In the twilight of my days, seated in my favorite chair, I rock away many a trip from my New Orleans home to the blue grass region of my ancestors. Dream trips they are, but dreams of real trips in the old days when steamboats and stages were the approved, in fact, the only, transportation for travelers.

About the Fourth of July every year our family migrated to the old Kentucky homestead. The Fourth was not chosen with any patriotic motive, but law courts were closed and legal business suspended, and my father’s vacation at hand at that date. Though the steamboats were called palatial, viewed from my rocking-chair trip to-day I wonder how people managed to stand the inconveniences and discomforts they provided.

There was the famed Grey Eagle, “a No. 1 floating palace” it was called. There was the Belle of the West and the Fashion and the Henry Clay. One time and another we churned up the muddy Mississippi water in every one of them. Naturally the boats catered in every way to the predilections of the plantation owners, who were their main source of profit. The picture of Arlington which illustrates this book was originally made to decorate a stateroom door on a fine new river boat built in the ’50’s and adorned in that way with views of homes along the river.

Grey Eagle was the finest and best, and therefore most popular boat. I recall with amusement an eight or ten days’ trip on that palace. The cabins were divided by curtains, drawn at night for privacy. The ladies’ cabin, at the stern, was equipped with ten or twelve small staterooms. The gentlemen’s cabin stretched on down to the officers’ quarters, bar, barber shop, pantries, etc., ending in what was called Social Hall, where the men sat about, smoking and chewing (the latter as common a habit as cigarette smoking is now) and talking—in other words, making themselves sociable.

On that same Grey Eagle I was for the first time promoted to the upper berth, in a stateroom shared by an older sister. The berth was so narrow that in attempting to turn over I fell out and landed in the wash basin, on the opposite side of the room! My sister had to sit on the lower berth to braid my pigtails, then sent me forth so she could have room to braid her own. Trunks and other baggage more unwieldy than carpetbags were piled up in the vicinity of Social Hall. A carpetbag, small enough to be easily handled, was all there was room for in the stateroom. There were no valises, suitcases or steamer trunks in those days of little travel, and unless you are three-quarters of a century old you can’t imagine a more unwieldy article than a carpetbag of seventy years ago. Only toilet articles and things that could not muss and tumble could be safely stored in one.

In the stateroom, where we had to sleep and dress, and, if we could snatch a chance, take an afternoon nap, there was a corner shelf for a basin and pitcher and one chair; two doors, one leading out and the other leading in, transoms over each for light and ventilation—and there you are for over a week. The cabin was lighted with swinging whale-oil lamps, and one could light his stateroom if one had thought to provide a candle.

Every family traveled with a man servant, whose business it was to be constantly at beck and call. Of course, there was always a colored chambermaid, and, equally of course, she frisked around and seemed to have very little responsibility—no bells, no means of summoning her from her little nodding naps if she happened to be beyond the sound of one’s voice. The man servant’s duties, therefore, were almost incessant. If an article was needed from the trunks he was sent to the baggage pile for it, and often he brought trunk trays to the staterooms. When the boat stopped “to wood” every man servant rushed to the woodman’s cabin to get eggs, chickens, milk, what not.

And those men had the privilege of the kitchen to prepare private dishes for their white folks. I wonder how long a boat or hotel would stand that kind of management to-day; but in the days where my rocking-chair is transporting me, steamboat fare was not up to the standard of any self-respecting pater familias. There was no ice chest, no cold storage; in a word, no way of preserving fresh foods for any length of time, so passengers resorted to such means as presented themselves for their own bodily comfort. Those who had not the necessary appendage—a man servant—foraged for themselves, but the experienced and trusted servant, to use a vulgarism, “was never left.”

The table for meals extended the length of the gentlemen’s cabin, stretched out and out to its utmost length, if need be, so that every passenger had a seat. There was no second table, no second-class passengers—anybody was the equal of anybody else. If you could not possibly be that, you could find accommodation on the lower deck and eat from a tin plate.

It was quite customary, as I have mentioned, for passengers to have private dishes, prepared by their own servants. I recall with a smile, on one occasion, a very respectable-looking stranger boarded our boat at Helena or some such place. At dinner he reached for a bottle of wine. Cuthbert Bullitt touched the bottle with a fork, saying, “Private wine.” The man, with a bow, withdrew his hand. Presently he reached for a dish of eggs. My father said, “Excuse me, private.” There was something else he reached for, I forget what, and another fellow-passenger touched the dish and said “Private.” Presently dessert was served, and a fine, large pie happened to be placed in front of the Helena man. He promptly stuck his fork into it. “By gracious! this is a private pie.” There was a roar of laughter.

