Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0140/01405.txt

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$Unique_ID{bob01405}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Life On The Mississippi
Chapter XLV}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{war
new
talk
every
long
moon
topic
women
day
little}
$Date{1917}
$Log{}
Title:       Life On The Mississippi
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1917

Chapter XLV

Southern Sports

     In the North one hears the war mentioned, in social conversation, once a
month; sometimes as often as once a week; but as a distinct subject for talk,
it has long ago been relieved of duty.  There are sufficient reasons for this.
Given a dinner company of six gentlemen to- day, it can easily happen that
four of them - and possibly five - were not in the field at all.  So the
chances are four to two, or five to one, that the war will at no time during
the evening become the topic of conversation; and the chances are still
greater that if it become the topic it will remain so but a little while.  If
you add six ladies to the company, you have added six people who saw so little
of the dread realities of the war that they ran out of talk concerning them
years ago, and now would soon weary of the war topic if you brought it up.

     The case is very different in the South.  There, every man you meet was
in the war; and every lady you meet saw the war.  The war is the great chief
topic of conversation.  The interest in it is vivid and constant; the interest
in other topics is fleeting.  Mention of the war will wake up a dull company
and set their tongues going when nearly any other topic would fail.  In the
South, the war is what A.D. is elsewhere; they date from it.  All day long you
hear things "placed" as having happened since the waw; or du'in' the waw; or
befo' the waw; or right aftah the waw; or 'bout two yeahs or five yeahs or ten
yeahs befo' the waw or aftah the waw.  It shows how intimately every
individual was visited, in his own person, by that tremendous episode.  It
gives the inexperienced stranger a better idea of what a vast and
comprehensive calamity invasion is than he can ever get by reading books at
the fireside.

     At a club one evening, a gentleman turned to me and said, in an aside:

     "You notice, of course, that we are nearly always talking about the war.
It isn't because we haven't anything else to talk about, but because nothing
else has so strong an interest for us.  And there is another reason: In the
war, each of us, in his own person, seems to have sampled all the different
varieties of human experience; as a consequence, you can't mention an outside
matter of any sort but it will certainly remind some listener of something
that happened during the war - and out he comes with it.  Of course that
brings the talk back to the war.  You may try all you want to, to keep other
subjects before the house, and we may all join in and help, but there can be
but one result: the most random topic would load every man up with war
reminiscences, and shut him up, too; and talk would be likely to stop
presently, because you can't talk pale inconsequentialities when you've got a
crimson fact or fancy in your head that you are burning to fetch out."

     The poet was sitting some little distance away; and presently he began to
speak - about the moon.

     The gentleman who had been talking to me remarked in an aside: "There,
the moon is far enough from the seat of war, but you will see that it will
suggest something to somebody about the war; in ten minutes from now the moon,
as a topic, will be shelved."

     The poet was saying he had noticed something which was a surprise to him;
had had the impression that down here, toward the equator, the moonlight was
much stronger and brighter than up North; had had the impression that when he
visited New Orleans, many years ago, the moon -

     Interruption from the other end of the room:

     "Let me explain that.  Reminds me of an anecdote.  Everything is changed
since the war, for better or for worse; but you'll find people down here born
grumblers, who see no change except the change for the worse.  There was an
old negro woman of this sort.  A young New-Yorker said in her presence, 'What
a wonderful moon you have down here!' She sighed and said, 'Ah, bless yo'
heart, honey, you ought to seen dat moon befo' de waw!'"

     The new topic was dead already.  But the poet resurrected it, and gave it
a new start.

     A brief dispute followed, as to whether the difference between Northern
and Southern moonlight really existed or was only imagined. Moonlight talk
drifted easily into talk about artificial methods of dispelling darkness.
Then somebody remembered that when Farragut advanced upon Port Hudson on a
dark night - and did not wish to assist the aim of the Confederate gunners -
he carried no battle-lanterns, but painted the decks of his ships white, and
thus created a dim but valuable light, which enabled his own men to grope
their way around with considerable facility.  At this point the war got the
floor again - the ten minutes not quite up yet.

     I was not sorry, for war talk by men who have been in a war is always
interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is
likely to be dull.

     We went to a cockpit in New Orleans on a Saturday afternoon.  I had never
seen a cock-fight before.  There were men and boys there of all ages and all
colors, and of many languages and nationalities.  But I noticed one quite
conspicuous and surprising absence: the traditional brutal faces.  There were
no brutal faces.  With no cock-fighting going on, you could have played the
gathering on a stranger for a prayer- meeting; and after it began, for a
revival - provided you blindfolded your stranger - for the shouting was
something prodigious.

