Pity, Too; For She Might Have Repented Of
This In Time.
Horse-hair chairs, horse-hair sofa which keeps sliding
from under you.
Window shades, of oil stuff, with milk-maids and ruined
castles stenciled on them in fierce colors. Lambrequins dependent from
gaudy boxings of beaten tin, gilded. Bedrooms with rag carpets;
bedsteads of the 'corded' sort, with a sag in the middle, the cords
needing tightening; snuffy feather-bed - not aired often enough; cane-
seat chairs, splint-bottomed rocker; looking-glass on wall, school-slate
size, veneered frame; inherited bureau; wash-bowl and pitcher, possibly
- but not certainly; brass candlestick, tallow candle, snuffers. Nothing
else in the room. Not a bathroom in the house; and no visitor likely to
come along who has ever seen one.
That was the residence of the principal citizen, all the way from the
suburbs of New Orleans to the edge of St. Louis. When he stepped aboard
a big fine steamboat, he entered a new and marvelous world: chimney-tops
cut to counterfeit a spraying crown of plumes - and maybe painted red;
pilot-house, hurricane deck, boiler-deck guards, all garnished with
white wooden filigree work of fanciful patterns; gilt acorns topping the
derricks; gilt deer-horns over the big bell; gaudy symbolical picture on
the paddle-box, possibly; big roomy boiler-deck, painted blue, and
furnished with Windsor armchairs; inside, a far-receding snow-white
'cabin;' porcelain knob and oil-picture on every stateroom door; curving
patterns of filigree-work touched up with gilding, stretching overhead
all down the converging vista; big chandeliers every little way, each an
April shower of glittering glass-drops; lovely rainbow-light falling
everywhere from the colored glazing of the skylights; the whole a long-
drawn, resplendent tunnel, a bewildering and soul-satisfying spectacle!
In the ladies' cabin a pink and white Wilton carpet, as soft as mush,
and glorified with a ravishing pattern of gigantic flowers. Then the
Bridal Chamber - the animal that invented that idea was still alive and
unhanged, at that day - Bridal Chamber whose pretentious flummery was
necessarily overawing to the now tottering intellect of that hosannahing
citizen. Every state-room had its couple of cozy clean bunks, and
perhaps a looking-glass and a snug closet; and sometimes there was even
a washbowl and pitcher, and part of a towel which could be told from
mosquito netting by an expert - though generally these things were
absent, and the shirt-sleeved passengers cleansed themselves at a long
row of stationary bowls in the barber shop, where were also public
towels, public combs, and public soap.
Take the steamboat which I have just described, and you have her in her
highest and finest, and most pleasing, and comfortable, and satisfactory
estate. Now cake her over with a layer of ancient and obdurate dirt,
and you have the Cincinnati steamer awhile ago referred to. Not all
over - only inside; for she was ably officered in all departments except
the steward's.
But wash that boat and repaint her, and she would be about the
counterpart of the most complimented boat of the old flush times:
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