Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain [143]
All the riders were young gentlemen in fashionable society. If the reader has been wondering why it is that the ladies of New Orleans attend so humble an orgy as a mule race, the thing is explained now. It is a fashion freak; all connected with it are people of fashion.
It is great fun, and cordially liked. The mule race is one of the marked occasions of the year. It has brought some pretty fast mules to the front. One of these had to be ruled out, because he was so fast that he turned the thing into a one-mule contest, and robbed it of one of its best features—variety. But every now and then somebody disguises him with a new name and a new complexion, and rings him in again.
The riders dress in full jockey costumes of bright-colored silk, satins, and velvets.
The thirteen mules got away in a body, after a couple of false starts, and scampered off with prodigious spirit. As each mule and each rider had a distinct opinion of his own as to how the race ought to be run, and which side of the track was best in certain circumstances, and how often the track ought to be crossed, and when a collision ought to be accomplished, and when it ought to be avoided, these twenty-six conflicting opinions created a most fantastic and picturesque confusion, and the resulting spectacle was killingly comical.
Mile heat; time, 2:22. Eight of the thirteen mules distanced. I had a bet on a mule which would have won if the procession had been reversed. The second heat was good fun; and so was the “consolation race for beaten mules,” which followed later, but the first heat was the best in that respect.
I think that much the most enjoyable of all races is a steamboat race; but, next to that, I prefer the gay and joyous mule rush. Two red-hot steamboats raging along neck-and-neck, straining every nerve—that is to say, every rivet in the boilers—quaking and shaking and groaning from stern to stern, spouting white steam from the pipes, pouring black smoke from the chimneys, raining down sparks, parting the river into long breaks of hissing foam—this is sport that makes a body’s very liver curl with enjoyment. A horse race is pretty tame and colorless in comparison. Still, a horse race might be well enough, in its way, perhaps, if it were not for the tiresome false starts. But then, nobody is ever killed. At least, nobody was ever killed when I was at a horse race. They have been crippled, it is true; but this is little to the purpose.
CHAPTER XLVI
Enchantments and Enchanters
The largest annual event in New Orleans is something which we arrived too late to sample—the Mardi Gras festivities. I saw the procession of the Mystic Crew of Comus there, twenty-four years ago—with knights and nobles and so on, clothed in silken and golden Paris-made gorgeousnesses, planned and bought for that single night’s use; and in their train all manner of giants, dwarfs, monstrosities, and other diverting grotesquerie—a startling and wonderful sort of show, as it filed solemnly and silently down the street in the light of its smoking and flickering torches; but it is said that in these latter days the spectacle is mightily augmented, as to cost, splendor, and variety. There is a chief personage—“Rex”; and if I remember rightly, neither this king nor any of his great following of subordinates is known to any outsider. All these people are gentlemen of position and consequence; and it is a proud thing to belong to the organization; so the mystery in which they hide their personality is merely for romance’s sake, and not on account of the police. Mardi Gras is of course a relic of the French and Spanish occupation; but I judge that the religious feature has been pretty well knocked out of it now. Sir Walter has got the advantage of the gentlemen of the cowl and rosary, and he will stay. His medieval business, supplemented by the monsters and the oddities, and the pleasant creatures from fairyland, is finer to look at than the poor fantastic inventions and performances of the reveling rabble of the priest’s day, and serves quite as well,