g 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 passed 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 robbers 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 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 us 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 none suspecting the soldiers but me working patiently by night and my desolated home I made a disguise for myself out of various odds and ends of closing in the nearest village I bought a pair of blue goggles and buy and buy 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 company's garrison there but I gave company C the great block of my attentions I made myself limitlessly obliging to these particular men they could ask me no favor put upon me no risk which I would decline I became the willing but of their jokes this perfected my popularity I became a favorite 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 the 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 intimate 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 hungry 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 French man who had been a prisonkeeper for 30 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 the 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 is 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 always 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 knife 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 hit away the fruit of loot and savory 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 hit 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 of protecting word the sentinel hailed and I answered both at the same moment I added is only me the fortune teller then I slipped to the poor devil side and without a word I drove my dirt into his heart yeah wow 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 15 or 16 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 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 filled 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 suddenly that dead bell rang out and 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 grizzly spectacle it five was toward me I hurried to it and peered into its face heavens it was Adler then you divine what my first thought was put into words it was this it 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 I see your hands are tied they cannot aid 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 there's a late footstep it is coming this way Mark 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 you see you have delayed too long it has 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 a surprise and Tramp 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 you know what happened then the satisfaction in the shrouded face was still a planar 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 stabbed 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 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 tear in 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 threshold and restored to life and vigor by a few spoonfuls 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 afflicted 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 30 now a shoemaker by trade and living at number 14 Konigstrasse 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 Adler's 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 office 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 end of chapter thirty-one 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 thirty-two the disposal of a bonanza such 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 to perhaps ruin him you want 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 and 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 it said I'm 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 few 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 and 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 fire but just you put that temptation before him once just you laid fifteen hundred dollars before a man like that and say fifteen hundred devils cry by five hundred would rot his principles paralyze his industry drag him to the room shop then to the gutter then to the alms house then to why put up on yourself this crime gentlemen interrupted the poet earnestly 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 the 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 goodbye captain I wish to go ashore at Napoleon go ashore where Napoleon the captain laughed at seeing that I was not in a jovial mood stopped that and said but are you serious serious I certainly am captain glanced up at the pilot house and said he wants to get off at Napoleon Napoleon that's what he says Chris Caesar's ghost Uncle Mumford approached along the deck the captain said uncle here's a friend of yours wants to get off in Napoleon well bye I said come what is all this about can't a man go ashore Napoleon if he wants to why hang it don't you know there isn't any Napoleon anymore hasn't been for years and years the Arkansas River burst through it tore it all to rags and emptied it into Mississippi carried the whole town away banks churches jails newspaper offices courthouse theater fire department livery stable everything everything just a 15 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 listened to 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 unpeopleed 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 and gone to feed the fishes nothing left but a fragment of a shanty and a crumbling brick chimney end of chapter thirty two 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 thirty three refreshments and ethics in regard to island seventy four 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 seventy four belonged to Arkansas by and by a cutoff 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 ninety two 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 is 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 cabins 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 that filters 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 is 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 holes from 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 Chico 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 laborers with provisions and necessaries at a trifling profit say eight or ten percent furnish 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 unburdened some rate of interest six percent is spoken of the trouble here before has been and quoting remarks of planters and steamboatmen but 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 10 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 dealers share of that crop is about 25 percent footnote but what can the state do where the people are under subjection to rates of interest ranging from 18 to 30 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 100 percent profit Edward Atkinson a cotton planters estimate of the average margin of profit on planting in his section one man and mule will raise 10 acres of cotton giving 10 bales of cotton worth say 500 dollars cost of production say 350 net profit 150 or 15 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 1600 pounds crude cotton 400 our lint worth say 10 cents a pound and 1200 pounds of seed worth 12 or 13 dollars per ton maybe in future even the stems will not be thrown away Mr Edward Atkinson says that for each bale of cotton there are 1500 pounds of stems 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 before the stems have been considered a nuisance complaint is made that the planter remains grouty toward the former slave since the war will 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 share of the growing crop and at the end of the season the Negro share belongs to the Israelite the Negro is in debt the sides 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 for a steamboat it is hoped that Calhoun company will show by its humane and protective treatment of its laborers and 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 they are say shall not the barkeeper testify he is thoughtful observant never drinks endeavors to earn his salary and would earn it if there were custom enough he says that 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 stenographers 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 off 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 eight thighs enough to it that you put up a pint of all kinds of worthless rubbish and he wins some red stuff to make it beautiful reds 