To Panama and back

by Henry T. Byford

As they kept on asking what the Eads and jetties looked like, they received various answers. Some said they looked like lighthouses on piers; others that they were like Greek temples covered with electric lights; others said that they were nude figures of lions bearing immense candelabra on their heads and electric lights on their tails; others said that they were a narrow channel running out at sea—mere longitudinal space. When we got through answering them they were discouraged, for they would not be able to describe the Eads and jetties to their friends at home.

They, of course, took the captain’s word that we would pass the jetties at 10 P. M. and paid no attention to my assurance that we would pass them at midnight. At ten o’clock they were gaping and shivering on deck like tired ghosts on a moonless night, and wished they had gone to bed. By eleven it was evident that I had told them the truth about the time of passing the jetties, so they placed a sentinel to watch the Eads and jetties and report what he saw, that they might describe them to their friends.

I enjoyed making my toilet the following morning as I had not for a long time. To be able to stand still and stretch both arms above my head leisurely and without danger of falling; to be able to gape without having a tooth knocked loose by an approaching shelf or edge of a bunk; to be able to get the right foot in the right trouser leg at the first attempt; to be able, while washing, to stoop down without a head-on dive; to find both shoes on the same side of the room, and my clothes hanging on the nail just as I had hung them: these were luxuries that made me forget my previous misery. Reaction from misery is, after all, the best substitute for happiness. Real happiness is too rare and impalpable, and is enjoyed in the past and future only.

Doctor Senn and I each had one hook upon which to hang our overcoats, heavy suits, belts, hats and the garments we removed at night. And I was glad that there had been no occupant of the sofa bunk to share these two hooks with us, for there would then have been no alternative but to throw our city clothes overboard where they would have been better preserved. I never knew to how much use one hook could be put until we tested the possibilities on the Brighton; nor did I realize the condition clothes could get into from hanging in a bunch upon one nail for a week.

At “coffee” I found the whole company. Those who had sat up and shivered while watching for the “Eads” and jetties looked hollow-eyed. The vigilants had retired at eleven o’clock, but had lain awake a long time with disappointment and cold feet, and had arisen early, famished and unrefreshed, and had shivered and shifted about cold corners and corridors for a couple of hours waiting for lukewarm coffee and jam to start the depressed circulation through their congealed capillaries.

Although it was a cold January day and ice had formed during the night, the river looked beautiful in the morning sunlight as we came nearer to New Orleans. Doctor Waite was even more enthusiastic in her appreciation than were the ladies who were not doctors, a thing which I could not understand. I always had supposed that a busy surgical life would take nearly all of the womanly out of a person. I had often observed such an effect upon others as well as upon myself.

When we arrived off the docks of the United Fruit Company the first thing we noticed was the S. S. Preston, the large boat that had not arrived at Colón when we left, and for which we did not wait because we wanted to save time and avoid the crowd. We expected the delegates to return in it en masse and crowd it until it would become more uncomfortable than the smaller, unpopular boat, the Brighton, that detestable little, breakdown little, slow poke of a rat-trap which no one was supposed to take, but which nearly every one did take. The Preston had sailed from Colón two days later than the Brighton and had arrived at New Orleans two days earlier. On a scheduled five-days’ trip she had beaten us by four days. She had provided a stateroom for each passenger or married couple, had not struck a reef, and had only broken one sailor’s leg—which didn’t signify as Doctor Palmer was there to set it immediately. She had kept her screw in the water and her deck out of the water, and thus had allowed passengers to eat, sleep and wear dry clothes. Some of us felt like blowing up the Brighton and the United Fruit Company, one with dynamite and the other with damning it.

We arrived at the docks in time for me to take the morning train for Chicago and thus escape Doctor Frank and his three deadly oyster suppers. But the suspicions of Uncle Sam had to be allayed, and before we had signed papers and suffered the conventional derangement of our baggage and bric-a-brac, the train had gone and I was doomed to eat oysters and drink gin fizz and absinthe with a starved man. It is not pleasant, after you have eaten more than you want, to sit half an hour or so and watch a starved man giving way to the eager ecstasy of slowly oncoming repletion. It seems to be the uppermost desire of every one upon arriving at New Orleans to eat a dish of oysters. In fact, it is remarkable what an amount of enjoyment the human being gets out of what it puts into its stomach, forgetting that an organ which affords such universal and almost continuous enjoyment deserves, like Hamlet’s “Players,” to be well used.

After satisfying our curiosity by taking a silver fizz, a drink which had made a reputation for a certain saloon in New Orleans, Doctors Frank and Newman and I had our eleven o’clock breakfast (the postponed oyster supper) at a French restaurant near the St. Charles. I myself could only eat half a dozen of those large and luscious oysters, but I will not destroy the reader’s good opinion, if he have one, of my comrades by telling how many they ate. However, we finally stopped eating, promising ourselves other oyster meals before the time for the evening trains to depart, and went to a saloon in the French quarter to increase our knowledge by taking a drink of the absinthe that had made New Orleans and this saloon famous for twenty years. I swallowed my dose and pretended that it was good. Absinthe makes people lie. It is the essence of seasickness and mendacity, and good only for those who, like horses, can’t get sick at the stomach and can’t tell the truth. When I have an enemy I will treat him to absinthe, but I will not drink it with him. Doctor Frank liked it on account of its reputation, just as his patients like him. Doctor Newman looked at his emptied glass and grunted, then rolled his head solemnly from side to side and opened his mouth as if he were going to say something important; but nothing came out.

In the afternoon after all hands had had their oyster lunches, we were attracted by the “sight-seeing auto” standing in front of the St. Charles. Circulars were scattered about, advertising “Two delightful tours daily and Sunday, leaving St. Charles Hotel daily at 10 A. M. and 2 P. M.” I have thought it worth while to print a copy of the advertised description of the tour in order to show the reader how quackery flourishes and is respected in business life as well as in professional. I formerly supposed that the medical, legal and sporting professions were the only ones which could successfully impose their frauds upon the public, but I am now hunting for the only profession or business that does not. I would advise all young men to divide the business public into two classes, viz., enemies and friends. The former will want his money to enrich themselves at his expense; the latter will solicit it to ruin both him and themselves—but him at any rate. Above all he should beware of the latter, that his money may not ruin both.