248
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain Some were handsome creatures, some were not; some were The riders dress in full jockey costumes of bright-colored sleek, some hadn’t had their fur brushed lately; some were silks, satins, and velvets.
innocently gay and frisky; some were full of malice and all The thirteen mules got away in a body, after a couple of unrighteousness; guessing from looks, some of them thought false starts, and scampered off with prodigious spirit. As each the matter on hand was war, some thought it was a lark, the mule and each rider had a distinct opinion of his own as to rest took it for a religious occasion. And each mule acted how the race ought to be run, and which side of the track was according to his convictions. The result was an absence of best in certain circumstances, and how often the track ought harmony well compensated by a conspicuous presence of to be crossed, and when a collision ought to be accomplished, variety—variety of a picturesque and entertaining sort.
and when it ought to be avoided, these twenty-six conflicting All the riders were young gentlemen in fashionable soci-opinions created a most fantastic and picturesque confusion, ety. If the reader has been wondering why it is that the ladies and the resulting spectacle was killingly comical.
of New Orleans attend so humble an orgy as a mule-race, Mile heat; time 2:22. Eight of the thirteen mules distanced.
the thing is explained now. It is a fashion-freak; all connected I had a bet on a mule which would have won if the proces-with it are people of fashion.
sion had been reversed. The second heat was good fun; and It is great fun, and cordially liked. The mule-race is one of so was the ‘consolation race for beaten mules,’ which fol-the marked occasions of the year. It has brought some pretty lowed later; but the first heat was the best in that respect.
fast mules to the front. One of these had to be ruled out, I think that much the most enjoyable of all races is a steam-because he was so fast that he turned the thing into a one-boat race; but, next to that, I prefer the gay and joyous mule-mule contest, and robbed it of one of its best features—vari-rush. Two red-hot steamboats raging along, neck-and-neck, ety. But every now and then somebody disguises him with a straining every nerve—that is to say, every rivet in the boil-new name and a new complexion, and rings him in again.
ers—quaking and shaking and groaning from stem to stern, 249
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain spouting white steam from the pipes, pouring black smoke use; and in their train all manner of giants, dwarfs, monstrosi-from the chimneys, raining down sparks, parting the river ties, and other diverting grotesquerie—a startling and won-into long breaks of hissing foam—this is sport that makes a derful sort of show, as it filed solemnly and silently down the body’s very liver curl with enjoyment. A horse-race is pretty street in the light of its smoking and flickering torches; but it tame and colorless in comparison. Still, a horse-race might is said that in these latter days the spectacle is mightily aug-be well enough, in its way, perhaps, if it were not for the mented, as to cost, splendor, and variety. There is a chief per-tiresome false starts. But then, nobody is ever killed. At least, sonage—’Rex;’ and if I remember rightly, neither this king nobody was ever killed when I was at a horse-race. They nor any of his great following of subordinates is known to any have been crippled, it is true; but this is little to the purpose.
outsider. All these people are gentlemen of position and consequence; and it is a proud thing to belong to the organiza-Chapter 46
tion; so the mystery in which they hide their personality is merely for romance’s sake, and not on account of the police.
Enchantments and En-
Mardi-Gras is of course a relic of the French and Spanish chanters
occupation; but I judge that the religious feature has been pretty well knocked out of it now. Sir Walter has got the THE LARGEST ANNUAL EVENT IN NEW ORLEANS is a something advantage of the gentlemen of the cowl and rosary, and he which we arrived too late to sample—the Mardi-Gras fes-will stay. His medieval business, supplemented by the mon-tivities. I saw the procession of the Mystic Crew of Comus sters and the oddities, and the pleasant creatures from fairy-there, twenty-four years ago—with knights and nobles and land, is finer to look at than the poor fantastic inventions so on, clothed in silken and golden Paris-made and performances of the reveling rabble of the priest’s day, gorgeousnesses, planned and bought for that single night’s and serves quite as well, perhaps, to emphasize the day and 250
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain admonish men that the grace-line between the worldly sea-birth, and also so completely stripped the divinity from roy-son and the holy one is reached.