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 tech 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 a tony as the 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 shirt 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 end of chapter 33 this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer visit libravox.org life on the mississippi by mark twain chapter 34 tough yarns stack island i remembered stack island also lake providence louisanna which is the first distinctly southern look in town you come to downward bound lies level and low shade trees hung with venerable gray bears of spanish moss restful pensive sunday aspect about the place comments uncle mumford with feeling also with truth uh 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 different 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 him he said that two of them could whip a dog and that four of them could hold a man down and accept 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 detail 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 25 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 customary on to your statements always dress a fact in plates 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 it remained so for months and people came miles to see me fan myself with it end of chapter 34 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 Mississippi by Mark Twain chapter 35 Vicksburg during the trouble we used to plow past the lofty hill city Vicksburg downstream but we cannot do that now a cutoff has made a country town of it like Osceola St. Genevieve and several others there is a currentless water also a big island in front of Vicksburg now you come down the river or the other side of the island and 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 27,000 soldiers 3000 non-combatants the city utterly cut off from the world walled solidly in the frontage by gunboats the rear by soldiers and batteries hence no buying and selling with the outside no passing to and fro no god-speeding a parting 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 steamboat 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 flower $200 a barrel sugar 30 corn $10 a bushel bacon $5 a pound rum $100 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 trap 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 crisscrossing red lines streaming from soaring bombshells and a rain of iron fragments descends upon the city descends upon the empty streets 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 will 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 have 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 colors not surprised 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 forever 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 poison itself away high in the air overhead in that case every fellow just whipped out of sudden see again gents and shoved often and often i saw gangs of ladies promenading the streets looking as cheerful as you please and keeping an eye counted up watching the cells 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 and some towns have a litter of pieces of paper and odds and ends of one sort or another lying around ours happened they had iron litter sometimes a man would gather up all the iron fragments and unversed shells in his neighborhood and file 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 house is vacant looked like eye holes in a skull whole pains were as scarce as news we had church sundays not many they are 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 them and all the more so on account of the awful boom and crash going on outside and overhead and pretty soon when the body could be heard service would go on again organs and church music mixed up with a bombardment is a powerful clear combination long 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 whiskey i was going to say you know and a shell interrupted a chunk of it cut the man's arm off i left it dangling in my hand and 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 means 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 20 or 25 people packed into it no turning room for anybody they're so foul sometimes you couldn't have made a candle burn in it the child was born in one of those caves one night think of that why it was like having it born in a trunk price we had 16 people in our cave and a number of times we had a dozen pretty suffocating in there we always had eight eight belong there younger 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 thought it out at first meal meat no we only got down to that the last day or two of course it was good anything is good when you're starving this man had kept a diary during six weeks no only the first six days the first day eight close 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 and terrific vixberg have now become common place and matter of course the war history of vixberg has more about it to interest the general raider than that of any other of the river towns it is full of variety full of incident full of the picturesque vixberg held out longer than any other important river town and saw warfare in all its phases those land and water the siege the line 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 sixteen thousand six hundred 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 wildwood left just as a crew 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 ruthless tunnels we drove out a mile or two and visited the monument which stands upon the scene of the surrender of vixberg to general grant by general pemberton its metal will preserve it from the hackings and chipping this 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 the picturesque region of wooded hills and ravines and is not on picturesque 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 here and a dog was a standing here the dog he went for the shell quite a pick up the fuss with it but i didn't i says just make yourself at home here they still why is or bust up the place just as he's a mine too but i's got business out in the woods i has vixberg is a town of substantial business streets and pleasant residences it commands the commerce of the yazu and the sunflower rivers is 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 upbuilding henceforth they are acting upon this idea the signs are that the next 20 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 ease 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 steamboating supremacy by a system of orphanage dues so stupidly great it has to prohibit what may be called small retail traffic and freight and passengers boats were charged such heavy warfuge 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 faint pole 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 an 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 inserted in this place merely because it is a good story not because it belongs here or 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 gifted 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 end of chapter thirty five 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 thirty six 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 route for a great mining ditch in california and i was on my way through there 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 or 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 backwards of some western state doubtless ohio and afterward when he dropped into his personal history and i discovered that he was a cattle razor 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 abacus 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 definitely 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 stake 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 wherely 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 favorable it'll be a middle and good thing for both of us you ain't going out to california for fun now they're my 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 and 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 the 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 and you turn them over to me i stock them with cattle in rolls the cash i plank out your share that all is 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. backers 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 hasten to console him and lead him on to forget his mishap in a conversational orgy about cattle and butchery we were lying at a capulco and as we went on deck it happened luckily that the crew were just beginning to