Children of the Market Place

by Edgar Lee Masters

CHAPTER XVIII

I did not tell Dorothy where I was going. I left her to suppose that I was returning to Jacksonville.

In passing to the boat landing I stumbled and fell, bruising myself painfully. I was hurrying to get away and in my haste and sorrow I was oblivious of my surroundings. As I limped along on the deck, I was approached by a kindly man who offered me some ointment which he said was made from the oil that escaped over the surface of the water in the salt wells of Kentucky and elsewhere, in spite of anything that could be done and much to the inconvenience of the business of getting salt. This man said that the oil was being subjected to experiments for use in illumination. As an ointment it was magical, and in a few days my lameness disappeared.

Both on the Ohio and the Mississippi we saw flatboats tied together heaped with coal, which had been loaded into them from the sides of the hills of the Alleghanies and elsewhere. They were being floated down to New Orleans. I had found coal in several places on my land in Illinois. Sometimes one could dig it out of the surface of the ground. But no expeditious means were yet in use in Illinois in mining it.

The Mississippi is a wonder scene to me. The river is full of islands and the boat winds about in endless turns of the stream. There are swamps, and melancholy cypress and funereal live oaks. There are the solitary huts of the woodcutters, and bars of sand covered with cane brake, and impenetrable forests, and the forbidding depths of the jungle. Farther on there are the sugar plantations, and the levees, and the great houses of the planters, and the huts of the negroes, and the vivid greens of fields of sugar cane standing many feet high; and around these the cypress swamp. And on every side in the midst of each plantation the tall white towers of the sugar mills. It is all novel and wonderful to me; and it helps me to forget my insistent thoughts of Dorothy.

The steamer stopped to get wood. It was at a creole plantation. There was a procession of carts here, each drawn by a team of mules, driven by negroes, laughing and joking with each other. They were slaves hauling wood to the sugar mills. We were soon off again on the silent river, which had now broadened to the dimensions of a great lake.

Then we saw steeples, a dome; then the masts of numerous vessels, and steamboats, and tall chimneys. Then we reached the levee of the city. The boat was fastened, and I walked upon the streets of New Orleans. The heat was no greater than I had felt in Illinois. And at night a breeze stirred briskly from the harbor and the gulf beyond. This city of 50,000 people had immediate fascination for me.

In the evening I went to the Place d'Armes where a military band was playing. There were races during the day just out of town. The cafés were filled with people smoking and drinking, playing billiards and dominoes. Ladies in gay costumes sat in the balconies, making observations on the scene, the players, the passersby. French was spoken everywhere. And everywhere was the creole beauty, with black eyes and long silken lashes, and light skin faintly suffused with rose. I plunged into these festivities in order to forget Dorothy.

I went to the Spanish Cathedral the next day, and saw on the porch groups of gray-haired negroes waiting for alms. There were candles on the altar, paintings of the stations of the cross on the pillars, and confessional closets near the door. And here the lovely creole knelt side by side with pure black descendants of the African negro.

Not anywhere did I see the negro treated worse than in Illinois, except on one occasion. I was loitering on the dock looking at the steamboats being loaded by slaves. A negro driving a wagon almost collided with a wagon being driven by a white man. I saw the whole of it. The white man was at fault. Yet he began to curse the negro, who laughingly spoke the truth, that the white man had suddenly veered. With that a man, apparently an officer of some sort, stepped from a patrol box carrying a rifle and with an oath and a vile epithet commanded the negro to drive on. And he did quickly and without returning a word. There was something about the injustice of this that aroused my resentment. It was a partiality that had nothing to do with the circumstances, but only with the persons.