alty, that whereas crowned heads in Europe were gods be-This Mardi-Gras pageant was the exclusive possession of fore, they are only men, since, and can never be gods again, New Orleans until recently. But now it has spread to Mem-but only figureheads, and answerable for their acts like com-phis and St. Louis and Baltimore. It has probably reached its mon clay. Such benefactions as these compensate the tem-limit. It is a thing which could hardly exist in the practical porary harm which Bonaparte and the Revolution did, and North; would certainly last but a very brief time; as brief a leave the world in debt to them for these great and perma-time as it would last in London. For the soul of it is the nent services to liberty, humanity, and progress.
romantic, not the funny and the grotesque. Take away the Then comes Sir Walter Scott with his enchantments, and romantic mysteries, the kings and knights and big-sounding by his single might checks this wave of progress, and even titles, and Mardi-Gras would die, down there in the South.
turns it back; sets the world in love with dreams and phan-The very feature that keeps it alive in the South—girly-girly toms; with decayed and swinish forms of religion; with de-romance—would kill it in the North or in London. Puck cayed and degraded systems of government; with the and Punch, and the press universal, would fall upon it and sillinesses and emptinesses, sham grandeurs, sham gauds, and make merciless fun of it, and its first exhibition would be sham chivalries of a brainless and worthless long-vanished also its last.
society. He did measureless harm; more real and lasting harm, Against the crimes of the French Revolution and of perhaps, than any other individual that ever wrote. Most of Bonaparte may be set two compensating benefactions: the the world has now outlived good part of these harms, though Revolution broke the chains of the Ancien Regime and of the by no means all of them; but in our South they flourish Church, and made of a nation of abject slaves a nation of pretty forcefully still. Not so forcefully as half a generation freemen; and Bonaparte instituted the setting of merit above ago, perhaps, but still forcefully. There, the genuine and 251
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain wholesome civilization of the nineteenth century is curiously man to say that we never should have had any war but for confused and commingled with the Walter Scott Middle-Sir Walter; and yet something of a plausible argument might, Age sham civilization; and so you have practical, common-perhaps, be made in support of that wild proposition. The sense, progressive ideas, and progressive works; mixed up Southerner of the American Revolution owned slaves; so did with the duel, the inflated speech, and the jejune romanti-the Southerner of the Civil War: but the former resembles cism of an absurd past that is dead, and out of charity ought the latter as an Englishman resembles a Frenchman. The to be buried. But for the Sir Walter disease, the character of change of character can be traced rather more easily to Sir the Southerner—or Southron, according to Sir Walter’s Walter’s influence than to that of any other thing or person.
starchier way of phrasing it—would be wholly modern, in One may observe, by one or two signs, how deeply that place of modern and medieval mixed, and the South would influence penetrated, and how strongly it holds. If one take be fully a generation further advanced than it is. It was Sir up a Northern or Southern literary periodical of forty or fifty Walter that made every gentleman in the South a Major or a years ago, he will find it filled with wordy, windy, flowery Colonel, or a General or a Judge, before the war; and it was
“eloquence,” romanticism, sentimentality—all imitated from he, also, that made these gentlemen value these bogus deco-Sir Walter, and sufficiently badly done, too—innocent traves-rations. For it was he that created rank and caste down there, ties of his style and methods, in fact. This sort of literature and also reverence for rank and caste, and pride and pleasure being the fashion in both sections of the country, there was in them. Enough is laid on slavery, without fathering upon opportunity for the fairest competition; and as a consequence, it these creations and contributions of Sir Walter.
the South was able to show as many well-known literary names, Sir Walter had so large a hand in making Southern charac-proportioned to population, as the North could.