hoist some bees aboard in slings back as his 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 passengers were on deck to look even the gamblers and backers knew them all and had afflicted them all with his pet topic as i moved away i saw one of the gamblers approached and across him then another of them and the third i halted waited watched the conversation continued between the four men it grew earnest back as drew gradually away the gamblers followed and kept at his elbow i was uncomfortable however as they passed me presently i heard back a 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 rescue i felt relieved his levelhead will be his sufficient protection i said to myself during the fortnight's run from a capulco to san francisco i several times saw the gamblers talking earnestly with backers 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 of me if my folks have told me once to look out for that sort of livestock they've told me a thousand times i reckon i'm by in due course we were approaching san francisco it was an ugly black knight with a strong wind blowing but there was not much see i was on deck alone toward ten i started below a figure issued from the gamblers then and disappeared in the darkness i experienced a shock for i was sure it was back us 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 it 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 or 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 surreptitious smiles that this passed from one rascal to another and they filled all the glasses and whilst backest honestly dreamed 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 no my uneasy spirit kept dragging me back at quarter-hour intervals and always i saw backest 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 at last we went booming through the golden date and my pulses left for joy i hurried back to that door and glanced in alas there was small room for hope back as his 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 doll eyes lit up for a moment the gamblers observed it and showed the gratification by hardly perceptible signs how many cards none said backest one villain named hank wiley discarded one card the others three each the betting began here to four the bets had been trifling a dollar or two but backest 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 backers went 20 better wiley said i see that and call you a hundred better then smiled and reached for the money let alone said backers 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 some 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 to summon 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 backers leaving his golden shot bag on the pile what have you got four kings you name fool and wiley threw down his cards and surrounded the stakes with his arms four aces you ask thundered backers puzzling 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 dumb dumb and a long trip was ended well well it is a sad world one of the three gamblers was back as his pal it was he that dealt the fateful hands according to an understanding with the two victims he was to have given back as four queens but alas he didn't a week later i stumbled upon back as a raid in the height of fashion in montgomery street he said cheerily as we were departing 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 failed my cattle culture and cattle enthusiasm have served their turn i shan't need them anymore next day we reluctantly parted from the gold dust and her officers hoping to see that boat and all those officers again someday a thing which the fates were to render tragically impossible end of chapter 36 this is a libravox recording all libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer visit libravox.org life on the mississippi by mark twain 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 17 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 47 persons were scalded and 17 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 24 of the injured were lying in holtman'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 17 dead one was the bar keeper and among the 47 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 end of chapter 37 this is a liberfox recording all liberfox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer visit liberfox.org life on the mississippi by mark twain 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 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 overexpress 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 pause or with the matter horn or with some other priceless or a 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 a citizen's dream of what magnificence was and satisfied it every town and village along that vast stretch of double riverfrontage 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 hailing 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 carinthian 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 power 15 feet by 15 in some instances five or 10 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 friendships offering and affections wreath with their sappy inanities illustrated in dioe mesotens also ocean alonzo and melissa maybe ivan hoe also album full of original poetry of the thou hast wounded the spirit that loved the breed two or three goody goody works shepherd of solsbury plain etc current number of the chased 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 engraving washington crossing the Delaware on the wall by the door copy of it done in thunder and lightning pools 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 tattle in disguise with music bound and unbound piled on it and on a stand nearby battle of Prague bird walls arkansas traveler rosin the bow marseille hymn on a lone baron aisle saint 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 ours there were two 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 planter singer has left it row hold on silver moon guide the traveler his way etc tilted pensively against the piano the 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 free geological trees on shore answer site precipice name of criminal conspicuous in the corner lithograph napoleon crossing the alps lithograph the grave at saint helena steel plates trumbles battle of bunker hill and the sally from Gibraltar copper plates moses smiting the rock and return of the prodigal son in the big guilt 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 guilt frame grandpa and grandma at 30 and 22 stiff old-fashioned high-collared puffs sleeved glaring paledly out from a background of solid egyptian night under a glass french clock dome large bouquet of stiff flowers done in porpsy 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 or trip of washington carved on it not well done the shell had washington's mouse originally artists should have built to that these two are memorials of the long ago bridal trip to norlands and the french market other bric-a-brac california specimens quartz with gold wart hearing old guinea gold locket with circlet of 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 scalloped in frame of wire closed 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 underdraw and squeaks when pressed upon sugar candy rabbit limbs and features merged together not strongly defined future presidential campaign metal miniature cardboard 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 temple to 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 ears some traceable effect of the daguerreotypes brisk now smile if you please bracketed over what not place of special sacredness an outrage in watercolor 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 penciled on them in fierce colors lamborghins 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 cane seat chairs splint-bottomed rocker looking glass on wall school slate size veneered frame inherited bureau washbowl 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 norlands to the edge of saint 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 cleans 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 derrick's 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 arm inside a far receding snow white cabin porcelain knob and oil picture on every stateroom door curving patterns of filigree work touched up with building 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 of wildering 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 over owing to the now tottering intellect of that hosannaing citizen every stateroom