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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of American Adventures, by Julian Street
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: American Adventures
+       A Second Trip 'Abroad at home'
+
+Author: Julian Street
+
+Illustrator: Wallace Morgan
+
+Release Date: May 3, 2006 [EBook #18304]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMERICAN ADVENTURES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Charleston is the last stronghold of a unified American
+upper class; the last remaining American city in which Madeira and Port
+and _noblesse oblige_ are fully and widely understood, and are employed
+according to the best traditions]
+
+
+
+
+AMERICAN ADVENTURES
+
+A SECOND TRIP "ABROAD AT HOME" BY
+
+JULIAN STREET
+
+
+WITH PICTORIAL SIDELIGHTS
+BY
+WALLACE MORGAN
+
+
+
+
+NEW YORK
+THE CENTURY CO.
+1917
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1917, by
+THE CENTURY CO.
+
+Copyright, 1916, 1917, by
+P.F. COLLIER & SON, INC.
+
+_Published, November, 1917_
+
+
+
+
+TO MY AUNT
+AND SECOND MOTHER
+
+JULIA ROSS LOW
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+Though much has been written of the South, it seems to me that this part
+of our country is less understood than any other part. Certainly the
+South, itself, feels that this is true. Its relationship to the North
+makes me think of nothing so much as that of a pretty, sensitive wife,
+to a big, strong, amiable, if somewhat thick-skinned husband. These two
+had one great quarrel which nearly resulted in divorce. He thought her
+headstrong; she thought him overbearing. The quarrel made her ill; she
+has been for some time recovering. But though they have settled their
+difficulties and are living again in amity together, and though he,
+man-like, has half forgotten that they ever quarreled at all, now that
+peace reigns in the house again, _she_ has _not_ forgotten. There still
+lingers in her mind the feeling that he never really understood her,
+that he never understood her problems and her struggles, and that he
+never will. And it seems to me further that, as is usually the case with
+wives who consider themselves misunderstood, the fault is partly, but by
+no means altogether, hers. He, upon one hand, is inclined to pass the
+matter off with a: "There, there! It's all over now. Just be good and
+forget it!" while she, in the depths of her heart, retains a little bit
+of wistfulness, a little wounded feeling, which causes her to say to
+herself: "Thank God our home was not broken up, but--I wish that he
+could be a little more considerate, sometimes, in view of all that I
+have suffered."
+
+For my part, I am the humble but devoted friend of the family. Having
+known him first, having been from boyhood his companion, I may perhaps
+have sympathized with him in the beginning. But since I have come to
+know her, too, that is no longer so. And I do think I know her--proud,
+sensitive, high-strung, generous, captivating beauty that she is!
+Moreover, after the fashion of many another "friend of the family," I
+have fallen in love with her. Loving her from afar, I send her as a
+nosegay these chapters gathered in her own gardens. If some of the
+flowers are of a kind for which she does not care, if some have thorns,
+even if some are only weeds, I pray her to remember that from what was
+growing in her gardens I was forced to make my choice, and to believe
+that, whatever the defects of my bouquet, it is meant to be a bunch of
+roses.
+
+        J.S.
+_October 1, 1917._
+
+     The Author makes his grateful acknowledgments to the old friends
+     and the new ones who assisted him upon this journey. And once more
+     he desires to express his gratitude to the friend and
+     fellow-traveler whose illustrations are far from being his only
+     contribution to this volume.
+
+        --J.S.
+New York, October, 1917.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE BORDERLAND
+
+CHAPTER                                                             PAGE
+
+      I ON JOURNEYS THROUGH THE STATES                                 3
+
+     II A BALTIMORE EVENING                                           13
+
+    III WHERE THE CLIMATES MEET                                       27
+
+     IV TRIUMPHANT DEFEAT                                             38
+
+      V TERRAPIN AND THINGS                                           44
+
+     VI DOUGHOREGAN MANOR AND THE CARROLLS                            53
+
+    VII A RARE OLD TOWN                                               69
+
+   VIII WE MEET THE HAMPTON GHOST                                     80
+
+     IX ARE WE STANDARDIZED?                                          89
+
+      X HARPER'S FERRY AND JOHN BROWN                                 97
+
+     XI THE VIRGINIAS AND THE WASHINGTONS                            105
+
+    XII I RIDE A HORSE                                               117
+
+   XIII INTO THE OLD DOMINION                                        136
+
+    XIV CHARLOTTESVILLE AND MONTICELLO                               150
+
+     XV THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA                                   159
+
+    XVI FOX-HUNTING IN VIRGINIA                                      169
+
+   XVII "A CERTAIN PARTY"                                            186
+
+  XVIII THE LEGACY OF HATE                                           193
+
+    XIX "YOU-ALL" AND OTHER SECTIONAL MISUNDERSTANDINGS              203
+
+     XX IDIOMS AND ARISTOCRACY                                       214
+
+    XXI THE CONFEDERATE CAPITAL                                      222
+
+   XXII RANDOM RICHMOND NOTES                                        233
+
+  XXIII JEDGE CRUTCHFIELD'S COT                                      242
+
+   XXIV NORFOLK AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD                                 248
+
+    XXV COLONEL TAYLOR AND GENERAL LEE                               258
+
+
+THE HEART OF THE SOUTH
+
+   XXVI RALEIGH AND JOSEPHUS DANIELS                                 273
+
+  XXVII ITEMS FROM "THE OLD NORTH STATE"                             285
+
+ XXVIII UNDER ST. MICHAEL'S CHIMES                                   296
+
+   XXIX HISTORY AND ARISTOCRACY                                      312
+
+    XXX POLITICS, A NEWSPAPER AND ST. CECILIA                        326
+
+   XXXI "GULLA" AND THE BACK COUNTRY                                 338
+
+  XXXII OUT OF THE PAST                                              349
+
+ XXXIII ALIVE ATLANTA                                                356
+
+  XXXIV GEORGIA JOURNALISM                                           369
+
+   XXXV SOME ATLANTA INSTITUTIONS                                    384
+
+  XXXVI A BIT OF RURAL GEORGIA                                       392
+
+ XXXVII A YOUNG METROPOLIS                                           403
+
+XXXVIII BUSY BIRMINGHAM                                              417
+
+  XXXIX AN ALLEGORY OF ACHIEVEMENT                                   426
+
+     XL THE ROAD TO ARCADY                                           440
+
+    XLI A MISSISSIPPI TOWN                                           447
+
+   XLII OLD TALES AND A NEW GAME                                     458
+
+  XLIII OUT OF THE LONG AGO                                          467
+
+   XLIV THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND HIM                                  474
+
+    XLV VICKSBURG OLD AND NEW                                        482
+
+   XLVI SHREDS AND PATCHES                                           494
+
+  XLVII THE BAFFLING MISSISSIPPI                                     500
+
+ XLVIII OLD RIVER DAYS                                               508
+
+   XLIX WHAT MEMPHIS HAS ENDURED                                     518
+
+      L MODERN MEMPHIS                                               535
+
+
+FARTHEST SOUTH
+
+     LI BEAUTIFUL SAVANNAH                                           553
+
+    LII MISS "JAX" AND SOME FLORIDA GOSSIP                           572
+
+   LIII PASSIONATE PALM BEACH                                        579
+
+    LIV ASSORTED AND RESORTED FLORIDA                                595
+
+     LV A DAY IN MONTGOMERY                                          603
+
+    LVI THE CITY OF THE CREOLE                                       619
+
+   LVII HISTORY, THE CREOLE, AND HIS DUELS                           629
+
+  LVIII FROM ANTIQUES TO PIRATES                                     648
+
+    LIX ANTOINE'S AND MARDI GRAS                                     663
+
+     LX FINALE                                                       675
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+                                                             FACING PAGE
+Charleston is the last stronghold of a unified American upper class;
+the last remaining American city in which Madeira and Port and
+_noblesse oblige_ are fully and widely understood, and are employed
+according to the best traditions                          _Frontispiece_
+
+"Railroad tickets!" said the baggageman with exaggerated patience      8
+
+Can most travellers, I wonder, enjoy as I do a solitary walk, by
+night, through the mysterious streets of a strange city?              17
+
+Coming out of my slumber with the curious and unpleasant sense of
+being stared at, I found his eyes fixed upon me                       24
+
+Mount Vernon Place is the centre of Baltimore                         32
+
+If she is shopping for a dinner party, she may order the costly and
+aristocratic diamond-back terrapin, sacred in Baltimore as is the
+Sacred Cod in Boston                                                  48
+
+Doughoregan Manor--the house was a buff-colored brick                 65
+
+I began to realize that there was no one coming                       80
+
+Harper's Ferry is an entrancing old town; a drowsy place piled up
+beautifully yet carelessly upon terraced roads clinging to steep
+hillsides                                                            100
+
+"What's the matter with him?" I asked, stopping                      117
+
+When I came down, dressed for riding, my companion was making a
+drawing; the four young ladies were with him, none of them in riding
+habits                                                               124
+
+Claymont Court is one of the old Washington houses                   132
+
+Chatham, the old Fitzhugh house, now the residence of Mark Sullivan  148
+
+Monticello stands on a lofty hilltop, with vistas, between trees of
+neighboring valleys, hills, and mountains                            157
+
+Like Venice, the University of Virginia should first be seen by
+moonlight                                                            168
+
+One party was stationed on the top of an old-time mail-coach,
+bearing the significant initials "F.F.V."                            180
+
+The Piedmont Hunt Race Meet                                          189
+
+The Southern negro is the world's peasant supreme                    200
+
+The Country Club of Virginia, out to the west of Richmond            216
+
+Judge Crutchfield                                                    228
+
+Negro women squatting upon boxes in old shadowy lofts stem the
+tobacco leaves                                                       237
+
+The Judge: "What did he do, Mandy?"                                  244
+
+Some genuine old-time New York ferryboats help to complete the
+illusion that Norfolk is New York                                    253
+
+"The Southern statesman who serves his section best, serves his
+country best"                                                        280
+
+St. Philip's is the more beautiful for the open space before it      300
+
+Opposite St. Philip's, a perfect example of the rude architecture of
+an old French village                                                305
+
+In the doorway and gates of the Smyth house, in Legaré Street, I was
+struck with a Venetian suggestion                                    316
+
+Nor is the Charleston background a mere arras of recollection        320
+
+Charleston has a stronger, deeper-rooted city entity than all the
+cities of the Middle West rolled into one                            328
+
+The interior is the oldest looking thing in the United States--Goose
+Creek Church                                                         344
+
+A reminder of the Chicago River--Atlanta                             353
+
+With the whole Metropolitan Orchestra playing dance music all night
+long                                                                 368
+
+The office buildings are city office buildings, and are sufficiently
+numerous to look very much at home                                   376
+
+The negro roof-garden, Odd Fellows' Building, Atlanta                385
+
+I was never so conscious, as at the time of our visit to the Burge
+Plantation, of the superlative soft sweetness of the spring          396
+
+The planters cease their work                                        400
+
+Birmingham--the thin veil of smoke from far-off iron furnaces
+softens the city's serrated outlines                                 408
+
+Birmingham practices unremittingly the pestilential habit of
+"cutting in" at dances                                               424
+
+Gigantic movements and mutations, Niagara-like noises, great bursts
+of flame like falling fragments from the sun                         437
+
+A shaggy, unshaven, rawboned man, gray-haired and collarless, sat
+near the window                                                      444
+
+Gaze upon the character called Daniel Voorhees Pike!                 456
+
+The houses were full of the suggestion of an easy-going home life
+and an informal hospitality                                          465
+
+Her hands looked very white and small against his dark coat          480
+
+As water flows down the hills of Vicksburg to the river, so the
+visitor's thoughts flow down to the great spectacular, mischievous,
+dominating stream                                                    485
+
+Over the tenement roofs one catches sight of sundry other buildings
+of a more self-respecting character                                  492
+
+Vicksburg negroes                                                    497
+
+On some of the boats negro fish-markets are conducted                504
+
+The old Klein house                                                  512
+
+Citizens go at midday to the square                                  520
+
+Hanging in the air above the middle of the stream                    536
+
+These small parks give Savannah the quality which differentiates it
+from all other American cities                                       556
+
+The Thomas house, in Franklin Square                                 561
+
+You will see them having tea, and dancing under the palm fronds of
+the cocoanut grove                                                   576
+
+Cocktail hour at The Breakers                                        581
+
+Nowhere is the sand more like a deep warm dust of yellow gold        588
+
+The couples on the platform were "ragging"                           600
+
+Harness held together by that especial Providence which watches over
+negro mending                                                        613
+
+It was a very jolly fair                                             616
+
+The mysterious old Absinthe House, founded 1799                      620
+
+St. Anthony's Garden                                                 632
+
+Courtyard of the old Orleans Hotel                                   641
+
+The little lady who sits behind the desk                             656
+
+The lights are always lowered at Antoine's when the spectacular Café
+Boulot Diabolique is served                                          664
+
+Passing between the brilliantly illuminated buildings, the Mardi
+Gras parades are glorious sights for children from eight to eighty
+years of age                                                         672
+
+
+
+
+THE BORDERLAND
+
+    O magnet-South! O glistening, perfumed South!
+    O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and love! good and evil!
+       O all dear to me!
+
+    WALT WHITMAN.
+
+
+
+
+AMERICAN ADVENTURES
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+ON JOURNEYS THROUGH THE STATES
+
+    On journeys through the States we start,
+    ... We willing learners of all, teachers of all, lovers of all.
+
+    We dwell a while in every city and town ...
+
+    --WALT WHITMAN.
+
+
+
+Had my companion and I never crossed the continent together, had we
+never gone "abroad at home," I might have curbed my impatience at the
+beginning of our second voyage. But from the time we returned from our
+first journey, after having spent some months in trying, as some one put
+it, to "discover America," I felt the gnawings of excited appetite. The
+vast sweep of the country continually suggested to me some great
+delectable repast: a banquet spread for a hundred million guests; and
+having discovered myself unable, in the time first allotted, to devour
+more than part of it--a strip across the table, as it were, stretching
+from New York on one side to San Francisco on the other--I have hungered
+impatiently for more. Indeed, to be quite honest, I should like to try
+to eat it all.
+
+Months before our actual departure for the South the day for leaving was
+appointed; days before we fixed upon our train; hours before I bought my
+ticket. And then, when my trunks had left the house, when my taxicab was
+ordered and my faithful battered suitcase stood packed to bulging in the
+hall, my companion, the Illustrator, telephoned to say that certain
+drawings he must finish before leaving were not done, that he would be
+unable to go with me that afternoon, as planned, but must wait until the
+midnight train.
+
+Had the first leap been a long one I should have waited for him, but the
+distance from New York to the other side of Mason and Dixon's Line is
+short, and I knew that he would join me on the threshold of the South
+next morning. Therefore I told him I would leave that afternoon as
+originally proposed, and gave him, in excuse, every reason I could think
+of, save the real one: namely, my impatience. I told him that I wished
+to make the initial trip by day to avoid the discomforts of the sleeping
+car, that I had engaged hotel accommodations for the night by wire, that
+friends were coming down to see me off.
+
+Nor were these arguments without truth. I believe in telling the truth.
+The truth is good enough for any one at any time--except, perhaps, when
+there is a point to be carried, and even then some vestige of it should,
+if convenient, be preserved. Thus, for example, it is quite true that I
+prefer the conversation of my fellow travelers, dull though it may be,
+to the stertorous sounds they make by night; so, too, if I had not
+telegraphed for rooms, it was merely because I had forgotten to--and
+that I remedied immediately; while as to the statement that friends were
+to see me off, that was absolutely and literally accurate. Friends had,
+indeed, signified their purpose to meet me at the station for last
+farewells, and had, furthermore, remarked upon the very slight show of
+enthusiasm with which I heard the news.
+
+The fact is, I do not like to be seen off. Least of all, do I like to be
+seen off by those who are dear to me. If the thing must be done, I
+prefer it to be done by strangers--committees from chambers of commerce
+and the like, who have no interest in me save the hope that I will live
+to write agreeably of their city--of the civic center, the fertilizer
+works, and the charming new abattoir. Seeing me off for the most
+practical of reasons, such gentlemen are invariably efficient. They
+provide an equipage, and there have even been times when, in the final
+hurried moments, they have helped me to jam the last things into my
+trunks and bags. One of them politely takes my suitcase, another kindly
+checks my baggage, and all in order that a third, who is usually the
+secretary of the chamber of commerce, may regale me with inspiring
+statistics concerning the population of "our city," the seating capacity
+of the auditorium, the number of banks, the amount of their clearings,
+and the quantity of belt buckles annually manufactured. When the train
+is ready we exchange polite expressions of regret at parting:
+expressions reminiscent of those little speeches which the King of
+England and the Emperor of Germany used to make at parting in the old
+days before they found each other out and began dropping high explosives
+on each other's roofs.
+
+Such a committee, feeling no emotion (except perhaps relief) at seeing
+me depart, may be useful. Not so with friends and loved ones. Useful as
+they may be in the great crises of life, they are but disturbing
+elements in the small ones. Those who would die for us seldom check our
+trunks.
+
+By this I do not mean to imply that either of the two delightful
+creatures who came to the Pennsylvania Terminal to bid me good-by would
+die for me. That one has lived for me and that both attempt to regulate
+my conduct is more than enough. Hardly had I alighted from my taxicab,
+hardly had the redcap seized my suitcase, when, with sweet smiles and a
+twinkling of daintily shod feet, they came. Fancy their having arrived
+ahead of me! Fancy their having come like a pair of angels through the
+rain to see me off! Enough to turn a man's head! It did turn mine; and I
+noticed that, as they approached, the heads of other men were turning
+too.
+
+Flattered to befuddlement, I greeted them and started with them
+automatically in the direction of the concourse, forgetting entirely the
+driver of my taxicab, who, however, took in the situation and set up a
+great shout--whereat I returned hastily and overpaid him.
+
+This accomplished, I rejoined my companions and, with a radiant
+dark-haired girl at one elbow and a blonde, equally delectable, at the
+other, moved across the concourse.
+
+How gay they were as we strolled along! How amusing were their
+prophecies of adventures destined to befall me in the South. Small
+wonder that I took no thought of whither I was going.
+
+Presently, having reached the wall at the other side of the great
+vaulted chamber, we stopped.
+
+"Which train, boss?" asked the porter who had meekly followed.
+
+Train? I had forgotten about trains. The mention of the subject
+distracted my attention for the moment from the _Loreleien_, stirred my
+drugged sense of duty, and reminded me that I had trunks to check.
+
+My suggestion that I leave them briefly for this purpose was lightly
+brushed aside.
+
+"Oh, no!" they cried. "We shall go with you."
+
+I gave in at once--one always does with them--and inquired of the porter
+the location of the baggage room. He looked somewhat fatigued as he
+replied:
+
+"It's away back there where we come from, boss."
+
+It was a long walk; in a garden, with no train to catch, it would have
+been delightful.
+
+"Got your tickets?" suggested the porter as we passed the row of grilled
+windows. He had evidently concluded that I was irresponsible.
+
+As I had them, we continued on our way, and presently achieved the
+baggage room, where they stood talking and laughing, telling me of the
+morning's shopping expedition--hat-hunting, they called it--in the
+rain. I fancy that we might have been there yet had not a baggageman,
+perhaps divining that I had become a little bit distrait and that I had
+business to transact, rapped smartly on the iron counter with his punch
+and demanded:
+
+"Baggage checked?"
+
+Turning, not without reluctance, from a pair of violet eyes and a pair
+of the most mysterious gray, I began to fumble in my pockets for the
+claim checks.
+
+"How long shall you stay in Baltimore?" asked the girl with the gray
+eyes.
+
+"Yes, indeed!" I answered, still searching for the checks.
+
+"That doesn't make sense," remarked the blue-eyed girl as I found the
+checks and handed them to the baggageman. "She asked how long you'd stay
+in Baltimore, and you said: 'Yes, indeed.'"
+
+"About a week I meant to say."
+
+"Oh, I don't believe a week will be enough," said Gray-eyes.
+
+"We can't stay longer," I declared. "We must keep pushing on. There are
+so many places in the South to see."
+
+"My sister has just been there, and she--"
+
+"Where to?" demanded the insistent baggageman.
+
+"Why, Baltimore, of course," I said. Had he paid attention to our
+conversation he might have known.
+
+"You were saying," reminded Violet-eyes, "that your sister--?"
+
+"She just came home from there, and says that--"
+
+"Railroad ticket!" said the baggageman with exaggerated patience.
+
+I began again to feel in various pockets.
+
+"She says," continued Gray-eyes, "that she never met more charming
+people or had better things to eat. She loves the southern accent too."
+
+I don't know how the tickets got into my upper right vest pocket; I
+never carry tickets there; but that is where I found them.
+
+"Do you like it?" asked the other girl of me.
+
+"Like what?"
+
+"Why, the southern accent."
+
+"Any valuation?" the baggageman demanded.
+
+"Yes," I answered them both at once.
+
+"Oh, you _do_?" cried Violet-eyes, incredulously.
+
+"Why, yes; I think--"
+
+"Put down the amount and sign here," the baggageman directed, pushing a
+slip toward me and placing a pencil in my hand.
+
+I obeyed. The baggageman took the slip and went off to a little desk. I
+judged that he had finished with me for the moment.
+
+"But don't you think," my fair inquisitor continued, "that the southern
+girls pile on the accent awfully, because they know it pleases men?"
+
+"Perhaps," I said. "But then, what better reason could they have for
+doing so?"
+
+"Listen to that!" she cried to her companion. "Did you ever hear such
+egotism?"
+
+"He's nothing but a man," said Gray-eyes scornfully. "I wouldn't be a
+man for--"
+
+"A dollar and eighty-five cents," declared the baggageman.
+
+I paid him.
+
+"I wouldn't be a man for anything!" my fair friend finished as we
+started to move off.
+
+"I wouldn't have you one," I told her, opening the concourse door.
+
+"_Hay!_" shouted the baggageman. "Here's your ticket and your checks!"
+
+I returned, took them, and put them in my pocket. Again we proceeded
+upon our way. I was glad to leave the baggageman.
+
+This time the porter meant to take no chances.
+
+"What train, boss?" he asked.
+
+"The Congressional Limited."
+
+"You got jus' four minutes."
+
+"Goodness!" cried Gray-eyes.
+
+"I thought," said Violet-eyes as we accelerated our pace, "that you
+prided yourself on always having time to spare?"
+
+"Usually I do," I answered, "but in this case--"
+
+"What car?" the porter interrupted tactfully.
+
+Again I felt for my tickets. This time they were in my change pocket. I
+can't imagine how I came to put them there.
+
+"But in this case--_what_?" The violet eyes looked threatening as their
+owner put the question.
+
+"Seat seven, car three," I told the porter firmly as we approached the
+gate. Then, turning to my dangerous and lovely cross-examiner: "In this
+case I am unfortunate, for there is barely time to say good-by."
+
+There are several reasons why I don't believe in railway station kisses.
+Kisses given in public are at best but skimpy little things, suggesting
+the swift peck of a robin at a peach, whereas it is truer of kissing
+than of many other forms of industry that what is worth doing at all is
+worth doing well. Yet I knew that one of these enchantresses expected to
+be kissed, and that the other very definitely didn't. Therefore I kissed
+them both.
+
+Then I bolted toward the gate.
+
+"Tickets!" demanded the gateman, stopping me.
+
+At last I found them in the inside pocket of my overcoat. I don't know
+how they got there. I never carry tickets in that pocket.
+
+As the train began to move I looked at my watch and, discovering it to
+be three minutes fast, set it right. That is the sort of train the
+Congressional Limited is. A moment later we were roaring through the
+blackness of the Hudson River tunnel.
+
+There is something fine in the abruptness of the escape from New York
+City by the Pennsylvania Railroad. From the time you enter the station
+you are as good as gone. There is no progress between the city's
+tenements, with untidy bedding airing in some windows and fat old
+slatterns leaning out from others to survey the sordidness and squalor
+of the streets below. A swift plunge into darkness, some thundering
+moments, and your train glides out upon the wide wastes of the New
+Jersey meadows. The city is gone. You are even in another State. Far,
+far behind, bathed in glimmering haze which gives them the appearance of
+palaces in a mirage, you may see the tops of New York's towering
+sky-scrapers, dwarfed yet beautified by distance. Outside the wide car
+window the advertising sign-boards pass to the rear in steady parade,
+shrieking in strong color of whiskies, tobaccos, pills, chewing gums,
+cough drops, flours, hams, hotels, soaps, socks, and shows.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A BALTIMORE EVENING
+
+    I felt her presence by its spell of might,
+      Stoop o'er me from above;
+    The calm, majestic presence of the night,
+      As of the one I love.
+
+    --LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+Before I went to Baltimore I had but two definite impressions connected
+with the place: the first was of a tunnel, filled with coal gas, through
+which trains pass beneath the city; the second was that when a
+southbound train left Baltimore the time had come to think of cleaning
+up, preparatory to reaching Washington.
+
+Arriving at Baltimore after dark, one gathers an impression of an
+adequate though not impressive Union Station from which one emerges to a
+district of good asphalted streets, the main ones wide and well lighted.
+The Baltimore street lamps are large and very brilliant single globes,
+mounted upon the tops of substantial metal columns. I do not remember
+having seen lamps of the same pattern in any other city. It is a good
+pattern, but there is one thing about it which is not good at all, and
+that is the way the street names are lettered upon the sides of the
+globes. Though the lettering is not large, it is large enough to be
+read easily in the daytime against the globe's white surface, but to try
+to read it at night is like trying to read some little legend printed
+upon a blinding noon-day sun. I noticed this particularly because I
+spent my first evening in wandering alone about the streets of
+Baltimore, and wished to keep track of my route in order that I might
+the more readily find my way back to the hotel.
+
+Can most travelers, I wonder, enjoy as I do a solitary walk, by night,
+through the mysterious streets of a strange city? Do they feel the same
+detached yet keen interest in unfamiliar highways, homes, and human
+beings, the same sense of being a wanderer from another world, a
+"messenger from Mars," a Harun-al-Rashid, or, if not one of these, an
+imaginative adventurer like Tartarin? Do they thrill at the sight of an
+ill-lighted street leading into a no-man's-land of menacing dark
+shadows; at the promise of a glowing window puncturing the blackness
+here or there; at the invitation of some open doorway behind which
+unilluminated blackness hangs, threatening and tempting? Do they rejoice
+in streets the names of which they have not heard before? Do they--as I
+do--delight in irregularity: in the curious forms of roofs and spires
+against the sky; in streets which run up hill or down; or which, instead
+of being straight, have jogs in them, or curves, or interesting
+intersections, at which other streets dart off from them obliquely, as
+though in a great hurry to get somewhere? Do they love to emerge from a
+street which is narrow, dim, and deserted, upon one which is wide,
+bright, and crowded; and do they also like to leave a brilliant street
+and dive into the darkness of some somber byway? Does a long row of
+lights lure them, block by block, toward distances unknown? Are they
+tempted by the unfamiliar signs on passing street cars? Do they yearn to
+board those cars and be transported by them into the mystic caverns of
+the night? And when they see strangers who are evidently going somewhere
+with some special purpose, do they wish to follow; to find out where
+these beings are going, and why? Do they wish to trail them, let the
+trail lead to a prize fight, to a church sociable, to a fire, to a
+fashionable ball, or to the ends of the world?
+
+For the traveler who does not know such sensations and such impulses as
+these--who has not at times indulged in the joy of yielding to an
+inclination of at least mildly fantastic character--I am profoundly
+sorry. The blind themselves are not so blind as those who, seeing with
+the physical eye, lack the eye of imagination.
+
+Residence streets like Chase and Biddle, in the blocks near where they
+cross Charles Street, midway on its course between the Union Station and
+Mount Vernon Place, are at night, even more than by day, full of the
+suggestion of comfortable and settled domesticity. Their brick houses,
+standing wall to wall and close to the sidewalk, speak of honorable age,
+and, in some cases of a fine and ancient dignity. One fancies that in
+many of these houses the best of old mahogany may be found, or, if not
+that, then at least the fairly old and quite creditable furniture of the
+period of the sleigh-back bed, the haircloth-covered rosewood sofa, and
+the tall, narrow mirror between the two front windows of the drawing
+room.
+
+Through the glass panels of street doors and beneath half-drawn window
+shades the early-evening wayfarer may perceive a feeble glow as of
+illuminating gas turned low; but by ten o'clock these lights have begun
+to disappear, indicating--or so, at all events, I chose to believe--that
+certain old ladies wearing caps and black silk gowns with old lace
+fichus held in place by ancient cameos, have proceeded slowly,
+rustlingly, upstairs to bed, accompanied by their cats.
+
+At Cathedral Street, a block or two from Charles, Biddle Street performs
+a jog, dashing off at a tangent from its former course, while Chase
+Street not only jogs and turns at the corresponding intersection, but
+does so again, where, at the next corner, it meets at once with Park
+Avenue and Berkeley Street. After this it runs but a short way and dies,
+as though exhausted by its own contortions.
+
+Here, in a region of malformed city blocks--some of them pentagonal,
+some irregularly quadrangular, some wedge-shaped--Howard Street sets
+forth upon its way, running first southwest as far as Richmond Street,
+then turning south and becoming, by degrees, an important thoroughfare.
+
+Somewhere near the beginning of Howard Street my attention was arrested
+by shadowy forms in a dark window: furniture, andirons, chinaware, and
+weapons of obsolete design: unmistakable signs of a shop in which
+antiquities were for sale. After making mental note of the location of
+this shop, I proceeded on my way, keeping a sharp lookout for other like
+establishments. Nor was I to be disappointed. These birds of a feather
+bear out the truth of the proverb by flocking together in Howard Street,
+as window displays, faintly visible, informed me.
+
+Since we have come naturally to the subject of antiques, let us pause
+here, under a convenient lamp-post, and discuss the matter further.
+
+Baltimore--as I found out later--is probably the headquarters for the
+South in this trade. It has at least one dealer of Fifth Avenue rank,
+located on Charles Street, and a number of humbler dealers in and near
+Howard Street. Among the latter, two in particular interested me. One of
+these--his name is John A. Williar--I have learned to trust. Not only
+did I make some purchases of him while I was in Baltimore, but I have
+even gone so far, since leaving there, as to buy from him by mail,
+accepting his assurance that some article which I have not seen is,
+nevertheless, what I want, and that it is "worth the price."
+
+At the other antique shop which interested me I made no purchases. The
+stock on hand was very large, and if those who exhibited it to me made
+no mistakes in differentiating between genuine antiques and copies, the
+assortment of ancient furniture on sale in that establishment, when I
+was there, would rank among the great collections of the world.
+
+However, human judgment is not infallible, and antique dealers sometimes
+make mistakes, offering, so to speak, "new lamps for old." The eyesight
+of some dealers may not be so good as that of others; or perhaps one
+dealer does not know so well as another the difference between, say, an
+old English Chippendale chair and a New York reproduction; or again,
+perhaps, some dealers may be innocently unaware that there exist, in
+this land of ours, certain large establishments wherein are manufactured
+most extraordinary modern copies of the furniture of long ago. I have
+been in one of these manufactories, and have there seen chairs of
+Chippendale and Sheraton design which, though fresh from the workman's
+hands, looked older than the originals from which they had been
+plagiarized; also I recall a Jacobean refectory table, the legs of which
+appeared to have been eaten half away by time, but which had, in
+reality, been "antiqued" with a stiff wire brush. I mention this
+because, in my opinion, antique dealers have a right to know that such
+factories exist.
+
+What curious differences there are between the customs of one trade and
+those of another. Compare, for instance, the dealer in old furniture
+with the dealer in old automobiles. The latter, far from pronouncing a
+machine of which he wishes to dispose "a genuine antique," will assure
+you--and not always with a strict regard for truth--that it is
+"practically as good as new." Or compare the seller of antiques with the
+horse dealer. Can you imagine the latter's taking you up to some
+venerable quadruped--let alone a three-year-old--and discoursing upon
+its merits in some such manner as the following:
+
+"This is the oldest and most historic horse that has ever come into my
+possession. Just look at it, sir! The farmer of whom I bought it assured
+me that it was brought over by his ancestors in the _Mayflower_. The
+place where I found it was used as Washington's headquarters during the
+Revolutionary War, and it is known that Washington himself frequently
+sat on this very horse. It was a favorite of his. For he was a large man
+and he liked a big, comfortable, deep-seated horse, well braced
+underneath, and having strong arms, so that he could tilt it back
+comfortably against the wall, with its front legs off the floor, and--"
+
+But no! That won't do. It appears I have gotten mixed. However, you know
+what I meant to indicate. I merely meant to show that a horse dealer
+wouldn't talk about a horse as an antique dealer would talk about a
+chair. Even if the horse was once actually ridden by the Father of his
+Country, the dealer won't stress the point. You can't get him to admit
+that a horse has reached years of discretion, let alone that it is one
+hundred and forty-five years old, or so. It is this difference between
+the horse dealer and the dealer in antiques which keeps us in the dark
+to-day as to exactly which horses Washington rode and which he didn't
+ride; although we know every chair he ever sat in, and every bed he ever
+slept in, and every house he ever stopped in, and how he is said to have
+caught his death of cold.
+
+Having thus wandered afield, let me now resume my nocturnal walk.
+
+Proceeding down Howard Street to Franklin, I judged by the signs I saw
+about me--the conglomerate assortment of theaters, hotels, rathskellers,
+bars, and brilliantly lighted drug stores--that here was the center of
+the city's nighttime life.
+
+Not far from this corner is the Academy, a very spacious and somewhat
+ancient theater, and although the hour was late, into the Academy I went
+with a ticket for standing room.
+
+Arriving during an intermission, I had a good view of the auditorium. It
+is reminiscent, in its interior "decoration," of the recently torn-down
+Wallack's Theater in New York. The balcony is supported, after the old
+fashion, by posts, and there are boxes the tops of which are draped with
+tasseled curtains. It is the kind of theater which suggests traditions,
+dust, and the possibility of fire and panic.
+
+After looking about me for a time, I drew from my pocket a pamphlet
+which I had picked up in the hotel, and began to gather information
+about the "Monumental City," as Baltimore sometimes calls
+itself--thereby misusing the word, since "monumental" means, in one
+sense, "enduring," and in another "pertaining to or serving as a
+monument": neither of which ideas it is intended, in this instance, to
+convey. What Baltimore intends to indicate is, not that it pertains to
+monuments, but that monuments pertain to it: that it is a city in which
+many monuments have been erected--as is indeed the pleasing fact. My
+pamphlet informed me that the first monument to Columbus and the first
+to George Washington were here put up, and that among the city's other
+monuments was one to Francis Scott Key. I had quite forgotten that it
+was at Baltimore that Key wrote the words of "The Star-Spangled Banner,"
+and, as others may have done the same, it may be well here to recall the
+details.
+
+In 1814, after the British had burned a number of Government buildings
+in Washington, including "the President's palace" (as one of their
+officers expressed it), they moved on Baltimore, making an attack by
+land at North Point and a naval attack at Fort McHenry on Whetstone
+Point in the estuary of the Patapsco River--here practically an arm of
+Chesapeake Bay. Both attacks were repulsed. Having gone on the United
+States cartel ship _Minden_ (used by the government in negotiating
+exchanges of prisoners) to intercede for his friend, Dr. William Beanes,
+of Upper Marlborough, Maryland, who was held captive on a British
+vessel, Key witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry from the deck of
+the _Minden_, and when he perceived "by the dawn's early light" that the
+flag still flew over the fort, he was moved to write his famous poem.
+Later it was printed and set to music; it was first sung in a restaurant
+near the old Holliday Street Theater, but neither the restaurant nor the
+theater exists to-day. It is sometimes stated that Key was himself a
+prisoner, during the bombardment, on a British warship. That is a
+mistake.
+
+By a curious coincidence, only a few minutes after my pamphlet had
+reminded me of the origin of "The Star-Spangled Banner" here in
+Baltimore, I heard the air played under circumstances very different
+from any which could have been anticipated by the author of the poem, or
+the composer who set it to music.
+
+The entertainment at the Academy that night was supplied by an elaborate
+"show" of the burlesque variety known as "The Follies," and it so
+happened that in the course of this hodgepodge of color, comedy,
+scenery, song, and female anatomy, there was presented a "number" in
+which actors, garbed and frescoed with intent to resemble rulers of
+various lands, marched successively to the front of the stage, preceded
+in each instance by a small but carefully selected guard wearing the
+full-dress-uniform of Broadway Amazons. This uniform consists
+principally of tights and high-heeled slippers, the different nations
+being indicated, usually, by means of color combinations and various
+types of soldiers' hats. No arms are presented save those provided by
+nature.
+
+The King of Italy, the Emperor of Austria, the Czar, the Mikado, the
+British Monarch, the President of France, the King of the Belgians, the
+Kaiser (for the United States had not then entered the war), and, I
+think, some others, put in an appearance, each accompanied by his
+Paphian escort, his standard, and the appropriate national air.
+Apprehending that this symbolic travesty must, almost inevitably, end in
+a grand orgy of Yankee-Doodleism, I was impelled to flee the place
+before the thing should happen. Yet a horrid fascination held me there
+to watch the working up of "patriotic" sentiment by the old, cheap,
+stage tricks.
+
+Presently, of course, the supreme moment came. When all the potentates
+had taken their positions, right and left, with their silk-limbed
+soldiery in double ranks behind them, there came into view upstage a
+squad of little white-clad female naval officers, each, according to my
+recollection, carrying the Stars and Stripes. As these marched forward
+and deployed as skirmishers before the footlights, the orchestra struck
+up "The Star-Spangled Banner," fortissimo, and with a liberal sounding
+of the brasses. Upon this appeared at the back a counterfeit President
+of the United States, guarded on either side by a female militia--or
+were they perhaps secret-service agents?--in striking uniforms
+consisting of pink fleshings partially draped with thin black lace.
+
+As this incongruous parade proceeded to the footlights, American flags
+came into evidence, and, though I forget whether or not Columbia
+appeared, I recollect that a beautiful young woman, habited in what
+appeared to be a light pink union suit of unexceptionable cut and
+material, appeared above the head of the pseudo-chief executive,
+suspended at the end of a wire. Never having heard that it was White
+House etiquette to hang young ladies on wires above the presidential
+head, I consulted my program and thereby learned that this young lady
+represented that species of poultry so popular always with the late
+Secretary of State, Mr. Bryan, and so popular also at one time with the
+President himself: namely, the Dove of Peace.
+
+The applause was thunderous. At the sound of "The Star-Spangled Banner"
+a few members of the audience arose to their feet; others soon
+followed--some of them apparently with reluctance--until at last the
+entire house had risen. Meanwhile the members of the company lined up
+before the footlights: the mock president smirking at the center, the
+half-clad girls posing, the pink young lady dangling above, the band
+blaring, the Stars and Stripes awave. It was a scene, in all, about as
+conducive to genuine or creditable national pride as would be the scene
+of a debauch in some fabulous harem.
+
+The difference between stupidity and satire lies, not infrequently, in
+the intent with which a thing is done. Presented without essential
+change upon the stage of a music hall in some foreign land, the scene
+just described would, at that time, when we were playing a timid part
+amongst the nations, have been accepted, not as a glorification of the
+United States, but as having a precisely opposite significance. It would
+have been taken for burlesque; burlesque upon our country, our
+President, our national spirit, our peace policy, our army, and perhaps
+also upon our women--and insulting burlesque at that.
+
+Some years since, it was found necessary to pass a law prohibiting the
+use of the flag for advertising purposes. This law should be amended to
+protect it also from the even more sordid and vulgarizing associations
+to which it is not infrequently submitted on the American musical-comedy
+stage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the morning, before I was awake, my companion arrived at the hotel,
+and, going to his room, opened the door connecting it with mine. Coming
+out of my slumber with that curious and not altogether pleasant sense of
+being stared at, I found his eyes fixed upon me, and noticed immediately
+about him the air of virtuous superiority which is assumed by all who
+have risen early, whether they have done so by choice or have been
+shaken awake.
+
+"Hello," I said. "Had breakfast?"
+
+"No. I thought we could breakfast together if you felt like getting up."
+
+Though the phraseology of this remark was unexceptionable, I knew what
+it meant. What it really meant was: "Shame on you, lying there so lazy
+after sunup! Look at _me_, all dressed and ready to begin!"
+
+I arose at once.
+
+For all that I don't like to get up early, it recalled old times, and
+was very pleasant, to be away with him again upon our travels; to be in
+a strange city and a strange hotel, preparing to set forth on
+explorations. For he is the best, the most charming, the most observant
+of companions, and also one of the most patient.
+
+That is one of his greatest qualities--his patience. Throughout our
+other trip he always kept on being patient with me, no matter what I
+did. Many a time instead of pushing me down an elevator shaft, drowning
+me in my bath, or coming in at night and smothering me with a pillow, he
+has merely sighed, dropped into a chair, and sat there shaking his head
+and staring at me with a melancholy, ruminative, hopeless
+expression--such an expression as may come into the face of a dumb man
+when he looks at a waiter who has spilled an oyster cocktail on him.
+
+All this is good for me. It has a chastening effect.
+
+Therefore in a spirit happy yet not exuberant, eager yet controlled,
+hopeful yet a little bit afraid, I dressed myself hurriedly, breakfasted
+with him (eating ham and eggs because he approves of ham and eggs), and
+after breakfast set out in his society to obtain what--despite my walk
+of the night before--I felt was not alone my first real view of
+Baltimore, but my first glimpse over the threshold of the South: into
+the land of aristocracy and hospitality, of mules and mammies, of
+plantations, porticos, and proud, flirtatious belles, of colonels,
+cotton, chivalry, and colored cooking.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+WHERE THE CLIMATES MEET
+
+    Here, where the climates meet,
+    That each may make the other's lack complete--
+
+    --SIDNEY LANIER.
+
+
+Because Baltimore was built, like Rome, on seven hills, and because
+trains run under it instead of through, the passing traveler sees but
+little of the city, his view from the train window being restricted
+first to a suburban district, then to a black tunnel, then to a glimpse
+upward from the railway cut, in which the station stands. These facts, I
+think, combine to leave upon his mind an impression which, if not
+actually unfavorable, is at least negative; for certainly he has
+obtained no just idea of the metropolis of Maryland.
+
+Let it be declared at the outset, then, that Baltimore is not in any
+sense to be regarded as a suburb of Washington. Indeed, considering the
+two merely as cities situated side by side, and eliminating the highly
+specialized features of Washington, Baltimore becomes, according to the
+standards by which American cities are usually compared, the more
+important city of the two, being greater both in population and in
+commerce. In this aspect Baltimore may, perhaps, be pictured as the
+commercial half of Washington. And while Washington, as capital of the
+United States, has certain physical and cosmopolitan advantages, not
+only over Baltimore, but over every other city on this continent, it
+must not be forgotten that, upon the other hand, every other city has
+one vast advantage over Washington, namely, a comparative freedom from
+politicians. To be sure, Congress did once move over to Baltimore and
+sit there for several weeks, but that was in 1776, when the British
+approached the Delaware in the days before the pork barrel was invented.
+
+As a city Baltimore has marked characteristics. Though south of Mason
+and Dixon's Line, and though sometimes referred to as the "metropolis of
+the South" (as is New Orleans also), it is in character neither a city
+entirely northern nor entirely southern, but one which partakes of the
+qualities of both; where, in the words of Sidney Lanier, "the climates
+meet," and where northern and southern thought and custom meet, as well.
+This has long been the case. Thus, although slaves were held in
+Baltimore before the Civil War, a strong abolitionist society was formed
+there during Washington's first Administration, and the sentiment of the
+city was thereafter divided on the slavery question. Thus also, while
+the two candidates of the divided Democratic party who ran against
+Lincoln for the presidency in 1860 were nominated at Baltimore, Lincoln
+himself was nominated there by the Union-Republican party in 1864.
+
+Speaking of the blending of North and South in Baltimore, you will, of
+course, remember that the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment was attacked by a
+mob as it passed through the city on the way to the Civil War. The
+regiment arrived in Baltimore at the old President Street Station, which
+was then the main station of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and which, now
+used as a freight station, looks like an old war-time woodcut out of
+_Harper's Weekly_. It was the custom in those days to hitch horses to
+passenger coaches which were going through and draw them across town to
+the Baltimore & Ohio Station; but when it was attempted thus to
+transport the northern troops a mob gathered and blocked the Pratt
+Street bridge over Jones's Falls, forcing the soldiers to leave the cars
+and march through Pratt Street, along the water front, where they were
+attacked. It is, however, a noteworthy fact that Mayor Brown of
+Baltimore bravely preceded the troops and attempted to stop the rioting.
+A few days later the city was occupied by northern troops, and the
+warship _Harriet Lane_ anchored at a point off Calvert Street, whence
+her guns commanded the business part of town. After this there was no
+more serious trouble. Moreover, it will be remembered that though
+Maryland was represented by regiments in both armies, the State, torn as
+it was by conflicting feeling, nevertheless held to the Union.
+
+A pretty sequel to the historic attack on the Sixth Massachusetts
+occurred when the same regiment passed through Baltimore in 1898, on its
+way to the Spanish War. On this occasion it was "attacked" again in the
+streets of the city, but the missiles thrown, instead of paving-stones
+and bricks, were flowers.
+
+Continuing the category of contrasts, one may observe that while the
+general appearance of Baltimore suggests a northern city rather than a
+southern one--Philadelphia, for instance, rather than
+Richmond--Baltimore society is strongly flavored with the tradition and
+the soft pronunciation of the South; particularly of Virginia and the
+"Eastern Shore."
+
+So, too, the city's position on the border line is reflected in its
+handling of the negro. Of American cities, Washington has the largest
+negro population, 94,446, New York and New Orleans follow with almost as
+many, and Baltimore comes fourth with 84,749, according to the last
+census. New York has one negro to every fifty-one whites, Philadelphia
+one to every seventeen whites, Baltimore one to every six, Washington a
+negro to every two and a half whites, and Richmond not quite two whites
+to every negro. But, although Baltimore follows southern practice in
+maintaining separate schools for negro children, and in segregating
+negro residences to certain blocks, she follows northern practice in
+casting a considerable negro vote at elections, and also in not
+providing separate seats for negroes in her street cars.
+
+Have you ever noticed how cities sometimes seem to have their own
+especial colors? Paris is white and green--even more so, I think, than
+Washington. Chicago is gray; so is London usually, though I have seen
+it buff at the beginning of a heavy fog. New York used to be a brown
+sandstone city, but is now turning to one of cream-colored brick and
+tile; Naples is brilliant with pink and blue and green and white and
+yellow; while as for Baltimore, her old houses and her new are, as
+Baedeker puts it, of "cheerful red brick"--not always, of course, but
+often enough to establish the color of red brick as the city's
+predominating hue. And with the red-brick houses--particularly the older
+ones--go clean white marble steps, on the bottom one of which, at the
+side, may usually be found an old-fashioned iron "scraper," doubtless
+left over from the time (not very long ago) when the city pavements had
+not reached their present excellence.
+
+The color of red brick is not confined to the center of the city, but
+spreads to the suburbs, fashionable and unfashionable. At one margin of
+the town I was shown solid blocks of pleasant red-brick houses which, I
+was told, were occupied by workmen and their families, and were to be
+had at a rental of from ten to twenty dollars a month. For though
+Baltimore has a lower East Side which, like the lower East Side of New
+York, encompasses the Ghetto and Italian quarter, she has not tenements
+in the New York sense; one sees no tall, cheap flat houses draped with
+fire escapes and built to make herding places for the poor. Many of the
+houses in this section are instead the former homes of fashionables who
+have moved to other quarters of the city--handsome old homesteads with
+here and there a lovely, though battered, doorway sadly reminiscent of
+an earlier elegance. So, also, red brick permeates the prosperous
+suburbs, such as Roland Park and Guilford, where, in a sweetly rolling
+country which lends itself to the arrangement of graceful winding roads
+and softly contoured plantings, stand quantities of pleasing homes,
+lately built, many of them colonial houses of red brick. Indeed, it
+struck us that the only parts of Baltimore in which red brick was not
+the dominant note were the downtown business section and Mount Vernon
+Place.
+
+Mount Vernon Place is the center of Baltimore. Everything begins there,
+including Baedeker, who, in his little red book, gives it the asterisk
+of his approval, says that it "suggests Paris in its tasteful monuments
+and surrounding buildings," and recommends the view from the top of the
+Washington Monument.
+
+This monument, standing upon an eminence at the point where Charles and
+Monument Streets would cross each other were not their courses
+interrupted by the pleasing parked space of Mount Vernon Place, is a
+gray stone column, surmounted by a figure of Washington--or, rather, by
+the point of a lightning rod under which the figure stands. Other
+monuments are known as this monument or that, but when "the monument" is
+spoken of, the Washington Monument is inevitably meant. This is quite
+natural, for it is not only the most simple and picturesque old monument
+in Baltimore, but also the largest, the oldest, and the most
+conspicuous: its proud head, rising high in air, having for nearly a
+century dominated the city. One catches glimpses of it down this street
+or that, or sees it from afar over the housetops; and sometimes, when
+the column is concealed from view by intervening buildings, and only the
+surmounting statue shows above them, one is struck by a sudden
+apparition of the Father of his Country strolling fantastically upon
+some distant roof.
+
+Though it may be true that Mount Vernon Place, with its symmetrical
+parked center and its admirable bronzes (several of them by Baryé),
+suggests Paris, and though it is certainly true that it is more like a
+Parisian square than a London square, nevertheless it is in reality an
+American square--perhaps the finest of its kind in the United States. If
+it were Parisian, it would have more trees and the surrounding buildings
+would be uniform in color and in cornice height. It is perhaps as much
+like Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia as any other, and that
+resemblance is of the slightest, for Mount Vernon Place has a quality
+altogether its own. It has no skyscrapers or semi-skyscrapers to throw
+it out of balance; and though the structures which surround it are of
+white stone, brown stone, and red brick, and of anything but homogeneous
+architecture, nevertheless a comparative uniformity of height, a
+universal solidity of construction, and a general grace about them,
+combine to give the Place an air of equilibrium and dignity and
+elegance.
+
+Including the Washington Monument, Baltimore has three lofty landmarks,
+likely to be particularly noticed by the roving visitor. Of the
+remaining two, one is the old brick shot-tower in the lower part of
+town, which legend tells us was put up without the use of scaffolding
+nearly a hundred years ago; while the other, a more modern, if less
+modest structure, proudly surmounts a large commercial building and is
+itself capped by the gigantic effigy of a bottle. This bottle is very
+conspicuous because of its emplacement, because it revolves, and because
+it is illuminated at night. You can never get away from it.
+
+One evening I asked a man what the bottle meant up there.
+
+"It's a memorial to Emerson," he told me.
+
+"Are they so fond of Emerson down here?"
+
+"I don't know as they are so all-fired fond of him," he answered.
+
+"But they _must_ be fond of him to put up such a big memorial. Why, even
+in Boston, where he was born, they have no such memorial as that."
+
+"He put it up himself," said the man.
+
+That struck me as strange. It seemed somehow out of character with the
+great philosopher. Also, I could not see why, if he did wish to raise a
+memorial to himself, he had elected to fashion it in the form of a
+bottle and put it on top of an office building.
+
+"I suppose there is some sort of symbolism about it?" I suggested.
+
+"Now you got it," approved the man.
+
+I gazed at the tower for a while in thought. Then I said:
+
+"Do you suppose that Emerson meant something like this: that human life
+or, indeed, the soul, may be likened to the contents of a bottle; that
+day by day we use up some portion of the contents--call it, if you like,
+the nectar of existence--until the fluid of life runs low, and at last
+is gone entirely, leaving only the husk, as it were--or, to make the
+metaphor more perfect, the shell, or empty bottle: the container of what
+Emerson himself called, if I recollect correctly, 'the soul that maketh
+all'--do you suppose he meant to teach us some such thing as that?"
+
+The man looked a little confused by this deep and beautiful thought.
+
+"He _might_ of meant that," he said, somewhat dubiously. "But they tell
+me Captain Emerson's a practical man, and I reckon what he _mainly_
+meant was that he made his money out of this-here Bromo Seltzer, and he
+was darn glad of it, so he thought he'd put him up a big Bromo Seltzer
+bottle as a kind of cross between a monument and an ad."
+
+If the bottle tower represents certain modern concepts of what is
+suitable in architecture, it is nevertheless pleasant to record the fact
+that many honorable old buildings--most of them residences--survive in
+Baltimore, and that, because of their survival, the city looks older
+than New York and fully as old as either Philadelphia or Boston. But in
+this, appearances are misleading, for New York and Boston were a
+century old, and Philadelphia half a century, when Baltimore was first
+laid out as a town. Efforts to start a settlement near the city's
+present site were, it is true, being made before William Penn and his
+Quakers established Philadelphia, but a letter written in 1687 by
+Charles Calvert, third Baron Baltimore, explains that: "The people there
+[are] not affecting to build nere each other but soe as to have their
+houses nere the watters for conveniencye of trade and their lands on
+each side of and behynde their houses, by which it happens that in most
+places there are not fifty houses in the space of thirty myles."[1]
+
+[1] From "Historic Towns of the Southern States."
