A Good Man, A Most Companionable And Manly Man,
And Worthy Of A Kindlier Fate.
Chapter 38 The House Beautiful
WE took passage in a Cincinnati boat for New Orleans; or on a Cincinnati
boat - either is correct; the former is the eastern form of putting it,
the latter the western.
Mr. Dickens declined to agree that the Mississippi steamboats were
'magnificent,' or that they were 'floating palaces,' - terms which had
always been applied to them; terms which did not over-express the
admiration with which the people viewed them.
Mr. Dickens's position was unassailable, possibly; the people's position
was certainly unassailable. If Mr. Dickens was comparing these boats
with the crown jewels; or with the Taj, or with the Matterhorn; or with
some other priceless or wonderful thing which he had seen, they were not
magnificent - he was right. The people compared them with what they had
seen; and, thus measured, thus judged, the boats were magnificent - the
term was the correct one, it was not at all too strong. The people were
as right as was Mr. Dickens. The steamboats were finer than anything on
shore. Compared with superior dwelling-houses and first-class hotels in
the Valley, they were indubitably magnificent, they were 'palaces.' To a
few people living in New Orleans and St. Louis, they were not
magnificent, perhaps; not palaces; but to the great majority of those
populations, and to the entire populations spread over both banks
between Baton Rouge and St. Louis, they were palaces; they tallied with
the citizen's dream of what magnificence was, and satisfied it.
Every town and village along that vast stretch of double river-frontage
had a best dwelling, finest dwelling, mansion, - the home of its
wealthiest and most conspicuous citizen. It is easy to describe it:
large grassy yard, with paling fence painted white - in fair repair;
brick walk from gate to door; big, square, two-story 'frame' house,
painted white and porticoed like a Grecian temple - with this difference,
that the imposing fluted columns and Corinthian capitals were a pathetic
sham, being made of white pine, and painted; iron knocker; brass door
knob - discolored, for lack of polishing. Within, an uncarpeted hall, of
planed boards; opening out of it, a parlor, fifteen feet by fifteen - in
some instances five or ten feet larger; ingrain carpet; mahogany center-
table; lamp on it, with green-paper shade - standing on a gridiron, so to
speak, made of high-colored yarns, by the young ladies of the house, and
called a lamp-mat; several books, piled and disposed, with cast-iron
exactness, according to an inherited and unchangeable plan; among them,
Tupper, much penciled; also, 'Friendship's Offering,' and 'Affection's
Wreath,' with their sappy inanities illustrated in die-away mezzotints;
also, Ossian; 'Alonzo and Melissa:' maybe 'Ivanhoe:' also 'Album,' full
of original 'poetry' of the Thou-hast-wounded-the-spirit-that-loved-thee
breed; two or three goody-goody works - 'Shepherd of Salisbury Plain,'
etc.; current number of the chaste and innocuous Godey's 'Lady's Book,'
with painted fashion-plate of wax-figure women with mouths all alike -
lips and eyelids the same size - each five-foot woman with a two-inch
wedge sticking from under her dress and letting-on to be half of her
foot. Polished air-tight stove (new and deadly invention), with pipe
passing through a board which closes up the discarded good old
fireplace. On each end of the wooden mantel, over the fireplace, a
large basket of peaches and other fruits, natural size, all done in
plaster, rudely, or in wax, and painted to resemble the originals - which
they don't. Over middle of mantel, engraving - Washington Crossing the
Delaware; on the wall by the door, copy of it done in thunder-and-
lightning crewels by one of the young ladies - work of art which would
have made Washington hesitate about crossing, if he could have foreseen
what advantage was going to be taken of it. Piano - kettle in disguise -
with music, bound and unbound, piled on it, and on a stand near by:
Battle of Prague; Bird Waltz; Arkansas Traveler; Rosin the Bow;
Marseilles Hymn; On a Lone Barren Isle (St. Helena); The Last Link is
Broken; She wore a Wreath of Roses the Night when last we met; Go,
forget me, Why should Sorrow o'er that Brow a Shadow fling; Hours there
were to Memory Dearer; Long, Long Ago; Days of Absence; A Life on the
Ocean Wave, a Home on the Rolling Deep; Bird at Sea; and spread open on
the rack, where the plaintive singer has left it, RO-holl on, silver
MOO-hoon, guide the TRAV-el-lerr his WAY, etc. Tilted pensively against
the piano, a guitar - guitar capable of playing the Spanish Fandango by
itself, if you give it a start. Frantic work of art on the wall - pious
motto, done on the premises, sometimes in colored yarns, sometimes in
faded grasses: progenitor of the 'God Bless Our Home' of modern
commerce. Framed in black moldings on the wall, other works of arts,
conceived and committed on the premises, by the young ladies; being grim
black-and-white crayons; landscapes, mostly: lake, solitary sail-boat,
petrified clouds, pre-geological trees on shore, anthracite precipice;
name of criminal conspicuous in the corner. Lithograph, Napoleon
Crossing the Alps. Lithograph, The Grave at St. Helena. Steel-plates,
Trumbull's Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Sally from Gibraltar. Copper-
plates, Moses Smiting the Rock, and Return of the Prodigal Son. In big
gilt frame, slander of the family in oil: papa holding a book
('Constitution of the United States'); guitar leaning against mamma,
blue ribbons fluttering from its neck; the young ladies, as children, in
slippers and scalloped pantelettes, one embracing toy horse, the other
beguiling kitten with ball of yarn, and both simpering up at mamma, who
simpers back. These persons all fresh, raw, and red - apparently skinned.
Opposite, in gilt frame, grandpa and grandma, at thirty and twenty-two,
stiff, old-fashioned, high-collared, puff-sleeved, glaring pallidly out
from a background of solid Egyptian night.
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