had its couple of cozy clean bunks and perhaps a looking glass in 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 barber shop 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 take 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 complimented 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 end of chapter thirty eight 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 thirty nine manufacturers and miscreants where the river in the Vicksburg region used to be pork screwed it is now comparatively straight made so by Cutthorne 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 sandbar thickly covered with young trees a growth which will magnify itself into a dense forest by and by and completely hide the exile town in due time we passed Grand Gulf and Rodney of War fame 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 pilling there among the riffraff 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 it's bright green hill forms with a dismal line of black forest that stretches on every side the abundant growth of the Palpa 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 Richard 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 rich outlying regions that are naturally tributary to her and like vixberg and norlands she has her ice factory she makes thirty tons of ice a day in vixberg and Natchez in my time ice was jewelry none but the rich 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 they merely seem 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 where 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 silk and 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 norlands 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 350 pounds at a delivery the rosalie yarn mill of matches has the capacity of 6000 spindles and 160 looms and employs 100 hands the matches cotton mills company began operations four years ago in a two-story building of 50 by 190 feet with 4000 spindles and 128 looms capital 105 thousand dollars all subscribed in the town two years later the same stockholders increase their capital to 225 thousand dollars added a third story to the mill increased its length to 317 feet added machinery to increase the capacity to 10 300 spindles and 304 looms the company now employs 250 operatives many of whom are citizens of matches the mill works 5000 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 norlands times democrat 26 august 1882 a close corporation stock held at 5000 dollars per share at 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 matches and these other river towns become manufacturing strongholds and railway centers speaking of manufacturers reminds me of a talk upon that topic which i heard which i overheard and bore the Cincinnati boat i woke out of a fretted sleep with a dull confusion of voices in my ears i listened two 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 a quaintanship breeder then they dropped into business it soon transpired that they were drummers one belonging in Cincinnati the other in norlands brisk men energetic of movement and speech the dollar their god how to get it their religion now as to this article said Cincinnati flashing 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 site it's olio margarine yes sir that's what it is olio margarine you can't tell it from butter but george an expert plant 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 olio margarine 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 show there ain't any chance for competition butters had its day and from this out butter goes to the wall there is more money in olio margarine than why you can't imagine the business we do i've stopped in every town from Cincinnati to natus and i've sent home big orders from every one of them and so forth and so on for 10 minutes longer in the same fervent strain then norland's 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 cotton seed 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 middley with the united states customs house mark on it to endorse it for genuine and there was no end to cash in it but france and middley broke up the game of course they naturally would cracked on such a rattling impulse that cotton seed 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 state room 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 is from europe the others never been out of this country one's european olive oil the others american cotton seed olive oil tell them apart of course you can't nobody can people that want to 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 the dirt sheet there you see there's just one little wee speck essence or whatever it is in a gallon of cotton seed oil but 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 and we turn out an olive oil that is just simply perfect undetectable we're 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 cotton seed 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 seen of two of the most terrific episodes of the war the night battle there between fargut's fleet and the confederate land batteries April 14th 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 end of chapter 39 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 40 castles and culture baton rouge was closed in flowers like a bride no much more so like a greenhouse for we were in the absolute south now no modifications no compromises no halfway measures the magnolia trees and the capital grounds were lovely and fragrant with their dense rich foliage and huge snowball blossoms the scent of the flower is very sweet but you want distance on it because it is so powerful they are not good bedroom blossoms they might suffocate one in his sleep we were certainly in the south at last for here the sugar region begins and the plantations vast green levels with sugar mill and negro quarters clustered together in the middle distance were in view and there was a tropical sun overhead and a tropical swelter in the air and at this point also begins the pilot's paradise a wide river hence to New Orleans abundance of water from shore to shore and no bars snags soyers or wrecks in his road sir welter scott is probably responsible for the capital building for it is not conceivable that this little sham castle would ever have been built if he had not run the people mad a couple of generations ago with his medieval romances the south has not yet recovered from the debilitating influence of his books admiration of his fantastic heroes and their grotesque chivalry doings and romantic juvenilities still survives here in an atmosphere in which is already perceptible the wholesome and practical 19th century smell of cotton factories and locomotives and traces of its inflated language and other windy humbuggaries survive along with it it is pathetic enough that a white washed castle with turrets and things materials all ungenuine within and without pretending to be what they are not should ever have been built in this otherwise honorable place but it is much more pathetic to see this architectural falsehood undergoing restoration and perpetuation in our day when it would have been so easy to let dynamite finish what a charitable fire began and then develop this restoration money to the building of something genuine baton rouge has no patent on imitation castles however and no monopoly of them here's a picture from the advertisement of the female institute of columbia tennessee the following remark is from the same advertisement the institute building has long been famed as a model of striking and beautiful architecture visitors are charmed with its resemblance to the old castles of song and story with its towers and turreted walls and ivy mantled porches keeping school in a castle is a romantic thing as romantic as keeping hotel in a castle by itself the imitation castle is doubtless harmless and well enough but as a symbol and breeder and sustainer of mortland middle-age romanticism here in the midst of the plainest and sturdiest and infinitely greatest and worthiest of all the centuries the world has seen it is necessarily a hurtful thing and a mistake here's an extract from the prospectus of a kentucky female college female college sounds well enough but since the phrasing it in that unjustifiable way was done purely in the interest of brevity it seems to me that she college would have been still better because shorter that means the same thing that is if i the phrase means anything at all the president is southern by birth by rearing by education and by sentiment the teachers are all