I had hoped to hunt up and talk with a hundred steamboatmen,but got so pleasantly involved in the social life of the town that Igot nothing more than mere five-minute talks with a couple of dozenof the craft.
I was on the bench of the pilot-house when we backed out and'straightened up' for the start--the boat pausing for a 'good ready,'
in the old-fashioned way, and the black smoke piling out of the chimneysequally in the old-fashioned way. Then we began to gather momentum,and presently were fairly under way and booming along.
It was all as natural and familiar--and so were the shoreward sights--as if there had been no break in my river life. There was a 'cub,'
and I judged that he would take the wheel now; and he did.
Captain Bixby stepped into the pilot-house. Presently the cubclosed up on the rank of steamships. He made me nervous,for he allowed too much water to show between our boat and the ships.
I knew quite well what was going to happen, because I could dateback in my own life and inspect the record. The captain looked on,during a silent half-minute, then took the wheel himself,and crowded the boat in, till she went scraping along withina band-breadth of the ships. It was exactly the favor which he haddone me, about a quarter of a century before, in that same spot,the first time I ever steamed out of the port of New Orleans.
It was a very great and sincere pleasure to me to see the thing repeated--with somebody else as victim.
We made Natchez (three hundred miles) in twenty-two hours and a half--much the swiftest passage I have ever made over that piece of water.
The next morning I came on with the four o'clock watch, and saw Ritchiesuccessfully run half a dozen crossings in a fog, using for hisguidance the marked chart devised and patented by Bixby and himself.
This sufficiently evidenced the great value of the chart.
By and by, when the fog began to clear off, I noticed that the reflectionof a tree in the smooth water of an overflowed bank, six hundredyards away, was stronger and blacker than the ghostly tree itself.
The faint spectral trees, dimly glimpsed through the shredding fog,were very pretty things to see.
We had a heavy thunder-storm at Natchez, another at Vicksburg,and still another about fifty miles below Memphis. They hadan old-fashioned energy which had long been unfamiliar to me.
This third storm was accompanied by a raging wind. We tied up to the bankwhen we saw the tempest coming, and everybody left the pilot-house but me.
The wind bent the young trees down, exposing the pale undersideof the leaves; and gust after gust followed, in quick succession,thrashing the branches violently up and down, and to this side and that,and creating swift waves of alternating green and white accordingto the side of the leaf that was exposed, and these waves racedafter each other as do their kind over a wind-tossed field of oats.
No color that was visible anywhere was quite natural--all tintswere charged with a leaden tinge from the solid cloud-bank overhead.
The river was leaden; all distances the same; and even the far-reachingranks of combing white-caps were dully shaded by the dark,rich atmosphere through which their swarming legions marched.
The thunder-peals were constant and deafening; explosion followed explosionwith but inconsequential intervals between, and the reports grew steadilysharper and higher-keyed, and more trying to the ear; the lightningwas as diligent as the thunder, and produced effects which enchantedthe eye and sent electric ecstasies of mixed delight and apprehensionshivering along every nerve in the body in unintermittent procession.
The rain poured down in amazing volume; the ear-splitting thunder-pealsbroke nearer and nearer; the wind increased in fury and began to wrenchoff boughs and tree-tops and send them sailing away through space;the pilot-house fell to rocking and straining and cracking and surging,and I went down in the hold to see what time it was.
People boast a good deal about Alpine thunderstorms;but the storms which I have had the luck to see in the Alps were notthe equals of some which I have seen in the Mississippi Valley.
I may not have seen the Alps do their best, of course,and if they can beat the Mississippi, I don't wish to.
On this up trip I saw a little towhead (infant island) half amile long, which had been formed during the past nineteen years.
Since there was so much time to spare that nineteen yearsof it could be devoted to the construction of a mere towhead,where was the use, originally, in rushing this whole globe throughin six days? It is likely that if more time had been taken,in the first place, the world would have been made right, and thisceaseless improving and repairing would not be necessary now.
But if you hurry a world or a house, you are nearly sure to findout by and by that you have left out a towhead, or a broom-closet,or some other little convenience, here and there, which hasgot to be supplied, no matter how much expense and vexationit may cost.
We had a succession of black nights, going up the river, and it was observablethat whenever we landed, and suddenly inundated the trees with the intensesunburst of the electric light, a certain curious effect was always produced:
hundreds of birds flocked instantly out from the masses of shininggreen foliage, and went careering hither and thither through the white rays,and often a song-bird tuned up and fell to singing. We judged thatthey mistook this superb artificial day for the genuine article.
We had a delightful trip in that thoroughly well-ordered steamer,and regretted that it was accomplished so speedily. By means of diligenceand activity, we managed to hunt out nearly all the old friends.
One was missing, however; he went to his reward, whatever it was,two years ago. But I found out all about him. His case helped meto realize how lasting can be the effect of a very trifling occurrence.
When he was an apprentice-blacksmith in our village, and I a schoolboy,a couple of young Englishmen came to the town and sojourned a while;and one day they got themselves up in cheap royal finery and didthe Richard III swordfight with maniac energy and prodigious powwow,in the presence of the village boys. This blacksmith cub was there,and the histrionic poison entered his bones. This vast, lumbering, ignorant,dull-witted lout was stage-struck, and irrecoverably. He disappeared,and presently turned up in St. Louis. I ran across him there, by and by.
