The Atlantic Monthly Part 16
39 30' N., and Long. 97 20' W. We are now in the primest part of the buffalo-pasture. As we wind along the base of the steep Republican Bluffs, and the edges of those green amphitheatres made by their alternate approach and retrocession, our whistle scares a picket-line of giant bulls, guarding a divide across the stream, and with tails in air, heads at the down charge, they scour away at a lumbering cow-gallop, to tell the main herd of a progress more resistless than their own. Or, perhaps, our experience of the buffaloes is a more inconvenient one. We may find the main herd crossing our track in their migration from the Republican to the Platte. In such case, there will be a detention of several hours, as the current of a main herd is not fordable by any known human mechanism. The halt will be taken advantage of by timid spectators looking safely out of car-windows,--by _bona-fide_ hunters, who want fresh meat, and take along the tidbits of their game to be cooked for them at the next dinner-station,--and by excited pseudo-hunters, who will bang away with their rifles at the defenceless herd, until the ground flows with useless blood, and somebody suggests to them that they might as well call it sportsmanship to fire into a farmer's cow-yard, resting over the top-rail.
Now and then we shall whirl through a village of chattering prairie-dogs, send a hen-turkey rattling off her nest in a thicket on the river's edge, or perhaps surprise even an antelope sufficiently close to point out to the ladies from our window the exquisite flight of that swiftest and most beautiful creature in our American fauna. But our road will not be in running order very long before this sight becomes the rarest of the rare. The stolid buffalo will continue to wear his old paths long after the human presence has driven every antelope into invisible fastnesses.
At intervals along the Republican bottom we shall find ranches springing up under the auspices of our road; immense grain-fields yellowing toward harvest; great herds of domestic cattle grazing haunch-deep through the boundless swales of billowing wild gra.s.s; with all the other indications of a prosperous farming settlement, which, keeping pace with the progress of the road, shall eventually become one of the richest agricultural communities in the world, and continuous for over two hundred miles. Here and there we pa.s.s a lateral excavation in the face of the bluff where some enterprising settler has opened a tertiary coal-vein, a deposit of iron-ore, or a bed of soft limestone suitable for both flux and mortar purposes. The way-freight trains that meet us now are mainly laden with the wealth of the grazier, the farmer, and the gardener, competing with their brethren of the Upper Mississippi for the markets of St. Louis and New Orleans. Iron-ore, coal, and limestone may form a portion of the cargoes,--but in process of time the mutual vicinity of these minerals will become sufficiently suggestive to induce the erection of smelting-furnaces _in situ_, and then their combined product will travel the road in the form of pigs.
A little to the westward of a line drawn due south from Fort Kearney to the Republican we shall find a comparatively abrupt and unexplained change taking place in the scenery. Our green river-bottoms will give way to tracts of the color and seemingly of the sterility proper to an ash-heap. Our bluffs will recede, grow higher, and exchange their flat _mesa_-like surfaces for a curved contour, imitating the mountainous formation on a reduced scale. For long distances the vast gray level around us will be dotted with conical sand-dunes, forever piling up and tearing down as the wind shifts, with a tendency to bestow their gritty compliments in the eyes of pa.s.sengers occupying windward seats on the train. The lovely blossoms of the running-poppy no longer mat the earth with blots of crimson fire; no more does the sweet breath of eglantine and sensitive-brier float in at the window as we whirl by a sheltered recess of the divides; the countless wild varieties of bean and pea no longer charm us with a rainbow prodigality of pink, blue, scarlet, purple, white, and magenta blossoms. The very trees by the river's brink become puny and stunted; the evergreens begin to replace the deciduous growths; in the shade of dwarfed and desiccated cedars we look vainly for the snowy or azure bells of the three-petalled campanula. Gaunt, staring sunflowers, and humbler _compositae_ of yellow tinge, stay with us a little longer than those darlings of our earlier scenery; but before we have gone many miles the last conspicuous wave of fresh vegetation breaks hopelessly on a thirsty sand-hill, and we are given over to a wilderness of cacti. Here and there occurs a sightly clump of waxen yellow blossoms, where these vegetable hedgehogs are in their holiday attire,--but it