St. Louis needs to be taken by the hand and led around to some municipal-improvement tailor, some civic haberdasherSt. Louis needs to be taken by the hand and led around to some municipal-improvement tailor, some civic haberdasher
over the building. We envied Mr. Powell the privilege of being housed in such a palace, and Mr. Powell, in his turn, tried to talk temperately about the wonders of his school, and was so polite as to let us do the raving.
Do you remember, when you went to school, the long closet, or dressing room, where you used to hang your coat and hat? The boys and girls of the Soldan School have steel lockers in a sunlit locker room. Do you remember the old wooden floors? These boys and girls have wooden floors to walk on, but the wood is quarter-sawed oak, and it is laid in asphalt over concrete, which makes the finest kind of floor. Do you remember the ugly old school building? The front of this one looks like Hampden Court Palace, brought up to date. Do you remember the big classroom that served almost every purpose? This school has separate rooms for everything—a greenhouse for the botanists, great studios, with skylights, for those who study art, a music hall, and private offices, beside the classrooms, for instructors. Oh, you ought to see this school yourself, and learn how schools have changed! You ought to see the domestic science kitchen with its twenty-four gas ranges and the model dining room, where the girls give dinner parties for their parents; the sewing room and fitting rooms, and the laundries, with sanitary equipment and electric irons—for every girl who takes the domestic-science course must know how to do fine laundry work, even to the washing of flannels.
You should see the manual-training shops, and the business college, and the textile work, and the kilns for pottery, and the very creditable drawings and paintings of the art students (who clearly have a competent teacher—again an unusual thing in schools), and the simple beauty of the corridors, so free from decoration, and the library—like that of a club—and the lavatories, as perfect as those in fine hotels, and the pictures on the classroom walls—good prints of good things, like Whistler's portrait of his mother, instead of the old hideosities of Washington and Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes, which used to hang on classroom walls in our school days. Oh, it is good to merely breathe the air of such a school—and why shouldn't it be, since the air is washed, and screened, and warmed, and fanned out to the rooms and corridors? Just think of that one thing, and then try to remember how schools used to smell—that rather zoölogical odor of dirty little boys and dirty little slates. That was one thing which struck me very forcibly about this school: it didn't smell like one. Yet, until I went there, I should have wagered that if I were taken blindfold to a school, led inside, and allowed a single whiff of it, I should immediately detect the place for what it was. Ah, memories of other days! Ah, sacred smells of childhood! Can it be that the school smell has gone forever from the earth—that it has vanished with our youth—that the rising generation may not know it? There is but little sadness in the thought.
Having thus dilated upon the oldtime smell of schools, I find myself drifting, perhaps through an association of ideas, to another subject—that of furs; raw furs.
The firm of Funsten Brothers & Co. have made St. Louis the largest primary fur market in the world. They operate a fur exchange which, though a private business, is conducted somewhat after the manner of a produce exchange. That is to say, the sales are not open to all buyers, but to about thirty men who are, in effect, "members," it being required that a member be a fur dealer with a place of business in St. Louis. These men are jobbers, and they sell in turn to the manufacturers.
Funsten Brothers & Co. work direct with trappers, and are in correspondence, I am informed, with between 700,000 and 800,000 persons, engaged in trapping and shipping furs, in all parts of the world. Their business has been considerably increased of late years by the installation of a trappers' information bureau and supply department for the accommodation of those who send them furs, and also by the marketing of artificial animal baits. In this way, and further by making it a rule to send checks in payment for furs received from trappers, on the same day shipments arrive, this company has built up for itself an enormous good will at the original sources of supply.
The furs come from every State in the Union, from every Province in Canada, and from Alaska, beingshipped in, during the trapping season, at the rate of about two thousand lots a day, these lots containing anywhere from five to five hundred pelts each.
The lots are sorted, arranged in batches according to quality, and auctioned off at sales, which are held three days a week. Even Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Florida, and Texas supply furs, but the furs from the north are in general the most valuable. This is not true, however, of muskrat, the best of which comes from the central and eastern States.
The sales are conducted in the large hall of the exchange, where the lots of furs are displayed in great piles. The skins are handled in the raw state, having been merely removed from the carcass and dried before shipment, with the result that the floor of the exchange is made slippery by animal fats, and that the olfactory organs encounter smells not to be matched in any zoo—or school—the blended fragrance of raccoon, mink, opossum, muskrat, ermine, ringtail, house cat, wolf, red fox, gray fox, cross fox, swift fox, silver fox, badger, otter, beaver, lynx, marten, bear, wolverine, fisher—a great orchestra of odors, in which the "air" is carried most competently, most unqualifiedly, by that master virtuoso of mephitic redolence, the skunk.
I was told that about sixty-five per cent of all North American furs pass through this exchange; also I received the rather surprising information that the greatest number of skins furnished by this continent comes from within a radius of five hundred miles of St. Louis.