southern in sentiment and with the exception of those born in europe were born and raised in the south believing the southern to be the highest type of civilization this continent has seen the young ladies are trained according to the southern ideas of delicacy refinement womanhood religion and propriety hence we offer a first-class female college for the south and solicit southern patronage footnote illustrations of it thoughtlessly omitted by the advertiser noxville tennessee october 19 this morning a few minutes after 10 o'clock general joseph a mabry thomas o'connor and joseph a mabry junior were killed in a shooting affray the difficulty began yesterday afternoon by general mabry attacking major o'connor and threatening to kill him this was at the fairgrounds and o'connor told mabry that it was not the place to settle their difficulties mabry then told o'connor he should not live it seems that mabry was armed and o'connor was not the cause of the difficulty was an old feud about the transfer of some property from mabry to o'connor later in the afternoon mabry sent word to o'connor that he would kill him on site this morning major o'connor was standing in the door of the mechanics national bank of which he was president general mabry and another gentleman walking down gay street on the opposite side from the bank o'connor stepped into the bank got the shotgun took deliberate aim at general mabry and fired mabry fell dead being shot on the left side as he fell o'connor fired again the shot taking effect in mabry's thigh o'connor then reached into the bank and got another shotgun about this time joseph a mabry jr son of general mabry came rushing down the street unseen by o'connor until within 40 feet when the young man fired a pistol the shot taking effect in o'connor's right breast passing through the body near the heart the instant mabry shot o'connor turned and fired the load taking effect in young mabry's right breast inside mabry fell pierced with 20 buck shot and almost instantly o'connor fell dead without a struggle mabry tried to rise but fell back dead the whole tragedy occurred within two minutes and neither of the three spoke after he was shot general mabry had about 30 buck shot in his body a bystander was painfully wounded in the thigh with a buck shot and another was wounded in the arm four other men had their clothing pierced by buck shot the affair caused great excitement and gay street was thronged with thousands of people general mabry and his son joe were acquitted only a few days ago of the murder of moses musby and don musby father and son whom they killed a few weeks ago will mabry was killed by don musby last christmuth major thomas o'connor was president of the mechanic's national bank here and was the wealthiest man in the state associated press telegram one day last month professor sharp of summerville tennessee female college a quiet and gentlemanly man was told that his brother-in-law a captain burton had threatened to kill him burton it seems had already killed one man and driven his knife into another the professor armed himself with a double barrel shotgun started out in search of his brother-in-law found him playing billions in a balloon and blew his brains out the memphis avalanche reports that the professor's course met with pretty general approval in the community knowing that the law was powerless in the actual condition of public sentiment to protect him he protected himself about the same time two young men in north carolina quarreled about a girl and hostile messages were exchanged friends tried to reconcile them but had their labor for their pains on the 24th the young man met in the public highway one of them had a heavy club in his hand the other an ax the man with a club fought desperately for his life but it was a hopeless fight from the first a well-directed blow sent his club whirling out of his grasp and the next moment he was a dead man about the same time two highly connected young virginians clerks in a hardware store at charlottesville while skylarking came to blows Peter dick threw pipper in charles road's eyes roads demanded an apology dick refused to give it and it was agreed that a duel was inevitable but a difficulty arose the parties had no pistols and it was too late at night to procure them one of them suggested that butcher knives would answer the purpose and the other accepted the suggestion the result was that roads fell to the floor with a gash in his abdomen that may or may not prove fatal if dick has been arrested the news has not reached us he expressed deep regret and we are told by a staunton correspondent of the philadelphia press that every effort has been made to hush the matter up extracts from the public journals what water hole the man that can blow so complacent a blast as that probably blows it from a castle from baton rouge to new Orleans the great sugar plantations border both sides of the river all the way and stretch their league wide levels back to the dim forest walls of bearded cypress in the rear shores lonely no longer plenty of dwellings all the way on both banks standing so close together for long distances that the broad river line between the two rows becomes a sort of spacious street a most home-like and happy-looking region and now and then you see a pillar to the portico great matterhouse and bowered in trees here is testimony of one or two of the procession of foreign tourists that filed along here half a century ago mrs trollop says the unbroken flatness of the banks of the mississippi continued unvaried for many miles above new orleans but the graceful and luxuriant palmetto the dark and noble elix and the bright orange were everywhere to be seen and it was many days before we were weary of looking at them captain basil hall the district of country which lies adjacent to the mississippi in the lower parts of louisiana is everywhere thickly peopled by sugar planters whose showy houses gay piazzas trig gardens and numerous slave villages all clean and neat gave an exceedingly thriving air to the river scenery all the procession paint the attractive picture in the same way the descriptions of fifty years ago do not need to have a word changed in order to exactly describe the same region as it appears today except as to the trigness of the houses the white wash is gone from the negro cabins now and many possibly most of the big mansions once so shining white have worn out their paint and have a decayed neglected look it is the blight of the war 21 years ago everything was trimmed and trig and right along the coast just as it had been in 1827 as described by those tourists unfortunate tourists people humbugged them with stupid and silly lies and then laughed at them for believing in printing the same they told mrs trollop that the alligators or crocodiles as she calls them were terrible creatures and backed up the statement with a blood curling account of how one of these slandered reptiles crept into a squatter cabin one night and ate up a woman and five children the woman by herself would have satisfied any ordinarily impossible alligator but no these liars must make him gorge the five children besides one would not imagine that jokers of this robust breed would be sensitive but they were it is difficult at this day to understand and impossible to justify the reception which the book of the grave honest intelligent gentle manly charitable well-meaning capital basil hall dot end of chapter 40 this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer visit libra vox dot org life on the mississippi by mark twain chapter 41 the metropolis of the south the approaches to new orleans were familiar general aspects were unchanged when one goes flying through london along a railway propped in the air on tall arches he may inspect miles of upper bedrooms through the open windows but the lower half of the houses is under his level and out of sight similarly in high river stage in the new orleans region the water is up to the top of the enclosing levy rim the flat country behind it lies low representing the bottom of a dish and as the boat swims along high on the flood one looks down upon the houses and into the upper windows there is nothing but that frail breastwork of earth between the people and destruction the old brick salt warehouses clustered at the upper end of the city looked as they had always looked warehouses which had had a kind of a laden's lamp experience however since i had seen them for when the war broke out the proprietor went to bed one night leaving them