in a gallon of cotton-seed oil, that give it a smell, or a flavor,
or something–get that out, and you’re all right–perfectly easy then
to turn the oil into any kind of oil you want to, and there ain’t anybody
that can detect the true from the false. Well, we know how to get
that one little particle out–and we’re the only firm that does.
And we turn out an olive-oil that is just simply perfect–undetectable!
We are doing a ripping trade, too–as I could easily show you by my
order-book for this trip. Maybe you’ll butter everybody’s bread pretty soon,
but we’ll cotton-seed his salad for him from the Gulf to Canada, and that’s
a dead-certain thing.’
Cincinnati glowed and flashed with admiration.
The two scoundrels exchanged business-cards, and rose.
As they left the table, Cincinnati said–
‘But you have to have custom-house marks, don’t you?
How do you manage that?’
I did not catch the answer.
We passed Port Hudson, scene of two of the most terrific episodes of the war–
the night-battle there between Farragut’s fleet and the Confederate
land batteries, April 14th, 1863; and the memorable land battle,
two months later, which lasted eight hours–eight hours of exceptionally
fierce and stubborn fighting–and ended, finally, in the repulse
of the Union forces with great slaughter.
Chapter 4O
Castles and Culture
BATON ROUGE was clothed in flowers, like a bride–no, much more so;
like a greenhouse. For we were in the absolute South now–
no modifications, no compromises, no half-way measures.
The magnolia-trees in the Capitol grounds were lovely and fragrant,
with their dense rich foliage and huge snow-ball blossoms.
The scent of the flower is very sweet, but you want distance on it,
because it is so powerful. They are not good bedroom blossoms–
they might suffocate one in his sleep. We were certainly in the South
at last; for here the sugar region begins, and the plantations–
vast green levels, with sugar-mill and negro quarters clustered together
in the middle distance–were in view. And there was a tropical sun
overhead and a tropical swelter in the air.
And at this point, also, begins the pilot’s paradise:
a wide river hence to New Orleans, abundance of water from shore
to shore, and no bars, snags, sawyers, or wrecks in his road.
Sir Walter Scott is probably responsible for the Capitol building;
for it is not conceivable that this little sham castle would
ever have been built if he had not run the people mad, a couple
of generations ago, with his medieval romances. The South has
not yet recovered from the debilitating influence of his books.
Admiration of his fantastic heroes and their grotesque
‘chivalry’ doings and romantic juvenilities still survives here,
in an atmosphere in which is already perceptible the wholesome
and practical nineteenth-century smell of cotton-factories
and locomotives; and traces of its inflated language and other
windy humbuggeries survive along with it. It is pathetic enough,
that a whitewashed castle, with turrets and things–materials all
ungenuine within and without, pretending to be what they are not–
should ever have been built in this otherwise honorable place;
but it is much more pathetic to see this architectural falsehood
undergoing restoration and perpetuation in our day, when it
would have been so easy to let dynamite finish what a charitable
fire began, and then devote this restoration-money to the building
of something genuine.
Baton Rouge has no patent on imitation castles, however, and no monopoly
of them. Here is a picture from the advertisement of the ‘Female Institute’
of Columbia; Tennessee. The following remark is from the same advertisement–
‘The Institute building has long been famed as a model of striking
and beautiful architecture. Visitors are charmed with its resemblance
to the old castles of song and story, with its towers, turreted walls,
and ivy-mantled porches.’
Keeping school in a castle is a romantic thing; as romantic as keeping
hotel in a castle.
By itself the imitation castle is doubtless harmless, and well enough;
but as a symbol and breeder and sustainer of maudlin Middle-Age romanticism
here in the midst of the plainest and sturdiest and infinitely greatest
and worthiest of all the centuries the world has seen, it is necessarily