It was in this Fur Exchange that the first auction of government seal skins ever held by the United States on its own territory, occurred last year. Before that time it had been the custom of the government to send Alaskan sealskins to Europe, where they were cured and dyed. Such of these skins as were returned to the United States, after having undergone curing and dyeing, came back under a duty of 20 per cent., or more recently, by an increase in the tariff—30 per cent. And all but a very few of the skins did come back. It was by action of Secretary of Commerce Redfield that the seal sale was transferred from London to St. Louis, and a member of the firm of Funsten Brothers & Co. informed me that the ultimate result will be that seal coats now costing, say, $1,200, may be bought for about $400 three years hence, when the seals will no longer be protected according to the present law.
Some interesting information with regard to sealing was published in the St. Louis "Republic" at the time of the sale. Quoting Mr. Philip B. Fouke, president of the Funsten Co., the "Republic" says:
"Under the present policy of the Government the United States will get the dyeing, curing, and manufacturing establishments from London, Amsterdam, Nizhni Novgorod, and other great centers. The price of sealskins will be reduced two-thirds to the wearer. Seals have been protected for the past two years, and will be protected for three years more, but during the period of protection it is necessary for the Government huntersto kill some of the 'bachelor seals'—males, without mates, who fight with other male seals for the possession of the females, destroying the young, and causing much trouble. Also a certain amount of seal meat must go to the natives for food.
"Each female produces but one pup a year, and each male demands from twenty to one hundred females. Fights between males for the possession of the females are fearful combats.
"In addition to protecting the seals on the Pribilof Islands, the United States has entered into an agreement with Japan, Russia, and England, that there shall be no sealing in the open seas for fifteen years. This open sea, or pelagic sealing did great harm. Only the females leave the land, where they can be protected, and go down to the open sea. Consequently the poachers got many females, destroying the young seals as well as the mothers, cutting off the source of supply, and leaving a preponderance of 'bachelors,' or useless males."
What a chance for the writer of sex stories! Why dally with the human race when seals are living such a lurid life? Here is a brand-new field: The heroine a soft-eyed female with a hide like velvet; the hero a dashing, splashing male. Sweet communions on the rocks at sunset, and long swims side by side. But one night on the cliffs, beneath the moon comes the blond beast of a bachelor, a seal absolutely unscrupulous and of the lowest animal impulses. Then the climax—the Jack London stuff: the fight on the edge of the cliff; the cry,the body hurtling to the rocks below. And, of course, a happy ending—love on a cake of ice.
Old John Jacob Astor, founder of the Astor fortune, was a partner in the American Fur Company of St. Louis of which Pierre Chouteau was president. A letter written to Chouteau by Astor just before his retirement from the fur business gives as the reason for his withdrawal the following:
I very much fear beaver will not sell very well very soon unless very fine. It appears that they make hats of silk in place of beaver.
I very much fear beaver will not sell very well very soon unless very fine. It appears that they make hats of silk in place of beaver.
Beaver was at that time the most valuable skin, and had been used until then for the making of tall hats; but the French were beginning to make silk hats, and Astor believed that in that fact was presaged the downfall of the beaver trade.
Club life in St. Louis is very highly developed. There are of course the usual clubs which one expects to find in every large city: The St. Louis Club, a solid old organization; the University Club, and a fine new Country Club, large and well designed. Also there is a Racquet Club, an agreeable and very live institution now holding the national championship in double racquets, which is vested in the team of Davis and Wear. The Davis of this pair is Dwight F. Davis, an exceedingly active and able young man who, aside from many other interests,is a member of the City Plan Commission, commissioner in charge of the very excellent parks of St. Louis, and giver of the famous Davis Cup, emblematic of the world's team tennis championship.
But the characteristic club note of St. Louis is struck by the very small, exclusive clubs. One is the Florissant Valley Country Club, with a pleasant, simple club-house and a very charming membership. But the most famous little club of the city, and one of the most famous in the United States, is the Log Cabin Club. I do not believe that in the entire country there is another like it. The club is on the outskirts of the city, and has its own golf course. Its house is an utterly unostentatious frame building with a dining room containing a single table at which all the members sit at meals together, like one large family. The membership limit is twenty-five, and the list has never been completely filled. There were twenty-one members, I was told, at the time we were there, and besides being, perhaps, the most prominent men in the city, these gentlemen are all intimates, so that the club has an air of delightful informality which is hardly equaled in any other club I know. The family spirit is further enhanced by the fact that no checks are signed, the expense of operation being divided equally among the members. Here originated the "Log Cabin game" of poker, which is now known nationally in the most exalted poker circles. I should like to explain this game to you, telling you all the hands, and how to bet on them, but after an evening of practical instruction, I cameaway quite baffled. Missouri is, you know, a poker State. Ordinary poker, as played in the east, is a game too simple, too childlike, for the highly specialized Missouri poker mind. I played poker twice in Missouri—that is, I tried to play—but I might as well have tried to juggle with the lightnings of the gods. No man has the least conception of that game until he goes out to Missouri. There it is not merely a casual pastime; it is a rite, a sacrament, a magnificent expression of a people. The Log Cabin game is a thing of "kilters," skip-straights, around-the-corner straights, and other complications. Three of a kind is very nearly worthless. Throw it away after the draw if you like, pay a dollar and get a brand-new hand.
