The Gilded Age - Mark Twain [61]
The fever at length got tired of tormenting the stout young engineer, who lay sick at the hotel, and left him, very thin, a little sallow but an “acclimated” man. Everybody said he was “acclimated” now, and said it cheerfully. What it is to be acclimated to western fevers no two persons exactly agree. Some say it is a sort of vaccination that renders death by some malignant type of fever less probable. Some regard it as a sort of initiation, like that into the Odd Fellows,1 which renders one liable to his regular dues thereafter. Others consider it merely the acquisition of a habit of taking every morning before breakfast a dose of bitters, composed of whiskey and assafœtida, out of the acclimation jug.
Jeff Thompson afterwards told Philip that he once asked Senator Atchison, then acting Vice-President of the United States, about the possibility of acclimation; he thought the opinion of the second officer of our great government would be valuable on this point. They were sitting together on a bench before a country tavern, in the free converse permitted by our democratic habits.
“I suppose, Senator, that you have become acclimated to this country?”
“Well,” said the Vice-President, crossing his legs, pulling his wide-awake2 down over his forehead, causing a passing chicken to hop quickly to one side by the accuracy of his aim, and speaking with senatorial deliberation, “I think I have. I’ve been here twenty-five years, and dash, dash my dash to dash, if I haven’t entertained twenty-five separate and distinct earthquakes, one a year. The niggro is the only person who can stand the fever and ague of this region.”
The convalescence of the engineer was the signal for breaking up quarters at St. Louis, and the young fortune-hunters started up the river in good spirits. It was only the second time either of them had been upon a Mississippi steamboat, and nearly everything they saw had the charm of novelty. Col. Sellers was at the landing to bid them good-bye.
“I shall send you up that basket of champagne by the next boat; no, no; no thanks; you’ll find it not bad in camp,” he cried out as the plank was hauled in. “My respects to Thompson. Tell him to sight for Stone’s. Let me know, Mr. Brierly, when you are ready to locate; I’ll come over from Hawkeye. Good-bye.”
And the last the young fellows saw of the Colonel, he was waving his hat, and beaming prosperity and good luck.
The voyage was delightful, and was not long enough to become monotonous. The travelers scarcely had time indeed to get accustomed to the splendors of the great saloon where the tables were spread for meals, a marvel of paint and gilding, its ceiling hung with fancifully cut tissue-paper of many colors, festooned and arranged in endless patterns. The whole was more beautiful than a barber’s shop. The printed bill of fare at dinner was longer and more varied, the proprietors justly boasted, than that of any hotel in New York. It must have been the work of an author of talent and imagination, and it surely was not his fault if the dinner itself was to a certain extent a delusion, and if the guests got something that tasted pretty much the same whatever dish they ordered; nor was it his fault if a general flavor of rose 3 in all the dessert dishes suggested that they had passed through the barber’s saloon on their way from the kitchen.
No Thanks! Good-bye!
The travelers landed at a little settlement on the left bank, and at once took horses for the camp in the interior, carrying their clothes and blankets strapped behind the saddles. Harry was dressed as we have seen him once before, and his long and shining boots attracted not a