ELIZA COOKING UNDER FIRE.
Eliza often cooked under fire, and only lately one of the General's staff, recounting war days, described her as she was preparing the General's dinner in the field. A shell would burst near her; she would turn her head in anger at being disturbed, unconscious that she was observed, begin to growl to herself about being obliged to move, but take up her kettle and frying-pan, march farther away, make a new fire, and begin cooking as unperturbed as if it were an ordinary disturbance instead of a sky filled with bits of falling shell. I do not repeat that polite fiction of having been on the spot, as neither the artist nor I had Eliza's grit or pluck; but we arranged the camp-kettle, and Eliza fell into the exact expression, as she volubly began telling the tale of "how mad those busting shells used to make her." It is an excellent likeness, even though Eliza objects to the bandana, which she has abandoned in her new position; and I must not forget that I found her one day turning her head critically from side to side looking at her picture; and, out of regard to her, will mention that her nose, of which she is very proud, is, she fears, a touch too flat in the sketch. She speaks of her dress as "completely whittled out with bullets," but she would like me to mention that "she don't wear them rags now."
When Eliza reached New York this past autumn, she told me, when I asked her to choose where she would go, as my time was to be entirely given to her, that she wanted first to go to the Fifth Avenue Hotel and see if it looked just the same as it did "when you was a bride, Miss Libbie, and the Ginnel took you and me there on leave of absence." We went through the halls and drawing-rooms, narrowly watched by the major-domo, who stands guard over tramps, but fortified by my voice, she "oh'd" and "ah'd" over its grandeur to her heart's content. One day I left her in Madison Square, to go on a business errand, and cautioned her not to stray away. When I returned I asked anxiously, "Did any one speak to you, Eliza?" "Everybody, Miss Libbie," as nonchalant and as complacent as if it were her idea of New York hospitality. Then she begged me to go round the Square, "to hunt a lady from Avenue A, who see'd you pass with me, Miss Libbie, and said she knowed you was a lady, though I reckon she couldn't 'count for me and you bein' together." We found the Avenue A lady, and I was presented, and, to her satisfaction, admired the baby that had been brought over to that blessed breathing-place of our city.
The Elevated railroad was a surprise to Eliza. She "didn't believe it would be so high." At that celebrated curve on the Sixth Avenue line, where Monsieur de Lesseps, even, exclaimed, "Mon Dieu! but the Americans are a brave people," the poor, frightened woman clung to me and whispered, "Miss Libbie, couldn't we get down anyway? Miss Libbie, I'se seed enough. I can tell the folks at home all about it now. Oh, I never did 'spect to be so near heaven till I went up for good."
At the Brooklyn Bridge she demurred. She is so intelligent that I wanted to have her see the shipping, the wharves, the harbor, and the statue of Liberty; but nothing kept her from flight save her desire to tell her townspeople that she had seen the place where the crank jumped off. The police-man, in answer to my inquiry, commanded us in martial tones to stay still till he said the word; and when the wagon crossing passed the spot, and the maintainer of the peace said "Now!" Eliza shivered and whispered, "Now, let's go home, Miss Libbie. I dun took the cullud part of the town fo' I come; the white folks hain't seen what I has, and they'll be took when I tell 'em;" and off she toddled, for Eliza is not the slender woman I once knew her.
Her description of the Wild West exhibition was most droll. I sent her down because we had lived through so many of the scenes depicted, and I felt sure that nothing would recall so vividly the life on the frontier as that most realistic and faithful representation of a Western life that has ceased to be, with advancing civilization. She went to Mr. Cody's tent after the exhibition, to present my card of introduction, for he had served as General Custer's scout after Eliza left us, and she was, therefore, unknown to him except by hearsay. They had twenty subjects in common; for Eliza, in her way, was as deserving of praise as was the courageous Cody. She was delighted with all she saw, and on her return her description of it, mingled with imitations of the voices of the hawkers and the performers, was so incoherent that it presented only a confused jumble to my ears. The buffalo were a surprise, a wonderful revival to her of those hunting-days when our plains were darkened by the herds. "When the buffalo cum in, I was ready to leap up and holler, Miss Libbie; it 'minded me of ole times. They made me think of the fifteen the Ginnel fust struck in Kansas. He jest pushed down his ole hat, and went after 'em linkety-clink. Well, Miss Libbie, when Mr. Cody come up, I see at once his back and hips was built precisely like the Ginnel, and when I come on to his tent, I jest said to him: 'Mr. Buffalo Bill, when you cum up to the stand and wheeled round, I said to myself, "Well, if he ain't the 'spress image of Ginnel Custer in battle I never seed any one that was!"' I jest wish he'd come to my town and give a show! He could have the hull fairground there. My! he could raise money so fast 'twouldn't take him long to pay for a church. And the shootin' and ridin'! why, Miss Libbie, when I seed one of them ponies brought out, I know'd he was one of the hatefulest, sulkiest ponies that ever lived. He was a-prancin' and curvin', and he jest stretched his ole neck and throwed the men as fast as ever they got on."