But those are some simple little points to be picked up in an evening's play, and a knowledge of the simple little points of such a game is worse than worthless—it is expensive. To really learn the Log Cabin game, you must give up your business, your dancing, and your home life, move out to St. Louis, cultivate Log Cabin members (who are the high priests of poker) and play with them until your family fortune has been painlessly extracted. And however great the fortune, it is a small price to pay for such adept instruction. When it is gone you will still fall short of ordinary Missouri poker, and will be as a mere babe in the hands of a Log Cabin member, but you will be absolutely sure of winning,anywhere outside the State.
It seems logical that the city, which is beyond doubtthe poker center of the universe, should also have attained to eminence in drinks. It was in St. Louis that two great drinks came into being. In the old days of straight whisky, the term for three fingers of red liquor in a whisky glass was a "ball." But there came from Austria a man named Enno Sanders, who established a bottling works in St. Louis, and manufactured seltzer. St. Louis liked the seltzer and presently it became the practice to add a little of the bubbling water to the "ball." This necessitated a taller glass, so men began to call for a "highball."
The weary traveler may be glad to know that the highball has not been discontinued in St. Louis.
Another drink which originated in St. Louis is the gin rickey. Colonel Rickey was born in Hannibal, Mo., of which town I shall write presently. Later he moved to St. Louis and invented the famous rickey, which immortalized his name—preserving it, as it were, in alcohol. The drink was first served in a bar opposite the old Southern Hotel—a hotel which, by the way, I regretted to see standing empty and deserted at the time of my last visit, for, in its prime, it was a hotel among hotels.
I have tried to lead gradually, effectively to a climax. From clubs, which are pleasant, I progressed to poker, which is pleasanter; from poker I stepped ahead to highballs and gin rickeys. And now I am prepared to reach my highest altitude. I intend to tell the very nicest thing about St. Louis. And the nicest thing about St. Louisis the nicest thing that there can be about a place.
It discounts primitive street cars, an ill-set railway station, and an unfinished bridge. It sinks the parks, the botanical gardens, the art museum into comparative oblivion. Small wonder that St. Louis seems to ignore her minor weaknesses when she excels in this one thing—as she must know she does.
The nicest thing about St. Louis is St. Louis girls.
In the first place, fashionable young women in St. Louis are quite as gratifying to the eye as women anywhere. In the second place, they have unusual poise. This latter quality is very striking, and it springs, I fancy, from the town's conservatism and solidity. The young girls and young men of the St. Louis social group have grown up together, as have their parents and grandparents before them. They give one the feeling that they are somehow rooted to the place, as no New Yorker is rooted to New York. The social fabric of St. Louis changes little. The old families live in the houses they have always lived in, instead of moving from apartment to apartment every year or two. One does not feel the nervous tug of social and financial straining, of that eternal overreaching which one senses always in New York.
One day at luncheon I found myself between two very lovely creatures—neither of them over twenty-two or twenty-three; both of them endowed with the aplomb of older, more experienced, women—who endeared themselves to me by talking critically about the works ofMeredith—and Joseph Conrad—and Leonard Merrick. Fancy that! Fancy their being pretty girls yet having worth-while things to say—and about those three men!
And when the conversation drifted away from books to the topic which my companion and I call "life stuff," and when I found them adept also in that field, my appreciation of St. Louis became boundless.
It just occurs to me that, in publishing the fact that St. Louis girls have brains I may have unintentionally done them an unkindness.
Once I asked a young English bachelor to my house for a week-end.
"I want you to come this week," I said, "because the prettiest girl I know will be there."
"Delighted," he replied.
"She's a most unusual girl," I went on, "for, besides being a dream of loveliness, she's clever."
"Oh," he said, "if she's clever, let me come some other time. I don't like 'em clever. I like 'em pretty and stupid."
If black slaves are no longer bought and sold there, if the river trade has dwindled, if the railroad and the factory have come, bringing a larger population with them, if the town now has a hundred-thousand-dollar city hall, a country club, and "fifty-six passenger trains daily," it is, at all events, a pleasure to record the fact that Hannibal, Missouri, retains to-day that look of soft and shambling picturesqueness suitable to an old river town, and essential to the "St. Petersburg" of fiction—the perpetual dwelling place of those immortal boys, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
Should this characterization of the town fail to meet with the approval of the Hannibal Commercial Club, I regret it, for I honor the Commercial Club because of its action toward the preservation of a thing so uncommercial as the boyhood home of Mark Twain. But, after all, the club must remember that, in its creditable effort to build up a newer and finer Hannibal, a Hannibal of brick and granite, it is running counter to the sentimental interests of innumerable persons who, though most of them have never seen the old town and never will, yet think of it as given to them by Mark Twain, with a peculiar tenderness, as though it were a Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn among the cities—a ragged,happy boy of a town, which ought never, never to grow up.