+
+The difficulty experienced by the Barons Baltimore, Lords Proprietary of
+Maryland, in building up communities in their demesne was not a local
+problem, but one which confronted those interested in the development of
+the entire portion of this continent now occupied by the Southern
+States. Generally speaking, towns came into being more slowly in the
+South than in the North, and it seems probable that one of the principal
+reasons for this may be found in the fact that settlers throughout the
+South lived generally at peace with the Indians, whereas the northern
+settlers were obliged to congregate in towns for mutual protection.
+Thus, in colonial days, while the many cities of New York and New
+England were coming into being, the South was developing its vast and
+isolated plantations. Farms on the St. Lawrence River and on the
+Detroit River, where the French were settling, were very narrow and very
+deep, the idea being to range the houses close together on the river
+front; but on such rivers as the Potomac, the Rappahannock and the
+James, no element of early fear is to be traced in the form of the broad
+baronial plantations.
+
+Nevertheless, when Baltimore began at last to grow, she became a
+prodigy, not only among American cities, but among the cities of the
+world. Her first town directory was published in 1796, and she began the
+next year as an incorporated city, with a mayor, a population of about
+twenty thousand, and a curiously assorted early history containing such
+odd items as that the first umbrella carried in the United States was
+brought from India and unfurled in Baltimore in 1772; that the town had
+for some time possessed such other useful articles as a fire engine, a
+brick theater, a newspaper, and policemen; that the streets were lighted
+with oil lamps; that such proud signs of metropolitanism as riot and
+epidemic were not unknown; that before the Revolution bachelors were
+taxed for the benefit of his Britannic Majesty; and that at fair time
+the "lid was off," and the citizen or visitor who wished to get himself
+arrested must needs be diligent indeed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+TRIUMPHANT DEFEAT
+
+    There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.
+
+    --MONTAIGNE.
+
+
+Following the incorporation of the city, Baltimore grew much as Chicago
+was destined to grow more than a century later; within less than thirty
+years, when Chicago was a tiny village, Baltimore had become the third
+city in the United States: a city of wealthy merchants engaged in an
+extensive foreign trade; for in those days there was an American
+merchant marine, and the swift, rakish Baltimore clippers were known the
+seven seas over.
+
+The story of modern Baltimore is entirely unrelated to the city's early
+history. It consists in a simple but inspiring record of regeneration
+springing from disaster. It is the story of Chicago, of San Francisco,
+of Galveston, of Dayton, and of many a smaller town: a cataclysm, a few
+days of despair, a return of courage, and another beginning.
+
+Imagine yourself being tucked into bed one night by your valet or your
+maid, as the case may be, calm in the feeling that all was secure: that
+your business was returning a handsome income, that your stocks and
+bonds were safe in the strong box, that the prosperity of your
+descendants was assured. Then imagine ruin coming like lightning in the
+night. In the morning you are poor. Your business, your investments,
+your very hopes, are gone. Everything is wiped out. The labor of a
+lifetime must be begun again.
+
+Such an experience was that of Baltimore in the fire of 1904.
+
+On the sickening morning following the conflagration two Baltimore men,
+friends of mine, walked down Charles Street to a point as near the
+ruined region as it was possible to go.
+
+"Well," said one, surveying the smoking crater, "what do you think of
+it?"
+
+"Baltimore is gone," was the response. "We are off the map."
+
+How many citizens of Chicago, of San Francisco, of Galveston, of Dayton
+have known the anguish of that first aftermath of hopelessness! How many
+citizens of Baltimore knew it that day! And yet how bravely and with
+what magic swiftness have these cities risen from their ruins! Was not
+Rome burned? Was not London? And is it not, then, time for men to learn
+from the history of other men and other cities that disaster does not
+spell the end, but is oftentimes another name for opportunity?
+
+Always, after disaster to a city, come improvements, but because
+disaster not only cleans the slate but simultaneously stuns the mind, a
+portion of the opportunity is invariably lost. The task of rebuilding,
+of widening a few streets, looks large enough to him who stands amidst
+destruction--and there, consequently, improvement usually stops. That is
+why the downtown boulevard system of Chicago has yet to be completed, in
+spite of the fact that it might with little difficulty have been
+completed after the Chicago fire (although it is only just to add that
+city planning was almost an unknown art in America at that time); and
+that also is why the hills of San Francisco are not terraced, as it was
+suggested they should be after the fire, but remain to-day inaccessible
+to frontal attack by even the maddest mountain goat of a taxi driver.
+
+These matters are not mentioned in the way of criticism: I have only
+admiration for the devastated cities and for those who built them up
+again. I call attention to lost opportunities with something like
+reluctance, and only in the wish to emphasize the fact that our crippled
+or destroyed cities do invariably rise again, and that if the next
+American city to sustain disaster shall but have this simple lesson
+learned in advance, it may thereby register a new high mark in municipal
+intelligence and a new record among the rebuilt cities, by making more
+sweet than any other city ever made them, the uses of adversity.
+
+The fire of 1904 found Baltimore a town of narrow highways, old
+buildings, bad pavements, and open gutter drains. The streets were laid
+in what is known as "southern cobble," which is the next thing to no
+pavement at all, being made of irregular stones, large and small, laid
+in the dirt and tamped down. For bumps and ruts there is no pavement in
+the world to be compared with it. There were no city sewers. Outside a
+few affluent neighborhoods, the citizens of which clubbed together to
+build private sewers, the cesspool was in general use, while domestic
+drainage emptied into the roadside gutters. These were made passable, at
+crossings, by stepping stones, about the bases of which passed
+interesting armadas of potato peelings, floating, upon wash days, in
+water having the fine Mediterranean hue which comes from diluted
+blueing. Everybody seemed to find the entire system adequate; for, it
+was argued, the hilly contours of the city caused the drainage quickly
+to be carried off, while as for typhoid and mosquitoes--well, there had
+always been typhoid and mosquitoes, just as there had always been these
+open gutters. It was all quite good enough.
+
+Then the fire.
+
+And then the upbuilding of the city--not only of the acres and acres
+comprising the burned section, in which streets were widened and
+skyscrapers arose where fire-traps had been--but outside the fire zone,
+where sewers were put down and pavements laid. Nor was the change merely
+physical. With the old buildings, the old spirit of _laissez faire_ went
+up in smoke, and in the embers a municipal conscience was born. Almost
+as though by the light of the flames which engulfed it, the city began
+to see itself as it had never seen itself before: to take account of
+stock, to plan broadly for the future.
+
+Nor has the new-born spirit died. Only last year an extensive red-light
+district was closed effectively and once for all. Baltimore is to-day
+free from flagrant commercialized vice. And if not quite all the old
+cobble pavements and open-gutter drains have been eliminated, there are
+but few of them left--left almost as though for purposes of
+contrast--and the Baltimorean who takes you to the Ghetto and shows you
+these ancient remnants may immediately thereafter escort you to the
+Fallsway, where the other side of the picture is presented.
+
+The Fallsway is a brand-new boulevard of pleasing aspect, the peculiar
+feature of which is that it is nothing more or less than a cover over
+the top of Jones's Falls, which figured in the early history of
+Baltimore as a water course, but which later came to figure as a great,
+open, trunk sewer.
+
+Every one in Baltimore is proud of the Fallsway, but particularly so are
+the city engineers who carried the work through. While in Baltimore I
+had the pleasure of meeting one of these gentlemen, and I can assure you
+that no young head of a family was ever more delighted with his new
+cottage in a suburb, his wife, his children, his garden, and his collie
+puppy, than was this engineer with his boulevard sewer. Like a lover, he
+carried pictures of it in his pocket, and like a lover he would assure
+you that it was "not like other sewers." Nor could he speak of it
+without beginning to wish to take you out to see it--not merely for a
+motor ride along the top of it, either. No, his hospitality did not
+stop there. When _he_ invited you to a sewer he invited you _in_. And if
+you went in with him, no one could make you come out until you wanted
+to.
+
+As he told my companion and me of the three great tubes, the walks
+beside them, the conduits for gas and electricity, and all the other
+wonders of the place, I began to wish that we might go with him, for,
+though we have been to a good many places together, this was something
+new: it was the first time we had ever been invited to drop into a sewer
+and make ourselves as much at home as though we lived there.
+
+My companion, however, seemed unsympathetic to the project.
+
+"Sewers, you know," he said, when I taxed him with indifference, "have
+come to have a very definite place in both the literary and the graphic
+arts. How do you propose to treat it?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"When you write about it: Are you going to write about it as a realist,
+a mystic, or a romanticist?"
+
+I said I didn't know.
+
+"Well, a man who is going to write of a sewer _ought_ to know," he told
+me severely. "You're not up to sewers yet. They're too big for you. If
+you take my advice you'll keep out of the sewers for the present and
+stick to the gutters."
+
+So I did.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+TERRAPIN AND THINGS
+
+
+Baltimore society has a Maryland and Virginia base, but is seasoned with
+families of Acadian descent, and with others descended from the
+Pennsylvania Dutch--those "Dutch" who, by the way, are not Dutch at all,
+being of Saxon and Bavarian extraction. Many Virginians settled in
+Baltimore after the war, and it may be in part owing to this fact, that
+fox-hunting with horse and hound, as practised for three centuries past
+in England, and for nearly two centuries by Virginia's country
+gentlemen, is carried on extensively in the neighborhood of Baltimore,
+by the Green Spring Valley Hunt Club, the Elkridge Fox-Hunting Club and
+some others--which brings me to the subject of clubs in general.
+
+The Baltimore Country Club, at Roland Park, just beyond the city limits,
+has a large, well-set clubhouse, an active membership, and charming
+rolling golf links, one peculiarity of the course being that a part of
+the city's water-supply system has been utilized for hazards.
+
+The two characteristic clubs of the city itself, the Maryland Club and
+the Baltimore Club, are known the country over. The former occupies a
+position in Baltimore comparable with that of the Union Club in New
+York, the Chicago Club in Chicago, or the Pacific Union in San
+Francisco, and has to its credit at least one famous dish: Terrapin,
+Maryland Club Style.
+
+The Baltimore Club is used by a younger group of men and has a
+particularly pleasant home in a large mansion, formerly the residence of
+the Abell family, long known in connection with that noteworthy old
+sheet, the Baltimore "Sun," which, it may be remarked in passing, is
+curiously referred to by many Baltimoreans, not as the "Sun," but as the
+"Sun-paper."
+
+This odd item reminds me of another: In the Balti-telephone book I
+chanced to notice under the letter "F" the entry:
+
+Fisher, Frank, of J.
+
+Upon inquiry I learned that the significance of this was that, there
+being more than one gentleman of the name of Frank Fisher in the city,
+this Mr. Frank Fisher added "of J" to his name (meaning "son of John")
+for purposes of differentiation. I was informed further that this custom
+is not uncommon in Baltimore, in cases where a name is duplicated, and I
+was shown another example: that of Mr. John Fyfe Symington of S.
+
+A typically southern institution of long standing, and highly
+characteristic of the social life of Baltimore, is the Bachelors'
+Cotillion, one of the oldest dancing clubs in the country. During the
+season this organization gives a series of some half-dozen balls which
+are the events of the fashionable year.
+
+The organization and general character of the Bachelors' Cotillion is
+not unlike that of the celebrated St. Cecilia Society of Charleston. The
+cost of membership is so slight that almost any eligible young man can
+easily afford it. There is, however, a long waiting-list. The club is
+controlled by a board of governors, the members of which hold office for
+life, and who, instead of being elected by the organization are selected
+_in camera_ by the board itself, when vacancies occur.
+
+The balls given by this society are known as the Monday Germans, and at
+these balls, which are held in the Lyric Theater, the city's débutantes
+are presented to society. As in all southern cities, much is made of
+débutantes in Baltimore. On the occasion of their first Monday German
+all their friends send them flowers, and they appear flower-laden at the
+ball, followed by their relatives who are freighted down with their
+darlings' superfluous bouquets. The modern steps are danced at these
+balls, but there are usually a few cotillion figures, albeit without
+"favors." And perhaps the best part of it all is that the first ball of
+the season, and the Christmas ball, end at one o'clock, and that all the
+others end at midnight. That seems to me a humane arrangement, although
+the opinion may only signify that I am growing old.
+
+Another very characteristic phase of Baltimore life, and of southern
+life--at least in many cities--is that, instead of dealing with the
+baker, and the grocer, and the fish-market man around the corner, all
+Baltimore women go to the great market-sheds and do their own selecting
+under what amounts to one great roof.
+
+The Lexington Market, to which my companion and I had the good fortune
+to be taken by a Baltimore lady, is comparable, in its picturesqueness
+with _Les Halles_ of Paris, or the fascinating market in Seattle, where
+the Japanese pile up their fresh vegetables with such charming show of
+taste. The great sheds cover three long blocks, and in the countless
+stall-like shops which they contain may be found everything for the
+table, including flowers to trim it and after-dinner sweets. I doubt
+that any northern housewife knows such a market or such a profusion of
+comestibles. In one stall may be purchased meat, in the next vegetables,
+in the next fish, in the next bread and cake, in the next butter and
+buttermilk, in the next fruit, or game, or flowers, or--at Christmas
+time--tree trimmings. These stalls, with their contents, are duplicated
+over and over again; and if your fair guide be shopping for a dinner
+party, at which two men from out of town are to be initiated into the
+delights of the Baltimore cuisine, she may order up the costly and
+aristocratic _Malacoclemmys_, the diamond-back terrapin, sacred in
+Baltimore as is the Sacred Cod himself in Boston.
+
+The admirable encyclopedia of Messrs. Funk & Wagnall's informs me that
+"the diamond-back salt-water terrapin ... is caught in salt marshes
+along the coast from New England to Texas, _the finest being those of
+the Massachusetts and the northern coasts_." The italics are mine; and
+upon the italicized passage I expect the mayor and town council of
+Baltimore, or even the Government of the State of Maryland, to proceed
+against Messrs. Funk & Wagnalls, whose valuable volumes should forthwith
+be placed upon the State's _index expurgatorius_.
+
+Of a marketman I obtained the following lore concerning the tortoise of
+the terrapin species:
+
+In the Baltimore markets four kinds of terrapin are sold--not counting
+muskrat, which is sometimes disguised with sauce and sherry and served
+as a substitute. The cheapest and toughest terrapin is known as the
+"slider." Slightly superior to the "slider" is the "fat-back,"
+measuring, usually, about nine or ten inches in length, and costing, at
+retail, fifty cents to a dollar, according to season and demand.
+Somewhat better than the "fat-back," but of about the same size and
+cost, is the "golden-stripe" terrapin; but all these are the merest poor
+relations of the diamond-back. Some diamond-back terrapin are supplied
+for the Baltimore market from North Carolina, but these, my marketman
+assured me, are inferior to those of Chesapeake Bay. (Everything in, or
+from, North Carolina seems to be inferior, according to the people of
+the other Southern States.)
+
+Although there is a closed season for terrapin, the value of the
+diamond-back causes him to be relentlessly hunted during the open
+season, with the result that, like the delectable lobster, he is
+passing. As the foolish lobster-fishermen of northern New England are
+killing the goose--or, rather, the crustacean--that lays the golden
+eggs, so are the terrapin hunters of the Chesapeake. Two or three
+decades ago, lobster and terrapin alike were eaten in the regions of
+their abundance as cheap food. One Baltimore lady told me that her
+father's slaves, on an Eastern Shore plantation, used to eat terrapin.
+Yet behold the cost of the precious diamond-back to-day! In his smaller
+sizes, according to my marketman, he is worth about a dollar an inch,
+while when grown to fair proportions he costs as much as a railroad
+ticket from Baltimore to Chicago. And for my part I would about as soon
+eat the ticket as the terrapin.
+
+Of a number of other odd items which help to give Baltimore distinct
+flavor I find the following in my notebooks:
+
+There are good street railways; also 'bus lines operated by the United
+Railways Company. Under the terms of its charter this company was
+originally obliged to turn over to the city thirteen per cent. of its
+gross income, to be expended upon the upkeep of parks. Of late years the
+amount has been reduced to nine per cent. The parks are admirable.
+
+Freight rates from the west to Baltimore are, I am informed, enough
+lower than freight rates to New York, Boston, or Philadelphia, to give
+Baltimore a decided advantage as a point of export. Also she is
+admirably situated as to sources of coal supply. (I do not care much
+for the last two items, myself, but put them in to please the Chamber of
+Commerce.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is the habit of my companion and myself, when visiting strange
+cities, to ask for interesting eating-places of one sort or another. In
+Baltimore there seems to be no choice but to take meals in
+hotels--unless one may wish to go to the Dutch Tea room or the Woman's
+Exchange for a shoppers' lunch, and to see (in the latter establishment)
+great numbers of ladies sitting upon tall stools and eating at a
+lunch-counter--a somewhat curious spectacle, perhaps, but neither
+pleasing to the eye nor thrilling to the senses.
+
+The nearest thing to "character" which I found in a Baltimore
+eating-place was at an establishment known as Kelly's Oyster House, a
+place in a dark quarter of the town. It had the all-night look about it,
+and the negro waiters showed themselves not unacquainted with certain of
+the city's gilded youth. Kelly's is a sort of southern version of
+"Jack's"--if you know Jack's. But I don't think Jack's has any flight of
+stairs to fall down, such as Kelly's has.
+
+The dining rooms of the various hotels are considerably used, one
+judges, by the citizens of Baltimore. The Kernan Hotel, which we visited
+one night after the theater, looked like Broadway. Tables were crowded
+together and there was dancing between them--and between mouthfuls. So,
+too, at the Belvedere, which is used considerably by Baltimore's gay
+and fashionable people.
+
+My companion and I stayed at the Belvedere and found it a good hotel,
+albeit one which has, I think, become a shade too well accustomed to
+being called good. Perhaps because of a city ordinance, perhaps because
+the waiters want to go to bed, they have a trick, in the Belvedere
+dining-room, during the cold weather, of opening the windows and
+freezing out such dilatory supper-guests as would fain sit up and talk.
+This is a system even more effective than the ancient one of mopping up
+the floors, piling chairs upon the tables, and turning out enough lights
+to make the room dull. A good post-midnight conversationalist--and
+Baltimore is not without them--can stand mops, buckets, and dim lights,
+but turn cold drafts upon his back and he gives up, sends for his coat,
+buttons it about his paunch and goes sadly home.
+
+It is fitting that last of all should be mentioned the man who views you
+with keen eye as you arrive in Baltimore, and who watches you depart. If
+you are in Baltimore he knows it. And when you go away he knows that,
+too. Also, during racing season, he knows whether you bet, and whether
+you won or lost. He is always at the station and always at the race
+track, and if you don't belong in Baltimore he is aware of it the
+instant he sets eyes upon you, because he knows every man, woman, child,
+and dog in Baltimore, and they all know him. If you are a Baltimorean
+you are already aware that I refer to the sapient McNeal, policeman at
+the Union Station.
+
+McNeal and Cardinal Gibbons are, I take it, the two preëminent figures
+of the city. Their duties, I admit, are not alike, but each performs his
+duties with discretion, with devotion, with distinction. The latter has
+already celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of his nomination as
+cardinal, but the former is well on the way toward his fortieth
+anniversary as officer at the Union Station.
+
+McNeal is an artist. He loves his work. And when his day off comes and
+he puts on citizen's clothing and goes out for a good time, where do you
+suppose he goes?
+
+Why down to the station, of course, to talk things over with the man who
+is relieving him!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+DOUGHOREGAN MANOR AND THE CARROLLS
+
+
+If I am to be honest about the South, and about myself--and I propose to
+be--I must admit that, though I approached the fabled land in a most
+friendly spirit, I had nevertheless become a little tired of the
+southern family tree, the southern ancestral hall, and the old southern
+negro servant of stage and story, and just a little skeptical about
+them. Almost unconsciously, at first, I had begun to wonder whether,
+instead of being things of actuality, they were not, rather, a mere set
+of romantic trade-marks, so to speak; symbols signifying the South as
+the butler with side whiskers signifies English comedy; as "Her" visit
+to "His" rooms, in the third act, signifies English drama; or as double
+doorways in a paneled "set" signify French farce.
+
+Furthermore, it had occurred to me that of persons of southern accent,
+or merely southern extraction, whom I had encountered in the North, a
+strangely high percentage were not only of "fine old southern family,"
+but of peculiarly tenacious purpose in respect to having the matter
+understood.
+
+I cannot pretend to say when the "professional Southerner," as we know
+him in New York, began to operate, nor shall I attempt to place the
+literary blame for his existence--as Mark Twain attempted to place upon
+Sir Walter Scott the blame for southern "chivalry," and almost for the
+Civil War itself. Let me merely say, then, that I should not be
+surprised to learn that "Colonel Carter of Cartersville"--that lovable
+old fraud who did not mean to be a fraud at all, but whose naďveté
+passed the bounds of human credulity--was not far removed from the
+bottom of the matter.
+
+In the tenor of these sentiments my companion shared--though I should
+add that he complained bitterly about agreeing with me, saying that with
+hats alike, and overcoats alike, and trunks alike, and suitcases alike,
+we already resembled two members of a minstrel troupe, and that now
+since we were beginning to think alike, through traveling so much
+together, our friends would not be able to tell us apart when we got
+home again--in spite of this he admitted to the same suspicion of the
+South as I expressed. Wherefore we entered the region like a pair of
+agnostics entering the great beyond: skeptical, but ready to be "shown."
+
+It was with the generous purpose of "showing" us that a Baltimore friend
+of ours called for us one day with his motor car and was presently
+wafting us over the good oiled roads of Maryland, through sweet, rolling
+country, which seemed to have been made to be ridden over upon
+horseback.
+
+It was autumn, but though the chill of northern autumn was in the air,
+the coloring was not so high in key as in New York or New England, the
+foliage being less brilliant, but rich with subtle harmonies of brown
+and green, blending softly together as in a faded tapestry, and giving
+the landscape an expression of brooding tenderness.
+
+After passing through Ellicott City, an old, shambling town quite out of
+character with its new-sounding name, which has such a western ring to
+it, we traversed for several miles the old Frederick Turnpike--formerly
+a national highway between East and West--swooping up and down over a
+series of little hills and vales, and at length turned off into a
+private road winding through a venerable forest, which was like an old
+Gothic cathedral with its pavement of brown leaves and its tree-trunk
+columns, tall, gray, and slender.
+
+When we had progressed for perhaps a mile, we emerged upon a slight
+eminence commanding a broad view of meadow and of woodland, and in turn
+commanded by a great house.
+
+The house was of buff-colored brick. It was low and very long, with
+wings extending from its central structure like beautiful arms flung
+wide in welcome, and at the end of each a building like an ornament
+balanced in an outstretched hand. The graceful central portico, rising
+by several easy steps from the driveway level, the long line of cornice,
+the window sashes, the delicate wooden railing surmounting the roof, the
+charming little tower which so gracefully held its place above the
+geometrical center of the house, the bell tower crowning one wing at its
+extremity--all these were white.
+
+No combination of colors can be lovelier, in such a house, than
+yellow-buff and white, provided they be brightened by some notes of
+green; and these notes were not lacking, for several aged elms,
+occupying symmetrical positions with regard to the house, seemed to gaze
+down upon it with the adoration of a group of mothers, aunts, and
+grandmothers, as they held their soft draperies protectively above it.
+The green of the low terrace--called a "haha," supposedly with reference
+to the mirth-provoking possibilities of an accidental step over the
+edge--did not reach the base of the buff walls, but was lost in a fringe
+of clustering shrubbery, from which patches of lustrous English ivy
+clambered upward over the brick, to lay strong, mischievous fingers upon
+the blinds of certain second-story windows. The blinds were of course
+green; green blinds being as necessary to an American window as
+eyelashes to an eye.
+
+Immediately before the portico and centering upon it the drive swung in
+a spacious circle, from which there broke, at a point directly opposite
+the portico, an avenue, straight and long as a rifle range, and lovely
+as the loveliest of New England village greens. Down the middle of this
+broad way, between grass borders each as wide as a great boulevard, and
+double rows of patriarchal trees, ran a road which, in the old days,
+continued straight to Annapolis, thirty or more miles away, where was
+the town house of the builder of this manor. As it stands to-day the
+avenue is less than half a mile long, but whatever its length, and
+whether one look down it from the house, or up the gentle grade from the
+far end, to where the converging lines of grass and foliage and sky melt
+into the house, it has about it something of unreality, something of
+enchantment, something of that quality one finds in the rhapsodic
+landscapes of those poet painters who dream of distant shimmering
+palaces and supernal vistas peopled by fauns and nymphs dancing amid the
+trunks of giant trees whose luxuriant dark tops are contoured like the
+cumulus white clouds floating above them.
+
+There is nothing "baronial," nothing arrogant, about Doughoregan Manor,
+for though the house is noble, its nobility, consisting in spaciousness,
+simplicity, and grace combined with age, fits well into what, it seems
+to me, should be the architectural ideals of a republic. No house could
+be freer of unessential embellishment; in detail it is plain almost to
+severity; yet the full impression that it gives, far from being austere,
+is of friendliness and hospitality. An approachable sort of house, a
+"homelike" house, it is perhaps less "imposing" than some other
+mansions, coeval with it, in Virginia, in Annapolis, and in Charleston;
+and yet it is as impressive, in its own way, as Warwick Castle, or
+Hurstmonceaux, or Loches, or Chinon, or Chenonceaux, or Heidelberg--not
+that it is so vast, that it has glowering battlements, or that it stuns
+the eye, but for precisely opposite reasons: because it is a consummate
+expression of republican cultivation, of a fine old American home, and
+of the fine old American gentleman who built it, and whose descendants
+inhabit it to-day: Charles Carroll of Carrollton, last to survive of
+those who signed the Declaration of Independence.
+
+The first Charles Carroll, known in the family as "the Settler," came
+from Ireland in 1688, and became a great landowner in Maryland. He was a
+highly educated gentleman and a Roman Catholic, as have also been his
+descendants. He acted as agent for Lord Baltimore.
+
+His son, Charles Carroll of Annapolis, or "Breakneck Carroll" (so called
+because he was killed by a fall from the steps of his house), built the
+Carroll mansion at Annapolis, now the property of the Redemptionist
+Order.
+
+The third and most famous member of the family was Charles Carroll of
+Carrollton, "the Signer," builder of the manor house at
+Doughoregan--which, by the way, derives its name from a combination of
+the old Irish words _dough_, meaning "house" or "court," and _O'Ragan_,
+meaning "of the King"; the whole being pronounced, as with a slight
+brogue, "Doo-ray-gan," the accent falling on the middle syllable--this
+Charles Carroll, "the Signer," most famous of his line, was
+"Breakneck's" only son. When eight years old he was sent to France to be
+educated by the Jesuits. He spent six years at Saint-Omer, one at
+Rheims, two at the College of Louis le Grand, one at Bourges, where he
+studied civil law, and after some further time in college in Paris went
+to London, entered the Middle Temple and there worked at the common law
+until his return to Maryland in 1765.
+
+Although Maryland was founded by the Roman Catholic Baron Baltimore on a
+basis of religious toleration, the Church of England had later come to
+be the established church in the British colonies in America, and Roman
+Catholics were unjustly used, being disfranchised, taxed for the support
+of the English Church, and denied the right to establish schools or
+churches of their own, to celebrate the Mass, or to bear arms--the
+bearing of arms having been "at that time the insignia of social
+position and gentle breeding."
+
+Finding this situation well-nigh intolerable, Carroll of Carrollton,
+already a man of great wealth, joined with his cousin, Father John
+Carroll, who later became first Archbishop of Baltimore (for many years
+the only Roman Catholic diocese in the United States, embracing all
+States and Territories), in an appeal to the King of France for a grant
+of land in what is now Arkansas, but was then a part of Louisiana, this
+land to be used as a refuge for Roman Catholics and Jesuits, whom the
+Carrolls proposed to lead thither precisely as Cecilius Calvert, Lord
+Baltimore, had led them to Maryland to escape persecution.
+
+The Roman Catholics were not, however, by this time the only American
+colonists who felt themselves abused; the whole country was chafing, and
+the seeds of revolution were beginning to show their red sprouts.
+
+It might have been expected that Mr. Carroll, being the richest man in
+the country, would hesitate at rebellion, but he did not. Unlike some of
+our present-day citizens of foreign extraction, and in circumstances
+involving not merely sentiment, but property and perhaps life, he showed
+no tendency to split his Americanism, but boldly threw his noble old
+cocked hat into the ring. Nor did he require a Roosevelt to make his
+duty clear to him.
+
+In 1775 Mr. Carroll was a delegate to the Revolutionary Convention of
+Maryland; in 1776 he went with three other commissioners (Benjamin
+Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Father John Carroll) to try to induce the
+Canadian colonies to join in the revolt; and soon after his return from
+this unsuccessful journey he signed the Declaration of Independence. Of
+the circumstances of the signing the late Robert C. Winthrop of Boston
+gave the following description:
+
+     "Will you sign?" said Hancock to Charles Carroll.
+
+     "Most willingly," was the reply.
+
+     "There goes two millions with the dash of a pen," says one of those
+     standing by; while another remarks: "Oh, Carroll, you will get off,
+     there are so many Charles Carrolls."
+
+     And then we may see him stepping back to the desk and putting that
+     addition "of Carrollton" to his name, which will designate him
+     forever, and be a prouder title of nobility than those in the
+     peerage of Great Britain, which were afterward adorned by his
+     accomplished and fascinating granddaughters.
+
+Some doubt has been cast upon this tale by the fact that papers in
+possession of the Carroll family prove that Mr. Carroll was wont to sign
+as "of Carrollton" long before the Declaration. Further, it is recorded
+that John H.B. Latrobe, Mr. Carroll's contemporaneous biographer, never
+heard the story from the subject of his writings.
+
+Nevertheless, I believe that it is true, for it seems to me likely that
+though Mr. Carroll used the subscription "of Carrollton" in conducting
+his affairs at home, where there was chance for confusion between his
+son Charles, his cousin Charles, and himself, he might well have been
+inclined to omit it from a public document, as to the signers of which
+there could be no confusion. Further, the fact that he never told the
+story to Latrobe does not invalidate it, for as every man (and every
+man's wife) knows, men do not remember to tell everything to their
+wives, and it is still less likely that they tell everything to their
+biographers. Further still, Mr. Winthrop visited Mr. Carroll just before
+the latter's death, and as he certainly did not invent the story it
+seems probable that he got it from "the Signer" himself. Last, I like
+the story and intend to believe it anyway--which, it occurs to me, is
+the best reason of all, and the one most resembling my reason for being
+more or less Episcopalian and Republican.
+
+Latrobe tells us that Mr. Carroll was, in his old age, "a small,
+attenuated old man, with a prominent nose and somewhat receding chin,
+and small eyes that sparkled when he was interested in conversation. His
+head was small and his hair white, rather long and silky, while his face
+and forehead were seamed with wrinkles."
+
+From the same source, and others, we glean the information that he was a
+charming and courteous gentleman, that he practised early rising and
+early retiring, was regular at meals, and at morning and evening prayer
+in the chapel, that he took cold baths and rode horseback, and that for
+several hours each day he read the Greek, Latin, English, or French
+classics.
+
+At the age of eighty-three he rode a horse in a procession in Baltimore,
+carrying in one hand a copy of the Declaration of Independence; and six
+years later, when by that strange freak of chance ex-Presidents Adams
+and Jefferson died simultaneously on July 4, leaving Mr. Carroll the
+last surviving signer of the Declaration, he took part in a memorial
+parade and service in their memory. In 1826, at the age of eighty-nine,
+he was elected a director of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company, and
+at the age of ninety he laid the foundation stone marking the
+commencement of that railroad--the first important one in the United
+States. We are told that at this time Mr. Carroll was erect in carriage
+and that he could see and hear as well as most men. In 1832, having
+lived to within five years of a full century, having been active in the
+Revolution, having seen the War of 1812, he died less than thirty years
+before the outbreak of the Civil War, and was buried in the chapel of
+the manor house.
+
+This chapel, the like of which does not, so far as I know, exist in any
+other American house, is the burial place of a number of the Carrolls.
+It is used to-day, regular Sunday services being held for the people of
+the neighborhood. An alcove to the south of the chancel contains seats
+for members of the family, and has access to the main portion of the
+house by a passageway which passes the bedroom known as the Cardinal's
+room, a large chamber furnished with massive old pieces of mahogany and
+decorated in red. This room has been occupied by Lafayette, by John
+Carroll, cousin of "the Signer" and first archbishop of Baltimore, and
+by Cardinal Gibbons. It is on the ground floor and its windows command
+the series of terraces, with their plantings of old box, which slope
+away to gardens more than a century old.
+
+Viewed in one light Doughoregan Manor is a monument, in another it is a
+treasure house of ancient portraits and furniture and silver, but above
+all it is a home. The beautifully proportioned dining-room, the wide
+hall which passes through the house from the front portico to another
+overlooking the terraces and gardens at the back, the old shadowy
+library with its tree-calf bindings, the sunny breakfast room, the
+spacious bedchambers with their four-posters and their cheerful
+chintzes, the big bright shiny pantries and kitchens, all have that
+pleasant, easy air which comes of being lived in, and which is never
+attained in a "show place" which is merely a "show place" and nothing
+more. No dining table at which great personages have dined in the past
+has the charm of one the use of which has been steadily continued; no
+old chair but is better for being sat in; no ancient Sheffield tea
+service but gains immeasurably in charm from being used for tea to-day;
+no old Venetian mirror but what is lovelier for reflecting the beauties
+of the present as it reflected those of the past; no little old-time
+crib but what is better for a modern baby in it. It is pleasant,
+therefore, to report that, like all other things the house contains, the
+crib at Doughoregan Manor was being used when we were there, for in it
+rested the baby son of the house; by name Charles, and of his line the
+ninth. Further, it may be observed that from his youthful parents, Mr.
+and Mrs. Charles Bancroft Carroll, present master and mistress of the
+place, Master Charles seemed to have inherited certain amiable traits.
+Indeed, in some respects, he outdoes his parents. For example, where the
+father and mother were cordial, the son chewed ruminatively upon his
+fingers and fastened upon my companion a gaze not merely interested, but
+expressive of enraptured astonishment. Likewise, though his parents
+received us kindly, they did not crow and gurgle with delight; and
+though, on our departure, they said that we might come again, they
+neither waved their hands nor yet blew bubbles.
+
+Though the house has been "done over" four times, and though the
+paneling was torn out of one room to make way for wall paper when wall
+paper came into style, everything has now been restored, and the place
+stands to-day to all intents and purposes exactly as it was. That so few
+changes were ever made in it, that it weathered successfully, with its
+contents, the disastrous period of Eastlake furniture and the American
+mansard roof, is a great credit to the Carroll family, and it is
+delightful to see such a house in the possession of those who can love
+it as it deserves to be loved, and preserve it as it deserves to be
+preserved.
+
+Mr. Charles Bancroft Carroll, who is a graduate of Annapolis and a
+grandson of the late Governor John Lee Carroll of Maryland, now farms
+some twenty-four hundred acres of the five or six thousand which
+surround the manor house. He raises blooded cattle and horses, and,
+though he rides with the Elkridge Hunt, also keeps his own pack and is
+starting the Howard County Hounds, an organization that will hunt the
+country around the manor, which is full of foxes.
+
+Of the innumerable family portraits contained in the house not a few are
+valuable and almost all are pleasing. When I remarked upon the high
+average of good looks among his progenitors, Mr. Carroll smiled in
+agreement, saying: "Yes, I'm proud of these pictures of my ancestors;
+most people's ancestors seem to have looked like the dickens."
+
+Among these noteworthy family portraits I recollect one of "the Signer"
+as a boy, standing on the shore and watching a ship sail out to sea; one
+of the three beautiful Caton sisters, his granddaughters, who lived at
+Brooklandwood, in the Green Spring Valley, now the home of Mr. Isaac
+Emerson; one of Charles Carroll of Homewood, son of "the Signer"; and
+one of Governor John Lee Carroll, who was born at Homewood.
+
+The Caton sisters and Charles Carroll of Homewood supply to the Carroll
+family archives that picturesqueness which the history of every old
+family should possess; the former contributing beauty, the latter dash
+and extravagance, those qualities so annoying in a living relative, but
+so delightfully suggestive in an ancestor long defunct. If anything more
+be needed to round out the composition, it is furnished by the ghosts of
+Doughoregan Manor: an old housekeeper with jingling keys, and an
+invisible coach, the wheels of which are heard upon the driveway before
+the death of any member of the family.
+
+Of the Caton sisters there were four, but because one of them, Mrs.
+McTavish, stayed at home and made the life of her grandfather happy, we
+do not hear so much of her as of the other three, who were
+internationally famous for their pulchritude, and were known in England
+as "the Three American Graces." All three married British peers, one
+becoming Marchioness of Wellesley, another Duchess of Leeds, while the
+third became the wife of Lord Stafford, one of the noblemen embalmed in
+verse by Fitz-Greene Halleck:
+
+    Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt,
+    The Duke of Norfolk deals in malt,
+    The Douglas in red herrings.
+
+As for Charles Carroll of Homewood, he was handsome, charming, and
+athletic, and, as indicated in letters written to him by his father,
+caused that old gentleman a good deal of anxiety. It is said that at
+one time--perhaps during some period of estrangment from his wealthy
+parent--he acted as a fencing master in Baltimore.
+
+At the age of twenty-five he settled down--or let us hope he did--for he
+married Harriet Chew, whose sister "Peggy," Mrs. John Eager Howard of
+Baltimore, was a celebrated belle, and of whose own charm we may judge
+by the fact that General Washington asked her to remain in the room
+while he sat to Gilbert Stuart, declaring that her presence there would
+cause his countenance to "wear its most agreeable expression." The
+famous portrait painted under these felicitous conditions hung in the
+White House when, in 1814, the British marched on Washington; but when
+they took the city and burned the White House, the portrait did not
+perish with it, for history records that Dolly Madison carried it to
+safety, and along with it the original draft of the Declaration of
+Independence.
+
+Charles Carroll of Homewood died before his father, "the Signer," but
+the house, Homewood, which the latter built for his son and
+daughter-in-law in 1809, stands to-day near the Baltimore city limits,
+at the side of Charles Street Boulevard, amid pleasant modern houses,
+many of which are of a design not out of harmony with the old mansion.
+Though not comparable in size with the manor house at Doughoregan,
+Homewood is an even more perfect house, being one of the finest examples
+of Georgian architecture to be found in the entire country. The fate of
+this house is hardly less fortunate than that of the paternal manor,
+for, with its surrounding lands, it has come into the possession of
+Johns Hopkins University. The fields of Homewood now form the campus and
+grounds of that excellent seat of learning, and the trustees of the
+university have not merely preserved the residence, using it as a
+faculty club, but have had the inspiration to find in it the
+architectural motif for the entire group of new college buildings, so
+that the campus may be likened to a bracelet wrought as a setting for
+this jewel of a house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A RARE OLD TOWN
+
+
+The drive from Baltimore to the sweet, slumbering city of Annapolis is
+over a good road, but through barren country. Taken in the crisp days of
+autumn, by a northern visitor sufficiently misguided to have supposed
+that beyond Mason and Dixon's Line the winters are tropical it may prove
+an uncomfortable drive--unless he be able to borrow a fur overcoat. It
+was on this drive that my disillusionment concerning the fall and winter
+climate of the South began, for, wearing two cloth overcoats, one over
+the other, I yet suffered agonies from cold. The sun shone down upon the
+open automobile in which we tore along, but its rays were no competitors
+for the biting wind. Through lap robes, cloth caps, and successive
+layers of clothing, and around the edges of goggles, fine little frozen
+fangs found their way, like the pliable beaks of a race of gigantic,
+fabulous mosquitoes from the Arctic regions. I have driven an open car
+over the New England snows for miles in zero weather, and been warm by
+comparison, because I was prepared.
+
+My former erroneous ideas as to the southern climate may be shared by
+others, and it is therefore well, perhaps, to enlarge a little bit upon
+the subject. Never, except during a winter passed in a stone
+tile-floored villa on the island of Capri, whither I went to escape the
+cold, have I been so conscious of it, as during fall, winter, and spring
+in the South.
+
+In the hotels of the South one may keep warm in cold weather, but in
+private homes it is not always possible to do so, for the popular
+illusion that the "sunny South" is of a uniformly temperate climate in
+the winter persists nowhere more violently than in the South itself.
+Many a house in Virginia, let alone the other States farther down the
+map, is without a furnace, and winter life in such houses, with their
+ineffectual wood fires, is like life in a refrigerator tempered by the
+glow of a safety match. As in Italy and Spain, so in the South it is
+often warmer outdoors than in; more than once during my southern voyage
+I was tempted to resume the habit, acquired in Capri, of wearing an
+overcoat in the house and taking it off on going out into the sunshine.
+True, in Capri we had roses blooming in the garden on Christmas Day, but
+that circumstance, far from proving warmth, merely proved the hardiness
+of roses. So, in the far South--excepting Florida and perhaps a strip of
+the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama--the blooming of
+flowers in the winter does not prove that "Palm Beach suits" and panama
+hats invariably make a desirable uniform.
+
+Furthermore, I am inclined to believe that because some southern winter
+days are warm and others cold, a Northerner feels cold in the South
+more than he feels the corresponding temperature at home--on somewhat
+the principle which caused the Italians who went with the Duke of the
+Abruzzi on his polar expedition to withstand cold more successfully than
+did the Scandinavians.
+
+Of the southern summer I have no experience, but I have been repeatedly
+assured that certain of the southern beaches are nearly, if not quite,
+as comfortable in hot weather as are those of New Jersey or Long Island,
+while in numerous southern mountain retreats one may be fairly cool
+through the hot months--a fact which spells fortune for the hotel
+keepers of such high-perched resorts as Asheville, White Sulphur
+Springs, and the Hot Springs of Virginia, who have their houses full of
+Northerners in winter and Southerners in summer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The experience of arrival in Annapolis, delightful in any weather and at
+any time of year, gives one a satisfaction almost ecstatic after a cold,
+windy automobile ride such as we had suffered. To ache for the shelter
+of almost any town, or any sort of building, and, with such yearnings,
+to arrive in this dreamy city, whose mild air seems to be compounded
+from fresh winds off a glittering blue sea, arrested by the barricade of
+ancient hospitable-looking houses, warmed by the glow of their sun-baked
+red brick, and freighted with a ghostly fragrance, as from the phantoms
+of the rose gardens of a century or two ago--to arrive, frigid and
+forlorn in such a haven, to drink a cup of tea in the old Paca house
+(now a hotel), is to experience heaven after purgatory. For there is no
+town that I know whose very house fronts hold out to the stranger that
+warm, old-fashioned welcome that Annapolis seems to give.
+
+The Paca house, which as a hotel has acquired the name Carvel Hall, is
+the house that Winston Churchill had in mind as the Manners house, of
+his novel "Richard Carvel." A good idea of the house, as it was, may be
+obtained by visiting the Brice house, next door, for the two are almost
+twins. When Mr. Churchill was a cadet at Annapolis, before the modern
+part of the Carvel Hall hotel was built, there were the remains of
+terraced gardens back of the old mansion, stepping down to an old spring
+house, and a rivulet which flowed through the grounds was full of
+watercress. The book describes a party at the house and in these
+gardens. The Chase house on Maryland Avenue was the one Mr. Churchill
+thought of as the home of Lionel Carvel, and he described the view from
+upper windows of this house, over the Harwood house, across the way, to
+the Severn.
+
+Annapolis, Baedeker tells me, was the first chartered city in the United
+States, having been granted its charter by Queen Anne considerably more
+than two centuries ago. It is, as every little boy and girl should know,
+the capital of Maryland, and is built around a little hill upon the top
+of which stands the old State House in which Washington surrendered his
+commission and in which met the first Constitutional Convention.
+
+In its prime Annapolis was nearly as large a city as it is to-day, but
+that is not saying a great deal, for at the present time it has not so
+many inhabitants as Amarillo, Texas, or Brazil, Indiana.
+
+Nevertheless, the life of Annapolis in colonial days, and in the days
+which followed them, was very brilliant, and we learn from the diary of
+General Washington and from the writings of amazed Englishmen and
+Frenchmen who visited the city in its period of glory that there were
+dinners and balls night after night, that the theater was encouraged in
+Annapolis more than in any other city, that the race meets compared with
+English race meets both as to the quality of the horses and of the
+fashionable attendance, that there were sixteen clubs, that the women of
+the city were beautiful, charming, and superbly dressed, that slaves in
+sumptuous liveries were to be seen about the streets, that certain
+gentlemen paid calls in barges which were rowed by half a dozen or more
+blacks, in uniform, and that the perpetual hospitality of the great
+houses was gorgeous and extravagant.
+
+The houses hint of these things. If you have seen the best old brick
+mansions of New England, and will imagine them more beautifully
+proportioned, set off by balancing wings and having infinitely finer
+details as to doorways, windows, porticos, and also as to wood carvings
+and fixtures within--as, for instance, the beautiful silver latches and
+hinges of the Chase house at Annapolis--you will gather something of the
+flavor of these old Southern homes. For though such venerable mansions
+as the Chase, Paca, Brice, Hammond, Ridout, and Bordley houses, in
+Annapolis, are not without family resemblance to the best New England
+colonial houses, the resemblance is of a kind to emphasize the
+differences, not only between the mansions of the North and South, but
+between the builders of them. The contrast is subtle, but marked.
+
+Your New England house, beautiful as it is, is stamped with austere
+simplicity. The man who built it was probably a scholar but he was
+almost certainly a Calvinist. He habited himself in black and was served
+by serving maids, instead of slaves in livery. If a woman was not
+flat-chested and forlorn, he was prone to regard her as the devil
+masquerading for the downfall of man--and no doubt with some justice,
+too. Night and morning he presided at family prayers, the purpose of
+which was to impress upon his family and servants that to have a good
+time was wicked, and that to be gay in this life meant hell-fire and
+damnation in the next.
+
+Upon this pious person his cousin of Annapolis looked with something not
+unlike contempt; for the latter, though he too was a scholar, possessed
+the sort of scholarliness which takes into account beauty and the lore
+of cosmopolitanism. He may have been religious or he may not have been,
+but if religious he demanded something handsome, something stylish, in
+his religion, as he did also in his residence, in his wife, his sons,
+his daughters, his horses, coaches, dinners, wines, and slaves. He did
+things with a flourish, and was not beset by a perpetual consciousness
+and fear of hell. He approved of pretty women; he made love to them; he
+married them; he was the father of them. His pretty daughters married
+men who also admired pretty women, and became the mothers of other
+pretty women, who became, in turn, the mothers and grandmothers of the
+pretty women of the South to-day.
+
+Your old-time Annapolis gentleman's ideas of a republic were far indeed
+from those now current, for he understood perfectly the difference
+between a republic and a democracy--a difference which is not now so
+well understood. He believed that the people should elect the heads of
+the government, but he also believed that these heads should be elected
+from his own class, and that, having voted, the people should go about
+their business, trusting their betters to run the country as it should
+be run.
+
+This, at least, is my picture of the old aristocrats of Maryland,
+Virginia, and South Carolina, as conveyed to me by what I have seen of
+their houses and possessions and what I have read of their mode of life.
+They were the early princes of the Republic and by all odds its most
+picturesque figures.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Very different from the spirit of appreciation and emulation shown by
+the trustees of Johns Hopkins University with regard to the old house,
+Homewood, in Baltimore, is that manifested in the architecture of the
+Naval Academy at Annapolis, where, in a city fairly flooded with
+examples of buildings, both beautiful and typically American,
+architectural hints were ignored, and there were erected great stone
+structures whose chief characteristics are size, solidity, and the look
+of being "government property." The main buildings of the Academy, with
+the exception of the chapel, suggest the sort of sublimated penitentiary
+that Mr. Thomas Mott Osborne might, one fancies, construct under a
+carte-blanche authorization, while the chapel, the huge dome of which is
+visible to all the country round, makes one think of a monstrous wedding
+cake fashioned in the form of a building and covered with white and
+yellow frosting in ornamental patterns.
+
+This chapel, one imagines, may have been inspired by the Invalides in
+Paris, but of the Invalides it falls far short. I know nothing of the
+history of the building, but it is easy to believe that the original
+intention may have been to place at the center of it, under the dome, a
+great well, over the parapet of which might have been seen the
+sarcophagus of John Paul Jones, in the crypt. One prefers to think that
+the architect had some such plan; for the crypt, as at present arranged,
+is hardly more than a dark cellar, approached by what seems to be a
+flight of humble back stairs. To descend into it, and find there the
+great marble coffin with its bronze dolphins, is not unlike going down
+into the cellar of a residence and there discovering the family silver
+reposing in the coal-bin.
+
+In this connection it is interesting to recall the fact that our
+sometimes piratical and always brilliant Revolutionary naval hero died
+in Paris, and that until a few years ago his resting place was unknown.
+The reader will remember that while General Horace Porter was American
+ambassador to France a search was instituted for the remains of John
+Paul Jones, the greater part of the work having been conducted by
+Colonel H. Baily Blanchard, then first secretary of the Embassy,
+assisted by the ambassador and Mr. Henry Vignaud, dean of secretaries of
+embassy. The resting place of Jones was finally discovered in an
+abandoned cemetery in the city of Paris, over which houses had been
+built. The body was contained in a leaden casket and was preserved in
+alcohol so that identification was easily accomplished by means of a
+contemporaneous likeness of Jones, and also by means of measurements
+taken from Houdin's bust. The remains were accorded military honors in
+Paris, and were brought to this country on a war vessel.
+
+Why the crypt at Annapolis is as it is, I do not know, but in my own
+purely imaginary picture of what happened, I see the architect's plans
+for a heroic display of Jones's tomb knocked on the head by some
+"practical man," some worthy dunce in the Navy Department, whom I can
+imagine as protesting: "But no! We can't take up space at the center of
+the chapel for any such purpose. It must be floored over to make room
+for pews. Otherwise where will the cadets sit?"
+
+So, although the grounds of the academy, with their lawns, and aged
+trees, and squirrels, and cadets, are charming, and although the solemn
+and industrious Baedeker assures me that the academy is the "chief lion"
+of Annapolis, and although I know that it is a great school, and that we
+need another like it in order properly to officer our navy, I prefer the
+old town with its old houses, and old streets bearing such reminiscent
+names as Hanover, Prince George, and Duke of Gloucester.
+
+For certain slang expressions used by cadets I am indebted to a member
+of the corps. From this admiral-to-be I learn that a "bird" or "wazzo"
+is a man or boy; that a "pap sheet" is a report covering delinquencies,
+and that to "hit the pap" is to be reported for delinquency; that
+"steam" is marine engineering, and to be "bilged for juice" is to fail
+in examinations in electrical engineering--to get an "unsat," or
+unsatisfactory mark, or even a "zip" or "swabo," which is a zero. Cadets
+do not escort girls to dances, but "drag" them; a girl is a "drag," and
+a "heavy drag" or "brick" is an unattractive girl who must be taken to a
+dance. A "sleuth" or "jimmylegs" is a night watchman, and to be "ragged"
+is to be caught. Mess-hall waiters are sometimes called "mokes," while
+at other times the names of certain exalted dignitaries of the Navy
+Department, or of the academy, are applied to them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I shall never cease to regret that dread of the cold kept us from seeing
+ancient Whitehall, a few miles from Annapolis, which was the residence
+of Governor Horatio Sharpe, and is one of the finest of historic
+American homes; nor shall I, on the other hand, ever cease to rejoice
+that, in spite of cold we did, upon another day, visit Hampton, the rare
+old mansion of the Ridgelys, of Maryland, which stands amid its own five
+thousand acres some dozen miles or so to the north of Baltimore. The
+Ridgelys were, it appears, the great Protestant land barons of this
+region as the Carrolls were the great Catholics, and, like the Carrolls,
+they remain to-day the proprietors of a vast estate and an incomparable
+house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+WE MEET THE HAMPTON GHOST
+
+    There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple;
+    If the ill spirit have so fair a house,
+    Good things will strive to dwell with 't.
+
+    --THE TEMPEST.
