Kitabı oku: «The Last of the Flatboats», sayfa 12
CHAPTER XXXI
AN OFFER OF HELP
On the day before they reached Vicksburg, the planter whose family had been rescued was able to have a long conversation with Phil. His first disposition had been to recognize Irv as the master spirit of the crew, because of his controlling activity in the matter of restoring the starved party to life and health, but he was quickly instructed otherwise by Irving himself.
He explained to Phil just who and what he was.
“I have lost a great deal, of course, by this overflow, but fortunately the bulk of my cotton crop was already shipped before the flood came, so that that is safe. Moreover, I am not altogether dependent upon my planting operations. In short, – you will understand that I say this by way of explanation and not otherwise, – I am a fairly well-to-do man, – I may even say a very well-to-do man, – independently of my planting operations.”
“I am glad to hear that,” said Phil, “because it has troubled me a good deal, especially as I have looked at Baby and the other children. I have wondered what was to become of them, and in what way we boys might best help you and them over the bridge.”
“I am glad you said that,” the planter responded. “That gives me the opportunity I am seeking. In the same spirit in which you have been thinking of helping me, I want you to let me help you and your comrades. I don’t know anything of the circumstances of the young men who compose this crew, yourself or the others; but I assume that if your circumstances were particularly comfortable, you would hardly be engaged in the not very profitable business of running a flatboat. At your ages, you would more probably be in school.”
“So we are,” said Phil; “we are none of us particularly well-to-do, but we are able to stay at home and go to school. This trip is a kind of a lark – or partly that and partly a thing done to restore my brother’s health; but we are obliged to make it pay its own way, anyhow, because we could not afford the trip otherwise. Of course, we are out of school for the time being, that is to say, for a few months, but we all expect to make that up. As to college, I don’t know. Probably not many of us will ever be able to afford that.”
“That, then, is exactly what I want to come to,” said the gentleman. “You are obviously boys of good parentage. I cannot offer to pay you for the great service you have done to me and mine – no, no; don’t interrupt me now; let me say this out. I should not think of insulting you in any such way as that; but why should you not let me contribute out of the abundance that I still possess to the expense of a college course for all five of you very bright young fellows? Believe me, nothing in the world could give me a greater gratification than to do this. You have rescued me and mine from a fate so terrible that I shudder to think of it even now. Let me in my turn help a little to advance your interests in life.”
Phil thought for a considerable time before he replied. Not that he had any notion of accepting the offer thus made, but that he did not want, in rejecting it, to hurt the feelings of a man so generous, and one who had made the offer with so much delicacy. At last the boy said: —
“Believe me, sir, I appreciate, and all my comrades will when I tell them of it, the good feeling and the generosity that have dictated your offer, but we could not on any account accept it. I am sure that in this I speak for all. I believe that any boy in this country who really wants an education can get it, if he chooses to work hard enough and live plainly enough. My brother has not been able to go to school much at any time in his life, because of his ill-health, and yet he is much the best educated one among us, and if he lives, he will be reckoned a well-educated man, even among men who are college graduates. As for the rest of us, we can get a college education, as I said, if we choose to work hard enough and live hard enough. If we don’t choose to do that, why, we must go without. But we thank you all the same, and I want you to know that we recognize the generosity of your offer, though we cannot accept it. Now, please don’t let’s talk of that any more, because it isn’t pleasant to refuse a request such as yours; for I take it from your manner and tone that you mean it as a request rather than as an offer of aid.”
With that, Phil walked away, and there was naturally no more to be said. But an hour later the gentleman, who was still feeble from his late exposure and suffering, asked Phil again to sit down by him. Then he said: —
“I am not going to reopen the question that we discussed a while ago, because I understand and honor your decision with regard to it. But there is another little service that I am in position to render you, and that I might render to anybody with whom I came into pleasant contact. My name counts for a good deal with my commission merchant in New Orleans; for how much it counts, it would not be quite modest for me to say; but, at any rate, I want to give you a letter to him, if you will allow me. When you get there, you will wish to sell your cargo, and of course you will be surrounded by buyers, but most of them will be disposed to take advantage of your youth and of your inexperience in the market. I cannot imagine how, in their hands, you can escape the loss of a considerable part of the value of what you have to sell. Now the commission merchant to whom I wish to give you a letter is a man of the very highest integrity, besides being my personal friend and my agent in business. I suggest that you place the whole matter of the sale of your boat and cargo in his hands, and I am confident that the difference in the results will be many hundreds of dollars in your favor. This is, as I said, a service that I might render even to a casual acquaintance. Surely, you will not deny me the privilege of rendering it to a group of young men who have done for me what you boys have.”