must be confessed that the view is a melancholy change from our recent affluence of beauty. With the other succulent plants, the rich herbage of the prairie has entirely disappeared. There is not a blade of anything which an Eastern grazier would recognize as gra.s.s between this boundary and the Rocky Mountains. As we whiz over these wastes at railroad-speed, we shall be apt to p.r.o.nounce them absolutely sterile. When we stop at the next coaling-station, let us examine the matter more closely. The ground proves to be covered with minute gray spirals of herbage, like a crop of vegetable corkscrews, an inch or two in height, and to all appearance dry as wool. This is the "_grama_" or "buffalo-gra.s.s," and, despite its look of utter desiccation, is highly nutritious. It is almost the entire winter dependence of the buffalo-herds, and domestic cattle soon learn to prefer it to all other feed. Its existence, together with the wide group of changes which we have noticed, denotes that we have pa.s.sed the threshold of the fourth grand continental division, and are now in the region of the Plains proper.
Ex-Governor Gilpin of Colorado, in his "Central Gold Region," very truly styles the Plains "the pastoral area of the continent." The Plains are set apart for grazing purposes by the method of exclusion. There is nothing else that can be done with them. Rain seldom falls on them. The shallow rivers, like the Platte, which wander through them, are too far apart to be used economically for their general irrigation. Only such herbage may be expected to thrive here as can live on its own condensation of water from a sensibly dry atmosphere. Manifestly, art can do nothing for the improvement of such a tract. It must be left to fulfil its natural function, as the great continental pasture. Along the banks of the rivers run narrow strips of alluvial soil, liable to yearly inundation; and these may be made amenable to the ordinary processes of agriculture. On these the herdsman may raise the grain and vegetables necessary for his own consumption. But the vast area of the region seems inevitably set apart for the one sole business of cattle-raising, and all the way-freight trains which pa.s.s us here are laden with beeves for the St. Louis market, or dairy-produce for all the markets of the world.
We have never tasted _grama_-cheese, but have a theory that its individual piquancy must equal that of the delicious _Schabzieger_.
Far off on the gray level we shall still see the antelope. His tribe is coextensive with three-fourths of the continent. No sterility discourages him. He seems as thrifty on the wiry _grama_ as among the most succulent gra.s.ses of the Republican. The sneaking coyote and a number of larger wolves put in an occasional appearance. Birds of the hawk and raven families are common. The waters swarm with numerous varieties of duck. It surprises us at this utmost distance from the maritime border to see flocks of Arctic gulls circling around the low sand-hills, and sickle-bill curlews wheeling high in air above their broods. Before we get far into this region we shall notice that one of its most typical features is the alkali-pool. Every few miles we come to a shallow basin of stagnant water saturated with salts of soda and potash. Still another characteristic of the Plains is their tremendous rainless thunder-storms. If we are fortunate enough to encounter one of these, we shall witness in one hour more atmospheric perturbation than has occurred within our whole previous experience on the Atlantic slope.
The lightning for half a night will light the sky with an almost continuous glare, brighter than noonday; all the parks of artillery on earth could not make such a constant deafening roar as those iron clouds in the heaven; and though the wind will not be able to blow the train backward, as we have seen it treat a four-mule stage, it will be likely to do its next best thing, heaping sand on the track till the engine has to slow and send men ahead with shovels.
Entering the Denver depot, we shall find a busy scene. All that immense freight-business between the Missouri and the Colorado mining-towns, which formerly strung the overland road with wagons drawn by six yoke of oxen each, has now been transferred to the railroad. The switches are crowded with cars getting unloaded, or waiting their turn to be. What is their freight? Rather ask what it is not. For the present, Colorado imports everything except the most perishable commodities,--and that which pays for all. If you would see _that_, ask the express-messenger on the train going East in five minutes to lift the lid of one of those heavy iron trunks in his car. Your eyes are dazzled by the yellow gleam of a king's ransom. It is a day's harvest of ingots from the stamps of Central City, on its way to square accounts with New York for the contents of one of those freight-trains.