+
+
+Hampton is probably the largest of Maryland's old mansions, and the
+beauty of it is more theatrical than the beauty of Doughoregan Manor;
+for although the latter is the older of the two, the former is not only
+spectacular by reason of its spaciousness, the delicacy of its
+architectural details, and the splendor of its dreamlike terraced
+gardens, but also for a look of beautiful, dignified, yet somehow tragic
+age--a look which makes one think of a wonderful old lady; a belle of
+the days of minuets and powdered wigs and patches; a woman no less
+wonderful in her declining years than in her youth, but wonderful in
+another way; a proud old aristocrat, erect and spirited to the last; her
+bedchamber a storehouse of ivory lace and ancient jewelry, her memory a
+storehouse of recollections, like chapters from romantic novels of the
+days when all men were gallant, and all women beautiful: recollections
+of journeys made in the old coach, which is still in the stable, though
+its outriders have been buried in the slaves' burying ground these many
+years; recollections of the opening of Hampton, when, as the story
+goes, gay Captain Charles Ridgely, builder of the house, held a card
+party in the attic to celebrate the event, while his wife, Rebecca
+Dorsey Ridgely, a lady of religious turn, marked the occasion
+simultaneously with a prayer-meeting in the drawing room; of the ball
+given by the Ridgelys in honor of Charles Carroll's granddaughters, the
+exquisite Caton sisters; of hunt meets here, long, long ago, and hunt
+balls which succeeded them; of breakneck rides; of love-making in that
+garden peopled with the ghosts of more than a century of lovers; of
+duels fought at dawn. Of such vague, thrilling tales the old house seems
+to whisper.
+
+Never, from the moment we turned into the tree-lined avenue, leading to
+Hampton, from the moment when I saw the fox hounds rise resentfully out
+of beds which they had dug in drifts of oak leaves in the drive, from
+the moment when I stood beneath the stately portico and heard the bars
+of the shuttered doors being flung back for our admittance--never, from
+my first glimpse of the place, have I been able to dispel the sense of
+unreality I felt while there, and which makes me feel, now, that Hampton
+is not a house that I have seen, but one built by my imagination in the
+course of a particularly charming and convincing dream.
+
+Stained glass windows bearing the Ridgely coat of arms flank the front
+doorway, and likewise the opposing doorway at the end of the enormous
+hall upon which one enters, and the light from these windows gives the
+hall a subdued yet glowing illumination, so that there is something
+spectral about the old chairs and the old portraits with which the walls
+are solidly covered. There are portraits here by Gilbert Stuart and
+other distinguished painters of times gone by, and I particularly
+remember one large canvas showing a beautiful young woman in evening
+dress, her hair hanging in curls beside her cheeks, her tapering fingers
+touching the strings of a harp. She was young then; yet the portrait is
+that of the great-grandmother, or great-great-grandmother, of present
+Ridgelys, and she has lain long in the brick-walled family burying
+ground below the garden. But there beneath the portrait stands the harp
+on which she played.
+
+One might tell endlessly of paneling, of the delicate carving of mantels
+and overmantels, of chairs, tables, desks, and sofas of Chippendale,
+Hepplewhite, Phyfe and Sheraton, yet giving such an inventory one might
+fail utterly to suggest the feeling of that great house, with its sense
+of homelike emptiness, its wealth of old furniture and portraits,
+blending together, in the dim light of a late October afternoon, to form
+shadowy backgrounds for autumnal reverie, or for silent, solitary
+listening--listening to the tales told by the soughing wind outside, to
+the whisper of embers in the fireplace, the slow somber tick of the tall
+clock telling of ages past and passing, the ghostly murmur of the old
+house talking softly to itself.
+
+From the windows of the great dining-room one looks away toward Hampton
+Gate, a favorite meeting place for the Elkridge Hunt, or, at another
+angle, toward the stables where the hunters are kept, the old slave
+cabins, and the overseer's house, with its bell tower--a house nearly
+two hundred years old. But the library is perhaps the more natural
+resting place for the guest, and it looks out over the garden, with its
+enormous descending terraces, its geometrical walks and steps, its
+beautiful old trees, and arbors of ancient box. Such terraces as these
+were never built by paid labor.
+
+We were given tea in the library, our hostess at this function being a
+young lady of five or six years--a granddaughter of Captain John
+Ridgely, present master of Hampton--who, with her pink cheeks, her
+serious eyes and demeanor, looked like a canvas by Sir Joshua come to
+life, as she sat in a large chair and ate a large red apple.
+
+Nor did Bryan, Captain Ridgely's negro butler, fit less admirably into
+the pervasive atmosphere of fiction which enveloped the place. In the
+absence of his master, Bryan did the honors of the old house with a
+style which was not "put on," because it did not have to be put
+on--nature and a good bringing-up having supplied all needs in this
+respect. There was about him none of that affectation of being a graven
+image, which one so often notices in white butlers and footmen imported
+from Europe by rich Americans, and which, of all shams, is one of the
+most false and absurd, as carried out on both sides--for we pretend to
+think these functionaries the deft mechanisms, incapable of thought,
+that they pretend to be; yet all the time we know--and they know we
+know--that they see and hear and think as we do, and that, moreover,
+they are often enough observant cynics whose elaborate gentility is
+assumed for hire, like the signboard of a sandwich man.
+
+Bryan was without these artificial graces. His manner, in showing us the
+house, in telling us about the various portraits, indicated some true
+appreciation of the place and of its contents; and the air he wore of
+natural dignity and courtesy--of being at once acting-host and
+servitor--constituted as graceful a performance in a not altogether easy
+rôle as I have ever seen, and satisfied me, once for all, as to the
+verity of legends concerning the admirable qualities of old-time negro
+servants in the South.
+
+After tea, when fading twilight had deepened the shadows in the house,
+we went up the stairway, past the landing with its window containing the
+armorial bearings of the family in stained glass, and, achieving the
+upper hall, crossed to a great bedchamber, the principal guest room, and
+paused just inside the door.
+
+And now, because of what I am about to relate, I shall give the names of
+those who were present. We were: Dr. Murray P. Brush, A.B., Ph.D.,
+acting Dean of Johns Hopkins University; Dr. John McF. Bergland of
+Baltimore; my companion, Wallace Morgan, illustrator; and myself.
+
+The light had, by this time, melted to a mere faint grayness sifting
+like mist through the many oblong panes of several large windows.
+Nevertheless I could discern that it was a spacious room, and from the
+color of it and certain shadowy lines upon the walls, I judged that it
+was paneled to the ceiling in white-painted wood. I am under the
+impression that it contained a fireplace, and that the great four-post
+bed, standing to the right of the doorway, was placed upon a low
+platform, a step or two above the floor--though of this I am not quite
+certain, the bulk of the bed and the dim light having, perhaps, deceived
+me. The rest of the furniture in the room was dark in color, and massed
+in heavy vague spots against the lighter background of the walls.
+
+Directly before the door, at about the center of the wall against which
+it was backed, stood something which loomed tall and dark, and which I
+took to be either a gigantic clothespress or a closet built into the
+room. Looking past the front of this obstruction, I saw one of the
+windows; the piece of furniture was therefore exhibited sidewise, in
+silhouette.
+
+I do not think that I had definitely thought of ghost stories before,
+and I know that ghosts had not been spoken of, but as I looked into this
+room, and reflected on the long series of persons who had occupied it,
+and on where they were now, and on all the stories that the room must
+have heard, there entered my mind thoughts of the supernatural.
+
+Having taken a step or two into the room, I was a little in advance of
+my three friends, and as these fancies came strongly to me, I spoke over
+my shoulder to one of them, who was at my right and a little behind me,
+saying, half playfully:
+
+"There ought to be ghosts in a room like this."
+
+Hardly had I spoken when without a sound, and swinging very slowly, the
+door of the large piece of furniture before me gently opened. My first
+idea was that the thing must be a closet, built against the wall, with a
+door at the back opening on a passageway, or into the next room, and
+that the little girl whom we had met downstairs had opened it from the
+other side and was coming in.
+
+I fully expected to see her enter. But she did not enter, for, as I
+learned presently, she was in the nursery at the time.
+
+After waiting for an instant to see who was coming, I began to realize
+that there was no one coming; that no one had opened the door; that,
+like an actor picking up a cue, the door had begun to swing immediately
+upon my saying the word "ghosts."
+
+The appropriateness of the coincidence was striking. I turned quickly to
+my friends, who were in conversation behind me, and asked:
+
+"Speaking of ghosts--did you see that door open?"
+
+It is my recollection that none of them had seen it. Certainly not more
+than one of them had, for I remember my feeling of disappointment that
+any one present should have missed so strange a circumstance. Some one
+may have asked what I had seen; at all events I was full of the idea,
+and, indicating the open door, I began to tell what I had seen,
+when--exactly as though the thing were done deliberately to
+circumstantiate my story--with the slow, steady movement of a heavy door
+pushed by a feeble hand, the other portal of the huge cabinet swung
+open.
+
+This time all four of us were looking.
+
+Presently, as we moved across the wide hall to go downstairs again,
+Bryan came from one of the other chambers, whither, I think, he had
+carried the young lady's supper on a tray.
+
+"Are there supposed to be any ghosts in this house?" I asked him.
+
+Bryan showed his white teeth in the semi-darkness. Whether he believed
+in ghosts or not, evidently he did not fear them.
+
+"Yes, sir," he said. "We're supposed to have a ghost here."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"In that room over there," he answered, indicating the bedroom from
+which we had come.
+
+We listened attentively to Bryan while he told how the daughter of
+Governor Swan had come to attend a ball at Hampton, and how she had died
+in the four-post bed in that old shadowy guest room, and of how, since
+then, she had been seen from time to time.
+
+"They's several people say they saw her," he finished. "She comes out
+and combs her hair in front of the long mirror."
+
+However, as we drove back to Baltimore that evening, we repeatedly
+assured one another that we did not believe in ghosts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+ARE WE STANDARDIZED?
+
+
+Almost all modern European critics of the United States agree in
+complaining that our telephones and sleeping cars are objectionable, and
+that we are "standardized" in everything. Their criticism of the
+telephone seems to be that the state of perfection to which it has been
+brought in this country causes it to be widely used, while their
+disapproval of our sleeping cars is invariably based on the assumption
+that they have no compartments--which is not the fact, since most of the
+great transcontinental railroads do run compartment cars, and much
+better ones than the best _wagons lits_, and since, also, all our
+sleeping cars have drawing-rooms which are incomparably better than the
+most comfortable European compartments.
+
+The charge of standardization will, however, bear a little thought. It
+is true that most American cities have a general family
+resemblance--that a business street in Atlanta or Memphis looks much
+like a business street in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo, Milwaukee, St.
+Paul, Kansas City, or St. Louis--and that much the same thing may be
+said of residence streets. Houses and office buildings in one city are
+likely to resemble those of corresponding grade in another; the men who
+live in the houses and go daily to the offices are also similar; so are
+the trolley cars in which they journey to and fro; still more so the
+Fords which many of them use; the clothing of one man is like that of
+another, and all have similar conventions concerning the date at
+which--without regard to temperature--straw hats should be discarded.
+Their womenfolk, also, are more or less alike, as are the department
+stores in which they shop and the dresses they buy. And the same is true
+of their children, the costumes of those children, and the schools they
+attend.
+
+Every American city has social groups corresponding to similar groups in
+other cities. There is always the small, affluent group, made up of
+people who keep butlers and several automobiles, and who travel
+extensively. In this group there are always some snobs: ladies who give
+much time to societies founded on ancestry, and have a Junkerish feeling
+about "social leadership."
+
+Every city has also its "fast" group: people who consider themselves
+"unconventional," who drink more than is good for them, and make much
+noise. Some members of this group may belong to the first group, as
+well, but in the fast group they have a following of well-dressed
+hangers-on: unmarried men and women, youngish rather than young, who,
+with little money, yet manage to dress well and to be seen eating and
+drinking and dancing in public places. There is usually to be found in
+this group a hectic widow or two--be it grass or sod--and a few pretty
+girls who, having been given too much freedom at eighteen, begin to
+wonder at twenty-eight, why, though they have always been "good
+fellows," none of the dozens of men who take them about have married
+them. To this aggregation drift also those restless husbands and wives
+whose glances rove hopefully away from their mates, a few well-bred
+drunkards, and a few men and women who are trying to forget things they
+cannot forget.
+
+Then there is always the young married group--a nice group for the most
+part--living in comfortable new houses or apartments, and keeping,
+usually, both a small automobile and a baby carriage. They also go to
+the Country Club on Saturday nights, leave their motors standing in the
+drive, eat a lukewarm supper that tastes like papier-mâché, and dance
+themselves to wiltedness.
+
+Another group is entirely masculine, being made up of husbands of
+various ages, their mutual bond being the downtown club to which they go
+daily, and in which the subjects discussed are politics, golf, and the
+evils of prohibition. To this group always belong the black-sheep
+husbands who, after taking their wives to the Country Club, disappear
+and remain away until they are sent for because it is time to go home,
+when they come back shamefaced and scented with Scotch.
+
+Every American city has also what Don Marquis calls its "little group of
+serious thinkers"--women, most of them--possessed of an ardent desire to
+"keep abreast of the times." These women belong to clubs and literary
+societies which are more serious than war. They are always reading
+papers or attending lectures, and at these lectures they get a strange
+assortment of "cultural" information and misinformation, delivered with
+ghastly assurance by heterogeneous gentlemen in cutaway coats, who go
+about and spout for pay. If you meet these ladies, and they suspect you
+of being infested by the germs of "culture," they will open fire on you
+with a "thought," about which you may detect a curious ghostly
+fragrance, as of Alfred Noyes's lecture, last week, or of "the New
+Republic" or the "Literary Digest." The most "liberal" of them may even
+take "The Masses," precisely as people rather like them used to take
+"The Philistine," a generation or two ago. Among the members of this
+group are the women who work violently for suffrage--something in which
+I personally believe, but which, merely because I believe in it, I do
+not necessarily like to take in my coffee as a substitute for sugar, on
+my bread as a substitute for butter, and in my ear as a substitute for
+pleasant general conversation.
+
+I do not wish to seem to speak disparagingly of women of this type, for
+they are doing good, and they will do more good when they have become
+more accustomed to possessing minds. Having but recently discovered
+their minds, they are playing with them enthusiastically, like children
+who have just discovered their new toys on Christmas morning. It is
+delightful to watch them. It is diverting to have them pop ideas at you
+with that bright-eyed, efficient, assertive look which seems to say:
+"See! I am a liberal woman--a woman of the new type. I meet men on their
+own ground. Do you wish to talk of birth control, social hygiene, and
+sex attraction? Or shall we reverse the order? Or shall I show you how
+much I know about Brieux, and household economics, and Ellen Key, and
+eugenics, and George Meredith, and post-impressionism, and "Roberts'
+Rules of Order," and theosophy, and conditions in the Sixteenth Ward?"
+
+When one thinks of these city groups, and of mail-order houses, and
+Fords, one may begin to fear it is indeed true that we are becoming
+standardized, but when one lets one's mind drift over the country as the
+eye drifts over a map; when one thinks of the quantities of modest,
+thoughtful, gentle, generous, intelligent, sound American families which
+are to be found in every city and every town, and thinks again, in a
+twinkling, of sheriffs and mining-camp policemen in the Far West, of
+boys going to Harvard, and other boys going to the University of Kansas,
+others to the old Southern universities, so rich in tradition, and still
+others to Annapolis or West Point; when one thinks of the snow
+glittering on the Rocky Mountain wall, back of Denver; of sleepy little
+towns drowsing in the sun beside the Mississippi; of Charles W. Eliot of
+Cambridge, and Hy Gill of Seattle; of Dr. Lyman Abbott of New York and
+Tom Watson of Georgia; of General Leonard Wood and Colonel William
+Jennings Bryan; of ex-slaves living in their cabins behind Virginia
+manor houses, and Filipino and Kanaka fishermen living in villages
+built on stilts beside the bayous below New Orleans; of the dry salt
+desert of Utah, and two great rivers meeting between green rocky hills,
+at Harper's Ferry; of men working in offices at the top of the Woolworth
+Building in New York, and other men working thousands of feet below the
+ground, in the copper mines of Butte and the iron and coal mines of
+Birmingham--when one thinks of these things one quickly ceases to fear
+that the United States is standardized, and instead begins to fear that
+few Americans will ever know the varied wonder of their country, and the
+varied character of its inhabitants, their problems, hopes, and views.
+
+If I lived somewhere in the region of Boston, New York, or Philadelphia
+and wished quickly to learn whether the country were really standardized
+or not, I should get into my automobile--or into some one else's--and
+take an autumn tour through Baltimore, past Doughoregan Manor, some
+miles to the west of Baltimore, on to Frederick, Maryland (where they
+dispute, quite justly, I believe, the truth of the Barbara Frietchie
+legend), and thence "over the mountain wall" and down into the
+northeastern corner of the most irregularly shaped State in the Union,
+West Virginia. I should strike for Harper's Ferry, and from there run to
+Charles Town, a few miles distant (where John Brown was tried and
+executed for the Harper's Ferry raid), and after circulating about that
+corner of the State, I should go down into Virginia by the good highway
+which leads from Charles Town to Berryville--"Bur'v'l," they pronounce
+it--and to "Winchester twenty miles away" (where they say that
+Sheridan's Ride was nothing to make such a lot of talk about!), and then
+back, by way of Berryville, and over the Blue Ridge Mountains into the
+great fox-hunting counties of Virginia: Clark, Loudon, and Fauquier.
+Here I should see a hunt meet or a race meet. There are many other
+places to which I might go after that, but as I meant only to suggest an
+easy little tour, I shall stop at this point, contenting myself with
+saying that not far to the south is Charlottesville, where Jefferson
+built that most beautiful of all universities, the University of
+Virginia, and his wonderful house Monticello; that Staunton (pronounced
+as without the "u"), where Woodrow Wilson was born, lies west of
+Charlottesville, while Fredericksburg, where Washington's mother lived,
+lies to the northeast.
+
+Some such trip as this I should take instead of a conventional New
+England tour. And before starting I should buy a copy of Louise Closser
+Hale's delightful book, "Into the Old Dominion."
+
+One beauty of the trip that I suggest is that it isn't all the same. In
+one place you get a fair country hotel, in another an inn, and somewhere
+along the way you may have to spend a night in a private house. Also,
+though the roads through Maryland, and the part of West Virginia I speak
+of, are generally good, my experience of Virginia roads, especially
+through the mountains, leads me to conclude that in respect to highways
+Virginia remains a backward State. But who wants to ride always over
+oiled roads, always to hotels with marble lobbies, or big white porches
+full of hungry-eyed young women, and old ladies, knitting? Only the
+standardized tourist. And I am not addressing him.
+
+I am talking to the motorist who is not ossified in habit, who has a
+love of strangeness and the picturesque--not only in scenery but in
+houses and people and the kind of life those people lead. For it is
+quite true that, as Professor Roland C. Usher said in his "Pan
+Americanism," "the information in New York about Buenos Aires is more
+extended, accurate, and contemporaneous than the notions in Maine about
+Alabama.... Isolation is more a matter of time than of space, and common
+interests are due to the ease of transportation and communication more
+often than geographical location."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+HARPER'S FERRY AND JOHN BROWN
+
+            Mad Old Brown,
+            Osawatomie Brown,
+    With his eighteen other crazy men, went in and took the town.
+
+    --EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.
+
+
+Three States meet at Harper's Ferry, and the line dividing two of them
+is indicated where it crosses the station platform. If you alight at the
+rear end of the train, you are in Maryland; at the front, you are in
+West Virginia. This I like. I have always liked important but invisible
+boundaries--boundaries of states or, better yet, of countries. When I
+cross them I am disposed to step high, as though not to trip upon them,
+and then to pause with one foot in one land and one in another, trying
+to imagine that I feel the division running through my body.
+
+Harper's Ferry is an entrancing old town; a drowsy place, piled up
+beautifully, yet carelessly, upon terraced roads clinging to steep
+hills, which slope on one side to the Potomac, on the other to the
+Shenandoah, and come to a point, like the prow of a great ship, at the
+confluence of the two.
+
+There is something foreign in the appearance of the place. Many times,
+as I looked at old stone houses, a story or two high on one side, three
+or four stories on the other, seeming to set their claws into the cliffs
+and cling there for dear life, I thought of houses in Capri and Amalfi,
+and in some towns in France; and again there were low cottages built of
+blocks of shale covered with a thin veneer of white plaster showing the
+outlines of the stones beneath, which, squatting down amid their trees
+and flowers, resembled peasant cottages in Normandy or Brittany, or in
+Ireland.
+
+It is a town in which to ramble for an hour, uphill, down and around;
+stopping now to delight in a crumbling stone wall, tied together with
+Kenilworth ivy; now to watch a woman making apple butter in a great iron
+pot; now to see an old negro clamber slowly into his rickety wagon, take
+up the rope reins, and start his skinny horse with the surprising words:
+"Come hither!"; now to look at an old tangled garden, terraced rudely up
+a hillside; now to read the sign, on a telegraph pole in the village,
+bearing the frank threat: "If you Hitch your Horses Here they will be
+Turned Loose." Now you will come upon a terraced road, at one side of
+which stands an old house draped over the rocks in such a way as to
+provide entrance from the ground level, on any one of three stories; or
+an unexpected view down a steep roadway, or over ancient moss-grown
+housetops to where, as an old book I found there puts it, "between two
+ramparts, in a gorge of savage grandeur, the lordly Potomac takes to his
+embrace the beautiful Shenandoah."
+
+The liaison between the rivers, described in this Rabelaisian manner by
+the author of "The Annals of Harper's Ferry," has been going on for a
+long time with all the brazen publicity of a love scene on a park bench.
+I recommend the matter to the attention of the Society for the
+Suppression of Vice, which once took action to prohibit a novel by Mr.
+Theodore Dreiser. A great many people wish to read Mr. Dreiser's books
+yet no one has to read them if he does not want to. But it is a
+different matter with these rivers. Sensitive citizens of Harper's Ferry
+and pure-minded passengers on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad are obliged
+daily to witness what is going on.
+
+Before the days of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, and of the
+late Anthony Comstock, when we had no one to make it clear to us exactly
+what was shocking, little was thought of the public scandal between the
+Potomac and the Shenandoah. Thomas Jefferson seems to have rather liked
+it; there is a point above the town, known as Jefferson's Rock, at
+which, it is said, the author of the Declaration of Independence stood
+and uttered a sentiment about the spectacle. Everybody in Harper's Ferry
+agrees that Jefferson stood at Jefferson's Rock and said something
+appropriate, and any one of them will try to tell you what he said, but
+each version will be different.
+
+A young lady told me that he said: "This view is worth a trip across the
+Atlantic Ocean."
+
+A young man in a blue felt hat of the fried-egg variety said that
+Jefferson declared, with his well-known simplicity: "This is the
+grandest view I ever seen."
+
+An old man who had to go through the tobacco chewer's pre-conversational
+rite before replying to my question gave it as: "Pfst!--They ain't
+nothin' in Europe ner Switzerland ner nowheres else, I reckon', to beat
+this-here scenery."
+
+The man at the drug store quoted differently alleging the saying to have
+been: "Europe has nothing on this": whereas the livery stable man's
+version was: "This has that famous German river--the Rhine River don't
+they call it?--skinned to death."
+
+Whatever Jefferson's remark was, there has been added to the spectacle
+at Harper's Ferry, since his day, a new feature, which, could he have
+but seen it, must have struck him forcibly, and might perhaps have
+caused him to say more.
+
+At a lofty point upon the steep wall of Maryland Heights, across the
+Potomac from the town, far, far up upon the side of the cliff,
+commanding a view not only of both rivers, but of their meeting place
+and their joint course below, and of the lovely contours of the Blue
+Ridge Mountains, fading to smoky coloring in the remote distance, there
+has, of late years, appeared the outline of a gigantic face, which looks
+out from its emplacement like some Teutonic god in vast effigy, its huge
+luxuriant mustaches pointing East and West as though in symbolism of the
+conquest of a continent. A blue and yellow background, tempered somewhat
+by the elements, serves to attract attention to the face and to the
+legend which accompanies it, but the thing one sees above all else, the
+thing one recognizes, is the face itself, with its look half tragic,
+half resigned, yet always so inscrutable: for it is none other than the
+beautiful brooding countenance of Gerhard Mennen, the talcum-powder
+gentleman.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The great story of Harper's Ferry is of course the John Brown story.
+Joseph I.C. Clarke, writing in the New York "Sun" of Sir Roger
+Casement's execution for treason in connection with the Irish rebellion,
+compared him with John Brown and also with Don Quixote. The spiritual
+likeness between these three bearded figures is striking enough. All
+were idealists; all were fanatics. Brown's ideal was a noble one--that
+of freedom--but his manner of attempting to translate it into actuality
+was that of a madman. He believed not only that the slaves should be
+freed, but that the blood of slaveholders should be shed in atonement.
+In "bleeding Kansas" he led the Ossawatomie massacre, and committed
+cold-blooded murders under the delusion that the sword of the Lord was
+in his hand.
+
+In October, 1859, Brown, who had for some time been living under an
+assumed name in the neighborhood of Harper's Ferry, led a score of his
+followers, some of them negroes, in a surprise attack upon the
+Government arsenal at this place, capturing the watchmen and taking
+possession of the buildings. It was his idea to get the weapons the
+arsenal contained and give them to the slaves that they might rise and
+free themselves. Before this plan could be executed, however, Brown and
+his men were besieged in the armory, and here, after a day or two of
+bloody fighting, with a number of deaths on both sides, he was captured
+with his few surviving men, by Colonel (later General) Robert E. Lee,
+whose aide, upon this occasion, was J.E.B. Stuart, later the Confederate
+cavalry leader. Stuart had been in Kansas, and it was he who recognized
+the leader of the raid as Brown of Ossawatomie.
+
+It is said that Brown's violent anti-slavery feeling was engendered by
+his having seen, in his youth, a colored boy of about his own age
+cruelly misused. He brooded over the wrongs of the blacks until, as some
+students of his life believe, he became insane on this subject. His
+utterances show that he was willing to give up his life and those of his
+sons and other followers, if by such action he could merely draw
+attention to the cause which had taken possession of his soul. In the
+course of the fighting he saw his two sons mortally wounded, and was
+himself stabbed and cut. Throughout the fight and his subsequent trial
+at Charles Town he remained imperturbable; when taken to the gallows he
+sat upon his coffin, in a wagon, and he not only mounted the scaffold
+without a tremor, but actually stood there, apparently unmoved, for ten
+or fifteen minutes, with the noose around his neck, while the troops
+which had formed his escort were marched to their positions.
+
+A large number of troops were present at the execution, for it was then
+believed in the South that the Brown raid was not the mere suicidal
+stroke of an individual fanatic, but an organized movement on the part
+of the Republican party; an effort to rescue Brown was therefore
+apprehended. This idea was later shown to be a fallacy, Brown having
+made his own plans, and been financed by a few northern friends, headed
+by Gerrit Smith of New York.
+
+There has been a tendency in the North to make a saint of John Brown,
+and in the South to make a devil of him. As a matter of fact he was a
+poor, misguided zealot, with a wild light in his eye, who had set out to
+do a frightful thing; for, bad though slavery was, its evils were not
+comparable with the horrors which would have resulted from a slave
+rebellion.
+
+It must be conceded, however, that those who would canonize John Brown
+have upon their side a strange and impressive piece of evidence. The
+jail where he was lodged in Charles Town and the courthouse where he was
+tried, still stand, and it is the actual fact that, when the snow falls,
+it always miraculously melts in a path which leads diagonally across the
+street from the one to the other. That this is true I have unimpeachable
+testimony. _Snow will not stand on the path by which John Brown crossed
+back and forth from the jail to the court-house._ There will be snow
+over all the rest of the street, but not on that path; there you can see
+it melting.
+
+But, as with certain other "miracles," this one is not so difficult to
+understand if you know how it is brought about. The courthouse is heated
+from the jail, and the hot pipes run under the pavement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE VIRGINIAS AND THE WASHINGTONS
+
+
+In colonial times, and long thereafter, the present State of West
+Virginia was a part of Virginia. Virginia, in the old days, used to have
+no western borders to her most westerly counties, which, in theory, ran
+out to infinity. As the western part of the State became settled, county
+lines were drawn, and new counties were started farther back from the
+coast. For this reason, towns which are now in Jefferson County, West
+Virginia, used to be in that county of Virginia which lies to the east
+of Jefferson County, and some towns have been in several different
+counties in the course of their history.
+
+The people in the eastern part of West Virginia are, so far as I am
+capable of judging, precisely like Virginians. The old houses, when
+built, were in Virginia, the names of the people are Virginian names,
+and customs and points of view are Virginian. Until I went there I was
+not aware how very much this means.
+
+I do not know who wrote the school history I studied as a boy, but I do
+know now that it was written by a lopsided historian, and that his
+"lop," like that of many another of his kind, led him to enlarge upon
+American naval and military victories, to minimize American defeats, to
+give an impression that the all-important early colonies were those of
+New England, and that the all-important one of them was Massachusetts.
+From this bias I judge that the historian was a Boston man. It takes a
+Bostonian to think in that way. They do it still.
+
+From my school history I gathered the idea that although Sir Walter
+Raleigh and Captain John Smith were so foolish as to dally more or less
+in the remote fastnesses of Virginia, and although there was a little
+ineffectual settlement at Jamestown, all the important colonizing of
+this country occurred in New England. I read about Peregrine White, but
+not about Virginia Dare; I read much of Miles Standish, but nothing of
+Christopher Newport; I read a great deal of the _Mayflower_, but not a
+word of the _Susan Constant_.
+
+Yet Virginia Dare, if she lived, must have been nearing young ladyhood
+when Peregrine White was born; Captain Christopher Newport passed the
+Virginia capes when Miles Standish was hardly more than a youth, in
+Lancashire; and the _Susan Constant_ landed the Jamestown settlers more
+than a dozen years before the _Mayflower_ landed her shipload of eminent
+furniture owners at Plymouth. Even Plymouth itself had been visited
+years before by John Smith, and it was he, not the Pilgrims, who named
+the place.
+
+I find that some boys, to-day, know these things. But though that fact
+is encouraging, I am not writing for boys, but for their comparatively
+ignorant parents.
+
+Not only did the first English colony establish itself in Virginia, and
+the first known tobacco come from there--a point the importance of which
+cannot be overstated--but the history of the Old Dominion is in every
+way more romantic and heroic than that of any other State. The first
+popular government existed there long before the Revolution, and at the
+time of the break with the mother country Virginia was the most wealthy
+and populous of the Colonies. Some historians say that slavery was first
+introduced there when some Dutchmen sold to the colonists a shipload of
+negroes, but I believe this point is disputed. The Declaration of
+Independence was, of course, written by a Virginian, and made good by
+the sword of one. The first President of the United States was a
+Virginian, and so is the present Chief Executive. The whole of New
+England has produced but four presidents; Ohio has produced six; but
+Virginia has given us eight. The first British army to land on this
+continent (Braddock's) landed in Virginia, and in that State our two
+greatest wars were terminated by the surrenders of Cornwallis and of
+Lee. And, last, the gallant Lee himself was a Virginian of the
+Virginians--a son of the distinguished Henry Lee who said of Washington
+that he was "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of
+his countrymen."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the pleasant drive of perhaps a dozen miles, from Harper's Ferry to
+Charles Town, I noticed here and there, at the roadside, pyramidal
+stones, suggesting monuments, but bearing no inscription save that each
+had a number. On inquiry I learned that these were indeed Confederate
+monuments, but that to find out what they marked it was necessary to go
+to the county courthouse at Charles Town and look up the numbers in a
+book, of which there is but one copy. These monuments were set out three
+or four years ago. They appeared suddenly, almost as though they had
+grown overnight, and many people wondered, as I had, what they meant.
+
+"Eloise," one Charles Town young lady asked another, "what's that
+monument out in front of your house with the number twenty-one on it?"
+
+"Oh," replied Eloise, "that's where all my suitors are buried."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One of the things which gives Jefferson County, West Virginia, its
+Virginian flavor is the collection of fine old houses which adorn it.
+Many of these houses are the homes of families bearing the name of
+Washington, or having in their veins the blood of the Washingtons. It is
+said that there is more Washington blood in Charles Town (which, by the
+way, should not be confused with Charleston, capital of the same State),
+than in any other place, if not in all the rest of the world together.
+The nearest competitors to Charles Town in this respect are Westmoreland
+County, Virginia, and the town of Kankakee, Illinois, where resides the
+Spottswood Augustine Washington family, said to be the only Washington
+group to have taken the Union side in the Civil War. It is rumored also
+that all the Washingtons are Democrats, although that fact is hard to
+reconcile, at the present time, with the statement that, among the five
+thousand of them, there is but a single Federal officeholder.
+
+The settling of the Washingtons in Jefferson County, West Virginia, came
+about through the fact that George Washington, when a youth of sixteen
+or seventeen, became acquainted with that part of what was then
+Virginia, through having gone to survey for Lord Fairfax, who had
+acquired an enormous tract of land in the neighboring county of Clarke,
+which is still in the mother State. To this estate, called Greenaway
+Court, his lordship, it is recorded, came from England to isolate
+himself because a woman with whom he was in love refused to marry him.
+
+In this general neighborhood George Washington lived for three years,
+and local enthusiasts affirm that to his having drunk the
+lime-impregnated waters of this valley was due his great stature. The
+man who informed me of this theory had lived there aways. He was about
+five feet three inches tall, and had drunk the waters all his
+life--plain and otherwise.
+
+Washington's accounts of the region so interested his brothers that they
+finally moved there, acquired large tracts of land, and built homes.
+Charles Town, indeed, was laid out on the land of Charles Washington,
+and was named for him, and there is evidence that George Washington,
+who certainly gave the lines for the roads about the place, also laid
+out the town.
+
+Another brother, John Augustine, left a large family, while Samuel, the
+oldest, described as "a rollicking country squire," was several years
+short of fifty when he died, but for all that had managed to marry five
+times and to find, nevertheless, spare moments in which to lay out the
+historic estate of Harewood, not far from Charles Town. It is said that
+George Washington was his brother's partner in this enterprise, but
+excepting in its interior, which is very beautiful, there is no sign,
+about the building, of his graceful architectural touch.
+
+George Washington spent much time at Harewood, Lafayette and his son
+visited there, and there the sprightly widow, Dolly Todd, married James
+Madison. This wedding was attended by President Washington and his wife
+and by many other national figures; the bride made the journey to
+Harewood in Jefferson's coach, escorted by Madison and a group of his
+friends on horseback, and history makes mention of a very large and very
+gay company.
+
+This is all very well until you see Harewood; for, substantial though
+the house is, with its two-foot stone walls, it has but five rooms: two
+downstairs and three up.
+
+Where did they all sleep?
+
+The question was put by the practical young lady whom I accompanied to
+Harewood, but the wife of the farmer to whom the place is rented could
+only smile and shake her head.
+
+The bedroom now occupied by this farmer and his wife has doubtless been
+occupied also by the first President of the United States and his wife,
+the fourth President and his wife, by Lafayette, and by a King of
+France--for Louis-Philippe, and his brothers, the Duc de Montpensier and
+the Comte de Beaujolais, spent some time at Harewood during their period
+of exile.
+
+Having read in an extract from the Baltimore "Sun" that Harewood, which
+is still owned in the Washington family, was a place in which all
+Washingtons took great and proper pride, that it was "the lodestone
+which draws the wandering Washingtons back to the old haunts," I was
+greatly shocked on visiting the house to see the shameful state of
+dilapidation into which it has been allowed to pass. The porches and
+steps have fallen down, the garden is a disreputable tangle, and the
+graves in the yard are heaped with tumble-down stones about which the
+cattle graze. The only parts of the building in good repair are those
+parts which time has not yet succeeded in destroying. The drawing-room,
+containing a mantelpiece given to Washington by Lafayette, and the
+finest wood paneling I have seen in any American house, has held its own
+fairly well, as has also the old stairway, imported by Washington from
+England. But that these things are not in ruins, like the porches, is no
+credit to the Washingtons who own the property to-day, and who, having
+rented the place, actually leave family portraits hanging on the walls
+to crack and rot through the cold winter.
+
+If there are indeed five thousand Washingtons, and if they are proud of
+their descent, a good way for them to show it would be to contribute
+twenty-five cents each to be expended on putting Harewood in respectable
+condition.
+
+The last member of the Washington family to own Mount Vernon was John
+Augustine Washington, of Charles Town, who sold the former home of his
+distinguished collateral ancestor. This Mr. Washington was a Confederate
+officer in the Civil War. He had a son named George, whose widow, if I
+mistake not, is the Mrs. George Washington of Charles Town, of whom I
+heard an amusing story.
+
+With another Charles Town lady this Mrs. Washington went to the
+Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and the two attended the Fair together
+on Washington Day. On this occasion Mrs. Washington made a purchase in
+one of the buildings, and ordered it sent to her home in Charles Town.
+
+"What name?" asked the clerk.
+
+"Mrs. George Washington."
+
+The clerk concluded that she was joking.
+
+"I want your _real_ name," he insisted with a smile.
+
+"But," plaintively protested the gentle Mrs. Washington, "that is the
+only name I _have_!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One of the most charming of the old houses in the neighborhood of
+Charles Town, and one of the few which is still occupied by the
+descendants of its builder, is Piedmont, the residence of the Briscoe
+family. It is a brick house, nearly a century and a half old, with a
+lovely old portico, and it contains two of the most interesting relics I
+saw on my entire journey in the South. The first of these is the wall
+paper of the drawing-room, upon which is depicted, not in pattern, but
+in a series of pictures with landscape backgrounds, various scenes
+representing the adventures of Telemachus on his search for his father.
+I remember having seen on the walls of the parlor of an old hotel at
+South Berwick, Maine, some early wall paper of this character, but the
+pictures on that paper were done in various shades of gray, whereas the
+Piedmont wall paper is in many colors. The other relic is a letter which
+Mrs. Briscoe drew from her desk quite as though it had been a note
+received that morning from a friend. It was written on tough
+buff-colored paper, and, though the ink was brown with age, the
+handwriting was clear and legible and the paper was not broken at the
+folds. It was dated "Odiham, Sept. 1st, 1633," and ran as follows:
+
+     To Dr. John Briscoe, _Greetings_.
+
+     Dear Sir: As the Privy Council have decided that I shall not be
+     disturbed or dispossessed of the charter granted by his
+     Majesty--the _Ark_ and Pinnace _Dove_ will sail from Gravesend
+     about the 1st of October, and if you are of the same mind as when I
+     conversed with you, I would be glad to have you join the colony.
+
+    With high esteem,    Your most obedient servant,
+        Cecilius Baltimore.
+
+This letter from the second Lord Baltimore refers to the historic voyage
+which resulted in the first settlement of Maryland, thirteen years after
+the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. As for Dr. Briscoe, to whom the
+letter was written, he was one of the three hundred original colonists,
+but after settling in St. Mary's, near the mouth of the Potomac, removed
+to the place where his descendants still reside.
+
+Farther out in Jefferson County the motorist may pass through two
+curious hamlets which, though not many miles from Charles Town, have the
+air of being completely removed from the world. One of these was known,
+many years ago, as Middleway, and later as Smithfield, but is now called
+Clip--and for a curious reason.
+
+When the stagecoaches were running, the town was quite a place, as its
+several good old houses indicate; but the railroads, when they were
+built, ignored the town, but killed the stage lines, with the result
+that the little settlement dried up. Even before this an old
+plaster-covered house, still standing, became haunted. The witches who
+resided in it developed the unpleasant custom of flying out at night and
+cutting pieces from the clothing of passers-by. And that is how the town
+came to be called Clip.
+
+A century or so ago, when the rudeness of the witches had long annoyed
+the inhabitants of Clip, and had proved very detrimental to their
+clothing, a Roman Catholic priest came along and told them that if they
+would give him a certain field, he would rid them of the evil spirits.
+This struck the worthy citizens of Clip as a good bargain; they gave the
+priest his field (it is still known as the Priest's Field, and is now
+used as a place for basket picnics) and forthwith the operations of the
+witches ceased. So, at least, the story goes.
+
+Not far beyond Clip lies the hamlet of Leetown, taking its name from
+that General Charles Lee who commanded an American army in the
+Revolutionary War, but who was suspected by Washington of being a
+traitor, and was finally court-martialed and cashiered from the army.
+The old stone house which Lee built at Leetown, and in which he lived
+after his disgrace, still remains. Instead of having partitions in his
+house the old general lived in one large room, upon the floor of which
+he made chalk marks to indicate different chambers. Here he dwelt
+surrounded by innumerable dogs, and here he was frequently visited by
+Generals Horatio Gates and Adam Stephen, who were neighbors and cronies
+of his, and met at his house to drink wine and exchange stories.
+
+It is said that upon one of these occasions Lee got up and declared:
+
+"The county of Berkeley is to be congratulated upon having as citizens
+three noted generals of the Revolution, each of whom was ignominiously
+cashiered. You, Stephen, for getting drunk when you should have been
+sober; you, Gates, for advancing when you should have retreated; and
+your humble servant for retreating when he should have advanced."
+
+Lee was a turbulent, insubordinate, hard-drinking rascal, and nothing
+could be more characteristic than the will, written in his own
+handwriting, filed by the old reprobate with the clerk of the Berkeley
+County Court, and expressing the following sentiments:
+
+     I desire most earnestly that I may not be buried in any church or
+     churchyard, or within a mile of any Presbyterian or Anabaptist
+     meeting house, for since I have resided in this county I have kept
+     so much bad company when living that I do not desire to continue it
+     when dead.
+
+During Lee's life there, Leetown was probably a livelier place than it
+is to-day. Something of its present state may be gathered from the fact
+that when a lady of my acquaintance stopped her motor there recently,
+and asked some men what time it was, they stared blankly at her for a
+moment, after which one of them said seriously:
+
+"We don't know. We don't have time here."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+I RIDE A HORSE
+
+    And vaulted with such ease into his seat
+    As if an angel dropp'd down from the clouds,
+    To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus
+    And witch the world with noble horsemanship.
+
+    --KING HENRY IV.
+
+
+Claymont Court, near Charles Town, the house in which my companion and I
+were so fortunate as to be guests during our visit to this part of the
+country, is one of the old Washington houses, having been built by
+Bushrod Corbin Washington, a nephew of the first President. It is a
+beautiful brick building, with courts at either end, the brick walls of
+which, connecting with the house, extend its lines with peculiar grace,
+and tie to the main structure the twin buildings which balance it,
+according to the delightful fashion of early Virginia architecture. The
+hexagonal brick tile of the front walk at Claymont Court, and the square
+stone pavement of the portico, resemble exactly those at Mount Vernon,
+and are said to have been imported at the same time; and it is believed
+also that the Claymont box trees were brought over with those growing at
+Mount Vernon.
+
+The estate was sold out of the Washington family in 1870, when it was
+acquired by a Colonel March, who later sold it to a gentleman whose wild
+performances at Claymont are not only remembered, but are commemorated
+in the house. In the cellar, for instance, bricked up in a room barely
+large enough to hold it, whence it cannot be removed except by tearing
+down a heavy wall, stands a huge carved sideboard to which the young man
+took a dislike, and which he therefore caused to be carried to the
+cellar and immured, despite the protests of his family. It is said that
+upon another occasion he conceived the picturesque idea of riding his
+horse upstairs and hitching it to his bedpost; and that he did so is
+witnessed by definite marks of horseshoes on the oak treads of the
+stair. Later Frank R. Stockton purchased the place, and there he wrote
+his story "The Captain of the Toll-Gate," which was published
+posthumously.
+
+But in all its history this glorious old house has never been a happier
+home, or a more interesting one, than it is to-day. For now it is the
+residence of four young ladies, sisters, who, because of their divergent
+tastes and their complete congeniality, continually suggest the fancy
+that they have stepped out of a novel. One of them is the Efficient
+Sister, who runs the automobile and the farm of two or three hundred
+acres, sells the produce, keeps the accounts, and pays off the men;
+another is the Domestic Sister, who conducts the admirable ménage;
+another is the Sociological and Artistic Sister, who draws and plays and
+thinks about the masses; while the fourth is the Sprightly Sister Who
+Likes to Dance.
+
+Never had my companion or I seen a more charming, a more varied
+household, an establishment more self-contained, more complete in all
+things from vegetables to brains. No need to leave the place for
+anything. Yet if one wished to look about the country, there was the
+motor, and there were the saddle horses in the stable--all of them
+members of old Virginian families--and there were four equestrian young
+ladies.
+
+"Would you-all like to ride to-day?" one of the sisters asked us at
+breakfast.
+
+To my companion, horseback riding is comparatively a new thing. He had
+taken it up a year before--partly because of appeals from me, partly
+because of changes which he had begun to notice in his topography.
+Compared with him I was a veteran horseman, for it was then a year and
+three months since I had begun my riding lessons.
+
+I said that I would like to ride, but he declared that he must stay
+behind and make a drawing.
+
+Sometimes, in the past, I had thought I would prefer to make my living
+as a painter or an illustrator than as a writer, but at this juncture it
+occurred to me that, though the writer's medium of expression is a less
+agreeable one than that of the graphic artist, it is much pleasanter to
+ride about with pretty girls than to sit alone and draw a picture of
+their house. I began to feel sorry for my companion: the thought of our
+riding gaily off, and leaving him at work, made him seem pathetic. My
+appeals, however, made no impression upon his inflexible sense of duty,
+and I soon ceased trying to persuade him to join us, and began to
+speculate, instead, as to whether all four sisters would accompany me,
+or whether only two or three of them would go--and if so, which.
+
+"What kind of horse do you like?" asked one.
+
+Such a question always troubles me. It is embarrassing. Imagine saying
+to a young lady who likes to ride thoroughbred hunters across fields and
+over ditches and fences: "I should like a handsome horse, one that will
+cause me to appear to advantage, one that looks spirited but is in
+reality tame."
+
+Such an admission would be out of character with the whole idea of
+riding. One could hardly make it to one's most intimate male friend, let
+alone to a girl who knows all about withers and hocks and pastern
+joints, and talks about "paneled country," and takes the "Racing
+Calendar."
+
+To such a young lady it is impossible to say: "I have ridden for a
+little more than a year; the horses with which I am acquainted are
+benevolent creatures from a riding school near Central Park; they go
+around the reservoir twice, and return automatically, and they sigh
+deeply when one mounts and again when one gets off."
+
+No; that sort of thing will not do at all; for the horse--besides having
+been placed in a position more aristocratic than ever, through the
+philanthropies of Henry Ford--is essentially "sporty." You must be a
+"sport" or you must keep away from him. You must approach him with dash
+or you must not approach him at all. And when a young lady inquires what
+kind of horse you like, there is but one way to reply.
+
+"It doesn't matter at all," I answered. "Any horse will do for me."
+Then, after a little pause, I added, as though it were merely an amusing
+afterthought: "I suppose I shall be stiff after my ride. I haven't been
+on a horse in nearly two months."
+
+"Then," said the sympathetic young lady, "you'll want an easy ride."
+
+"I suppose it _might_ be more sensible," I conceded.
+
+"Better give him the black mare," put in the Efficient Sister.
+
+"She hasn't been out lately," said the other. "You know how she acts
+when she hasn't been ridden enough. He might not know just how to take
+her. I was thinking of giving him 'Dr. Bell.'"
+
+"Dr. Bell's too gentle," said the Efficient Sister.
+
+"Which horse do you think you'd like?" the other asked me. "Dr. Bell has
+plenty of life, but he's gentle. The black mare's a little bit flighty
+at first, but if you can ride her she soon finds it out and settles
+down."
+
+I want to ask: "What happens if she finds out that you _can't_ ride her?
+What does she do then?" But I refrained.
+
+"She's never thrown anybody but a stable boy and a man who came up here
+to visit--and neither one of them could ride worth a cent," said the
+Efficient Sister.
+
+Meanwhile I had been thinking hard.
+
+"What color is Dr. Bell?" I asked.
+
+"He's a sorrel."
+
+"Then," I said, "I believe I'd rather ride Dr. Bell. I don't like black
+horses. It is simply one of those peculiar aversions one gets."
+
+They seemed to accept this statement, and so the matter was agreeably
+settled.
+
+When, at ten o'clock, I came down dressed for riding, my companion was
+out in front of the house, making a drawing; the four young ladies were
+with him, all seemingly enchanted with his work, and none of them in
+riding habits.
+
+"Who's going with me?" I asked as I strolled toward them.
+
+They looked at one another inquiringly. Then the Efficient Sister said:
+"I'd like to go, but this is pay day and I can't leave the place."
+
+"I have to go to town for some supplies," said the Domestic Sister.
+
+"I want to stay and watch this," said the Sociological and Artistic
+Sister. (She made a gesture toward my companion, but I think she
+referred to his drawing.)
+
+"I'm going away to a house party," said the Sprightly Sister who Likes
+to Dance. "I must pack."
+
+"You can't get lost," said the Domestic Sister.
+
+"Even if you should," put in the Efficient Sister, "Dr. Bell would bring
+you home."
+
+During this conversation my companion did not look up from his work,
+neither did he speak; yet upon his back there was an expression of
+derisive glee which made me hope, vindictively, that he would smudge his
+drawing. However inscrutable his face, I have never known a man with a
+back so expressive.
+
+"Here comes Dr. Bell," remarked the Sociological and Artistic Sister, as
+a negro groom appeared leading the sorrel steed.
+
+"Well," I said, trying to speak debonairely as I started toward the
+drive, "I'll be going."
+
+I wished to leave them where they were and go around to the other side
+of the house to mount. I had noticed a stone block there and meant to
+use it if no one but the groom were present; also I intended to tip the
+groom and ask him a few casual questions about the ways of Dr. Bell.
+
+I might have managed this but for a sudden manifestation of interest on
+the part of my companion.
+
+"Come on," he said to the young ladies, "let's go and see him off." It
+seemed to me that he emphasized the word "off" unpleasantly. However I
+tried to seem calm as we moved toward the drive.
+
+Dr. Bell had a bright brown eye; there was something alert in the gaze
+with which he watched us moving toward him. However, to my great relief
+he stood quite still while two of the sisters who preceded me by a few
+steps, went up and patted him. Evidently he liked to be patted. I
+decided that I would pat him also.
+
+I had approached him from the left and in order to mount I now found it
+necessary to circle around, in front of him. I was determined that if
+the horse would but remain stationary I should step up to him, speak to
+him, give him a quick pat on the neck, gather the reins in my hand,
+place my foot swiftly in the stirrup, take a good hop, and be on his
+back before any one had time to notice.
+
+Dr. Bell, however, caused me to alter these plans; for though he had
+stood docile as a dog while the sisters patted him, his manner underwent
+a change on sight of me. I do not think this change was caused by any
+personal dislike for me. I believe he would have done the same had any
+stranger appeared before him in riding boots. The trouble was, probably,
+that he had expected to be ridden by one of the young ladies, and was
+shocked by the abrupt discovery that a total stranger was to ride him.
+This is merely my surmise. I do not claim deep understanding of the
+mental workings of any horse, for there is no logic about them or their
+performances. They are like crafty lunatics, reasoning, if they reason
+at all, in a manner too treacherous and devious for human comprehension.
+Their very usefulness, the service they render man, is founded on their
+own folly; were it not for that, man could not even catch them, let
+alone force them to submit, like weak-minded giants, to his will.
+
+The fact is that, excepting barnyard fowls, the horse is the most
+idiotic of all animals, and, pound for pound, even the miserable hen is
+his intellectual superior. Indeed, if horses had brains no better than
+those of hens, but proportionately larger, they would not be drawing
+wagons, and carrying men upon their backs, but would be lecturing to
+women's clubs, and holding chairs in universities, and writing essays on
+the Development of the Short Story in America.
+
+Horse lovers, who are among the most prejudiced of all prejudiced
+people, and who regard horses with an amiable but fatuous admiration
+such as young parents have for their babies, will try to tell you that
+these great creatures which they love are not mentally deficient. Ask
+them why the horse, with his superior strength, submits to man, and they
+will tell you that the horse's eye magnifies, and that, to the horse,
+man consequently appears to be two or three times his actual size.
+
+Nonsense! There is but one reason for the yielding of the horse: he is
+an utter fool.
+
+Everything proves him a fool. He will charge into battle, he will walk
+cheerfully beside a precipice, he will break his back pulling a heavy
+wagon, or break his leg or his neck in jumping a hurdle; yet he will go
+into a frenzy of fright at the sight of a running child, a roadside
+rock, or the shadow of a branch across the path, and not even a German
+chancellor could shy as he will at a scrap of paper.
+
+As I passed in front of Dr. Bell he rolled his eyes at me horribly, and
+rose upon his hind legs, almost upsetting the groom as he went up and
+barely missing him with his fore feet as he brought them to earth again.
+
+"What's the matter with him?" I asked, stopping.
+
+"I guess he just feels good," said the Efficient Sister.
+
+"Yassuh, tha 's all," said the groom cheerfully. "_He's_ aw' right.
+Gentle ath a lamb."
+
+As he made this statement, I took another step in the direction of the
+horse, whereat he reared again.
+
+"_Well_, now!" said the groom, patting Dr. Bell upon the neck. "Feelin'
+pretty good 's mawnin', is you? There, there!"
+
+Dr. Bell, however, paid little attention to his attendant, but gazed
+steadily at me with an evil look.