After we had strolled through the streets for many days, Eliza always amusing me by her droll comments, she said to me one day: "Miss Libbie, you don't take notice, when me and you's walking on, a-lookin' into shop-windows and a-gazin' at the new things I never see before, how the folks does stare at us. But I see 'em a-gazin', and I can see 'em a-ponderin' and sayin' to theirsel's, 'Well, I do declar'! that's a lady, there ain't no manner of doubt. She's one of the bong tong; but whatever she's a-doin' with that old scrub nigger, I can't make out.'" I can hardly express what a recreation and delight it was to go about with this humorous woman and listen to her comments, her unique criticisms, her grateful delight, when she turned on the street to say: "Oh, what a good time me and you is having, Miss Libbie, and how I will 'stonish them people at home!" The best of it all was the manner in which she brought back our past, and the hundred small events we recalled, which were made more vivid by the imitation of voice, walk, gesture she gave in speaking of those we followed in the old marching days.
On this journey to Texas some accident happened to our engine, and detained us all night. We campaigners, accustomed to all sorts of unexpected inconveniences, had learned not to mind discomforts. Each officer sank out of sight into his great-coat collar, and slept on by the hour, while I slumbered till morning, curled up in a heap, thankful to have the luxury of one seat to myself. We rather gloried over the citizens who tramped up and down the aisle, groaning and becoming more emphatic in their language as the night advanced, indulging in the belief that the women were too sound asleep to hear them. I wakened enough to hear one old man say, fretfully, and with many adjectives: "Just see how those army folks sleep; they can tumble down anywhere, while I am so lame and sore, from the cramped-up place I am in, I can't even doze." As morning came we noticed our scamp at the other end of the car, with his legs stretched comfortably on the seat turned over in front of him. All this unusual luxury he accounted for afterward, by telling us the trick that his ingenuity had suggested to obtain more room. "You see," the wag said, "two old codgers sat down in front of my pal and me, late last night, and went on counting up their gains in the rise of corn, owing to the war, which, to say the least, was harrowing to us poor devils who had fought the battles that had made them rich and left us without a 'red.' I concluded, if that was all they had done for their country, two of its brave defenders had more of a right to the seat than they had. I just turned to H—— and began solemnly to talk about what store I set by my old army coat, then on the seat they occupied; said I couldn't give it up, though I had been obliged to cover a comrade who had died of small-pox, I not being afraid of contagion, having had varioloid. Well, I got that far when the eyes of the old galoots started out of their heads, and they vamoosed the ranche, I can tell you, and I saw them peering through the window at the end of the next car, the horror still in their faces." The General exploded with merriment. How strange it seems, to contrast those noisy, boisterous times, when everybody shouted with laughter, called loudly from one end of the car to the other, told stories for the whole public to hear, and sang war-songs, with the quiet, orderly travelers of nowadays, who, even in the tremor of meeting or parting, speak below their breath, and, ashamed of emotion, quickly wink back to its source the prehistoric tear.
We bade good-by to railroads at Louisville, and the journeying south was then made by steamer. How peculiar it seemed to us, accustomed as we were to lake craft with deep hulls, to see for the first time those flat-bottomed boats drawing so little water, with several stories, and upper decks loaded with freight. I could hardly rid myself of the fear that, being so top-heavy, we would blow over. The tempests of our western lakes were then my only idea of sailing weather. Then the long, sloping levees, the preparations for the rise of water, the strange sensation, when the river was high, of looking over the embankment, down upon the earth! It is a novel feeling to be for the first time on a great river, with such a current as the Mississippi flowing on above the level of the plantations, hemmed in by an embankment on either side. Though we saw the manner of its construction at one point where the levee was being repaired, and found how firmly and substantially the earth was fortified with stone and logs against the river, it still seemed to me an unnatural sort of voyaging to be above the level of the ground; and my tremors on the subject, and other novel experiences, were instantly made use of as a new and fruitful source of practical jokes. For instance, the steamer bumped into the shore anywhere it happened to be wooded, and an army of negroes appeared, running over the gang-plank like ants. Sometimes at night the pine torches, and the resinous knots burning in iron baskets slung over the side of the boat, made a weird and gruesome sight, the shadows were so black, the streams of light so intense, while the hurrying negroes loaded on the wood, under the brutal voice of a steamer's mate. Once a negro fell in. They made a pretense of rescuing him, gave it up soon, and up hurried our scamp to the upper deck to tell me the horrible tale. He had good command of language, and allowed no scruples to spoil a story. After that I imagined, at every night wood-lading, some poor soul was swept down under the boat and off into eternity. The General was sorry for me, and sometimes, when I imagined the calls of the crew to be the despairing wail of a dying man, he made pilgrimages, for my sake, to the lower deck to make sure that no one was drowned. My imaginings were not always so respected, for the occasion gave too good an opportunity for a joke, to be passed quietly by. The scamp and my husband put their heads together soon after this, and prepared a tale for the "old lady," as they called me. As we were about to make a landing, they ran to me and said, "Come, Libbie, hurry up! hurry up! You'll miss the fun if you don't scrabble." "Miss what?" was my very natural question, and exactly the reply they wanted me to make. "Why, they're going to bury a dead man when we land." I exclaimed in horror, "Another man drowned? how can you speak so irreverently of death?" With a "do you suppose the mate cares for one darkey more or less?" they dragged me to the deck. There I saw the great cable which was used to tie us up, fastened to a strong spar, the two ends of which were buried in the bank. The ground was hollowed out underneath the centre, and the rope slipped under to fasten it around the log. After I had watched this process of securing our boat to the shore, these irrepressibles said, solemnly, "The sad ceremony is now ended, and no other will take place till we tie up at the next stop." When it dawned upon me that "tying up" was called, in steamer vernacular, "burying a dead man," my eyes returned to their proper place in the sockets, breath came back, and indignation filled my soul. Language deserts us at such moments, and I resorted to force.