Old Times on the Upper Mississippi

disturbed. It usually had but one effect upon such lady passengers as had the hardihood to follow the cry of "Grub-pile"! and ascertain what the thing really was. Altogether the duties of the steward were arduous and tormenting. The passengers expected much; and after getting the best, if any slip occurred they were sure to enter complaint--a complaint so worded as to convey the impression that they never had anything fit to eat while on the boat, nor any service that white men were justified in tolerating. The fact was, that most of the passengers so served had never in all their lives lived so well as they did on the trip from Galena to St. Paul on one of the regular boats of the Minnesota Packet Company. Certainly, after reaching their destination in the Territory of Minnesota, the chances were that it would be many long years, in that era of beginnings, before they would again be so well fed and so assiduously cared for, even in the very best hotels of St. Paul. This chapter on Mississippi menus would be incomplete without some reference to the drinkables served on the steamboat tables. These were coffee, tea, and river water. Mark Twain has described the ordinary beverage used on the river, as it is found on the Missouri, or on the Mississippi below the mouth of the "Big Muddy": "When I went up to my room, I found there the young man called Rogers, crying. Rogers was not his name; neither was Jones, Brown, Baxter, Ferguson, Bascom, nor Thompson; but he answered to either of them that a body found handy in an emergency; or to any other name, in fact, if he perceived that you meant him. He said: "'What is a person to do here when he wants a drink of water? drink this slush?' "'Can't you drink it?' "'I would if I had some other water to wash it with.' "Here was a thing which had not changed; a score of years had not affected this water's mulatto complexion in the least; a score of centuries would succeed no better, perhaps. It comes out of the turbulent bank-caving Missouri, and every tumblerful of it holds nearly an acre of land in solution. I got this fact from the bishop of the diocese. If you will let your glass stand half an hour, you can separate the land from the water as easy as Genesis; and then you will find them both good; the one good to eat, the other good to drink. The land is very nourishing, the water is thoroughly wholesome. The one appeases hunger, the other, thirst. But the natives do not take them separately, but together, as nature mixed them. When they find an inch of mud in the bottom of the glass, they stir it up, and then take the draught as they would gruel. It is difficult for a stranger to get used to this batter, but once used to it he will prefer it to water. This is really the case. It is good for steamboating, and good to drink; but it is worthless for all other purposes, except baptizing." The above sketch had not been written in 1860, as Mark Twain was himself piloting on the lower river at that time. It could not, therefore, have been this description which prejudiced many eastern people against Mississippi River water as a beverage. But that prejudice did exist, away back in the fifties, and the fame of the yellow tipple had reached even to the fastnesses of the Vermont hills at that early day. Many emigrants from the old New England states provided themselves with kegs, jugs or "demijohns", and before embarking at Rock Island or Dunleith for the river trip, would fill these receptacles with water from the nearest well, or even cistern, and drink such stuff, warm, and sometimes putrid, rather than drink the life-giving elixir which had welled up from springs nestled in the shadows of the everlasting hills, or had been distilled by the sun from the snowbanks and ice fields of the unspoiled prairies and azure lakes of the great northwest. One old Yankee would pin his faith to nothing less than the water from his own spring or well at home, away back in old Vermont, and brought, at infinite pains and labor, a five-gallon demijohn all the way from his native state, drinking it on the cars en route, and on the boat after reaching the river. It wasn't as bad as that. The river water was as pure and healthful as any water on the footstool--_then_. It may not be so now--it _isn't, now_. Then there were no great cities on the river banks, pouring thousands of gallons of sewage and all manner of corruption into the stream, daily. There was very little land under cultivation even, and few farmyards, the drainage from which might contaminate the feeders of the great river. It was good, clean, healthful, spring and snow water. Above the mouth of the Missouri, in any ordinary stage of water, especially with a falling river, the water was but slightly discolored with the yellow sediment with which the river itself is always tinged; and this sediment was so fine that there was no suspicion of grit about it. When properly stirred up and evenly mixed, as those to the manner born always took it, it was an invigorating potion, and like good old Bohea, it would cheer but not inebriate. Since the advent of sewage in the river and with it the popular superstition that everything, liquid or solid, is permeated with pernicious microbes, it is possible that it has lost something of its pristine purity, and it is certain that it has lost something of its reputation; but river men still drink it from preference, and passengers, unless they revert to the Yankee method, must drink it perforce, or go dry. Chapter XVII _Bars and Barkeepers_ In the old days on the river, whiskey was not classed as one of the luxuries. It was regarded as one of the necessities, if not the prime necessity, of life. To say that everybody drank would not be putting much strain upon the truth, for the exceptions were so few