Life on The Mississippi (39 page)

“Does a coffin pay so well? Is there much profit on a coffin?”

“
Go
way! 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 a person don’t ever try to jew you down on. 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 doorplate 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 your very best; and you can just pile it on, too—pile it on and sock it to him—he won’t ever holler. And you take in a poor man, and if you work him right he’ll bust himself on a single layout. Or especially a woman. F’r instance: Mrs. O’Flaherty comes in—widow—wiping her eyes and kind of moaning. Unhandkerchiefs one eye, bats it around tearfully over the stock; says—

“ ‘And what might ye ask for that wan?’

“ ‘Thirty-nine dollars, madam,’ says I.

“ ‘It’s a foine big price, sure, but Pat shall be buried like a gintleman, as he was, if I have to work me fingers off for it. I’ll have that wan, sor.’

“ ‘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 garment to our clothes, as the saying is.’ And as she starts out, I heave in, kind of casually, ‘This one with the white satin lining is a beauty, but I am afraid—well, sixty-five dollars
is
a rather—rather—but no matter, I felt obliged to say to Mrs. O’Shaughnessy—’

“ ‘D’ye mane to soy that Bridget O’Shaughnessy bought the mate to that joo-ul box to ship that dhrunken divil to Purgatory in?’

“ ‘Yes, madam.’

“ ‘Then Pat shall go to heaven in the twin to it, if it takes the last rap the O’Flaherties can raise; and moind you, stick on some extras, too, and I’ll give ye another dollar.’

“And as I lay in with the livery stables, of course I don’t forget to mention that Mrs. O’Shaughnessy hired fifty-four dollars’ worth of hacks and flung as much style into Dennis’s funeral as if he had been a duke or an assassin. And of course she sails in and goes the O’Shaughnessy about four 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,” said I, “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 Embamming.”

“And, what’s the other?”

“Ice.”

“How is that?”

“Well, in ordinary times, a 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 ’em to the cemetery the minute the breath’s out. No market for ice in an epidemic. Same with Embamming. You take a family that’s able to embam, and you’ve got a soft thing. You can mention sixteen 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-priced way, every time. It’s human nature—human nature in grief. It don’t reason, you see. ’Time being, it don’t care a dam. All it wants is physical immortality for the deceased, and they’re willing to pay for it. All you’ve got to do is to just be ca’m 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 embamming 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 di’monds in time of famine. Well, don’t you see, when there’s an epidemic, people don’t wait to embam. No, indeed they don’t; and it hurts the business like hellth, as we say—hurts it like hell-th,
health
, see?—our little joke in the trade. Well, I must be going. Give me a call whenever you need any—I mean, 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 references 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.”

Much he knew about it—the family all so opposed to it.

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 ignorant nearsighted stranger traversing the rim of wide vague horizons of Alps with an inspired and enlightened longsighted 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 buttonhole 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. Today 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 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’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 warpath 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.”