One knows the orders combined in this half-breed’s architecture
without inquiring: one parent Northern, the other Southern.
To-day I heard a schoolmistress ask, ‘Where is John gone?’
This form is so common–so nearly universal, in fact–that if she
had used ‘whither’ instead of ‘where,’ I think it would have sounded
like an affectation.
We picked up one excellent word–a word worth traveling to New
Orleans to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy word–‘lagniappe.’
They pronounce it lanny-yap. It is Spanish–so they said.
We discovered it at the head of a column of odds and ends in
the Picayune, the first day; heard twenty people use it the second;
inquired what it meant the third; adopted it and got facility
in swinging it the fourth. It has a restricted meaning,
but I think the people spread it out a little when they choose.
It is the equivalent of the thirteenth roll in a ‘baker’s dozen.’
It is something thrown in, gratis, for good measure.
The custom originated in the Spanish quarter of the city.
When a child or a servant buys something in a shop–
or even the mayor or the governor, for aught I know–he finishes
the operation by saying–
‘Give me something for lagniappe.’
The shopman always responds; gives the child a bit of licorice-root,
gives the servant a cheap cigar or a spool of thread, gives the governor–
I don’t know what he gives the governor; support, likely.
When you are invited to drink, and this does occur now and then
in New Orleans–and you say, ‘What, again?–no, I’ve had enough;’
the other party says, ‘But just this one time more–this is for lagniappe.’
When the beau perceives that he is stacking his compliments a trifle too high,
and sees by the young lady’s countenance that the edifice would have been
better with the top compliment left off, he puts his ‘I beg pardon–
no harm intended,’ into the briefer form of ‘Oh, that’s for lagniappe.’
If the waiter in the restaurant stumbles and spills a gill of coffee down
the back of your neck, he says ‘For lagniappe, sah,’ and gets you another cup
without extra charge.
Chapter 45
Southern Sports
IN the North one hears the war mentioned, in social conversation,
once a month; sometimes as often as once a week; but as a distinct
subject for talk, it has long ago been relieved of duty. There are
sufficient reasons for this. Given a dinner company of six gentlemen
to-day, it can easily happen that four of them–and possibly five–
were not in the field at all. So the chances are four to two,
or five to one, that the war will at no time during the evening
become the topic of conversation; and the chances are still greater
that if it become the topic it will remain so but a little while.
If you add six ladies to the company, you have added six people
who saw so little of the dread realities of the war that they ran
out of talk concerning them years ago, and now would soon weary of
the war topic if you brought it up.
The case is very different in the South. There, every man you
meet was in the war; and every lady you meet saw the war.
The war is the great chief topic of conversation. The interest in it
is vivid and constant; the interest in other topics is fleeting.
Mention of the war will wake up a dull company and set
their tongues going, when nearly any other topic would fail.
In the South, the war is what A.D. is elsewhere: they date from it.
All day long you hear things ‘placed’ as having happened since the waw;
or du’in’ the waw; or befo’ the waw; or right aftah the waw;
or ’bout two yeahs or five yeahs or ten yeahs befo’ the waw
or aftah the waw. It shows how intimately every individual
was visited, in his own person, by that tremendous episode.
It gives the inexperienced stranger a better idea of what a vast
and comprehensive calamity invasion is than he can ever get by reading
books at the fireside.
At a club one evening, a gentleman turned to me and said,