At Denver we reach the edge of the Rocky-Mountain foot-hills; the grand snow-peak of Mount Rosalie, rivalling Mont Blanc in height and majesty, though forty miles away, seems to rise just behind the town; thence southerly toward Pike's and northerly toward Long's Peak, the billowing ridges stretch away brown and bare, save where the climbing lines of sombre green mark their pine-fringed gorges, or the everlasting ice pencils their crests with an edge of opal. Still we do not leave the Plains region. We glide through the thronged streets of the growing city, cross the South Platte by a short bridge, and strike nearly due north along the edge of the mountain-range, over a broad plateau which still bears the characteristic _grama_. Not until we enter the _canon_ of the Cache-la-Poudre, a hundred miles from Denver by the road, can we consider ourselves fairly out of the Plains, and in the fifth great region of the continent, the Rocky-Mountain system of ridges and intramontane plateaus.
Before we begin this portion of our journey, let us examine, in the light of that already accomplished, an a.s.sertion made early in this article to the effect that the Pacific Railroad must precede and create the business which shall support it. The consideration shall be brief as a mathematical process.
The river-bottoms and divides along the Lower Republican are peculiarly suited to the raising of farm-produce. But so long as they had no avenue to a market, they might have been fertile as Paradise without alluring settlers to cultivate them. The natural advantages of a country are developed not as a matter of taste, but as a matter of profit. The crops which can be raised to best advantage in this region are the crops which without a railroad must rot on the ground. No man can be expected to settle in a new country from pure Quixotism,--and nothing but the railroad would make anything else of his expenditure of energies beyond the needs of self-support. The Plains are the natural pasture of the continent; but they have no natural fascination for the white man which can induce him to take up his residence there for cattle-breeding _en amateur_. The greatest enthusiast in b.u.t.ter and cheese would scarcely care to acc.u.mulate mountains of rancid firkins and boxes for the mere gratification of fancy. Access to a market is his only justification for spending a nomadic lifetime among herds, or a fortune on churns and presses. The settlement of the country must precede the birth of its industries, and the Pacific Road is the absolutely essential stimulus to such settlement.
As we converse, we are beginning our climb toward the snow. A series of steep grades, mainly following the bed of that wildly picturesque and roaring torrent, the Cache-la-Poudre, take us up through the Cheyenne Pa.s.s to the Laramie Plains. In reaching the head of the Cache-la-Poudre we have familiarized ourselves with the ridges of the system; we are now to learn what is meant by the intramontane plateaus. The Laramie Plains form the most remarkable plateau of the Rocky Range,--one of the most remarkable anywhere in the known world. Through a series of savage _canons_ we enter what appears to us a reproduction of the prairies east of the Mississippi,--a level and luxuriantly gra.s.sy plain, bright with unknown flowers, alive with startled antelope, threaded by the clear currents of both the Laramie Rivers, and rejoicing in an atmosphere which exhilarates like the fresh-brewed nectar of Olympus. Bounded on the east by the great ridge we have just pa.s.sed, northerly by a continuation of the Wind-River Range and Laramie Peak, southerly by a magnificent transverse bar of naked mountains running parallel with the Wind-River Range, and westward by a staircase of sterile divides which we must climb to reach the base of Elk Mountain and find its giant ma.s.s towering into the eternal snows three thousand feet farther above our heads,--this plateau is a prairie fifty miles square, lifted bodily eight thousand feet into the air. It is difficult for us to roll over this Elysian mead walled in by these tremendous ranges, and think of the commercial uses to which the level might be put; but from its elevation and its natural crop we may p.r.o.nounce it a grazing tract of splendid capabilities, unsuited to artificial culture.