+
+"Does he always do like that?" I asked the Domestic Sister.
+
+"I never saw him do it before," she said.
+
+"Maybe he doesn't admire the cut of your riding breeches," suggested my
+companion.
+
+"Oh, no, suh," protested the groom. "It 's jes' his li'l way tryin' t'
+tell you he likes de ladies t' ride him better 'n he likes de gemmen."
+
+"He means he doesn't want me to ride him?"
+
+"Yassuh, da 's jes' his li'l idee 't he 's got _now_. He be all right
+once you in de saddle."
+
+"But how am I to get in the saddle if he keeps doing that?"
+
+"I hold 'im all right," said the groom. "You jes' get on 'im, suh. He
+soon find out who 's boss."
+
+"I think he will," said my heartless companion.
+
+"Nevvah you feah, suh," the man said to me. "Ah knowed the minute Ah saw
+yo' laigs 't you was a _horse_man. Yassuh! Ah says t' ole Gawge, Ah
+says, 'Dat gemman's certain'y been 'n de cava'ry, he has, wid dem fine
+crooked laigs o' hisn.'"
+
+"You should have told that to Dr. Bell, instead," suggested my
+companion.
+
+At this every one laughed. Even the groom laughed a wheezy, cackling
+negro laugh. The situation was becoming unbearable. Clearly I must try
+to mount. Perhaps I should not succeed, but I must try. As I was
+endeavoring to adjust my mind to this unpleasant fact the Efficient
+Sister spoke.
+
+"That horse is going to be ridden," she said firmly, "if I have to go
+upstairs and dress and ride him myself."
+
+That settled it.
+
+"Now you hold him down," I said to the groom, and stepped forward.
+
+As I did so Dr. Bell reared again, simultaneously drawing back sidewise
+and turning his flank away from me, but this time the Efficient Sister
+hit him with a crop she had found somewhere, and he came down hastily,
+and began to dance a sort of double clog with all four feet.
+
+After several efforts I managed to get beside him. Gathering the reins
+in my left hand I put my foot up swiftly, found the stirrup, and with a
+hop, managed to board the beast.
+
+As I did so, the groom let him go. Both stirrups were short, but it was
+too late to discuss that, for by the time I was adjusted to my seat we
+had traveled, at a run, over a considerable part of the lawn and through
+most of the flowerbeds. The shortness of the stirrups made me bounce,
+and I had a feeling that I might do better to remove my feet from them
+entirely, but as I had never ridden without stirrups I hesitated to try
+it now. Therefore I merely dug my knees desperately into the saddle
+flaps and awaited what should come, while endeavoring to check the
+animal. He, however, kept his head down, which not only made it
+difficult to stop him, but also gave me an unpleasant sense as of riding
+on the cowcatcher of a locomotive with nothing but space in front of me.
+Once, with a jerk, I managed to get his head up, but when I did that he
+reared. I do not care for rearing.
+
+To add to my delight, one of the dogs now ran out and began to bark and
+circle around us, jumping up at the horse's nose and nipping at his
+heels. This brought on new activities, for now Dr. Bell not only reared
+but elevated himself suddenly behind, to kick at the dog. However, there
+was one good result. We stopped running and began to trot rapidly about
+in circles, dodging the dog, and this finally brought us back toward the
+house.
+
+"My stirrups are too short!" I shouted to the groom.
+
+"Ride oveh heah, suh," he called back.
+
+I tried to do it, but Dr. Bell continued to move in circles. At last,
+however, the man managed to catch us by advancing with his hand
+extended, as though offering a lump of sugar, at the same time talking
+gently to my steed. Then, while my companion held the bit the negro
+adjusted the stirrup leathers. I was glad of the breathing spell. I
+wished that it took longer to adjust stirrups.
+
+"You'd better go out by the drive this time," said the Efficient Sister.
+
+"I intended to before," I told her, "but he didn't seem to understand
+the signals."
+
+"You've got spurs on. Give him the spur."
+
+As a matter of fact, I had hesitated to give him the spur. It seemed to
+me that he was annoyed with me anyway, and that the spur would only
+serve to increase his prejudice. I wanted to rule him not by brute force
+but by kindness. I wished that I could somehow make him know that I was
+a regular subscriber to the S.P.C.A., that I loved children and animals
+and all helpless creatures, both great and small, that I used the dumb
+brutes gently and only asked in return that they do the same by me. But
+how is one to communicate such humanitarian ideas to a big, stupid,
+wilful, perverse, diabolical creature like a horse?
+
+I was determined that when we started again we should not run over the
+lawn if I could possibly prevent it. Therefore I had the groom head the
+horse down the drive, and the moment he released him, I touched Dr. Bell
+with the spurs. The result was magical. He started on a run but kept in
+the road where I wanted him to be, giving me, for the moment, a sense of
+having something almost like control over him. At the foot of the drive
+was a gate which I knew could be opened without dismounting, by pulling
+a rope, and as no horse, unless quite out of his mind, will deliberately
+run into a gate, I had reason to hope that Dr. Bell would stop when he
+got there. Imagine my feelings, then, when on sight of the gate he not
+only failed to slacken his pace, but actually dashed at it faster than
+ever. Within a few feet of the barrier he seemed to pause momentarily,
+hunching himself in a peculiar and alarming manner: then he arose,
+sailed through the air like a swallow, came down beyond like a load of
+trunks falling off from a truck, and galloped down the highway,
+seemingly quite indifferent to the fact that the stirrups were flapping
+at his sides and that I had moved from the saddle to a point near the
+base of his neck.
+
+My position at the moment was one of considerable insecurity. By holding
+on to his mane and wriggling backward I hoped to stay on, provided he
+did not put down his head. If he did that, I was lost. Fortunately for
+me, however, Dr. Bell did not realize with what ease he could have
+dropped me at that moment, and by dint of cautious but eager gymnastics,
+I managed to regain the saddle and the stirrups, although in doing so I
+pricked him several times with the spurs, with the result that, though
+he ran faster than ever for a time, he must have presently concluded
+that I didn't care how fast he went; at all events, he slackened his
+pace to a canter, from which, shortly, I managed to draw him down to a
+trot and then to a walk.
+
+I am glad to say that not until now had we met any vehicle. Even while
+he was running, even while I was engaged in maintaining a precarious
+seat upon his neck, I had found time to hope fervently that we should
+not encounter an automobile. I was afraid that he would jump it if we
+did.
+
+Now, however, I saw a motor approaching. Dr. Bell saw it, too, and
+pricked up his ears. Seizing the reins firmly in one hand, I waved with
+the other, signalling to the motorist to stop, which he did, pulling out
+into the ditch. Meanwhile I talked to Dr. Bell, patting him on the neck
+and telling him to go on and not to be afraid, because it was all right.
+Dr. Bell did go on. He went up to the front of the motor, past the side
+of it, and on behind it, without showing the least sign of alarm. He did
+not mind it at all. But the man in the motor minded. Annoyed with me for
+having stopped him unnecessarily, he shouted something after me. But I
+paid no attention to him. Under the circumstances, it seemed the only
+thing to do. I might have gotten off; I might conceivably have beaten
+him; but I never could have held the horse while doing it, or have
+gotten on again.
+
+Presently, when I was changing the position of the reins, which were
+hurting my fingers because I had gripped them so tight, I accidentally
+shifted the gears in some way, so to speak, sending Dr. Bell off at a
+pace which was neither a trot nor a canter, but which carried us along
+at a sort of smooth, rapid glide. At first I took this gait to be a
+swift trot, and attempted to post to it; then, as that did not work, I
+sat still in the saddle and, finding the posture comfortable, concluded
+that Dr. Bell must be single-footing. I had never single-footed before.
+Just as I was beginning to like it, however, he changed to a trot, then
+back to single-footing again, and so on, in a curious puzzling manner.
+
+Except for the changes of gait, we were now going on rather well, and I
+had begun, for the first time, to feel a little security, when all of a
+sudden he swerved off and galloped with me up a driveway leading toward
+a white house which stood on a hill two or three hundred yards from the
+road. Again I tried to stop him, but when I pulled on the reins he shook
+his head savagely from side to side and snorted in a loud and
+threatening manner.
+
+As we neared the house I saw that two ladies were sitting on the porch
+regarding our approach with interest. I hoped that Dr. Bell would find
+some way of keeping on past the house and into the fields, but he had no
+such intention. Instead of going by, he swung around the circle before
+the porch, and stopped at the steps, upon which the two ladies were
+sitting.
+
+One of them was a white-haired woman of gentle mien; the other was a
+girl of eighteen or twenty with pretty, mischievous eyes.
+
+Both the ladies looked up inquiringly as Dr. Bell and I stopped.
+
+I lifted my hat. It was the only thing I could think of to do at the
+moment. At this they both nodded gravely. Then we sat and stared at one
+another.
+
+"Well?" said the old lady, when the silence had become embarrassing.
+
+I felt that I must say something, so I remarked: "This is a very pretty
+place you have here."
+
+At this, though the statement was quite true, they looked perplexed.
+
+"Is there any message?" asked the young woman, after another pause.
+
+"Oh, no," I answered lightly. "I was riding by and thought I'd take the
+liberty of coming up and telling you--telling you that although I am a
+Northerner and a stranger here, I love the South, the quaint old
+Southern customs, the lovely old houses, the delicious waffles, the--"
+
+"That is very gratifying," said she "I am sorry to say we are all out of
+waffles at present."
+
+"Oh, I don't want any now," I replied politely.
+
+"Well, if you don't mind my asking, what _do_ you want?"
+
+"I want," I said, desperately, "to see your groom for a moment, if
+possible."
+
+"He's gone to town," she replied. "Is there anything I can do? I see
+that your stirrup leather is twisted." With that she arose, came down,
+removed my foot from the stirrup, in a businesslike manner, reversed the
+iron, and put my foot back for me.
+
+I thanked her.
+
+"Anything else?" she asked, her wicked eye twinkling.
+
+"Perhaps," I ventured, "perhaps you know how to make a horse
+single-foot?"
+
+"There are different ways," she said. "With Dr. Bell you might try using
+the curb gently, working it from side to side."
+
+"I will," I said. "Thank you very much."
+
+"And," said the girl, "if he ever takes a notion to bolt with you, or to
+go up to some house where you don't want him to go, just touch him with
+the curb. That will fix him. He's very soft-bitted."
+
+"But I tried that," I protested.
+
+She looked at my reins, then shook her head.
+
+"No," she said, "you've got your curb rein and your snaffle rein mixed."
+
+"I am very much indebted to you," I said, as I changed the position of
+the reins between my fingers.
+
+"Not at all," said she. "I hope you'll get safely back to the Claymont.
+If you want to jump him, give him his head. He'll take off all right."
+
+"Thanks," I returned. "I don't want to jump him."
+
+Then lifting my hat and thanking her again, I wiggled the curb gently
+from side to side, as directed, and departed, singlefooting comfortably.
+
+Dr. Bell and I got home very nicely. He wanted to jump the gate again,
+but I checked him with the curb. After pulling the rope to open the gate
+I must have got the reins mixed once more, for as I was nearing the
+house, calm in the feeling that I had mastered the animal, and intent
+upon cantering up to the porch in fine style, Dr. Bell swerved suddenly
+off to the stable, went into the door, and, before I could stop him,
+entered his stall.
+
+There I dismounted in absolute privacy. It was quite easy. I had only to
+climb on to the partition and drop down into the next stall, which, by
+good fortune, was vacant.
+
+With a single exception, this was the only riding I did in the South,
+and on the one other occasion of which I speak I did not ride alone, but
+had, surrounding me, the entire Eleventh United States Cavalry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+INTO THE OLD DOMINION
+
+
+When two men are traveling together on an equal footing, and it becomes
+necessary to decide between two rooms in a hotel, how is the decision to
+be made? Which man is to take the big, bright corner room, and which the
+little room that faces on the court and is fragrant of the bakery below?
+Or again, which man shall occupy the lower berth in a Pullman
+drawing-room, and which shall try to sleep upon the shelf-like couch? Or
+when there is but one lower left, which shall take the upper? If an
+extra kit bag be required for the use of both, who shall pay for it and
+own it at the journey's end? Who shall pay for this meal and who for
+that? Or yet again, if there be but one cheap heavy overcoat in a shop,
+and both desire to own that coat, which one shall have the right of
+purchase? Who shall tip the bell boy for bringing up the bags, or the
+porter for taking down the trunks? Who shall take home from a dance the
+girl both want to take, and who shall escort the unattractive one who
+resides in a remote suburb?
+
+Between two able-bodied men there is no uncomfortable complication of
+politeness in such matters. On a brief journey there might be, but on a
+long journey the thin veil of factitious courtesy is cast aside; each
+wants his fair share of what is best and makes no pretense to the
+contrary.
+
+Upon our first long journey together, some years ago, my companion and I
+established a custom of settling all such questions by matching coins,
+and we have maintained this habit ever since. Upon the whole it has
+worked well. We have matched for everything except railroad fares and
+hotel bills, and though fortune has sometimes favored one or the other
+for a time, I believe that, had we kept accounts, we should find
+ourselves to-day practically even.
+
+Our system of matching has some correlated customs. Now and then, for
+instance, when one of us is unlucky and has been "stuck" for a series of
+meals, the other, in partial reparation, will declare a "party."
+Birthdays and holidays also call for parties, and sometimes there will
+be a party for no particular reason other than that we feel like having
+one.
+
+Two of our parties on this journey have been given in the basement café
+of the Shoreham Hotel in Washington. Both were supper parties. The first
+I gave in honor of my companion, for the reason that we both like the
+Shoreham café, and that a party seemed to be about due. That party
+brought on the other, which occurred a few nights later and was given by
+us jointly in honor of a very beautiful and talented young actress. And
+this one, we agree, was, in a way, the most amusing of all the parties
+we have had together.
+
+It was early in the morning, when we were leaving the café after the
+first party, that we encountered the lady who caused the second one. I
+had never met her, but I was aware that my companion knew her, for he
+talked about her in his sleep. She was having supper with a gentleman at
+a table near the door, and had you seen her it would be unnecessary for
+me to tell you that my companion stopped to speak to her, and that I
+hung around until he introduced me.
+
+After we had stood beside her, for a time, talking and gazing down into
+her beautiful world-wise eyes, the gentleman with whom she was supping
+took pity upon us, and upon the waiters, whose passageway we blocked,
+and invited us to sit down.
+
+It was doubly delightful to meet her there in Washington, for besides
+being beautiful and celebrated, she had just come from New York and was
+able to give us news of mutual friends, bringing us up to date on suits
+for separation, alimony, and alienation of affections, on divorces and
+remarriages, and all the little items one loses track of when one has
+been away for a fortnight.
+
+"I shall be playing in Washington all this week," she said as we were
+about to leave. "I hope that we may see each other again."
+
+Whom did she mean by "we"? True, she looked at my companion as she
+spoke, but he was seated at one side of her and I at the other, and even
+with such eyes as hers, she could not have looked at both of us at
+once. Certainly the hope she had expressed was shared by me. _I_ hoped
+that "we" might meet again, and it seemed to me desirable at the moment
+that she should understand (and that my companion should be reminded)
+that he and I were as Damon and Pythias, as Castor and Pollux, as
+Pylades and Orestes, and all that sort of thing. Therefore I leaped
+quickly at the word "we," and, before my companion had time to answer,
+replied:
+
+"I hope so too."
+
+This brought her eyes to me. She looked surprised, I thought, but what
+of that? Don't women like to be surprised? Don't they like men to be
+strong, resolute, determined, like heroes in the moving pictures? Don't
+they like to see a man handle matters with dash? I was determined to be
+dashing.
+
+"We are off to Virginia to-morrow morning," I continued. "We are going
+to Fredericksburg and Charlottesville, and into the fox-hunting country.
+If we can get back here Saturday night let's have a party."
+
+I spoke of the hunting country debonairely. I did not care what she
+thought my companion was going to the hunting country for, but I did not
+wish her to think that I was going only to look on. On the contrary, I
+desired her to suppose that I should presently be wearing a pair of
+beautiful, slim-legged riding boots and a pink coat, and leaping a
+thoroughbred mount over fences and gates. I wished her to believe me a
+wild, reckless, devil of a fellow, and to worry throughout the week
+lest I be killed in a fall from my horse, and she never see me
+more--poor girl!
+
+That she felt such emotions I have since had reason to doubt. However,
+the idea of a party after the play on Saturday night seemed to appeal to
+her, and it was arranged that my companion and I should endeavor to get
+back to Washington after the Piedmont Hunt races, which we were to
+attend on Saturday afternoon, and that if we could get back we should
+telegraph to her.
+
+We kept our agreement--but I shall come to that later.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Next morning we took train for Fredericksburg.
+
+The city manager who runs the town is a good housekeeper; his streets
+are wide, pretty, and clean; and though there are many historic
+buildings--including the home of Washington's mother and the house in
+which Washington became a Mason--there are enough good new ones to give
+the place a progressive look.
+
+In the days of the State's magnificence Fredericksburg was the center
+for all this part of northeastern Virginia, and particularly for the
+Rappahannock Valley; and from pre-Revolutionary times, when tobacco was
+legal tender and ministers got roaring drunk, down to the Civil War,
+there came rolling into the town the coaches of the great plantation
+owners of the region, who used Fredericksburg as a headquarters for
+drinking, gambling, and business. Among these probably the most famous
+was "King" Carter, who not only owned miles upon miles of land and a
+thousand slaves, but was the husband of five (successive) Mrs. Carters.
+
+Falmouth, a river town a mile above Fredericksburg, where a few
+scattered houses stand to-day, was in early times a busy place. It is
+said that the first flour mill in America stood there, and that one
+Gordon, who made his money by shipping flour and tobacco direct from his
+wharf to England, and bringing back bricks as ballast for his ships, was
+the first American millionaire.
+
+Besides having known intimately such historic figures as Washington,
+Monroe, and Robert E. Lee, and having been the scene of sanguinary
+fighting in the Civil War, the neighborhood of Fredericksburg boasts the
+birth-place of a man of whom I wish to speak briefly here, for the
+reason that he was a great man, that he has been partially overlooked by
+history, and that it is said in the South that the fame which should
+justly be his has been deliberately withheld by historians and
+politicians for the sole reason that as a naval officer he espoused the
+southern cause in the Civil War.
+
+Every one who has heard of Robert Fulton, certainly every one who has
+heard of S.F.B. Morse or Cyrus W. Field, ought also to have heard of
+Matthew Fontaine Maury. But that is not the case. For myself, I must
+confess that, until I visited Virginia, I was ignorant of the fact that
+such a person had existed; nor have northern schoolboys, to whom I have
+spoken of Maury, so much as heard his name. Yet there is no one living
+in the United States, or in any civilized country, whose daily life is
+not affected through the scientific researches and attainments of this
+man.
+
+Maury's claim to fame rests on his eminent services to navigation and
+meteorology. If Humboldt's work, published in 1817, was the first great
+contribution to meteorological science, it remained for Maury to make
+that science exact.
+
+While it is perhaps an exaggeration to say that Maury alone laid the
+foundation for our present Weather Bureau, he certainly shares with
+Professors Redfield, Espy, Loomis, Joseph Henry, Dr. Increase Lapham,
+and others, the honor of having been one of the first to suggest the
+feasibility of our present systematic storm warnings.
+
+Maury was born in 1806. When nineteen years of age he secured a
+midshipman's warrant, and, as there was no naval academy at Annapolis
+then, was immediately assigned to a man-of-war. Within six years he was
+master of an American war vessel. Before starting on a voyage to the
+Pacific he sought information on the winds and currents, and finding
+that it was not available, determined himself to gather it for general
+publication. This he did, issuing a book upon the subject.
+
+When a broken leg, the result of a stage-coach accident, caused his
+retirement from active service at sea, he continued his studies, and, in
+recognition of his services to navigation, was given charge of the Depot
+of Charts and Instruments at Washington. There he found stored away the
+log books of American naval vessels, and from the vast number of
+observations they contained, began the compilation of the Wind and
+Currents Charts known to all mariners.
+
+A monograph on Maury, issued by N.W. Ayer & Son, of Philadelphia, says
+of these charts:
+
+"They were, at first, received with indifference and incredulity.
+Finally, a Captain Jackson determined to trust the new chart absolutely.
+As a result he made a round trip to Rio de Janeiro in the time often
+required for the outward passage alone. Later, four clipper ships
+started from New York for San Francisco, via Cape Horn. These vessels
+arrived at their destination in the order determined by the degree of
+fidelity with which they had followed the directions of Maury's charts.
+The arrival of these ships in San Francisco marked, likewise, the
+arrival of Maury's Wind and Currents Charts in the lasting favor of the
+mariners of the world. The average voyage to San Francisco was reduced,
+by use of the charts, from one hundred and eighty-three to one hundred
+and thirty-five days, a saving of forty-eight days.
+
+"Soon after this, the ship _San Francisco_, with hundreds of United
+States troops on board, foundered in an Atlantic hurricane. The rumor
+reached port that there was need of help. Maury was called upon to
+indicate her probable location. He set to work to show where the wind
+and currents would combine to place a helpless wreck, and marked the
+place with a blue pencil. There the relief was sent, and there the
+survivors of the wreck were found. From that day to this, Maury's word
+has been accepted without challenge by the matter-of-fact men of the
+sea.
+
+"These charts, only a few in number, are among the most wonderful and
+useful productions of the human mind. One of them combined the result of
+1,159,353 separate observations on the force and direction of the wind,
+and upward of 100,000 observations on the height of the barometer, at
+sea. As the value of such observations was recognized, more of them were
+made. Through the genius and devotion of one man, Commander Maury, every
+ship became a floating observatory, keeping careful records of winds,
+currents, limits of fogs, icebergs, rain areas, temperature, soundings,
+etc., while every maritime nation of the world coöperated in a work that
+was to redound to the benefit of commerce and navigation, the increase
+of knowledge, the good of all.
+
+"In 1853, at the instance of Commander Maury, the United States called
+the celebrated Brussels Conference for the coöperation of nations in
+matters pertaining to maritime affairs. At this conference, Maury
+advocated the extension of the system of meteorological observation to
+the land, thus forming a weather bureau helpful to agriculture. This he
+urged in papers and addresses to the close of his life. Our present
+Weather Bureau and Signal Service are largely the outcome of his
+perception and advocacy."
+
+Maury's "Physical Geography of the Sea," the work by which he is best
+known, was published in 1855. He discovered, among other things, the
+causes of the Gulf Stream, and the existence of the still-water plateau
+of the North Atlantic which made possible the laying of the first cable.
+Cyrus W. Field said, with reference to Maury's work in this connection:
+"Maury furnished the brains, England gave the money, and I did the
+work."
+
+Maury was decorated by many foreign governments but not by his own.
+Owing, it is said, to his having taken up the Confederate cause,
+national honors were withheld from him, not only during the remainder of
+his life, but until 1916, when one of the large buildings at the Naval
+Academy--the establishment of which, by the way, Maury was one of the
+first to advocate--was named for him, and Congress passed a bill
+appropriating funds for the erection of a monument to the "Pathfinder of
+the Sea," in Washington.
+
+Maury died in 1873, one of the most loved and honored men in the State
+of Virginia.
+
+It is recorded that, near the end, he asked his son: "Am I dragging my
+anchors?"
+
+And when the latter replied in the affirmative, the father gave a brave
+sailor's answer:
+
+"All's well," he said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Across the river from Fredericksburg stands Chatham, the old Fitzhugh
+house, one of the most charming of early Virginian mansions. Chatham was
+built in 1728, and it is thought that the plans for it were drawn by
+Sir Christopher Wren at the order of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, and
+sent by the latter to William Fitzhugh, who had been his classmate at
+Eton and Oxford. Not only does the name of the house lend color to the
+tale, but so do its proportions, which are very beautiful, reminding one
+somewhat of those of Doughoregan Manor. Chatham, however, has the
+advantage of being (as the Hon. Charles Augustus Murray wrote of it in
+his quaint "Travels in North America," published in 1839) "situated on
+an eminence commanding a view of the town, and of the bold, sweeping
+course of the Rappahannoc." Murray also tells of the beautiful garden,
+with its great box trees and its huge slave-built terraces, stepping
+down to the water like a giant's stairway.
+
+In this house my companion and I were guests, and as I won the toss for
+the choice of rooms, mine was the privilege of sleeping in the historic
+west bedchamber, the principal guest room, and of opening my eyes, in
+the morning, upon a lovely wall all paneled in white-painted wood.
+
+I shall always remember the delightful experience of awakening in that
+room, so vast, dignified, and beautiful, and of lying there a little
+drowsy, and thinking of those who had been there before me. This was the
+room occupied by George and Martha Washington when they stopped for a
+few days at Chatham on their wedding journey; this was the room occupied
+by Madison, by Monroe, by Washington Irving, and by Robert E. Lee when
+he visited Chatham and courted Mary Custis, who became his wife. And,
+most wonderful of all to me, this was the room occupied by Lincoln when
+he came to Fredericksburg to review the army, while Chatham was Union
+headquarters, and the embattled Lee had headquarters in the old house
+known as Brompton, still standing on Marye's Heights back of the river
+and the town. It is said that Lee during the siege of Fredericksburg
+never trained his guns on Chatham, because of his sentiment for the
+place. As I lay there in the morning I wondered if Lee had been aware,
+at the time, that Lincoln was under the roof of Chatham, and whether
+Lincoln knew, when he slept in "my" room, that Washington and Lee had
+both been there before him.
+
+War, I thought, not only makes strange bedfellows, but strange
+combinations in the histories of bedrooms.
+
+Then the maid rapped for the second time upon my door, and though this
+time I got up at once, my ruminations made me scandalously late for
+breakfast.
+
+After breakfast came the motor, which was to take us to the
+battlefields, its driver a thin dry-looking, dry-talking man, with the
+air of one a little tired of the story he told to tourists day in and
+day out, yet conscientiously resolved to go through with it. Before the
+huge cemetery which overlooks the site of the most violent fighting that
+occurred in the bloody and useless Battle of Fredericksburg, he paused
+briefly; then drove us to the field of Chancellorsville, to that of the
+Battles of the Wilderness, and finally to the region of Spottsylvania
+Courthouse; and at each important spot he stopped and told us what had
+happened there. He knew all about the Civil War, that man, and he had a
+way of passing out his information with a calm assumption that his
+hearers knew nothing about it whatever. This irritated my companion, who
+also knows all about the War, having once passed three days in the
+neighborhood of a Soldiers' Home. Consequently he kept cutting in,
+supplying additional details--such, for instance, as that Stonewall
+Jackson, who died in a house which the driver pointed out, was shot by
+some of his own men, who took him for a Yankee as he was returning from
+a reconnaissance.
+
+Either one of these competitive historians alone, I could have stood,
+but the way they picked each other up, fighting the old-time battles
+over again, got on my nerves. Besides, it was cold, and as I have taken
+occasion to remark before, I do not like cold motor rides. Indeed, as I
+think it over, it seems to me I do not like battlefields, either. At all
+events, I became more and more morose as we traversed that bleak
+Virginia landscape, and I am afraid that before the day was over I was
+downright sulky.
+
+As we drove back to Fredericksburg and to the train which was to take us
+to Charlottesville, my companion made remarks of a general character
+about people who were trivial minded, and who didn't take a proper
+interest in the scenes of great historical occurrences. When he had
+continued for some time in this vein, I remarked feebly that I loved to
+read about battles; but that, far from mitigating his severity, only
+caused him to change his theme. He said that physical laziness was a
+terrible thing because it not only made the body soft but by degrees
+softened the brain, as well. He said that when people didn't want to see
+battlefields, preferring to lie in bed and read about them, that was a
+sign of the beginning of the end.
+
+On various occasions throughout the week he brought this subject up
+again, and I was glad indeed when, as the time for our party with the
+beautiful young actress, in Washington, drew near, he began to forget
+about my shortcomings and think of more agreeable things.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+CHARLOTTESVILLE AND MONTICELLO
+
+
+When Virginians speak of "the university," they do not mean Harvard,
+Princeton, Yale, or even Washington and Lee, but always the University
+of Virginia, which is at Charlottesville.
+
+The city of Charlottesville, in its downtown parts, is no more and no
+less dingy and dismal than many another town of six or seven thousand
+inhabitants, be it North or South. It has a long main street, lined with
+little shops and moving-picture shows, and the theatrical posters which
+thrill one at first sight with hopes of evening entertainment, prove, on
+inspection, to have survived long after the "show" they advertise has
+come and gone, or else to presage the "show" that is coming for one
+night, week after next.
+
+Nor is this scarcity of theatrical entertainment confined alone to small
+towns of the South. Not all important stars and important theatrical
+productions visit even the largest cities, for the South is not regarded
+by theatrical managers as particularly profitable territory. It would be
+interesting to know whether anćmia of the theater in the South, as well
+as the falling off generally of theatergoing in lesser American
+cities--usually attributed to the popularity and cheapness of the
+"movies"--is not due in large measure to the folly of managers
+themselves in sending out inferior companies. Any one who has seen a
+theatrical entertainment in New York and seen it later "on the road" is
+likely to be struck by the fact that even the larger American cities do
+not always get the full New York cast, while smaller cities seldom if
+ever get any part of it. The South suffers particularly in this respect.
+The little "river shows," which arrive now and then in river towns, and
+which are more or less characteristic of the South, have the excuse of
+real picturesqueness, however bad the entertainment given, for the
+players live and have their theater on flatboats, which tie up at the
+wharf. But the plain fact about the ordinary little southern "road show"
+is that it does not deserve to make money.
+
+The life of a poor player touring the South must be very wretched, for
+generally, excepting in large cities, hotels are poor. Before we had
+gone far upon our way, my companion and I learned to inquire carefully
+in advance as to the best hotels, and when we found in any small city
+one which was not a fire trap, and which was clean, we were surprised,
+while if the service was fairly good, and the meals were not very bad,
+we considered it a matter for rejoicing.
+
+We were advised to stop, in Charlottesville, at the New Gleason, and
+when we alighted at the dingy old brick railroad station--a station
+quite as unprepossessing as that at New Haven, Connecticut--we began to
+feel that all was not for the best. A large gray horse hitched to the
+hack in which we rode to the Gleason evidently felt the same, for at
+first he balked, and later tried to run away.
+
+The hotel lobby was a perfect example of its kind. There were several
+drummers writing at the little desks, and several more sitting idly in
+chairs adjacent to brass cuspidors. All of them looked despondent with a
+despondency suggesting pie for breakfast. Behind the desk was a
+sleepy-looking old clerk who, as we arrived, was very busy over a
+financial transaction involving change of ownership in a two-cent stamp.
+This enterprise concluded, he assigned us rooms.
+
+Never have I wished to win the toss for rooms as I wished it when I saw
+the two allotted to us, for though the larger one could not by a flight
+of fancy be termed cheerful, the sight of the lesser chamber filled me
+with thoughts of madness.
+
+Of course I lost.
+
+Never shall I forget that room. It was too small to accommodate my
+trunks with any comfort, so I left them downstairs with the porter,
+descending, now and then, to get such articles as I required. The
+furniture, what there was of it, was of yellow pine; the top of the
+dresser was scarred with the marks of many glasses and many bottles; the
+lace window curtains were long, hard and of a wiry stiffness, and the
+wall-paper was of a scrambled pattern all in bilious brown. During the
+evening I persuaded my companion to walk with me through the town, and
+once I got him out I kept him going on and on through shadowy streets
+unknown to us, until, exhausted, he insisted upon returning to our
+hostelry. I fancy that there are picturesque old houses on the outskirts
+of the town, but with that wall paper and a terrible nostalgia occupying
+my mind, I was in no state to judge of what was there.
+
+On reaching the hotel my companion went to bed, but I remained until
+late in the office, writing letters, doing anything rather than go up to
+my room. When at last I did ascend I planned to read, but the
+arrangement of the light was bad, so presently I put it out and lay
+there sleepless and miserable, thinking of foolish things that I have
+said and done during a life rich with such items, and having chills and
+fever over each separate recollection. How I drifted off to sleep at
+last I do not know; all I remember is waking up next morning, leaping
+out of bed and dressing in frantic haste to get out of my room. There
+was but one thing in it which did not utterly offend the eye: that was
+the steam pipe which ascended from floor to ceiling at one corner, and
+which, being a simple, honest metal tube, was not objectionable.
+
+As we passed through the office on our way to breakfast, the bus man
+entered, and in a loud, retarded chant proclaimed: "Train for the
+South!"
+
+The impressive tones in which this announcement was delivered seemed to
+call for a sudden stir, a rush for bags and coats, a general exodus,
+but no one in the office moved, and I remember feeling sorry for the bus
+man as he turned and went out in the midst of a crushing anti-climax.
+
+"I wonder," I said to my companion, "if anybody ever gets up and goes
+when that man calls out the trains."
+
+"I don't believe so," he replied. "I don't think he calls trains for any
+such purpose. He only warns people so they will expect to hear the
+train, and not be frightened when it goes through."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thomas Jefferson is most widely remembered, I suppose, as the author of
+the Declaration of Independence, the third President, the purchaser of
+Louisiana, and the unfortunate individual upon whom the Democratic party
+casts the blame for its existence, precisely as the Republican party
+blames itself on Washington and Lincoln--although the lamentable state
+into which both parties have fallen is actually the fault of living men.
+
+It is significant, however, that of this trio of Jeffersonian items,
+Jefferson himself selected but one to be included in the inscription
+which he wrote for his tombstone--a modest obelisk on the grounds at
+Monticello. The inscription mentions but three of his achievements: the
+authorship of the Declaration, that of the Virginia statute for
+religious freedom, and the fact that he was "Father of the University of
+Virginia."
+
+Regardless of other accomplishments, the man who built the university
+and the house at Monticello was great. It is more true of these
+buildings than of any others I have seen that they are the
+autobiography, in brick and stone, of their architect. To see them, to
+see some of the exquisitely margined manuscript in Jefferson's clean
+handwriting, preserved in the university library, and to read the
+Declaration, is to gain a grasp of certain sides of Jefferson's nature
+which can be achieved in no other way.
+
+Monticello stands on a lofty hilltop, with vistas, between trees, of
+neighboring valleys, hills, and mountains. It is a supremely lovely
+house, unlike any other, and, while it is too much to say that one would
+recognize it as the house of the writer of the Declaration, it is not
+too much to say that, once one does know it, one can trace a clear
+affinity resulting from a common origin--an affinity much more apparent,
+by the way, than may be traced between the work of Michelangelo on St.
+Peter's at Rome, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and in his
+"David."
+
+The introductory paragraph to the Declaration ascends into the body of
+the document as gracefully and as certainly as the wide flights of easy
+steps ascend to the doors of Monticello; the long and beautifully
+balanced paragraph which follows, building word upon word and sentence
+upon sentence into a central statement, has a form as definite and
+graceful as that of the finely proportioned house; the numbered
+paragraphs which follow, setting forth separate details, are like rooms
+within the house, and--I have just come upon the coincidence with a
+pleasant start such as might be felt by the discoverer of some complex
+and important cipher--as there are twenty-seven of the numbered
+paragraphs in the Declaration, so there are twenty-seven rooms in
+Monticello. Last of all there are two little phrases in the Declaration
+(the phrases stating that we shall hold our British brethren in future
+as we hold the rest of mankind--"enemies in war; in peace, friends"),
+which I would liken to the small twin buildings, one of them Jefferson's
+office, the other that of the overseer, which stand on either side of
+the lawn at Monticello, at some distance from the house. These office
+buildings face, and balance upon each other, and upon the mansion, but
+they are so much smaller that to put them there required daring, while
+to make them "compose" (as painters say) with the great house, required
+the almost superhuman sense of symmetry which Jefferson assuredly
+possessed.
+
+The present owner of Monticello is Mr. Jefferson Monroe Levy, former
+United States congressman from New York. Mr. Levy is a Democrat and a
+bachelor, according to the Congressional Directory, which states further
+that he inherited Monticello from an uncle, Commodore Uriah P. Levy,
+U.S.N., and that the latter purchased the place in 1830 "at the
+suggestion of President Jackson."
+
+Dorothy Dix, writing in "Good Housekeeping," tells a tale which I have
+heard repeatedly of the acquisition of Monticello by Uriah Levy. Says
+Miss Dix:
+
+"Monticello was sold to a stranger, and Jefferson's only daughter, Mrs.
+Randolph, widowed and with eleven children, was left homeless.... A
+subscription of three thousand dollars was raised ... to buy back the
+house ... and this money was intrusted to a young relative of the
+Jeffersons' to convey to Charlottesville. Traveling in the stagecoach
+with the young man was Captain Uriah P. Levy, to whom he confided his
+mission. The young man became intoxicated and dallied, but Captain Levy
+hastened on to Charlottesville, and purchased Monticello for two
+thousand five hundred dollars. The next day the repentant and sober
+young man arrived and besought Captain Levy to take the three thousand
+dollars ... and let Monticello go back to the Jefferson family. Captain
+Levy refused to part with his bargain, but at his death he willed
+Monticello to 'the people of the United States to be held as a memorial
+of Thomas Jefferson'.... The Levy heirs contested the will, and it was
+finally decided upon a technicality that 'the people of the United
+States' was too indefinite a term to make the bequest binding, and the
+estate passed into the hands of the Levys, and so to its present
+owner...."
+
+In a biographical note upon the latter, the Congressional Directory
+states that the house is "kept open to the public all the year." My
+companion and I were admitted to the grounds, but were informed that,
+though the building was unoccupied, no one was permitted to enter. While
+we were in the vicinity of the house we were attended by one of the men
+employed on the place, who told us that when people were allowed to
+roam about at will, there had been much vandalism; ivy had been pulled
+from the walls, shrubbery broken, pieces of brick chipped out of the
+steps, and teeth knocked from the heads of the marble lions which flank
+them.
+
+Of recent years there has been on foot a movement, launched, I believe,
+by Mrs. Martin W. Littleton, of New York, to influence the Government to
+purchase Monticello from its present owner. It is difficult to see
+precisely how Mr. Levy could be forced to part with his property, if he
+did not wish to. Nevertheless public sentiment on this subject has
+become so strong that he has agreed to let the Government have
+Monticello "at a price"--so, at least, I was informed in
+Charlottesville.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
+
+     The opening of the University of Virginia was an event of prime
+     importance for the higher education in the whole country, and
+     really marks a new era.
+
+     --CHARLES FORSTER SMITH.
+
+
+Like Monticello, the buildings of the University of Virginia are those
+of an intellectual, a classicist, a purist, and, like it, they might
+have been austere but for the warmth of their red brick and the glow of
+their white-columned porticos. But they are cheerful buildings, which,
+individually and as a group, attain a geometrical yet soft perfection, a
+supreme harmony of form and color.
+
+The principal buildings are grouped about a large campus, called the
+Lawn, which is dominated by the rotunda, suggesting in its outlines the
+Pantheon at Rome. From the rotunda, at either side, starts a
+white-columned arcade connecting the various houses which are
+distributed at graceful intervals along the margins of the rectangular
+lawn, above which loom the tops of even rows of beautiful old trees.
+Flanking the buildings of the lawn, and reached by brick walks which
+pass between the famous serpentine walls (walls but one brick thick
+which support themselves on the snake-fence principle, by progressing in
+a series of reverse curves), are the "ranges": solid rows of one-story
+student dormitories built of brick and fronted by colonnades which
+command other lawns and other trees.
+
+With a single exception, restorations and additions to the university
+have been made with reverence and taste, and the Brooks Museum, the one
+architectural horror of the place, fortunately does not stand upon the
+lawn. Since it is said that beauty could not exist were there not
+ugliness for contrast, this building may have its uses; certainly, after
+a glance at it, one looks back with renewed delight at the structures of
+the central group.
+
+Most superb of all, always there hangs at night, above the buildings and
+the tree-tops, a glorious full moon. At least I suppose it always hangs
+there, for though it seemed to us very wonderful, every one else seemed
+used to it.
+
+Like Venice, the University of Virginia should first be seen by
+moonlight. There could not have been a finer moonlit night, I thought,
+than that cold, crisp one upon which my companion stood for two hours
+beside the rotunda, gazing at the lawn and drawing it, its frosty grass
+and trees decked with diamonds, its white columns standing out softly
+from their shadow backgrounds like phosphorescent ghosts in the luminous
+blue darkness. Until I was nearly frozen I stayed there with him. That
+drawing cost him one of the worst colds he ever had.
+
+The university ought to have, and has, many traditions, and life there
+ought to be, and is, different from life in any other college. Jefferson
+brought from Italy the men who carved the capitals of the columns (the
+descendants of some of these Italian workmen live in Charlottesville
+to-day), and when the columns were in place he brought from Europe the
+professors to form the faculty, creating what was practically a small
+English university in the United States. Never until, a dozen years ago,
+Dr. E.A. Alderman became president, had there been such an office;
+before that time the university had a rector, and the duties of
+president were performed by a chairman of the faculty, elected by the
+faculty from among its members. This was the first university to adopt
+the elective system, permitting the students, as Jefferson wrote,
+"uncontrolled choice in the lectures they shall attend," instead of
+prescribing one course of reading for all. No less important, the
+University of Virginia was the first college to introduce (1842) the
+honor system, and still has the most complete honor system to be found
+among American colleges. This system is an outgrowth of the Jeffersonian
+idea of student self-government; under it each student signs, with
+examination papers, a pledge that he has neither given nor received
+assistance. That is found sufficient; students are not watched, nor need
+they be. With time this system has been extended, so that it now covers
+not only examinations, but many departments of college life, eliminating
+professionalism in athletics and plagiarism in literary work, and
+resulting in a delightful mutual confidence between the student body and
+the faculty.
+
+Madison and Monroe were active members of the university's first board
+of visitors; the first college Y.M.C.A. was started there; and among
+many famous men who have attended the university may be mentioned Edgar
+Allan Poe, Thomas Nelson Page, and Thomas Woodrow Wilson, whose name
+appears thus upon the "University Magazine" for 1879-80, as one of its
+three editors. The ill-starred Poe attended the university for only one
+year, at the end of which time his adopted father, Mr. Allan, of
+Richmond, withdrew him because of debts he had contracted while
+acquiring his education in gambling and drinking champagne. Poe's former
+room, No. 13 West Range, is now the office of the magazine.
+
+The clean, lovely manuscript in Jefferson's handwriting, of the first
+Anglo-Saxon grammar written in the United States, is to be seen in the
+university library; Jefferson was Vice-President of the United States
+when he wrote it; he put Anglo-Saxon in the first curriculum of the
+university, and it has been taught there ever since. In a note which is
+a part of the manuscript, he advocates the study of Anglo-Saxon as an
+introduction to modern English on the ground that though about half the
+words in our present language are derived from Latin and Greek, these
+being the scholarly words, the other half, the words we use most often,
+are Anglo-Saxon.
+
+Before the war it was not uncommon for students at the university to
+have their negro body servants with them, and it has occasionally
+happened since that some young sprig of southern aristocracy has come
+to college thus attended.
+
+Perhaps the most striking and characteristic feature of student life
+to-day, from the point of view of the stray visitor, is the formal
+attitude of students toward one another. There is no easy-going
+casualness between them, no calling back and forth, no "hello," by way
+of greeting. They pass each other on the walks either without speaking
+(men have been punished at the university by being ignored by the entire
+student body), or if they do greet each other the customary salutation
+is "How are you, sir?" or "How are you, gentlemen?" First-year men are
+expected to wear hats, and not to speak to upper classmen until they
+have been spoken to; and, though there is no hazing at the university,
+woe betide them if they do not heed these rules.
+
+In the early days of the university there was an effort to exercise
+restraint over students, to make them account for their goings and
+comings, and to prevent their going to taverns or betting upon horse
+races. Also they were obliged to wear a uniform. The severity was so
+great that they appealed to Jefferson, who sided with them. He, however,
+died in the same year, and friction prevailed for perhaps a decade
+longer, with many student disorders, culminating in the shooting of a
+professor by a student. In 1840 the students were at last granted full
+freedom, and two years later the honor system was adopted.
+
+During the university's first years young men from the far South, where
+dueling was especially prevalent, did not come in large numbers to the
+University of Virginia, but went, as a rule, to the northern colleges,
+but about the middle of the century, as feeling between North and South
+over taxation, States' Rights and slavery became more acute, these men
+began to flock to the college at Charlottesville. Between 1850 and 1860
+the university almost doubled in size, and at about the same time there
+developed a good deal of dueling between students.
+
+When the War ended many men who had gone into the Confederate army at
+sixteen or seventeen years of age came to Charlottesville to complete
+their education. The hard life of the army had made some of these into a
+wild lot, and there was a great deal of gambling and drinking during
+their time, and also after it, for several succeeding generations of
+students looked up to the ex-soldiers as heroes, and carried on the
+unfortunate traditions left by them at the university. In the nineties,
+however, a change came, and though there is still some drinking and
+gambling, it is doubtful whether such vices are now more prevalent at
+the University of Virginia than at many other colleges. The honor system
+has never been extended to cover these points.
+
+It is related that, in Poe's time, gambling became such a serious
+obstacle to discipline and work that the university authorities set the
+town marshal after a score or so of gambling students, Poe among them,
+whereupon these students fled to the Ragged Mountains, near by, and
+remained for two weeks, during which time Poe is said to have mightily
+entertained them with stories and prophecies, including a forecast of
+the Civil War, in which, he declared, two of the youths present would
+fight on opposite sides.
+
+The Poe tradition is kept vigorously alive at the university. Not long
+ago a member of the Raven Society, one of the rather too numerous
+student organizations, discovered the burial place of Poe's mother, who
+was an actress, and who died penniless in Richmond at the age of
+twenty-four and was buried with the destitute. By a happy inspiration a
+fund was raised among the students for the erection of a monument to
+her--an example of fine and chivalrous sentiment on the part of these
+young men, which, one feels, is somehow delicately intertwined with the
+traditions of the honor system.
+
+The Poe professor of English at the university, when we were there, was
+Dr. C. Alphonso Smith, who has since taken the professorship of English
+at the United States Naval Academy. By a coincidence which has proved a
+happy one for those who love the stories of the late Sidney Porter (O.
+Henry), Dr. Smith grew up as a boy with Porter, in Greensboro, North
+Carolina. Because of this, and also because of Dr. Smith's own gifts as
+a writer and an analyst, it is peculiarly fitting that he should have
+undertaken the work which has occupied him for several years past, the
+result of which has recently been given to us in the form "The O. Henry
+Biography."
+
+Dr. Smith was Roosevelt exchange professor at the University of Berlin
+in 1910-11, holding the chair of American History and Institutions.
+While occupying that professorship he met the Kaiser.
+
+"I talked with him twice," he said, "and upon the second occasion under
+very delightful circumstances, for I was invited to dinner at the Palace
+at Potsdam, and was the only guest, the Kaiser, Kaiserin, and Princess
+Victoria Luise being present.
+
+"The Kaiser is, of course, a very magnetic man. His eyes are his most
+remarkable feature. They are very large, brilliant, and sparkling, and
+he rolls them in a manner most unusual. While he is always the king and
+the soldier, he can be genial and charming. One might expect a man in
+his position to be blasé, but that, most of all, is what he is not. He
+is like a boy in his vitality and vividness, and he has a great and
+persistent intellectual curiosity. It is this, I think, which used to
+cause him to be compared with Colonel Roosevelt. Both would like to know
+all things, and both have had, and have exercised more, perhaps, than
+any other two living men, the power to bring to themselves the central
+figures in all manner of world events, and thus learn at first hand,
+from acknowledged authorities, about the subjects that interest
+them--which is to say, everything.
+
+"He frankly admired America. I don't mean that he said so for the sake
+of courtesy to me, but that he has--or did have, then--an immense and
+rather romantic interest in this country. A great many Germans used to
+resent this trait in him. America held in his mind the same romantic
+position that the idea of monarchy did in the minds of some of us. I
+mean that the average American went for romance to stories of monarchy,
+but that the Kaiser, being used to the monarchial idea, found his
+romance over here. (I am, of course, speaking of him as he was five or
+six years ago.) He wished to come to America, but was never able to do
+so, since German law forbids it. And, perhaps because he could not come,
+America was the more a sort of dream to him.
+
+"He asked me about some of the things in Berlin which I had noticed as
+being different from things at home, and when I mentioned the way that
+history was kept alive in the very streets of Berlin, his eyes danced,
+and he said that was one of the things he had tried to accomplish by the
+erection of the numerous monuments which have been placed in Berlin
+during his reign. He told me of other means by which history was kept
+alive in Germany: among them that every officer has to know in detail
+the history of his regiment, and that German regiments always celebrate
+the anniversaries of their great days.
+
+"He speaks English without an accent, though we might say that he spoke
+it with an English accent. He told me that he had learned English before
+he learned German, and had also caused his children to learn it first.
+He reads Mark Twain, or had read him, and he enjoyed him, but he said
+that when he met Mark Twain the latter had little or nothing to say, and
+that it was only with the greatest difficulty that he got him to talk at
+all. He subscribed, he told me, to 'Harper's Magazine,' and he was in
+the habit of reading short stories aloud to his family, in English. He
+admired the American short story, and I remember that he declared: 'The
+Americans know how to plunge into a short story. We Germans are too
+long-winded.'"
+
+When Professor Smith talks about the Kaiser, you say to yourself: "I
+know that it is growing late, but I cannot bear to leave until I have
+heard the rest of this"; when he drifts presently to O. Henry, you say
+the same; and so it is always, no matter what his subject. At last,
+however, the grandfather's clock in the hall below his study sends up a
+stern message which is not to be mistaken, whereupon you arise
+reluctantly from your comfortable chair, spill the cigar ashes out of
+your lap onto the rug, dust off your clothing, and take your leave. Nor
+is your regret at departing lessened by the fact that you must go to
+your bilious-colored bedroom in the New Gleason, and that you will not
+see the university, or Professor C. Alphonso Smith, or Mrs. Smith again,
+because you are leaving upon the morrow.
+
+So it must always be with the itinerant illustrator and writer. They are
+forever finding new and lovely scenes only to leave them; forever making
+new and charming friends only to part with them, faring forth again into
+the unknown.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+FOX-HUNTING IN VIRGINIA
+
+    Better to hunt in fields for health unbought
+    Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught.
+    The wise for cure on exercise depend;
+    God never made his work for man to mend.
+
+    --DRYDEN.
+
+
+It is my impression that the dining-car conductor on the Chesapeake &
+Ohio train by which we left Charlottesville was puzzled when I asked his
+name; but if he sees this and remembers the incident he will now know
+that I did so because I wished here to mention him as a humane citizen.
+His name is C.G. Mitchell, and he was so accommodating as to serve a
+light meal, after hours, when he did not have to, to two hungry men who
+needed it. If travel has taught my companion and me anything, it has
+taught us that not all dining-car conductors are like that. Nor, I
+judge, can all dining-car conductors play the violin, pleasantly, in off
+hours, as does Mr. Mitchell. Better one merciful dining-car conductor
+than twenty who wear white carnations at their left lapels, but wear no
+hearts below them!
+
+The road by which we drove from the railroad into the fastnesses of
+Loudon County, where, near the little settlement of Upperville, the race
+meet of the Piedmont Hunt was to be held, suggested other times and
+other manners, for though we rode in a motor car, and though we passed
+another now and then, machines were far outnumbered by the horses which,
+under saddle, or hitched to buggies, surreys, and carts of all
+descriptions, were heading toward the meeting place.
+
+On these roads, one felt, the motor was an outsider; this was the
+kingdom of the horse that we were visiting; soft dirt roads were there
+for him to trot and gallop on, and fences of wood or stone, free from
+barbed wire, were everywhere, for him to jump.
+
+Throughout the week we had looked forward to this day, and even more,
+perhaps, to the party which, if we could get back to Washington that
+night, was to follow it; wherefore the first thing we did on reaching a
+place where information was obtainable was to inquire about facilities
+for leaving. Herein my companion had the advantage of me, for there was
+nothing to prevent his departing immediately after the races, whereas I
+must remain behind for an hour or two, to learn something of fox-hunting
+as practised in this region.
+
+By motoring immediately after the races to a neighboring town--Bluemont
+if I remember rightly--and there taking an interurban trolley to some
+other place, and changing cars, and going without his dinner, my
+companion found that he could get to Washington by nine o'clock. My case
+was different. Should I be delayed more than two hours I could not get
+away at all that night, but must miss the much anticipated party
+altogether; and, though my companion seemed to view this possibility
+with perfect equanimity, my memories of the charming lady whom we were
+to meet at the stage door, after the performance, were too clear to
+permit of indifference in me. The trolley my companion meant to catch
+was, however, the last one; my only hope, therefore, was to motor a
+distance of perhaps a dozen miles, over roads which I was frankly told
+were "middling to bad," and try to catch a train at The Plains station.
+If I missed this train, I was lost, and must spend a solitary night in
+such a room as I might be able to find in a strange village. That
+possibility did not appeal to me. I began to wish that there was no such
+thing as fox-hunting, or that, there being such a thing, I had chosen to
+ignore it.
