The Last of the Flatboats
Page 38
CHAPTER XXXVII
RED-LETTER DAYS IN NEW ORLEANS
Once comfortably settled at the little hotel near Dryades Street, theboys proceeded to equip themselves for seeing the city. They bought anew suit of clothes and a hat apiece, together with such underclothes,linen, shoes, and socks as they needed. Indeed, they bought more thanwas necessary for their immediate wants, because they would need theclothes on their return home, and they could buy them much cheaper inNew Orleans than in Vevay. Phil decided to indulge himself in anovercoat, the first that he had ever owned, and the others followed hisexample.
"Not that we are likely to need overcoats very pressingly in New Orleansat this autumn season," said Irv, "but I for one have a livelyrecollection of how cold it is in Vevay every winter."
By appointment they called at the office of Mr. Kennedy, the commissionmerchant, the next day, for a settlement. He furnished them withcarefully detailed accounts, made out by his bookkeepers, and gave themdrafts on New York for the money coming to them.
"You'd better send your drafts by mail to your home bank," he said. "Ifyou need any money for your expenses while here, I'll furnish it, andyou can remit it from home."
"Thank you!" responded Phil. "We shan't need any money for expenseshere. We've enough left of the money we started with, which we call our'campaign fund,' for that. But how about our passage home? Do you happento know, sir, about how much that will cost us?"
"Whatever you choose to make it cost you, from nothing at all up,"answered the merchant.
A query or two brought out this explanation:--
"You've dropped some hints in our conversations"--for he had talked withthem at their hotel the evening before--"concerning your educationalplans, and I gather that you want to keep all you can of the money youhave made."
"Precisely!" said Phil. "Except that we mean to stay here for a week tosee all we can of the city, we don't intend to spend a dollar that wecan save."
"So I thought," said the merchant. "I have therefore taken the libertyof making some inquiries for you. It happens that I am freighting asteamboat with cotton, sugar, molasses, coffee, and fruits, forLouisville. The captain is a good friend of mine. As he will have noway-freight,--nothing to put on or off till he gets to Louisville, wherethe stevedores will unload the boat,--he has very little for deck handsor roustabouts to do. But there will be some 'wooding up' to do now andthen,--taking on wood for the furnaces,--and there will be the decks tokeep clean, the lanterns to keep in order, and all that sort of thing.Now as you young men are stout fellows and pretty well used by this timeto roughing it, he has agreed, if you choose, to take you instead of theroustabouts and deck hands ordinarily carried. There won't be any wages,but you'll have your meals from the cook's galley and your passages toLouisville free. Passage from there to Vevay will be a trifle, ofcourse."
The boys were more pleased with the arrangement than they could explainin words. But Phil tried to thank Mr. Kennedy, ending by saying, "Idon't know why you should take so much trouble for us, sir, as we'recomplete strangers to you."
"You don't know why?" asked the merchant, with smiles rippling over hisface. "Well, let me tell you that the man you rescued from a horribledeath up there in the Tallahatchie swamp is my brother-in-law, the womanyou saved is my sister, and the children my nephew and nieces. Now youwill understand that whatever you happen to want in New Orleans isyours, if I know of your wanting it. We should all be more than glad todo vastly more for such good friends as you if we could. But mybrother-in-law writes me that he talked with you about that, andconcluded that boys of your sort are likely to do much better forthemselves than anybody can do for them. Now, not a word more on thatsubject, please," as Ed, with his big eyes full of tears, arose,intending to say something of his own and his comrades' feelings. "Not aword more. Besides, there's a clerk waiting for me at the door. Go tothe opera to-night, and hear some good music. One of my clerks willleave tickets at the hotel for you. And be ready at noon to-morrow for adrive. I'll call for you, and show you our town. Good-by now,good-by--really, I mustn't talk longer. Good-by."
And so the overwhelmed youngsters found themselves bowed out into CampStreet without a chance to say a word of thanks.
