The same slender figure, the same tight curls, the same springy step,the same alertness, the same decision of eye and answering decisionof hand, the same erect military bearing; not an inch gained or lostin girth, not an ounce gained or lost in weight, not a hair turned.
It is a curious thing, to leave a man thirty-five years old, and comeback at the end of twenty-one years and find him still only thirty-five.
I have not had an experience of this kind before, I believe.
There were some crow's-feet, but they counted for next to nothing,since they were inconspicuous.
His boat was just in. I had been waiting several days for her,purposing to return to St. Louis in her. The captain and Ijoined a party of ladies and gentlemen, guests of Major Wood,and went down the river fifty-four miles, in a swift tug,to ex-Governor Warmouth's sugar plantation. Strung along belowthe city, were a number of decayed, ram-shackly, superannuatedold steamboats, not one of which had I ever seen before.
They had all been built, and worn out, and thrown aside,since I was here last. This gives one a realizing senseof the frailness of a Mississippi boat and the briefnessof its life.
Six miles below town a fat and battered brick chimney, sticking abovethe magnolias and live-oaks, was pointed out as the monument erectedby an appreciative nation to celebrate the battle of New Orleans--Jackson's victory over the British, January 8, 1815. The war had ended,the two nations were at peace, but the news had not yet reached New Orleans.
If we had had the cable telegraph in those days, this blood wouldnot have been spilt, those lives would not have been wasted;and better still, Jackson would probably never have been president.
We have gotten over the harms done us by the war of 1812, but not over someof those done us by Jackson's presidency.
The Warmouth plantation covers a vast deal of ground, and the hospitalityof the Warmouth mansion is graduated to the same large scale.
We saw steam-plows at work, here, for the first time. The traction enginetravels about on its own wheels, till it reaches the required spot;then it stands still and by means of a wire rope pulls the huge plow towarditself two or three hundred yards across the field, between the rows of cane.
The thing cuts down into the black mold a foot and a half deep.
The plow looks like a fore-and-aft brace of a Hudson river steamer, inverted.
When the negro steersman sits on one end of it, that end tilts down nearthe ground, while the other sticks up high in air. This great see-saw goesrolling and pitching like a ship at sea, and it is not every circus riderthat could stay on it.
The plantation contains two thousand six hundred acres;six hundred and fifty are in cane; and there is a fruitfulorange grove of five thousand trees. The cane iscultivated after a modern and intricate scientific fashion,too elaborate and complex for me to attempt to describe;but it lost $40,000 last year. I forget the other details.
However, this year's crop will reach ten or twelve hundredtons of sugar, consequently last year's loss will not matter.
These troublesome and expensive scientific methods achieve a yieldof a ton and a half and from that to two tons, to the acre;which is three or four times what the yield of an acre wasin my time.
The drainage-ditches were everywhere alive withlittle crabs--'fiddlers.' One saw them scampering sidewisein every direction whenever they heard a disturbing noise.
Expensive pests, these crabs; for they bore into the levees,and ruin them.
The great sugar-house was a wilderness of tubs and tanksand vats and filters, pumps, pipes, and machinery.
The process of making sugar is exceedingly interesting.
First, you heave your cane into the centrifugals and grind outthe juice; then run it through the evaporating pan to extractthe fiber; then through the bone-filter to remove the alcohol;then through the clarifying tanks to discharge the molasses;then through the granulating pipe to condense it; then throughthe vacuum pan to extract the vacuum. It is now ready for market.
I have jotted these particulars down from memory.
The thing looks simple and easy. Do not deceive yourself.
To make sugar is really one of the most difficult thingsin the world. And to make it right, is next to impossible.
If you will examine your own supply every now and thenfor a term of years, and tabulate the result, you will findthat not two men in twenty can make sugar without getting sandinto it.
We could have gone down to the mouth of the river and visited Captain Eads'
great work, the 'jetties,' where the river has been compressed between walls,and thus deepened to twenty-six feet; but it was voted useless to go,since at this stage of the water everything would be covered up and invisible.
We could have visited that ancient and singular burg,'Pilot-town,' which stands on stilts in the water--so they say;where nearly all communication is by skiff and canoe, even tothe attending of weddings and funerals; and where the littlestboys and girls are as handy with the oar as unamphibiouschildren are with the velocipede.
We could have done a number of other things; but on account of limited time,we went back home. The sail up the breezy and sparkling river wasa charming experience, and would have been satisfyingly sentimentaland romantic but for the interruptions of the tug's pet parrot,whose tireless comments upon the scenery and the guests were alwaysthis-worldly, and often profane. He had also a superabundanceof the discordant, ear-splitting, metallic laugh common to his breed--a machine-made laugh, a Frankenstein laugh, with the soul left out of it.
He applied it to every sentimental remark, and to every pathetic song.
