Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0140/01404.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 13KB | 231 lines

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$Title{Life On The Mississippi
Chapter XLIV}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
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$Subject{say
jackson
lee
new
lagniappe
last
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$Date{1917}
$Log{}
Title:       Life On The Mississippi
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1917

Chapter XLIV

City Sights

     The old French part of New Orleans - anciently the Spanish part - bears
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, varicolored 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 bric-a-
brac.

     The party had the privilege of idling through this ancient quarter of New
Orleans with the South's finest literary genius, the author of The
Grandissimes.  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 it.

     With Mr. Cable along to see for you, and describe and explain and
illuminate, 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 an
ignorant, near-sighted stranger traversing the rim of wide, vague horizons of
Alps with an inspired and enlightened long-sighted native.

     We visited the old St. 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 button-hole bouquets on the premises shows what might be
done if they had the right kind of an agricultural head to 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 blossomy shrubs; then we drove in the
hot sun through the wilderness of houses and out onto the wide, dead level
beyond, where the villas are, and the water-wheels 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.  To-day the loyal
and generous remember only what he was, and charitably forget what he became.

     Thence, we drove a few miles across a 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-limbed and moss-bearded cypress-top
standing out, clear-cut against the sky, and as quaint of 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 Pontchartrain lapping the thresholds. We had
dinner on a ground veranda over the water - the chief dish the renowned fish
called 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's
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
Palace; those I have spoken of can be had in similar perfection in New Orleans
only, I suppose.

     In the West and South they have a new institution - the Broom Brigade.
It is composed of young ladies who dress in a uniform costume, and go through
the infantry drill, with broom in place of musket.  It is a very pretty sight,
on private view.  When they perform on the stage of a theater, in the blaze of
colored fires, it must be a fine and fascinating spectacle.  I saw them go
through their complex manual with grace, spirit, and admirable precision.  I
saw them do everything which a human being can possibly do with a broom,
except sweep.  I did not see them sweep.  But I know they could learn.  What
they have already learned proves that.  And if they ever should learn, and
should go on the war- path down Tchoupitoulas or some of those other streets
around there, those thoroughfares would bear a greatly improved aspect in a
very few minutes.  But the girls themselves wouldn't; so nothing would be
really gained, after all.

     The drill was in the Washington Artillery building.  In this building we
saw many interesting relics of the war.  Also a fine oil- painting
representing Stonewall Jackson's last interview with General Lee.  Both men
are on horseback.  Jackson has just ridden up, and is accosting Lee.  The
picture is very valuable, on account of the portraits, which are authentic.
But like many another historical picture, it means nothing without its label.
And one label will fit it as well as another:

     First Interview between Lee and Jackson.

     Last Interview between Lee and Jackson.

     Jackson Introducing Himself to Lee.

     Jackson Accepting Lee's Invitation to Dinner.

     Jackson Declining Lee's Invitation to Dinner - with Thanks.

     Jackson Apologizing for a Heavy Defeat.

     Jackson Reporting a Great Victory.

     Jackson Asking Lee for a Match.

     It tells one story, and a sufficient one; for it says quite plainly and
satisfactorily, "Here are Lee and Jackson together." The artist would have
made it tell that this is Lee and Jackson's last interview if he could have
done it.  But he couldn't, for there wasn't any way to do it. A good legible
label is usually worth, for information, a ton of significant attitude and
expression in a historical picture.  In Rome, people with fine sympathetic
natures stand up and weep in front of the celebrated "Beatrice Cenci the Day
before Her Execution." It shows what a label can do.  If they did not know the
picture, they would inspect it unmoved, and say, "Young girl with hay fever;
young girl with her head in a bag."

     I found the half-forgotten Southern intonations and elisions as pleasing
to my ear as they had formerly been.  A Southerner talks music. At least it is
music to me, but then I was born in the South.  The educated Southerner has no
use for an r, except at the beginning of a word.  He says "honah," and
"dinnah," and "Gove'nuh," and "befo' the waw," and so on.  The words may lack
charm to the eye, in print, but they have it to the ear.  When did the r
disappear from Southern speech, and how did it come to disappear?  the custom
of dropping it was not borrowed from the North, nor inherited from England.
Many Southerners - most Southerners - put a y into occasional words that begin
with the k sound. For instance, they say Mr. K'yahtah (Carter) and speak of
playing k'yahds or of riding in the k'yahs.  And they have the pleasant custom
- long ago fallen into decay in the North - of frequently employing the
respectful "Sir." Instead of the curt Yes, and the abrupt No, they say "Yes,
suh"; "No, suh."

     But there are some infelicities, such as "like" for "as," and the
addition of an "at" where it isn't needed.  I heard an educated gentleman say,
"Like the flag-officer did." His cook or his butler would have said, "Like the
flag-officer done." You hear gentlemen say, "Where have you been at?" And here
is the aggravated form - heard a ragged street Arab say it to a comrade: "I
was a-ask'n' Tom whah you was a-sett'n' at." The very elect carelessly say
"will" when they mean "shall"; and many of them say "I didn't go to do it,"
meaning "I didn't mean to do it." The Northern word "guess" - imported from
England, where it used to be common, and now regarded by satirical Englishmen
as a Yankee original - is but little used among Southerners.  They say
"reckon." They haven't any "doesn't" in their language; they say "don't"
instead.  The unpolished often use "went" for "gone." It is nearly as bad as
the Northern "hadn't ought." This reminds me that a remark of a very peculiar
nature was made here in my neighborhood (in the North) a few days ago: "He
hadn't ought to have went." How is that?  Isn't that a good deal of a triumph?
One knows the orders combined in this half-breed's architecture without
inquiring: one parent Northern, the other Southern.  To-day I heard a
schoolmistress ask, "Where is John gone?" This form is so common - so nearly
universal, in fact - that if she had used "whither" instead of "where," I
think it would have sounded like an affectation.

     We picked up one excellent word - a word worth traveling to New Orleans
to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy word - "Lagniappe." They pronounce it
lanny-yap.  It is Spanish - so they said.  We discovered it at the head of a
column of odds and ends in the Picayune the first day; heard twenty people use
it the second; inquired what it meant the third; adopted it and got facility
in swinging it the fourth.  It has a restricted meaning, but I think the
people spread it out a little when they choose.  It is the equivalent of the
thirteenth roll in a "baker's dozen." It is something thrown in, gratis, for
good measure.  The custom originated in the Spanish quarter of the city.  When
a child or a servant buys something in a shop - or even the mayor or the
governor, for aught I know - he finishes the operation by saying:

     "Give me something for lagniappe."

     The shopman always responds; gives the child a bit of licorice-root,
gives the servant a cheap cigar or a spool of thread, gives the governor - I
don't know what he gives the governor; support, likely.

     When you are invited to drink - and this does occur now and then in New
Orleans - and you say, "What, again? - no, I've had enough,:!" the other party
says, "But just this one time more - this is for lagniappe." When the beau
perceives that he is stacking his compliments a trifle too high, and sees by
the young lady's countenance that the edifice would have been better with the
top compliment left off, he puts his "I beg pardon, no harm intended," into
the briefer form of "Oh, that's for lagniappe." If the waiter in the
restaurant stumbles and spills a gill of coffee down the back of your neck, he
says, "F'r lagniappe, sah," and gets you another cup without extra charge.