LXXVIII.
THAT HAIR-TRUNK.
Dear sisters:--We are here at Long Branch, bag and baggage--Cousin Dempster, E. E., myself, and that creature Cecilia, who is more trouble than the whole of us put together. We came down in--not on--the _Plymouth Rock_, which is nothing of the sort, but a steamboat, as long as all out-doors, with room enough for a camping-ground for the next generation on the decks, and rows of staterooms that would line the main street of Sprucehill on both sides, and have some to let. There was a whole lot of fiddlers and horn-players on board that began to play the minute we came in sight--a compliment that I should feel more deeply if it hadn"t become so common; but somehow wherever I go, those musical fellows start up, and grind and blow till one almost begins to wish for the privacy of an obscure position.
Fame is beautiful, and reputation is the glory of genius; but when they are sounded out by fiddles in broad daylight, and blasted over creation by wide-mouthed toot-horns, innate modesty shrinks within itself.
I really felt this way when a squad of music-grinders burst out in high jubilee the moment my foot touched the deck. It was a compliment, of course, but the sun was pouring down upon us, hot as a fiery furnace.
The express-men were smashing our twenty-two trunks on deck end foremost, caving one in every minute or two, and I felt too hot and anxious for reciprocity when the musicians struck up, for all the genius and ambition was just burned out of me.
When we got aboard, the thermometer was running up so fast that another hitch would have made it boil right over. Those gla.s.s things ought to be made longer at both ends.
I haven"t a blinding faith in express-men since I saw three of E. E."s best Saratoga trunks stove in, so I let the music storm on while I kept watch of my own hair-trunk, which came down from my grandmother on the father"s side, who fed the calf that gave up the skin that covers that trunk only with its innocent life. She fed it with skim-milk from her own saucer, and set store by the trunk on that account up to the day of her death. Then she willed it to me in a codicil, that being more sacred than the original testament, she said, which I cannot understand--all testaments, old or new, being first in my estimation.
Well, of course, I kept watch of that trunk, and when I saw a great broad footed Irishman take it from the wagon and pitch it ten feet on deck, I just shut my parasol, clenched it in the middle, and went up to him.
"How dare you pitch my property on end in that way?" says I.
"I hain"t touched none of your property," says he, a-wiping his forehead with the cuff of his coat. "Never see a bit of it."
"That trunk is my property," says I, pointing toward it with my parasol, which I still held belligerently by the middle.
"Well," says the fellow, eyeing the trunk sideways, "it does look sort of pecular, but still I reckon it"s nothing more "en a trunk, after all--one of the hairy old stagers--but only a trunk, anyhow!"
"Sir," says I, with emphatic dignity, for the honor of my ancestors was concerned, "that is a traditional trunk--a testamentary bequest from my grandmother--who was revolutionary in her time."
"What," says the man--"what is that you say?"
Here a real nice-looking gentleman came up to where I stood, and says he to the man:
"You should be more careful, the trunk is evidently an heirloom."
"You are very kind," says I, relenting into a bow; "it"s only a hair-trunk--grandmother"s loom went to another branch of the family."
"Well, anyway, I"ll put the crather by itself, and bring it to yez safe, marum, never fear," says the Irishman; and with that he sat down on my blessed grandmother"s trunk and wiped his face again. Then he waved his dirty hand and motioned that I should go away, which I did, and found E.
E. spreading her skirts out wide on a settee, and looking as innocent as twenty lambs if any one seemed to turn anxiously toward the extra seat she was covering up for me.
I took the seat thankfully, spread my parasol, and tried to catch a mouthful of air, but there wasn"t a breath stirring. The water in the harbor was smooth as a looking-gla.s.s. The sky was broad, blue, and so hot with sunshine that it blistered one"s face to look up.
I put a blue veil around my beehive, and wilted down into my corner of the settee. Dempster stood by us blowing himself with a broad-brimmed hat, but not a breath of air he got.
"I"ll run down and see how the thermometer is," says he. "Never--never did I swelter under such a stifler in my life."
Off he went, swinging his hat. In a few minutes he came back again, panting with the heat.
"It"s a hundred," says he.
"What?" says I.
"The thermometer," says he.
"And is it that which makes things so hot?"