Another series of grades takes us past the base of Elk Mountain to a broad and sandy cactus-plain, whence we descend among curious trap and sandstone formations, simulating human architecture, to the crossing of the North Platte. A little farther on, so close to the snow-line that we shiver under the white ridges with a reflected chill, we cross the axial ridge of the continent, and begin our descent toward Salt Lake by the n.o.ble gallery of Bridger's Pa.s.s. The springs along our way become tinctured with sulphur, alkali, and salt. We know, when we stop at a station to drink, that we are drawing near the primeval basin of a stagnant sea, now shrunk to its final pool in Salt Lake, but once in size a rival of the Mediterranean. We pa.s.s over an alternation of mountain-grades and sandy levels, cross the Green or Upper Colorado River, stop for five minutes at the Fort-Bridger station, thread the sinuous galleries of the Wahsatch, and come down from a savage wilderness of sage-brush, granite, and red sandstone, into the luxuriant green pastures of Mormondom, heavy with crops and irrigated from the snow-peaks. Thence, one of the numerous _canons_--Emigrant or Parley's most likely--conducts us to the mountain-walled level of Salt-Lake City.
We have now traversed the most difficult part of our road. Its Rocky-Mountain section has cost more capital, labor, and engineering skill than all the rest together. The return for this vast expenditure must be no less vast,--but it will be rendered slowly. It does not lie on the surface or just beneath the surface, as in the pastoral and agricultural regions. It is almost entirely mineral, and must be mined by the hardest work. But it ranges through all the metallic wealth of Nature, from gold to iron, and no conceivable stimulus short of a Pacific Railroad could ever have been adequate to bring it forth.
We shall find the import trade of Salt Lake by the railroad to consist chiefly of emigrants and their chattels. If Brigham Young be still living, his favorite policy of non-intercourse with the Gentiles may also somewhat diminish the export business of the road. But human nature cannot forever resist the currents of commercial interest; and the Mormon settlements possess so many advantages for the economical production of certain staples, that we need not be surprised to find trains leaving Salt-Lake City with sorghum and cotton for San Francisco, and raw silk for all the markets of the East.
From Salt-Lake City to the Humboldt Mountains, we pa.s.s between isolated uplifts of trap and granite, over a comparatively level desert of sand and snowy alkali. The terrors of this journey, as performed by horse-carriage, have been fully depicted in our last April number. We may laugh at them now. The question which princ.i.p.ally interests us, after we have blunted the first edge of our wonder at the sublime sterility of the Desert, is what conceivable use this waste can be made to subserve. Before the railroad, that question had but a single answer,--the inculcation of contentment, by contrast with the most disagreeable surroundings in which one might anywhere else be placed.
Perhaps it is over-sanguine to conceive of a further answer even now. If there be any, it is this: In its crudest state the alkaline earth of the Desert is sufficiently pure to make violent effervesence with acids. No elaborate process is required to turn it into commercial soda and potash. Coal has been already found in Utah. Silex exists abundantly in all the Desert uplifts. Why should not the greatest gla.s.s-works in the world be reared along the Desert section of the Pacific Road? and why should not the entire market of the Pacific Coast be supplied with refined alkalies from the same tract? Given the completed railroad, and neither of these projects exceeds commercial possibility.
We cross the Humboldt Mountains by a series of grades shorter than that which conducts us over the Rocky system, but full as difficult in proportion. We descend into a second instalment of Desert on the other side; but the general sterility is now occasionally broken by oases, moist green _canons_, and living springs. A hundred miles west of the Humboldt Pa.s.s we come to the mining-settlements of Reese River, gaining a new increment to the business of the road in the transportation of silver to San Francisco, and every conceivable necessary of life to the mines.--Within the last eighteen months eleven hundred dollars in gold have been paid for the carriage by wagon of a single set of amalgamating-apparatus from Virginia City to Reese, a distance of two hundred miles. The price of the commonest necessaries at the Reese-River mines has reached the highest point of the old California markets in '49,--and no attainable means of transport have been adequate to supply the demand.