There is no more charming way of preserving the memory of an artist than through the preservation of the house in which he lived, and that is especially true where the artist was a literary man and where the house has figured in his writings. What memorial to Thomas Bailey Aldrich, for example, could equal the one in Portsmouth, N. H., where is preserved the house in which the "Bad Boy" of the "Diary" used to live, even to the furniture and the bedroom wall paper mentioned in the book? And what monuments to Washington Irving could touch quite the note that is touched by that old house in Tarrytown, N. Y., or that other old house in Irving Place, in the city of New York, where the Authors' League of America now has its headquarters?
With the exception of Stratford-on-Avon, I do not know of a community so completely dominated by the memory of a great man of letters as is the city of Hannibal by the memory of Mark Twain. There is, indeed, a curious resemblance to be traced between the two towns. I don't mean a physical resemblance, for no places could be less alike than the garden town where Shakespeare lived and the pathetic wooden village of the early west in which nine years of Mark Twain's boyhood were spent. The resemblance is only in the majestic shadows cast over them by their great men.
Thus, the hotel in Stratford is called The Shakespeare Hotel, while that in Hannibal is The Mark Twain.Stratford has the house in which Shakespeare was born; Hannibal the house in which Mark Twain lived—the house of Tom Sawyer. Stratford has the cottage of Anne Hathaway; Hannibal that of Becky Thatcher. And Hannibal has, furthermore, one possession which lovers of the delightful Becky will hope may long be spared to it—it possesses, in the person of Mrs. Laura Hawkins Frazer, who is now matron of the Home for the Friendless, the original of Becky.
It is said that a memorial tablet, intended to mark the birthplace of Eugene Field in St. Louis, was placed, not only upon the wrong house, but upon a house in the wrong street. Mark Twain unveiled the tablet; one can fancy the spirits of these two Missouri literary men meeting somewhere and smiling together over that. But if the shade of Mark Twain should undertake to chaff that of the poet upon the fact that mortals had erred as to the location of his birthplace, the shade of Field would not be able to retort in kind, for—thanks partly to the fact that Mark Twain was known for a genius while he was yet alive, and partly to the indefatigable labors of his biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine—a vast fund of accurate information has been preserved, covering the life of the great Missourian, from the time of his birth in the little hamlet of Florida, Mo., to his death in Reading, Conn. No; if the shade of Field should wish to return the jest, it would probably call the humorist's attention to a certain memorial tablet in the Mark Twain house in Hannibal. But of that presently.
I have said that the Commercial Club honored Mark Twain's memory. That is true. But the Commercial Club would not be a Commercial Club if it did not also wish the visitor to take into consideration certain other matters. In effect it says to him: "Yes, indeed, Mark Twain spent the most important part of his boyhood here. But we wish you to understand that Hannibal is a busy, growing town. We have the cheapest electric power in the Mississippi Valley. We offer free factory sites. We—"
"Yes," you say, "but where is the Mark Twain house?"
"Oh—" says Hannibal, catching its breath. "Go right on up Main to Hill Street; you'll find it just around the corner. Any one will point it out to you. There's a bronze tablet in the wall. But put this little pamphlet in your pocket. It tells all about our city. You can read it at your leisure."
You take the pamphlet and move along up Main Street. And if there is a sympathetic native with you he will stop you at the corner of Main and Bird—they call it Wildcat Corner—and point out a little wooden shanty adjoining a near-by alley, where, it is said, Mark Twain's father, John Marshall Clemens, had his office when he was Justice of the Peace—the same office in which Samuel Clemens in his boyhood saw the corpselying on the floor, by moonlight, as recounted in "The Innocents Abroad."
We came upon the "Mark Twain House".... And to think that, wretched as this place was, the Clemens family were forced to leave it for a time because they were too poor to live there!We came upon the "Mark Twain House".... And to think that, wretched as this place was, the Clemens family were forced to leave it for a time because they were too poor to live there!
It was at Wildcat Corner, too, that the boys conducted that famous piece of high finance: trading off the green watermelon, which they had stolen, for a ripe one, on the allegation that the former had been purchased.
Also near the corner stands the building in which Joseph Ament had the office of his newspaper, the "Missouri Courier," where young Sam Clemens first went to work as an apprentice, doing errands and learning to set type; and there are many other old buildings having some bearing on the history of the Clemens family, including one at the corner of Main and Hill Streets, in the upper story of which the family lived for a time, a building somewhat after the Greek pattern so prevalent throughout the south in the early days. Once, when he revisited Hannibal after he had become famous, Mark Twain stopped before that building and told Mr. George A. Mahan that he remembered when it was erected, and that at the time the fluted pilasters on the front of it constituted his idea of reckless extravagance—that, indeed, the ostentation of them startled the whole town.