"Of course," says he, "one hundred is as much as we can bear."
"Then, why on earth don"t they get rid of some? What is the use of piling-up things to this extent? For my part I never will travel on boats that carry these red-hot thermometers again. It"s as much as one"s life is worth. Nitro-glycerine is nothing to it; that blows you right straight up, but these other things pile on the heat and never come to an end."
Congress ought to put a stop to such dangerous freights being piled-up in steamboats. It"s enough to breed suicides on the water.
Dempster wanted to laugh, I could see that, but his face just puckered up a little, and it was all he could do in that line. So he took a camp-stool, pulled his new white hat over his eyes, and fell into a soggy sort of sleep. There he sat, kind of simmering, like a baked apple in the mouth of an oven, till the steamboat stopped on the end of a sand-bank, and gave a lazy snarl, as if it was glad to get rid of us.
After this they packed the whole cargo of live people in a line of cars, and sent them off sweltering through the sand with the engine roaring before them like a fiery dragon.
LXXIX.
AT THE BRANCH.
By and by, we came to Long Branch, where the engine gave another long whoop, and were turned out into the sunshine again among stages, wagons, carriages, and all sorts of wheeled creatures, all looking as if they had been in a whirlwind of red dust.
Cousin Dempster had sent his carriage ahead, and there his handsome bay horses stood sweating themselves black, and dropping foam into the dusty road. We got in, helter-skelter--no one cared which was first--and were driven toward the sea-sh.o.r.e.
When we got in sight of the water the horses made a sudden turn, and wheeled into a wide, dusty street, that runs right along the edge of the water. It was an awful grand sight, but the waves didn"t seem to have strength enough to move, only gave out a lazy sob once in a while, as if they were tired of carrying so many loafing ships about that hadn"t spirit enough to flap their own sails.
Long Branch is a real nice place after all; and just the broadest, coolest, and most scrumptious tavern in it is the Ocean Hotel, which stands just back of the sea-sh.o.r.e, stretching its white wings widely, from the centre building a quarter of a mile, I do believe, each way.
Before the house is a great green lawn, with walks and carriage roads cut through it that lead from the house to the high bank, against which the ocean keeps beating all the year round.
On each side the walks are great white marble flower-pots--vases they call them here--choke full and running over with flowers and vines, and great broad-leaved plants that looked cool and green, hot as it was.
"Oh," says Cousin E. E. "Isn"t that beautiful? So fresh, so bright, it is like a moving garden."
So it was. All along those deep verandahs that run clear across the front of the hotel in double rows, were swinging baskets full of flowers and cool green leaves--hundreds of them--brightening the whole broad front of the hotel, and under them was a crowd of people--gentlemen, ladies, and children--reading, chatting, sleeping in the great easy willow chairs, or walking up and down on the soft gra.s.s.
Sisters, I know now exactly the way an Arab feels when he finds a bright spring--which they call an oasis--in the deserts of Sahara, and hears the leaves shiver and the waters murmur. This hotel looked cool, still, and refreshing like that. All the front was in shadow, before it lay the deep blue water. Inside was Mr. Leland, a potentate among hotel-keepers, ready to make us at home.
There it was again. Ovations will follow me. I had but just taken off my dusty clothes, bathed my face and hands with cold water, and stepped out on the verandah, when a storm of music burst out from a little summer-house on the gra.s.s. Wherever I go this sort of ovation follows me. Music and flowers seem to be my destiny. No matter where I roam, in all the steamboats and hotels they send storms of homage after me. Well, I am grateful, and I hope bear these honors with Christian meekness.
I have been riding all along the beach. The sun has gone down and the ocean ripples to the softest and blandest wind I ever felt. The vessels that move on it show signs of life now. Their great white sails bend and strain with a look of power. The day has been hot, but a cool wind comes off the water, and you breathe once more.
Sisters, do not be led to suppose that the Ocean Hotel, large and grand as it is, means all Long Branch. Why, there is a mile of hotels and cottages running along the beach, all swarming over with people. As you ride up the street you pa.s.s dozens and dozens of little summer-houses, full of young people looking out at the sea, which comes in with a slow rush and swell now that leaves a lonesome feeling in the heart.