From Reese River to Carson we traverse a broken, rocky, and sterile tract, with occasional fertile patches and a belt along the Carson River susceptible of cultivation. The foot-hills of the Sierra Nevada gradually shut us round, and at Carson we begin penetrating the main system through a series of magnificent galleries between precipices of porphyritic granite, leading nearly northward to the Truckee Pa.s.s. The grades we now encounter are as tremendous as any in the Rocky-Mountain system. Just before entering the main pa.s.s we come to the junction of a branch-road from Virginia City. The train which stops at the fork to let us go ahead is carrying down several tons of silver "bricks" from the Washoe mines to Kellogg and Hewston's, the great a.s.say and refining firm of San Francisco. The pa.s.s takes us across the summit-line of the range, but not out of the environment of its mountains. We penetrate granite fastnesses and descend blood-chilling inclines, span roaring chasms and glide under solemn roofs of lofty mountain-pine, until in the neighborhood of Centralia we begin for the first time to see the agricultural tract of the Golden State.
Between ranches, placer-diggings, and small settlements, we now thread our comparatively level way to Sacramento. Here we are met by the chief affluent of this end of the Pacific Road,--the long-projected, greatly needed, and now finally accomplished line between Sacramento and Portland. This enterprise has done for the Sacramento and Willamette valleys the same good offices of development performed by our grand line for all the central continent. The n.o.ble orchards, pastures, grain-lands, and gardens of Northern California and Oregon are now provided with a market. Their wastes are brought under cultivation, their mines are opened, their entire area is settled by a cla.s.s of men who work under the stimulus of certain profit. The Northern freight-trains waiting at Sacramento to make a junction with our road are loaded with the produce of one of the richest agricultural regions in the world, now flowing to its first remunerative market. All this must pay toll to our road, and here is another source of profit.
Crossing a number of tributaries to the Sacramento, and intersecting mines, ranches, and settlements, as before, we follow a nearly straight level to Stockton. Then turning westerly, we cross the San Joaquin, pa.s.s almost beneath the shadow of grand old Monte Diablo, glide among the vines and olives of San Jose Mission, and curve round the southern bend of the lovely bay to the queenly city of San Francisco. One of Leland's carriages awaits us at the terminus. We are driven to the most delightful hotel on the continent, and find our old friend, the Occidental, altered in no respect save size, which the growing demands of the Pacific New York, since the completion of our inter-oceanic line, have compelled Leland to quadruple. We are on time,--six days and eight hours exactly. Or, a.s.suming the San-Francisco standard, we have gained three hours on the sun, and, instead of taking a two-o'clock lunch, as our friends are doing in New York, sit down to an eleven-o'clock breakfast crowned with melons, grapes, and strawberries, in the sweet seclusion of the Ladies' Ordinary.
Is not all this worth doing in reality?
SEA-HOURS WITH A DYSPEPTIC.
BY HIS SATELLITE.
I.--PRELUSIVE.
There are a good many fictions in the world. I will mention one:--the propeller Markerstown. The bulletins and placards of her owners soar high in the realms of fancy; like Sirens, they sing delightful songs,--and all about "the A 1 fast-sailing, commodious, first-cla.s.s steam-packet Markerstown." Such is the soaring fiction: now let us look at the sore fact. The "A 1" is, I take it, simply the "Ai!" of the Greek chorus new-vamped for modern wear,--a drear wail well suited to the victims of the Markerstown. As to sailing qualities:--we know, of course, that all speed is relative. For a sea-comet, the Markerstown would be somewhat leisurely, though answering well for an oceanic fixed star, having no perceptible motion. One man on board--the Captain--was accommodated: the kidnapped all suffered. Whether the Markerstown should be reckoned as first-cla.s.s or last-cla.s.s is a question depending simply on where the counting begins, and which way it runs. "Steam-packet" she was indeed, though not in the most desirable way. Her steam was "packit"
(_Scottice_) too close for safety, but lay quite too loose for speed.