ter, as it existed before the war, that he is in great measure But a change has come, and there is no opportunity now responsible for the war. It seems a little harsh toward a dead for a fair competition between North and South. For the 252
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain North has thrown out that old inflated style, whereas the concerned, the good work done by Cervantes is pretty nearly Southern writer still clings to it—clings to it and has a re-a dead letter, so effectually has Scott’s pernicious work un-stricted market for his wares, as a consequence. There is as dermined it.
much literary talent in the South, now, as ever there was, of course; but its work can gain but slight currency under present Chapter 47
conditions; the authors write for the past, not the present; they use obsolete forms, and a dead language. But when a Uncle Remus and
Southerner of genius writes modern English, his book goes Mr. Cable
upon crutches no longer, but upon wings; and they carry it swiftly all about America and England, and through the great MR. JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS (“Uncle Remus”) was to arrive English reprint publishing houses of Germany—as witness from Atlanta at seven o’clock Sunday morning; so we got up the experience of Mr. Cable and Uncle Remus, two of the and received him. We were able to detect him among the very few Southern authors who do not write in the South-crowd of arrivals at the hotel-counter by his correspondence ern style. Instead of three or four widely-known literary with a description of him which had been furnished us from names, the South ought to have a dozen or two—and will a trustworthy source. He was said to be undersized, red-haired, have them when Sir Walter’s time is out.
and somewhat freckled. He was the only man in the party A curious exemplification of the power of a single book whose outside tallied with this bill of particulars. He was said for good or harm is shown in the effects wrought by ‘Don to be very shy. He is a shy man. Of this there is no doubt. It Quixote’ and those wrought by “Ivanhoe.” The first swept may not show on the surface, but the shyness is there. After the world’s admiration for the medieval chivalry-silliness out days of intimacy one wonders to see that it is still in about as of existence; and the other restored it. As far as our South is strong force as ever. There is a fine and beautiful nature hid-253
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain den behind it, as all know who have read the Uncle Remus only master the country has produced. Mr. Cable is the only book; and a fine genius, too, as all know by the same sign. I master in the writing of French dialects that the country has seem to be talking quite freely about this neighbor; but in produced; and he reads them in perfection. It was a great talking to the public I am but talking to his personal friends, treat to hear him read about Jean-ah Poquelin, and about and these things are permissible among friends.
Innerarity and his famous ‘pigshoo’ representing ‘Louisihanna He deeply disappointed a number of children who had RIF-fusing to Hanter the Union,’ along with passages of flocked eagerly to Mr. Cable’s house to get a glimpse of the nicely-shaded German dialect from a novel which was still illustrious sage and oracle of the nation’s nurseries. They in manuscript.
said—
It came out in conversation, that in two different instances
“Why, he ‘s white!”
Mr. Cable got into grotesque trouble by using, in his books, They were grieved about it. So, to console them, the book next-to-impossible French names which nevertheless hap-was brought, that they might hear Uncle Remus’s Tar-Baby pened to be borne by living and sensitive citizens of New story from the lips of Uncle Remus himself—or what, in Orleans. His names were either inventions or were borrowed their outraged eyes, was left of him. But it turned out that from the ancient and obsolete past, I do not now remember he had never read aloud to people, and was too shy to ven-which; but at any rate living bearers of them turned up, and ture the attempt now. Mr. Cable and I read from books of were a good deal hurt at having attention directed to them-ours, to show him what an easy trick it was; but his immor-selves and their affairs in so excessively public a manner.
tal shyness was proof against even this sagacious strategy, so Mr. Warner and I had an experience of the same sort when we had to read about Brer Rabbit ourselves.