Turning into Bird Street and passing the old Pavey Hotel, we came upon the "Mark Twain House," a tiny box of a cottage, its sagging front so taken up with five windows and a door that there is barely room for the little bronze plaque which marks the place. At one sideis an alley running back to the house of Huckleberry Finn, on the next street (Huck, as Paine tells us, was really a boy named Tom Blankenship), and in that alley stood the historic fence which young Sam Clemens cajoled the other boys into whitewashing for him, as related in "Tom Sawyer."
Inside the house there is little to be seen. It is occupied now by a custodian who sells souvenir post cards, and has but few Mark Twain relics to show—some photographs and autographs; nothing of importance. But, despite that, I got a real sensation as I stood in the little parlor, hardly larger than a good-sized closet, and realized that in that miserable shanty grew up the wild, barefoot boy who has since been called "the greatest Missourian" and "America's greatest literary man," and that in and about that place he gathered the impressions and had the adventures which, at the time, he himself never dreamed would be made by him into books—much less books that would be known as classics.
In the front room of the cottage a memorial tablet is to be seen. It is a curious thing. At the top is the following inscription:
THIS BUILDING PRESENTED TO THECITY OF HANNIBAL,MAY 7, 1912,BYMR. AND MRS. GEORGE A. MAHANAS A MEMORIAL TOMARK TWAIN
THIS BUILDING PRESENTED TO THECITY OF HANNIBAL,MAY 7, 1912,BYMR. AND MRS. GEORGE A. MAHANAS A MEMORIAL TOMARK TWAIN
Beneath the legend is a portrait bust of the author in bas relief. At the bottom of the tablet is another inscription. From across the room I saw that it was set off in quotation marks, and assuming, of course, that it was some particularly suitable extract from the works of the most quotable of all Americans, I stepped across and read it. This is what it said:
"MARK TWAIN'S LIFE TEACHES THAT POVERTY IS AN INCENTIVE RATHER THAN A BAR: AND THAT ANY BOY, HOWEVER HUMBLE HIS BIRTH AND SURROUNDINGS, MAY BY HONESTY AND INDUSTRY ACCOMPLISH GREAT THINGS."—George A. Mahan.
"MARK TWAIN'S LIFE TEACHES THAT POVERTY IS AN INCENTIVE RATHER THAN A BAR: AND THAT ANY BOY, HOWEVER HUMBLE HIS BIRTH AND SURROUNDINGS, MAY BY HONESTY AND INDUSTRY ACCOMPLISH GREAT THINGS."
—George A. Mahan.
That inscription made me think of many things. It made me think of Napoleon's inscription on the statue of Henri IV, and of Judge Thatcher's talk with Tom Sawyer, in the Sunday school, and of Mr. Walters, the Sunday school superintendent, in the same book, and of certain moral lessons drawn by Andrew Carnegie. And not the least thing of which it made me think was the mischievous, shiftless, troublesome, sandy-haired young rascal who hated school and Sunday school and yet became the more than honest, more than industrious man, commemorated there.
If I did not feel the inspiration of that place while considering the tablet, the back yard gave me real delight. There were the old outhouses, the old back stair, the old back fence, and the little window looking down on them—the window of Tom Sawyer, beneath which, in the gloaming, Huckleberry Finn made catcalls to summon forth his fellow buccaneer. And here, below the window, was the place where Pamela Clemens, Sam's sister, the original of Cousin Mary in "Tom Sawyer," had her candy pull on that evening when a boy, in his undershirt, came tumbling from above.
And to think that, wretched as this place was, the Clemens family were forced to leave it for a time because they were too poor to live there! Of a certainty Mark Twain's early life was as squalid as his later life was rich. However, it was always colorful—he saw to that, straight through from the barefoot days to those of the white suits, the Oxford gown, and the European courts.
At one side is an alley running back to the house of Huckleberry Finn, and in that alley stood the historic fence which young Sam Clemens cajoled the other boys into whitewashing for himAt one side is an alley running back to the house of Huckleberry Finn, and in that alley stood the historic fence which young Sam Clemens cajoled the other boys into whitewashing for him
Not far back of the house rises the "Cardiff Hill" of the stories; in reality, Holliday's Hill, so called because long ago there lived, up at the top, old Mrs. Holliday, who burned a lamp in her window every night as a mark for river pilots to run by. It was down that hill that the boys rolled the stones which startled churchgoers, and that final, enormous rock which, by a fortunate freak of chance, hurdled a negro and his wagon instead of striking and destroying them. Ah, how rich in racy memories are those streets! Somewhere among them, in that part of town which has come to be called "Mark-Twainville," is the very spot, unmarked and unknown,where young Sam Clemens picked up a scrap of newspaper upon which was printed a portion of the tale of Joan of Arc—a scrap of paper which, Paine says, gave him his first literary stimulus. And somewhere else, not far from the house, is the place where Orion Clemens, Sam's elder brother, ran the ill-starred newspaper on which Sam worked, setting type and doing his first writing. It was, indeed, in Orion's paper that Sam's famous verse, "To Mary in Hannibal," was published—the title condensed, because of the narrow column, to read: "To Mary in H—l."
