The obeisance to their teacher was made, and Will’s idea of a “study club” was resolved upon. The idea, as developed, was to do much more in a year than the school course marked out, especially to help Phil forward to the level of his fellows, and to help Ed repair the deficiencies that lay back of his irregular attainments. For Ed was now so robust that neither he nor any of his comrades thought of him as an invalid. Instead of spending the winter in the South, as he had intended, Ed had made up his mind to go back with the others, to join them in their “study club,” and to be one of the five when they should enter college.
It was long past midnight when this conversation was over. And the morning had active duties for the crew of The Last of the Flatboats to do.
[CHAPTER XXXVI]
THE LAST LANDING
As The Last of the Flatboats passed the upper part of New Orleans, the boys were disposed to gaze at the strangely beautiful city. It was greater in size than any city that they had ever seen; for none of them had visited Cincinnati, though they had lived all their lives within sixty or seventy miles of it. New Orleans was different in architecture, situation, and everything else from Louisville and Memphis, cities at which they had looked up from the river, while at New Orleans they found themselves looking down, and taking almost a bird’s-eye view of the city. Then, too, the palm gardens, the evergreen trees, and glimpses every now and then of great parterres of flowers, growing gayly in the open air even in late autumn, filled them with the feeling that somehow they had come into a world quite different from any they had ever dreamed of before.
Finally, there were the miles of levee, thickly bordered with steamships and sailing craft of every kind, all so new to them as to be a show in their eyes. The forests of masts, the towering elevators, the wharves piled high with cotton in bales and sugar in hogsheads and great piles of tropical fruits, appealed strongly to their imaginations. There was a soft languor in the atmosphere, and the red sunlight shone through a sort of Indian summer haze, which made the city look dream-like, or as if seen through a fleecy, pink veil.
Presently Phil put an end to their musings.