we wrote the book called “The Gilded Age.” There is a char-Mr. Harris ought to be able to read the negro dialect bet-acter in it called “Sellers.” I do not remember what his first ter than anybody else, for in the matter of writing it he is the name was, in the beginning; but anyway, Mr. Warner did 254
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain not like it, and wanted it improved. He asked me if I was Chapter 48
able to imagine a person named “Eschol Sellers.” Of course I said I could not, without stimulants. He said that away out Sugar and Postage
West, once, he had met, and contemplated, and actually shaken hands with a man bearing that impossible name—
ONE DAY, ON THE STREET, I encountered the man whom, of
“Eschol Sellers.” He added—
all men, I most wished to see—Horace Bixby; formerly pilot
“It was twenty years ago; his name has probably carried him under me—or rather, over me—now captain of the great off before this; and if it hasn’t, he will never see the book steamer “City of Baton Rouge,” the latest and swiftest addi-anyhow. We will confiscate his name. The name you are using tion to the Anchor Line. The same slender figure, the same is common, and therefore dangerous; there are probably a tight curls, the same springy step, the same alertness, the thousand Sellerses bearing it, and the whole horde will come same decision of eye and answering decision of hand, the after us; but Eschol Sellers is a safe name—it is a rock.” same erect military bearing; not an inch gained or lost in So we borrowed that name; and when the book had been girth, not an ounce gained or lost in weight, not a hair turned.
out about a week, one of the stateliest and handsomest and It is a curious thing, to leave a man thirty-five years old, and most aristocratic looking white men that ever lived, called come back at the end of twenty-one years and find him still around, with the most formidable libel suit in his pocket only thirty-five. I have not had an experience of this kind that ever—well, in brief, we got his permission to suppress before, I believe. There were some crow’s-feet, but they an edition of ten million* copies of the book and change counted for next to nothing, since they were inconspicuous.
that name to “Mulberry Sellers” in future editions.
His boat was just in. I had been waiting several days for her, purposing to return to St. Louis in her. The captain and I joined a party of ladies and gentlemen, guests of Major Wood,
*Figures taken from memory, and probably incorrect. Think it was more.
255
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain and went down the river fifty-four miles, in a swift tug, to ex-to the same large scale. We saw steam-plows at work, here, Governor Warmouth’s sugar plantation. Strung along below for the first time. The traction engine travels about on its the city, were a number of decayed, ram-shackly, superannu-own wheels, till it reaches the required spot; then it stands ated old steamboats, not one of which had I ever seen before.
still and by means of a wire rope pulls the huge plow toward They had all been built, and worn out, and thrown aside, itself two or three hundred yards across the field, between since I was here last. This gives one a realizing sense of the the rows of cane. The thing cuts down into the black mold a frailness of a Mississippi boat and the briefness of its life.
foot and a half deep. The plow looks like a fore-and-aft brace Six miles below town a fat and battered brick chimney, of a Hudson river steamer, inverted. When the negro steers-sticking above the magnolias and live-oaks, was pointed out man sits on one end of it, that end tilts down near the ground, as the monument erected by an appreciative nation to cel-while the other sticks up high in air. This great see-saw goes ebrate the battle of New Orleans—Jackson’s victory over the rolling and pitching like a ship at sea, and it is not every British, January 8, 1815. The war had ended, the two na-circus rider that could stay on it.
tions were at peace, but the news had not yet reached New The plantation contains two thousand six hundred acres; Orleans. If we had had the cable telegraph in those days, this six hundred and fifty are in cane; and there is a fruitful or-blood would not have been spilt, those lives would not have ange grove of five thousand trees. The cane is cultivated af-been wasted; and better still, Jackson would probably never ter a modern and intricate scientific fashion, too elaborate have been president. We have gotten over the harms done us and complex for me to attempt to describe; but it lost $40,000
by the war of 1812, but not over some of those done us by last year. I forget the other details. However, this year’s crop Jackson’s presidency.
will reach ten or twelve hundred tons of sugar, consequently The Warmouth plantation covers a vast deal of ground, last year’s loss will not matter. These troublesome and exand the hospitality of the Warmouth mansion is graduated pensive scientific methods achieve a yield of a ton and a half 256
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain and from that to two tons, to the acre; which is three or four term of years, and tabulate the result, you will find that not times what the yield of an acre was in my time.
two men in twenty can make sugar without getting sand The drainage-ditches were everywhere alive with little into it.