The kidnapped were all "packit," and "weel packit." How I came to be one of them, and how by this mystic union I halved my joys and doubled my griefs, as the naughty ones say of wedlock, will soon appear.
One brilliant fancy-flight I forgot to mention. The craft in question was boldly proclaimed as "new." New, indeed, she might have been: so were once the Ark, the Argo, the Old Temeraire, the Const.i.tution, and sundry other hulks of celebrity. Yet it is not mere rhetoric to say, that, if the eyes of the second and third Presidents of these United States never, in their declining years, beheld the good ship Markerstown, it was only from lack of wholesome curiosity.
This pleasing list of attractions was wont to make an occasional trip--should I not rather say saunter?--to the New-World Levant, the Yankee Eothen. The time consumed was theoretically a day and a half, but practically a day or two longer. Tired as I was of the s.l.u.ttish land, the clean sea had an inviting look. Dusty car and ringing rail wore no Circean graces, when the long-haired mermaid, decked in robes of comely green, looked out from her bower beneath the waves, and beckoned me to come. What more welcome than her sea-green home? What sight finer than the myriad diamond-sparkles in her eye? What sound sweeter than the murmurs of her soothing, never-ceasing voice? What perfume so rare as the crisp fragrance breathing from her robes? What so thrilling, so magnetically ecstatic, as her tumultuous heaving, and the lithe, undulating buoyancy of her mazy footfalls?
It is proper to state here, as an act of justice to others, and to save myself from the charge of lunacy, that the Markerstown was a mere interloper. Our covetous, good old uncle had set his eye on the regular steamer of the line, and his greedy fingers had taken her away to Dixie, where her decks were now swarming with blue coats and black heels. The peaceful Markerstown, being exempt by reason of physical disqualifications, tarried behind as home-guard subst.i.tute for her warlike sister. Ignorant of the change, I secured my pa.s.sage, paid for my ticket, sent down my trunks, and presented myself at the gangway one sweltering afternoon in the latter part of June, a few minutes before the hour set for sailing. There was nothing in the aspect of things to indicate a speedy departure. On the contrary, the tardy craft had just arrived, and was intensely busy in letting off steam and discharging cargo. The mate was quite sure--and so was I--that she wouldn't weigh anchor before early next morning. The prospect was not enrapturing.
Confusion, dirt, pandemoniac noise, long delay, and over all a blistering sun, were ill suited to bring peace to the embezzled seeker after pleasure.
As a relief from the horrid din on deck, I made my way to the cabin. It was a place well named, being cabined, cribbed, confined, in quite an unprecedented degree. It was then and there that I first saw the subject of this sketch,--the Peptic Martyr. Unknowingly, I was face to face with my Man of Destiny. Shipmate, Philosopher, Martyr, Rhapsodist, Mentor, Bon-Vivant, Duspeptos,--these are but a few of the various disks which I came at last to see in this gem of first water. Even now, in memory, the subject looms vast before me, and the freighted pen halts.
Bear with me: let us pause for one moment. Matter like this asks a new strophe.
II.--THE BURDEN OF THE SONG.
