Cairo was avenged in that I had declined to avail myself of the privileges of free citizenship which had been offered to me in that barber's shop. And then, while we were in our agony, pulling at the straps of our portmanteaus and swearing at the faithlessness of the boots, up came the clerk of the hotel--the great man from behind the bar--and scolded us prodigiously for our delay. "Called! We had been called an hour ago!" Which statement, however, was decidedly untrue, as we remarked, not with extreme patience. "We should certainly be late," he said; "it would take us five minutes to reach the train, and the cars would be off in four." Nobody who has not experienced them can understand the agonies of such moments--of such moments as regards traveling in general; but none who have not been at Cairo can understand the extreme agony produced by the threat of a prolonged sojourn in that city. At last we were out of the house, rushing through the mud, slush, and half-melted snow, along the wooden track to the railway, laden with bags and coats, and deafened by that melancholy, wailing sound, as though of a huge polar she-bear in the pangs of travail upon an iceberg, which proceeds from an American railway-engine before it commences its work. How we slipped and stumbled, and splashed and swore, rushing along in the dark night, with buttons loose, and our clothes half on! And how pitilessly we were treated! We gained our cars, and even succeeded in bringing with us our luggage; but we did not do so with the sympathy, but amid the derision of the by-standers. And then the seats were all full, and we found that there was a lower depth even in the terrible deep of a railway train in a Western State. There was a second-class carriage, prepared, I presume, for those who esteemed themselves too dirty for association with the aristocracy of Cairo; and into this we flung ourselves. Even this was a joy to us, for we were being carried away from Eden. We had acknowledged ourselves to be no fitting colleagues for Mark Tapley, and would have been glad to escape from Cairo even had we worked our way out of the place as assistant stokers to the engine-driver. Poor Cairo!
unfortunate Cairo! "It is about played out!" said its citizen to me. But in truth the play was commenced a little too soon. Those players have played out; but another set will yet have their innings, and make a score that shall perhaps be talked of far and wide in the Western World.
We were still bent upon army inspection, and with this purpose went back from Cairo to Louisville, in Kentucky. I had passed through Louisville before, as told in my last chapter, but had not gone south from Louisville toward the Green River, and had seen nothing of General Buell's soldiers. I should have mentioned before that when we were at St. Louis, we asked General Halleck, the officer in command of the Northern army of Missouri, whether he could allow us to pass through his lines to the South. This he assured us he was forbidden to do, at the same time offering us every facility in his power for such an expedition if we could obtain the consent of Mr.
Seward, who at that time had apparently succeeded in engrossing into his own hands, for the moment, supreme authority in all matters of government. Before leaving Washington we had determined not to ask Mr. Seward, having but little hope of obtaining his permission, and being unwilling to encounter his refusal. Before going to General Halleck, we had considered the question of visiting the land of "Dixie" without permission from any of the men in authority. Iascertained that this might easily have been done from Kentucky to Tennessee, but that it could only be done on foot. There are very few available roads running North and South through these States.
The railways came before roads; and even where the railways are far asunder, almost all the traffic of the country takes itself to them, preferring a long circuitous conveyance with steam, to short distances without. Consequently such roads as there are run laterally to the railways, meeting them at this point or that, and thus maintaining the communication of the country. Now the railways were of course in the hands of the armies. The few direct roads leading from North to South were in the same condition, and the by-roads were impassable from mud. The frontier of the North, therefore, though very extended, was not very easily to be passed, unless, as I have said before, by men on foot. For myself I confess that I was anxious to go South; but not to do so without my coats and trowsers, or shirts and pocket-handkerchiefs. The readiest way of getting across the line--and the way which was, I believe, the most frequently used--was from below Baltimore, in Maryland, by boat across the Potomac. But in this there was a considerable danger of being taken, and I had no desire to become a state-prisoner in the hands of Mr. Seward under circumstances which would have justified our Minister in asking for my release only as a matter of favor.
Therefore, when at St. Louis, I gave up all hopes of seeing "Dixie"during my present stay in America. I presume it to be generally known that Dixie is the negro's heaven, and that the Southern slave States, in which it is presumed that they have found a Paradise, have since the beginning of the war been so named.