crabs— “fiddlers.” One saw them scampering sidewise in We could have gone down to the mouth of the river and every direction whenever they heard a disturbing noise. Ex-visited Captain Eads’ great work, the “jetties,” where the pensive pests, these crabs; for they bore into the levees, and river has been compressed between walls, and thus deep-ruin them.
ened to twenty-six feet; but it was voted useless to go, since The great sugar-house was a wilderness of tubs and tanks at this stage of the water everything would be covered up and vats and filters, pumps, pipes, and machinery. The pro-and invisible.
cess of making sugar is exceedingly interesting. First, you We could have visited that ancient and singular burg, “Pi-heave your cane into the centrifugals and grind out the juice; lot-town,” which stands on stilts in the water—so they say; then run it through the evaporating pan to extract the fiber; where nearly all communication is by skiff and canoe, even then through the bone-filter to remove the alcohol; then to the attending of weddings and funerals; and where the through the clarifying tanks to discharge the molasses; then littlest boys and girls are as handy with the oar as through the granulating pipe to condense it; then through unamphibious children are with the velocipede.
the vacuum pan to extract the vacuum. It is now ready for We could have done a number of other things; but on market. I have jotted these particulars down from memory.
account of limited time, we went back home. The sail up The thing looks simple and easy. Do not deceive yourself.
the breezy and sparkling river was a charming experience, To make sugar is really one of the most difficult things in and would have been satisfyingly sentimental and romantic the world. And to make it right, is next to impossible. If you but for the interruptions of the tug’s pet parrot, whose tire-will examine your own supply every now and then for a less comments upon the scenery and the guests were always 257
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain this-worldly, and often profane. He had also a superabun-York to St. Louis, three cents. I remember Mr. Manchester dance of the discordant, ear-splitting, metallic laugh com-very well. I called on him once, ten years ago, with a couple mon to his breed—a machine-made laugh, a Frankenstein of friends, one of whom wished to inquire after a deceased laugh, with the soul left out of it. He applied it to every uncle. This uncle had lost his life in a peculiarly violent and sentimental remark, and to every pathetic song. He cackled unusual way, half a dozen years before: a cyclone blew him it out with hideous energy after “Home again, home again some three miles and knocked a tree down with him which from a foreign shore,” and said he “wouldn’t give a damn for was four feet through at the butt and sixty-five feet high. He a tug-load of such rot.” Romance and sentiment cannot long did not survive this triumph. At the séance just referred to, survive this sort of discouragement; so the singing and talk-my friend questioned his late uncle, through Mr. Manches-ing presently ceased; which so delighted the parrot that he ter, and the late uncle wrote down his replies, using Mr.
cursed himself hoarse for joy.
Manchester’s hand and pencil for that purpose. The follow-Then the male members of the party moved to the fore-ing is a fair example of the questions asked, and also of the castle, to smoke and gossip. There were several old sloppy twaddle in the way of answers, furnished by Manches-steamboatmen along, and I learned from them a great deal ter under the pretense that it came from the specter. If this of what had been happening to my former river friends dur-man is not the paltriest fraud that lives, I owe him an apol-ing my long absence. I learned that a pilot whom I used to ogy—
steer for is become a spiritualist, and for more than fifteen QUESTION. Where are you?
years has been receiving a letter every week from a deceased ANSWER. In the spirit world.
relative, through a New York spiritualist medium named Q. Are you happy?
Manchester—postage graduated by distance: from the local A. Very happy. Perfectly happy.
post-office in Paradise to New York, five dollars; from New Q. How do you amuse yourself?
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Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain A. Conversation with friends, and other spirits.
Q. What do you drink?
Q. What else?
A. We do not drink.
A. Nothing else. Nothing else is necessary.
Q. What do you smoke?
Q. What do you talk about?
A. We do not smoke.
A. About how happy we are; and about friends left behind Q. What do you read?
in the earth, and how to influence them for their good.