Duspeptos was sitting on a common mohair sofa, surrounded by some half-dozen or more of his fellow-victims. It is stated that Themistocles, before his ocean-raid at Salamis, sacrificed three young men to Bacchus the Devourer. The Markerstown, in sailing out upon the great deep, immolated at least twelve, old and young, as a festive holocaust to Neptune the Nauseator. Here in their sacrificial crate were the luckless scapegoats, sad-eyed prey of the propeller. It was easy to see, at the first glance, that the Martyr was the central sun round which cl.u.s.tered the planets of propitiation. Born king, he a.s.serted his kingship, and all yielded from the beginning to his sway. Ears and mouths opened toward him the liege. Upon the magnet of his voice hung the eager atoms. There was a filmy, distant look in the eyes of the listeners, as of men rapt with the mystic utterances of a seer. My entrance unheralded broke up the monologue, whatever it was. But seeing the true sacrificial look on my brow, all at once, from chief to sutler, confessed a brother. To me then turning, Duspeptos, king of men, spoke winged words:--
"'Pears t' me, stranger, you look kind o' streaked. Ken I do anythin'
for ye? Wal, I s'pose th' old tub's caught you too, so we ken jest count y' in along o' this 'ere crowd. Reg'lar fix, now, a'n't it? 'T's wut I call pooty kinky. Dern'd 'f I'd 'a' come, 'f I'd 'a' known th' old b.u.t.ter-box was goin' to be s' frisky. Lively's a young colt now, a'n't she? Kicks up her heels, an' scampers off te'ble smart, don't she? 'S never seen an ekul yit for punctooality an' speed. When she doos tech the loocifer, an' cooks up her steam in her high old pepper-box, jest you mind me, boys, there'll be a high old time. Wun't say much, but there'll be fizzin', sure,--mebby suthin' more,--mebby reg'lar snorter, a jo-fired jolly good bust-up. Mebby th' wun't be no weepin' an'
gahnishin' o' teeth about these parts along towards mornin'. Who knows?
Natur' will work. Th' old scow's got to go accordin' to law,--that's one sahtisfahction, sartin. 'S a cause for all these things. An' ef she doos kind o' rip an' tear, she's got to go b' Gunter. She's bound to foller her const.i.tootion as she understan's it, an' to stan' up for the great princ.i.p.al of ekul freedom for all. Hope they'll be keerful to save some o' the pieces. 'S a good deal o' comfort 'n these loose fragments. 'S nuthin' like the raal odds an' ends--the Simon-pure, ginooine article--to bind up the broken heart an' make the mourners joyful. No tellin' how much good they do in restorin' grat.i.tood to Providence, an'
smoothin' things over,--kind o' make matters easy, you know.
Interestin', too, to hev in the house,--pleasin' ornaments on the mantel-piece to show to friends an' vis'ters. They allers like to hear the story 'n connection with the native specimens, an' everybody feels happified an' thankful. Yes, after all, th'r' is a master lot of solid comfort in a raal substantial accident right in the buzzum of a family,--none o' your three-cent fizzles, but a true-blue afflictin'
dispensation. 'S a heap o' pleasin' an' valooable a.s.sociations a-cl.u.s.terin' round."
Here the vocal one paused for an instant, to draw breath, and rally for another raid. Feeling his little army now well in hand, he burned for fresh conquests. In glancing triumphantly around, his eye fell on a certain benign smile then flitting over the face of his predestined Satellite. Complacently nodding thereto, straightway the Peptic spoke:--
"I s'pose this 'ere group 's all insured, everythin' right an' tight an'
all square up t' the hub. Suthin' hahnsum for the widders an' orphans.
These little nest-eggs allers sort o' handy,--grease the ways, an' slick things up ship-shape. Survivors bless the rod, an' fix up everythin'
round the house in apple-pie order. I hev known men that was so te'ble pertickler allers to save the Company, that nuthin' ever did, n' ever could happen. An' the despairin' friends kep' waitin' an' waitin', but 't was no sort o' use; they never got a red. 'T's wut I call bein'
desput keerful, an' sailin' pooty consid'able close to the wind. 'T's like old Deacon Skillins's hoss, down to Mudville, that was so dreffle conscientious he couldn't eat oats. No accountin' for tastes. Free country, anyhow. Ef anybody likes to be fussy an' ructious 'n little things, why, there's nuthin' to hender him from hevin' his own way. But it don't exackly hev an hon'able look to common-sense folks.
