Gideons Band

Gideon's Band, by George W. Cable

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Title: Gideon's Band A Tale of the Mississippi
Author: George W. Cable
Illustrator: F. C. Yohn
Release Date: September 22, 2006 [EBook #19348]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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GIDEON'S BAND

BOOKS BY GEORGE W. CABLE
Published by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
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[Illustration: Ramsey [Page 80]]

GIDEON'S BAND
A TALE OF THE MISSISSIPPI
BY
GEORGE W. CABLE
ILLUSTRATED BY
F. C. YOHN
NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1914

Copyright, 1914, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published September, 1914

TO EVA

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Steamboat Levee 1
II. "The Votaress" 5
III. Certain Passengers 9
IV. The First Two Miles 13
V. Ramsey Hayle 17
VI. Hayles's Twins 25
VII. Supper 31
VIII. Questions 37
IX. Sitting Silent 43
X. Peril 50
XI. First Night-Watch 57
XII. Hugh and the Twins 68
XIII. The Superabounding Ramsey 75
XIV. The Committee of Seven 83
XV. Morning Watch 90
XVI. Phyllis 95
XVII. "It's a-Happmin' Yit--to We All" 106
XVIII. Ramsey Wins a Point or Two 113
XIX. This Way to Womanhood 122
XX. Ladies' Table 131
XXI. Ramsey and the Bishop 138
XXII. Basile and What He Saw 147
XXIII. A State of Affairs 152
XXIV. A Senator Enlightened 158
XXV. "Please Assemble" 164
XXVI. Alarm and Distress 173
XXVII. Pilots' Eyes 180
XXVIII. Words and the "Westwood" 186
XXIX. Studying the River--Together 195
XXX. Phyllis Again 203
XXXI. The Burning Boat 211
XXXII. A Prophet in the Wilderness 222
XXXIII. Twins and Texas Tender 229
XXXIV. The Peacemakers 234
XXXV. Unsettled Weather 246
XXXVI. Captain's Room 252
XXXVII. Basile Uses a Cane 260
XXXVIII. The Cane Again 272
XXXIX. Fortitude 280
XL. Ramsey at the Footlights 289
XLI. Quits 299
XLII. Against Kin 306
XLIII. Which from Which 313
XLIV. Forbearance 319
XLV. Applause 327
XLVI. After the Play 331
XLVII. Insomnia 337
XLVIII. "California" 347
XLIX. Kangaroo Point 354
L. "Delta Will Do" 365
LI. Loving-Kindness 374
LII. Love Runs Rough but Runs on 383
LIII. Trading for Phyllis 393
LIV. "Can't!" 404
LV. Love Makes a Cut-Off 412
LVI. Eight Years After 425
LVII. Farewell, "Votaress" 436
LVIII. 'Lindy Lowe 443
LIX. "Conclusively" 446
LX. Once More Hugh Sings 460
LXI. Wanted, Hayle's Twins 469
LXII. Euthanasia 478
LXIII. The Captain's Chair 493

ILLUSTRATIONS

Ramsey Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
"Stop!... Stop! the safest place for you on this boat now is right where you are standing--Phyllis" 258
"My heavenly Father wouldn't 'a' had to call me in out of the storm" 334
"For I believe that we belong to each other from the centre of our souls, by a fitness plain even to the eyes of your brothers" 420

GIDEON'S BAND

I
THE STEAMBOAT LEVEE
Saturday, April, 1852. There was a fervor in the sky as of an August noon, although the clocks of the city would presently strike five.
Dazzling white clouds, about to show the earliest flush of the sun's decline, beamed down upon a turbid river harbor, where the water was deep so close inshore that the port's unbroken mile of steamboat wharf nowhere stretched out into the boiling flood. Instead it merely lined the shore, the steamers packing in bow on with their noses to it, their sterns out in the stream, their fenders chafing each other's lower guards.
New Orleans was very proud of this scene. Very prompt were her citizens, such as had travelled, to remind you that in many seaports vast warehouses and roofed docks of enormous cost thronged out so greedily to meet incoming craft that the one boat which you might be seeking you would find quite hidden among walls and roofs, and of all the rest of the harbor's general fleet you could see little or nothing. Not so on this great sun-swept, wind-swept, rain-swept, unswept steamboat levee. You might come up out of any street along that mile-wide front, and if there were a hundred river steamers in port a hundred you would behold with one sweep of the eye. Overhead was only the blue dome, in full view almost from rim to rim; and all about, amid a din of shouting, whip-cracking, scolding, and laughing, and a multitudinous flutter of many-colored foot-square flags, each marking its special lot of goods, were swarms of