He cackled it out with hideous energy after 'Home again, home againfrom a foreign shore,' and said he 'wouldn't give a damn for a tug-loadof such rot.' Romance and sentiment cannot long survive this sortof discouragement; so the singing and talking presently ceased; which sodelighted the parrot that he cursed himself hoarse for joy.
Then the male members of the party moved to the forecastle,to smoke and gossip. There were several old steamboatmen along,and I learned from them a great deal of what had beenhappening to my former river friends during my long absence.
I learned that a pilot whom I used to steer for is becomea spiritualist, and for more than fifteen years has beenreceiving a letter every week from a deceased relative,through a New York spiritualist medium named Manchester--postage graduated by distance: from the local post-officein Paradise to New York, five dollars; from New York toSt. Louis, three cents. I remember Mr. Manchester very well.
I called on him once, ten years ago, with a couple of friends,one of whom wished to inquire after a deceased uncle.
This uncle had lost his life in a peculiarly violent andunusual way, half a dozen years before: a cyclone blew himsome three miles and knocked a tree down with him which wasfour feet through at the butt and sixty-five feet high.
He did not survive this triumph. At the ance/>
just referred to, my friend questioned his late uncle,through Mr. Manchester, and the late uncle wrote down his replies,using Mr. Manchester's hand and pencil for that purpose.
The following is a fair example of the questions asked,and also of the sloppy twaddle in the way of answers, furnished byManchester under the pretense that it came from the specter.
If this man is not the paltriest fraud that lives, I owe him anapology--QUESTION. Where are you?
ANSWER. In the spirit world.
Q. Are you happy?
A. Very happy. Perfectly happy.
Q. How do you amuse yourself?
A. Conversation with friends, and other spirits.
Q. What else?
A. Nothing else. Nothing else is necessary.
Q. What do you talk about?
A. About how happy we are; and about friends left behind in the earth,and how to influence them for their good.
Q. When your friends in the earth all get to the spirit land,what shall you have to talk about then?--nothing but abouthow happy you all are?
No reply. It is explained that spirits will not answer frivolous questions.
Q. How is it that spirits that are content to spend an eternityin frivolous employments, and accept it as happiness,are so fastidious about frivolous questions upon the subject?
No reply.
Q. Would you like to come back?
A. No.
Q. Would you say that under oath?
A. Yes.
Q. What do you eat there?
A. We do not eat.
Q. What do you drink?
A. We do not drink.
Q. What do you smoke?
A. We do not smoke.
Q. What do you read?
A. We do not read.
Q. Do all the good people go to your place?
A. Yes.
Q. You know my present way of life. Can you suggest any additions to it,in the way of crime, that will reasonably insure my going to some other place.
A. No reply.
Q. When did you die?
A. I did not die, I passed away.
Q. Very well, then, when did you pass away? How long have youbeen in the spirit land?
A. We have no measurements of time here.
Q. Though you may be indifferent and uncertain as to datesand times in your present condition and environment,this has nothing to do with your former condition.
You had dates then. One of these is what I ask for.
You departed on a certain day in a certain year.
Is not this true?
A. Yes.
Q. Then name the day of the month.
(Much fumbling with pencil, on the part of the medium, accompanied byviolent spasmodic jerkings of his head and body, for some little time.
Finally, explanation to the effect that spirits often forget dates,such things being without importance to them.)Q. Then this one has actually forgotten the date of its translationto the spirit land?
This was granted to be the case.
Q. This is very curious. Well, then, what year was it?
(More fumbling, jerking, idiotic spasms, on the part of the medium.
Finally, explanation to the effect that the spirit has forgotten the year.)Q. This is indeed stupendous. Let me put one more question,one last question, to you, before we part to meet no more;--for even if I fail to avoid your asylum, a meeting there will gofor nothing as a meeting, since by that time you will easilyhave forgotten me and my name: did you die a natural death,or were you cut off by a catastrophe?
A. (After long hesitation and many throes and spasms.) NATURAL DEATH.
This ended the interview. My friend told the medium that when his relativewas in this poor world, he was endowed with an extraordinary intellectand an absolutely defectless memory, and it seemed a great pity that he hadnot been allowed to keep some shred of these for his amusement in the realmsof everlasting contentment, and for the amazement and admiration of the restof the population there.
This man had plenty of clients--has plenty yet. He receivesletters from spirits located in every part of the spirit world,and delivers them all over this country through the United States mail.
These letters are filled with advice--advice from 'spirits' who don'tknow as much as a tadpole--and this advice is religiously followedby the receivers. One of these clients was a man whom the spirits(if one may thus plurally describe the ingenious Manchester)were teaching how to contrive an improved railway car-wheel. Itis coarse employment for a spirit, but it is higher and wholesomeractivity than talking for ever about 'how happy we are.'
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