+
+"Now," said my companion cheerfully, "we'll telegraph her."
+
+At a telegraph office he seized the pencil and wrote the following
+message:
+
+     _Will call for you to-night after performance._
+
+To this he signed his own name.
+
+"What about me?" I suggested, after glancing over his shoulder at the
+message.
+
+"Oh, well," said he, "there's no use in going into all that in a
+telegram. It's sufficient to let her know that one of us is coming."
+
+"But I proposed this party."
+
+"Well," he gave in, with an air of pained patience, "what shall I say,
+then? Shall I add that you are unavoidably detained?"
+
+"Not by a jugful!" I returned. "Add that I hope to get there too, and
+will make every effort to do so."
+
+He wrote it out, sighing as he did so. Then, by careful cutting, he got
+it down to fourteen words. By that time the operator couldn't read it,
+so he wrote it out again--gloomily.
+
+This accomplished, we matched coins to see who should pay for the
+message. He lost.
+
+"All right!" he said. "I'll pay for it, but it's all foolishness to send
+such a long telegram."
+
+"No," I returned, as we left the office and got into the machine, "it is
+not foolishness. If I can make life a little brighter for a beautiful
+woman, by adding a few words to a telegram, and sticking you for it, I
+shall do it every time."
+
+He looked away over the fields and did not answer me. So we drove on in
+silence to where stands the beautiful manor house called Huntland, which
+is the residence of Mr. Joseph B. Thomas, M.F.H. of the Piedmont Hunt.
+
+There is, I have been told, no important hunt in the United States in
+which the master of foxhounds is not the chief financial supporter, the
+sport being a very costly one. Of American hunts, the Middlesex, in
+Massachusetts, of which Mr. A. Henry Higginson is M.F.H., has the
+reputation of being the best appointed. The Piedmont Hunt is, however,
+one of the half dozen leading organizations of the kind, and it is
+difficult indeed to imagine a finer.
+
+In a well-kept park near Mr. Thomas's house stand extensive
+English-looking buildings of brick and stucco, which, viewed from a
+distance, suggest a beautiful country house, and which, visited, teach
+one that certain favored hounds and horses in this world live much
+better than certain human beings. One building is given over to the
+kennels, the other the stables; each has a large sunlit court, and each
+is as beautiful and as clean as a fine house--a house full of trophies,
+hunting equipment, and the pleasant smell of well-cared-for saddlery. In
+a rolling meadow, not far distant, is the race course, all green turf,
+and here, soon after luncheon, gathered an extraordinary diversified
+crowd.
+
+For the most part the crowd was a fashionable one: men and women of the
+type whose photographs appear in "Vogue" and "Vanity Fair," and whose
+costumes were like fashion suggestions for "sport clothes" in those
+publications. One party was stationed on the top of an old-time mail
+coach, the boot of which bore the significant initials
+"F.F.V."--standing, as even benighted Northerners must be aware, for
+"First Families of Virginia"; others were in a line of motors and
+heterogeneous horse-drawn vehicles, parked beside the course; and
+scattered through the gathering, like brushmarks on an impressionist
+canvas, one saw the brilliant color of pink coats. Handsome hunters
+were being ridden or led about by negro grooms, and others kept
+arriving, ridden in by farmers and breeders, while here and there one
+saw a woman rider, her hair tightly drawn back under a mannish derby
+hat, her figure slender and graceful in a severely-cut habit coat.
+Jumbled together in a great green meadow under a sweet autumnal sun,
+these things made a picture of what, I am persuaded, is the ultimate in
+extravagant American country life. There was something, too, about this
+blending of fashionables and farmers, which made me think of the
+theater; for there is, in truth, a distinct note of histrionism about
+many of the rich Americans who "go in for" elaborate ruralness, and
+there is a touch of it very often, also, about "horsey" people. They
+like to "look the part," and they dress it with no less care than they
+exercise, at other seasons, in dressing the parts of opera-going
+cosmopolites, or wealthy loungers at the beaches. In other words, these
+fashionables had the overtrained New York look all over them, and the
+local rustics set them off as effectively as the villainous young squire
+of the Drury Lane melodrama is set off by contrast with honest old
+Jasper, the miller, who wears a smock, and comes to the Great House to
+beg the Young Master to "make an honest woman" of poor Rose, the fairest
+lass in all Hampshire.
+
+About the races themselves there was something fascinatingly
+nonprofessional. They bore the same relation to great races on great
+tracks that a very fine performance of a play by amateurs might bear to
+a professional performance.
+
+First came a two-mile steeplechase, with brush hurdles. Then, after a
+couple of minor events, a four-mile point-to-point race for hunters
+ridden by gentlemen in hunt uniform. This was as stiff a race for both
+horses and riders as I have ever seen, and it was very picturesque to
+watch the pink coats careering up hill and down dale, now over a tall
+stone wall, now over a brook or a snake fence; and when a rider went
+head over heels, and lay still upon the ground where he fell, while his
+horse cantered along after the field, in that aimless and pathetic way
+that riderless horses have, one had a real sensation--which was the
+pleasanter for knowing, a few minutes later, that the horseman had only
+broken an arm.
+
+Next was run a rollicking race for horses owned by farmers, and others,
+whose land is hunted over by the Piedmont and Middleburg foxhounds; and
+last occurred a great comedy event--a mule race, free for all, in which
+one of the hunting men, in uniform, made such a handsome showing against
+a rabble of white and colored boys, all of them yelling, all of them
+beating their long-eared animals with sticks, that he would have won,
+had he not deliberately pulled his mount and "thrown" the race.
+
+The last event was not yet finished when my companion, who had become
+nervous about his interurban trolley, got into a machine to drive to
+Bluemont.
+
+"Of course," he said as we parted, "we'll miss you to-night."
+
+"Oh," I said, "I hope not. I expect to get there."
+
+"I don't see how you can make it," said he. "You have a lot of material
+to gather."
+
+"I shall work fast."
+
+"Well," said he, trying to speak like the voice of Conscience, "I hope
+you won't forget your _duty_--that's all."
+
+"I proposed this party to-night. It is my duty to be there."
+
+"You didn't make any definite engagement," said he, "and, besides, your
+first duty is to your editors and your readers."
+
+Having tossed me this disgusting thought, he departed in a cloud of
+dust, leaving me sad and alone, but not yet altogether in despair.
+
+The last race over, I hastened to Mr. Thomas's house, which, by this
+time, looked like an old English hunting print come to life, for it was
+now crowded with pink coats. For most of the technical information
+contained in this chapter I am indebted to various gentlemen whom I
+encountered there.
+
+In Virginia--which is the oldest fox-hunting State in the Union, the
+sport having been practised there for nearly two centuries--the words
+"hunt" or "hunting" never by any chance apply to shooting, but always
+refer to hunting the fox with horse and hounds. A "hunter" is not a man
+but a horse; a huntsman is not a member of the hunt but a hunt-servant;
+the "field" may be the terrain ridden over by the hunt, or it may be
+the group of riders following the hounds--"hunt followers," "hunting
+men," and "hunting women."
+
+The following items, from "Baily's Hunting Directory," a British annual,
+give some idea of certain primary formalities and practicalities of
+hunting:
+
+     HINTS TO BEGINNERS
+
+     Buy the best horses you can afford; but remember that a workably
+     sound horse, though blemished or a bit gone in the wind, will give
+     you plenty of fun, if you do not knock him about.
+
+     Obey the Master's orders without argument; in the field he is
+     supreme.
+
+     Hold up your hat if you view the fox away; do not halloa. If none
+     of the hunt servants see your uplifted hat, go and tell the nearest
+     of them.
+
+     Ride fast at water; if hounds clear a brook a horse has a good
+     chance of doing so. Steady your horse and let him take his own pace
+     at big timber.
+
+     Keep well away from hounds, and down wind of them at a check. The
+     steam from heated horses adds a fresh difficulty to recovery of
+     lost scent. Look out for signs that may indicate the whereabouts or
+     passing of the fox. Huddling sheep, staring cattle, chattering
+     magpies, circling rooks, may mean that they see, or have just seen,
+     the fox.
+
+     Never lark over fences; it tires your horse needlessly and may
+     cause damage and annoy the farmer.
+
+     Never take a short cut through a covert that is likely to be drawn
+     during the day; and keep well away from a covert that hounds are
+     drawing if you start for home before the day's sport is over, lest
+     you head the fox.
+
+     Always await your turn at a gate or gap; do not try and push
+     forward in a crowd.
+
+     If you follow a pilot, do not "ride in his pocket"; give him plenty
+     of room, say fifteen lengths, at fences, or if he falls you might
+     jump on him.
+
+     If your horse kicks, tie a knot of red ribbon in his tail. N.B.--Do
+     not be guilty of using this "rogue's badge" for the sake of getting
+     room in a crowd, as some men have been known to do.
+
+     If a man is down and in danger of being kicked, put your own saddle
+     over his head.
+
+
+     HINTS CONCERNING THE HUNTER
+
+     It should be remembered that in the ordinary routine the horse is
+     fed three or four times a day. On a hunting day he gets one good
+     feed early in the morning and loses one or two feeds. Moreover, he
+     is doing hard work for hours together, with a weight on his back.
+     Carry a couple of forage biscuits in your pocket to give him during
+     the day. Also get off and relieve him of your weight when you can
+     do so.
+
+     When he is brought home, put him in his stall or box, slack the
+     girths, take off the bridle and give him his gruel at once. Throw a
+     rug over his loins and pull his ears for a minute or two.
+
+     An old horse needs more clothing than a young one.
+
+     Condition is a matter of seasons, not of months; a horse in hard
+     condition can take without injury a fall that would disable a soft
+     one for weeks.
+
+In old times many of Virginia's country gentlemen kept their own packs,
+but though some followed the hounds according to the English tradition,
+there developed a less sportsmanlike style of hunting called
+"hilltopping," under which the hunting men rode to an elevated point and
+watched the hounds run the fox, without themselves attempting to follow
+across country and be in at the kill. As a result, the fox was, if
+caught, torn to pieces by the hounds, and the brush and head were
+infrequently saved.
+
+Under the traditions of English fox-hunting--traditions the strictness
+of which can hardly be exaggerated--"hilltopping" is a more than
+doubtful sport, and, since organized fox-hunting in the United States is
+taken entirely from the English idea, the practice is tabooed on
+first-class hunting regions.
+
+The origin of hilltopping is, however, easily understood. The old
+fox-hunters simply did not, as a rule, have horses adequate to negotiate
+the country, hunters not having been developed to any great extent in
+America in early times.
+
+The perfect type of hunter is of thoroughbred stock. By the term
+"thoroughbred" horsemen do not mean highly bred horses of any kind, as
+is sometimes supposed, but only running horses. All such horses come
+originally of British stock, for it is in Great Britain that the breed
+has been developed, although it traces back, through a number of
+centuries, to a foundation of Arabian blood. I am informed that climatic
+and other conditions in a certain part of Ireland are for some reason
+peculiarly favorable to the development of hunters and that these
+conditions are duplicated in the Piedmont section of Virginia, and
+nowhere else in the whole world. Only the stanchest, bravest, fastest
+type of horse is suited for hunting in Virginia, and for this reason the
+more experienced riders to hounds prefer the thoroughbred, though
+half-bred and three-quarter-bred horses are also used to some extent,
+the thoroughbred often being too mettlesome, when he becomes excited,
+for any but the best riders. The finest qualities of a horse are brought
+out in hunting in the Piedmont section, for the pace here is very
+fast--much faster than in England, though it should be added that in the
+English hunting country there are more hedges than over here, and that
+the jumps are, upon the whole, stiffer.
+
+The speed of the Piedmont Hunt and other hunts in Virginia is doubtless
+due to the use of southern hounds, these being American hounds, smaller
+and faster than English hounds, from which, however, they were
+originally bred. The desirable qualities in a pack of hounds are
+uniformity of type, substance, speed, and color. These points have to do
+not only with the style of a pack, but also with its hunting quality.
+Thus in the Piedmont pack they breed for a red hound with white
+markings, so that the pack may have an individual appearance, but in all
+packs a great effort is made to secure even speed, for a slow hound
+lags, while a fast one becomes an individual hunter. The unusual hound
+is therefore likely to be "drafted" from the pack.
+
+There has been a long controversy as to whether the English or American
+type of hound is best suited for hunting in this country, and the matter
+seems still to remain one of opinion. Probably the best English pack in
+the United States is that of Mr. A. Henry Higginson. Some years since,
+Mr. Higginson and Mr. Harry Worcester Smith, of Worcester,
+Massachusetts, master of the Grafton pack, made a bet of $5000 a side,
+each backing his own hounds, the question being that of the general
+suitability of the American versus the English hound for American
+country. The trials were made in the Piedmont region of Virginia, and
+Mr. Smith's American hounds won the wager for him.
+
+In the last ten or twenty years hunting in the United States has been
+organized under the Hunts Committee of the National Steeplechase
+Association. Practically all the important hunting organizations are
+members of this association, there being forty of these: eleven in
+Virginia, nine in Pennsylvania, six in New York, four in Massachusetts,
+three each in Maryland and New Jersey, and one each in Connecticut,
+Vermont, Ohio, and Michigan--the Grosse Pointe Hounds, near Detroit,
+being the most westerly of recognized hunts, although there is some
+unrecognized hunting near Chicago.
+
+An idea of the comparative importance of hunting in the United States
+and in England may be gathered from the fact that in England and Wales
+alone there are more than 180 packs of foxhounds, 88 packs of beagles,
+and 16 packs of staghounds, while Ireland and Scotland have many also.
+The war, however, has struck hard at hunting in the British Isles.
+Baily's Hunting Directory for 1915-16, says:
+
+"Hunting has given her best, for of those who have gone from the hunting
+field to join the colors, the masters lead, as they have led in more
+happy days, with a tale of over 80 per cent. of their number, the hunt
+secretaries following with over 50 per cent., while the hunt servants
+show over 30 per cent. No exact data are available to tell of the
+multitude from the rank and file that has followed this magnificent
+lead, excepting that from all the hunts there comes the same report,
+that practically every man fit for service has responded to the call."
+
+It is estimated that 17,000 horses were drafted from hunting for the
+cavalry in England at the beginning of the war; and it is to be noticed
+that so soon after the outbreak as July, 1915, the "Directory" published
+a list of names of well-known hunting men killed in action, which
+occupied more than seven large pages printed in small type.
+
+Under the heading "Incidents of the 1914-15 Season" are to be found many
+items of curious early war-time interest, a few of which I quote:
+
+     Lady Stalbridge announces willingness to act as field master of the
+     South and West Wilts Hounds during her husband's absence in France.
+
+     Lieutenant Charles Romer Williams took out to the front a pack of
+     beagles, with which the officers of the Second Cavalry Brigade
+     hoped to hunt Belgian hares.
+
+     Capt. E.K. Bradbury, a member of the Cahir Harriers, earned the
+     V.C. at Nery, but died from wounds.
+
+     The Grafton Hounds have seventy-six followers with the colors.
+
+     Admiral Sir David Beatty, of North Sea fame, has a hunting box at
+     Brooksby Hall, in the Melton Mowbray country.
+
+     Five members of the Crawley and Horsham Hounds have been killed,
+     three wounded, and two are missing.
+
+     Quorn fields down to about 30, instead of 300 last season.
+
+     Captain the Honorable R.B.F. Robertson (Twenty-first Lancers) a
+     prisoner of war. He took over the North Tipperary Hounds in May,
+     and, of course, did not get a chance to have any sport.
+
+     We now learn that the French authorities have discouraged
+     fox-hunting behind the fighting lines. So did the Germans. One day
+     British hounds took up the scent on their own initiative. The usual
+     followers had bigger game afoot, and were in the thick of an
+     engagement. The Germans gained ground and occupied the kennels.
+     When the hounds returned from their chase and challenged the
+     intruders they were shot down one by one.
+
+Such is the lore I had acquired when the motor came for me; whereupon,
+taking a few sandwiches to sustain me until supper time, I set forth
+through the night by Ford, for the station at The Plains.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The publication of the larger part of the foregoing chapter on fox
+hunting, in "Collier's Weekly," brought me a number of letters
+containing hunting anecdotes.
+
+Mr. J.R. Smith of Martinsville, Virginia, calls my attention to marked
+difference in character between the red fox and the gray. The red fox,
+he says, depends upon his legs to elude the hounds, and will sometimes
+lead the hunt twenty-five miles from the place where he gets up, but the
+gray fox depends on cunning, and is more prone to run a few miles and
+"tack."
+
+Mr. Smith tells the following story illustrative of the gray fox's
+amazing artfulness:
+
+"We had started a fox on three different occasions," he writes, "running
+him a warm chase for about four miles and losing him every time in a
+sheep pasture. Finally we stationed a servant in that pasture to see
+what became of the fox. We started him again and he took the same route
+to the pasture. There the mystery was solved. The fox jumped on the back
+of a large ram, which, in fright, ran off about half a mile. The fox
+then jumped off and continued his run. When the hounds came up we urged
+them on to the point where the fox dismounted, and soon had his brush."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another correspondent calls my attention to the fact that, in Virginia,
+hunting is not merely the sport of the rich, but that the farmers are
+enthusiastic members of the field--sometimes at the expense of their
+cattle and crops. He relates the following story illustrative of the
+point of view of the sporting Virginia farmer:
+
+"A man from the Department of Agriculture came down into our section to
+look over farms and give advice to farmers. He went to see one farmer
+in my county and found that he had absolutely nothing growing, and that
+his livestock consisted of three hunters and thirty-two couples of
+hounds. The agricultural expert was scandalized. He told the farmer he
+ought to begin at once to raise hogs. 'You can feed them what you feed
+the dogs,' he said, 'and have good meat for your family aside from what
+you sell.'
+
+"After hearing his visitor out, the farmer looked off across the country
+and spat ruminatively.
+
+"'I ain't never seen no hawg that could catch a fox,' he said, and with
+that turned and went into the barn, evidently regarding the matter as
+closed. Clearly he did not share the view of the Irishman who dismissed
+fox hunting with the remark that a fox was 'damned hard to catch and no
+good when you got him.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+"A CERTAIN PARTY"
+
+    Kind are her answers,
+    But her performance keeps no day;
+    Breaks time, as dancers
+    From their own music when they stray.
+
+    Lost is our freedom
+    When we submit to women so:
+    Why do we need 'em
+    When, in their best, they work our woe?
+
+    --THOMAS CAMPION.
+
+
+The motor ride to The Plains was a cold and rough one. I remember that
+we had to ford a stream or two, and that once, where the mud had been
+churned up and made deep by the wheels of many vehicles, we almost
+stuck. Excepting at the fords, the road was dusty, and the dust was kept
+in circulation by the feet of countless saddle horses, on which men from
+the country to the south of Upperville were riding home from the races.
+All the way to The Plains our lights kept picking up these riders,
+sometimes alone, sometimes in groups, all of them going our way, we
+taking their dust until we overhauled them, then giving them ours.
+
+Dust was over me like a close-fitting gray veil when I reached the
+railroad station only to find that the train was late. I had a magazine
+in my bag, but the light in the waiting-room was poor, so I took a place
+near the stove and gave myself up to anticipations of a bath, a
+comfortable room, clean clothing, and a good supper with my
+companion--and another companion much more beautiful.
+
+I tried to picture her as she would look. She would be in evening dress,
+of course. After thinking over different colors, and trying them upon
+her in my mind, I decided that her gown should be of a delicate pink,
+and should be made of some frail, beautiful material which would float
+about her like gossamer when she moved, and shimmer like the light of
+dawn upon the dew. You know the sort of gown I mean: one of those gowns
+upon which a man is afraid to lay his finger-tips lest the material melt
+away beneath them; a gown which, he feels, was never touched by
+seamstress of the human species, but was made by fairies out of woven
+moonlight, star dust, afterglow, and the fragrance of flowers. Such a
+gown upon a lovely woman is man's proof that woman is indeed the thing
+which so often he believes her--that she is more goddess than earthly
+being; for man knows well that he himself is earthly, and that a costume
+made from such dream stuffs and placed on him, would not last out the
+hour. He has but to look up at the stars to realize the infinity of
+space, and, similarly, but to look at her in her evening gown to realize
+the divinity of woman.
+
+And that is where she has him. For it isn't so!
+
+At last came the train--just the dingy train to stop at such a station.
+I boarded it, found a seat, and continued to dream dreams as we rattled
+on toward Washington.
+
+Even when I found myself walking through that great terminal by which
+all railroads enter the capital, I hardly believed that I was there, nor
+did I feel entirely myself until I had reached my room in the New
+Willard.
+
+Having started my bath, I went and knocked upon the door of the near-by
+room where the clerk had told me I should find my fellow traveler.
+
+"Oh," he said, without enthusiasm as he discovered me. "You're here, are
+you?"
+
+He looked imposing and severe in his evening dress. I felt
+correspondingly dirty and humble.
+
+"Yes," I replied meekly. "Any news?"
+
+"None," he replied. "I've reserved a table at Harvey's. They dance
+there. At first they said there was not a table to be had--Saturday
+night, you know--but I told them who was to be with us, and they changed
+their minds."
+
+"Good. I'll be dressed in a little while. Silk hats?"
+
+He nodded. I returned to my own room.
+
+Less than an hour later, my toilet completed, I rejoined him, and
+together we descended, in full regalia, to the lobby.
+
+"Shall we take a taxi?" he suggested, as we passed out of the side
+entrance.
+
+"How far away is the theater?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+We asked the carriage starter. He said it was only two or three blocks.
+
+"Let's walk," I said.
+
+"I don't feel like walking," he returned.
+
+We rode.
+
+The theater was just emptying when we arrived.
+
+"I suppose we'd better let the cab go?" I said. "There'll be quite a
+while to wait while she's changing."
+
+"Better keep it," he disagreed. "Might not find another."
+
+We kept it.
+
+At the stage door there was confusion. Having completed its week in
+Washington, the play was about to move elsewhere, and furniture was
+already coming out into the narrow passage, and being piled up to be
+taken on wagons to the train. It took us some time to find the doorman,
+and it took the doorman--as it always does take doormen--a long, long
+time to depart into the unknown region of dressing rooms, with the cards
+we gave him, and a still longer time to return.
+
+"Says to wait," he grunted when he came back.
+
+Meanwhile more and more furniture had come out, menacing our shins and
+our beautifully polished hats in passing, and leaving us less room in
+which to stand.
+
+We waited.
+
+After ten minutes had passed, I remarked:
+
+"I wish we had let the taxi go."
+
+After twenty minutes I remarked:
+
+"I always feel like an idiot when I have to wait at a stage door."
+
+"I don't see why you do it, then," said he.
+
+"And I hate it worse when I'm in evening dress. I hate the way the
+actors look at us, when they come out. They think we're a couple of
+Johnnies."
+
+"And supposing they do?"
+
+I do not know how long this unsatisfactory dialogue might have continued
+had not some one come to the inside of the stage door and spoken to the
+doorman, whereat he indicated us with a gesture and said:
+
+"There they are."
+
+At this a woman emerged. The light was dim, but I saw that she wore no
+hat and had on an apron. As she came toward us we advanced.
+
+"You wait for madame?" she asked, with the accent of a Frenchwoman.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Madame receive your telegram only this afternoon," she said. "All week,
+she say, she wait to hear. This morning she have receive a telegram from
+Mr. Woods that say she mus' come to New York. She think you not coming,
+so she say 'Yes.' Then she receive your message. She don't know where to
+reach you. She can do nossing. She is desolated! She mus' fly to the
+train. She is ver' sorry. She hope that maybe the gentlemans will be in
+Baltimore nex' week? Yes?"
+
+"You mean she can't come to-night?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur. She cannot. She are fill with regret. She--"
+
+"Perhaps," said my companion, recovering, "we can drive her to the
+train?"
+
+The maid, however, did not seem to wish to discuss this point. She shook
+her head and said:
+
+"Madame ver' sorry she cannot come."
+
+"But I say," repeated my companion, "that we shall be delighted to drive
+her to the train if she wishes."
+
+"She ver' sorry," persisted the maid negatively.
+
+"Oh, I see," he said. "Very well. Please say to her that we are sorry,
+too."
+
+"Yes, monsieur." The maid retired.
+
+"I want something to eat," I remarked as we passed down the long
+furniture-piled passage leading to the street.
+
+"So do I. We have that table at Harvey's."
+
+"I know; but--"
+
+"That's a fact," he put in. "I mentioned her name. We can't very well go
+there without her."
+
+"And all dressed up like a pair of goats."
+
+"No."
+
+"There's always the hotel."
+
+"I don't want to go back there--not now."
+
+"Neither do I. Let's make it the Shoreham," I suggested as we emerged
+upon the street.
+
+"All right." Then, looking across the sidewalk, he added: "There's that
+damned taxi!"
+
+"Yes. We'll drive around there in it."
+
+"No," said he, "send it away. I don't feel like riding."
+
+We walked to the Shoreham. The café looked cheerful, as it always does.
+We ordered an extensive supper. It was good. There were pretty women in
+the room, but we looked at them with the austere eyes of disillusioned
+men, and talked cynically of life. I cannot recall any of the things we
+said, though I remember thinking at the time that both of us were being
+rather brilliant, in an icy way. I suppose it was mainly about women.
+That was to be expected. Women, indeed! What were women to us? Nothing!
+And pretty women, least of all. Ah, pretty women! Pretty women!... Yes,
+yes!
+
+I had ordered fruit to finish off the meal, and I remember that as the
+dish was set upon the table, it occurred to me that we had made a very
+pleasant party of it after all.
+
+"Do you know," I said, as I helped myself to some hothouse grapes, "I've
+had a bully evening. It has been fine to sit here and have a party all
+to ourselves. I'm not so sorry that she did not come!"
+
+Then I ate a grape or two.
+
+They were very handsome grapes, but they were sour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE LEGACY OF HATE
+
+    ... Immortal hate,
+    And courage never to submit or yield.
+
+    --PARADISE LOST.
+
+
+The last time I went abroad, a Briton on the boat told me a story about
+an American tourist who asked an old English gardener how they made such
+splendid lawns over there.
+
+"First we cut the grass," said the gardener, "and then we roll it. Then
+we cut it, and then we roll it."
+
+"That's just what we do," said the American.
+
+"Ah," returned the gardener, "but over here we've been doing it five
+hundred years!"
+
+In Liverpool another Englishman told me the same story. Three or four
+others told it to me in London. In Kent I heard it twice, and in Sussex
+five or six times. After going to Oxford and the Thames I lost count.
+
+In the South my companion and I had a similar experience with the story
+about that daughter of the Confederacy who declared she had always
+thought "damn Yankee" one word. In Maryland that story amused us, in
+Virginia it seemed to lose a little of its edge, and we are proud to
+this day because, in the far southern States, we managed to grin and
+bear it.
+
+Doubtless the young lady likewise thought that "you-all" was one word.
+However I refrained from suggesting that, lest it be taken for an
+attempt at retaliation. And really there was no occasion to retaliate,
+for the story was always told with good-humored appreciation not only of
+the dig at "Yankees"--collectively all Northerners are "Yankees" in the
+South--but also of the sweet absurdity of the "unreconstructed" point of
+view.
+
+Speaking broadly of the South, I believe that there survives little real
+bitterness over the Civil War and the destructive and grotesquely named
+period of "reconstruction." When a southern belle of to-day damns
+Yankees, she means by it, I judge, about as much, and about as little,
+as she does by the kisses she gives young men who bear to her the
+felicitous southern relationship of "kissing cousins."
+
+Even from old Confederate soldiers I heard no expressions of violent
+feeling. They spoke gently, handsomely and often humorously of the war,
+but never harshly. Real hate, I think, remains chiefly in one quarter:
+in the hearts of some old ladies, the wives and widows of Confederate
+soldiers--for there are but few mothers of the soldiers left. The wonder
+is that more of the old ladies of the South have not held to their
+resentment, for, as I have heard many a soldier say, women are the
+greatest sufferers from war. One veteran said to me: "My arm was
+shattered and had to be amputated at the shoulder. There was no
+anesthetic. Of course I suffered, but I never suffered as my mother did
+when she learned what I had endured."
+
+Be they haters of the North or not, the old ladies of the South are
+among its chief glories, and it should be added that another of those
+glories is the appreciation that the South has for the white-haired
+heroines who are its mothers, grandmothers, and great grandmothers, and
+the unfailing natural homage that it pays them. I do not mean by this
+merely that children and grandchildren have been taught to treat their
+elders with respect. I do not mean merely that they love them. The thing
+of which I speak is beyond family feeling, beyond the respect of youth
+for age. It is a strong, superb sentiment, something as great as it is
+subtle, which floods the South, causing it to love and reverence its old
+ladies collectively, and with a kind of national spirit, like the love
+and reverence of a proud people for its flag.
+
+Among young men, I met many who told me, with suitable pride, of the
+parts played by their fathers and uncles in the war. Of these only one
+spoke with heat. He was a Georgian, and when I mentioned to him that, in
+all my inquiries, I had heard of no cases of atrocious attacks upon
+women by soldiers--such attacks as we heard of at the time of the German
+invasion of Belgium and France--he replied with a great show of feeling
+that I had been misinformed, and that many women had been outraged by
+northern soldiers in the course of Sherman's march to the sea. At this
+my heart sank, for I had treasured the belief that, despite the
+roughness of war, unprotected women had generally been safe from the
+soldiers of North and South alike. What was my relief, then, on later
+receiving from this same young man a letter in which he declared that he
+had been mistaken, and that after many inquiries in Georgia he had been
+unable to learn of a single case of such crime. If it is indeed true
+that such things did not occur in the Civil War--and I believe
+confidently that it is true--then we have occasion, in the light of the
+European War, to revise the popular belief that of all wars civil war is
+the most horrible.
+
+The attitude of the modern South (the "New South" which, by the way, one
+Southerner described to me as meaning "northern capital and smoke")
+toward its own "unreconstructed" citizens, for all its sympathy and
+tenderness, is not without a glint of gentle humor. More than once, when
+my companion and I were received in southern homes with a cordiality
+that precluded any thought of sectional feeling, we were nevertheless
+warned by members of the younger generation--and their eyes would
+twinkle as they said it--to "look out for mother; she's
+unreconstructed." And you may be sure that when we were so warned we did
+"look out." It was well to do so! For though the mother might be a frail
+old lady, past seventy, with the face of an angel and the normal
+demeanor of a saint, we could see her bridle, as we were presented to
+her, over the thought there here were two Yankees in her
+home--Yankees!--we could see the light come flashing up into her eyes
+as they encountered ours, and could feel beneath the veil of her austere
+civility the dagger points of an eternal enmity. By dint of self-control
+on her part, and the utmost effort upon ours to be tactful, the
+presentation ceremony was got over with, and after some formal speeches,
+resembling those which, one fancies, may be exchanged by opposing
+generals under a flag of truce, we would be rescued from her, removed
+from the room, before her forbearance should be strained, by our
+presence, to the point of breaking. A baleful look would follow us as we
+withdrew, and we would retire with a better understanding of the flaming
+spirit which, through that long, bloody conflict against overwhelming
+odds in wealth, supplies, and men, sustained the South, and which at
+last enabled it to accept defeat as nobly as it had accepted earlier
+victories.... How one loves a gentle old lady who can hate like that!
+
+In this chapter, when it appeared originally, in "Collier's Weekly," I
+made the statement that I had seldom spent an hour in conversation with
+a Southerner without hearing some mention of the Civil War, and that I
+had heard other Northerners remark upon this matter, and express
+surprise at the tenacity with which the war holds its place in the
+foreground of the southern mind.
+
+This, like many another of my southern observations, brought me letters
+from readers of "Collier's," residing in the South. A great number of
+the letters thus elicited, as well as comments made upon these chapters
+by the southern press, have been of no small interest to me. On at
+least one subject (the question discussed in the next chapter, as to
+whether the expression "you-all" is ever used in the singular) my
+correspondents have convinced me that my earlier statement was an error,
+while on other subjects they have modified my views, and on still others
+made my convictions more profound. Where it has been possible, and where
+it has seemed, for one reason or another, to be worth while, I have
+endeavored, while revising the story of my southern wanderings for this
+book, to make note of the other fellow's point of view, especially in
+cases where he disagrees with me.
+
+The following, then, is from a letter written on the stationery of
+Washington and Lee University, and applies to certain statements
+contained in this chapter:
+
+     In 1813, Thomas Jefferson wrote to a newspaper publisher: "Were I
+     the publisher of a paper, instead of the usual division into
+     Foreign, Domestic, etc., I think I should distribute everything
+     under the following heads: 1. True. 2. Probable. 3. Wanting
+     confirmation. 4. Lies, and be careful in subsequent papers to
+     correct all errors in preceding ones."
+
+     Allow me to suggest that your story might, under Mr. Jefferson's
+     category, be placed under "2." Perhaps you went to see "The Birth
+     of a Nation" before you wrote it. It has been my experience that my
+     acquaintances among the F.F.V.'s have been far more interested in
+     whether Boston or Brooklyn would win the pennant than in discussing
+     the Civil War. By the young men of the South the War was forgotten
+     long ago.
+
+This letter has caused me to wonder whether the frequency with which my
+companion and I heard the Civil War discussed, may not, perhaps, have
+been due, at least in part, to our own inquiries, resulting from the
+consuming interest that we had in hearing of the War from those who
+lived where it was fought.
+
+Yet, after all, it seems to me most natural that the South should
+remember, while the North forgets. Not all Northerners were in the war.
+But all Southerners were; if a boy was big enough to carry a gun, he
+went. The North almost completely escaped invasion, and upon one
+occasion when a southern army did march through northern territory, the
+conduct of the invading troops toward the civilian population (the false
+Barbara Frietchie legend to the contrary notwithstanding) was so
+exemplary as to set a record which is probably unequaled in history.[2]
+The South, upon the other hand, was constantly under invasion, and the
+record of destruction wrought by northern armies in the valley of the
+Shenandoah, on the March to the Sea, and in some other instances, is
+writ in poverty and mourning unto this day.
+
+[2] See chapter on Colonel Taylor and General Lee.
+
+Thus, except politically, the North now feels not the least effect from
+the war. But the South knew the terrors of invasion and the pangs of
+conquest, and is only growing strong again after having been ruined--as
+instanced by the fact, which I came across the other day, that the tax
+returns from one of the southern States have, for the first time since
+the Civil War, reached the point at which they stood when it began.
+
+So, very naturally, while the War has begun to take its place in the
+northern mind along with the Revolutionary War, as something to be
+studied in school under the heading "United States History," it has not,
+in southern eyes, become altogether "book history," but is history that
+lives--in swords hanging upon the walls of many homes, in old faded
+letters, in sacks of worthless Confederate bills, in the ruins of great
+houses, in lovingly preserved gray uniforms, in southern battle fields,
+and in southern burial grounds where rows upon rows of tombstones, drawn
+up in company front, stand like gray armies forever on parade.
+
+Small wonder if, amid its countless tragic memorials, the South does not
+forget. The strange thing is that bitterness has gone so soon; that
+remembering the agonies of war and the abuses of reconstruction, the
+South does not to-day hate the North as violently as ever. If to err is
+human, the North has, in its treatment of the South, richly proved its
+humanness; and if forgiveness is divine, the South has, by the same
+token, attained something like divinity.
+
+Had the numbskull North understood these things as it should have
+understood them, there would not now be a solid Democratic South.
+
+Such rancor as remains is, I believe, strongest in the smaller towns in
+those States which suffered the greatest hardships. I know, for
+instance, of one lady, from a little city in Virginia, who refused to
+enter the Massachusetts Building at the Chicago World's Fair, and there
+are still to be found, in Virginia, ladies who do not leave their houses
+on the Fourth of July because they prefer not to look upon the Stars and
+Stripes. The Confederate flag is still, in a sense, the flag of the
+South. Southerners love it as one loves a pressed flower from a mother's
+bridal wreath. When the Eleventh Cavalry rode from Fort Oglethorpe,
+Georgia, to Winchester, Virginia, a few years since, they saw many
+Confederate flags, but only one Union flag, and that in the hands of a
+negro child. However, war had not then broken out in Europe. It would be
+different now.
+
+A Virginia lady told me of having gone to a dentist in Winchester,
+Virginia, and having taken her little niece with her. The child watched
+the dentist put a rubber dam in her aunt's mouth, and then, childlike,
+began to ask questions. She was a northern child, and she had evidently
+heard some one in the town speak of Sheridan's ride.
+
+"Auntie," she said, "was Sheridan a Northerner or a Southerner?"
+
+Owing to the rubber dam the aunt was unable to reply, but the dentist
+answered for her. "He was a drunken Yankee!" he declared vehemently.
+
+When, later, the rubber dam was removed, the aunt protested.
+
+"Doctor," she reproved, "you should not have said such a thing to my
+niece. She is from New York."
+
+"Then," returned the unrepentant dentist, "she has heard the truth for
+once!"
+
+Doubtless this man was an inheritor of hate, like the descendants of one
+uncompromisingly bitter old Southerner whose will, to be seen among the
+records of the Hanover County courthouse, in Virginia, bequeaths to his
+"children and grandchildren and their descendants throughout all future
+generations, the bitter hatred and everlasting malignity of my heart and
+soul against the Yankees, including all people north of Mason and
+Dixon's line."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+"YOU-ALL" AND OTHER SECTIONAL MISUNDERSTANDINGS
+
+    Let us make an honorable retreat.
+
+    --AS YOU LIKE IT.
+
+
+Those who write school histories and wish them adopted by southern
+schools have to handle the Civil War with gloves. Such words as "rebel"
+and "rebellion" are resented in the South, and the historian must go
+softly in discussing slavery, though he may put on the loud pedal in
+speaking of State Rights, the fact being that the South not only knows
+now, but, as evidenced by the utterances of her leading men, from
+Jefferson to Lee, knew long before the war that slavery was a great
+curse; whereas, on the question of State Rights, including the
+theoretical right to secede from the Union--this being the actual
+question over which the South took up arms--there is much to be said on
+the southern side. Colonel Robert Bingham, superintendent of the Bingham
+School, Asheville, North Carolina, has made an exhaustive study of the
+question of secession, and has set forth his findings in several
+scholarly and temperately written booklets.
+
+Colonel Bingham proves absolutely, by quotation of their own words,
+that the framers of the Constitution regarded that document as a
+_compact_ between the several States. He shows that three of the States
+(Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island) joined in this compact
+_conditionally_, with the clear purpose of resuming their independent
+sovereignty as States, should the general government use its power for
+the oppression of the States; that up to the time of the Mexican War the
+New England States contended for, not against, the right to secede; that
+John Quincy Adams went so far as to negotiate with England with a view
+to the secession of the New England States, because of Jefferson's
+Embargo Act, and moreover that up to 1840 the United States Government
+used as a textbook for cadets at West Point, Rawle's "View of the
+Constitution," a book which teaches that the Union is dissoluble. Robert
+E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, were, therefore, in all probability, given
+this book as students at West Point, and consequently, if we would have
+honest history, we must face the astonishing fact that there is evidence
+to show _that they learned the doctrine of secession at the United
+States Military Academy_.
+
+Colonel Bingham, who, it may be remarked, served with distinction in the
+Confederate Army, has very kindly supplemented, in a letter to me, his
+published statements. He writes:
+
+     Secession was legal _theoretically_, but practically the conditions
+     on which the thirteen Independent Republics, covering a little
+     strip on the Atlantic coast, came to an agreement, could not
+     possibly be applied to the great inter-Oceanic Empire into which
+     these thirteen Independent Republics had developed.
+
+     "Theory is a good horse in the stable, but may make an arrant jade
+     on the journey"--to paraphrase Goldsmith--and the only way in which
+     these irreconcilable differences could be settled was by bullet and
+     bayonet, which settled them right and finally.
+
+Once such matters as these are fully understood in the North, there will
+be left but one grave issue between North and South, that issue being
+over the question of whether or not Southerners, under any
+circumstances, use the phrase "you-all" in the singular.
+
+"Whatever you write of the South," said our hostess at a dinner party in
+Virginia, "don't make the mistake of representing any one from this paht
+of the country, white oh black, educated oh ignorant, as saying
+'you-all' meaning one person only."
+
+When I remarked mildly that it seemed to me I had often seen the phrase
+so used in books, and heard it in plays, eight or ten southern ladies
+and gentlemen at the table pounced upon me, all at once. "Yes!" they
+agreed, with a kind of polite violence, "books and plays by Yankees!"
+
+"If," one of the gentlemen explained, "you write to a friend who has a
+family, and say, according to the northern practice, 'I hope to see you
+when you come to my town,' you write something which is really
+ambiguous, since the word 'you' may refer only to your friend, or may
+refer also to his family. Our southern 'you-all' makes it explicit."
+
+I told him that in the North we also used the word "all" in connection
+with "you," though we accented the two evenly, and did not compound
+them, but he seemed to believe that "you" followed by "all" belonged
+exclusively to the South.
+
+The argument continued almost constantly throughout the meal. Not until
+coffee was served did the subject seem to be exhausted. But it was not,
+for after pouring a demi-tasse our hostess lifted a lump of sugar in the
+tongs, and looking me directly in the eye inquired: "Do you-all take
+sugah?"
+
+Undoubtedly it would have been wiser, and politer, to let this pass, but
+the discussion had filled me with curiosity, not only because of my
+interest in the localism, but also because of the amazing intensity with
+which it had been discussed.
+
+"But," I exclaimed, "you just said 'you-all,' apparently addressing me.
+Didn't you use it in the singular?"
+
+No sooner had I spoken than I was sorry. Every one looked disconcerted.
+There was silence for a moment. I was very much ashamed.
+
+"Oh, no," she said at last. "When I said 'you-all' I meant you and Mr.
+Morgan." (She pronounced it "Moh-gan," with a lovely drawl.) As she made
+this statement, she blushed, poor lady!
+
+Being to blame for her discomfiture, I could not bear to see her blush,
+and looked away, but only to catch the eye of my companion, and to read
+in its evil gleam the thought: "Of course they use it in the singular.
+But aren't you ashamed of having tripped up such a pretty creature on a
+point of dialect?"
+
+Though my interest in the southern idiom had caused me to forget about
+the sugar, my hostess had not forgotten.
+
+"Well," she said, still balancing the lump above the cup, and continuing
+gamely to put the question in the same form, and to me: "Do you-all take
+sugah, oh not?"
+
+I had no idea how my companion took his coffee, but it seemed to me that
+tardy politeness now demanded that I tacitly--or at least
+demi-tacitly--accede to the alleged plural intent of the question.
+Therefore, I replied: "Mr. Morgan takes two lumps. I don't take any,
+thanks."
+
+Late that night as we were returning to our hotel, my companion said to
+me somewhat tartly: "In case such a thing comes up again, I wish you
+would remember that sugar in my coffee makes me ill."
+
+"Well, why didn't you say so?"
+
+"Because," he returned, "I thought that you-all ought to do the
+answering. It seemed best for me-all to keep quiet and try to look
+plural under the singular conditions."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No single thing I ever wrote has brought to me so many letters, nor
+letters so uniform in sentiment (albeit widely different in expression),
+as the foregoing, seemingly unimportant tale, printed originally in
+"Collier's Weekly."
+
+Some one has pointed out that various communities have "fighting words,"
+and as the letters poured in I began to realize that in discussing
+"you-all" I had inadvertently hit upon a term which aroused the ire of
+the South--or rather, that I had aroused ire by implying that the
+expression is sometimes used in the singular--the Solid South to the
+contrary notwithstanding.
+
+Never, upon any subject, have I known people to agree as my southern
+correspondents did on this. The unanimity of their dissent was an
+impressive thing. So was the violence some of them displayed.
+
+For a time, indeed, the heat with which they wrote, obscured the issue.
+That is to say, most of them instead of explaining merely denied, and
+added comments, more or less unflattering, concerning me.
+
+Wrote a lady from Lexington, Kentucky:
+
+     I have lived in Kentucky all of my life, and have never yet heard
+     "you-all" used in the singular, not even among the negroes. My
+     grandparents and friends say they have never heard it, either.
+
+     It was needless for you to tell your Virginia hostess that
+     "you-all" (meaning you and your friend) were Yankees. The fact that
+     you criticized her language proved it. Southern people pride
+     themselves on their tact, and no doubt, at the time, she was
+     struggling to conceal a smile because of some of your own
+     localisms.
+
+Many of the letters were more severe than this one, and most of them
+made the point that I had been impolite to my hostess, and that, in all
+probability, when she looked at me and asked, "Do you-all take sugah?"
+she was playing a joke upon me, apropos the discussion which had
+preceded the question. For example, this, from a gentleman of Pell City,
+Alabama:
+
+     My wife is the residuary legatee of Virginia's language, inherited,
+     acquired and affected varieties, including the vanishing _y_;
+     annihilated _g_; long-distance _a_, and irresistible drawl.
+
+     To quell the unfortunate tumult that has arisen in our household as
+     a result of your last article in "Collier's" I am commanded to
+     advise you that the use of "you-all" in the singular is
+     absodamnlutely _non est factum_ in Virginia, save, perhaps, among
+     the hill people of the Blue Ridge.
+
+     Also, take notice that when your hostess, with apparent
+     inadvertence, used the expression in connection with sugar in your
+     demi-tasse, the subsequent blush was due to your failure to catch
+     her witticism, ignorantly mistaking it for a lapse of hers.
+
+     My wife was going to write to you herself, but I managed to divert
+     this cruel determination by promising to uphold the honor of the
+     Old Dominion. There is already too much blood being shed in the
+     world without spilling that of non-combatants as would have been
+     "you-all's" fate had she gone after you with a weapon more mighty
+     than the sword when in the hands of Mr. Wilson or an outraged
+     woman.
+
+In face of all this and much more, however, my conviction was unshaken.
+I talked it over with my companion. He remembered the episode of the
+dinner table exactly as I did. Moreover, I still had my notes, made in
+the hotel that night. The lady looked at me. My companion was several
+places removed from her at the other side of the table. How could she
+have meant to include him? And how could she have expected me to say how
+he took his after-dinner coffee?
+
+At last, to reassure myself, I wrote to the wisest, cleverest, most
+trustworthy lady in the South, and asked her what it all meant.
+
+"Well," she wrote back from Atlanta, "I will tell you, but I am not sure
+that you will understand me. The answer is: _She did, but she didn't_.
+She looked at and spoke to you and, of course, by all rules of logic she
+could not have been intending to make you Morg's keeper in the matter of
+coffee dressing. _But_ she never would have said 'you-all' if Morg had
+not been in her mind as joined with you. The response, according to her
+thought-connotation, would have been from you _and_ from him."
+
+This was disconcerting. So was a letter, received in the same mail, from
+a gentleman in Charleston:
+
+     It is as plain as the nose on your face that you are not yet
+     convinced that we in the South _never_ use "you-all" with reference
+     to one person. The case you mentioned proves nothing at all. The
+     very fact that there were _two_ strangers present justified the use
+     of the expression; we continually use the expression in that way,
+     and in such cases we expect an answer from _both_ persons so
+     addressed. To illustrate: just a few days ago I "carried" two girls
+     into an "ice-cream parlor." After we were seated, I looked at the
+     one nearest me, and said: "Well, what will you-all have?"
+
+     Physically we are so constructed that unless a person is cross-eyed
+     it is impossible to look at two persons at once; the mere fact that
+     I looked at the one nearest me did not mean that I was not
+     addressing both. I expected an answer from both, and I got it, too
+     (as is generally the case where ice-cream is concerned).
+
+     The subject is one to which I have devoted the most careful
+     attention for many years. I have been so interested in it that
+     almost unconsciously, whenever I myself use the expression
+     "you-all," or hear any one else use it, I note whether it is
+     intended to refer to one or to more than one person. I have heard
+     thousands of persons, white, black and indifferent, use the
+     expression, and the only ones I have ever heard use it incorrectly
+     are what we might call "professional Southerners." For instance,
+     last week I went to a vaudeville show, and part of the performance
+     was given by two "black-face" comedians, calling themselves "The
+     Georgia Blossoms." Their dialect was excellent, with the single
+     exception that one of them _twice_ used the expression "you-all"
+     where it could not _possibly_ have meant more than one person. And
+     I no sooner heard it than I said to myself: "There is _one_ blossom
+     that never bloomed in Georgia!"
+
+     Another instance is the following: I was once approached by a
+     beggar in Atlanta, who saluted me thus: "Say, mister, can't you-all
+     give me a nickel?" Had I been accompanied it would have been all
+     right, but I was alone, and there was no other person near me
+     except the hobo. Did I give him the nickel? I should say not! I
+     said to myself: "He is a damned Yankee trying to pass himself off
+     for a Southerner."
+
+Horrid glimmerings began to filter dimly through. And yet--
+
+Next day came a letter calling my attention to an article, written years
+ago by Joel Chandler Harris and Thomas Nelson Page, jointly, in which
+they plead with northern writers not to misuse the disputed expression
+by applying it in the singular.
+
+That was another shock. I felt conviction tottering.... But she _did_
+look at me.... She _didn't_ expect an answer from my companion....
+
+And then behold! a missive from Mr. H.E. Jones, a member--and a worthy
+one--of the Tallapoosa County Board of Education, and a resident of
+Dadeville, Alabama. Mr. Jones' educational activities reach far beyond
+Tallapoosa County, and far beyond the confines of his State, for he has
+educated me. He has made me see the light.
+
+"I want to straighten you out," he wrote, kindly. "We never use
+'you-all' in the singular. Not even the most ignorant do so. But, as you
+know," (Ah, that was mercifully said!) "there are some peculiar, almost
+unexplainable, shades of meaning in local idioms of speech, which are
+not easy for a stranger to understand. I have a friend who was reared in
+Milwaukee and is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, who tells me
+he would have argued the 'you-all' point with all comers for some years
+following his taking up his residence here, but he is at this time as
+ready as I to deny the allegation and 'chaw the alligator.'
+
+"When your young lady, in Virginia, asked, 'Do you-all take sugar?' she
+mentally included Mr. Morgan, and perhaps all other Yankees. I would ask
+my local grocer, 'Will you-all sell me some sugar this morning?' meaning
+his establishment, collectively, although I addressed him personally;
+but I would _not_ ask my only servant, 'Have you-all milked the cow?'"
+
+And that is the exact truth.
+
+I was absolutely wrong. And though, having printed the ghastly falsehood
+in my original article, I can hardly hope now for absolution from the
+outraged South, I can at least retract, as I hereby do, and can,
+moreover, thank Mr. H.E. Jones, of Tallapoosa County, Alabama, for
+having saved me from a double sin; for had he not given me the simple
+illustration of the grocery store, I might have repeated, now, my
+earlier misstatement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+IDIOMS AND ARISTOCRACY
+
+
+Southerners have told me that they can tell from what part of the South
+a person comes, by his speech, just as an Easterner can distinguish, by
+the same means a New Englander, a New Yorker, a Middle-Westerner, and a
+Brooklynite. I cannot pretend to have become an authority upon southern
+dialect, but it is obvious to me that the speech of New Orleans is
+unlike that of Charleston, and that of Charleston unlike that of
+Virginia.
+
+The chief characteristic of the Virginian dialect is the famous and
+fascinating localism which Professor C. Alphonso Smith has called the
+"vanishing _y_"--a _y_ sound which causes words like "car" and "garden"
+to be pronounced "cyar" and "gyarden"--or, as Professor Smith prefers to
+indicate it: "C^{y}ar" and "g^{y}arden." I am told that in years gone by
+the "vanishing _y_" was common to all Virginians, but though it is still
+common enough among members of the old generation, and is used also by
+some young people--particularly, I fancy, young ladies, who realize its
+fetching quality--there can be no doubt that it is, in both senses,
+vanishing, and that not half the Virginians of the present day
+pronounce "cigar" as "segyar," "carpet" as "cya´pet," and "Carter," as
+"Cyahtah."
+
+In Virginia and many other parts of the South one hears such words as
+"aunt" correctly pronounced with the broad _a_, and such words as "tube"
+and "new" properly given the full _u_ sound (instead of "toobe," and
+"noo," as in some parts of the North); but, on the other hand, while the
+South gives the short _o_ sound in such words as "log" and "fog," it
+invariably calls a dog a "dawg." "Your" is often pronounced "yore,"
+"sure" as "shore," and, not infrequently, "to" as "toe."
+
+The South also uses the word "carry" in a way that strikes Northerners
+as strange. If a Southerner offers to "carry" you to the station, or
+over his plantation, he does not signify that he intends to transport
+you by means of physical strength, but that he will escort you. If he
+"carries you to the run" you will find that the "run" is what
+Northerners call a creek; if to the "branch," or "dreen," that is what
+we call a brook.