Along the crest of the bluffs, overlooking the river, the city of Hannibal has made for itself a charming park, and at the highest point in this park there is to be unveiled, in a short time, a statue of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, which, from its position, will command a view of many leagues of mile-wide Mississippi. It is peculiarly fitting that the memorial should be stationed in that place. Mark Twain loved the river. Even though it almost "got" him in his boyhood (he had "nine narrow escapes from drowning") he adored it; later, when his youthful ambition to become a river pilot was attained, he still adored it; and finally he wrote his love of it into that masterpiece, "Life on the Mississippi," of which Arnold Bennett has said: "I would sacrifice for it the entire works of Thackeray and George Eliot."
Looking up the river from the spot where the statue will be placed, one may see Turtle Island, where Tom and Huck used to go and feast on turtle's eggs—rowingthere in that boat which, after they had so "honestly and industriously" stolen it, they painted red, that its former proprietor might not recognize it. Below is Glascox Island, where Nigger Jim hid. Glascox Island is often called Tom Sawyer's Island, or Mark Twain's Island, now. Not far below the island is the "scar on the hill-side" which marks the famous cave.
"For Sam Clemens," says Paine in his biography, "the cave had a fascination that never faded. Other localities and diversions might pall, but any mention of the cave found him always eager and ready for the three-mile walk or pull that brought them to the mystic door."
I suggested to my companion that, for the sake of sentiment, we, too, approach the cave by rowing down the river. And, having suggested the plan, I offered to take upon myself the heaviest responsibility connected with it—that of piloting the boat in these unfamiliar waters. All I required of him was the mere manual act of working the oars. To my amazement he refused. I fear that he not only lacks sentiment, but that he is becoming lazy.
We drove out to the cave in a Ford car.
Do you remember when Tom Sawyer took the boys to the cave at night, in "Huckleberry Finn"?
"We went to a clump of bushes," says Huck, "and Tom made everybody swear to keep the secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest part of the bushes. Then we lit candles and crawled in onour hands and knees. We went about two hundred yards, and then the cave opened up. Tom poked about among the passages, and pretty soon ducked under a wall where you wouldn't 'a' noticed there was a hole. We went along a narrow place and got into a kind of room, all damp and sweaty and cold, and there we stopped. Tom says: 'Now we'll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer's Gang. Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath and write his name in blood.'"
That is the sort of cave it is—a wonderful, mysterious place, black as India ink; a maze of passageways and vaulted rooms, eaten by the waters of long ago through the limestone cliffs; a seemingly endless cavern full of stalactites and stalagmites, looking like great conical masses of candle grease; a damp, oppressive labyrinth of eerie rock formations, to kindle the most bloodcurdling imaginings.
As we moved in, away from the daylight, illuminating our way, feebly, with such matches as we happened to have with us, and with newspaper torches, the man who had driven us out there told us about the cave.
"They ain't no one ever explored it," he said. "'S too big. Why, they's a lake in here—quite a big lake, with fish in it. And they's an arm of the cave that goes away down underneath the river. They say they's wells, too—holes with no bottoms to 'em. Prob'ly that's where them people went to that's got lost in the cave."
"Have people gotten lost in here?" I asked.
"Oh, yes," he said cheerfully. "They say there's some that's gone in and never come out again. She's quite a cave."
I began to walk more gingerly into the blackness.
"I suppose," I said to him presently, "there are toads and snakes and such things here?"
He hastened to set my mind at rest on that.
"Oh, Lord bless you, yes!" he declared. "Bats, too."
"And I suppose some of those holes you speak of are full of snakes?"
"Most likely." His voice reverberated in the darkness. "But I can't be sure. Nobody that's ever been in them holes ain't lived to tell the tale."
By this time we had reached a point at which no glimmer of light from the mouth of the cave was visible. We were feeling our way along, running our hands over the damp rocks and putting our feet before us with the utmost caution. I knew, of course, that it would add a good deal to my story if one of our party fell into a hole and was never again heard from, but the more I thought about it the more advisable it seemed to me that I should not be that one. I had an engagement for dinner that evening, and besides, if I fell in, who would write the story? Certainly the driver of the auto-hack, for all his good will, could hardly do it justice; whereas, if he fell in I could at a pinch drive the little Ford back to the city.
I dropped behind. But when I did that he stopped.