"Ef the clipper's a free-agent, she'll blow up, sure, jest to git out o'
sin an' misery. But ef so be she's bonyfihd predestined, she'll hev to travel in the vale o' puhbation a spell longer, 'cause her cup a'n't full yit, not by a long chalk. S'posin' she doos start out mellifloous, what then? Don't imagine, my feller-sinners, that the danger's all over,--no, it's only jest begun. Things ahead 's a good deal wuss. Steam 's pooty bad, but 't a'n't a circ.u.mstahnce to the blamed grease. 'T's the grease that doos the mischief, an' plays the d.i.c.kens with human natur'. Down in th' army, they say, biscuits kills more'n bullets; an'
it's gospil truth, every word on 't, perticklerly ef the biscuits is hot, an' pooty wal fried up in grease. Fryin' 's the great mortal sin, the parient of all misery. The hull world's full of it, but the sea 's a master sight fuller 'n the land. Somehow 'nother, grease takes kind o'
easy to salt water,--sailors wun't hev nothin' but a fry. Jest you give 'em plenty o' fat, an' they wun't ask no favors o' n.o.body. These 'ere puhpellers 's the wust sinners of 'em all, an' somehow hev a good deal more 'n their own share o' fat. They kind o' borrer from mackerellers an' side-wheelers both together, an' mix 't all up 't oncet. My friends, ef you a'n't desput anxious to see glory from this 'ere deck, be virtoous, an' observe the golden rule: Don't tech, don't g' nigh the p'is'n upus-tree of gravy; beware o' the dorg called hot biscuits; take keer o' the grease, an' the stomach'll take keer of itself. Fact is, my beloved brethren, I've ben a fust-chop dyspeptic for the best part o' my life, an' I'm pooty wal posted in what I'm talkin' about. What I don't know on this 'ere subjick a'n't wuth knowin'."
III.--RECITATIVE
How much farther the Martyr's appeal might have gone can never be known, as the height of his great argument was cut short at this point by the appearance of the Pontifex Maximus in person on the stage of action. The fated victims were to be made ready for the coming sacrifice. The oracle, it seems, had declared that Neptune would not smile, unless two were cribbed together in one pen,--that the arrangement of these pairs should be left with the lot of the bean,--and that as the beans went, so must go the victims. Inexorable Fate would allow no reversal of her decrees. Soon the beans were rattling in the hat of the Pontifex, and, _mirabile!_ pen No. 1 fell to Duspeptos and his Satellite elect.
The immediate effects of this bean--whether white, black, Pythagorean, Lima, kidney, or what not--were three-fold: 1. A pump-handle hand-shaking; 2. A very thorough diagnosis of the weather, including a rapid sketch by Duspeptos of the leading principles of caloric, pneumatics, and hygrology; 3. An exchange of cards. That of which I was the recipient consisted of a sheet of paste-board, rather begrimed and wrinkled, of nearly the same dimensions as the Atlantic (Monthly, not Ocean). The name and address occupied the middle of one side of the doc.u.ment, while all the remaining s.p.a.ce was filled in with manifold closest scribblings in lead-pencil,--apparently notes, memoranda, and the like. These were not at all private, so the new-found partner of my bosom a.s.sured me. In fact, I should do well to look at them, and make myself master of their contents. My friends also might find profit therein. Stray hints might undoubtedly be gathered from them which would lay open to my eyes the secret things of Nature and life. Thrusting it into my pocket for the moment, I feasted myself in imagination with the treasure that was mine, antic.i.p.ating the happy hour that should make my hope fruition. Then we, first elect of the bean, set ourselves to determine the _status quo ante bellum_. And here came in once more the fabaceous maker and marker of destiny, saying that blind justice decreed, that, inasmuch as sound is wont to rise, he who was noonday Sayer and midnight Snorer should couch below, while the Hearer should circle above,--plainly a wise provision, that the good things of Providence might not be wasted. Both Damon and Pythias agreed, that, for once at least, the oracle was not ambiguous.