Phil rose and stood before him embarrassed.
“I suppose,” he said, “I ought to consult my comrades before accepting even this favor at your hands, but I shan’t do anything of the kind. I understand what you feel and what you mean, and if you won’t ask anything of your commission merchant except that he shall sell us out on his usual terms, I shall frankly be very much obliged to you for the letter you offer; for it has really been a source of a good deal of anxiety to me, this thing of how to sell out when we get there.”
It was so arranged; and as the gentleman and his family were to quit the boat at Vicksburg, the letter was written that day.
At Vicksburg the boys offered the hospitality of their boat to their guests until such time as proper clothing could be provided for them, their condition of destitution being one in which it was impossible for them to think of going ashore. This offer was frankly accepted, and as the boys were themselves in sad need of supplies, the delay of two or three days was not only of no consequence to them, but it introduced a new element of life on board The Last of the Flatboats. The lady sent into the town for dressmakers and seamstresses in such numbers as might enable her quickly to equip herself and the children for a reappearance among civilized human beings. The cabin became a workroom, and two sewing-machines were installed even upon the deck. It looked a little odd, but, as Irv Strong put it, “it’s only another incident in a voyage that began with Jim Hughes and promises to end we do not know with what. Anyhow, we’ve had good luck on the whole, and if we don’t come out ahead now, it’ll probably be our own fault.”
This was the feeling of all the boys. They had the open Mississippi before them for the brief remainder of their journey. The river was still enormously full, of course, but it was falling now, and below Vicksburg it had been kept well within the levees, so that there was no further probability of any cross-country excursions on the part of The Last of the Flatboats. They had nothing to do, apparently, but to cast the boat loose and let her float the rest of the way upon placid waters. But this again is getting ahead of my story. The boat is still tied to the bank at Vicksburg. Let us return to her.
CHAPTER XXXII
PUBLICITY
As soon as the first necessities of their business were provided for at Vicksburg, Phil wandered off in search of newspapers. He had become interested in many things through his newspaper reading in connection with Jim Hughes, and concerning many matters he was curious to know the outcome. So he sought not only for the latest newspapers, and not chiefly for them, but rather for back numbers covering the period during which The Last of the Flatboats had been wandering in the woods. He secured a lot of them, some of them from New York, some from Chicago, some from St. Louis, and some from other cities.
To his astonishment, when he opened the earliest of them, – those that had been published soon after the affair at Memphis, – he found them filled with portraits of himself and of his companions, with pictures of The Last of the Flatboats, and even with interviews, of which neither he nor Irv Strong, who was the other one chiefly quoted, had any recollection. Yet when they read the words quoted from their lips, they remembered that these things were substantially what they had said to innocent-looking persons not at all known to them as newspaper reporters, who had quite casually conversed with them at Memphis. Neither had either of them posed for a portrait, and yet here were pictures of them, ranging all the way from perfect likenesses to absolute caricatures, freely exploited.
Phil and Irv were so curious about this matter that they asked everybody who came on board for an explanation. Finally, one young man, who had come to them with an inquiry as to the price at which they would be willing to sell out the boat and cargo at Vicksburg instead of going on to New Orleans, smiled gently and said, in reply to Phil’s questions: —
“Well, perhaps you don’t always recognize a reporter when you see him. Sometimes he may come to you to talk about quite other things than those that he really wants you to tell him about. Sometimes your talk will prove to be exactly what he wants to interest his readers with, and as a reporter usually has a pretty accurate memory, he is able to reproduce all that you say so nearly as you said it, that you can’t yourself afterward discover any flaw in his report. Sometimes, too, the reporter happens to be an artist sent to get a picture of you. He may have a kodak concealed under his vest, but usually that does not work. It is clumsy, you know, and generally unsatisfactory. It is a good deal easier for a newspaper artist who knows his business to talk to you about turnips, or Grover Cleveland, or Christian Science, or the tariff, or any of those things that people always talk about, and while you think him interested in the expression of your views, make a sketch of you on his thumb nail or on his cuff, which he can reproduce at the office for purposes of print. By the way, have you talked with any reporters since you arrived at Vicksburg?”