+
+This use of the word "carry," far from being a corruption, is pure old
+English, and is used in the Bible, and by Smollett, though it is amusing
+to note that the "Georgia Gazetteer" for 1837, mentions as a lamentable
+provincialism such an application of the word as "to _carry_ (instead of
+_lead_) a horse to water." If the "Gazetteer" were indeed correct in
+this, then the Book of Genesis contains an American provincialism.
+
+The customary use of the word in the North, as "to _carry_ a cane, or a
+bag," is equally but no more correct than the southern usage. I am
+informed by Mr. W.T. Hall, Editor of the Dothan (Alabama) "Eagle," that
+the word used in his part of the country, as signifying "to bear on the
+back, or shoulder," is "tote." "Tote" is a word not altogether unknown
+in the North, and it has recently found its way into some dictionaries,
+though the old "Georgia Gazetteer" disapproved of it. Even this word has
+some excuse for being, in that it is a deformed member of a good family,
+having come from the Latin, _tollit_, been transformed into the early
+English "tolt," and thus into what I believe to be a purely American
+word.
+
+Other expressions which struck me as being characteristic of the South
+are "stop by," as for instance, "I will stop by for you," meaning, "I
+will call for you in passing"; "don't guess," as "I don't guess I'll
+come"; and "Yes indeedy!" which seems to be a kind of emphatic "Yes
+indeed."
+
+"As I look back over the old South," said one white-haired Virginian,
+"there were two things it was above. One was accounts and the other was
+grammar. Tradesmen in prosperous neighborhoods were always in distress
+because of the long credits, though gambling debts were, of course,
+always punctiliously paid. As to the English spoken in old Virginia--and
+indeed in the whole South--there is absolutely no doubt that its
+softness and its peculiarities in pronunciation are due to the influence
+of the negro voice and speech on the white race. Some of the young
+people seem to wish to dispute this, but we older ones used to take the
+view--half humorously, of course--that if a Southerner spoke perfect
+English, it showed he wasn't a gentleman; "that he hadn't been raised
+with niggers around him.""
+
+"Oh, you shouldn't tell him that!" broke in a lady who was present.
+
+"Why not?" demanded the old gentleman.
+
+"He'll print it!" she said.
+
+"Well," he answered, "ain't it true? What's the harm in it?"
+
+"There!" she exclaimed. "You said '_ain't_.' He'll print that Virginians
+say 'ain't'!"
+
+"Well," he answered, "I reckon we do, don't we?"
+
+She laughed and gave up. "I remember," she told me, "the very spot on
+the turnpike going out to Ripon, where I made up my mind to break myself
+of saying 'ain't.' But I want to tell you that we are talking much
+better English than we used to. Even the negroes are. You don't hear
+many white people saying 'gwine' for 'going' any more, for instance, and
+the young people don't say 'set' for 'sit' and 'git' for 'get,' as their
+fathers did."
+
+"I've heard folks say, though," put in the old gentleman, "that they'd
+ruther speak like a Virginian than speak correctly. The old talk was
+pretty nice, after all. I don't hold to all these new improvements.
+They've been going too far in this Commonwealth."
+
+"What have they been doing?" I asked.
+
+"Doing!" he returned, "Why, they're gradually taking the cuspidors out
+of the church pews!"
+
+Before the question of dialect is dropped, it should be said that those
+who do not believe the soft southern pronunciation is derived from
+negroes, can make out an interesting case. If, they ask, the negro has
+corrupted the English of the South, why is it that he has not also
+corrupted the language of the West Indies--British and French? French
+negroes speak like French persons of white blood, and British West
+Indian negroes often speak the cockney dialect, without a trace of
+"nigger." Moreover, it is pointed out that in southern countries, the
+world over, there is a tendency to soften the harsh sounds of language,
+to elide, and drop out consonants. The Andalusians speak a Spanish
+comparable in many of its peculiarities with the English of our own
+South, and the south-Italians exhibit similar dialectic traits. Nor do
+the parallels between the north and south of Spain and Italy, and of the
+United States, end there. The north-Italians and north-Spaniards are the
+"Yankees" of their respective countries--the shrewd, cold business
+people--whereas the south-Italians and south-Spaniards are more poetic,
+more dashing, more temperamental. The merchants are of the north of
+Spain, but the dancers and bull-fighters are Andalusians. And just as
+our Americans of the North admire the lazy dialect of the South, so the
+north-Spaniards admire the dialect of Andalusia, and even imitate it
+because they think it has a fashionable sound--quite as British
+fashionables cultivate the habit of dropping final _g_'s, as in
+"huntin'" for "hunting."
+
+Virginia, more than any other State I know of, feels its entity as a
+State. If you meet a Virginian traveling outside his State, and ask
+where he is from, he will not mention the name of the city in which he
+resides, but will reply: "I'm from Va'ginia." If, on the other hand, you
+are in Virginia, and ask him the same question, he will proudly reply:
+"I'm from Fauquier," or "I'm from Westmoreland," or whatever the name of
+his county may be. The chances are, also, that his trunks and traveling
+bags will be marked with his initials, followed not by the name of his
+town, but by the abbreviation, "Va."
+
+I was told of one old unreconstructed Virginian who had to go to Boston
+on business. The gentleman he went to see there was exceedingly polite
+to him, asking him to his house, putting him up at his club, and showing
+him innumerable courtesies. The old Confederate, writing to his wife,
+indicated his amazement: "Although he is not a Virginian," he declared,
+"I must confess that he lives like a gentleman."
+
+The name of his Bostonian acquaintance was John Quincy Adams.
+
+I heard this story from a northern lady who has a country place near a
+small town in Virginia. In the North this lady's family is far from
+being unknown, but in Virginia, she assured me, all persons originating
+outside the State are looked upon as vague beings without "family."
+
+"They seem to think," she said, "that Northerners have no parents--that
+they are made chemically."
+
+This does not imply, however, that well-bred Northerners are excluded
+from society. Even if they are well off they may get into society; for
+though money does not count in one's favor in such a town, it does not
+count against one. The social requirement of the place is simple. If
+people are "nice people," that is enough.
+
+Of course, however, it is one thing to be admitted to Virginia society
+and another to belong to it by right. A case in point is that of a lady
+visiting in a Virginia city who, while calling at the house of some
+"F.F.V's," was asked by a little girl, the daughter of the house, where
+she had been born.
+
+"Mawtha," said the little girl's mother, after the caller had departed,
+"you must not ask people where they were bo'n. If they were bo'n in
+Va'ginia they will tell you so without asking, and if they weren't bo'n
+in Va'ginia it's very embarrassing."
+
+Some of the old families of the inner circle are in a tragic state of
+decay, owing to inbreeding; others, in a more wholesome physical and
+mental condition, are perpetually wrestling with the heritage of poverty
+left over from the War--"too proud to whitewash and too poor to
+paint"--clinging desperately to the old acres, and to the old houses
+which are like beautiful, tired ancestral ghosts.
+
+Until a few years ago the one resource of Virginian gentlewomen in need
+of funds was to take boarders, but more lately the daughters of
+distinguished but poverty-stricken families have found that they may
+work in offices. Thus, in the town of which I speak, several ladies who
+are very much "in society," support themselves by entertaining "paying
+guests," while others are stenographers. The former, I was told, by the
+way, make it a practice to avoid first-hand business contacts with their
+guests by sending them their bills through the mail, and requiring that
+response be made by means of the same impersonal channel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE CONFEDERATE CAPITAL
+
+     The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each
+     and every town or city.
+
+     --OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
+
+
+Richmond is the Boston of Virginia; Norfolk its New York. The comparison
+does not, of course, hold in all particulars, Richmond being, for
+instance, larger than Norfolk, and not a seaport. Yet, on the other
+hand, Boston manages, more than any seaport that I know of, to conceal
+from the visitor the signs of its maritime life; wherefore Richmond
+looks about as much like a port as does the familiar part of Boston.
+
+The houses on the principal residence streets of Richmond are not built
+in such close ranks as Boston houses; they have more elbow-room; numbers
+of them have yards and gardens; and there is not about Richmond houses
+the Bostonian insistence upon red brick; nevertheless many houses of
+both cities give off the same suggestion of having long been lived in by
+the descendants of their builders. So, too, though the Capitol at
+Richmond has little architectural resemblance to Boston's gold-domed
+State House--the former having been copied by Thomas Jefferson from the
+Maison Carrée at Nîmes, and being a better building than the
+Massachusetts State House, and better placed--the two do, nevertheless,
+suggest each other in their gray granite solidity.
+
+It is perhaps in the quality of solidity--architectural, commercial,
+social, even spiritual--that Richmond and Boston are most alike.
+Substantialness, conservatism, tradition, and prosperity rest like gray
+mantles over both.
+
+Broad Street in Richmond is two or three times as wide as Granby Street,
+Norfolk's chief shopping street, and for this reason, doubtless, its
+traffic seems less, though I believe it is in fact greater. A fine
+street to look upon at night, with its long, even rows of clustered
+boulevard lights, and its bright windows, Broad Street in the daytime is
+a disappointment, because, for all its fine spaciousness, it lacks good
+buildings. I must confess, too, that I was disappointed in the
+appearance of the women in the shopping crowds on Broad Street; for, as
+every one knows, Richmond has been famous for its beauties. In vain I
+looked for young women fitted to inherit the débutante mantles of such
+nationally celebrated beauties as Miss Irene Langhorne (Mrs. Charles
+Dana Gibson), Miss May Handy (Mrs. James Brown Potter), Miss Lizzie
+Bridges (Mrs. Hobson), and Miss Sally Bruce (Mrs. Arthur B. Kinsolving).
+
+In the ten years between 1900 and 1910 the population of Richmond
+increased 50 per cent. Her population by the last census was about
+130,000, of which a third is colored. Norfolk's population is about
+70,000, with approximately the same percentage of negroes. In both
+cities there is much new building--offices downtown, and pretty new
+brick homes in outlying suburban tracts. Likewise, in both, the charming
+signs of other days are here and there to be seen.
+
+Richmond is again like its ancient enemy, Boston, in the wealth of its
+historical associations, and I know of no city which gives the
+respectful heed to its own history that Richmond does, and no State
+which in this matter equals the State of Virginia. If Richmond was the
+center of the South during the Civil War, Capitol Square was, as it is
+to-day, the center of that center. In this square, in the shadow of
+Jefferson's beautiful classic capitol building, which has the glowing
+gray tone of one of those water colors done on tinted paper by Jules
+Guérin, Confederate soldiers were mustered into service under Lee and
+Jackson. Within the old building the Confederate Congress met, Aaron
+Burr was tried for treason, and George Washington saw, in its present
+position, his own statue by Houdon. Across the way from the square,
+where the post office now stands, was the Treasury Building of the
+Confederate States, and there Jefferson Davis appeared seven times, to
+be tried for treason, only to have his case postponed by the Federal
+Government, and finally dismissed. East of the square is the State
+Library, containing a remarkable collection of portraits and documents,
+including likenesses of all governors of Virginia from John Smith to
+Tyler, a portrait of Pocahontas, and the bail bond of Jefferson Davis,
+signed by Horace Greeley, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Gerrit Smith, and
+seventeen other distinguished men of the day. To the west of the square
+is old St. Paul's Church, with the pews of Lee and Davis. It was while
+attending service in this church, on Sunday, April 2, 1865, that Davis
+received Lee's telegram from Petersburg, saying that Richmond must be
+evacuated. A block or two west of the church, in East Franklin Street,
+is a former residence of Lee. It was given by the late Mrs. Joseph Bryan
+and her sisters to the Virginia Historical Society, and is now,
+appropriately enough, the home of that organization.
+
+In the old drawing room, now the office of the Historical Society, I
+found Mr. William G. Stanard, the corresponding secretary, and from him
+heard something of Lee's life there immediately after the War.
+
+By the Northerners in Richmond at that time, including the Federal
+troops stationed in the city, Lee was of course respected and admired,
+while by the whole South he was, and is to-day, adored. As for his own
+ex-soldiers, they could not see him without emotion, and because of the
+demonstrations which invariably attended his appearance on the Richmond
+streets, he went out but little, passing much time upon the back porch
+of the house. Here most of the familiar Brady photographs of him were
+taken. Brady sent a young photographer to Richmond to get the
+photographs. Lee was at first disposed to refuse to be taken, but his
+family persuaded him to submit, on the ground that if there were any
+impertinence in the request it was not the fault of the young man, and
+that the latter might lose his position if he failed to obtain the
+desired pictures.
+
+Finding the continued attention of the crowds too much for him, the
+general left Richmond after two months, removing to a small house in
+Cumberland County, on the James, and it was there that he was residing
+when called to the presidency of Washington College--now Washington and
+Lee University--at Lexington, Virginia. As is well known, he accepted
+this offer, built up the institution, remained its president until the
+time of his death, and now lies buried in the university chapel.
+
+To Mr. Stanard I am also indebted for the following information
+regarding John Smith and Pocahontas:
+
+About a mile below Richmond, in what is now the brickyard region, there
+used to stand the residence of the Mayo family, a place known as
+Powhatan. This place has long been pointed out as the scene of the
+saving of Smith by the Indian girl, but late research indicates that,
+though Smith did come up the James to the present site of Richmond, his
+capture by the Indians did not occur here, but in the vicinity of
+Jamestown. Then Indians took him first to one of their villages on York
+River, near the present site of West Point, Virginia, and thence to a
+place, on the same stream, in the county of Gloucester, where the tribal
+chief resided. I was under the impression that this worthy's name was
+Powhatan, but Mr. Stanard declared "powhatan" was not a proper name,
+but an Indian word meaning "chief."
+
+The Virginia Historical Society is satisfied that Smith was rescued by
+Pocahontas at a point about nine miles from Williamsburg on the west
+side of York River, but there are historians who contend that the whole
+story of the rescue is a fiction. One of these is Dr. Albert Bushnell
+Hart, of Harvard, who lists Smith among "Historical Liars." Virginians,
+who regard Smith as one of their proudest historical possessions, are
+somewhat disposed to resent this view, but it appears to me that there
+is at least some ground for it. Matthew Page Andrews, another historian,
+himself a Virginian, points out that many of our ideas of the Jamestown
+colony have been obtained from Smith's history of the settlement, which
+he wrote in England, some years after leaving Virginia.
+
+"From these accounts," says Mr. Andrews, "we get an unfavorable
+impression of Smith's associates in the colony and of the management of
+the men composing the popular or people's party in the London Company.
+As we now know that this party in the London Company was composed of
+very able and patriotic Englishmen, we are inclined to think that
+Captain Smith not only overrated his achievement, but was very unjust to
+his fellow-colonists and the Company."
+
+The story of the rescue of Smith by Pocahontas, with the strong
+implication that the Indian girl was in love with him, comes to us from
+Smith himself. We know that when Pocahontas was nineteen years of age
+(seven years after the Smith rescue is said to have occurred), she
+married John Rolfe--the first Englishman to begin the cultivation of the
+tobacco plant. We know that she was taken to England, that she was
+welcomed at court as a princess, that she had a son born in England, and
+that she herself died there in 1617. We know also that her son, Thomas
+Rolfe, settled in Virginia, and that through him a number of Virginians
+trace descent from Pocahontas. (Mr. Andrews points out that in 1915 one
+of these descendants became the wife of the President of the United
+States.)
+
+But we know also that John Smith, brave and daring though he was, was
+not above twisting and embroidering a tale to his own glorification.
+While, therefore, it is too much to affirm that his rescue story is
+false, it is well to remember that Pocahontas was but twelve years old
+when the rescue is said to have occurred, and that Smith waited until
+after she had become famous, and had died, to promulgate his romantic
+story.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Immediately to the north of Capitol Square stands the City Hall, an ugly
+building, in the cellar of which is the Police Court presided over by
+the celebrated and highly entertaining Judge Crutchfield, otherwise
+known as "One John" and "the Cadi"--of whom more presently. A few blocks
+beyond the City Hall, in the old mansion at the corner of East Clay and
+Twelfth Streets, which was the "White House of the Confederacy," the
+official residence of Jefferson Davis during the war, is the
+Confederate Museum--one of the most fascinating museums I ever visited.
+
+Not the least part of the charm of this museum is the fact that it is
+not of great size, and that one may consequently visit it without
+fatigue; but the chief fascination of the place is the dramatic
+personalness of its exhibits. To me there is always something peculiarly
+engaging about intimate relics of historic figures, and it is of such
+relics that the greater part of the collection of the Confederate Museum
+consists. In one show case, for example, are the saddle and bridle of
+General Lee, and the uniform he wore when he surrendered. The effects of
+General Joseph E. Johnston are shown in another case, and in still
+another those of the picturesque J.E.B. Stuart, who, as here one may
+see, loved the little touch of individuality and dash which came of
+wearing a feather in a campaign hat. So also one learns something of
+Stonewall Jackson when one sees in the cabinet, along with his old blue
+hat and other possessions, the gold spurs which were given to him by the
+ladies of Baltimore, beside the steel spurs that he _wore_. All
+Jackson's personal effects were very simple.
+
+One of the most striking relics in the museum is the Great Seal of the
+Confederacy, which was only returned to Richmond within the last few
+years, after having been lost track of for nearly half a century--a
+strange chapter in the annals of the Civil War.
+
+Records in the Library of Congress, including the Confederate state
+papers purchased by the United States Government in 1872, of William J.
+Bromwell, formerly a clerk in the Confederate State Department, brought
+to light, a few years ago, the fact that the seal was in the possession
+of Rear Admiral Thomas O. Selfridge, U.S.N., retired.
+
+At the time of the evacuation of Richmond, Bromwell carried off a number
+of the Confederate state papers, and Mrs. Bromwell took charge of the
+seal, transporting it through the lines in her bustle. When later,
+through Colonel John T. Pickett, Bromwell sold the papers to the
+Government, Rear Admiral Selfridge--then a captain--was the officer
+assigned to go to Hamilton, Ontario, to inventory and receive them. It
+is said that Pickett gave the seal to Selfridge at about this time,
+first, however, having a duplicate made. This duplicate, or a copy of
+it, was later offered for sale as the original, but was found to be
+spurious. When examination of the Pickett papers by Gaillard Hunt, of
+the Library of Congress, finally traced the original seal to Rear
+Admiral Selfridge, an effort was made to buy it back. In 1912 three
+Richmond gentlemen, Messrs. Eppa Hunton, Jr., William H. White and
+Thomas P. Bryan, purchased the Seal of the admiral for three thousand
+dollars, subject to proof of its authenticity. Mr. St. George Bryan and
+Mr. William Gray, of Richmond, then took the seal to London, where the
+makers are still well-known engravers. Here, by means of hall marks, the
+identification was made complete.
+
+No less appealing than the relics of the deceased government and great
+generals who are gone, are some of the humbler items connected with the
+deaths of privates in the ranks of North and South alike. One of the
+most pathetic was a small daguerreotype of a beautiful young girl. On a
+card, beside the picture, is the story of it, so far as that story is
+ever likely to be known:
+
+     Picture found on the dead body of an unidentified Federal soldier.
+
+     Presented by C.C. Calvert, Upperville, Va.
+
+"We have always hoped," said Miss Susan B. Harrison, house regent of the
+museum, "that some day some one would come in and recognize this little
+picture, and that it would find its way back to those who ought to have
+it, and who might by this means at last discover what became of the
+soldier who was dear to them."
+
+An even more tragic souvenir is a letter addressed to A.V. Montgomery,
+Camden, Madison County, Mississippi, in which a mortally wounded soldier
+of Confederacy bids a last good-by to his father. The letter was
+originally inclosed with one from Lieutenant Ethelbert Fairfax, C.S.A.,
+informing the father that his son passed away soon after he had written.
+The text, pitiful and heroic as it is, can give but the faintest idea of
+the original, with its feeble, laborious writing, and the dark-brown
+spots dappling the three sheets of paper where blood from the boy's
+mangled shoulder dripped upon them while he wrote:
+
+            Spotsylvania County, Va.
+                       May 10, 1864.
+
+     Dear Father:
+
+     This is my last letter to you. I went into battle this evening as
+     courier for Gen'l Heth. I have been struck by a piece of shell and
+     my right shoulder is horribly mangled & I know death is inevitable.
+     I am very weak but I write to you because I know you would be
+     delighted to read a word from your dying son. I know death is near,
+     that I will die far from home and friends of my early youth, but I
+     have friends here, too, who are kind to me. My Friend Fairfax will
+     write you at my request and give you the particulars of my death.
+     My grave will be marked so that you may visit it if you desire to
+     do so, but it is optionary with you whether you let my remains rest
+     here or in Mississippi. I would like to rest in the graveyard with
+     my dear mother and brothers, but it is a matter of minor
+     importance. Let us all try to reunite in heaven. I pray my God to
+     forgive my sins & I feel that his promises are true, that he will
+     forgive me and save me. Give my love to all my friends. My strength
+     fails me. My horse & my equipments will be left for you. Again a
+     long farewell to you. May we meet in heaven.
+
+       Your Dying Son,
+            J.R. Montgomery.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+RANDOM RICHMOND NOTES
+
+
+Richmond may again be likened to Boston as a literary center. In an
+article published some years ago in "Book News" Alice M. Tyler refers to
+Colonel William Byrd, who founded Richmond in 1733, as the sprightliest
+and most genial native American writer before Franklin. In the time of
+Chief Justice Marshall, Richmond had a considerable group of novelists,
+historians and essayists, but the great literary name connected with the
+place is that of Edgar Allan Poe, who spent much of his boyhood in the
+city and later edited the "Southern Literary Messenger." Matthew
+Fontaine Maury, the great scientist, mentioned in an earlier chapter,
+was, at another time, editor of the same periodical, as was also John
+Reuben Thompson, "Poet of the Confederacy," who wrote, among other
+poems, "Music in Camp," and who translated Gustave Nadaud's familiar
+poem, "Carcassonne."
+
+Thomas Nelson Page made his home in Richmond for thirty years; Amélie
+Rives was born there and still maintains her residence in Albemarle
+County, Virginia, while among other writers of the present time
+connected with the city either by birth or long association are, Henry
+Sydnor Harrison, Mary Johnston, Ellen Glasgow, Marion Harland, Kate
+Langley Bosher, James Branch Cabell, Edward Peple, dramatist, J.H.
+Whitty, biographer of Poe, and Colonel W. Gordon McCabe, soldier,
+historian, essayist, and local character--a gentleman upon whose
+shoulders such imported expressions as _littérateur_, _bon viveur_, and
+_raconteur_ alight as naturally as doves on friendly shoulders.
+
+Colonel McCabe is a link between present-day Richmond and the traditions
+and associations of England. He was the friend of Lord Roberts, he
+introduced Lord Tennyson to Bull Durham tobacco, and, as is fitting
+under the circumstances, he speaks and writes of a hotel as "_an_
+hotel."
+
+Henry Sydnor Harrison did his first writing as book reviewer on the
+Richmond "Times-Dispatch," of which paper he later became paragrapher
+and daily poet, and still later editor in chief. It is commonly reported
+in Richmond that the characters in his novel "Queed," the scenes of
+which are laid in Richmond, were "drawn from life." I asked Mr. Harrison
+about this.
+
+"When the book appeared," he said, "I was much embarrassed by the
+disposition of Richmond people--human and natural, I suppose, when you
+'know the author'--to identify all the imaginary persons with various
+local characters. Some characteristics of the political boss in my story
+were in a degree suggested by a local celebrity; Stewart Bryan is
+indicated, in passing, as Stewart Byrd; and the bare bones of a historic
+case, altered at will, were employed in another connection. But I think
+I am stating the literal truth when I say that no figure in the book is
+borrowed from life."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The recent residential development in Richmond has been to the west of
+the city in the neighborhood of Monument Avenue, a fine double drive,
+with a parked center, lined with substantial new homes, and having at
+intervals monuments to southern heroes: Lee, Davis, and J.E.B. Stuart.
+
+The parks are on the outskirts of the city and, as in most other cities,
+it is in these outlying regions that new homes are springing up, thanks
+in no small degree to the automobile. The Country Club of Virginia is
+out to the west of the town, in what is known as Westhampton, and is one
+of the most charming clubs of its kind in the South or, indeed, in the
+country.
+
+Richmond has one of the most beautiful and several of the most curious
+cemeteries I have ever seen. Hollywood Cemetery stands upon rolling
+bluffs overlooking the James, and under its majestic trees are the tombs
+of many famous men, including James Monroe, John Tyler, Jefferson Davis
+and Fitzhugh Lee. An inscription on the Davis monument, which was
+erected by the widow and daughter of the President of the Confederacy,
+describes him as "an American soldier and defender of the Constitution."
+At the back of the pedestal is another inscription:
+
+  PRESIDENT OF THE CONFEDERATE
+  STATES OF AMERICA 1861-1865.
+FAITHFUL TO ALL TRUSTS, A MARTYR
+         TO PRINCIPLE.
+   HE LIVED AND DIED THE MOST
+CONSISTENT OF AMERICAN SOLDIERS
+         AND STATESMEN.
+
+It occasionally happens that, instead of having monuments because in
+life they were famous, men are made famous after death, by the
+inscriptions placed upon their tombstones. Such is the case with James
+E. Valentine, a locomotive engineer killed in a collision many years
+ago. The Valentine monument in Hollywood Cemetery is almost as well
+known as the monuments erected in memory of the great, the reason for
+this being embodied in the following verse adorning the stone:
+
+    Until the brakes are turned on Time,
+    Life's throttle valve shut down,
+    He wakes to pilot in the crew
+    That wear the martyr's crown.
+
+    On schedule time on upper grade
+    Along the homeward section,
+    He lands his train at God's roundhouse
+    The morn of resurrection.
+
+    His time all full, no wages docked;
+    His name on God's pay roll.
+    And transportation through to Heaven,
+    A free pass for his soul.
+
+In the burial ground of old St. John's Church--the building in which
+Patrick Henry delivered his "Give me Liberty or give me Death"
+oration--are a number of old gravestones bearing strange inscriptions
+which appeal to the imagination, and also, alas! elicit sad thoughts
+concerning those who wrote the old-time gravestone doggerel.
+
+The custodian of the church is glad to indicate the interesting stones,
+but is much more taken up with his own gift of oratory, as displayed
+when, on getting visitors inside the church, he takes his place on the
+spot where Patrick Henry stood, and delivers the famous oration. Having
+done this to us--or perhaps it would seem more generous to say _for_
+us--the caretaker told us that many persons who had heard him had
+declared that Patrick Henry himself would have had a hard time doing it
+better. But when he threatened, for contrast, to deliver the oration as
+a less gifted elocutionist might speak it, my companion, in whom I had
+already observed signs of restlessness, interrupted with the statement
+that we were late for an engagement, and fled from the place, followed
+by me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In certain parts of the city, often at a considerable distance from the
+warehouse and factory sections, one may occasionally catch upon the
+breeze the faint, spicy fragrance of tobacco; and should one trace these
+pleasant scents to their sources, one would come to a region of
+factories in which rich brown leaves are transformed into pipe tobacco,
+plug tobacco, or cigarettes. In the simpler processes of this work,
+negro men and women are employed, and these with their natural
+picturesqueness of pose and costume, and their singing, in the setting
+of an old shadowy loft, make a tobacco factory a fascinating place. In
+one loft you will see negro men and boys handling the tobacco leaves
+with pitchforks, much as farm hands handle hay; in another, negro women
+squatting upon boxes, stemming the leaves, or "pulling up ends," their
+black faces blending mysteriously with the dark shadows of beams and
+rafters. Here the air is laden not only with the sweet tobacco smell,
+mixed with a faint scent of licorice and of fruit, but is freighted also
+with a fine brown dust which is revealed where bars of sunlight strike
+in through the windows, and which seems, as it shifts and sparkles, to
+be a visible expression of the smell.
+
+In the busy season "street niggers" are generally used for stemming,
+which is, perhaps, the leading part of the tobacco industry in Richmond,
+and these "street niggers," a wild yet childlike lot, who lead a
+hand-to-mouth existence all year round, bring to the tobacco trade a
+wealth of semi-barbaric color. To give us an idea of the character of a
+Richmond "street nigger" the gentleman who took my companion and me
+through the factory told us of having wanted a piece of light work done,
+and having asked one of these negroes: "Want to earn a quarter?"
+
+To which the latter replied without moving from his comfortable place
+beside a sun-baked brick wall: "No, boss, Ah _got_ a quahtah."
+
+The singing of the negroes is a great feature of the stemming department
+in a tobacco factory. Some of the singers become locally famous; also, I
+was told by the superintendent, they become independent, and for that
+reason have frequently to be dismissed. The wonderful part of this
+singing, aside from the fascinating harmonies made by the sweet,
+untrained negro voices, is the utter lack of prearrangement that there
+is about it. Now there will be silence in the loft; then there will come
+a strange, half-savage cry from some dark corner, musical, yet seemingly
+meaningless; soon a faint humming will begin, and will be taken up by
+men and women all over the loft; the humming will swell into a chant to
+which the workers rock as their black hands travel swiftly among the
+brown leaves; then, presently, it will die away, and there will be
+silence until they are again moved to song.
+
+From shadowy room to shadowy room, past great dark bins filled with the
+leaves, past big black steaming vats, oozing sweet-smelling substances,
+past moist fragrant barrels, always among the almost spectral forms of
+negroes, treading out leaves with bare feet, working over great wicker
+baskets stained to tobacco color, piling up wooden frames, or operating
+the powerful hydraulic presses which convert the soft tobacco into plugs
+of concrete hardness--so one goes on through the factory. The browns and
+blacks of these interiors are the browns and blacks of etchings; the
+color of the leaves, the old dark timbers, the black faces and hands,
+and the ragged clothing, combined with the humming of negro voices, the
+tobacco fragrance, and the golden dust upon the air, make an
+indescribably complete harmony of shade, sound, and scent.
+
+The department in which the pipe tobacco is packed in tins is a very
+different sort of place; here white labor is employed: a great many
+girls seated side by side at benches working with great digital
+dexterity: measuring out the tobacco, folding wax paper cartons, filling
+them, and slipping them into the narrow tins, all at a rate of speed so
+great as to defy the sight, giving a sense of fingers flickering above
+the bench with a strange, almost supernatural sureness, like the fingers
+of a magician who makes things disappear before your eyes; or like the
+pictures in which post-impressionist and cubist painters attempt to
+express motion.
+
+"May I speak to one of them?" I asked the superintendent.
+
+"Sure," said he.
+
+I went up to a young woman who was working, if anything, more rapidly
+than the other girls at the same bench.
+
+"Can you think, while you are doing this?" I asked.
+
+"Yes," she replied, without looking up, while her fingers flashed on
+ceaselessly.
+
+"About other things?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"How many cans do you fill in a day?"
+
+"About thirty-four to thirty-five hundred on the average."
+
+"May I ask your name?" She gave it.
+
+I took up one of the small identification slips which she put into each
+package, and wrote her name upon the back of it. The number on the
+slip--for the purpose of identifying the girl who packed the tin--was
+220. Let the reader, therefore, be informed that if he smokes Edgeworth
+Ready Rubbed, and finds in a tin a slip bearing that number, he has been
+served by no less a person than Miss Katie Wise, of the astonishingly
+speedy fingers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+JEDGE CRUTCHFIELD'S CO'T
+
+    Dar's a pow'ful rassle 'twix de Good en de Bad,
+      En de Bad's got de all-under holt;
+    En w'en de wuss come, she come i'on-clad,
+      En you hatter holt yo' bref fer de jolt.
+
+    --UNCLE REMUS.
+
+
+My companion and I had not traveled far into the South before we
+discovered that our comfort was likely to be considerably enhanced if,
+in hotels, we singled out an intelligent bell boy and, as far as
+possible, let this one boy serve us. Our mainstay in the Jefferson Hotel
+was Charles Jackson, No. 144, or, when Charles was "off," his "side
+partner," whom we knew as Bob.
+
+Having one day noticed a negro in convict's stripes, but without a
+guard, raking up leaves in Capitol Square, I asked Charles about the
+matter.
+
+"Do they let the convicts go around unguarded?" I inquired.
+
+"They 's some of 'em can," said he. "Those is trustees."
+
+This talk of "trustees" led to other things and finally to a strong
+recommendation, by Charles, of the Richmond Police Court, as a place of
+entertainment.
+
+"Is it interesting?" I asked.
+
+"Inter-_resting_? Yes, _suh_! Judge Crutchfield he suttinly _is_. He
+done chahge me twenty-six dollahs and fo'ty cents. My brothah, he got in
+fight down street, heah. Some niggers set on him. I went to he'p him an'
+p'leeceman got me. He say I was resistin' p'leece. I ain't resisted no
+p'leece! No, _suh_! Not _me_! But Judge Crutchfield, you can't tell him
+nothin'. 'Tain't no use to have a lawyer, nuther. Judge Crutchfield
+don't want no lawyers in his co't. Like 's not he cha'ge you _mo'_ fo'
+_havin'_ lawyer. Then you got pay lawyer, too.
+
+"Friend mine name Billy. One night Billy he wake up and heah some one
+come pushin' in his house. He hollah: 'Who thar?'
+
+"Othah nigger he kep' pushin' on in. He say: 'This Gawge.'
+
+"Billy, he say: 'Git on out heah, niggah! Ain't no Gawge live heah!'
+
+"Othah niggah, he say: 'Don't make no diff'unce Gawge live heah o' not.
+He sure comin' right in! Ain't nobody heah kin stop ol' Gawge! He eat
+'em alive, Gawge do! He de boss of Jackson Ward. Bettah say yo' prayehs,
+niggah, fo' yo' time--has--come!'
+
+"Billy he don't want hit nobody, but this-heah Gawge he drunk, an' Billy
+_have_ t' hit 'im. Well, suh, what you think this Gawge done? He go have
+Billy 'rested. _Yes_, suh! But you can't tell Judge Crutchfield nothin'.
+Next mo'nin' in p'leece co't he say to Billy: 'I fine you twenty-five
+dollahs, fo' hittin' this old gray-haihed man.' Yes, _suh_! 'at 's a way
+Judge Crutchfield is. Can't tell _him_ nothin'. He jes' set up theh on
+de bench, an' he chaw tobacco, an' he heah de cases, an' he spit, an'
+evvy time he spit he spit a fine. Yes, _suh_! He spit like dis: 'Pfst!
+Five dollahs!'--'Pfst! Ten dollahs!'--'Pfst! Fifteen dollahs!'--just how
+he feel. He suttinly is some judge, 'at man."
+
+Encouraged by this account of police court justice as meted out to the
+Richmond negro, my companion and I did visit Justice Crutchfield's
+court.
+
+The room in the basement of the City Hall was crowded. All the benches
+were occupied and many persons, white and black, were standing up. Among
+the members of the audience--for the performance is more like a
+vaudeville show with the judge as headliner than like a serious
+tribunal--I noticed several actors and actresses from a company which
+was playing in Richmond at the time--these doubtless drawn to the place
+by the fact that Walter C. Kelly, billed in vaudeville as "The Virginia
+Judge," is commonly reported to have taken Judge Crutchfield as a model
+for his exceedingly amusing monologue. Mr. Kelly himself has, however,
+told me that his inspiration came from hearing the late Judge J.D.G.
+Brown, of Newport News, hold court.
+
+At the back of the room, in what appeared to be a sort of steel cage,
+were assembled the prisoners, all of them, on this occasion, negroes;
+while at the head of the chamber behind the usual police-court bulwark,
+sat the judge--a white-haired, hook-nosed man of more than seventy,
+peering over the top of his eyeglasses with a look of shrewd, merciless
+divination.
+
+"William Taylor!" calls a court officer.
+
+A negro is brought from the cage to the bar of justice. He is a sad
+spectacle, his face adorned with a long strip of surgeon's plaster. The
+judge looks at him over his glasses. The hearing proceeds as follows:
+
+COURT OFFICER (to prisoner)--Get over there! (Prisoner obeys.)
+
+JUDGE CRUTCHFIELD--Sunday drunk--Five dollars.
+
+It is over.
+
+The next prisoner is already on his way to the bar. He is a short, wide
+negro, very black and tattered. A large black negress, evidently his
+consort, arises as witness against him. The case goes as follows:
+
+JUDGE CRUTCHFIELD--Drunk?
+
+THE WIFE (looking contemptuously at her spouse)--Drunk? Yass, Jedge,
+drunk. _Always_ drunk.
+
+THE PRISONER (meekly)--I ain't been drunk, Jedge.
+
+THE JUDGE--Yes, you have. I can see you've got your sign up this
+morning. (Looking toward cage at back of room): Make them niggers stop
+talkin' back there! (To the wife): What did he do, Mandy?
+
+THE WIFE (angrily)--Jedge, he come bustin' in, and he come so fast he
+untook the do' off'n de hinges; den 'e begins--
+
+THE JUDGE (to the prisoner, sarcastically)--You wasn't drunk, eh?
+
+THE PRISONER (weakly)--I might of had a drink oh two.
+
+THE JUDGE (severely)--Was--you--_drunk_?
+
+THE PRISONER--No, suh, Jedge. Ah wasn't drunk. Ah don't think no man's
+drunk s' long 's he can navigate, Jedge. I don't--
+
+THE JUDGE--Oh, yes, he can be! He can navigate and navigate mighty
+mean!--Ten dollars.
+
+(At this point an officer speaks in a low tone to the judge, evidently
+interceding for the prisoner.)
+
+THE JUDGE (loudly)--No. That fine's very small. If it ain't worth ten
+dollars to get drunk, it ain't worth nothing at all. Next case!
+
+(While the next prisoner is being brought up, the judge entertains his
+audience with one of the humorous monologues for which he is famous, and
+which, together with the summary "justice" he metes out, keeps ripples
+of laughter running through the room): I'm going to get drunk myself,
+some day, and see what it does to me. [Laughter.] Mebbe I'll take a
+little cocaine, too.
+
+A NEGRO VOICE (from back of room, deep bass, and very fervent)--Oh,
+_no-o-o_! Don't do dat, Jedge! [More laughter.]
+
+THE JUDGE--Where's that prisoner? If he was a Baptist, he wouldn't be so
+slow.
+
+(The prisoner, a yellow negro, is brought to the bar. His trousers are
+mended with a large safety pin and his other equipment is to match.)
+
+THE JUDGE (inspecting the prisoner sharply)--You ain't a Richmond
+nigger. I can tell that to look at you.
+
+THE PRISONER--No, suh, Jedge. That's right.
+
+THE JUDGE--Where you from? You're from No'th Ca'lina, ain't you?
+
+THE PRISONER--Yas, suh, Jedge.
+
+THE JUDGE--Six months!
+
+(A great laugh rises from the courtroom at this. On inquiry we learn
+that the "joke" depends upon the judge's well-known aversion for negroes
+from North Carolina.)
+
+Only recently I have heard Walter C. Kelly as "The Virginia Judge." Save
+for a certain gentle side which Mr. Kelly indicates, and of which I saw
+no signs in Judge Crutchfield, I should say that, even though Judge
+Crutchfield is not his model, the suggestion of him is strongly there.
+Two of Mr. Kelly's "cases" are particularly reminiscent of the Richmond
+Police Court. One is as follows:
+
+THE JUDGE--First case--Sadie Anderson.
+
+THE PRISONER--Yassir! That's me!
+
+THE JUDGE--Thirty days in jail. That's me! Next case.
+
+The other:
+
+THE JUDGE--What's your name?
+
+THE PRISONER--Sam Williams.
+
+THE JUDGE--How old are you, Sam?
+
+THE PRISONER--Just twenty-four.
+
+THE JUDGE--You'll be just twenty-five when you get out. Next case!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+NORFOLK AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD
+
+
+Just as New York looks newer than Boston, but is actually older, Norfolk
+looks newer than Richmond. Business and population grow in Richmond, but
+you do not feel them growing as you do in Norfolk. You feel that
+Richmond business men already have money, whereas in Norfolk there is
+less old wealth and a great deal more scrambling for new dollars. Also
+you feel that law and order count for more in Richmond than in Norfolk,
+and that the strict prohibition law which not long ago became effective
+in Virginia will be more easily enforced in the capital than in the
+seaport. Norfolk, in short, likes the things New York likes. It likes
+tall office buildings, and it dotes on the signs of commercial activity
+by day and social activity by night. Furthermore, from the tops of some
+of the high buildings the place actually looks like a miniature New
+York: the Elizabeth River masquerading as the East River; Portsmouth,
+with its navy yard, pretending to be Brooklyn, while some old-time New
+York ferryboats, running between the two cities, assist in completing
+the illusion. In the neighboring city of Newport News, Norfolk has its
+equivalent for Jersey City and Hoboken, while Willoughby Spit protrudes
+into Hampton Roads like Sandy Hook reduced to miniature.
+
+The principal shopping streets of Norfolk and Richmond are as unlike as
+possible. Broad Street, Richmond, is very wide, and is never
+overcrowded, whereas Granby Street, Norfolk (advertised by local
+enthusiasts as "the livest street in Virginia," and appropriately
+spanned, at close intervals, by arches of incandescent lights), is none
+too wide for the traffic it carries, with the result that, during the
+afternoon and evening, it is truly very much alive. To look upon it at
+the crowded hours is to get a suggestion of a much larger city than
+Norfolk actually is--a suggestion which is in part accounted for by the
+fact that Norfolk's spending population, drawn from surrounding towns
+and cities, is much greater than the number of its inhabitants.
+
+Norfolk's extraordinary growth in the last two or three decades may be
+traced to several causes: to the fertility of the soil of the
+surrounding region, which, intensively cultivated, produces rich
+market-garden crops, making Norfolk a great shipping point for "truck";
+to the development of the trade in peanuts, which are grown in large
+quantities in this corner of Virginia; to a great trade in oysters and
+other sea-food, and to the continually increasing importance of the
+Norfolk navy yard.
+
+In connection with the navy Norfolk has always figured prominently,
+Hampton Roads having been a favorite naval rendezvous since the early
+days of the American fleet. Now, however, it is announced that the cry
+of our navy for a real naval base--something we have never had, though
+all other important navies have them, Britain alone having three--has
+been heard in Washington, and that Norfolk has been selected as the site
+for a base. This is an important event not only for the Virginia
+seaport, but for the United States.
+
+Farmers who think they are in a poor business will do well to
+investigate Norfolk's recent history. The "trucking" industry of Norfolk
+is said to amount in the aggregate to twelve or fourteen million dollars
+annually, and many fortunes have been made from it. The pioneer
+"trucker" of the region was Mr. Richard Cox. A good many years ago Mr.
+Cox employed a German boy, a blacksmith by trade, named Henry Kern. Kern
+finally branched out for himself. When, in 1915, he died, his real
+estate holdings in Norfolk and Portsmouth were valued at two million
+dollars, all of which had been made from garden truck. He was but one of
+a considerable class of wealthy men whose fortunes have sprung from the
+same source.
+
+Many of the truck farms have access to the water. The farmers bring
+their produce to the city in their own boats, giving the port a
+picturesque note. At Norfolk it is transferred to steamers which carry
+it to New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Providence, Baltimore and
+Washington. Lately a considerable amount of truck has been shipped west
+by rail, as well.
+
+Hundreds of acres of ground in the vicinity of the city are under glass
+and large crops of winter vegetables are raised. Kale and spinach are
+being grown and harvested throughout the cold months; strawberries,
+potatoes, beans, peas, cucumbers, cabbage, lettuce and other vegetables
+follow through the spring and summer, running on into the fall, when the
+corn crop becomes important. Corn is raised chiefly by the peanut
+farmer, whose peanuts grow between his corn-rows.
+
+While the banks are "carrying" the peanut farmers, pending their fall
+harvest, the activities of the "truckers" are at their height, so that
+the money loaned to one class of agriculturist is replaced by the
+deposits of the other class; and by the same token, of course, the
+peanut farmers are depositing money in the banks when the "truckers"
+want to borrow. This situation, one judges, is not found objectionable
+by Norfolk and Portsmouth bankers, and I have been told that, as a
+corollary, these banks have never been forced, even in times of dire
+panic, to issue clearing house certificates, but have always paid cash.
+
+Norfolk has grown so fast and has so rapidly replaced the old with the
+new, that the visitor must keep his eyes open if he would not miss
+entirely such lovely souvenirs of an earlier and easier life, as still
+remain. Who would imagine, seeing it to-day, that busy Granby Street had
+ever been a street of fine residences? Yet a very few years have passed
+since the old Newton, Tazwell, Dickson and Taylor residences surrendered
+to advancing commerce and gave place to stores and office
+buildings--the two last mentioned having been replaced by the Dickson
+Building and the Taylor Building, erected less than fifteen years ago.
+
+Freemason Street is the highway which, more than any other, tells of
+olden times. For though the downtown end of this lovely old thoroughfare
+has lapsed into decay, many beautiful mansions, dating from long ago,
+are to be seen a few blocks out from the busier portion of the city.
+Among these should be mentioned the Whittle house, the H.N. Castle
+house, and particularly the exquisite ivy-covered residence of Mr.
+Barton Myers, at the corner of Bank Street. The city of Norfolk ought, I
+think, to attempt to acquire this house and preserve it (using it
+perhaps as a memorial museum to contain historical relics) to show what
+has been, in Norfolk, as against what is, and to preach a silent sermon
+on the high estate of beauty from which a fine old city may fall, in the
+name of progress and commercial growth.
+
+To the credit of Norfolk be it said that old St. Paul's Church, with its
+picturesque churchyard and tombs, is excellently cared for and properly
+valued as a pre-Revolutionary relic. The church was built in 1730, and
+was struck by a British cannon-ball when Lord Dunmore bombarded the
+place in 1776. Baedeker tells me, however, that the cannon-ball now
+resting in the indentation in the wall of the church is "not the
+original."
+
+When I say that St. Paul's is properly valued I mean that many citizens
+told my companion and me to be sure to visit. I observe, however--and I
+take it as a sign of the times in Norfolk--that an extensive,
+well-printed and much illustrated book on Norfolk, issued by the Chamber
+of Commerce, contains pictures of banks, docks, breweries, mills, office
+buildings, truck farms, peanut farms, battleships, clubhouses, hotels,
+hospitals, factories, and innumerable new residences, but no picture of
+the church, or of the lovely old homes of Freemason Street. Nor do I
+find in the booklet any mention of the history of the city or the
+surrounding region--although that region includes places of the greatest
+beauty and interest: among them the glorious old manor houses of the
+James River; the ancient and charming town of Williamsburg, second
+capital of the Virginia colony, and seat of William and Mary College,
+the oldest college in the United States excepting Harvard; Yorktown,
+"Waterloo of the Revolution"; many important battlefields of the Civil
+War; Hampton Institute, the famous negro industrial school at Hampton,
+nearby; the lovely stretch of water on which the _Monitor_ met the
+_Merrimac_[3]; the site of the first English settlement in America at
+Jamestown, and, for mystery and desolation, the Dismal Swamp with Lake
+Drummond at its heart. But then, I suppose it is natural that the
+Chamber of Commerce mind should thrust aside such things in favor of the
+mighty "goober," which is a thing of to-day, a thing for which Norfolk
+is said to be the greatest of all markets. For is not history dead, and
+is not the man who made a fortune out of a device for shelling peanuts
+without causing the nuts to drop in two, still living?
+
+[3] The _Merrimac_, originally a Federal vessel of wooden construction,
+was sunk by the Union forces when they abandoned Norfolk. A Confederate
+captain, John M. Brooke, raised her, equipped her with a ram, and
+covered her with boiler plate and railroad rails. She is called the
+first ironclad. While she was being reconstructed John Ericsson was
+building his _Monitor_ in New York. The turret was first used on this
+vessel. It is worth noting that at the time of the engagement between
+these two ships the _Monitor_ was not the property of the Federal
+Government, but belonged to C.S. Bushnell, of New Haven, who built her
+at his own expense, in spite of the opposition of the Navy Department of
+that day. The Government paid for her long after the fight. It should
+also be noted that the _Merrimac_ did not fight under that name, but as
+a Confederate ship had been rechristened _Virginia_. The patriotic
+action of Mr. Bushnell is recalled by the fact that, only recently, Mr.
+Godfrey L. Cabot, of Boston, has agreed to furnish funds to build the
+torpedoplane designed by Admiral Fiske as a weapon wherewith to attack
+the German fleet within its defenses at Kiel.
+
+And yet the modernness on which Norfolk so evidently prides herself is
+not something to be lightly valued. Fine schools, fine churches and
+miles of pleasant, recently built homes are things for any American city
+to rejoice in. Therefore Norfolk rejoices in Ghent, her chief modern
+residence district, which is penetrated by arms of the Elizabeth River,
+so that many of the houses in this part of the city look out upon pretty
+lagoons, dotted over with all manner of pleasure craft. Less than twenty
+years ago, the whole of what is now Ghent was a farm, and there are
+other suburban settlements, such as Edgewater, Larchmont, Winona and
+Lochhaven, out in the direction of Hampton Roads, which have grown up in
+the last six or eight years. The Country Club of Norfolk, with a very
+pleasing club-house on the water, and an eighteen-hole golf course, is
+at Lochhaven, and the new naval base is, I believe, to be located
+somewhat farther out, on the site of the Jamestown Exposition.
+
+Norfolk is well provided with nearby seaside recreation places, of which
+probably the most attractive is Virginia Beach, facing the ocean. Ocean
+View, so called, is on Chesapeake Bay, and there are summer cottage
+colonies at Willoughby Spit and Cape Henry. On the bay side of Cape
+Henry is Lynnhaven Inlet connecting Lynnhaven Bay and River with
+Chesapeake Bay. From Lynnhaven Bay come the famous oysters of that name,
+now to be had in most of the large cities of the East, but which seemed
+to me to taste a little better at the Virginia Club, in Norfolk, than
+oysters ever tasted anywhere. Perhaps that was because they were real
+Lynnhavens, just as the Virginia Club's Smithfield ham is real
+Smithfield ham from the little town of Smithfield, Virginia, a few miles
+distant. On the bank of the Lynnhaven River is situated the Old Donation
+farm with a ruined church, and an ancient dwelling house which was used
+as the first courthouse in Princess Anne County; and not far distant
+from this place is Witch Duck Point, where Grace Sherwood, after having
+been three times tried, and finally convicted as a witch, was thrown
+into the river.
+
+The several waterside places I have mentioned are more or less local in
+character, but there is nothing local about Fortress Monroe, on Old
+Point Comfort, just across Hampton Roads, which has for many years been
+one of the most beautiful and highly individualized idling places on the
+Atlantic Coast.
+
+The old moated fortress, the interior of which is more like some lovely
+garden of the last century than a military post, remains an important
+coast artillery station, and is a no less lovely spot now than when our
+grandparents went there on their wedding journeys, stopping at the old
+Hygiea Hotel, long since gone the way of old hotels.
+
+The huge Chamberlin Hotel, however, remains apparently unchanged, and is
+to-day as spacious, comfortable and homelike as when our fathers and
+mothers, or perhaps we ourselves, stopped there years ago. The
+Chamberlin, indeed, seems to have the gift of perennial youth. I
+remember a ball which was given there in honor of Admiral Sampson and
+the officers of his fleet, after the Spanish War. The ballroom was so
+full of naval and military uniforms that I, in my somber civilian
+clothing, felt wan and lonely. Most of the evening I passed in modest
+retirement, looking out upon the brilliant scene from behind a potted
+palm. And yet, when my companion and I, now in our dotage, recently
+visited the Chamberlin, there stood the same potted palm in the same
+place. Or if it was not the same, it was one exactly like it.
+
+The Chamberlin is of course a great headquarters for army and navy
+people, and we observed, moreover, that honeymooning couples continue to
+infest it--for Fortress Monroe has long ranked with Washington and
+Niagara Falls as a scene to be visited upon the wedding journey.
+
+There they all were, as of old: the young husband scowling behind his
+newspaper and pretending to read and not to be thinking of his pretty
+little wife across the breakfast table; the fat blonde bride being
+continually photographed by her adoring mate--now leaning against a pile
+on the pier, now seated on a wall, with her feet crossed, now standing
+under a live-oak within the fortress; also there was the inevitable
+young pair who simply couldn't keep their hands off from each other; we
+came upon them constantly--in the sun-parlor, where she would be seated
+on the arm of his chair, running her hand through his hair; wandering in
+the eventide along the shore, with arms about each other, or going in to
+meals, she leading him down the long corridor by his "ickle finger".
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I recall that it was as we were going back to Norfolk from Old Point
+Comfort, having dinner on a most excellent large steamer, running to
+Norfolk and Cape Charles, that my companion remarked to me, out of a
+clear sky, that he had made up his mind, once for all, that, come what
+might, he would never, never, never get married. No, never!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+COLONEL TAYLOR AND GENERAL LEE
+
+    Forth from its scabbard all in vain
+      Bright flashed the sword of Lee;
+    'Tis shrouded now in its sheath again,
+    It sleeps the sleep of our noble slain,
+    Defeated, yet without a stain,
+      Proudly and peacefully.
+
+    --ABRAM J. RYAN.
