Life On The Mississippi, Complete

M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> Life On The Mississippi, Complete


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 36 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 the world before me--to survey,
in case anybody wanted it done. I had a contract to survey a route 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 countrified 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 grazier 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 with somewhat of
diffidence--

'Triangle, would you mind coming down to my stateroom 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 warily, then closed the door and locked it. He sat
down on the sofa, and he said--

'I'm a-going to make a little proposition to you, and if it strikes
you favorable, it'll be a middling good thing for both of us. You ain't
a-going out to Californy for fun, nuther 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 it again and relocked the trunk. Dropping his voice to a
cautious low tone, he continued, 'She's all there--a round 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 Californy. 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 'em over to me, I stock 'em 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.
Backus.'

It was pitiful to see his confusion and hear his awkward and shamefaced
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 beeves aboard in slings. Backus's
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 'em handled
like that?--wouldn't they, though?'

All the passengers were on deck to look--even the gamblers--and Backus
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; then the third. I halted; waited; watched; the conversation
continued between the four men; it grew earnest; Backus drew gradually
away; the gamblers followed, and kept at his elbow. I was uncomfortable.
However, as they passed me presently, I heard Backus 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 a dozen times before, I warn't raised to it, and I ain't a-going to
resk 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 Backus, 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 laws-a-me, if my folks have
told me once to look out for that sort of live-stock, they've told me a
thousand times, I reckon.'

By-and-bye, 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. Toward ten I started below. A figure issued
from the gamblers' den, and disappeared in the darkness. I experienced
a shock, for I was sure it was Backus. 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
bodings. 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 had got a taste of it he almost believed he would drink it
if it was spirits, it was so good and so ahead of anything he had ever
run across before. Surreptitious smiles, at this, passed from one rascal
to another, and they filled all the glasses, and whilst Backus 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 always I saw Backus
drinking his wine--fairly and squarely, and the others throwing theirs
away. It was the painfullest 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. At last we went booming through the Golden Gate, and my
pulses leaped for joy. I hurried back to that door and glanced in. Alas,
there was small room for hope--Backus'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 Backus.

One villain--named Hank Wiley--discarded one card, the others three
each. The betting began. Heretofore the bets had been trifling--a dollar
or two; but Backus 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.

Backus 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 Backus, with drunken gravity.

'What! you mean to say you're going to cover it?'

'Cover it? Well, I reckon I am--and 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 your raise, and raise it five
hundred!' said Wiley.

'Five hundred better.' said the foolish bull-driver, and pulled out the
amount and showered it on the pile. The three conspirators hardly tried
to conceal their exultation.

All diplomacy and pretense were dropped now, and the sharp exclamations
came thick and fast, and 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 Backus, heaving his golden shot-bag on the pile.
'What have you got?'

'Four kings, you d--d fool!' and Wiley threw down his cards and
surrounded the stakes with his arms.

'Four ACES, you ass!' thundered Backus, 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, rumbledy-dum-dum! and the long trip was ended.

Well--well, it is a sad world. One of the three gamblers was Backus's
'pal.' It was he that dealt the fateful hands. According to an
understanding with the two victims, he was to have given Backus four
queens, but alas, he didn't.

A week later, I stumbled upon Backus--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 what 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, Aug. 7.--A despatch from Hickman, Ky., says--

'The steamer "Gold Dust" exploded her boilers at three o'clock to-day,
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 Holcomb's dry-goods 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 companionable and manly man,
and worthy of a kindlier fate.




Chapter 38 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 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's 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, 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 populations 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 door
knob--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; ingrain 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 die-away mezzotints; also, Ossian; '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,' etc.; current
number of the chaste and innocuous Godey's 'Lady's 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 air-tight stove (new and deadly invention), with pipe passing
through a board which closes up the discarded good old fireplace. On
each end of the wooden mantel, 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 mantel, engraving--Washington Crossing the Delaware; on the
wall by the door, copy of it done in thunder-and-lightning crewels 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 near by: Battle of Prague;
Bird Waltz; Arkansas Traveler; Rosin the Bow; Marseilles 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 o'er
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, RO-holl on, silver MOO-hoon, guide the TRAV-el-lerr
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 sail-boat, 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 the Sally from Gibraltar. Copper-plates, Moses Smiting
the Rock, and Return of the Prodigal Son. In big gilt frame, slander
of the family in oil: papa holding a book ('Constitution of the United
States'); guitar leaning against mamma, blue ribbons fluttering from
its neck; the young ladies, as children, in slippers and scalloped
pantelettes, one embracing toy horse, the other beguiling kitten with
ball of yarn, and both simpering up at mamma, 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-collared, 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
what-not in the corner, the shelves 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--artist 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: Californian 'specimens'--quartz, with gold
wart adhering; old Guinea-gold locket, with circlet of ancestral hair in
it; Indian arrow-heads, of flint; pair of bead moccasins, from uncle
who crossed the Plains; three 'alum' baskets of various colors--being
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 card-board wood-sawyer, to be
attached to the stove-pipe and operated by the heat; small Napoleon,
done in wax; spread-open daguerreotypes of dim children, parents,
cousins, aunts, and friends, in all attitudes but customary ones; no
templed portico at back, and manufactured landscape 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
daguerreotypist's 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. Lambrequins dependent from gaudy boxings of beaten tin,
gilded. Bedrooms with rag carpets; bedsteads of the 'corded' sort,
with a sag in the middle, the cords needing tightening; snuffy
feather-bed--not aired often enough; cane-seat 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; gilt acorns topping the
derricks; gilt deer-horns over the big bell; gaudy symbolical picture
on the paddle-box, possibly; big roomy boiler-deck, painted blue, and
furnished with Windsor armchairs; 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, as 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 overawing to the now tottering intellect of
that hosannahing citizen. Every state-room had its couple of cozy clean
bunks, and perhaps a looking-glass and a snug closet; and sometimes
there was even a washbowl 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 barber shop, where were also
public towels, public combs, and public soap.