CHAPTER XXXVII.
DECLINING YEARS.
It is a sad reflection that, after a life of hard and useful work and the prominent part he took in up-building the great West, Captain La Barge should have closed his career in comparative want. But such were the vicissitudes of the business to which his life had been devoted. That business had passed away, and like a sinking ship it dragged down all who clung to it. Captain La Barge struggled bravely against these adverse conditions, but it was impossible to withstand the downward tendency.
From 1890 to 1894 Captain La Barge held a position under the city government of St. Louis. His very last remunerative work of any kind was for the United States Government, under the direction of the author of this work, whom he helped compile a list of the steamboat wrecks which have occurred on the Missouri River. This work was done in the year 1897, and was published as a part of the report of the Missouri River Commission for that year. Although the number of these wrecks lacks but five of three hundred, the Captain’s memory embraced them nearly all, and most of them with great accuracy of detail.
[Sidenote: GREATEST WRECK OF ALL.]
Truly a mournful task was this to the veteran pilot. What reminiscences of a strange and wonderful past did it bring to mind! He lived over again his river life of fifty years, saw the old keelboat, the mackinaw, and the canoe, dodged again the bullets of the treacherous savages, killed the wild buffalo, sparred his boat over sandbars or warped it up the rapids, beheld again the wild rush to the gold fields, heard the tramp of the army going to battle on the plains, and mused upon a thousand other features of a life that existed no more. And as he recalled one by one these wrecks of a once flourishing business, he could not but reflect that the greatest wreck of all was the business itself. It was gone--buried so deep in the sands of commercial competition that not even the pennant staff or smokestack caused a ripple on the surface--passengers, cargo, and all that clung to her a total loss.
Captain La Barge survived most of his associates in the river business, and in his later years was frequently consulted by those who had occasion to recover facts concerning the early history of the river. He lived only about two years after the completion of his work for the government. He had grown visibly feebler during this time, and it was apparent to those who knew him that the end of his life was near. It came at last, however, quite unexpectedly. He was taken suddenly ill on the 2d of April, 1899, and at 3 P. M. of the following day breathed his last.
[Sidenote: JESUITS HONOR LA BARGE.]
The funeral of Captain La Barge was from the St. Xavier Cathedral in St. Louis, and was largely attended. The Jesuits were under a deep debt of gratitude to the Captain, who, throughout his career, had extended to their missionaries the freedom of his boats. Through mistaken information they had often credited this generosity to the American Fur Company, for which Captain La Barge worked so much. Upon discovering their error they made due acknowledgment of it, and upon this occasion made a particular point to correct it and to acknowledge their lasting debt to the great pilot. It was probably in line with this purpose that the Church paid to the deceased its very highest honors. On Thursday morning, April 6, solemn high mass was celebrated at the Cathedral for the repose of the soul. Archbishop Kain, assisted by eight priests, officiated at the mass. Six grandsons of the deceased acted as pall bearers. Father Walter H. Hill, a lifelong friend of Captain La Barge, preached the funeral sermon. In the course of his remarks he said: “Captain La Barge led an honorable life. In the eyes of the Church to which he belonged he led a good life. There was no stigma upon his name. No vice marred his character to bring the blush of shame to his children. His life was an example of which they might well be proud.”
[Sidenote: A WONDERFUL METAMORPHOSIS.]
The speaker drew an interesting picture of the changes that had taken place in the city of St. Louis and in the great West within the span of this man’s life. In his infancy he had actually been in peril from the Indians in what are now the outskirts of the city. Then luxury and plenty, as we now know them, had no existence. The mother cared for her children and did the work of the house. The candle and not the incandescent furnished light at night. Water was pumped from the well and people did not ride to and from their business in swift electric cars. In the words of a local paper, commenting upon the Captain’s career, “He passed through all the gradations and progressive steps of the century until in its very last year the sun of his life set forever, and his expiring gaze beheld a little village grown to a great metropolis, enmeshed in a perfect tangle of railways, factories, and furnaces, teeming with busy activity, converting the crude material into every possible contrivance imaginable for the use of man; palatial mansions where, in his youth, was a wilderness; in short, every improvement that the brain of man had wrought.”
Father Hill illustrated this marvelous growth by a reference to the growth of his own Church in St. Louis: “As I stand here to-day,” he said, “to pay the last sad tribute of respect to the memory of the friend of my early youth, I cannot help thinking of the marvelous changes that have been wrought in the last eighty-four years. On the evening of October 22, 1815, a mother entered a little frame church on the banks of the Mississippi, bearing an infant in her arms. The parent had come to have the child baptized. Tallow candles lighted her way through the aisle to the rude altar where the ceremony was to be performed. To-day the remains of that babe, grown to manhood’s estate and full of years, lie before me. The spirit now dwells in his Father’s house. At the christening were only the most primitive conveniences; at the burial services his remains rest in a magnificent granite structure; hundreds of electric lights glare upon the dead; hundreds of heads are bowed in silent prayer. Which of us can ponder for an instant upon the span of this life and not be bewildered at the contemplation?”
[Sidenote: A FIT RESTING PLACE.]
Captain La Barge was buried in the beautiful Calvary Cemetery, which lies adjacent to the even more beautiful Bellefontaine Cemetery in the northern part of the City of St. Louis. His grave is within a short distance of where he spent his earliest infancy, and is in all respects a peculiarly appropriate resting place after a life like his. To the eastward, in full view where not cut off by the foliage, flows the mighty Mississippi. To the northward the impetuous Missouri brings down its flood from the dim and shadowy distance. How often had this individual guided his intrepid bark up the channels of these two streams, headed for remote and almost unknown ports, and anon, gliding swiftly on his homeward journey, sped eastward into the Mississippi and south to the port to which he always returned. Standing by his grave and overlooking the valleys of these streams, their history through the past two centuries thrills the mind like a romance of the past.
[Sidenote: PERSONAL APPEARANCE.]
In personal appearance Captain La Barge was one of the most distinguished-looking men of the West in his time. He stood five feet ten, was well proportioned, weighed about 180 pounds, was erect, muscular, and alert, with a sharp, quick eye and a quiet energy in all his movements. He always wore a beard after reaching manhood’s estate, and in later years bore a striking resemblance to General Grant. Colonel Thomas of the army, long stationed in St. Louis, always addressed him by the name, Grant; and only a few years before his death a gentleman met him on the street and said, “Well, if I did not know Grant is dead, I should say there he comes.”
[Sidenote: SUNSHINE AND TEMPEST.]
Captain La Barge’s manner in social intercourse was mild and agreeable, and his accent pleasant to a degree. It was a satisfaction to hear him talk. Although almost invariably soft and unobtrusive, his voice would occasionally swell, under the influence of emotion, until it possessed all the power of command. It is said that this characteristic marked his entire career. His men were not deceived by it. They never dared to take undue advantage of the sunshine of his manner, lest they call down upon them the thunder of the tempest.
Captain La Barge was a lifelong, consistent Catholic in religion, and in politics a lifelong, consistent Democrat.