+
+
+Though I had often heard, before going into the South, of the devotion
+of that section to the memory of General Robert E. Lee, I never fully
+realized the extent of that devotion until I began to become a little
+bit acquainted with Virginia. I remember being struck, while in Norfolk,
+with the fact that portraits of General Lee were to be seen in many
+offices and homes, much as one might expect, at the present time, to
+find portraits of Joffre and Nivelle in the homes of France, or of Haig
+in the homes of Britain. It is not enough to say that the memory of Lee
+is to the South like that of Napoleon I to France, for it is more. The
+feeling of France for Napoleon is one of admiration, of delight in a
+national military genius, of hero-worship, but there is not intermingled
+with it the quality of pure affection which fully justifies the use of
+the word _love_, in characterizing the feeling of the South for its
+great military leader--the man of whom Lord Wolseley said: "He was a
+being apart and superior to all others in every way; a man with whom
+none I ever knew, and very few of whom I ever read are worthy to be
+compared; a man who was cast in a grander mould and made of finer metal
+than all other men."
+
+Nor is this love surprising, for whereas Napoleon was a self-seeking
+man, and one whose personal character was not altogether admirable in
+other respects, and whereas he could hardly be said to typify France's
+ideal of everything a gentleman should be, Lee sought nothing for
+himself, was a man of great nobility of character, and was in perfection
+a Virginia gentleman. At the end, moreover, where Napoleon's defeat was
+that of an aspirant to conquest, glory and empire, Lee's defeat was that
+of a cause, and the cause was regarded in the entire South as almost
+holy, so that, in defeat, the South felt itself martyred, and came to
+look upon its great general with a love and veneration unequaled in
+history, and much more resembling the feeling of France for the
+canonized Joan of Arc, than for the ambitious Corsican.
+
+When, therefore, my companion and I heard, while in Norfolk, that
+Colonel Walter H. Taylor, president of the Marine Bank of that city, had
+served through the Civil War on General Lee's staff, we naturally became
+very anxious to meet him; and I am glad to say that Colonel Taylor,
+though at the time indisposed and confined to his home, was so kind as
+to receive us.
+
+He was seated in a large chair in his library, on the second floor of
+his residence, a pleasant old-fashioned brick house at the corner of
+York and Yarmouth Streets--a slender man, not very tall, I judged
+(though I did not see him standing), not very strong at the moment, but
+with nothing of the decrepitude of old age about him, for all his
+seventy-seven years. Upon the contrary he was, in appearance and manner,
+delightfully alert, with the sort of alertness which lends to some men
+and women, regardless of their years, a suggestion of perpetual
+youthfulness. Such alertness, in those who have lived a long time, is
+most often the result of persistent intellectual activity, and the sign
+of it is usually to be read in the eyes. Colonel Taylor's keen, dark,
+observant, yet kindly eyes, were perhaps his finest feature, though,
+indeed, all his features were fine, and his head, with its well-trimmed
+white hair and mustache, was one of great distinction.
+
+Mrs. Taylor (of whom we had previously been warned to beware, because
+she had not yet forgiven the "Yankees" for their sins) was also present:
+a beautiful old lady of unquenchable spirit, in whose manner, though she
+received us with politeness, we detected lurking danger.
+
+And why not? Do not women remember some things longer than men remember
+them? Do not the sweethearts who stayed at home remember the continual
+dull dread they suffered while the men they loved faced danger, whereas
+the absent lovers were at least in part compensated for the risks they
+ran, by the continual sense of high adventure and achievement?
+
+Mrs. Taylor was Miss Elizabeth Selden Saunders, daughter of Captain John
+L. Saunders of Virginia, who died in 1860, in the service of his
+country, a commander in the United States Navy. When the war broke out
+Miss Saunders, wishing to serve the Confederate Government, became a
+clerk in the Surgeon General's office, at Richmond, and there she
+remained while Colonel Taylor, whose training at the Virginia Military
+Institute, coupled with his native ability, made him valuable as an
+officer, followed the fortunes of General Lee, part of the time as the
+general's aide-de-camp, and the rest of the time as adjutant-general and
+chief of staff of the Army of Northern Virginia, in which capacities he
+was present at all general engagements of the army, under Lee.
+
+On April 2, 1865, when Lee's gallant but fast dwindling army, short of
+supplies, and so reduced in numbers as to be no longer able to stand
+against the powerful forces of Grant, was evacuating its lines at
+Petersburg, when it was evident that the capital of the Confederacy was
+about to fall, and the orders for retreat had been despatched by Colonel
+Taylor, in his capacity as adjutant--then the colonel went to his
+commander and asked for leave of absence over night, for the purpose of
+going to Richmond and being married. He tells the story in his
+exceedingly interesting and valuable book, "General Lee--His Campaigns
+in Virginia":
+
+     At the close of the day's work, when all was in readiness for the
+     evacuation of our lines under cover of the darkness of night, I
+     asked permission of General Lee to ride over to Richmond and to
+     rejoin him early the next morning, telling him that my mother and
+     sisters were in Richmond and that I would like to say good-by to
+     them, and that my sweetheart was there, and we had arranged, if
+     practicable, to be married that night. He expressed some surprise
+     at my entertaining such a purpose at that time, but when I
+     explained to him that the home of my bride-elect was in the enemy's
+     lines, that she was alone in Richmond and employed in one of the
+     departments of the government, and wished to follow the fortunes of
+     the Confederacy should our lines be reëstablished farther South, he
+     promptly gave his assent to my plans. I galloped to the railroad
+     station, then at Dunlops, on the north side of the river, where I
+     found a locomotive and several cars, constituting the "ambulance
+     train," designed to carry to Richmond the last of the wounded of
+     our army requiring hospital treatment. I asked the agent if he had
+     another engine, when, pointing to one rapidly receding in the
+     direction of Richmond, he replied, "Yonder goes the only locomotive
+     we have besides the one attached to this train." Turning my horse
+     over to the courier who accompanied me, with directions to join me
+     in Richmond as soon as he could, I mounted the locomotive in
+     waiting, directed the engineer to detach it from the cars and to
+     proceed to overtake the engine ahead of us. It was what the sailors
+     call a stern chase and a long one. We did not overtake the other
+     locomotive until it had reached Falling Creek, about three-fourths
+     of the distance, when I transferred to it and sent the other back
+     to Petersburg. I reached Richmond without further incident, and
+     soon after midnight I was married to Elizabeth Selden Saunders....
+     As will be readily understood, the occasion was not one of great
+     hilarity, though I was very happy; my eyes were the only dry ones
+     in the company....
+
+     The people of Richmond were greatly excited and in despair in the
+     contemplation of the abandonment of their beautiful city by our
+     troops. General Lee had for so long a time thwarted the designs of
+     his powerful adversaries for the capture of the city, and seemed so
+     unfailing and resourceful in his efforts to hold them at bay, that
+     the good people found it difficult to realize that he was compelled
+     at last to give way. There was universal gloom and despair at the
+     thought that at the next rising of the sun the detested Federal
+     soldiers would take possession of the city and occupy its streets.
+     The transportation companies were busily engaged in arranging for
+     the removal of the public stores and of the archives of the
+     government. A fire in the lower part of the city was fiercely
+     raging, and added greatly to the excitement.
+
+     Somewhere near four o'clock on the morning of the 3d of April I
+     bade farewell to all my dear ones, and in company with my
+     brother-in-law, Colonel John S. Saunders, proceeded toward Mayo's
+     Bridge, which we crossed to the south side of the James, in the
+     lurid glare of the fire, and within the sound of several heavy
+     explosions that we took to be the final scene in the career of the
+     Confederate navy, then disappearing in smoke on the James River,
+     near Rockets.
+
+Before we departed from the colonel's library, which we felt obliged to
+do much sooner than we wished to, owing to the condition of his health,
+he called our attention to an oil portrait of his old commander, which
+occupied the place of honor above the mantelpiece, and asked his
+daughters to let us see his scrap-book, containing personal letters from
+General Lee, Jefferson Davis, and other distinguished men, as well as
+various war documents of unusual interest.
+
+We felt it a great privilege to handle these old letters and to read
+them, and the charm of them was the greater for the affection in which
+the general held Colonel Taylor, as evidenced by the tone in which he
+wrote. To us it was a wonderful evening.... And it still seems to me
+wonderful to think that I have met and talked with a man who issued
+Lee's orders, who rode forth with Lee when he went to meet Grant in
+conference at Appomattox, just before the surrender, who once slept
+under the same blanket with Lee, who knew Lee as well perhaps as one man
+can know another, and under conditions calculated to try men to the
+utmost.
+
+As adjutant, Colonel Taylor took an active part in arranging details of
+surrender and parole. He says:
+
+     Each officer and soldier was furnished for his protection from
+     arrest or annoyance with a slip of paper containing his parole,
+     signed by his commander and countersigned by an officer of the
+     Federal army.
+
+     I signed these paroles for all members of the staff, and when my
+     own case was reached I requested General Lee to sign mine, which I
+     have retained to the present time.
+
+This document, with Colonel Taylor's name and title in his own
+handwriting, and the signature of General Lee, I am able to reproduce
+here through the courtesy of the colonel's daughters, Mrs. William B.
+Baldwin and Miss Taylor, of Norfolk. It is the only parole which was
+signed personally by General Lee.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+On the back of the little slip, which is of about the size of a bank
+check, is the countersignature of George H. Sharpe, Assistant Provost
+Marshal general:
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Following his parole Colonel Taylor rode with General Lee to Richmond.
+The general seemed to be in a philosophical frame of mind, but thought
+much of the future. The subject of the surrender and its consequences
+was about exhausted. The Colonel tells of one incident:
+
+     On the route General Lee stopped for the night near the residence
+     of his brother, Mr. Carter Lee, in Powhatan County; and although
+     importuned by his brother to pass the night under his roof, the
+     general persisted in pitching his tent by the side of the road and
+     going into camp as usual. This continued self-denial can only be
+     explained upon the hypothesis that he desired to have his men know
+     that he shared their privations to the very last.
+
+This was perfectly in character with Lee. Throughout the War, we learn
+from Colonel Taylor's book, the general used the army ration, and lived
+the army life. He would not take up his quarters in a house, because he
+wished to share the lot of his men, and also because he feared that, in
+the event of the house falling into the hands of the enemy, the very
+fact of its having been occupied by him might possibly cause its
+destruction. It was only during the last year of the War, when his
+health was somewhat impaired, that he consented sometimes to vary this
+rule.
+
+Lee's chivalrous nature is well shown forth in his famous General
+Orders, No. 73, issued at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, a few days before
+Gettysburg.
+
+After congratulating the troops on their good conduct the general
+continued as follows:
+
+     There have, however, been instances of forgetfulness on the part of
+     some that they have in keeping the yet unsullied reputation of the
+     army, and that the duties exacted of us by civilization and
+     Christianity are not less obligatory in the country of the enemy
+     than in our own.
+
+     The commanding general considers that no greater disgrace could
+     befall the army, and through it our whole people, than the
+     perpetration of the barbarous outrages upon the unarmed and
+     defenseless, and the wanton destruction of private property, that
+     have marked the course of the enemy in our own country.
+
+     Such proceedings not only degrade the perpetrators and all
+     connected with them, but are subversive to the discipline and
+     efficiency of the army, and destructive of the ends of our present
+     movement. It must be remembered that we make war only upon armed
+     men, and that we cannot take vengeance for the wrongs our people
+     have suffered without lowering ourselves in the eyes of all whose
+     abhorrence has been excited by the atrocities of our enemies, and
+     offending against Him to whom vengeance belongeth, without whose
+     favor and support our efforts must all prove in vain. The
+     commanding general, therefore, earnestly exhorts the troops to
+     abstain with most scrupulous care from unnecessary or wanton injury
+     to private property, and he enjoins upon all officers to arrest and
+     bring to summary punishment all who shall in any way offend against
+     the orders on this subject.
+
+        R.E. Lee,
+            General.
+
+Truly, a document to serve as a model for warriors of all future
+generations, albeit one showing an utter lack of "Kultur"!
+
+Said Charles Francis Adams, of Massachusetts: "I doubt if a hostile
+force ever advanced into an enemy's country, or fell back from it in
+retreat, leaving behind it less cause of hate and bitterness than did
+the Army of Northern Virginia in that memorable campaign."
+
+After the war, Colonel Taylor and his wife settled in Norfolk, where,
+within a very short time, a United States grand jury indicted Jefferson
+Davis and General Lee for treason--this, in the case of Lee, being in
+direct violation of the terms of surrender. When Grant learned of the
+shameful action of the grand jury he complained to Washington and caused
+the proceedings against Lee to be dropped.
+
+In Colonel Taylor's scrap-book I found a letter written by Lee before
+the indictment had been quashed, referring to the subject:
+
+            Richmond, Va.
+                June 17, 1865.
+
+     My dear Colonel:
+
+     I am very much obliged to you for your letter of the 13th. I had
+     heard of the indictment by the grand jury at Norfolk, and made up
+     my mind to let the authorities take their course. I have no wish to
+     avoid any trial the government may order, and cannot flee. I hope
+     others may be unmolested, and that you at least may be undisturbed.
+
+     I am sorry to hear that our returned soldiers cannot obtain
+     employment. Tell them they must all set to work, and if they cannot
+     do what they prefer, do what they can. Virginia wants all their
+     aid, all their support, and the presence of all her sons to sustain
+     and recuperate her. They must therefore put themselves in a
+     position to take part in her government, and not be deterred by
+     obstacles in their way. There is much to be done which they only
+     can do.
+
+        Very truly yours,
+            R.E. Lee.
+
+As time went on, and the more gaping wounds began to heal, Colonel
+Taylor's letters from the general took in many cases a lighter and
+happier tone. After some years, when four daughters had been born to
+Colonel and Mrs. Taylor, while yet they had no son, the general chaffed
+them gently on the subject: "Give my congratulations to Mrs. Taylor," he
+wrote. "Tell her I hope that when her fancy for girls is satisfied (mine
+is exorbitant) she will begin upon the boys. We must have somebody to
+work for them."
+
+One of the colonel's sons was present when I came upon this letter.
+
+"And you see," he smiled, "my father obeyed his old commander to the
+last, for the next baby was a boy, and the next, and the next, and the
+next, until there were as many boys as girls in our family."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Colonel Taylor died at his home in Norfolk, March 1, 1916, and on the
+subsequent June 15, was followed by his wife.
+
+His death leaves but three members of Lee's staff surviving, namely,
+Rev. Giles B. Cooke, of Portsmouth, Virginia, Inspector General; Major
+Henry E. Young, of Charleston, South Carolina, Judge Advocate General;
+and Colonel T.M.R. Talcott, of Richmond, Virginia, Aide-de-Camp. Of
+these officers only the first two surrendered with General Lee, Colonel
+Talcott having left the staff by promotion in 1863.
+
+Yes, two of them surrendered, but if we are to believe Charles Francis
+Adams we cannot say that Lee and his forces were actually vanquished,
+for as the Massachusetts soldier-author put it:
+
+"Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia never sustained defeat. Finally
+succumbing to exhaustion, to the end they were not overthrown in
+fight."
+
+
+
+
+THE HEART OF THE SOUTH
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+RALEIGH AND JOSEPHUS DANIELS
+
+    Jedge Crutchfield give de No'th Ca'lina nigger frown;
+    De mahkets says ouh tehapin am secon'-rate,
+    An' Mistuh Daniels, he call Raleigh his hum town.
+    --I wondah what kin be de mattuh wid ouh State?
+
+
+Just as it is the fashion in the Middle West to speak jestingly of
+Kansas, it is the fashion in the South to treat lightly the State of
+North Carolina. And just as my companion and I, long ago, on another
+voyage of discovery, were eager to get into Kansas and find out what
+that fabulous Commonwealth was really like, so we became anxious, as we
+heard the gossip about the "Old North State," to enter it and form our
+own conclusions. The great drawback to an attempt to see North Carolina,
+however, lies in the fact that North Carolina is, so to speak, spread
+very thin. It has no great solid central city occupying a place in its
+thoughts and its affairs corresponding to that occupied by Richmond, in
+its relation to Virginia. Like Mississippi, it is a State of small towns
+and small cities. Its metropolis, Charlotte, had, by the 1910 census,
+less than 35,000 inhabitants; its seaport, Wilmington, a little more
+than 25,000; its capital, Raleigh, less than 20,000; its beautiful
+mountain resort, Asheville, fourth city in the State, less than 19,000.
+
+I hasten to add that the next census will undoubtedly show considerable
+growth in all these cities. In Raleigh I found every one insistent on
+this point. The town is growing; it is a going place; a great deal of
+new building is in progress; and when you ask about the population,
+progressive citizens are prepared to do much better by their city than
+the census takers did, some years ago. They talk thirty thousand,
+instead of twenty, and they are ready with astonishing statistics about
+the number of students in the schools and colleges as compared with the
+total population of the city--statistics showing that though Raleigh is
+not large she is progressive. Which is quite true.
+
+I recollect that Judge Francis D. Winston, former Lieutenant Governor of
+the State, United States District Attorney, and the most engaging
+raconteur in the Carolinas, contributed a story to a discussion of
+Raleigh's population, which occurred, one evening, at a dinner at the
+Country Club.
+
+"A promoter," he said, "was once trying to borrow money on a boom town.
+He went to a banker and showed him a map, not of what the town was, but
+of what he claimed it was going to be. 'Here,' he said, 'is where the
+town hall will stand. In this lot will be the opera house. Over here we
+are going to have a beautiful park. And on this corner we are going to
+erect a tall granite office building.'
+
+"'But,' said the banker, coldly, 'we lend money only on the basis of
+population.'
+
+"'That's all right,' returned the promoter. 'Measured by any known
+standard except an actual _count_, we have a population of two hundred
+thousand.'"
+
+I shall not attempt to point this tale more than to recommend it to the
+attention of the secretary of the Chamber of Commerce in every city in
+the United States.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Raleigh is situated within seven miles of the exact center of North
+Carolina. The land on which the city stands was purchased by the State,
+in 1792, from a man named Joel Lane, whose former house still stands.
+The town was then laid out in a one mile square, with the site selected
+for the State Capitol directly at the center of it, and lots were sold
+off by the State to individuals, the proceeds of these sales being used
+to build the Capitol. As a result the parks, streets and sidewalks of
+the original old town still belong to the State of North Carolina, and
+the city has jurisdiction over them only by courtesy of the State
+government. Raleigh has, of course, much outgrown its original
+dimensions, and the government of the town, outside the original square
+mile at the center, is as in other towns.
+
+While Raleigh has not the look of age which characterizes many old
+southern cities, causing them to delight the eye and the imagination,
+its broad streets have here and there a building old enough to remove
+from the town any air of raw newness, and to make it a homelike looking
+place. The sidewalks are wide; when we were in Raleigh those of the
+principal streets were paved largely with soft-colored old red bricks,
+which, however, were being taken up and replaced with cement. Not being
+a resident of Raleigh, and consequently not having been obliged to tread
+the rough brick pavements daily, I was sorry to witness this victory of
+utility over beauty.
+
+One of the pleasant old buildings is the Yarborough Hotel, at which my
+companion and I stayed. The Yarborough is an exceedingly good hotel for
+a city of the size of Raleigh, especially, it may be added, when that
+city is in the South. The Capitol, standing among trees in a small park,
+also gathers a fine flavor from age. In one of the many simple dignified
+apartments of this building my companion and I were introduced to the
+gentleman who was governor of the State at the time of our visit. It
+seemed to me that he had a look both worn and apprehensive, and that,
+while we talked, he was waiting for something. I don't know how I
+gathered this impression, but it came to me definitely. After we had
+departed from the executive chamber I asked the gentleman who had taken
+us there if the governor was ill.
+
+"No," he replied. "All our governors look like that after they have been
+in office for a while."
+
+"From overwork?"
+
+"No, from an overworked jest--the jest about 'what the Governor of North
+Carolina said to the Governor of South Carolina.' Every one who meets
+the governor thinks of that joke and believes confidently that no one
+has ever before thought of this application of it. So they all pull it
+on him. For the first few months our governors stand it pretty well, but
+after that they begin to break down. They feel they ought to smile, but
+they can't. They begin to dread meeting strangers, and to show it in
+their bearing. When in private life our governor had a very pleasant
+expression, but like all the others, he has acquired, in office, the
+expression of an iron dog."
+
+Raleigh's most widely-known citizen is Josephus Daniels, Secretary of
+the Navy, and publisher of the Raleigh "News and Observer." This paper,
+published in the morning, and the "Times," a rival paper, published in
+the afternoon, are, I believe, the only dailies in the city.
+
+Mr. Daniels has been so much discussed that I was greatly interested in
+hearing what Raleigh had to say of him. Every one knew him personally.
+The men on his paper seemed to be very fond of him; others held various
+opinions.
+
+In 1894 Mr. Daniels came from Washington, D.C., where he had been chief
+clerk in the Department of the Interior, when Hoke Smith was Secretary,
+and acquired the newspaper of which he has since been proprietor. In its
+first years under Mr. Daniels, the paper is said to have gone through
+severe financial struggles, and there is an amusing story current, about
+the way the payroll was met upon one occasion. According to this tale,
+the business manager of the paper came to Mr. Daniels, one day, and
+informed him that he needed sixty dollars more to make the payroll, and
+didn't know where he was going to get it. The only ready asset in sight,
+it is related, was several cases of a patent medicine known as "Mrs. Joe
+Persons' Remedy," which had been taken by the "News and Observer" in
+payment for advertising space. Mr. Daniels had a few dollars, and his
+business manager had a railroad pass. With these resources the latter
+went out on the road and sold the patent medicine for enough to make up
+the deficit.
+
+Until Mr. Daniels was appointed Secretary of the Navy he seems to have
+been regarded by many citizens of Raleigh, as a good, earnest,
+hard-working man, possessed of considerable personal magnetism and a
+good political nose--a man who could scent how the pack was running,
+take a short-cut, and presently appear to be leading. In other words an
+opportunist. Though he has not much education, and though as a writer he
+is far from polished, it is said that he has written powerful
+editorials. "When his editorials have been good," said one gentleman,
+"it is because he has been stirred up over something, and because he
+manages sometimes to get into his writing the intensity of his own
+personality." His office used to be, and still is, when he is in
+Raleigh, a sort of political headquarters, and he used to be able to
+write editorials while half a dozen politicians were sitting around his
+desk, talking.
+
+With his paper he has done much good in the State, notably by fighting
+consistently for prohibition and for greater public educational
+advantages. The strong educational movement in North Carolina began with
+a group of men chief among whom were the late Governor Charles B.
+Aycock, called "the educational governor"; Dr. E.A. Alderman, who,
+though president of the University of Virginia, is a North Carolinian
+and was formerly president of the University of that State; Dr. Charles
+D. McKeever who committed the State to the principle of higher education
+for women, and other men of similar high purpose. A gentleman who was
+far from an unqualified admirer of Mr. Daniels, told me that without his
+aid the great educational advance which the state has certainly made of
+recent years could hardly have been accomplished, and that the same
+thing applies in the case of prohibition--which has been adopted in
+North Carolina.
+
+"What sort of man is he?" I asked this gentleman.
+
+"He is the old type of Methodist," he said. "He is the kind of man who
+believes that the whale swallowed Jonah. He has the same concept of
+religion that he had as a child. I differ with his policies, his
+politics, his mental methods, but I don't think anybody here doubts that
+he is trying, not only to do the moral thing himself, but to force
+others to adopt, as rules for public conduct, the exact code in which he
+personally believes, and which he certainly follows. His mental
+processes are often crude, yet he has much native shrewdness and the
+ability to grasp situations as they arise.
+
+"He does not come of the aristocratic class, which probably accounts for
+his failure, when he first became secretary, to perceive the necessity
+for discipline in the navy, and the benefits of naval tradition.
+
+"He was an ardent follower--I might say swallower--of Bryan, gobbling
+whole all of the "Great Commoner's" vagaries. It has been said, more or
+less humorously, but doubtless with a foundation of fact, that he was
+"Secretary of War in all of Bryan's cabinets." That shows where Bryan
+placed him. Yet when Bryan broke with Wilson and made his exit from the
+Cabinet, Daniels found it perfectly simple, apparently, to drop the
+Bryanism which had, hitherto, been the very essence of his life, and
+become a no less ardent supporter of the President.
+
+"When he was first taken into the cabinet he evidently regarded the
+finer social amenities as matters of no consequence, or even as
+effeminacies. He had but little sense of the fitness of things, and was,
+in consequence, continually making _faux pas_; but he is observant; he
+has learned a great deal in the course of his life as a cabinet member,
+both as to his work in the Department, and as to the niceties of formal
+social life."
+
+At the time of our visit to Raleigh I had not met Mr. Daniels, nor heard
+him speak. Since that time I have heard him several times and have
+talked with him. Also I have talked of him with a number of men who have
+been thrown more or less closely in contact with him. As is well known,
+naval officers detested him with peculiar unanimity. This was true up
+to the time of our entering the War. Whether matters have changed
+greatly since then I am unable to say. One officer, well known in the
+navy, said to me quite seriously that he believed the navy would be
+better off without its two best dreadnoughts if in losing them it could
+also lose Mr. Daniels. Such sentiments were peculiarly unanimous among
+officers. On the other hand, however, a high officer, who has been quite
+close to the Secretary, informs me that it is indeed true that he has
+improved as experience has come to him. This officer stated that when
+Mr. Daniels first took office he seemed to be definitely antagonistic to
+officers of the navy. "He appeared to suspect them of pulling political
+wires and working in their own interests. That was in the days when he
+seemed almost to encourage insubordination among the enlisted men, by
+his attitude toward them, in contrast to his attitude towards their
+superiors. Of course it was demoralizing to the service. But there has
+been a marked change in the Secretary since Bryan left the Cabinet."
+From several sources I have heard the same evidence. I never heard any
+one say that Mr. Daniels was really an able Secretary of the Navy, but I
+have heard many say that he improved.
+
+Personally he is a very likable man. His face is kind and gentle; his
+features are interestingly irregular and there are heavy wrinkles about
+his mouth and eyes--the former adding something to the already humorous
+twinkle of the eyes. His voice has a _timbre_ reminding me of George M.
+Cohan's voice. He is hardly an orator in the sense that Bryan is, yet he
+is not without simple oratorical tricks--as for example a tremolo, as of
+emotion, which I have heard him use in uttering such a phrase as "the
+grea-_a-a-at_ Daniel _Web_-ster!" Also, he wears a low turnover collar
+and a black string tie--a fact which would not be worth noting did these
+not form a part of what amounts almost to a uniform worn by politicians
+of more or less the Bryan type. Almost invariably there seems to be
+something of the minister and something of the actor in such men.
+
+Once I asked one of the famous Washington correspondents what manner of
+man Mr. Daniels was.
+
+"He's a man," he said, "that you'd like to go with on a hunting trip in
+his native North Carolina. He would be a good companion and would have a
+lot of funny stories. He is full of kind intentions. Had you known him
+before the War, and had he liked you, and had you wished to take a ride
+upon a battleship, he would be disposed to order up a battleship and
+send you for a ride, even if, by doing so, he muddled up the fleet a
+little. That would be in line with his fixing it for moving picture
+people to act scenes on a battleship's deck--which he permitted. He saw
+no reason why that was not proper, and the kind of people who admire him
+most are those who, likewise, see no reason why it was not proper. The
+great lack in his nature is that of personal dignity--or even the
+dignity which should be his because of his position. If you are sitting
+beside him and he is amiably disposed toward you, he may throw his arm
+over your shoulder, or massage your knee while talking with you.
+
+"But if some friend of his were to go to him and convince him that he
+lacked dignity, he is the kind of man who, in my judgment, would become
+so much the worse. That is, if he attempted to attain dignity he would
+not achieve it, but would merely grow arbitrary. That, to my mind, shows
+his great ineradicable weakness, for it not only reveals him as a man
+too little for his job, but prevents his comprehending the basic thing
+upon which naval discipline is founded. Nevertheless, as a man you like
+him. It is as Secretary of the Navy, and particularly as a War
+Secretary, that you very definitely don't."
+
+Some time after our visit to Raleigh my companion and I heard Secretary
+Daniels speak in Charleston. He told a funny story and talked
+generalities about the navy. That was before the United States entered
+the War. I do not know what he meant the speech for, but what it
+actually was, was a speech against preparedness. So was the speech made
+on the same occasion by Lemuel P. Padgett, chairman of the House
+Committee on Naval Affairs. It was a disingenuous speech, a speech to
+lull the country into confidence, a speech which, alone, should have
+been sufficient to prove Mr. Padgett's unfitness to serve on that
+committee. Mr. Daniels argued that "Germany's preparedness had not kept
+Germany out of war"; that seemed enough, but there was one thing he
+said which utterly dumbfounded me. It was this:
+
+"_The Southern statesman who serves his section best, serves the country
+best._"
+
+Let the reader reflect for a moment upon such an utterance. Carried a
+little farther what would it mean? Would it not be equally logical to
+say that the man who serves himself best serves the country best? It is
+the theory of narrow sectionalism, and by implication, at least, the
+theory of individualism as well. And sectionalism and individualism are
+two of the great curses of the United States.
+
+Compare with Mr. Daniels' words those of John Hay who, veiling fine
+patriotism beneath a web of delicate humor, said:
+
+"_In my bewilderment of origin and experience I can only put on an
+aspect of deep humility in any gathering of favorite sons, and confess
+that I am nothing but an American._"
+
+Or again, compare with them the famous words of Patrick Henry:
+
+"_I am not a Virginian, but an American._"
+
+Clearly, one point of view or the other is wrong. Perhaps Mr. Daniels
+has more light on sectional questions than had Patrick Henry or John
+Hay. At all events, the Charleston audience applauded.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+ITEMS FROM "THE OLD NORTH STATE"
+
+
+Two of the most interesting things we saw in Raleigh were the model jail
+on the top floor of the new County Court House, where a lot of very
+honest looking rustics were confined to await trial for making
+"blockade" (otherwise moonshine) whisky, and the North Carolina Hall of
+History, which occupies a floor in the fine new State Administration
+Building, opposite the Capitol. At the head of the first stair landing
+in the Administration Building is a memorial tablet to William Sidney
+Porter ("O Henry"), who was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, with a
+bust of the author, in relief, by Lorado Taft. Porter, it may be
+mentioned, was a connection of Worth Bagley, the young ensign who was
+the only American naval officer killed in the Spanish-American War.
+Bagley was a brother of Mrs. Josephus Daniels. A monument to him stands
+in the park before the Capitol. Aside from Porter, the only author well
+known in our time whom I heard mentioned in connection with North
+Carolina, was the Rev. Thomas Dixon, whose name is most familiar,
+perhaps, in connection with the moving-picture called "The Birth of a
+Nation," taken from one of his novels. Mr. Dixon was born in the town of
+Shelby, North Carolina, and was for some years pastor of the Tabernacle
+Baptist Church, Raleigh.
+
+The Hall of History, containing a great variety of State relics, is one
+of the most fascinating museums I ever visited. Too much praise cannot
+be given Colonel Fred A. Olds and Mr. Marshall De Lancey Haywood, of the
+North Carolina Historical Society, for making it what it is. As with the
+Confederate Museum in Richmond, so, here, it is impossible to give more
+than a faint idea of the interest of the museum's contents. Among the
+exhibits of which I made note, I shall, however, mention a few. There
+was a letter written from Paris in the handwriting of John Paul Jones,
+requesting a copy of the Constitution of North Carolina; there was the
+Ku Klux warning issued to one Ben Turner of Northampton County; and
+there was an old newspaper advertisement signed by James J. Selby, a
+tailor, dated at Raleigh, June 24, 1824, offering a reward of ten
+dollars for the capture and return of two runaways: "apprentice boys,
+legally bound, named William and Andrew Johnson." The last named boy was
+the same Andrew Johnson who later became a distinctly second-rate
+President of the United States. Also there was a peculiarly tragic Civil
+War memento, consisting of a note which was found clasped in the dead
+hand of Colonel Isaac Avery, of the 6th North Carolina Regiment, who was
+killed while commanding a brigade on the second day at Gettysburg.
+
+     _Tell my father I died with my face to the enemy._
+
+These words were written by the fallen officer with his left hand, his
+right arm having been rendered useless by his mortal wound. For ink he
+used his own life blood.
+
+Also in the museum may be seen the chart-book of Blackbeard, the pirate,
+who, one of the curators of the museum informed me, was the same person
+as Edward Teach. Blackbeard, who is commemorated in the name of
+Blackbeard's Island, off the coast of South Georgia, met his fate when
+he encountered a cruiser fitted out by Governor Spotswood of Virginia
+and commanded by Lieutenant Maynard. Maynard found Blackbeard's ship at
+Okracoke Inlet, on the North Carolina coast. Before he and his men could
+board the pirate vessel the pirates came and boarded them. Severe
+fighting ensued, but the pirates were defeated, Maynard himself killing
+Blackbeard in single combat with swords. The legend around Okracoke is
+that Blackbeard's bad fortune on this occasion came to him because of
+the unlucky number of his matrimonial adventures, the story being that
+he had thirteen wives. It is said also that his vanquishers cut off his
+head and hung it at the yard-arm of their ship, throwing his body into
+the sea, and that as soon as the body struck the water the head began to
+call, "Come on, Edward!" whereupon the headless body swam three times
+around the ship. Personally I think there may be some slight doubt about
+the authenticity of this part of the story. For, while from one point of
+view we might say that to swim about in such aimless fashion would be
+the very thing a man without a head might do, yet from another point of
+view the question arises: Would a man whose head had just been severed
+from his body feel like taking such a long swim?
+
+And what a rich lot of other historic treasures!
+
+Did you know, for instance, that Flora Macdonald, the Scottish heroine,
+who helped Prince Charles Edward to escape, dressed as a maidservant,
+after the Battle of Culloden, in 1746, came to America with her husband
+and many relatives just before the Revolutionary War and settled at
+Cross Creek (now Fayetteville), North Carolina? When General Donald
+Macdonald raised the Royal standard at the time of the Revolution, her
+husband and many of her kinsmen joined him, and these were later
+captured at the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge, in 1776, and taken as
+prisoners to Philadelphia. Yes; and Flora Macdonald's garter-buckles are
+now in the museum at Raleigh.
+
+A portrait of Captain James J. Waddell, C.S.N., who was a member of a
+famous North Carolina family, recalls the story of his post-bellum
+cruise, in command of the _Shenandoah_, when, not knowing that the War
+was over, he preyed for months on Federal commerce in the South Seas.
+
+The museum of course contains many uniforms worn by distinguished
+soldiers of the Confederacy and many old flags, among them one said to
+be the original flag of the Confederacy. This flag was designed by Orren
+R. Smith of Louisburg, North Carolina, and was made in that town. The
+journals of the Confederate Congress show that countless designs for a
+flag were submitted, that the Committee on a Flag reported that all
+designs had been rejected and returned, the committee having adopted one
+of its own; nevertheless Mr. Smith's claim to have designed the flag
+finally adopted is so well supported that the Confederate Veterans, at
+their General Reunion held in Richmond in 1915, passed a resolution
+endorsing it.
+
+Also in the museum is the shot-riddled smokestack of the Confederate ram
+_Albemarle_, which was built on the farm of Peter E. Smith, on Roanoke
+River, and is said to have been the first vessel ever launched sidewise.
+The _Albemarle_, after a glorious career, was sunk by Lieutenant
+Cushing, U.S.N., in his famous exploit with a torpedo carried on a pole
+at the bow of a launch. It will be remembered that the launch was sunk
+by the shock and that only Cushing and one member of his crew survived,
+swimming away under fire.
+
+North Carolina also claims--and not without some justice--that the first
+English settlement on this continent was not that at Jamestown, but the
+one made by Sir Walter Raleigh's expedition, under Amadas and Barlowe,
+which landed at Roanoke Island, August 4, 1584, and remained there for
+some weeks. The Jamestown Colony, say the North Carolinians, was merely
+the first to _stick_.
+
+Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, across the sound from Roanoke Island, is the
+site of the first flight of a man in an aeroplane, the Wright brothers
+having tried out their first crude plane there, among the Kill-Devil
+sand dunes. A part of the original plane is preserved in the museum. Nor
+must I leave the museum without mentioning the bullet-riddled hat of
+General W.R. Cox, and his gray military coat, with a blood-stained gash
+in front, where a solid shell ripped across. General Cox's son, Mr.
+Albert Cox, was with us in the museum when we stopped to look at this
+grim souvenir. "It tore father open in front," he said, "spoiled a coat
+which had cost him $550, Confederate, and damaged his watchchain.
+Nevertheless he lived to take part in the last charge at Appomattox, and
+the watchchain wasn't so badly spoiled but what, with the addition of
+some new links, it could be worn." And he showed us where the chain,
+which he himself was wearing at the time, had been repaired.
+
+I must say something, also, of the North Carolina College of Agriculture
+and Mechanic Arts, an institution doing splendid work, and doing it
+efficiently, both in its own buildings and through extension courses.
+Fifty-two per cent. of the students at this college earn their way
+through, either wholly or in part. And better yet, eighty-three per
+cent. of the graduates stick to the practical work afterwards--an
+unusually high record.
+
+The president of the college, Dr. D.H. Hill, is a son of the Confederate
+general of the same name, who has been called "the Ironsides of the
+South."
+
+There are a number of other important educational institutions in and
+about Raleigh, and there is one which, if not important, is at all
+events, a curio. This is "Latta University," consisting of a few flimsy
+shacks in the negro village of Oberlin, on the outskirts of Raleigh.
+
+"Professor" Latta is one of the rare negroes who combines the habit with
+white folks of the old fashioned southern darky, and the astuteness of
+the "new issue" in high finance. Years ago he conceived the idea of
+establishing a negro school near Raleigh, to which he gave the above
+mentioned name. He had no funds, no credit and little or no education.
+Nevertheless he had ideas, the central one of which was that New England
+was the land of plenty. With the "university" in his head, and with a
+miscellaneous collection of photographs, he managed to make a tour of
+northern cities, and came back with his pockets lined. As a result he
+procured a little land, put up frame buildings, gathered a few youths
+about him, and was fully launched on his career as a university
+president.
+
+So long as the money held out, Latta was content to drift along with his
+school. When he came to the bottom of the bag he invested the last of
+his savings in another ticket north and, armed with his title of
+"president," made addresses to northern audiences and replenished his
+finances with their contributions.
+
+Finally, as the great act of his career, Latta managed to get passage to
+Europe and was gone for several months. When he came back he had added a
+manuscript to his possessions: "The History of My Life and Work," which
+he published, and which is one of the most curious volumes I have ever
+seen.
+
+It is illustrated--largely with photographs of the author. One of the
+pictures is entitled, "Rev. M.L. Latta when he first commenced to build
+Latta University." This shows Latta with the tips of his fingers resting
+on a small table. Another picture shows him posed with one hand raised
+and the other resting on what is unmistakably the same little table. The
+latter picture, however, has the caption, "Rev. M.L. Latta making a
+speech in Pawtucket, R.I., at Y.M.C.A." Both pictures were all too
+clearly taken in a photographer's studio. Another page shows us, "Rev.
+M.L. Latta and three of his Admirable Presidents." In this case Latta
+merely takes for himself the upper right-hand corner, the other eminent
+persons pictured being ex-Presidents Roosevelt, McKinley and Cleveland.
+The star illustration, however, is a "made up" picture, in which a
+photograph of Latta, looking spick-and-span, has been pasted onto what
+is very obviously a painted picture of a hall full of people in evening
+dress, all of them gazing at Latta, who stands upon the stage,
+dignified, suave, impressive, and all dressed-up by the brush of the
+"re-toucher." This picture is called: "In the Auditorium at London, in
+1894." Similar artfulness is shown in pictures of the "university"
+buildings, where the same frame structure, photographed from opposite
+ends, appears in one case as, "Young Ladies' Dormitory," and in the
+other as, "Chapel and Young Men's Dormitory."
+
+In his autobiography, Latta tells how, in the course of getting his own
+schooling, he raised money by teaching a district school during
+vacation. He says:
+
+     After paying my expenses, I had nearly a hundred dollars to return
+     to school with. When I returned I was able to dress very neatly
+     indeed, and the young ladies received me very cordially on the
+     green during social hour. Before I taught school it was a common
+     saying among the young ladies and young men "Latta"; but after I
+     returned with a hundred dollars it was "Mr. Latta" all over the
+     campus. I would hear the young ladies saying among themselves, "I
+     bet Mr. Latta will not go with you--he will correspond with me this
+     afternoon." I paid no attention to it. I said to myself, "Don't you
+     see what a hundred dollars will do?"
+
+In another place the Professor reveals how he came to write his book:
+"Professor King, one of the teachers at Latta University said to me, 'If
+I had done what you have done I would have wrote a history of my life
+several years ago.'"
+
+The best part of the book, however, gives us Latta's account of his
+doings in London:
+
+     Just before I left the city of London I was invited by a
+     distinguished friend, a close relation to Queen Victoria, to make a
+     speech. He told me there would be a meeting in one of the large
+     halls in that city. I can't just think of the name of the hall. He
+     invited me to be present. The distinguished friend that I have just
+     mentioned presided over the meeting. There was an immense audience
+     present. If memory serves me right, I was the only Negro in the
+     hall. The gentleman came to me and asked if I would make a speech.
+     I told him I had already delivered one address, besides several
+     sermons I had preached, and I thought that I would not speak again
+     during my stay. I accepted the invitation, however, and spoke.
+
+The Professor then tells how he was introduced as one whose addresses
+were "among the ablest ever delivered in London." Also he gives his
+speech in full. Great events followed. His distinguished unnamed friend,
+the "close relation of the Queen," came to him soon after, he says, and
+asked him if he had "ever been to the palace."
+
+Continues Latta:
+
+     He said to me, "If you will come over before you leave the city,
+     and call to see me, I will take you to the palace with me and
+     introduce you to the Queen." I told him I would do so, that I had
+     heard a good deal about the royal throne, and I would be very much
+     interested to see the palace. He said he thought I would, because
+     the government was very different from ours.
+
+     I called at his residence as I had promised, and he went with me to
+     the palace. The Queen knew him, of course. He was received very
+     cordially. Everything shined so much like gold in the palace that I
+     had to stop and think where I was. He introduced me to the Queen,
+     and told her I was from North America. He told her that I spoke at
+     a meeting he presided over, and he enjoyed my speech very much. He
+     told her we had an immense audience, and all the people were well
+     pleased with the speech. The Queen said she was more than glad to
+     meet me, and she would have liked very much to have been present,
+     and heard the speech that her cousin said I made.... She told me
+     she hoped that would not be the last visit I would make to their
+     city. I shook hands with her and bade her good-bye. The
+     distinguished friend carried me and showed me the different
+     departments of the palace, and I bade him good-bye.
+
+In Raleigh, I think, they rather like Latta. It amuses them to see him
+go north and get money, and it is said that he appreciates the situation
+himself. He ought to. Not many southern negroes have such comfortable
+homes as "Latta University's" best kept-up building--the residence of
+the President.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+UNDER ST. MICHAEL'S CHIMES
+
+    And where St. Michael's chimes
+    The fragrant hours exquisitely tell,
+    Making the world one loveliness, like a true poet's rhymes.
+
+    --RICHARD WATSON GILDER.
+
+
+It has been said--by Mrs. T.P. O'Connor, I think--that whereas
+twenty-five letters of introduction for New York may produce one
+invitation to dinner, one letter of introduction for Charleston will
+produce twenty-five dinner invitations. If this be an exaggeration it
+is, at least, exaggeration in the right direction; that is, along the
+lines of truth. For though Charleston's famed "exclusiveness" is very
+real, making letters of introduction very necessary to strangers
+desiring to see something of the city's social life, such letters
+produce, in Charleston, as Mrs. O'Connor suggests, results definite and
+delightful.
+
+Immediately upon our arrival, my companion and I sent out several
+letters we had brought with us, and presently calling cards began to
+arrive for us at the hotel. Also there came courteous little notes,
+delivered in most cases by hand, according to the old Charleston
+custom--a custom surviving pleasantly from times when there were no
+postal arrangements, but plenty of slaves to run errands. Even to this
+day, I am told, invitations to Charleston's famous St. Cecilia balls are
+delivered by hand.
+
+One of the notes we received revealed to us a characteristic custom of
+the city. It contained an invitation to occupy places in the pew of a
+distinguished family, at St. Michael's Church, on the approaching Sunday
+morning. In order to realize the significance of such an invitation one
+must understand that St. Michael's is to Charleston, socially, what St.
+George's, Hanover Square, is to London. A beautiful old building,
+surrounded by a historic burial ground and surmounted by a delicate
+white spire containing fine chimes, it strongly suggests the
+architectural touch of Sir Christopher Wren; but it is not by Wren, for
+he died a number of years before 1752, when the cornerstone of St.
+Michael's was laid. When the British left Charleston--or Charles Town,
+as the name of the place stands in the early records--after occupying it
+during the Revolutionary War, they took with them, to the horror of the
+city, the bells of St. Michael's, and the church books. The silver,
+however, was saved, having been concealed on a plantation some miles
+from Charleston. Later the bells were returned.
+
+Pre-Revolutionary Charleston was divided into two parishes: St.
+Michael's below Broad Street, and St. Philip's above. Under governmental
+regulation citizens were not allowed to hold pews in both churches
+unless they owned houses in both parishes. St. Michael's, being nearer
+the battery, in which region are the finest old houses, had, perhaps,
+the wealthier congregation, but St. Philip's is, to my mind, the more
+beautiful church of the two, largely because of the open space before
+it, and the graceful outward bend of Church Street in deference to the
+projecting portico.
+
+When the Civil War broke out St. Philip's bells were melted and made
+into cannon, but those of St. Michael's were left in place until
+cannonballs from the blockading fleet struck the church, when they were
+taken down and sent, together with the silver plate, to Columbia, South
+Carolina, for safe-keeping. But Columbia was, as matters turned out, the
+worst place to which they could have been sent. The silver was looted by
+troops under Sherman, and the bells were destroyed when the city was
+burned. The fragments were, however, collected and sent to England,
+whence the bells originally came, and there they were recast. Their
+music--perhaps the most characteristic of all the city's characteristic
+sounds--has been called "the voice of Charleston." Of the silver only a
+few fragments have been returned. One piece was found in a pawn shop in
+New York, and another in a small town in Ohio. _Mais que voulez-vous?
+C'est la guerre!_
+
+In mentioning Charleston churches one becomes involved in a large
+matter. In 1801, when St. Mary's, the first Roman Catholic church in the
+city, was erected, there were already eighteen churches in existence,
+among them the present Huguenot Church, at the corner of Church and
+Queen Streets, which, though a very old building, is nevertheless the
+second Huguenot Church to occupy the same site, the first, built in
+1687, having been destroyed in the great conflagration of 1796, which
+very nearly destroyed St. Philip's, as well. A number of the old
+Huguenot families long ago became Episcopalians, and the descendants of
+many of the early French settlers of Charleston, buried in the Huguenot
+churchyard, are now parishioners of St. Michael's and St. Philip's. The
+Huguenot Church in Charleston is the only church of this denomination in
+America; its liturgy is translated from the French, and services are
+held in French on the third Sunday of November, January and March. A
+Unitarian Church was established in 1817, as an offshoot of the Scotch
+Presbyterian Church, the old White Meeting House of which (built 1685,
+used by the British as a granary, during the Revolution, and torn down
+1806) gave Meeting Street its name. Early in the history of the
+Unitarian Church, the home of which was a former Presbyterian Church
+building, in Archdale Street, Dr. Samuel Gilman, a young minister from
+Gloucester, Massachusetts, became its pastor. This was the same Dr.
+Gilman who wrote "Fair Harvard."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In only one instance did the letters of introduction we sent out produce
+a response of the kind one would not be surprised at receiving in some
+rushing city of the North: a telephone call. A lady, not a native
+Charlestonian, but one who has lived actively about the world, rang us
+up, bade us welcome, and invited us to dinner.
+
+But she was a very modern sort of lady, as witness not only her use of
+the telephone--an instrument which seems in Charleston almost an
+anachronism; as, for that matter, the automobile does, too--but her
+dinner hour, which was eight o'clock. Very few Charleston families dine
+at night. Dinner invitations are usually for three, or perhaps half-past
+three or four, in the afternoon, and there is a light supper in the
+evening. I judge that this custom holds also in some other cities of the
+region, for I remember calling at the office of a large investment
+company in Wilmington, North Carolina, to find it wearing, at three in
+the afternoon, the deserted look of a New York office between twelve and
+one o'clock. Every one had gone home to dinner. Mr. W.D. Howells, in his
+charming essay on Charleston, makes mention of this matter:
+
+"The place," he says, "has its own laws and usages, and does not trouble
+itself to conform to those of other aristocracies. In London the best
+society dines at eight o'clock, and in Madrid at nine, but in Charleston
+it dines at four.... It makes morning calls as well as afternoon calls,
+but as the summer approaches the midday heat must invite rather to the
+airy leisure of the verandas, and the cool quiescence of interiors
+darkened against the fly in the morning and the mosquito at
+night-fall."
+
+The household fly is a year-round resident of Charleston, by grace of a
+climate which permits--barely permits, at its coldest--the use of the
+open surrey as a public vehicle in all seasons. Sometimes, during a
+winter cold-snap, when a ride in a surrey is not a pleasant thing to
+contemplate, when residents of old mansions have shut themselves into a
+room or two heated by grate fires, then the fly seems to have
+disappeared, but let the cold abate a little and out he comes again like
+some rogue who, after brief and spurious penance, resumes the evil of
+his ways.
+
+The stranger going to a humble Charleston house will find on the gate a
+coiled spring at the end of which hangs a bell. By touching the spring
+and causing the bell to jingle he makes his presence known. The larger
+houses have upon their gates bell-pulls or buttons which cause bells to
+ring within. This is true of all houses which have front gardens. The
+garden gate constitutes, by custom, a barrier comparable in a degree
+with the front door of a Northern house; a usage arising, doubtless, out
+of the fact that almost all important Charleston houses have not only
+gardens, but first and second story galleries, and that in hot weather
+these galleries become, as it were, exterior rooms, in which no small
+part of the family life goes on. Many Charleston houses have their
+gardens to the rear, and themselves abut upon the sidewalk. Calling at
+such houses, you ring at what seems to be an ordinary front door, but
+when the door is opened you find yourself entering not upon a hall, but
+upon an exterior gallery running to the full depth of the house, down
+which you walk to the actual house door. In still other houses--and this
+is true of some of the most notable mansions of the city, including the
+Pringle, Huger, and Rhett houses--admittance is by a street door of the
+normal sort, opening upon a hall, and the galleries and gardens are at
+the side or back, the position of the galleries in relation to the house
+depending upon what point of the compass the house faces, the desirable
+thing being to get the breezes which are prevalently from the southwest
+and the westward.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Charleston is very definitely two things: It is old, and it is a city.
+
+There is the story of a young lady who asked a stranger if he did not
+consider it a unique town.
+
+He agreed that it was, and inquired whether she knew the derivation of
+the word "unique."
+
+When she replied negatively he informed her that the word came from the
+Latin _unus_, meaning "one," and _equus_, meaning "a horse"; otherwise
+"a one-horse town."
+
+This tale, however, is a libel, for despite the general superstition of
+chambers of commerce to the contrary, the estate of cityhood is not
+necessarily a matter of population nor yet of commerce. That is one of
+the things which, if we were unaware of it before, we may learn from
+Charleston. Charleston is not great in population; it is not very great,
+as seaports go, in trade. Were cities able to talk with one another as
+men can, and as foolishly as men often do, I have no doubt that many a
+hustling middle-western city would patronize Charleston, precisely as a
+parvenue might patronize a professor of astronomy; nevertheless,
+Charleston has a stronger, deeper-rooted city entity than all the cities
+of the Middle West rolled into one. This is no exaggeration. Where
+modern American cities strive to be like one another, Charleston strives
+to be like nothing whatsoever. She does not have to strive to _be_
+something. She _is_ something. She understands what most other American
+cities do not understand, and what, in view of our almost unrestricted
+immigration laws, it seems the National Government cannot be made to
+understand: namely, that mere numbers do not count for everything; that
+there is the matter of quality of population to be considered.
+Therefore, though Charleston's white population is no greater than that
+of many a place which would own itself frankly a small town, Charleston
+knows that by reason of the character of its population it is a great
+city. And that is precisely the case. Charleston people are city people
+_par excellence_. They have the virtues of city people, the vices of
+city people, and the civilization and sophistication of those who reside
+in the most aristocratic capitals. For that is another thing that
+Charleston is; it is unqualifiedly the aristocratic capital of the
+United States; the last stronghold of a unified American upper class;
+the last remaining American city in which Madeira and Port and
+_noblesse oblige_ are fully and widely understood, and are employed
+according to the best traditions.
