Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0140/01408.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 13KB | 272 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01408}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Life On The Mississippi
Chapter XLVIII}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{how
every
spirit
spirits
happy
river
sugar
time
years
friends}
$Date{1917}
$Log{}
Title:       Life On The Mississippi
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1917

Chapter XLVIII

Sugar And Postage

     One day, on the street, I encountered the man whom, of all men, I most
wished to see - Horace Bixby; formerly pilot under me - or rather, over me -
now captain of the great steamer City of Baton Rouge, the latest and swiftest
addition to the Anchor Line.  The same slender figure, the same tight curls,
the same spring step, the same alertness, the same decision of eye and
answering decision of hand, the same erect military bearing; not an inch
gained or lost in girth, not an ounce gained or lost in weight, not a hair
turned.  It is a curious thing, to leave a man thirty-five years old, and come
back at the end of twenty-one years and find him still only thirty-five.  I
have not had an experience of this kind before, I believe.  There were some
crow's-feet, but they counted for next to nothing, since they were
inconspicuous.

     His boat was just in.  I had been waiting several days for her, purposing
to return to St. Louis in her.  The captain and I joined a party of ladies and
gentlemen, guests of Major Wood, and went down the river fifty-four miles, in
a swift tug, to ex-Governor Warmoth's sugar- plantation.  Strung along below
the city was a number of decayed, ramshackly, superannuated old steamboats,
not one of which had I ever seen before.  They had all been built, and worn
out, and thrown aside, since I was here last.  This gives one a realizing
sense of the frailness of a Mississippi boat and the briefness of its life.

     Six miles below town a fat and battered brick chimney, sticking above the
magnolias and live-oaks, was pointed out as the monument erected by an
appreciative nation to celebrate the battle of New Orleans - Jackson's victory
over the British, January 8, 1815.  The war had ended, the two nations were at
peace, but the news had not yet reached New Orleans.  If we had had the cable
telegraph in those days, this blood would not have been spilt, those lives
would not have been wasted; and better still, Jackson would probably never
have been President.  We have gotten over the harms done us by the War of
1812, but not over some of those done us by Jackson's presidency.

     The Warmoth plantation covers a vast deal of ground, and the hospitality
of the Warmoth mansion is graduated to the same large scale. We saw steamplows
at work, here, for the first time.  The traction engine travels about on its
own wheels, till it reaches the required spot; then it stands still and by
means of a wire rope pulls the huge plow toward itself two or three hundred
yards across the field, between the rows of cane.  The thing cuts down into
the black mold a foot and a half deep. The plow looks like a fore-and-aft
brace of a Hudson River steamer, inverted.  When the negro steersman sits on
one end of it, that end tilts down near the ground, while the other sticks up
high in air.  This great seesaw goes rolling and pitching like a ship at sea,
and it is not every circus-rider that could stay on it.

     The plantation contains two thousand six hundred acres; six hundred and
fifty are in cane; and there is a fruitful orange grove of five thousand
trees.  The cane is cultivated after a modern and intricate scientific
fashion, too elaborate and complex for me to attempt to describe; but it lost
forty thousand dollars last year.  I forget the other details.  However, this
year's crop will reach ten or twelve hundred tons of sugar, consequently last
year's loss will not matter. These troublesome and expensive scientific
methods achieve a yield of a ton and a half, and from that to two tons, to the
acre; which is three or four times what the yield of an acre was in my time.

     The drainage ditches were everywhere alive with little crabs -
"fiddlers." One saw them scampering sidewise in every direction whenever they
heard a disturbing noise.  Expensive pests, these crabs; for they bore into
the levees, and ruin them.

     The great sugar-house was a wilderness of tubs and tanks and vats and
filters, pumps, pipes, and machinery.  The process of making sugar is
exceedingly interesting.  First, you heave your cane into the centrifugals and
grind out the juice; then run it through the evaporating-pan to extract the
fiber; then through the bone-filter to remove the alcohol; then through the
clarifying-tanks to discharge the molasses; then through the granulating-pipe
to condense it; then through the vacuum-pan to extract the vacuum.  It is now
ready for market.  I have jotted these particulars down from memory.  I have
jotted these particulars down from memory.  The thing looks simple and easy.
Do not deceive yourself.  To make sugar is really one of the most difficult
things in the world.  And to make it right is next to impossible.  If you will
examine your own supply every now and then for a term of years, and tabulate
the result, you will find that not two men in twenty can make sugar without
getting sand into it.

     We could have gone down to the mouth of the river and visited Captain
Eads's great work, the "jetties," where the river has been compressed between
walls, and thus deepened to twenty-six feet; but it was voted useless to go,
since at this stage of the water everything would be covered up and invisible.

     We could have visited that ancient and singular burg, "Pilot-town," which
stands on stilts in the water - so they say; where nearly all communication is
by skiff and canoe, even to the attending of weddings and funerals; and where
the littlest boys and girls are as handy with the oar as unamphibious children
are with the velocipede.