After dinner the others, finding him delightfully congenial and entertaining, fraternized with him to the extent of a few games at cards. He was wonderfully lucky. He left the boat at an obscure river town during the night, and the next day our captain said he was a notorious gambler. From his capers at table the captain saw he was planning a way of winning attention to himself, therefore under cover of darkness he had been put ashore. My father, who did not play, was vastly amused when he found the smart gambler had carried off all the spare cash of those who had enjoyed the innocent sport.

Flatboats floating all manner of freight down stream were a common sight on the river. Arrived at their destination, the boats, which were only huge rafts with no propelling power, were broken up and sold for lumber, and the boatmen traveled back up stream in packets to repeat the process. Cousin Eliza Patrick used to relate the trip her family made in about 1820 on a flatboat from Kentucky to Louisiana. The widowed mother wished to rejoin a son practicing medicine in the latter state, so she sold her land, and loaded her family and every movable object she possessed—slaves, cattle, farm implements, household effects—upon a huge “flat” and they floated by day and tied up to the bank by night, carrying on, during the weeks consumed by the trip, an existence which must have been somewhat like that of Noah’s family in the Ark.

There was not, as I have mentioned, any means of keeping foods fresh, nor was there even ice water to be had on those boats. We used entirely, even for drinking, the muddy river water, which was hauled up in buckets on the barber side of the boat, while the steward was emptying refuse to the fishes on the pantry side. The passengers became more or less intimate, necessarily, on a trip such as I am attempting to describe. There was no place to sit but in the general cabin, the sleeping rooms being so cramped. There was no library, very little reading, but much fancy work, mostly on canvas, footstools and bell-pulls. A bell-pull, you may want to know, was a long band about three inches wide; it was hung from the parlor cornice and connected with a bell in the servant’s region; it was quite the style to embroider them in gay vines and flower designs.

The elderly ladies knit fine thread nightcaps, collars and lace. Really some of the “old lady” work was quite handsome. Thus fingers were kept busy, while gossip and interchange of bread and cake recipes entertained the housewives who had never heard of cooking schools and domestic science. Our trip necessarily embraced at least one Sunday. I remember my father had a dear old relative of the deepest dyed Presbyterian type (father of the late Dr. T. G. Richardson), who always on his river trips landed wherever he happened to be on Saturday and on Monday boarded another boat (if one came along), his scruples forbidding Sunday travel.

Arrived at the end of our river journey, father chartered a whole stage to take his family a two days’ trip into the heart of the blue grass region. Nine passengers filled the interior of the coach, and four or five, if need be, could ride on top. The rumble (we always called it boot) was filled with baggage. The vehicle had no springs, but was swung on braces, which gave it a kind of swaying motion that always made me sick. However, we managed to start off in fine style, but every time there was a stop to change horses all of us alighted, stiff and tired and hot, to “stretch our legs,” like Squeers in Dickens’ “Nicholas Nickleby.” At noon we rejoiced to hear our coachman’s horn, a grand, loud blast, followed by toot, toot!—one toot for each passenger, so the tavern man would know how many plates to lay, and his wife how many biscuits and chicken legs to have ready. We always made out to spend the one night of the journey at Weissiger’s tavern in Frankfort, the best tavern in all the land. We had a leisurely breakfast the following morning and were refreshed in body and soul for the last lap of our journey.

Late afternoon the stage winds up a hill, and in a woods pasture and surrounded by blue grass meadows the gable end of a red brick house can be seen. My dear, tired mother puts her head out of the window, “Driver, blow your horn.” A great blast sounds over the waving grass and blossoming fields, and we know that they know we are coming. Tired as the horses are after the long, hard pull; tired as the coachman must be, he cracks his whip, and we gallop up the shady lane to the dear old door as briskly as though we were fresh from the stable. Long before we are fully there, and the steps of the nine-passenger coach can be lowered; long before the boys can jump off the top, a host of dear faces, both white and black, is assembled to greet us. As a little child I always wondered why it was, when the occasion was so joyful, and all of us tumbled from that stage so beaming and happy, that as my aunt folded my mother in her arms, they both wept such copious tears. Now I know.