packed with thousands of sacks of vulgar salt worth a couple of dollars a sack and got up in the morning and found his mountain of salt turned into a mountain of gold so to speak so suddenly and to so dizzy a height had the war news sent up the price of the article the vast reach of plank warves remained unchanged and there were as many ships as ever but the long array of steamboats had vanished not altogether of course but not much of it was left the city itself had not changed into the eye it had greatly increased in spread and population but the look of the town was not altered the dust waste paper littered was still deep in the streets the deep trough like gutters alongside the curb stones were still half full of reposeful water with a dusty surface the sidewalks were still in the sugar and bacon region encumbered by casks and barrels and hogsheads the great blocks of austerely plain commercial houses were as dusty looking as ever canal street was finer and more attractive and stirring than formerly with its drifting crowds of people its several processions of hurrying street cars and toward evening its broad second story verandas crowded with gentlemen and ladies closed according to the latest mode not that there is any architecture in canal street to speak in broad general terms there is no architecture in orleans except in the cemeteries it seems a strange thing to say of a wealthy far-seeing and energetic city of a quarter of a million habitants but it is true there is a huge granite u.s custom house costly enough genuine enough but as a decoration it is inferior to a decometer it looks like a state prison but it was built before the war architecture in america may be said to have been born since the war norleans i believe has had the good luck and in a sense the bad luck to have had no great fire in late years it must be so if the opposite had been the case i think one would be able to tell the burnt district by the radical improvement in its architecture of the old forms one can do this in boston and chicago the burnt district of boston was commonplace before the fire but now there is no commercial district in any city in the world that can surpass it or perhaps even rival it in beauty elegance and tastefulness however norleans has begun just this moment as one may say when completed the new cotton exchange will be a stately and beautiful building massive and substantial full of architectural graces no shams or false pretenses or uglinesses about it anywhere to the city it will be worth many times its cost or it will breed its species what has been lacking hitherto was a model to build toward something to educate i and taste uh suggestor so to speak the city is well outfitted with progressive men thinking sagacious long-headed men the contrast between the spirit of the city and the city's architecture is like the contrast between waking and sleep apparently there is a boom in everything but that one dead feature the water in the gutters used to be stagnant and slimy and a potent disease breeder but the gutters are flushed now two or three times a day by powerful machinery in many of the gutters the water never stands still but has a steady current other sanitary improvements have been made and with such effect that new orleans claims to be during the long intervals between occasional yellow fever assaults one of the healthiest cities in the union there's plenty of ice now for everybody manufactured in the town it is a driving place commercially and has a great river ocean and railway business at the date of our visit it was the best lighted city in the union electrically speaking the new orleans electric lights were more numerous than those of new york and very much better one had this modified noon day not only in canal and some neighboring chief streets but all along stretch of five miles of river frontage there are good clubs in the city now several of them but recently organized and inviting modern style pleasure resorts at west end and spanish fort the telephone is everywhere one of the most notable advances is in journalism the newspapers as i remember them were not a striking feature now they are money is spent upon them with a free hand they get the news let it cost what it may the editorial work is not hack grinding literature as an example of new orleans journalistic achievement it may be mentioned that the times democrat august 26 1882 contained a report of the year's business of the towns of the mississippi valley from norlands all the way to st paul 2 000 miles that issue of the paper consisted of 40 pages seven columns to the page 280 columns in all 1500 words to the column an aggregate of 420 000 words that is to say not much short of three times as many words as there are in this book one may with sorrow contrast this with the architecture of new orleans i have been speaking of public architecture only the domestic article in new orleans is reproachless notwithstanding it remains as it always was all the dwellings are of wood in the american part of the town i mean and all have a comfortable look those in the wealthy quarter are spacious painted snow white usually and generally have wide verandas or double verandas supported by ornamental columns these mansions stand in the center of large grounds and rise garlanded with roses out of the mists of swelling masses of shining green foliage and many colored blossoms no houses could well be in better harmony with their surroundings or more pleasing to the eye or more home-like and comfortable looking one even becomes reconciled to the cistern presently this is a mighty task painted green and sometimes a couple of stories high which is propped against the house corner on stilts there is a mansion and brewery suggestion about the combination which seems very incongruous at first but the people cannot have wells and so they take rainwater neither can they conveniently have cellars or graves footnote the israelites are buried in graves by permission i take it not requirement but none else except the destitute who are buried at public expense the graves are but three or four feet deep neither can they conveniently have cellars or graves the town being built upon made ground so they do without both and few of the living complain and none of the others end of chapter 41 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 42 hygiene and sentiment they bury their dead in vaults above the ground these vaults have a resemblance to houses sometimes to temples are built of marble generally are architecturally graceful and shapely they face the walks and driveways of the cemetery and when one moves through the mits of a thousand or so of them and sees their white roofs and gables stretching into the distance on every hand the phrase city of the dead has all at once a meaning to him many of the cemeteries are beautiful and are kept in perfect order when one goes from the levy or the business streets near it to a cemetery he observes to himself that if those people down there would live as neatly while they are alive as they do after they are dead they would find many advantages in it and besides their quarter would be the wonder and admiration of the business world fresh flowers in vases of water are to be seen at the portals of many of the vaults placed there by the pious hands of bereaved parents and children husbands and wives and renewed daily a milder form of sorrow finds its inexpensive and lasting remembrance sir in the course and ugly but indestructible immortel which is a wreath or cross or some such emblem made of rosettes of black linen with sometimes a yellow rosette at the conjunction of the crosses bars kind of sorrowful breastpins so to say the mortel requires no attention you just hang it up and there you are just leave it alone it will take care of your grief for you and keep it in mind better than you can stands weather first rate and lasts like boiler iron on sunny days pretty little chameleons graceful us of legged reptiles creep along the marble fronts of the vaults and catch flies their changes of color as to variety are not up to the creature's reputation they change color when a person comes along and hangs up an immortal but that is nothing any right feeling reptile would do that I will gradually drop this subject of graveyards I have been trying all I could to get down to the sentimental part of it but I cannot accomplish it I think there is no genuinely sentimental part to it it is all grotesque ghastly horrible graveyards may have been justifiable in the bygone ages when nobody