For Nearer Or Remoter Neighbors, The Tower Has The Devil's
Bake Oven - So Called, Perhaps, Because It Does Not Powerfully
Resemble
anybody else's bake oven; and the Devil's Tea Table - this latter a great
smooth-surfaced mass of rock, with
Diminishing wine-glass stem, perched
some fifty or sixty feet above the river, beside a beflowered and
garlanded precipice, and sufficiently like a tea-table to answer for
anybody, Devil or Christian. Away down the river we have the Devil's
Elbow and the Devil's Race-course, and lots of other property of his
which I cannot now call to mind.
The Town of Grand Tower was evidently a busier place than it had been in
old times, but it seemed to need some repairs here and there, and a new
coat of whitewash all over. Still, it was pleasant to me to see the old
coat once more. 'Uncle' Mumford, our second officer, said the place had
been suffering from high water, and consequently was not looking its
best now. But he said it was not strange that it didn't waste white-
wash on itself, for more lime was made there, and of a better quality,
than anywhere in the West; and added - 'On a dairy farm you never can get
any milk for your coffee, nor any sugar for it on a sugar plantation;
and it is against sense to go to a lime town to hunt for white-wash.' In
my own experience I knew the first two items to be true; and also that
people who sell candy don't care for candy; therefore there was
plausibility in Uncle Mumford's final observation that 'people who make
lime run more to religion than whitewash.' Uncle Mumford said, further,
that Grand Tower was a great coaling center and a prospering place.
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