“The beads fitted my rifle-bore, and I fired 'em away when lead was scarce.”
Various discussions followed about luck and lotteries, with anecdotes of all kinds respecting fortunate winners; then came stories of Texan expeditions in former times, which I began to perceive were little else than speculations of a gambling kind, rarely intended to go farther than the quay of New Orleans.
On the present occasion, however, it would seem a real expedition had been planned. Some had already sailed, others were to follow the very day after the lottery, and only waited to learn who was the fortunate winner of Butcher's mare, at that time waiting at Galveston for an owner.
I waited a long time, in hope of acquiring something like an insight into the scope of the enterprise, but in vain; indeed, it was easy to see that, of the company, not a single one, in all likelihood, intended to join the expedition. When I left the “Picayune,” therefore, I was but little wiser than when I entered it; and yet somehow the whole scheme had taken a fast hold on my imagination, which readily filled in the details of what I was ignorant. The course of reading in which I had indulged on board Sir Dudley's yacht was doubtless the reason of this. My mind had laid up so many texts for adventurous fancies that on the slightest pretext I could call up any quantity of enterprise and vicissitude.
A hundred times I asked myself if it were likely that any of these Texan adventurers would accept, of my services to wait upon them. I was not ignorant of horses, a tolerably fair groom, could cook a little,—that much I had learned on board the yacht; besides, wherever my qualifications failed, I had a ready witted ingenuity that supplied the place almost as well as the “real article.”
“Ah!” thought I, “who knows how many are passing at this moment whose very hearts would leap with joy to find such a fellow as I am,' accustomed to in-door and out, wages no object, and no objection to travel! '” Possessed with this notion, I could not help fancying that in every look that met mine as I went, I could read something like an inquiry, a searching glance that seemed to say, “Bless me! ain't that Con? As I live, there's Con Cregan! What a rare piece of fortune to chance upon him at this juncture!”
I own it did require a vivid and warm imagination so to interpret the expressions which met my eyes at every moment, seeing that the part of the town into which I had wandered was that adjoining to the docks,—a filthy, gloomy quarter, chiefly resorted to by Jew slop-sellers, ship-chandlers, and such like, with here and there a sailors' ordinary usually kept by a negro or half-breed.
I had eaten nothing that day, and it was now late in the afternoon, so that it was with a very strong interest I peeped occasionally into the little dens, where, under a paper lantern with the inscription, “All for Twelve Cents,” sat a company, usually of sailors and watermen, whose fare harmonized most unpleasantly with their features.
The combat between a man's taste and his exchequer is never less agreeable than when it concerns a dinner. To feel that you have a soul for turtle and truffles, and yet must descend to mashed potatoes and herrings; to know that a palate capable of appreciating a salmi des perdreaux must be condemned to the indignity of stock fish,—what an indignity is that! The whole man revolts at it! You feel, besides, that such a meal is unrelieved by those suggestive excursions of fancy which a well-served table abounds in. In the one case you eat like the beast of the field,—it is a question of supporting nature, and no more; in the other, there is a poetry interwoven that elevates and exalts. With what discursive freedom does the imagination range from the little plate of oysters that preludes your soup, to pearl fishery and the coral reefs, “with moonlight sleeping on the breaking surf!” And then your soup, be it turtle or mulligatawny, how associated is it with the West Indies or the East, bearing on its aromatic vapor thousands of speculative reflections about sugar and slavery, pepper-pots, straw hats, pickaninnies, and the Bishop of Barbadoes; or the still grander themes of elephants, emeralds, and the Indus, with rajahs, tigers, punkahs, and the Punjaub!
And so you proceed, dreamily following out in fancy the hints each course supplies, and roving with your cutlets to the “cattle upon a thousand hills,” or dallying with the dessert to the orange-groves of Zaute or Sicily.