“No,” answered Phil; “none of them have come aboard.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Well, yes; I haven’t seen a single man from the press.”
“Well, if any of the papers should happen to ‘get on’ to the fact that you are here, and print something about it, I will send you copies in the morning.”
The next morning the promised copies came. One of them contained not only a very excellent portrait of Phil and a group picture of the crew, but also an almost exact reproduction of the conversation given above.
A new light dawned upon Phil’s mind.
“After all, that fellow was a reporter and a very clever one. He didn’t want to buy the boat or its cargo or anything else. But I wonder if he was an artist also. If not, who made those pictures?”
“Well,” said Irv, “you remember there was a young woman who came on board about the same time that he did. She was very much interested in Baby, but I noticed that she went all over the boat, and when you and that young fellow were talking, she sat down on the anchor, there, and seemed to be writing a letter on a pad. Just then, as I remember, we fellows were gathered around the new lantern you had just bought and examining it – and, by the way, here’s the lantern in the group picture.”
All this was a revelation to Phil, and it interested him mightily. As for Irv Strong, he was so interested that he made up his mind to beard the lion in his den. He went to the office of one of the newspapers and asked to see its editor. But out of him he got no satisfaction whatever. The editor hadn’t the slightest idea where the interviews or the pictures had come from.
“All that,” he said, “is managed by our news department. I never know what they are going to do. I judge them only by results. But I do not mind saying to you that there would have been several peremptory discharges in this office if this paper had not had a good picture of The Last of the Flatboats, a portrait of your interesting young captain and other pictures of human interest tending to illustrate the arrival of this boat at our landing, although we rarely print pictures of any kind in our paper. This is an exceptional case. And I think that the chief of our news department would have had an uncomfortable quarter of an hour if he and his subordinates had failed to secure a talk with persons so interesting as those who captured Jim Hughes, as he is called, and secured the arrest of the others of that bank burglar’s gang, and afterward rescued one of the most distinguished citizens of Mississippi and his family from death by starvation. Really, you must excuse me from undertaking the task of telling you how our boys do these things. It is not my business to know, and I have a great many other things to do. It is their business to get the news. For that they are responsible, and to that end they have control of adequate means. Oh, by the way, that suggests to me a good editorial that ought to be written right now. Perhaps you will be interested to read it in to-morrow morning’s paper. I am just going to write it.”
As it was now midnight, Irv was bewildered. How in the world was he to read in the next morning’s paper an editorial that had, at this hour, just occurred to the man who was yet to write it? How was it to be written, set up in type, and printed before that early hour when the newspaper must be on sale?
The editor knew, if Irv did not. He knew that the hour of midnight sees the birth of many of the ablest and most influential newspaper utterances of our time. Irv’s curious questions had suggested to him a little essay upon the value of Publicity, and it was upon that theme that he wrote. He showed, with what Irv and Phil regarded as an extraordinary insight into things that they had supposed to be known only to themselves, how their very irregular reading of the newspapers, from time to time, as they received them, had first awakened their interest in a vague and general way in the bank burglary case; how, as their interest became intenser, and the descriptions of the fleeing criminal became more and more detailed, they had at last so far coupled one thing with another as to reach a correct conclusion at the critical moment. He showed how, but for this persistent and minute Publicity, they would never have dreamed of arresting the fugitive who was posing as their pilot – how, but for this, the criminals would probably never have been caught at all; how their escape would have operated as an encouragement to crime everywhere by relieving it of the fear of detection, – and much else to the like effect. It was a very interesting article, and it was one which set the boys thinking.
“After all,” said Ed, “we owe a great deal more to the newspapers than I had ever thought. And the more we think of it, the more we see that we owe it to them. I don’t know whether they are always sincere in their antagonism to wrong or not, but at any rate in their rivalry with each other to get the earliest news and to stand best with the public, they manage pretty generally to expose about all the wrongs there are, and to rouse public opinion against them. I suppose that, but for the newspapers, we should not have a very good country to live in, especially so far as big cities are concerned.”