A. We do not read.
Q. When your friends in the earth all get to the spirit Q. Do all the good people go to your place?
land, what shall you have to talk about then?—nothing but A. Yes.
about how happy you all are?
Q. You know my present way of life. Can you suggest any No reply. It is explained that spirits will not answer frivo-additions to it, in the way of crime, that will reasonably inlous questions.
sure my going to some other place.
Q. How is it that spirits that are content to spend an eterA. No reply.
nity in frivolous employments, and accept it as happiness, Q. When did you die?
are so fastidious about frivolous questions upon the subject?
A. I did not die, I passed away.
No reply.
Q. Very well, then, when did you pass away? How long Q. Would you like to come back?
have you been in the spirit land?
A. No.
A. We have no measurements of time here.
Q. Would you say that under oath?
Q. Though you may be indifferent and uncertain as to A. Yes.
dates and times in your present condition and environment, Q. What do you eat there?
this has nothing to do with your former condition. You had A. We do not eat.
dates then. One of these is what I ask for. You departed on a 259
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain certain day in a certain year. Is not this true?
A. (After long hesitation and many throes and spasms.) A. Yes.
Natural Death.
Q. Then name the day of the month.
This ended the interview. My friend told the medium that (Much fumbling with pencil, on the part of the medium, when his relative was in this poor world, he was endowed accompanied by violent spasmodic jerkings of his head and with an extraordinary intellect and an absolutely defectless body, for some little time. Finally, explanation to the effect memory, and it seemed a great pity that he had not been that spirits often forget dates, such things being without allowed to keep some shred of these for his amusement in importance to them.)
the realms of everlasting contentment, and for the amaze-Q. Then this one has actually forgotten the date of its ment and admiration of the rest of the population there.
translation to the spirit land?
This man had plenty of clients—has plenty yet. He re-This was granted to be the case.
ceives letters from spirits located in every part of the spirit Q. This is very curious. Well, then, what year was it?
world, and delivers them all over this country through the (More fumbling, jerking, idiotic spasms, on the part of United States mail. These letters are filled with advice—ad-the medium. Finally, explanation to the effect that the spirit vice from ‘spirits’ who don’t know as much as a tadpole—
has forgotten the year.)
and this advice is religiously followed by the receivers. One Q. This is indeed stupendous. Let me put one more ques-of these clients was a man whom the spirits (if one may thus tion, one last question, to you, before we part to meet no plurally describe the ingenious Manchester) were teaching more;—for even if I fail to avoid your asylum, a meeting how to contrive an improved railway car-wheel. It is coarse there will go for nothing as a meeting, since by that time you employment for a spirit, but it is higher and wholesomer will easily have forgotten me and my name: did you die a activity than talking for ever about “how happy we are.” natural death, or were you cut off by a catastrophe?
260
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain But I did not learn that any of these pilot-farmers had Chapter 49
astonished anybody with their successes. Their farms do not support them: they support their farms. The pilot-farmer Episodes in Pilot Life
disappears from the river annually, about the breaking of spring, and is seen no more till next frost. Then he appears IN THE COURSE OF THE TUG-BOAT GOSSIP, it came out that out again, in damaged homespun, combs the hayseed out of his of every five of my former friends who had quitted the river, hair, and takes a pilot-house berth for the winter. In this way four had chosen farming as an occupation. Of course this he pays the debts which his farming has achieved during the was not because they were peculiarly gifted, agriculturally, agricultural season. So his river bondage is but half broken; and thus more likely to succeed as farmers than in other he is still the river’s slave the hardest half of the year.
industries: the reason for their choice must be traced to some One of these men bought a farm, but did not retire to it.
other source. Doubtless they chose farming because that life He knew a trick worth two of that. He did not propose to is private and secluded from irruptions of undesirable strang-pauperize his farm by applying his personal ignorance to ers—like the pilot-house hermitage. And doubtless they also working it. No, he put the farm into the hands of an agricul-chose it because on a thousand nights of black storm and tural expert to be worked on shares—out of ever