     We could have done a number of other things; but on account of limited
time, we went back home.  The sail up the breezy and sparkling river was a
charming experience, and would have been satisfyingly sentimental and romantic
but for the interruptions of the tug's pet parrot, whose tireless comments
upon the scenery and the guests were always this-worldly, and often profane.
He had also a super-abundance of the discordant, ear-splitting, metallic laugh
common to his breed - a machine-made laugh, a Frankenstein laugh, with the
soul left out of it. He applied it to every sentimental remark, and to every
pathetic song. He cackled it out with hideous energy after "Home again, home
again, from a foreign shore," and said he "wouldn't give a d - for a tug-load
of such rot." Romance and sentiment cannot long survive this sort of
discouragement; so the singing and talking presently ceased; which so
delighted the parrot that he cursed himself hoarse for joy.

     Then the male members of the party moved to the forecastle, to smoke and
gossip.  There were several old steamboatmen along, and I learned from them a
great deal of what had been happening to my former river friends during my
long absence.  I learned that a pilot whom I used to steer for is become a
spiritualist, and for more than fifteen years has been receiving a letter
every week from a deceased relative, through a New York spiritualistic medium
named Manchester - postage graduated by distance; from the local post-office
in Paradise to New York, five dollars; from New York to St. Louis, three
cents.  I remember Mr. Manchester very well.  I called on him once, ten years
ago, with a couple of friends, one of whom wished to inquire after a deceased
uncle.  This uncle had lost his life in a peculiarly violent and unusual way,
half a dozen years before: a cyclone blew him some three miles and knocked a
tree down with him which was four feet through at the butt and sixty-five feet
high.  He did not survive this triumph.  At the seance just referred to, my
friend questioned his late uncle, through Mr. Manchester, and the late uncle
wrote down his replies, using Mr. Manchester's hand and pencil for that
purpose.  The following is a fair example of the questions asked, and also of
the sloppy twaddle in the way of answers furnished by Manchester under the
pretense that it came from the specter.  If this man is not the paltriest
fraud that lives, I owe him an apology:

     Question.  Where are you?

     Answer.  In the spirit world.

     Q.  Are you happy?

     A.  Very happy.  Perfectly happy.

     Q.  How do you amuse yourself?

     A.  Conversation with friends, and other spirits.

     Q.  What else?

     A.  Nothing else.  Nothing else is necessary.

     Q.  What do you talk about?

     A.  About how happy we are; and about friends left behind in the earth,
and how to influence them for their good.

     Q.  When your friends in the earth all get to the spirit land, what shall
you have to talk about then? - nothing but about how happy you all are?

     No reply.  It is explained that spirits will not answer frivolous
questions.

     Q.  How is it that spirits that are content to spend an eternity in
frivolous employments, and accept it as happiness, are so fastidious about
frivolous questions upon the subject?

     No reply.

     Q.  Would you like to come back?

     A.  No.

     Q.  Would you say that under oath?

     A.  Yes.

     Q.  What do you eat there?

     A.  We do not eat.

     Q.  What do you drink?

     A.  We do not drink.

     Q.  What do you smoke?

     A.  We do not smoke.
     Q.  What do you read?

     A.  We do not read.

     Q.  Do all the good people go to your place?

     A.  Yes.

     Q.  You know my present way of life.  Can you suggest any additions to
it, in the way of crime, that will reasonably insure my going to some other
place?

     No reply.

     Q.  When did you die?

     A.  I did not die; I passed away.

     Q.  Very well, then; when did you pass away?  How long have you been in
the spirit land?

     A.  We have no measurements of time here.

     Q.  Though you may be indifferent and uncertain as to dates and times in
your present condition and environment, this has nothing to do with your
former condition.  You had dates then.  One of these is what I ask for.  You
departed on a certain day in a certain year.  Is not this true?

     A.  Yes.

     Q.  Then name the day of the month.

     (Much fumbling with pencil, on the part of the medium, accompanied by
violent spasmodic jerkings of his head and body, for some little time.
Finally, explanation to the effect that spirits often forget dates, such
things being without importance to them.)

     Q.  Then this one has actually forgotten the date of its translation to
the spirit land?

     This was granted to be the case.

     Q.  This is very curious.  Well, then, what year was it?

     (More fumbling, jerking, idiotic spasms, on the part of the medium.
Finally, explanation to the effect that the spirit has forgotten the year.)

     Q.  This is indeed stupendous.  Let me put one more question, one last
question, to you, before we part to meet no more; for even if I failed to
avoid your asylum, a meeting there will go for nothing as a meeting, since by
that time you will easily have forgotten me and my name.  Did you die a
natural death, or were you cut off by a catastrophe?

     A.  (After a long hesitation and many throes and spasms.) Natural death.

     This ended the interview.  My friend told the medium that when his
relative was in this poor world, he was endowed with an extraordinary
intellect and an absolutely defectless memory, and it seemed a great pity that
he had not been allowed to keep some shred of these for his amusement in the
realms of everlasting contentment, and for the amazement and admiration of the
rest of the population there.

     This man had plenty of clients - has plenty yet.  He receives letters
from spirits located in every part of the spirit world, and delivers them all
over this country through the United States mail. These letters are filled
with advice - advice from "spirits" who don't know as much as a tadpole - and
this advice is religiously followed by the receivers.  One of these clients
was a man whom the spirits (if one may thus plurally describe the ingenious
Manchester) were teaching how to contrive an improved railway car-wheel.  It
is coarse employment for a spirit, but it is higher and wholesome activity
than talking forever about "how happy we are."