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Mark Twain > Life On The Mississippi > Chapter 45

Life On The Mississippi

Chapter 45


                             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 mule race, 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 a woman heaves in sight. Then he goes
all to pieces; his mind totters, he 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 4 o'clock ominous clouds began to gather in the south-east, 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 homewards 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 foam-like 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.

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