as scarcely to be worth counting. It was a saying on the river that if a man owned a bar on a popular packet, it was better than possessing a gold mine. The income was ample and certain, and the risk and labor slight. Men who owned life leases of steamboat bars willed the same to their sons, as their richest legacies. Ingenious and far-seeing men set about accumulating bars as other men invested in two, three, or four banks, or factories. "Billy" Henderson of St. Louis was the first financier to become a trust magnate in bars. He owned the one on the "Excelsior", on which boat he ran between St. Louis and St. Paul. Later, he bought the lease of the bar on the "Metropolitan", and still later, when the Northern Line was organized, he bought the bars on all the boats, putting trusty "bar-keeps" aboard each, he himself keeping a general oversight of the whole, and rigorously exacting a mean average of returns from each, based upon the number of passengers carried. This system of averages included men, women, and children, and "Indians not taxed", presupposing that a certain percentage of the passengers' money would find its way into his tills, regardless of age, sex, or color. What his judgment would have been had one of the craft been chartered to carry a Sunday school picnic from St. Louis to St. Paul, will never be known. Such an exigency never confronted him, in those days. The judgment rendered was, that he was not far off in his conclusions as to the average income from the average class of passengers carried. Ordinarily, the bartenders were young men "of parts". None of them, so far as I know, were college graduates; but then college graduates were then mighty few in the West in any calling--and there were bars in plenty. It was required by their employers that they be pleasant and agreeable fellows, well dressed, and well mannered. They must know how to concoct a few of the more commonplace fancy drinks affected by the small number of travellers who wished such beverage--whiskey cocktails for the Eastern trade, and mint juleps for the Southern. The plain, everyday Western man took his whiskey straight, four fingers deep, and seldom spoiled the effect of his drink by pouring water on top of it. The "chaser" had not, at that early day, become fashionable, and in times of extreme low water it was not permitted that water should be wasted in that manner when all was required for purposes of navigation. The barkeeper was also supposed to know how to manufacture a choice brand of French brandy, by the judicious admixture of burnt peach stones, nitric acid, and cod-liver oil, superimposed upon a foundation of Kentucky whiskey three weeks from the still. He did it, too; but judicious drinkers again took theirs straight, and lived the longest. I flatter myself that I can recall the name of but one bartender with whom I sailed. While I had no very strong scruples about drinking or selling liquor, I seldom patronized the bar beyond the purchase of cigars and an occasional soft drink. I remember one dispenser, however, from his short but exceedingly stormy experience on the "Fanny Harris". He was an Irish lad, about twenty or twenty-one years of age, and not very large. He was sent on board by the lessee of the bar, who lived in Dubuque. Charley Hargus, our chief clerk, did not like the Irish. He had personal reasons for disliking some member of that nationality, and this dislike he handed on to all its other members with whom he came in contact. There were no Irishmen among the officers of the "Fanny Harris", and when Donnelly came aboard to take charge of the bar Hargus strongly objected, but without avail. He then set himself about the task of making life so uncomfortable for the lad that he would be sure to transfer to some other boat, or quit altogether, an end accomplished within three months. The process afforded rare amusement to such witnesses as happened to see the fun, but there was no fun in it for Donnelly; and in later years, when I came to think it over, my sympathy went out to the poor fellow, who suffered numberless indignities at the hands of his tireless persecutor. If Donnelly--who was not at all a bad fellow, was earning his living honestly, and never did anything to injure Hargus--had had the spirit common to most river men in those days, he would have shot the chief clerk and few could have blamed him. Bars are not looked upon with the same favor in our day, as in the past. It is claimed that upon some of the boats plying upon the upper river there are now no bars at all. If a person thinks he must have liquor on the trip, he must take it with his baggage. It is further credibly asserted that many of the officers handling the steamers are teetotalers; further, that there is no more profit in the bar business, and that investors in that kind of property are becoming scarce. Modern business conditions are responsible for much of the change that has taken place, especially in the transportation business, within the last twenty-five years. Railroad and steamboat managers do not care to intrust their property to the care of drinking men, and it is becoming more and more difficult for such to secure positions of responsibility. As the display of liquor in an open bar might be a temptation to some men, otherwise competent and trusty officers, the owners are adopting the only consistent course, and are banishing the bar from their boats. This does not apply in all cases, however. A few years ago I took a trip from St. Paul to St. Louis on one of the boats of the Diamond Jo Line. There was a bar on the boat, but it seemed to depend for its patronage upon the colored deck crew. They were pretty constant patrons, although their drinking was systematically regulated. A side window, opening out upon the boiler deck promenade, was devoted to