanceship breeder. Then they dropped into business. It soon transpired that they were drummers, one belonging in Cincinnati, the other in New Orleans. Brisk men, energetic of movement and speech, the dollar, their god, how to get it, their religion. Now, as to this article, said Cincinnati, slashing into the ostensible butter and holding forward a slab of it on his knife blade. It's from our house. Look at it. Smell of it. Taste it. Put any test on it you want to. Take your own time. No hurry. Make it thorough. There now, what do you say? Butter, ain't it? Not by a thundering sight. It's oleomargerin. Yes, sir, that's what it is, oleomargerin. You can't tell it from butter. But George, an expert, can't. It's from our house. We supply most of the boats in the west. There's hardly a pound of butter on one of them. We are crawling right along, jumping right along, is the word. We are going to have that entire trade, yes, and the hotel trade, too. You are going to see the day, pretty soon, when you can't find an ounce of butter to bless yourself with in any hotel in the Mississippi and Ohio valleys outside of the biggest cities. Why, we are turning out oleomargerin now by the thousands of tons, and we can sell it so dirt-cheap that the whole country has got to take it. Can't get around it, you see? Butter, don't stand any low. There ain't any chance for competition. Butters had its day, and from this out butter goes to the wall. There's more money in oleomargerin than, why, you can't imagine the business we do. I've stopped in every town from Cincinnati to Natchez, and I've sent home big orders from every one of them. And so forth and so on for ten minutes longer in the same fervid strain. Then New Orleans piped up and said, Yes, it's a first-rate imitation. That's a certainty. But it ain't the only one around that's first-rate. For instance, they make olive oil out of cottonseed oil nowadays so that you can't tell them apart. Yes, that's so, responded Cincinnati. And it was a tip-top business for a while. They sent it over and brought it back from France and Italy with the United States Customs House mark on it to endorse it for genuine. And there was no end of cash in it. But France and Italy broke up the game, of course they naturally would. Cracked on such a rattling impulse that cottonseed olive oil couldn't stand the raise. Had to hang it up and quit. Oh, it did, did it? You wait here a minute. Goes to his stateroom, brings back a couple of long bottles, and takes out the corks, says, There now. Smell them. Taste them. Examine the bottles. Inspect the labels. One of them's from Europe. The others never been out of this country. One's European olive oil. The other's American cottonseed olive oil. Tell them apart. Of course you can't. Nobody can. People that want to can go to the expense and trouble of shipping their oils to Europe and back. It's their privilege. But our firm knows a trick worth six of that. We turn out the whole thing. Clean from the word go. In our factory in New Orleans. Labels, bottles, oil, everything. Well, no, not labels. Been buying them abroad. Get them dirt cheap there. You see, there's just one little wee speck, essence or whatever it is, in a gallon of cottonseed oil that give it a smell or a flavor or something. Get that out, and you're all right. Perfectly easy then to turn the oil into any kind of oil you want to, and there ain't anybody that can detect the true from the false. Well, we know how to get that one little particle out, and we're the only firm that does. We turn out an olive oil that is just simply perfect, undetectable. We are doing a ripping trade, too, as I could easily show you by my order book for this trip. Maybe you'll butter everybody's bread pretty soon, but we'll cottonseed his salad for him, from the Gulf to Canada, and that's a dead certain thing. Cincinnati glowed and flashed with admiration. The two scoundrels exchanged business cards and rose. As they left the table, Cincinnati said, But you have to have custom-house marks, don't you? How do you manage that? I did not catch the answer. We passed Port Hudson, scene of two of the most terrific episodes of the war, the night battle there between Fargut's fleet and the Confederate land batteries, April 14, 1863, and the memorable land battle two months later which lasted eight hours, eight hours of exceptionally fierce and stubborn fighting, and ended finally in the repulse of the Union forces with great slaughter.