“As to those sentiments,” said Irv, “I’m afraid one Thomas Jefferson got ahead of you, Ed. I remember reading that he said somewhere, that he would rather have a free press without a free government than a free government without a free press. I imagine his meaning to have been that we could not long have a free government without a free press, and that if we have a free press it must pretty soon compel the setting up of a free government.”
“But the newspapers do publish such dreadful things,” said Constant. “They make so many sensations that their moral influence, I suppose, is pretty bad.”
“Well, is it?” asked Irv. “If there is a pest-hole in any city, where typhus or smallpox is breeding, and a newspaper exposes it, it is not pleasant reading, of course, but it arouses public attention and brings public opinion to bear to compel a remedy. If there is a health board, the newspapers all want to know what the health board is doing; if there isn’t a health board, the newspapers all cry out, ‘Why isn’t there a health board?’ and presently one is organized. Now I suppose it is very much the same way about moral plague spots. If vice or crime prevail in any part of the city, the newspapers print the news of it and call upon the police to suppress it. This arouses public attention and brings pressure to bear upon public officials until the bad thing is done away with, or at least reduced to small proportions.”
“Yes,” said Ed, thinking and speaking slowly, “and there is another thing. Even when the newspapers print the details about scandals, and we say it would be better not to publish such things, it may be that the newspapers are right; because every rascal that is inclined to do scandalous things knows by experience or observation that the newspapers, if they get hold of the facts, will print them and hold him up to the execration of mankind. If the newspapers did not print the news of such things, every scoundrel would know that he could do what he pleased without fear of being made the subject of scandal. The first thought of every rascal seems to be to keep his affairs out of the newspapers. Now perhaps it is better that he cannot keep them out; as he certainly cannot. In very many cases, without doubt or question, men are restrained from doing outrageous things merely by the fear that their conduct will be exploited with pictures of themselves and fac-similes of their letters and everything of the kind, in so-called sensational newspapers.”
“Well, all that is so, I suppose,” said Will, “though I hadn’t thought of it quite to the extent that you have, Ed. I have always been told that the newspapers were horribly sensational and immoral, but, now that I think of it, when they publish a story of immorality, it is because somebody has been doing the immoral thing that they report; and as you say, the fact that the newspapers are pretty sure to get hold of the truth and publish it in every case is often a check on men’s tendency to do immoral things.”
Before parting with their rescued friends at Vicksburg, the boys had to go ashore and be photographed, at the planter’s solicitation.
“I want my children always to think of you young men as their friends,” he said, – “friends to whom they owe more than they can ever repay. I don’t want ‘Baby’ to forget you as she might – she is so young still – if she did not have your portraits to remind her as she grows older. As for myself and my wife – I cannot say how much of gratitude we feel. There are some things that one can’t even try to say. But be sure – ” He broke down here, but the boys understood.
Irv Strong, whose objection to anything like a “scene” is a familiar fact to the reader, diverted the conversation by saying: —
“It would be a pity to perpetuate the memory of these clothes of ours, or to let the little ones learn as they grow up what a ragamuffin crew it was with whom an unfortunate accident once compelled them to associate for a time. So suppose we have only our faces photographed now, and send you pictures of our best clothes when we get back home.”
The triviality served its purpose, and the party went to the photographer’s.
When the time of leave taking came there were tears on the part of the mother and the children, while “Baby” stoutly insisted upon remaining on the flatboat with “my big boys,” as she called her rescuers. She was especially in love with Phil, who, in spite of his absorbing duties, had found time to play with her and tell her wonderful stories. During the clothes-making wait at Vicksburg, indeed, Phil had done little else than entertain the beautiful big-eyed child. He repeated to her all the nursery rhymes and jingles he had ever heard in his infancy or since, and to the astonishment of his companions, he made up many jingles of his own for her amusement. He made up funny stories for her too, – stories that were funny only because he illustrated them with comical faces and grotesque gestures.
So when the time of parting came the child clung to him, and had to be torn away in tears. I suppose I ought not to tell it on Phil, but he too had to turn aside from the others and use his handkerchief on his eyes before he could give the command to “cast off” in a husky and not very steady voice.
