No Good Deed 1

Over the next few hours, Mr Clemens junior kept a running commentary of the things he expected to do, and the enormous fortune he expected to make, in the booming frontier towns of Nevada. This fascinating subject exhausted, he began to regale me with the qualities of the wondrous seven-shot pistol he had brought along to defend himself on the wild frontier. He declared it a marvel of engineering so sophisticated that it had taken two fellows to design it. A Mr Smith and a Mr Wesson. He was so enamoured of it that he declared himself prepared to overlook its only fault: that one was unable to hit anything with it. Almost every anecdote provided him with an opportunity to blow such gales of laughter as ought to have despatched his sibling's ridiculous hat out of the stage coach window. I began to look forward to our arrival in St. Louis. Mr Clemens informed me that the next stage of his journey would be by steamboat from thence to St Jo, where they would once more try the overland stage.

In St. Louis, the brothers Clemens made for the wharf to arrange their passage and I looked for the nearest place to partake of something to drink. My throat was as dry as if I had been the blow-hard and not his victim. I fell into company in what they were pleased to call a saloon bar on Laclede's Landing. This area was dedicated to trading and traders associated with the great river. There were two or three longshoremen, a lascar sailor and a smartly - if gaudily - dressed fellow who appeared to be observing the rest of the company with what I felt to be disdain. It had taken me some time to become accustomed to the American's disregard for social nicety. Every restaurant, bar or hotel was an egalitarian hodge-podge of strange and ill-met fellows. It was not at all a question of the quality visiting a pot-house of the stews, being desirous of entertainment. It was merely a peculiarity of colonial society. Or so it had seemed to me ever since I had stepped off the Iowa in Newport News.

The dandy was wearing what he no doubt would have termed 'a vest': this was a waistcoat, more or less. However, it appeared to be of woven silk, and bore a busy design representing the four playing card suits over and over. He had a large cigar clamped between his teeth and seemed merely to be listening to the discussion between the longshoremen and the lascar as to the location of the cheapest brothel in St. Louis. One and all were drinking a dreadful approximation of whiskey, a libation that I had never found to my taste. There was a tricky moment when I tried to insist on the lascar purchasing a brandy for myself. It was alarming to think he had been able to conceal so large a blade about his person. The whiskey was best drunk all at once, thereby evading the necessity of actually tasting it, I found.