Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain [124]
For, three months later, August 8, while I was writing one of these foregoing chapters, the New York papers brought this telegram:
A TERRIBLE DISASTER.
SEVENTEEN PERSONS KILLED BY AN EXPLOSION ON THE STEAMER GOLD DUST
NASHVILLE, Aug. 7.—A dispatch from Hickman, Ky., says:
The steamer Gold Dust exploded her boilers at three o’clock today, just after leaving Hickman. Forty-seven persons were scalded and seventeen are missing. The boat was landed in the eddy just above the town, and through the exertions of the citizens the cabin passengers, officers, and part of the crew and deck passengers were taken ashore and removed to the hotels and residences. Twenty-four of the injured were lying in Holcomb’s dry-goods store at one time, where they received every attention before being removed to more comfortable places.
A list of the names followed, whereby it appeared that of the seventeen dead, one was the barkeeper; and among the forty-seven wounded were the captain, chief mate, second mate, and second and third clerks; also Mr. Lem. S. Gray, pilot, and several members of the crew.
In answer to a private telegram, we learned that none of these was severely hurt, except Mr. Gray. Letters received afterward confirmed this news, and said that Mr. Gray was improving and would get well. Later letters spoke less hopefully of his case; and finally came one announcing his death. A good man, a most companionable and manly man, and worthy of a kindlier fate.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
The House Beautiful
We took passage in a Cincinnati boat for New Orleans; or on a Cincinnati boat—either is correct; the former is the eastern form of putting it, the latter the western.
Mr. Dickens declined to agree that the Mississippi steamboats were “magnificent,” or that they were “floating palaces”— terms which had always been applied to them; terms which did not overexpress the admiration with which the people viewed them.
Mr. Dickens’s position was unassailable, possibly; the people’s position was certainly unassailable. If Mr. Dickens was comparing these boats with the crown jewels; or with the Taj, or with the Matterhorn; or with some other priceless or wonderful thing which he had seen, they were not magnificent—he was right. The people compared them with what they had seen; and, thus measured, thus judged, the boats were magnificent—the term was the correct one, it was not at all too strong, The people were as right as was Mr. Dickens. The steamboats were finer than anything on shore. Compared with superior dwelling houses and first-class hotels in the Valley, they were indubitably magnificent, they were “palaces.” To a few people living in New Orleans and St. Louis, they were not magnificent, perhaps; not palaces; but, to the great majority of those populations, and to the entire populations spread over both banks between Baton Rouge and St. Louis, they were palaces; they tallied with the citizen’s dream of what magnificence was, and satisfied it.
Every town and village along that vast stretch of double river frontage had a best dwelling, finest dwelling, mansion,—the home of its wealthiest and most conspicuous citizen. It is easy to describe it: large grassy yard, with paling fence painted white—in fair repair; brick walk from gate to door; big, square, two-story “frame” house, painted white and porticoed like a Grecian temple—with this difference, that the imposing fluted columns and Corinthian capitals were a pathetic sham, being made of white pine, and painted; iron knocker; brass door knob—discolored, for lack of polishing. Within, an uncarpeted hall, of planed boards; opening out of it, a parlor, fifteen feet by fifteen—in some instances five or ten feet larger; ingrain carpet; mahogany center-table; lamp on it, with green paper shade—standing on a gridiron, so to speak, made of high-colored yarns, by the young ladies of the house, and called a lamp mat; several books, piled and disposed, with cast-iron exactness, according to an inherited and unchangeable plan; among them, Tupper, much penciled; also, Friendship’s