     A negro and a white man were in the ring; everybody else outside. The
cocks were brought in in sacks; and when time was called, they were taken out
by the two bottle-holders, stroked, caressed, poked toward each other, and
finally liberated.  The big black cock plunged instantly at the little gray
one and struck him on the head with his spur.  The gray responded with spirit.
Then the Babel of many-tongued shoutings broke out, and ceased not
thenceforth.  When the cocks had been fighting some little time, I was
expecting them momently to drop dead, for both were blind, red with blood, and
so exhausted that they frequently fell down. Yet they would not give up,
neither would they die.  The negro and the white man would pick them up every
few seconds, wipe them off, blow cold water on them in a fine spray, and take
their heads in their mouths and hold them there a moment - to warm back the
perishing life perhaps; I do not know.  Then, being set down again, the dying
creatures would totter gropingly about, with dragging wings, find each other,
strike a guesswork blow or two, and fall exhausted once more.

     I did not see the end of the battle.  I forced myself to endure it as
long as I could, but it was too pitiful a sight; so I made frank confession to
that effect, and we retired.  We heard afterward that the black cock died in
the ring, and fighting to the last.

     Evidently there is abundant fascination about this "sport" for such as
have had a degree of familiarity with it.  I never saw people enjoy anything
more than this gathering enjoyed this fight.  The case was the same with old
gray-heads and with boys of ten.  They lost themselves in frenzies of delight.
The "cocking-main" is an inhuman sort of entertainment, there is no question
about that; still, it seems a much more respectable and far less cruel sport
than fox-hunting - for the cocks like it; they experience, as well as confer
enjoyment; which is not the fox's case.

     We assisted - in the French sense - at a mulerace, one day.  I believe I
enjoyed this contest more than any other mule there.  I enjoyed it more than I
remember having enjoyed any other animal race I ever saw. The grand-stand was
well filled with the beauty and the chivalry of New Orleans.  That phrase is
not original with me.  It is the Southern reporter's.  He has used it for two
generations.  He uses it twenty times a day, or twenty thousand times a day,
or a million times a day - according to the exigencies.  He is obliged to use
it a million times a day, if he have occasion to speak of respectable men and
women that often; for he has no other phrase for such service except that
single one.  He never tires of it; it always has a fine sound to him.  There
is a kind of swell, medieval bulliness and tinsel about it that pleases his
gaudy, barbaric soul.  If he had been in Palestine in the early times, we
should have had no references to "much people" out of him.  No, he would have
said "the beauty and the chivalry of Galilee" assembled to hear the Sermon on
the Mount.  It is likely that the men and women of the South are sick enough
of that phrase by this time, and would like a change, but there is no
immediate prospect of their getting it.

     The New Orleans editor has a strong, compact, direct, unflowery style;
wastes no words, and does not gush.  Not so with his average correspondent.
In the Appendix I have quoted a good letter, penned by a trained hand; but the
average correspondent hurls a style which differs from that.  For instance:

     The Times-Democrat sent a relief-steamer up one of the bayous, last
April.  This steamer landed at a village, up there somewhere, and the captain
invited some of the ladies of the village to make a short trip with him.  They
accepted and came aboard, and the steamboat shoved out up the creek.  That was
all there was "to it." And that is all that the editor of the Times-Democrat
would have got out of it.  There was nothing in the thing but statistics, and
he would have got nothing else out of it.  He would probably have even
tabulated them; partly to secure perfect clearness of statement, and partly to
save space.  But his special correspondent knows other methods of handling
statistics.  He just throws off all restraint and wallows in them:

     On Saturday, early in the morning, the beauty of the place graced our
cabin, and proud of her fair freight the gallant little boat glided up the
bayou.

     Twenty-two words to say the ladies came aboard and the boat shoved out up
the creek, is a clean waste of ten good words, and is also destructive of
compactness of statement.