The next day, in two open carriages, Mr. Kennedy drove the boysfor hours over the beautiful and picturesque old city--up into theCarrollton district, where are fine residences and broad streets; downthrough the French Creole region, where the quaintness of the city issomething wholly unmatched in any other town in America; and out over abeautiful road to Lake Pontchartrain, with luncheon at the HalfwayHouse.
"This will be enough for to-day," said their host, as they rose fromtheir meal. "To-morrow morning, if you young gentlemen like, we'll drivedown to the battlefield, where Jackson won his famous victory and savedthe Mississippi River and all the region west of it from Britishcontrol. We'll drive into the city now, and you would do well to restthis afternoon, for driving in this crisp autumn air makes one tired andsleepy."
The boys protested that he was unwarrantably taking his time for theirentertainment, but he had a way of turning off such things with a laughwhich left nothing else to be said.
So the trip to the battlefield was made, but this time they had a secondcompanion in the person of a young professor from Tulane University,whom Mr. Kennedy had pressed into service to explain the battlefield andall the events connected with it.
On the following day Mr. Kennedy took his young friends down the riveron a little steamer, on board which they passed a night and two days,seeing the forts and hearing from the professor the story of the partthey had played in Farragut's celebrated river fight, and visiting thejetties--those stupendous engineering works by which the governmentdeepened the mouth of the river so as to permit large ships to come upto the city.
On the way back from this two days' trip Mr. Kennedy invited the boys todine with him at his home on the next evening. With a queer smile uponhis lips, he said:--
"I ought to have asked you to my house sooner, perhaps, but I wasn'tready. There were some little details that I wanted to arrange first."
When the dinner evening came, the boys entered the stately mansion withmore of embarrassment than they would have cared to confess. It was thefinest house they had ever seen,--a stately, old-fashioned structure,with broad galleries running around three of its sides, and with aspacious colonnade in front. It stood in the midst of a garden of palm,ilex, and magnolia trees, occupying an entire city block, and shut in bya high brick wall, pierced by great gateways and little ones.
Inside, the house was luxuriously comfortable, filled with old-fashionedfurniture, time-dulled pictures, and here and there a bit of statuary,but with none of that painfully breakable looking bric-a-brac that onefinds so often and in such annoying profusion in the houses of the richor the well-to-do. There was nothing here that meant show, nothing thatdid not suggest easy use and comfort.
Mr. Kennedy himself followed the servant to the door to receive hisyoung friends. When he had ushered them into a homelike, "back-parlor"sort of a room, he excused himself for a brief time and left them. Abouta minute later they heard little feet pattering down the great hall,and, an instant later, "Baby" toddled in. She paused a moment, and thenrushing into Phil's arms called aloud:--
"My boys! My big boys!" Then she raised her little voice, and cried:--
"Come, papa! Come, mamma! My boys is come!"
This was the "little detail" that Mr. Kennedy had waited to arrange. Hehad induced his sister and her husband to bring the children to NewOrleans, to await the flood's subsidence; and he had waited for theirarrival before inviting the boys to dinner, in order that their welcomemight be eager, and their enjoyment of his hospitality free fromembarrassment.
In company with their flatboat guests, the lads felt completely at home,and perhaps their shrewdly kind host aided toward this result by havingthe dinner served in the most homelike and informal way that he couldmanage.
As the steamboat on which th
ey were to "work their way" up the riverwas to sail the next afternoon, this evening at Mr. Kennedy's was theirlast in New Orleans.
"And what a delightful finish it has been to all our experiences!" saidIrv, when they all got back to their hotel.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
"IT"
There is not much more of this story for me to tell. The voyage up theriver involved very little of work, and nothing at all of adventure. Thesteamboat was a slow one. She plodded along, day and night, neverlanding except when it was necessary to take on fifty cords or so ofwood, with which to make steam.
Phil and his comrades took pride in keeping the decks in mostscrupulously clean condition, and doing with earnest care the othertasks--mostly very small ones--which fell to their lot.
It took about nine days for the pottering old freight steamer to makethe journey to Louisville; for although the great flood had considerablysubsided, the Ohio was still sufficiently full for the boat to pass overthe falls and land her cargo at the city, instead of discharging it atPortland, four miles below.
Bidding farewell to their captain, the crew of _The Last of theFlatboats_ donned their new clothes, and took passage for Vevay on themail boat.
They landed at their home town late in the afternoon, hired a drayman tohaul their small baggage to their several homes, and proudly marched upFerry Street like the returning adventurers that they were, while allthe small boys in town trudged along with them precisely as they wouldhave followed a circus parade.
After briefly visiting their homes and having reunion suppers there withtheir families, the boys reassembled in their old meeting-place, WillMoreraud's room over a store. There they made out all their accounts,trying hard to make them look like those prepared by Mr. Kennedy'sbookkeepers in New Orleans. They were then ready to settle, on the nextday, with all the owners of the cargo they had carried.
When all was arranged, Phil figured a while, and then said:--
"Fellows, we've netted a profit of exactly four hundred and fiftydollars clear, by our trip. That's ninety dollars apiece to add to ourcollege fund. The money's in bank to my credit. I'll draw a check foreach fellow's share."
When he had delivered to each of his comrades a check for ninetydollars, he rose and stretched himself and said, with accents ofrelief:--
"Now I'm not 'IT' any longer."
"Oh, yes, you are," said Irv. "We fellows are going to stick togethernow, you know. There's the study club, you remember. That will need an'IT,' and you'll be the 'IT,' won't he, boys?"
"You bet!" said all in a breath.
* * * * *
When Irv and Ed reported the voyage and the study club plan to Mrs.Dupont, she entered enthusiastically into the scheme.
"Don't go to school at all this year," she said. "Come to me instead.When bright boys have made up their minds to study as hard as they canwithout any forcing, all they need is a tutor to help them when theyneed help. I'll be the tutor. The old schoolroom in my house, where Itaught you boys and your fathers the multiplication table long beforegraded schools were thought of in this town, is unoccupied. Everythingin it is just as it was when you boys were with me. I'll have the maidsdust it up, and it shall be the home of the 'Study Club.'"
When the boys told the wise old lady how Phil had been made "IT" on thevoyage, and how splendidly he had risen to his responsibilities, shesmiled, but showed no surprise.
"I'm glad you boys had the good sense to choose Phil for your leader,"she said. "If you had asked me, I should have told you to do just that.I am older than you by nearly half a century. I have taught severalgenerations of boys, and I think I know boys better than I know anythingelse in the world. Now let me tell you about Phil. He was born to be'IT,' he will always be 'IT,' though he will never try to be. He has agift--if I didn't detest the word for the bad uses it has been put to,I'd say he has a 'mission' to be 'IT' in every endeavor that he may beassociated with. Whenever you're in doubt, be very sure that Phil isyour best 'IT.'"
Here this story comes to an
END
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
Where the original work uses text in italics, this e-text uses _text_.Small capitals in the original work are represented here in allcapitals.
Footnotes have been renumbered and moved to directly below the paragraphto which they belong.
Illustrations that were located mid-paragraph in the original work weremoved below the including paragraph.
This text has been preserved as in the original, including archaic andinconsistent spelling, punctuation and grammar, except as noted below.
Obvious printer's errors have been silently corrected.
Page 12: 'tussel' changed to 'tussle'.
Page 90: 'Ouashita' changed to 'Ouachita'.
Pages 100, 101 and 102: 'Pittsburg' is likely referring to 'Pittsburgh'.
Page 140: 'fusilade' changed to 'fusillade'.
Page 124: 'spliting' changed to 'splitting'.
Page 337: 'Alleghanies' changed to 'Alleghenies'