I
looked out through the open transom. The two men were eating a late
breakfast; sitting opposite each other; nobody else around. They closed
up the inundation with a few words - having used it, evidently, as a mere
ice-breaker and acquaintanceship-breeder - then they dropped into
business. It soon transpired that they were drummers - one belonging in
Cincinnati, the other in New Orleans. Brisk men, energetic of movement
and speech; the dollar their god, how to get it their religion.
'Now as to this article,' said Cincinnati, slashing into the ostensible
butter and holding forward a slab of it on his knife-blade, 'it's from
our house; look at it - smell of it - taste it. Put any test on it you
want to. Take your own time - no hurry - make it thorough. There now -
what do you say? butter, ain't it. Not by a thundering sight - it's
oleomargarine! Yes, sir, that's what it is - oleomargarine. You can't
tell it from butter; by George, an EXPERT can't. It's from our house.
We supply most of the boats in the West; there's hardly a pound of
butter on one of them. We are crawling right along - JUMPING right along
is the word. We are going to have that entire trade. Yes, and the hotel
trade, too. You are going to see the day, pretty soon, when you can't
find an ounce of butter to bless yourself with, in any hotel in the
Mississippi and Ohio Valleys, outside of the biggest cities. Why, we are
turning out oleomargarine NOW by the thousands of tons. And we can sell
it so dirt-cheap that the whole country has GOT to take it - can't get
around it you see. Butter don't stand any show - there ain't any chance
for competition. Butter's had its DAY - and from this out, butter goes to
the wall. There's more money in oleomargarine than - why, you can't
imagine the business we do. I've stopped in every town from Cincinnati
to Natchez; and I've sent home big orders from every one of them.'
And so-forth and so-on, for ten minutes longer, in the same fervid
strain. Then New Orleans piped up and said -
Yes, it's a first-rate imitation, that's a certainty; but it ain't the
only one around that's first-rate. For instance, they make olive-oil out
of cotton-seed oil, nowadays, so that you can't tell them apart.'
'Yes, that's so,' responded Cincinnati, 'and it was a tip-top business
for a while. They sent it over and brought it back from France and
Italy, with the United States custom-house mark on it to indorse it for
genuine, and there was no end of cash in it; but France and Italy broke
up the game - of course they naturally would. Cracked on such a rattling
impost that cotton-seed olive-oil couldn't stand the raise; had to hang
up and quit.'
'Oh, it DID, did it? You wait here a minute.'
Goes to his state-room, brings back a couple of long bottles, and takes
out the corks - says:
'There now, smell them, taste them, examine the bottles, inspect the
labels. One of 'm's from Europe, the other's never been out of this
country. One's European olive-oil, the other's American cotton-seed
olive-oil. Tell 'm apart? 'Course you can't. Nobody can. People that
want to, can go to the expense and trouble of shipping their oils to
Europe and back - it's their privilege; but our firm knows a trick worth
six of that. We turn out the whole thing - clean from the word go - in our
factory in New Orleans: labels, bottles, oil, everything. Well, no,
not labels: been buying them abroad - get them dirt-cheap there. You
see, there's just one little wee speck, essence, or whatever it is, 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 40 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.
