Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain [129]
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 cottonseed oil, nowadays, so that you can’t tell them apart.”
“Yes, that’s so,” responded Cincinnati, “and it was a tiptop business for a while. They sent it over, and brought it back from France and Italy, with the United States customhouse 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 cottonseed 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 stateroom, 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 cottonseed 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 cottonseed oil, that gives 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 cottonseed 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 customhouse 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 XL
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 halfway measures. The magnolia trees in the Capitol grounds were lovely and fragrant, with their dense rich foliage and huge snowball 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