     The trouble with the Southern reporter is - Women.  They unsettle him;
they throw him off his balance.  He is plain, and sensible, and satisfactory,
until woman heaves in sight.  Then he goes all to pieces; his mind totters,
becomes flowery and idiotic.  From reading the above extract, you would
imagine that this student of Sir Walter Scott is an apprentice, and knows next
to nothing about handling a pen.  On the contrary, he furnishes plenty of
proofs, in his long letter, that he knows well enough how to handle it when
the women are not around to give him the artificial-flower complaint.  For
instance:

     At four o'clock ominous clouds began to gather in the southeast, and
presently from the Gulf there came a blow which increased in severity every
moment.  It was not safe to leave the landing then, and there was a delay.
The oaks shook off long tresses of their mossy beards to the tugging of the
wind, and the bayou in its ambition put on miniature waves in mocking of much
larger bodies of water.  A lull permitted a start, and homeward we steamed, an
inky sky overhead and a heavy wind blowing.  As darkness crept on, there were
few on board who did not wish themselves nearer home.

     There is nothing the matter with that.  It is good description, compactly
put.  Yet there was great temptation, there, to drop into lurid writing.

     But let us return to the mule.  Since I left him, I have rummaged around
and found a full report of the race.  In it I find confirmation of the theory
which I broached just now - namely, that the trouble with the Southern
reporter is Women: Women, supplemented by Walter Scott and his knights and
beauty and chivalry, and so on.  This is an excellent report, as long as the
women stay out of it.  But when they intrude, we have this frantic result:

     It will be probably a long time before the ladies' stand presents such a
sea of foamlike loveliness as it did yesterday.  The New Orleans women are
always charming, but never so much so as at this time of the year, when in
their dainty spring costumes they bring with them a breath of balmy freshness
and an odor of sanctity unspeakable.  The stand was so crowded with them that,
walking at their feet and seeing no possibility of approach, many a man
appreciated as he never did before the Peri's feeling at the Gates of
Paradise, and wondered what was the priceless boon that would admit him to
their sacred presence.  Sparkling on their white-robed breasts or shoulders
were the colors of their favorite knights, and were it not for the fact that
the doughty heroes appeared on unromantic mules, it would have been easy to
imagine one of King Arthur's gala-days.

     There were thirteen mules in the first heat; all sorts of mules, they
were; all sorts of complexions, gaits, dispositions, aspects.  Some were
handsome creatures, some were not; some were sleek, some hadn't had their fur
brushed lately; some were innocently gay and frisky; some were full of malice
and all unrighteousness; guessing from looks, some of them thought the matter
on hand was war, some thought it was a lark, the rest took it for a religious
occasion.  And each mule acted according to his convictions.  The result was
an absence of harmony well compensated by a conspicuous presence of variety -
variety of a picturesque and entertaining sort.

     All the riders were young gentlemen in fashionable society.  If the
reader has been wondering why it is that the ladies of New Orleans attend so
humble an orgy as a mule-race, the thing is explained now.  It is a fashion
freak; all connected with it are people of fashion.

     It is great fun, and cordially liked.  The mule-race is one of the marked
occasions of the year.  It has brought some pretty fast mules to the front.
One of these had to be ruled out, because he was so fast that he turned the
thing into a one-mule contest, and robbed it of one of its best features -
variety.  But every now and then somebody disguises him with a new name and a
new complexion, and rings him in again.

     The riders dress in full jockey costumes of bright-colored silks, satins,
and velvets.

     The thirteen mules got away in a body, after a couple of false starts,
and scampered off with prodigious spirit.  As each mule and each rider had a
distinct opinion of his own as to how the race ought to be run, and which side
of the track was best in certain circumstances, and how often the track ought
to be crossed, and when a collision ought to be accomplished, and when it
ought to be avoided, these twenty-six conflicting opinions created a most
fantastic and picturesque confusion, and the resulting spectacle was killingly
comical.

     Mile heat; time, 2:22.  Eight of the thirteen mules distanced.  I had a
bet on a mule which would have won if the procession had been reversed.  The
second heat was good fun; and so was the "consolation race for beaten mules,"
which followed later; but the first heat was the best in that respect.

     I think that much the most enjoyable of all races is a steamboat race;
but, next to that, I prefer the gay and joyous mule-rush.  Two red- hot
steamboats raging along, neck-and-neck, straining every nerve - that is to
say, every rivet in the boilers - quaking and shaking and groaning from stem
to stern, spouting white steam from the pipes, pouring black smoke from the
chimneys, raining down sparks, parting the river into long breaks of hissing
foam - this is sport that makes a body's very liver curl with enjoyment.  A
horse-race is pretty tame and colorless in comparison.  Still, a horse-race
might be well enough, in its way, perhaps, if it were not for the tiresome
false starts.  But then, nobody is ever killed.  At least, nobody was ever
killed when I was at a horse- race.  They have been crippled, it is true; but
this is little to the purpose.