He was standing musing on a street corner, with his left hand on his hip,the thumb of his right supporting his chin, face bowed and frowning,slouch hat pulled down over his forehead--imagining himself to be Othelloor some such character, and imagining that the passing crowd marked histragic bearing and were awestruck.
I joined him, and tried to get him down out of the clouds,but did not succeed. However, he casually informed me, presently,that he was a member of the Walnut Street theater company--and he tried to say it with indifference, but the indifferencewas thin, and a mighty exultation showed through it.
He said he was cast for a part in Julius Caesar, for that night,and if I should come I would see him. IF I should come!
I said I wouldn't miss it if I were dead.
I went away stupefied with astonishment, and saying to myself,'How strange it is! WE always thought this fellow a fool;yet the moment he comes to a great city, where intelligenceand appreciation abound, the talent concealed in this shabbynapkin is at once discovered, and promptly welcomed and honored.'
But I came away from the theater that night disappointed and offended;for I had had no glimpse of my hero, and his name was not in the bills.
I met him on the street the next morning, and before I could speak, he asked--'Did you see me?'
'No, you weren't there.'
He looked surprised and disappointed. He said--'Yes, I was. Indeed I was. I was a Roman soldier.'
'Which one?'
'Why didn't you see them Roman soldiers that stood back there in a rank,and sometimes marched in procession around the stage?'
'Do you mean the Roman army?--those six sandaled roustaboutsin nightshirts, with tin shields and helmets, that marched aroundtreading on each other's heels, in charge of a spider-leggedconsumptive dressed like themselves? '
'That's it! that's it! I was one of them Roman soldiers.
I was the next to the last one. A half a year ago I used to alwaysbe the last one; but I've been promoted.'
Well, they told me that that poor fellow remained a Roman soldier to the last--a matter of thirty-four years. Sometimes they cast him for a 'speaking part,'
but not an elaborate one. He could be trusted to go and say, 'My lord,the carriage waits,' but if they ventured to add a sentence or two to this,his memory felt the strain and he was likely to miss fire. Yet, poor devil,he had been patiently studying the part of Hamlet for more than thirty years,and he lived and died in the belief that some day he would be invitedto play it!
And this is what came of that fleeting visit of those youngEnglishmen to our village such ages and ages ago! What noblehorseshoes this man might have made, but for those Englishmen;and what an inadequate Roman soldier he DID make!
A day or two after we reached St. Louis, I was walking along FourthStreet when a grizzly-headed man gave a sort of start as he passed me,then stopped, came back, inspected me narrowly, with a clouding brow,and finally said with deep asperity--'Look here, HAVE YOU GOT THAT DRINK YET?'
A maniac, I judged, at first. But all in a flash I recognized him.
I made an effort to blush that strained every muscle in me,and answered as sweetly and winningly as ever I knew how--'Been a little slow, but am just this minute closing in on the placewhere they keep it. Come in and help.'
He softened, and said make it a bottle of champagne and he was agreeable.
He said he had seen my name in the papers, and had put all his affairsaside and turned out, resolved to find me or die; and make me answerthat question satisfactorily, or kill me; though the most of his lateasperity had been rather counterfeit than otherwise.
This meeting brought back to me the St. Louis riots of aboutthirty years ago. I spent a week there, at that time,in a boarding-house, and had this young fellow for a neighboracross the hall. We saw some of the fightings and killings;and by and by we went one night to an armory where twohundred young men had met, upon call, to be armed and goforth against the rioters, under command of a military man.
We drilled till about ten o'clock at night; then news camethat the mob were in great force in the lower end of the town,and were sweeping everything before them. Our column moved at once.
It was a very hot night, and my musket was very heavy.
We marched and marched; and the nearer we approached the seatof war, the hotter I grew and the thirstier I got. I was behindmy friend; so, finally, I asked him to hold my musket while Idropped out and got a drink. Then I branched off and went home.
I was not feeling any solicitude about him of course,because I knew he was so well armed, now, that he could takecare of himself without any trouble. If I had had any doubtsabout that, I would have borrowed another musket for him.
I left the city pretty early the next morning, and if thisgrizzled man had not happened to encounter my name in the papersthe other day in St. Louis, and felt moved to seek me out,I should have carried to my grave a heart-torturing uncertaintyas to whether he ever got out of the riots all right or not.
I ought to have inquired, thirty years ago; I know that.
And I would have inquired, if I had had the muskets; but, in thecircumstances, he seemed better fixed to conduct the investigationsthan I was.
One Monday, near the time of our visit to St. Louis,the 'Globe-Democrat' came out with a couple of pages of Sundaystatistics, whereby it appeared that 119,448 St. Louis peopleattended the morning and evening church services the day before,and 23,102 children attended Sunday-school. Thus 142,550 persons,out of the city's total of 400,000 population, respected the dayreligious-wise. I found these statistics, in a condensed form,in a telegram of the Associated Press, and preserved them.
They made it apparent that St. Louis was in a higher stateof grace than she could have claimed to be in my time.
But now that I canvass the figures narrowly, I suspectthat the telegraph mutilated them. It cannot be that thereare more than 150,000 Catholics in the town; the other 250,000must be classified as Protestants. Out of these 250,000,according to this questionable telegram, only 26,362 attendedchurch and Sunday-school, while out of the 150,000 Catholics,116,188 went to church and Sunday-school.
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |