American Notes for General Circulation

by Dickens, Chales

  fixings?'

  There are few words which perform such various duties as this word

  'fix.' It is the Caleb Quotem of the American vocabulary. You

  call upon a gentleman in a country town, and his help informs you

  that he is 'fixing himself' just now, but will be down directly:

  by which you are to understand that he is dressing. You inquire,

  on board a steamboat, of a fellow-passenger, whether breakfast will

  be ready soon, and he tells you he should think so, for when he was

  last below, they were 'fixing the tables:' in other words, laying

  the cloth. You beg a porter to collect your luggage, and he

  entreats you not to be uneasy, for he'll 'fix it presently:' and if

  you complain of indisposition, you are advised to have recourse to

  Doctor So-and-so, who will 'fix you' in no time.

  One night, I ordered a bottle of mulled wine at an hotel where I

  was staying, and waited a long time for it; at length it was put

  upon the table with an apology from the landlord that he feared it

  wasn't 'fixed properly.' And I recollect once, at a stage-coach

  dinner, overhearing a very stern gentleman demand of a waiter who

  presented him with a plate of underdone roast-beef, 'whether he

  called THAT, fixing God A'mighty's vittles?'

  There is no doubt that the meal, at which the invitation was

  tendered to me which has occasioned this digression, was disposed

  of somewhat ravenously; and that the gentlemen thrust the broadbladed

  knives and the two-pronged forks further down their throats

  than I ever saw the same weapons go before, except in the hands of

  a skilful juggler: but no man sat down until the ladies were

  seated; or omitted any little act of politeness which could

  contribute to their comfort. Nor did I ever once, on any occasion,

  anywhere, during my rambles in America, see a woman exposed to the

  slightest act of rudeness, incivility, or even inattention.

  By the time the meal was over, the rain, which seemed to have worn

  itself out by coming down so fast, was nearly over too; and it

  became feasible to go on deck: which was a great relief,

  notwithstanding its being a very small deck, and being rendered

  still smaller by the luggage, which was heaped together in the

  middle under a tarpaulin covering; leaving, on either side, a path

  so narrow, that it became a science to walk to and fro without

  tumbling overboard into the canal. It was somewhat embarrassing at

  first, too, to have to duck nimbly every five minutes whenever the

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  man at the helm cried 'Bridge!' and sometimes, when the cry was

  'Low Bridge,' to lie down nearly flat. But custom familiarises one

  to anything, and there were so many bridges that it took a very

  short time to get used to this.

  As night came on, and we drew in sight of the first range of hills,

  which are the outposts of the Alleghany Mountains, the scenery,

  which had been uninteresting hitherto, became more bold and

  striking. The wet ground reeked and smoked, after the heavy fall

  of rain, and the croaking of the frogs (whose noise in these parts

  is almost incredible) sounded as though a million of fairy teams

  with bells were travelling through the air, and keeping pace with

  us. The night was cloudy yet, but moonlight too: and when we

  crossed the Susquehanna river - over which there is an

  extraordinary wooden bridge with two galleries, one above the

  other, so that even there, two boat teams meeting, may pass without

  confusion - it was wild and grand.

  I have mentioned my having been in some uncertainty and doubt, at

  first, relative to the sleeping arrangements on board this boat. I

  remained in the same vague state of mind until ten o'clock or

  thereabouts, when going below, I found suspended on either side of

  the cabin, three long tiers of hanging bookshelves, designed

  apparently for volumes of the small octavo size. Looking with

  greater attention at these contrivances (wondering to find such

  literary preparations in such a place), I descried on each shelf a

  sort of microscopic sheet and blanket; then I began dimly to

  comprehend that the passengers were the library, and that they were

  to be arranged, edge-wise, on these shelves, till morning.

  I was assisted to this conclusion by seeing some of them gathered

  round the master of the boat, at one of the tables, drawing lots

  with all the anxieties and passions of gamesters depicted in their

  countenances; while others, with small pieces of cardboard in their

  hands, were groping among the shelves in search of numbers

  corresponding with those they had drawn. As soon as any gentleman

  found his number, he took possession of it by immediately

  undressing himself and crawling into bed. The rapidity with which

  an agitated gambler subsided into a snoring slumberer, was one of

  the most singular effects I have ever witnessed. As to the ladies,

  they were already abed, behind the red curtain, which was carefully

  drawn and pinned up the centre; though as every cough, or sneeze,

  or whisper, behind this curtain, was perfectly audible before it,

  we had still a lively consciousness of their society.

  The politeness of the person in authority had secured to me a shelf

  in a nook near this red curtain, in some degree removed from the

  great body of sleepers: to which place I retired, with many

  acknowledgments to him for his attention. I found it, on aftermeasurement,

  just the width of an ordinary sheet of Bath post

  letter-paper; and I was at first in some uncertainty as to the best

  means of getting into it. But the shelf being a bottom one, I

  finally determined on lying upon the floor, rolling gently in,

  stopping immediately I touched the mattress, and remaining for the

  night with that side uppermost, whatever it might be. Luckily, I

  came upon my back at exactly the right moment. I was much alarmed

  on looking upward, to see, by the shape of his half-yard of sacking

  (which his weight had bent into an exceedingly tight bag), that

  there was a very heavy gentleman above me, whom the slender cords

  seemed quite incapable of holding; and I could not help reflecting

  upon the grief of my wife and family in the event of his coming

  down in the night. But as I could not have got up again without a

  severe bodily struggle, which might have alarmed the ladies; and as

  I had nowhere to go to, even if I had; I shut my eyes upon the

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  danger, and remained there.

  One of two remarkable circumstances is indisputably a fact, with

  reference to that class of society who travel in these boats.

  Either they carry their restlessness to such a pitch that they

  never sleep at all; or they expectorate in dreams, which would be a

  remarkable mingling of the real and ideal. All night long, and

  every night, on this canal, there was a perfect storm and tempest

  of spitting; and once my coat, being in the very centre of the

  hurricane sustained by
five gentlemen (which moved vertically,

  strictly carrying out Reid's Theory of the Law of Storms), I was

  fain the next morning to lay it on the deck, and rub it down with

  fair water before it was in a condition to be worn again.

  Between five and six o'clock in the morning we got up, and some of

  us went on deck, to give them an opportunity of taking the shelves

  down; while others, the morning being very cold, crowded round the

  rusty stove, cherishing the newly kindled fire, and filling the

  grate with those voluntary contributions of which they had been so

  liberal all night. The washing accommodations were primitive.

  There was a tin ladle chained to the deck, with which every

  gentleman who thought it necessary to cleanse himself (many were

  superior to this weakness), fished the dirty water out of the

  canal, and poured it into a tin basin, secured in like manner.

  There was also a jack-towel. And, hanging up before a little

  looking-glass in the bar, in the immediate vicinity of the bread

  and cheese and biscuits, were a public comb and hair-brush.

  At eight o'clock, the shelves being taken down and put away and the

  tables joined together, everybody sat down to the tea, coffee,

  bread, butter, salmon, shad, liver, steak, potatoes, pickles, ham,

  chops, black-puddings, and sausages, all over again. Some were

  fond of compounding this variety, and having it all on their plates

  at once. As each gentleman got through his own personal amount of

  tea, coffee, bread, butter, salmon, shad, liver, steak, potatoes,

  pickles, ham, chops, black-puddings, and sausages, he rose up and

  walked off. When everybody had done with everything, the fragments

  were cleared away: and one of the waiters appearing anew in the

  character of a barber, shaved such of the company as desired to be

  shaved; while the remainder looked on, or yawned over their

  newspapers. Dinner was breakfast again, without the tea and

  coffee; and supper and breakfast were identical.

  There was a man on board this boat, with a light fresh-coloured

  face, and a pepper-and-salt suit of clothes, who was the most

  inquisitive fellow that can possibly be imagined. He never spoke

  otherwise than interrogatively. He was an embodied inquiry.

  Sitting down or standing up, still or moving, walking the deck or

  taking his meals, there he was, with a great note of interrogation

  in each eye, two in his cocked ears, two more in his turned-up nose

  and chin, at least half a dozen more about the corners of his

  mouth, and the largest one of all in his hair, which was brushed

  pertly off his forehead in a flaxen clump. Every button in his

  clothes said, 'Eh? What's that? Did you speak? Say that again,

  will you?' He was always wide awake, like the enchanted bride who

  drove her husband frantic; always restless; always thirsting for

  answers; perpetually seeking and never finding. There never was

  such a curious man.

  I wore a fur great-coat at that time, and before we were well clear

  of the wharf, he questioned me concerning it, and its price, and

  where I bought it, and when, and what fur it was, and what it

  weighed, and what it cost. Then he took notice of my watch, and

  asked me what THAT cost, and whether it was a French watch, and

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  where I got it, and how I got it, and whether I bought it or had it

  given me, and how it went, and where the key-hole was, and when I

  wound it, every night or every morning, and whether I ever forgot

  to wind it at all, and if I did, what then? Where had I been to

  last, and where was I going next, and where was I going after that,

  and had I seen the President, and what did he say, and what did I

  say, and what did he say when I had said that? Eh? Lor now! do

  tell!

  Finding that nothing would satisfy him, I evaded his questions

  after the first score or two, and in particular pleaded ignorance

  respecting the name of the fur whereof the coat was made. I am

  unable to say whether this was the reason, but that coat fascinated

  him afterwards; he usually kept close behind me as I walked, and

  moved as I moved, that he might look at it the better; and he

  frequently dived into narrow places after me at the risk of his

  life, that he might have the satisfaction of passing his hand up

  the back, and rubbing it the wrong way.

  We had another odd specimen on board, of a different kind. This

  was a thin-faced, spare-figured man of middle age and stature,

  dressed in a dusty drabbish-coloured suit, such as I never saw

  before. He was perfectly quiet during the first part of the

  journey: indeed I don't remember having so much as seen him until

  he was brought out by circumstances, as great men often are. The

  conjunction of events which made him famous, happened, briefly,

  thus.

  The canal extends to the foot of the mountain, and there, of

  course, it stops; the passengers being conveyed across it by land

  carriage, and taken on afterwards by another canal boat, the

  counterpart of the first, which awaits them on the other side.

  There are two canal lines of passage-boats; one is called The

  Express, and one (a cheaper one) The Pioneer. The Pioneer gets

  first to the mountain, and waits for the Express people to come up;

  both sets of passengers being conveyed across it at the same time.

  We were the Express company; but when we had crossed the mountain,

  and had come to the second boat, the proprietors took it into their

  beads to draft all the Pioneers into it likewise, so that we were

  five-and-forty at least, and the accession of passengers was not at

  all of that kind which improved the prospect of sleeping at night.

  Our people grumbled at this, as people do in such cases; but

  suffered the boat to be towed off with the whole freight aboard

  nevertheless; and away we went down the canal. At home, I should

  have protested lustily, but being a foreigner here, I held my

  peace. Not so this passenger. He cleft a path among the people on

  deck (we were nearly all on deck), and without addressing anybody

  whomsoever, soliloquised as follows:

  'This may suit YOU, this may, but it don't suit ME. This may be

  all very well with Down Easters, and men of Boston raising, but it

  won't suit my figure nohow; and no two ways about THAT; and so I

  tell you. Now! I'm from the brown forests of Mississippi, I am,

  and when the sun shines on me, it does shine - a little. It don't

  glimmer where I live, the sun don't. No. I'm a brown forester, I

  am. I an't a Johnny Cake. There are no smooth skins where I live.

  We're rough men there. Rather. If Down Easters and men of Boston

  raising like this, I'm glad of it, but I'm none of that raising nor

  of that breed. No. This company wants a little fixing, IT does.

  I'm the wrong sort of man for 'em, I am. They won't like me, THEY

  won't. This is piling of it up, a little too mountainous, this

  is.' At the end of every one of these short sentences he turned

  upon his heel, and walked the other wa
y; checking himself abruptly

  when he had finished another short sentence, and turning back

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  again.

  It is impossible for me to say what terrific meaning was hidden in

  the words of this brown forester, but I know that the other

  passengers looked on in a sort of admiring horror, and that

  presently the boat was put back to the wharf, and as many of the

  Pioneers as could be coaxed or bullied into going away, were got

  rid of.

  When we started again, some of the boldest spirits on board, made

  bold to say to the obvious occasion of this improvement in our

  prospects, 'Much obliged to you, sir;' whereunto the brown forester

  (waving his hand, and still walking up and down as before),

  replied, 'No you an't. You're none o' my raising. You may act for

  yourselves, YOU may. I have pinted out the way. Down Easters and

  Johnny Cakes can follow if they please. I an't a Johnny Cake, I

  an't. I am from the brown forests of the Mississippi, I am' - and

  so on, as before. He was unanimously voted one of the tables for

  his bed at night - there is a great contest for the tables - in

  consideration for his public services: and he had the warmest

  corner by the stove throughout the rest of the journey. But I

  never could find out that he did anything except sit there; nor did

  I hear him speak again until, in the midst of the bustle and

  turmoil of getting the luggage ashore in the dark at Pittsburg, I

  stumbled over him as he sat smoking a cigar on the cabin steps, and

  heard him muttering to himself, with a short laugh of defiance, 'I

  an't a Johnny Cake, - I an't. I'm from the brown forests of the

  Mississippi, I am, damme!' I am inclined to argue from this, that

  he had never left off saying so; but I could not make an affidavit

  of that part of the story, if required to do so by my Queen and

  Country.

  As we have not reached Pittsburg yet, however, in the order of our

  narrative, I may go on to remark that breakfast was perhaps the

  least desirable meal of the day, as in addition to the many savoury

  odours arising from the eatables already mentioned, there were

  whiffs of gin, whiskey, brandy, and rum, from the little bar hard

  by, and a decided seasoning of stale tobacco. Many of the

  gentlemen passengers were far from particular in respect of their