knew that for every dead body put into the ground to glut the earth and the plant roots and the air with disease germs five or fifty or maybe a hundred persons must die before their proper time but they are hardly justifiable now when even the children know that a dead saint enters upon a century long career of assassination the moment the earth closes over his corpse it is a grim sort of a thought the relics of Saint Anne up in Canada have now after nineteen hundred years gone to curing the sick by the dozen but it is mirrors to matter of course that these same relics within a generation after Saint Anne's death and burial made several thousand people sick therefore these miracle performances are simply compensation nothing more Saint Anne is somewhat slow pay for a saint it is true but better a debt paid after nineteen hundred years and outlawed by the statute of limitations than not paid at all and most of the knights of the halo do not pay at all where you find one that pays like Saint Anne you find a hundred and fifty that take the benefit of the statute and none of them pay any more than the principle of what they owe they pay none of the interest either simple or compound a saint can never quite return the principle however for his dead body kills people whereas his relics heal only they never restore the dead to life that part of the count is always left unsettled Dr. F. Julius Lemoine after fifty years of medical practice wrote the inhumation of human bodies dead from infectious diseases results in constantly loading the atmosphere and polluting the waters with not only the germs that rise from simply future faction but also with the specific germs of the diseases from which death resulted the gases from buried corpses will rise to the surface through eight or ten feet of gravel just as cold gas will do and there is practically no limit to their power of escape during the epidemic in New Orleans in eighteen fifty three Dr. E. H. Barton reported that in the fourth district the mortality was four hundred and fifty two per thousand more than double that of any other in this district were three large cemeteries in which during the previous year more than three thousand bodies have been buried in other districts the proximity of cemeteries seem to aggravate the disease in eighteen twenty eight Professor Bianchi demonstrated how the fearful reappearance of the plague at Modena was caused by excavations in ground where three hundred years previously the victims of the pestilence had been buried Mr. Cooper in explaining the causes of some epidemics remarks that the opening of the plague burial grounds at AM resulted in an immediate outbreak of disease North American review number three volume one thirty five in an address before the Chicago Medical Society in advocacy of Cremation Dr. Charles W. Purdy made some striking comparisons to show what a burden is laid upon society by the burial of the dead one and one fourth times more money is expended annually in funerals in the United States than the government expends for public school purposes funerals cost this country in eighteen eighty enough money to pay the liabilities of all the commercial failures in the United States during the same year and give each bankrupt a capital of eight thousand six hundred and thirty dollars with which to resume business funerals cost annually more money than the value of the combined gold and silver yield of the United States in the year eighteen eighty these figures do not include the sums invested in burial grounds and expended in tombs and monuments nor the loss from depreciation of property in the vicinity of the cemeteries for the rich cremation would answer as well as burial for the ceremonies connected with it could be made as costly and ostentatious as a Hindu suitee while for the poor cremation would be better than burial because so cheap footnote four or five dollars is the minimum cost so cheap until the poor got to imitating the rich which they would do by and by the adoption of cremation would relieve us of a muck of threadbare burial with the systems but on the other hand it would resurrect a lot of mildewed old cremation jokes that have had a rest for two thousand years i have a colored acquaintance who earns his living by odd jobs and heavy manual labor he never earns about four hundred dollars in a year and as he has a wife and several young children the closest scrimping is necessary to get him through to the end of the twelve months debtless to such a man a funeral is a colossal financial disaster while i was writing one of the preceding chapters this man lost a little child he walked the town over with a friend trying to find a coffin that was within his means he bought the very cheapest one he could find lanewood stained it cost him twenty six dollars it would have cost less than four probably if it had been built to put something useful into it he and his family will feel that outlay a good many months end of chapter forty two 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 forty three the art of inhumation about the same time i encountered a man in the street whom i had not seen for six or seven years and something like this talk followed i said but you used to look sad and oldish you don't now where did you get all this youth and bubbling cheerfulness give me the address he chuckled blithely took off his shining tile pointed to a notched pink circlet of paper pasted into its crown with something lettered on it and went on chuckling while i read jb undertaker then he clapped his hat on gave it an irreverent tilt to lowered and cried out that's what's the matter it used to be rough times with me when you knew me insurance agency business you know mighty regular big fire all right brisk trade for 10 days while people scared after that dull policy business till next fire town like this don't have fires often enough a fellow strikes so many dull weeks in a row that he gets discouraged but you bet you this is the business people don't wait for examples to die no sir they drop off right along there ain't any dull spots in the undertaker line i just started in with two or three little old coffins and a hired hearse and now look at the thing i've worked up a business here that would satisfy any man don't care who he is five years ago lodged in an attic live in a swell house now with a mason roof and all of the modern inconveniences does the coffin pay so well is there much profit on a coffin go away how you talk then with a confidential wink a dropping of the voice and an impressive laying of his hand on my arm look here there's one thing in this world which isn't ever cheap that's a coffin there's one thing in this world which the person don't ever try to chew you down that's a coffin there's one thing in this world which a person don't say i'll look around a little and if i find i can't do better i'll come back and take it that's a coffin there's one thing in this world which a person won't take in pine if he can go walnut and won't take in walnut if he can go mahogany and won't take in mahogany if he can go an iron casket with silver door plate and bronze handles that's a coffin and there's one thing in this world which you don't have to worry around after a person to get him to pay for and that's a coffin undertaking why it's the dead surest business in christendom and the nobbiest why just look at it a rich man won't have anything but you're very best and you can just pile it on too pile it on and sock it to him he won't even holler and you take in a poor man and if you work him right he'll bust himself on a single layer or especially a woman for instance mr so flowery comes in widow wiping her eyes and kind of moaning unhunt achieves one eye that's it around tearfully over the stock and says and what might he ask for that one thirty nine dollars madam says i it's a foreign big price sure but that shall be buried like a gentleman as he was if i have to work my fingers off for it i'll have that one for yes madam says i and it is a very good one too not costly to be sure but in this life we must cut our garments to our clothes as to say it is and as she starts out i heave in kind of casually this one with the white satin lining is a beauty but i'm afraid well sixty five dollars is a rather rather but no matter i felt obliged to say to mrs oshanessy to mind to sigh that bridget oshanessy bought the bite of that joel box to ship that drunken gill to purgatory in yes madam then cat shall go to heaven in the twin to it if it takes the last rap feel flared