Life on the Mississippi, Part 7. eBook

It is hoped that the Calhoun Company will show, by its humane and protective treatment of its laborers, that its method is the most profitable for both planter and negro; and it is believed that a general adoption of that method will then follow.

And where so many are saying their say, shall not the barkeeper testify?  He is thoughtful, observant, never drinks; endeavors to earn his salary, and would earn it if there were custom enough.  He says the people along here in Mississippi and Louisiana will send up the river to buy vegetables rather than raise them, and they will come aboard at the landings and buy fruits of the barkeeper.  Thinks they ’don’t know anything but cotton;’ believes they don’t know how to raise vegetables and fruit—­’at least the most of them.’  Says ’a nigger will go to H for a watermelon’ (’H’ is all I find in the stenographer’s report—­means Halifax probably, though that seems a good way to go for a watermelon).  Barkeeper buys watermelons for five cents up the river, brings them down and sells them for fifty.  ’Why does he mix such elaborate and picturesque drinks for the nigger hands on the boat?’ Because they won’t have any other.  ’They want a big drink; don’t make any difference what you make it of, they want the worth of their money.  You give a nigger a plain gill of half-a-dollar brandy for five cents—­will he touch it?  No.  Ain’t size enough to it.  But you put up a pint of all kinds of worthless rubbish, and heave in some red stuff to make it beautiful—­red’s the main thing—­and he wouldn’t put down that glass to go to a circus.’  All the bars on this Anchor Line are rented and owned by one firm.  They furnish the liquors from their own establishment, and hire the barkeepers ‘on salary.’  Good liquors?  Yes, on some of the boats, where there are the kind of passengers that want it and can pay for it.  On the other boats?  No.  Nobody but the deck hands and firemen to drink it.  ’Brandy?  Yes, I’ve got brandy, plenty of it; but you don’t want any of it unless you’ve made your will.’  It isn’t as it used to be in the old times.  Then everybody traveled by steamboat, everybody drank, and everybody treated everybody else.  ’Now most everybody goes by railroad, and the rest don’t drink.’  In the old times the barkeeper owned the bar himself, ’and was gay and smarty and talky and all jeweled up, and was the toniest aristocrat on the boat; used to make $2,000 on a trip.  A father who left his son a steamboat bar, left him a fortune.  Now he leaves him board and lodging; yes, and washing, if a shirt a trip will do.  Yes, indeedy, times are changed.  Why, do you know, on the principal line of boats on the Upper Mississippi, they don’t have any bar at all!  Sounds like poetry, but it’s the petrified truth.’

Chapter 34 Tough Yarns

Stack island.  I remembered Stack Island; also Lake Providence, Louisiana—­which is the first distinctly Southern-looking town you come to, downward-bound; lies level and low, shade-trees hung with venerable gray beards of Spanish moss; ’restful, pensive, Sunday aspect about the place,’ comments Uncle Mumford, with feeling—­also with truth.