Mark Twain

Name: Life on the Mississippi — Chapter 22
Author: Mark Twain

Life on the Mississippi — Chapter 22 (1883)

Summary

“Life on the Mississippi — Chapter 22”, published in 1883, is a work by Mark Twain. It explores elements such as steamboat, New Orleans and loafers.

Quotes from Life on the Mississippi — Chapter 22 (Mark Twain)

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi — Chapter 22 (1883)

“ The most notable absence observable in the billiard-room, was the absence of the river man. If he was there he had taken in his sign, he was in disguise. I saw there none of the swell airs and graces, and ostentatious displays of money, and pompous squanderings of it, which used to distinguish the steamboat crowd from the dry-land crowd in the bygone days, in the thronged billiard-rooms of St. Louis. In those times, the principal saloons were always populous with river men; given fifty players present, thirty or thirty-five were likely to be from the river. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi — Chapter 22 (1883)

“ It makes no difference which direction you take, the fact remains the same. Whether you move north, south, east, or west, no matter: you can get up in the morning and guess how far you have come, by noting what degree of grace and picturesqueness is by that time lacking in the costumes of the new passengers,--I do not mean of the women alone, but of both sexes. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi — Chapter 22 (1883)

“ Freight and passenger way-traffic remains to the steamers. This is in the hands--along the two thousand miles of river between St. Paul and New Orleans---of two or three close corporations well fortified with capital; and by able and thoroughly business-like management and system, these make a sufficiency of money out of what is left of the once prodigious steamboating industry. I suppose that St. Louis and New Orleans have not suffered materially by the change, but alas for the wood-yard man! ”

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Source: Wikisource

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi — Chapter 22 (1883)

“ Louis, as in London and Pittsburgh, you can't persuade a new thing to look new; the coal smoke turns it into an antiquity the moment you take your hand off it. The place had just about doubled its size, since I was a resident of it, and was now become a city of 400,000 inhabitants ”

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Source: Wikisource

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi — Chapter 22 (1883)

“ If you will let your glass stand half an hour, you can separate the land from the water as easy as Genesis; and then you will find them both good: the one good to eat, the other good to drink. The land is very nourishing, the water is thoroughly wholesome. The one appeases hunger ”

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Source: Wikisource

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi — Chapter 22 (1883)

“ It killed the old-fashioned keel-boating, by reducing the freight-trip to New Orleans to less than a week. The railroads have killed the steamboat passenger traffic by doing in two or three days what the steamboats consumed a week in doing; and the towing-fleets have killed the through-freight traffic by dragging six or seven steamer-loads of stuff down the river at a time, at an expense so trivial that steamboat competition was out of the question. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi — Chapter 22 (1883)

“ The goatee extends over a wide extent of country; and is accompanied by an iron-clad belief in Adam and the biblical history of creation, which has not suffered from the assaults of the scientists.
'AFTERNOON. At the railway stations the loafers carry BOTH hands in their breeches pockets; it was observable, heretofore, that one hand was sometimes out of doors,--here, never. This is an important fact in geography.'
If the loafers determined the character of a country, it would be still more important, of course. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi — Chapter 22 (1883)

“ A strangely short life for so majestic a creature. Of course it is not absolutely dead, neither is a crippled octogenarian who could once jump twenty-two feet on level ground; but as contrasted with what it was in its prime vigor, Mississippi steamboating may be called dead. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi — Chapter 22 (1883)

“ When they find an inch of mud in the bottom of a glass, they stir it up, and then take the draught as they would gruel. It is difficult for a stranger to get used to this batter, but once used to it he will prefer it to water. ”

Mark Twain

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Quotes from Life on the Mississippi — Chapter 22 (Mark Twain)

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