"I just stopped for breath," I said. "You can keep on and I'll follow in a minute."
"No," he answered, "I'll wait for you. I'm out of breath, too. Besides, I don't want you to get lost in here."
At this juncture my companion, who had moved a little way off, gave a frightful yell, which echoed horribly through the cavern.
I could not see him. I did not know what was the matter. Never mind! My one thought was of him. Perhaps he had been attacked by a wildcat or a serpent. Well, he was my fellow traveler, and I would stand by him! Even the chauffeur of the hack seemed to feel the same way. Together we turned and ran toward the place whence we thought the voice might have come—that is to say, toward the mouth of the cave. But when we reached it he wasn't there.
"He must be back in the cave, after all," I said to the driver.
"Yes," he agreed.
"Now, I tell you," I said. "We mustn't both go in after him. One of us ought to stay here and call to the others to guide them out. I'll do that. I have a good strong voice. And you go in and find out what's the matter. You know the cave better than I do."
"Oh, no I don't," said the man.
"Why certainly you do!" I said.
"I wasn't never into the cave before," he said."Leastways not nowhere near as far as we was this time."
"But you live right here in Hannibal," I insisted. "Youmustknow more about it than I do. I live in New York. What could I know about a cave away out here in Missouri?"
"Well, you know just as much as I do, anyhow," he returned doggedly.
"Look here!" I said sharply. "I hope you aren't a coward? The idea! A great big fellow like you, too!"
However, at that juncture, our argument was stopped by the appearance of the missing man. He strolled into the light in leisurely fashion.
"What happened?" I cried.
"Happened?" he repeated. "Nothing happened. Why?"
"You yelled, didn't you?"
"Yes," he said, "I wanted to hear the echoes."
Before leaving Hannibal that afternoon, we had the pleasure of meeting an old school friend of Samuel Clemens's, Colonel John L. RoBards—the same John RoBards of whom it is recorded in Paine's work that "he wore almost continually the medal for amiability, while Samuel Clemens had a mortgage on the medal for spelling."
Colonel RoBards is still amiable. He took us to his office, showed us a scrap-book containing clippings inwhich he was mentioned in connection with Mark Twain, and told us of old days in the log schoolhouse.
Seeing that I was making notes, the Colonel called my attention politely to the spelling of his name, requesting that I get it right. Then he explained to me the reason for the capital B, beginning the second syllable.
"I may say, sir," he explained in his fine Southern manner, "that I inserted that capital B myself. At least I converted the small B into a capital. I am a Kentuckian, sir, and in Kentucky my family name stands for something. It is a name that I am proud to bear, and I do not like to be called out of it. But up here I was continually annoyed by the errors of careless persons. Frequently they would fail to give the accent on the final syllable, where it should be placed, sir—RoBards; that is the way it should be pronounced—but even worse, it happened now and then that some one called me by the plebeian appellation, Roberts. That was most distasteful to me, sir.Mostdistasteful. For that reason I use the capital B for emphasis."
I was glad to assure the Colonel that in these pages his name would be correctly spelled, and I call him to witness that I spoke the truth. I repeat, the name is RoBards. And it is borne by a most amiable gentleman.
Mr. F. W. Hixson of St. Louis has in his possession an autograph book which belonged to his mother when she was a young girl (Ann Virginia Ruffner), residingin Hannibal. In this book, Sam Clemens wrote a verse at the time when he was preparing to leave the town where he had spent his youth. I reproduce that boyish bit of doggerel here, solely for the value of one word which it contains:
Good-by, good-by,I bid you now, my friend;And though 'tis hard to say the word,To destiny I bend.
Good-by, good-by,I bid you now, my friend;And though 'tis hard to say the word,To destiny I bend.
Never, in his most perfect passages, did Samuel Clemens hit more certainly upon the one right word than when in this verse he wrote the second word in the last line.
And what a destiny it was!
Never outside of Brittany and Normandy have I seen roads so full of animals as those of Pike CountyNever outside of Brittany and Normandy have I seen roads so full of animals as those of Pike County
It was before we left St. Louis that I received a letter inviting us to visit in the town of Louisiana, Mo. I quote a portion of it:
Louisiana is in Pike County, a county famous for its big red apples, miles of rock roads, fine old estates, Rhine scenery, capons, rare old country hams, and poker. Pike County means more to Missouri than Missouri does to Pike.Do you remember "Jim Bludso of the 'Prairie Belle'"?He weren't no saint—them engineersIs pretty much all alike—One wife in Natchez-under-the-HillAnd another one here in Pike.We can show you "the willer-bank on the right," where Bludso ran the 'Prairie Belle' aground and made good with his life his old promise:I'll hold her nozzle agin the bankTill the last galoot's ashore.We can also show you the home of Champ Clark, and the largest nursery in the world, and a meadow where, twenty-five years ago, a young fellow threw down his hayfork and said to his companion: "Sam, I'm going to town to study law with Champ Clark. Some day I'm going to be Governor of this State." He was Elliott W. Major, and he is Governor to-day.