he's can raise and mind you stick on some extras too and i'll give you another dollar and as i lay in with the livery stables of course i don't forget to mention that mrs oshanessy hired fifty four dollars worth of hacks and flung as much style into denises funeral as if he had been a duke or an assassin and of course she sails in and goes the oshanessy about floor hacks and an omnibus better that used to be but that's all played now that is in this particular town the irish got to piling up hacks so on their funerals that a funeral left them ragged and hungry for two years afterward so the priest pitched in and broke it all up he don't allow them to have but two hacks now and sometimes only one well i said if you are so lighthearted and jolly in ordinary times what must you be in an epidemic he shook his head no you're off there we don't like to see an epidemic an epidemic don't pay well of course i don't mean that exactly but it don't pay in proportion to the regular thing don't it occur to you why no think i can't imagine what is it it's just two things well what are they one's in bombing what's the other ice how's that well in ordinary times the person dies and we lay him up in ice one day two days maybe three to wait for friends to come takes a lot of it melts fast we charge jewelry rates for that ice and war prices for attendance well don't you know when there's an epidemic they rush them to the cemetery the minute the breath's out no market for ice in an epidemic same within bombing you take a family that's able to embalm and you've got a soft thing you can mention 16 different ways to do it though there ain't only one or two ways when you come down to the bottom facts of it and they'll take the highest price way every time it's human nature human nature in grief it don't reason you see time being it don't care damn all it wants is physical immortality for deceased and they're willing to pay for it all you've got to do is to just be calm and stack it up they'll stand the racket why man you can take a defunct that you couldn't give away and get your embalming traps around you and go to work and in a couple of hours he is worth a cool six hundred that's what he's worth there ain't anything equal to it but trading rats for diamonds and time of famine well don't you see when there's an epidemic people don't wait to embalm no indeed they don't and it hurts the business like hell as we say hurts it like hell health see a little joke in the trade well i must be going give me a call whenever you need any i mean uh when you're going by sometime in his joyful high spirits he did the exaggerating himself if any has been done i have not enlarged on him with the above brief reference to inhumation let us leave the subject as for me i hope to be cremated i made that remark to my pastor once who said with what he seemed to think was an impressive manner i wouldn't worry about that if i had your chances he knew about it the family also opposed to it end of chapter 43 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 44 city sites the old french part of norlands anciently the spanish part there's no resemblance to the american end of the city the american end which lies beyond the intervening brick business center the houses are massed in blocks are austerely plain and dignified uniform of pattern with here and there a departure from it with pleasant effect all are plastered on the outside and nearly all have long iron railed verandas running along the several stories their chief beauty is the deep warm very colored stain with which time and the weather have enriched the plaster it harmonizes with all the surroundings and has as natural a look of belonging there as has the flush upon sunset clouds this charming decoration cannot be successfully imitated neither is it to be found elsewhere in america the iron railings are a specialty also the pattern is often exceedingly light and dainty and airy and graceful with a large cipher or monogram in the center a delicate cobweb of baffling intricate forms wrought in steel the ancient railings are handmade and are now comparatively rare and proportionately valuable they are become brick-a-brack the party had the privilege of idling through this ancient quarter of norlands with the south's finest literary genius the author of the grand seams in him the south has found a masterly delineator of its interior life and its history in truth i find by experience that the untrained eye and vacant mind can inspect it and learn of it and judge of it more clearly and profitably in his books than by personal contact with with mr. cable along to see for you and describe and explain and illuminate it a jog through that old quarter is a vivid pleasure and you have a vivid sense as of unseen or dimly seen things vivid and yet fitful and darkling you glimpse salient features but lose the fine shades or catch them imperfectly through the vision of the imagination a case as it were of ignorant nearsighted stranger traversing the rim of wide vague horizons of alps with an inspired and enlightened long-sighted native we visited the old saint louis hotel now occupied by municipal offices there is nothing strikingly remarkable about it but one can say of it as of the academy of music in new york that if a broom or a shovel has ever been used in it there is no circumstantial evidence to back up the fact it is curious that cabbages and hay and things do not grow in the academy of music but no doubt it is on account of the interruption of the light by the benches and the impossibility of hoeing the crop except in the aisles the fact that the ushers grow their buttonhole bouquets on the premises shows what might be done if they had the right kind of agricultural head of the establishment we visited also the venerable cathedral and the pretty square in front of it the one dim with religious light the other brilliant with the worldly sort and lovely with orange trees and blossoming shrubs then we drove in the hot sun through the wilderness of houses and out on to the wide dead level beyond where the villas are and the waterwheels to drain the town and the commons populous with cows and children passing by an old cemetery where we were told lie the ashes of an early pirate but we took him on trust and did not visit him he was a pirate with a tremendous and sanguinary history and as long as he preserved unspotted in retirement the dignity of his name and the grandeur of his ancient calling homage and reverence were his from high and low but when at last he descended into politics and became a paltry alderman the public shook him and turned aside and wept when he died they set up a monument over him and little by little he has come into respect again but it is respect for the pirate not the alderman today the loyal and generous remember only what he was and charitably forget what he became thence we drove a few miles across the swamp along a raised shell road with a canal on one hand and a dense wood on the other and here and there in the distance a ragged and angular lint and moss bearded cypress top standing out clear cut against the sky and as quaint to form as the apple trees in japanese pictures such was our course and the surroundings of it there was an occasional alligator swimming comfortably along in the canal and an occasional picturesque colored person on the bank flinging his statue rigid reflection upon the still water and watching for a bite and by and by we reached the west end a collection of hotels of the usual light summer resort pattern with broad verandas all around and the waves of the wide and blue lake poncher train lapping the thresholds we had dinner on a ground veranda over the water the chief dish the renowned fish called the pompano delicious as the less criminal forms of sin thousands of people come by rail and carriage to west end and to spanish fort every evening and dine listen to the bands take strolls in the open air under the electric lights go sailing on the lake and entertain themselves in various and sundry other ways we had opportunities on other days and in other places to test the pompano notably at an editorial dinner at one of the clubs in the city he was in his last possible perfection there and justified his fame in his suite was a tall pyramid of scarlet crayfish large ones as large as one thumb delicate palatable appetizing also deviled whitebait also shrimps of choice quality and a platter of small soft shell crabs of a most superior breed the other dishes were what one might get at delmonico's or buckingham pala