Louisiana is in Pike County, a county famous for its big red apples, miles of rock roads, fine old estates, Rhine scenery, capons, rare old country hams, and poker. Pike County means more to Missouri than Missouri does to Pike.
Do you remember "Jim Bludso of the 'Prairie Belle'"?
He weren't no saint—them engineersIs pretty much all alike—One wife in Natchez-under-the-HillAnd another one here in Pike.
He weren't no saint—them engineersIs pretty much all alike—One wife in Natchez-under-the-HillAnd another one here in Pike.
We can show you "the willer-bank on the right," where Bludso ran the 'Prairie Belle' aground and made good with his life his old promise:
I'll hold her nozzle agin the bankTill the last galoot's ashore.
I'll hold her nozzle agin the bankTill the last galoot's ashore.
We can also show you the home of Champ Clark, and the largest nursery in the world, and a meadow where, twenty-five years ago, a young fellow threw down his hayfork and said to his companion: "Sam, I'm going to town to study law with Champ Clark. Some day I'm going to be Governor of this State." He was Elliott W. Major, and he is Governor to-day.
The promise held forth by this letter appealed to me. It is always interesting to see whether a man likeChamp Clark lives in a house with ornamental iron fences on the roof and iron urns in the front yard; likewise there is a sort of fascination for a man of my extensive ignorance, in hearing not merely how the Governor of Missouri decided to become Governor, but in finding out his name. Then those hams and capons—how many politicians can compare for interest with a tender capon or a fine old country ham? And perhaps more alluring to me than any of these was the idea of going to visit in a strange State, and a strange town, and a strange house—the house of a total stranger.
We accepted.
Our host met us with his touring car and proceeded to make good his promises about the nursery, and the scenery, and the roads, and the estates, and as we bowled along he told us about "Pike." It is indeed a great county. And the fact that it was originally settled by Virginians, Kentuckians, and Carolinians still stamps it strongly with the qualities of the South. Though north of St. Louis on the map, it is south of St. Louis in its spirit. Indeed, Louisiana is the most Southern town in appearance and feeling that we visited upon our travels. The broad black felt hats one sees about the streets, the luxuriant mustaches and goatees—all these things mark the town, and if they are not enough, you should see "Indy" Gordon as she walks along puffing at a bulldog pipe black as her own face.
Never outside of Brittany and Normandy have I seen roads so full of animals as those of Pike County. Fromthe great four-horse teams, drawing produce to and from the beautiful estate called "Falicon," to the mule teams and the saddle horses and the cows and pigs and chickens and dogs, all the quadrupeds and bipeds domesticated by mankind were there upon the roads to meet us and to protest, by various antics, against the invasion of the motor car. Dogs hurled themselves at the car as though to suicide; chickens extended themselves in shrieking dives across our course; pigs arose from the luxurious mud with grunts of frantic disapproval, and cantered heavily into the fields; cows trotted lumberingly before us, their hind legs and their fore legs moving, it seemed, without relation to each other; a goat ran round and round the tree to which he was attached; mules pointed their ears to heaven, and opened their eyes wide in horror and amazement; beautiful saddle horses bearing countrymen, or rosy-cheeked young women from the farms, tried to climb into the boughs of wayside trees for safety, and four-horse teams managed to get themselves involved in a manner only rivaled by a ball of yarn with which a kitten is allowed to work its own sweet will.
Our host took all these matters calmly. When a mule protested at our presence on the road, it would merely serve as a reminder that, "Pike County furnished most of the mules for the Spanish war"; or, when a saddle horse showed signs of homicidal purpose, it would draw the calm observation, "Pike is probably the greatest county in the whole United States for saddle horses.'Missouri King,' the undefeated champion saddle horse of the world, was raised here."
So we progressed amid the outraged animals.
My feeling as I alighted at last on the step before our host's front door was one of definite relief. For dinner is the meal I care for most, and man, with all his faults, the animal I most enjoy.
The house was genial like its owner—it was just the sort of house I like; large and open, with wide halls, spacious rooms, comfortable beds and chairs, and ash trays everywhere.
"I've asked some men in for dinner and a little game," our host informed us, as he left us to our dressing.
Presently we heard motors arriving in the drive, beneath our windows. When we descended, the living room was filled with men in dinner suits. (Oh, yes; they wear them in those Mississippi River towns, and they fit as well as yours does!)
When we had been introduced we all moved to the dining room.
At each place was a printed menu with the heading "At Home Abroad"—a hospitable inversion of the general title of these chapters—and with details as follows:
A COUNTRY DINNER
Old Pike County ham,Pike County caponsand other Pike County essentials,with Pike County Colonels.
Old Pike County ham,Pike County caponsand other Pike County essentials,with Pike County Colonels.