+
+I have been told of a lady who remarked that Charleston was "the biggest
+little place" she ever saw. I say the same. The littleness of the place,
+it is sometimes pointed out, is expressed by the "vast cousinship" which
+constitutes Charleston society, but it is to my mind expressed much
+better in the way bicyclists leave their machines leaning against the
+curb at the busiest parts of main shopping streets. Its bigness, upon
+the other hand, is expressed by the homes from which some of those
+bicyclists come, by the cultivation which exists in those homes, and has
+existed there for generations, by the amenities of life as they are
+comprehended and observed, by the wealth of the city's tradition and the
+richness of its background. Nor is that background a mere arras of
+recollection. It exists everywhere in the wood and brick and stone of
+ancient and beautiful buildings, in iron grilles and balconies
+absolutely unrivaled in any other American city, and equaled only in
+European cities most famous for their artistry in wrought iron. It
+exists also in venerable institutions--the first orphanage established
+in the United States; the William Enston Home; the Public Library, one
+of the first and now one of the best libraries in the country; the art
+museum, the St. Cecilia Society, and various old clubs. More intimately
+it exists within innumerable old homes, which are treasure-houses of
+fine old English and early American furniture and of
+portraits--portraits by Sir Joshua, by Stuart, Copley, Trumbull, and
+most of the other portrait painters who painted from the time the
+Colonies began to become civilized to the time of the Civil War--among
+them S.F.B. Morse, who, I believe it is not generally known, made a
+considerable reputation as a portrait painter, in Charleston, before he
+made himself a world figure by inventing the telegraph.
+
+Even without seeing these private treasures the visitor to Charleston
+will see enough to convince him that Charleston is indeed
+"unique"--though not in the sense implied in the story--that it is the
+most intimately beautiful city upon the American continent.
+
+To call Charleston "unique," and immediately thereafter to liken it to
+other places may seem paradoxical. These likenesses are, however,
+evanescent. It is not that Charleston is actually like other places, but
+that here in a church building, there in an old tile roof, wrought iron
+gate, or narrow cobbled street, the visitor will find himself delicately
+reminded of Old World towns and cities. Mr. Howells, for example, found
+on the East Battery a faint suggestion of Venetian palaces, and in the
+doorway and gates of the Smyth house, in Legaré Street, I was struck,
+also, with a Venetian suggestion so strange and subtle that I could not
+quite account for it. At night some of the old narrow streets, between
+Meeting Street and Bay, made me think of streets in the old part of
+Paris, on the left bank of the Seine; or again I would stop before an
+ancient brick house which was Flemish, or which--in the case of houses
+diagonally opposite St. Philip's Church--exampled the rude architecture
+of an old French village, stucco walls colored and chipped, red tile
+roof and all. The busy part of King Street, on a Saturday night when the
+fleet was in, made me think of Havana, and the bluejackets seemed to me,
+for the moment, to be American sailors in a foreign port; and once, on
+the same evening's walk, when I chanced to look to the westward across
+Marion Square, I found myself transported to the central _place_ of a
+Belgian city, with a slope-shouldered church across the way masquerading
+as a _hôtel de ville_, and the sidewalk lights at either side figuring
+in my imagination as those of pleasant terrace cafés. So it was always.
+The very hotel in which we stayed--the Charleston--is like no other
+hotel in the United States, though it has about it something which
+caused me to think of the old Southern, in St. Louis. Still, it is not
+like the Southern. It is more like some old hotel in a provincial city
+of France--large and white, with a pleasing unevenness of floor, and,
+best of all, a great inner court which, in provincial France, might be a
+_remise_, but is here a garden. If I mistake not, carriages and coaches
+did in earlier times drive through the arched entrance, now the main
+doorway, and into this courtyard, where passengers alighted and baggage
+was taken down. The Planter's Hotel, now a ruin, opposite the Huguenot
+Church, antedates all others in the city, and used to be the fashionable
+gathering place for wealthy Carolinians and their families who came to
+Charleston annually for the racing season.
+
+The fact that Charleston has a rather important art museum and that its
+library is one of the four oldest town libraries in the country, no less
+than the fact that the city was, in its day, a great racing center,
+contribute to an understanding of the spirit of the place. The present
+Charleston Library is not the first public library started in the city.
+Not by any means! For it was founded as late as 1748, and the original
+public library of Charleston was the first one of the kind in the
+country, having been started about the beginning of the 18th century.
+Old records of this library still exist, showing that citizens voted so
+many skins to its support. Probably the most valuable possession of the
+present library are its files of Charleston newspapers, dating from 1732
+to the present time, including three files covering the War of 1812, and
+two covering the Civil War. These files are consulted by persons from
+all over the United States, for historical material. The library has
+recently moved into a good modern building. In the old building there
+was a separate entrance at the back for ladies, and it is only lately
+that ladies have been allowed full membership in the Library Society,
+and have entered by the front door. The former custom, I suppose,
+represented certain old-school sentiments as to "woman's place" such as
+I find expressed in "Reminiscences of Charleston," by Charles Fraser,
+published in 1854. Declares Mr. Fraser:
+
+     The ambition for literary distinction is now very prevalent with
+     the sex. But without any disposition to undervalue their claims,
+     whenever I hear of a female traveler clambering the Alps, or
+     describing the classic grounds of Greece and Italy, publishing her
+     musings in the holy land, or revealing the mysteries of the harem,
+     I cannot but think that for every success obtained some appropriate
+     duty has been neglected.
+
+     I except the poetess, for hers are the effusions of the heart and
+     the imagination, prompted by nature and uttered because they are
+     irrepressible. Many females travel for the purpose of writing and
+     publishing books--whilst Mrs. Heman's, Mrs. Osgood's, and Mrs.
+     Sigourney's volumes may be regarded as grateful offerings to the
+     muse in return for her inspiration.
+
+It is hard not to be irritated, even now, with the man who wrote that,
+especially in view of the fact that the two most interesting books to
+come out of the Carolinas of recent years are both by women: one of them
+being "Charleston--the Place and the People," by Mrs. St. Julien
+Ravenel, a volume any chapter of which is worth the whole of Mr.
+Fraser's "Reminiscences," and the other "A Woman Rice-Planter," by
+"Patience Pennington," otherwise Mrs. John Julius Pringle (née Alston),
+who lives on her plantation near Georgetown, South Carolina.
+
+The Carolina Jockey Club subscribed regularly to the support of the
+library, and now that that club is no more, its chief memorial may be
+said to rest there. This club was probably the first racing club in the
+country, and it is interesting to note that the old cement pillars from
+the Washington Race Course at Charleston were taken, when that course
+was abandoned, and set up at the Belmont Park course, near New York.
+
+The turf history of Carolina began (according to the "South Carolina
+Gazette," dated February 1, 1734) in that same year, on the first
+Tuesday in February. One of the prizes was a saddle and bridle valued at
+Ł20. The riders were white men and the course was a green at Charleston
+Neck, near where the lower depot of the South Carolina Railroad now
+stands. In a "History of the Turf in South Carolina," which I found in
+the library, I learned that Mr. Daniel Ravenel bred fine horses on his
+plantation, Wantoot, in St. John's Parish, as early as 1761, that Mr.
+Frank Huger had imported an Arabian horse, and that many other gentlemen
+were importing British running horses, and were engaged in breeding. The
+book refers to the old York Course, later called the New Market Course.
+A long search did not, however, enable me to establish the date on which
+the Jockey Club was founded. It was clearly a going institution in 1792,
+for under date of Wednesday, February 15, in that year, I found the
+record of a race for the Jockey Club Purse--"four mile-heats--weight for
+age--won by Mr. Lynch's _Foxhunter_, after a well contested race of four
+heats, beating Mr. Sumter's _Ugly_, who won the first heat; Col.
+Washington's _Rosetta_, who won the second heat; Capt. Alston's _Betsy
+Baker_," etc., etc.
+
+The Civil War practically ended the Jockey Club, though a feeble effort
+was, for a time, made to carry it on. In 1900 the club properties and
+the funds remaining in the club treasury were transferred as an
+endowment to the Charleston Library Society. The proceeds from this
+endowment add to the library's income by about two thousand dollars
+annually. Other items of interest in connection with the Carolina Jockey
+Club are that Episcopal Church conventions used to be held in Charleston
+during the racing season, so that the attending parsons might take in
+the races; that the Jockey Club Ball used to be the great ball of the
+Charleston season, as the second St. Cecilia Ball became later and now
+is; that the Charleston Club, a most delightful club, founded in 1852,
+was an outgrowth of the Jockey Club; and that the Jockey Club's old
+Sherries, Ports and Madeiras went to New York where they were purchased
+by Delmonico--among them a Calderon de la Barca Madeira of 1848, and a
+Peter Domecq Sherry of 1818.
+
+Mr. S.A. Nies, one of the old employees of Delmonico's, tells me that
+the Calderon de la Barca of the above mentioned year is all gone, but
+that Delmonico's still has a few bottles of the same wine of the vintage
+of 1851.
+
+"This wine," Mr. Nies said, "is listed on our wine card at $6.00 per
+bottle. It is not the best Madeira that we have, although it is a very
+fine one. Recently we served a bottle of Thompson's Auction Madeira, of
+which the year is not recognizable on the label, but which to my
+knowledge was an old wine forty years ago. This wine brought $25.00 a
+bottle and was worth it.
+
+"The Peter Domecq Sherry of 1818 does not figure on our wine list as we
+have but a few bottles left. It is $20.00 a bottle.
+
+"The prices brought to-day by old Madeiras and Sherries do not represent
+their real values. One has but to look at the compound interest of
+savings banks to realize that these wines should be selling at four
+times the price they are; but unfortunately, since the advent of Scotch
+whisky in the American market, the American palate seems to have
+deteriorated, and if the wines were listed at the price they ought to
+bring, we could not sell them. As it is, the demand for the very rare
+old wines is irregular and infrequent. We keep them principally to
+preserve our reputation; not for the money there is in it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+HISTORY AND ARISTOCRACY
+
+    The cool shade of aristocracy....
+
+    --SIR W.F.P. NAPIER.
+
+
+Just now, when we are being unpleasantly awakened to the fact that our
+vaunted American melting-pot has not been doing its work; when some of
+us are perhaps wondering whether the quality of metal produced by the
+crucible will ever be of the best; it is comforting to reflect that a
+city whose history, traditions and great names are so completely
+involved with Americanism in its highest forms, a city we think of as
+ultra-American, is peculiarly a melting-pot product.
+
+The original Charleston colonists were English and Irish, sent out under
+Colonel Sayle, in 1669, by the Lords Proprietors, to whom Charles II had
+granted a tract of land in the New World, embracing the present States
+of Georgia and North and South Carolina. These colonists touched at Port
+Royal--where the Marine Barracks now are (and ought not to be)--but
+settled on the west side of the Ashley River, across from where
+Charleston stands. It was not until 1680 that they transferred their
+settlement to the present site of the city, naming the place Charles
+Town in honor of the King. In 1671 the colony contained 263 men able to
+bear arms, 69 women and 59 children. In 1674, when New York was taken by
+the English from the Dutch, a number of the latter moved down to the
+Carolina colony. French Protestants had, at that time, already begun to
+arrive, and more came after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in
+1685. In 1680 Germans came. By 1684 there were four Huguenot settlements
+in Carolina. In 1696 a Quaker was governor for a short time, and in the
+same year a body of New Englanders arrived from Dorchester,
+Massachusetts, establishing a town which they called Dorchester, near
+the present town of Summerville, a few miles from Charleston. At that
+time a number of Scottish immigrants had already arrived, though more
+came in 1715 and 1745, after the defeat of the Highlanders. From 1730 to
+1750 new colonists came from Switzerland, Holland and Germany. As early
+as 1740 there were several Jewish families in Charleston, and some of
+the oldest and most respected Jewish families in the United States still
+reside there. Also, when the English drove the Acadians from Canada in
+1755, twelve hundred of them immigrated to Carolina. By 1790, then, the
+city had a population of a little more than 15,000, which was about half
+the number of inhabitants then contained in the city of New York. In the
+case of Charleston, however, more than one half her people, at that
+time, were negroes, slavery having been introduced by Sir John Yeamans,
+an early British governor. By 1850 the city had about 20,000 white
+citizens and 23,000 blacks, and by 1880 some 7,500 more, of which
+additional number two thirds were negroes. The present population is
+estimated at 65,000, which makes Charleston a place of about the size of
+Rockford, Illinois, Sioux City, Iowa, or Covington, Kentucky; but as, in
+the case of Charleston, more than half this number is colored,
+Charleston is, if the white population only is considered, a place of
+approximately 30,000 inhabitants, or, roughly speaking, about the size
+of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., or Colorado Springs, Colorado.
+
+In area, also, Charleston is small, covering less than four square
+miles. This is due to the position of the city on a peninsula formed by
+the convergence and confluence of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers, which
+meet at Charleston's beautiful Battery precisely as the Hudson River and
+the East River meet at the Battery in New York. The shape of Charleston,
+indeed, greatly resembles that of Manhattan Island, and though her
+harbor and her rivers are neither so large nor so deep as those of the
+port of New York, they are altogether adequate to a considerable
+maritime activity.
+
+The Charleston Chamber of Commerce (which, like everything else in
+Charleston dates from long ago, having been founded in 1748) quotes
+President Taft as calling this port the most convenient one to Panama--a
+statement which the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce is in position to
+dispute. The fact remains, however, that Charleston's position on the
+map justifies the Chamber of Commerce's alliterative designation of the
+place as "The Plumb-line Port to Panama." This is so true that if
+Charleston should one day be shaken loose from its moorings by an
+earthquake--something not unknown there--and should fall due south upon
+the map, it would choke up the mouth of the Canal, were not Cuba
+interposed, to catch the debris.
+
+Before the Civil War, Charleston was the greatest cotton shipping port
+of the country, and it still handles large amounts of cotton and rice.
+Until a few years ago South Carolina was the chief rice producing State
+in the Union, and history records that the first rice planted in the
+Carolinas, if not in the country, was secured and sown by an early
+governor of Carolina, Thomas Smith, who died in 1694. It may be noted in
+passing that this Thomas Smith bore the title "Landgrave," the Lords
+Proprietors, in their plan of government for the colony--which, by the
+way, was drawn up by the philosopher Locke--having provided for a
+colonial nobility with titles. The titles "Baron" and "Landgrave" were
+hereditary in several Charleston families, and constitute, so far as I
+know, the only purely American titles of nobility that ever existed.
+Descendants of the old Landgraves still reside in Charleston, and in at
+least one instance continue to use the word "Landgrave" in connection
+with the family name.
+
+The prosperity of Charleston since the Civil War has depended more,
+perhaps, than on any other single product, upon the trade in phosphate,
+large deposits of which underlie this region.
+
+The real wonder of Charleston, the importance of the place among
+American cities, cannot, however, be said to have resulted primarily
+from commerce (though her commerce is growing), or from greatness of
+population (though Charleston is the metropolis of the Carolinas), but
+is involved with matters of history, tradition and beauty. The mantle of
+greatness was assumed by this city in colonial times, and has never been
+laid aside. Among the most distinguished early Americans were many
+Charlestonians, and in not a few instances the old blood still endures
+there, and even the old names: such names as Washington, Pinckney, Bull,
+Pringle, Rutledge, Middleton, Drayton, Alston, Huger, Agassiz, Ravenel,
+Izard, Gadsden, Rhett, Calhoun, Read, De Saussure, Lamar and Brawley, to
+mention but a few.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Charleston's early history is rich in pirate stories of the most
+thrilling moving-picture variety. Blackbeard, Stede Bonnet and other
+disciples of the Jolly Roger preyed upon Charleston shipping. Bonnet
+once held a Mr. Samuel Wragg of Charleston prisoner aboard his ship
+threatening to send his head to the city unless the unfortunate man
+should be ransomed--the demand being for medicines of various kinds.
+Colonel Rhett, of Charleston, captured Bonnet and his ship after a
+savage fight, but Bonnet soon after escaped from the city in woman's
+clothing. Still later he was retaken, hanged, as he deserved to be, and
+buried along with forty of his band at a point now covered by the
+Battery Garden, that exquisite little park at the tip of the city, which
+is the favorite promenade of Charlestonians. In another fight which
+occurred just off Charleston bar, a crew of citizens under Governor
+Robert Johnson defeated the pirate Richard Worley, who was killed in the
+action, and captured his ship, which, when the hatches were opened
+proved to be full of prisoners, thirty-six of them women. Even as late
+as the period of the War of 1812--a war which did not affect Charleston
+save in the way of destroying her shipping and causing poverty and
+distress--a case of brutal piracy is recorded. The daughter of Aaron
+Burr, Theodosia by name, was married to Governor Joseph Alston. After
+her father's trial for high treason, when he was disgraced and broken,
+she tried to comfort him, for the two were peculiarly devoted. Intending
+to visit him she set sail from Charleston for New York in a ship which
+was never heard from again. Somewhere I have read a description of the
+distraught father's long vigils at New York, where he would stand gazing
+out to sea long after all hope had been abandoned by others. Mrs. St.
+Julien Ravenel tells us in her charming book, that thirty years later an
+old sailor, dying in a village of the North Carolina coast, confessed
+that he had been one of a pirate crew which had captured the ship and
+compelled the passengers to walk the plank. This story is also given by
+Charles Gayarré, who says the pirate chief was none other than Dominick
+You, who fought under Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans, and is
+buried in that city. The husband and father of Mrs. Alston were spared
+the ghastly tale, Mrs. Ravenel says, since both were already in their
+graves when the sailor's deathbed confession solved the mystery.
+
+In the Revolution, Charleston played an important part. Men of
+Charleston were, of course, among the signers of the Declaration of
+Independence. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, who gave us the immortal
+maxim: "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!" who was on
+Washington's staff, was later Ambassador to France and president-general
+of the Sons of the Cincinnati, was a Charlestonian of the
+Charlestonians, and lies buried in St. Michael's. Such Revolutionary
+names as Marion, Laurens, William Washington, Greene, Hampton, Moultrie
+and Sumter are associated with the place, and two of these are reëchoed
+in the names of those famous forts in Charleston harbor on which
+attention was fixed at the outbreak of the Civil War: Moultrie and
+Sumter--the latter, target for the first shot fired in the conflict.
+
+Nearly thirty years before the Civil War, Charleston had distinguished
+herself in the arts of peace by producing the first locomotive tried in
+the United States, and by constructing the first consecutive hundred
+miles of railroad ever built in the world, and now, with the War, she
+distinguished herself by initiating other mechanical devices of very
+different character--a semi-submersible torpedo boat and the first
+submarine to torpedo a hostile war vessel. True, David Bushnell of
+Connecticut did construct a crude sort of submarine during the
+Revolutionary War, and succeeded in getting under a British ship with
+the machine, but he was unable to fasten his charge of powder and his
+effort consequently failed. Robert Fulton also experimented with
+submarines, or "plunging boats" as he called them, and was encouraged
+for a time by Napoleon I. The little _David_ of the Confederate navy is
+sometimes referred to as the first submarine but the _David_ was not
+actually an underwater boat, but a torpedo boat which could run awash,
+with her funnels and upper works slightly out of water. She was a
+cigar-shaped vessel thirty-three feet long, built of wood, propelled by
+steam, and carrying her torpedo on a pole, forward. Dr. St. Julien
+Ravenel of Charleston and Captain Theodore Stoney devised the craft, and
+she was built by funds subscribed by Charleston merchants. In command of
+Lieutenant W.T. Glassell, C.S.N., and with three other men aboard, she
+torpedoed the United States ship _New Ironsides_, flagship of the fleet
+blockading Charleston. The _New Ironsides_ was crippled, but not lost.
+After this United States vessels blockading Charleston protected
+themselves with booms. This resulted in the construction of an actual
+undersea torpedo boat, the _Hunley_. This extraordinary vessel has been
+spoken of as having had the appearance of a huge iron coffin, as well as
+the attributes of one, for she proved a death-trap for successive crews
+on three trial trips. As there were no electric motors or gasoline
+engines in those days, she was run by hand, eight men crowded together
+turning a crank-shaft which operated her propeller. After repeated
+sinkings, she was raised, manned by new men, and sent forth again.
+Finally, in Charleston harbor she succeeded in destroying the United
+States man-o'-war _Housatonic_, but at the same time went down, herself,
+drowning or suffocating all on board. A memorial drinking fountain on
+the Battery, at the foot of Meeting Street, commemorates "the men of the
+Confederate Army and Navy, first in marine warfare to employ torpedo
+boats--1863-1865." On this memorial are given the names of sixteen men
+who perished in torpedo attacks on the blockading fleet, among them
+Horace L. Hunley, set down as inventor of the submarine boat. The names
+of fourteen others who were lost are unknown.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lord William Campbell, younger son of the Duke of Argyll, was British
+governor at Charleston when the Revolution broke out. He had married a
+Miss Izard, of Charleston, who brought him a dowry of fifty thousand
+pounds, a large sum in those times. Their home was in a famous old house
+which stands on Meeting Street, and it was from the back yard of this
+house that Lord William fled in a rowboat to a British man-o'-war, when
+it became evident that Charleston was no longer hospitable to
+representatives of the Crown. Later his wife followed him to Great
+Britain, where they remained.
+
+The Pringle House, as it is now called, formerly the Brewton house,
+perhaps the most superb old residence in the city, was the headquarters
+of General Sir Henry Clinton, after he had captured Charleston, and was
+the residence of Lord Rawdon, the unpleasant British commander who
+succeeded Clinton. Cornwallis lived outside the town at Drayton Hall,
+which still stands, on the Ashley River. After his capture Cornwallis
+was exchanged for Henry Laurens, a distinguished Charlestonian, who,
+though he wept over the Declaration of Independence, was before long
+president of the Continental Congress, and later went to France, where
+he was associated with Benjamin Franklin, John Jay and John Adams in
+negotiating the treaty of peace and independence for America.
+
+Mrs. Ravenel says in her book that Sherman destroyed all but one of the
+superb old houses on the Ashley River, and when we consider that
+Sherman's troops invested Charleston just before the end of the War, and
+reflect upon the general's notorious "carelessness with fire," we have
+cause for national rejoicing that Charleston, with its unmatched
+buildings and their splendid contents, was not laid in ashes, as were
+Atlanta and Columbia. Had Sherman burned Charleston it would be hard for
+even a Yankee to forgive him.
+
+Even without the aid of the Northern general, the city has been able to
+furnish disastrous conflagrations of her own, over a period of two
+centuries and more, and I find in the quaint reminiscences of Charles
+Fraser, already alluded to, a lamentation that, because of fires, many
+of the old landmarks have disappeared, and the city is "losing its look
+of picturesque antiquity." To make matters worse, there came, in 1886,
+an earthquake, rendering seven eighths of the houses uninhabitable until
+repairs aggregating some millions of dollars had been made. Up to the
+time of the earthquake the old mansion from which Lord William Campbell
+fled at the beginning of the Revolution, was adorned by a battlemented
+roof. It is recorded that when the shock came, an Englishman was in the
+house, and that in his eagerness to get outdoors he pushed others aside.
+As he reached the front steps, however, the battlements came crashing
+down. He was the one person from that house who perished, and his only
+monument is the patch of comparatively new stone where the broken steps
+have been repaired.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My companion and I achieved entrance to one of the famous old Charleston
+houses which we had been particularly anxious to see, through the
+kindness of a lady to whom we had a letter of introduction, who happened
+to be a relative of the owner of the house.
+
+It seems necessary to explain, at this juncture, that in Charleston,
+many proper names of foreign origin have been corrupted in
+pronunciation. A few examples will suffice: The Dutch name Vanderhorst,
+conspicuous in the early annals of the city, has come to be pronounced
+"Van-Dross"; Legaré, the name of another distinguished old family,
+commemorated in the name of Legaré Street, is pronounced "Legree"; De
+Saussure has become "Dess-a-sore," with the accent on the first
+syllable, and Prioleau is called "Pray-low."
+
+I was unaware of these matters when my companion and I visited the
+ancient house I speak of. Though I had heard the name of the proprietor
+of the mansion spoken many times, and recognized it as a distinguished
+Charleston name, I had never seen it written; however, without having
+given the matter much thought, I had, unfortunately, reached my own
+conclusions as to how it was spelled. Still more unfortunately, while I
+was delighting in the drawing-room of that wonderful old house, with the
+portraits of ladies in powdered hair and men in cocked hats and periwigs
+looking down upon me from the walls, I was impelled to reassure myself
+as to the spelling of the name. Let us assume that the name sounded like
+"Bowfee." That was not it but it will suffice for illustration.
+
+"I suppose," I said to our charming cicerone, "that the family name is
+spelled 'B-o-w-f-e-e'?"
+
+I had no sooner spoken than I realized, with a sudden access of horror
+what I had done. In guessing I had sinned, but in guessing wrong I had
+ruined myself. All this came to me instantly and positively, as by a
+psychic message of unparalleled definiteness from the dead ancestors
+whose portraits hung upon the paneling. It was as though they had joined
+in a great ghostly shout of execration, which was the more awful because
+it was a silent shout that jarred upon the senses rather than the ear
+drums. Then, before the lady replied, while the sound of my own voice
+saying "B-o-w-f-e-e" seemed to reverberate through the apartment, I
+suddenly comprehended the spirit of Charleston: understood that,
+compared with Charleston, Boston is as a rough mining camp, while New
+York hardly exists at all, being a mere miasma of vulgarity.
+
+There was a long silence, in which the lady to whom I had spoken gazed
+from the window at the rainy twilight. Her silence, I am persuaded, was
+not intended to rebuke me; she was not desirous of crushing me; she was
+merely stunned. Indeed, when at last she spoke, there was in her tone
+something of gentleness.
+
+"The name," she said, "is Beaufoy--B-e-a-u-f-o-y. It is of Huguenot
+origin."
+
+Passionately I wished for an earthquake--one that might cause the floor
+to open beneath me, or the roof to fall through and blot me from her
+sight. How to get away?--that was my one thought. To cover my
+embarrassment, I tried to make small-talk about a medallion of an
+Emperor of France, which hung upon the paneling. The lady said it had
+been given to an ancestor of the Beaufoys by the Emperor himself. That,
+for some reason, seemed to make things rather worse. I wished I had not
+dragged the Emperor into the conversation.
+
+"It is getting dark," I said. "It is time we were going."
+
+This the lady did not dispute.
+
+Of our actual farewells and exit from that house, I remember not a
+detail, save that, as we departed, I knew that we should never see this
+lady again; that for her I no longer existed, and that in my downfall I
+had dragged my companion with me. The next thing I definitely recollect
+is walking swiftly up Meeting Street beside him, in the rain and
+darkness of late afternoon. All the way back to the hotel we strode side
+by side in pregnant silence; neither did we speak as we ascended to our
+rooms.
+
+Some time later, while I was dressing for dinner, he entered my
+bedchamber. At the moment, as it happened, I was putting cuff-links into
+a dress shirt. With this task I busied myself, dreading to look up. In
+the meantime I felt his eyes fixed upon me. When the links were in, I
+delayed meeting his gaze by buttoning the little button in one
+sleeve-vent, above the cuff.
+
+"Do you mean to say you button those idiotic little buttons?" he
+demanded. "I didn't know that anybody ever did that!"
+
+"I don't always," I answered apologetically.
+
+"I should hope not!" he returned. Then he continued: "Do you remember
+where we are to be taken to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes," I said. "To the Pringle house."
+
+"Well," said he, "I just came in to ask you, as a favor, not to get off
+any fanciful ideas that you may have thought up, about the way to spell
+Pringle."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+POLITICS, A NEWSPAPER AND ST. CECILIA
+
+
+Charleston is very definitely a part of South Carolina. That is not
+always the case with a State and its chief city. It is not the case with
+the State and the City of New York. New York City has about the same
+relation to New York State as a goldpiece has to a large table-top on
+one corner of which it lies. Charleston, on the other hand, harmonizes
+into its state setting, as a beautiful ancient vase harmonizes into the
+setting afforded by some rare old cabinet. Moreover, Charleston's
+individuality amongst cities is more or less duplicated in South
+Carolina's individuality amongst States. South Carolina is a State as
+definitely marked--though in altogether different ways--as Kansas or
+California. It is a State that does nothing by halves. It has
+rattlesnakes larger and more venomous than other rattlesnakes, and it
+has twice had the disgraceful Cole Blease, otherwise
+"To-hell-with-the-Constitution" Blease, as governor. For senator it has
+the old war-horse Tillman, a man so admired for his power that, in our
+easy-going way, we almost forgive his dives into the pork-barrel.
+Tillman has been to South Carolina more or less what the late Senator
+Hale was to his section of New England. Hale grabbed a navy yard for
+Kittery, Maine (the Portsmouth yard), where there never should have been
+a navy yard; Tillman performed a like service, under like circumstances,
+for Charleston. Both are purely political yards. Naval officers opposed
+them, but were overridden by politicians, as so often happens. For in
+time of peace the army and the navy are political footballs, and it is
+only when war comes that the politicians cease kicking them about and
+cry: "Now, football, turn into a cannon-ball, and save your country and
+your country's flag!" For obviously, if the flag cannot be saved, the
+politicians will be without a "starry banner" to gesture at and roar
+about.
+
+Now, of course, with war upon us, any navy yard is a blessing, and the
+Charleston yard is being used, as it should be, to the utmost. But in
+time of peace the yard comes in for much criticism from the navy, the
+contention being that it is not favorably located from a strategic point
+of view, and that, owing to bars in the Cooper River, up which it is
+situated, it cannot be entered by large ships. The point is also made
+that while labor is cheaper at this yard than at any other, skilled
+metal-workers are hard to get. Friends of the yard contend, upon the
+other hand, that it is desirable because of its convenience to the
+Caribbean Sea, where, according to naval theory, this country will some
+day have to fight a battle in defense of the Panama Canal. The Pensacola
+yard, it is pointed out, is exposed and can be bombarded, whereas the
+Charleston yard is far enough inland to be safe from sea attack. As to
+the channel, it is navigable for destroyers and other small
+craft--though whether it would be so to a large destroyer which had been
+injured and was drawing more water than usual, I do not know. The
+practical situation of the navy, with regard to this and some of the
+other political yards, is like that of some man who has been left a lot
+of heterogeneous houses, scattered about town, none of them suited to
+his purposes, and who is obliged to scatter his family amongst them as
+best he can, or else abandon them and build a new house. We have been
+following the former course, and are only now preparing to adopt the
+latter, by establishing a naval base at Norfolk, as mentioned in an
+earlier chapter.
+
+Charleston politics have been peculiar. Until a few years ago the
+government of the city had long rested in the hands of a few old
+families, among them the Gadsdens and the Rhetts. The overthrow of this
+ancient and aristocratic rule by the election to the mayoralty of John
+P. Grace, an alleged "friend of the people," was spoken of by the New
+York "Sun," as being not a mere change in municipal government, but the
+fall of a dynasty which had controlled the city politically, financially
+and socially for a century and a half. Mr. Grace may be dismissed with
+the remark that he supported Blease and that he is editor of the
+recently founded Charleston "American," which I have heard called a
+Hearst newspaper, and which certainly wears the Hearst look about it.
+
+On January 19, 1917, this newspaper printed a full account of the ball
+of the St. Cecilia Society, Charleston's most sacred social
+organization. Never before in the history of the St. Cecilia Society,
+covering a period of a century and a half, had an account of one of its
+balls, and the names of those attending, been printed. The publication
+caused a great stir in the city and resulted in an editorial, said to
+have been written by Grace, which appeared next day, and which reveals
+something of Charleston tradition and something of Grace, as well. It
+was headed "The Saint Cecilia Ball," and ran as follows:
+
+     We carried on yesterday a full account of the famous Saint Cecilia
+     Ball. From the foundation of Charleston until the present moment it
+     has been regarded as an unwritten law that the annual events of
+     this ancient society shall not be touched upon.
+
+     Of course it was permissible for the thirty-five thousand poor
+     white people of Charleston to talk about the Saint Cecilia, and to
+     indulge in the thrilling sensation that comes to the proverbial cat
+     when she looks at a queen. Some of them, moved by curiosity, even
+     ventured within half a block of the Hibernian Hall to observe from
+     afar the gay festivities.
+
+     The press being forbidden to cover Saint Cecilia events, there grew
+     up in the vulgar mind weird stories of what went on behind the
+     scenes. While the Saint Cecilia has enjoyed the happy privilege of
+     journalistic silence, it has, therefore, correspondingly suffered
+     on the tongue of gossip. The truth is that we always knew that the
+     Saint Cecilia was just about the same as every other social
+     collection of human beings--a little gaiety flavored with a little
+     frivolity; nothing more, nothing less.
+
+     There was a time when this society was the extreme limit of social
+     exclusiveness. It was an anachronism on American soil, a matter of
+     pure heredity, the right to membership in which was as fixed as
+     Median law, but transcendently above the median line. Now, however,
+     since the society, in keeping with the spirit of the age, has
+     relaxed its rules to admit from year to year (if, indeed, only a
+     few now and then) members whose blood is far from indigo, we think
+     it perfectly legitimate for the newspaper, which represents ALL
+     classes of people, to invade the quondam sanctity of its functions
+     which are now being OPENED to all classes.
+
+Following this, the editorial quoted from Don Seitz's book, telling how
+the elder James Gordon Bennett was in the habit of mocking "events to
+which he was not invited," and how, in 1840, he managed to get one of
+his reporters into "Henry I Brevoort's fancy dress ball, the social
+event of the period." The quotation from Mr. Seitz's book ends with the
+following: "A far cry from this to 1894, when Ward McAlister, arbiter of
+the '400' at Mrs. Astor's famous ball, became a leader on social topics
+for the New York 'World.' It took many years for this umbrage at the
+reporting of social events to wear off and make the reporter welcome.
+Indeed, there is one place yet on the map where it is not even now
+permitted to record a social event, though the editors and owners of
+papers may be among those present. That is Charleston, South
+Carolina...."
+
+The Charleston editor then resumes his own reflections in this wise:
+
+     We regret to say, and it is the regret of our life, that we were
+     not one of the editors present at the Saint Cecilia. This,
+     therefore, relieves us of the implied condition to adhere any
+     longer to this silly and absurd custom which, in the language of
+     this great newspaper man, has made its last stand "on the map" at
+     Charleston. We are glad that we have forever nailed, in the opinion
+     of one hundred million ordinary people who make the American
+     nation, the absurdity that there is any social event so sacred, any
+     people so DIFFERENT from the rest of us poor human beings, that we
+     dare not speak of them.
+
+Just why private social events should be, as Mr. Grace seems to assume,
+particularly the property of the press, it is somewhat difficult to
+explain, unless we do so by accepting as fundamental the theory that the
+press is justified in invading personal privacy purely in order to
+pander, on the one hand to the new breed of vulgar rich which thrives on
+"publicity," and on the other, to the breed of vulgar poor which enjoys
+reading that supremest of American inanities, the "society page."
+
+What Mr. Seitz said in his book as to the reticence of Charleston
+newspapers, where society is concerned, is, however, generally
+true--amazingly so to one who has become hardened to the attitude of the
+metropolitan press elsewhere. The society columns of Charleston papers
+hardly ever print the names of the city's real aristocrats, and in the
+past they have gone much farther than this, for they have been known to
+suppress important news stories in which prominent citizens were
+unpleasantly involved. It may be added that earthquakes are evidently
+classed as members of the aristocracy, since occasional tremors felt in
+the city are pointedly ignored by the press. Whether or not the paper
+edited by the fearless Mr. Grace ignores these manifestations I am
+unable to say. One can easily fancy his taking a courageous stand on
+such a subject as well as upon social matters. Indeed, with a few slight
+changes, his editorial upon the St. Cecilia ball, might be made to serve
+equally well after an earthquake shock. He might say:
+
+     The press being forbidden to cover earthquakes, there grew up in
+     the vulgar mind weird stories of what went on behind the scenes.
+     While the earthquakes have enjoyed the happy privilege of
+     journalistic silence, they have, therefore, correspondingly
+     suffered on the tongue of gossip.
+
+He could also make the point that since, "in keeping with the spirit of
+the age," the earthquake shakes people "(if indeed only a few of them
+now and then), whose blood is far from indigo, we think it perfectly
+legitimate for the newspaper, which represents ALL classes of people, to
+invade the quondam sanctity of its functions which are now being OPENED
+to all classes."
+
+But of course, where the editor of such a paper is concerned, there is
+always the element of natural delicacy and nicety of feeling to be
+considered. Mr. Grace felt that because he was not present at the St.
+Cecilia ball, he was free to print things about it. An earthquake would
+not be like the St. Cecilia Society--it would not draw the line at Mr.
+Grace. At a Charleston earthquake he would undoubtedly be present. The
+question therefore arises: Having been PRESENT, might his AMOUR PROPRE
+make him feel that to REPORT the event would not be altogether in GOOD
+TASTE?
+
+The St. Cecilia Society began in 1737 with a concert given on St.
+Cecilia's day, and continued for many years to give concerts at which
+the musicians were both amateurs and professionals. Josiah Quincy, in
+his "Journal," tells of having attended one of these concerts in 1773,
+and speaks of the richness of the men's apparel, noting that there were
+"many with swords on."
+
+When, in 1819, difficulty was experienced in obtaining performers, it
+was proposed that a ball be held in place of a concert, and by 1822 the
+society was definitely transformed from a musical to a dancing
+organization, which it has remained ever since.
+
+The statement in the "American" editorial that St. Cecilia balls have
+been the subject of scandalous gossip is, I believe, quite false, as is
+also the statement that the balls are now "being opened to all classes."
+
+Mrs. Ravenel in her book tells how the organization is run. Members are
+elected, and all are men, though the names of the ladies of a member's
+household are placed on the club list. "Only death or removal from the
+city erases them--change of fortune affects them not at all." A man
+whose progenitors have belonged to the society is almost certain of
+election, though there have been cases in which undesirables of good
+family have been blackballed. Two blackballs are sufficient to cause the
+rejection of a candidate. Men who are not of old Charleston stock are
+carefully investigated before they can be elected, but of late years not
+a few such, having been considered desirable, have become members. The
+members elect officers and a board of managers, and these have entire
+control of the society. Three balls are given each year, one in January
+and two in February. Until a few years ago the hall in which the balls
+are given was lighted by innumerable candelabra; only lately has
+electricity been used. The society owns its own plate, damask, china and
+glassware, and used to own a good stock of wines. Of late years, I
+believe, wines have not been served, the beverage of the evening
+consisting of coffee, hot and iced. The greatest decorum is observed at
+the balls. Young ladies go invariably with chaperones; following each
+dance there is a brief promenade, whereafter the young ladies are
+returned to their duennas--who, if they be Charleston dowagers in
+perfection, usually carry turkey-feather fans. Cards are filled months
+in advance. As lately as the year 1912 every other dance was a square
+dance; since then, however, I believe that square dances have gone the
+way of candle-light. The society has an endowment and membership is
+inexpensive, costing but fifteen dollars a year, including the three
+balls. This enables young men starting in life to be members without
+going into extravagance, and is in accord with the best social tradition
+of Charleston, where the difference between an aristocracy and a
+plutocracy is well understood. Most of the rules of the organization are
+unwritten. One is that men shall not smoke on the premises during a
+ball; another is that divorced persons shall not be members or guests of
+the society. In this respect the St. Cecilia Society may be said, in
+effect, to be applying, socially, the South Carolina law; for South
+Carolina is the only State in the Union in which divorces are not
+granted for any cause whatsoever.
+
+This reminds me that the State has an anti-tipping law. The Pullman
+porter is required to hang up copies of the law in his car when it
+enters South Carolina, and copies of it are displayed on the doors of
+hotel bedrooms. The penalty for giving or receiving a tip is a fine of
+from ten to one hundred dollars, or thirty days in jail. Perhaps the law
+is observed. I know, at least, that no one offered me a tip while I was
+in that State.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The old grandees of Charleston were usually sent to Oxford or Cambridge
+for an education and English tradition still remains, I fancy, the
+foundation for what Charleston social life is to-day. I thought at first
+that Charlestonians spoke like the English, but later came to the
+conclusion that there is in the pronunciation of some of them a quality
+resembling a very faint brogue--a brogue such as might be possessed by a
+cultivated Irishman who had moved to England in his boyhood, and had
+been educated there. The "vanishing _y_" of tidewater Virginia is also
+used by some Charlestonians, I am told, though I do not remember hearing
+it.
+
+Generalizations on the subject of dialectic peculiarities are dangerous,
+as I have good reason to know. Naturally, not all Charlestonians speak
+alike. I should say, however, that the first _a_ in the words "Papa"
+and "Mama" is frequently given a short sound, as _a_ in "hat"; also
+that many one-syllable words are strung out into two. For instance,
+"eight" is heard as "ay-et" ("ay" as in "gray"); "where" as "whey-uh,"
+or "way-uh," and "hair" as "hay-uh." "Why?" sometimes sounds like "Woi?"
+Such words as "calm" and "palm" are sometimes given the short _a_: "cam"
+and "pam"--which, of course, occurs elsewhere, too. The name "Ralph" is
+pronounced as "Rafe" (_a_ as in "rate")--which I believe is Old English;
+and the names "Saunders" and "Sanders" are pronounced exactly alike,
+both being called "Sanders." Tomatoes are sometimes called "tomatters."
+Two dishes I never heard of before are "Hopping John," which is rice
+cooked with peas, and "Limping Kate," which is some other rice
+combination. What we, in the North, call an "ice-cream freezer" becomes
+in Charleston an "ice-cream _churn_." "Good morning" is the salutation
+up to three P.M., whereas in other parts of the South "Good evening" is
+said for the Northern "Good afternoon." Charlestonians speak of being
+"parrot-toed"--not "pigeon-toed." Where, in the North, we would ask a
+friend, "How are things out your way?" a Charlestonian may inquire, "How
+are things out your _side_?" The expression "going out" means to go to
+St. Cecilia Balls, and I have been told that it is never used in any
+other way. That is, if a lady is asked: "Are you going out this winter?"
+it means definitely, "Are you going to the St. Cecilia balls?" If you
+heard it said that some one was "_on_ Mount Pleasant," you might
+suppose that Mount Pleasant was an island; but it is not; it is a
+village on the mainland across the Cooper River. And what is to me one
+of the most curious expressions I ever heard is "do don't," as when a
+lady called to her daughter, "Martha, _do_ don't slam that door again!"
+
+How generally these peculiarities crop out in the speech of Charleston I
+cannot say. It occurs to me, however, that, assembled and catalogued in
+this way, they may create the idea that slovenly English is generally
+spoken in the city. If so they give an impression which I should not
+wish to convey, since Charleston has no more peculiarities of language
+than New York or Boston, and not nearly so many as a number of other
+cities. Cultivated Charlestonians have, moreover, the finest voices I
+have heard in any American city.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+"GULLA" AND THE BACK COUNTRY
+
+
+The most extraordinary negro dialect I know of is the "gulla" (sometimes
+spelled "gullah") of the rice plantation negroes of South Carolina and
+of the islands off the South Carolina and Georgia coast. I believe that
+the region of Charleston is headquarters for "gulla niggers," though I
+have heard the argot spoken as far south as Sepeloe Island, off the town
+of Darien, Georgia, near the Florida line. Gulla is such an extreme
+dialect as to be almost a language by itself. Whence it came I do not
+know, but I judge that it is a combination of English with the primitive
+tongues of African tribes, just as the dialect of old Creole negroes, in
+Louisiana, is a combination of African tribal tongues with French.
+
+A Charleston lady tells me that negroes on different rice
+plantations--even on adjoining plantations--speak dialects which differ
+somewhat, and I know of my own knowledge that thick gulla is almost
+incomprehensible to white persons who have not learned, by long
+practice, to understand it.
+
+A lady sent a gulla negro with a message to a friend. This is the
+message as it was delivered:
+
+"Missis seh all dem turrah folk done come shum. Enty you duh gwine come
+shum?" (To get the gulla effect the sounds should be uttered very
+rapidly.)
+
+Translated, this means: "Mistress says all them other folks have come to
+see her. Aren't you coming to see her?"
+
+"Shum" is a good gulla word. It means all kinds of things having to do
+with seeing--_to see her_, _to see him_, _to see it_. Thus, "You shum,
+enty?" may mean, _You see him_--_her_--or _it_? or _You see what
+he_--_she_--or _it_--_is doing_, or _has done_? For gulla has no genders
+and no tenses. "Enty" is a general question: _Aren't you? Didn't you?
+Isn't it?_ etc. Another common gulla word is "Buckra" which means _a
+white man of the upper class_, in contradistinction to a poor white. I
+have known a negro to refer to "de frame o' de bud," meaning the
+carcass, or frame, of a fowl. "Ay ain' day" means "They aren't (ain't)
+there."
+
+A friend of mine who resided at Bluffton, South Carolina, has told me of
+an old gulla fisherman who spoke in parables.
+
+A lady would ask him: "Have you any fish to-day?" To which, if replying
+affirmatively, he would answer: "Missis, de gate open"; meaning, "The
+door (of the 'car,' or fish-box) is open to you." If he had no fish he
+would reply: "Missis, ebb-tide done tack (take) crick"; signifying: "The
+tide has turned and it is too late to go to catch fish." This old man
+called whisky "muhgundy smash," the term evidently derived from some
+idea of the word "burgundy" combined with the word "mash."
+
+Here is a gulla dialect story, with a line-for-line translation. A train
+has killed a cow, and a negro witness is being examined by a justice of
+the peace:
+
+JUSTICE--Uncle John, did you see
+what killed Sam's cow?
+
+NEGRO--Co'ose Uh shum.                   (Of) course I saw him.
+
+JUSTICE--What was it, Uncle
+John?
+
+NEGRO--Dat black debble you-all          (It was) that black devil you-all
+runnin' tru we lan'. Nigga duh           (are) running through our land.
+                                         (A) nigger (fireman) he
+stan' deh, duh po' coal                  stands there (and) he pours coal
+in eh stomach.                           into its stomach.
+Buckra duh sit up on eh seat,            (A) white man (engineer)
+                                         he sits up on his seat.
+duh smoke eh cigah, an' ebry             (and) he smokes his cigar, and every
+tahme eh twis' eh tail eh run fasteh.    time he twists its (engine's) tail it
+An'                                      runs faster. And
+eh screams dis lak uh pantuh. Eben       it screams just like a panther. Even
+w'en eh git tuh de station, eh stan'     when it gets to the station, it stands
+tuh de station an' seh: "_Kyan_-stop!    at the station and says: "_Can't_-stop!
+_Kyan_-stop! _Kyan_-stop!"               _Can't_-stop! _Can't_-stop!"
+
+Sam cow binna browse down deh            Sam's cow was browsing down there
+tuh Bull Head Crick. Eh ram eh           to (at) Bull Head Creek. It (engine)
+                                         rammed its
+nose innum, an' eh bussum wahde          nose into it (the cow), and it
+                                         busted him wide
+loose. Eh t'row eh intrus on de          loose (open). It threw its entrails
+                                         on the
+reyel on de cross-tie, an' clean-up      rails, on the cross-ties, and clean up
+on de tele_gram_ pole.                   on the telegraph pole.
+
+Mrs. Leiding (Harriette Kershaw Leiding), of Charleston, has done a fine
+service to lovers of Old Charleston, and its ways, in collecting and
+publishing in pamphlet form a number of the cries of the negro street
+vendors. Of these I shall rob Mrs. Leiding's booklet of but one
+example--the cry of a little negro boy, a peddler of shrimp ("swimp"),
+who stood under a window in the early morning and sang:
+
+[Music:
+
+An' a Daw-try Daw! an' a swimp-y raw! an' a Daw-try Daw-try Daw-try Raw Swimp.]
+
+While on the subject of the Charleston negro I must not neglect two of
+his superstitions. One is his belief that a two-dollar bill is unlucky.
+The curse may be removed only by tearing off a corner of the bill. The
+other is that it is unlucky to hand any one a pin. A Charleston lady
+told me that when she was motoring and wished to pin her hat or her
+veil, she could never get her negro chauffeur to hand her pins. Instead
+he would stick them in the laprobe, or in the sleeve of his coat, whence
+she could pick them out herself. Another lady told me of the case of an
+old black slave who lived years ago on a plantation on the Santee River,
+owned by her family. This slave, who was a very powerful, taciturn and
+high-tempered man, had a curious habit of disappearing for about half an
+hour each day. He would go into the swamp, and for many years no one
+ever followed him, the other negroes being afraid to do so because of
+his temper and his strength. At last, however, they did spy upon him and
+discovered that in the swamp there stood a cypress tree on which were
+strange rude carvings, before which he prostrated himself. No one ever
+learned the exact significance of this, but it was assumed that the man
+practised some barbaric form of worship, brought from Africa.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The country back of Charleston is very lovely and is rich in interest,
+even though most of the houses on the old estates have been destroyed.
+Drayton Hall, however, stands, and the old Drayton estate, Magnolia, not
+far distant from the Hall (which was on another estate), has one of the
+most famous gardens in the world. Seven persons touching fingertips can
+barely encircle the trunks of some of the live-oaks at Magnolia; there
+are camellias more than twenty feet high, and a rose tree nearly as
+large, but the great glory of the garden is its huge azaleas--ninety-two
+varieties, it is said--which, when they blossom in the spring, are so
+wonderful that people make long journeys for no other purpose than to
+see them.
+
+In "Harper's Magazine" for December, 1875, I find an account of the
+gardens which were, at that time, far from new. The azaleas were then
+twelve and thirteen feet tall; now, I am told, they reach to a height of
+more than twenty feet, with a corresponding spread.
+
+"It is almost impossible," says the anonymous writer of the article, "to
+give a Northerner any idea of the affluence of color in this garden when
+its flowers are in bloom. Imagine a long walk with the moss-draped
+live-oaks overhead, a fairy lake and a bridge in the distance, and on
+each side the great fluffy masses of rose and pink and crimson,
+reaching far above your head, thousands upon tens of thousands of
+blossoms packed close together, with no green to mar the intensity of
+their color, rounding out in swelling curves of bloom down to the turf
+below, not pausing a few inches above it and showing bare stems or
+trunk, but spreading over the velvet, and trailing out like the rich
+robes of an empress. Stand on one side and look across the lawn; it is
+like a mad artist's dream of hues; it is like the Arabian nights; eyes
+that have never had color enough find here a full feast, and go away
+satisfied at last. And with all their gorgeousness, the hues are
+delicately mingled; the magic effect is produced not by unbroken banks
+of crude reds, but by blended shades, like the rich Oriental patterns of
+India shawls, which the European designers, with all their efforts, can
+never imitate."
+
+Another remarkable garden, though not the equal of Magnolia, is at
+Middleton Place, not many miles away, and still another is at the
+pleasant winter resort town of Summerville, something more than twenty
+miles above Charleston. The latter, called the Pinehurst Tea Garden, is
+said to be the only tea garden in the United States. It is asserted that
+the teas produced here are better than those of China and Japan, and are
+equal to those of India. The Government is coöperating with the owners
+of this garden with a view to introducing tea planting in the country in
+a large way.
+
+The finest grade of tea raised here is known as "Shelter Tea," and is
+sold only at the gardens, the price being five dollars per pound. It is
+a tea of the Assam species grown under shelters of wire mesh and pine
+straw. This type of tea is known in Japan, where it originated, as
+"sugar tea," because, owing to the fact that it is grown in the shade,
+the sap of the bush, which is of starchy quality, is turned chemically
+into sugar, giving the leaf an exceedingly delicate flavor.
+
+From the superintendent in charge of the gardens I learned something of
+the bare facts of the tea growing industry. I had always been under the
+impression that the name "pekoe" referred to a certain type of tea, but
+he told me that the word is Chinese for "eyelash," and came to be used
+because the tip leaves of tea bushes, when rolled and dried, resemble
+eyelashes. These leaves--"pekoe tips"--make the most choice tea. The
+second leaves make the tea called "orange pekoe," while the third leaves
+produce a grade of tea called simply "pekoe." In China it is customary
+to send three groups of children, successively, to pick the leaves, the
+first group picking only the tips, the second group the second leaves,
+and the third group the plain pekoe leaves. At the Pinehurst Tea Gardens
+the picking is done by colored children, ranging from eight to fifteen
+years of age. All the leaves are picked together and are later separated
+by machinery.
+
+Summerville itself seems a lovely lazy town. It is the kind of place to
+which I should like to retire in the winter if I had a book to write.
+One could be very comfortable, and there would be no radical
+distractions--unless one chanced to see the Most Beautiful Girl in the
+World, who has been known to spend winters at that place.
+
+On the way from Charleston to Summerville, if you go by motor, you pass
+The Oaks, an estate with a new colonial house standing where an ancient
+mansion used to stand. A long avenue bordered by enormous live-oaks,
+leading to this house, gives the place its name, and affords a truly
+noble approach. Here, in Revolutionary times, Marion, "the Swamp Fox,"
+used to camp.
+
+Not far distant from the old gate at The Oaks is Goose Creek Church--the
+most interesting church I have ever seen. The Parish of St. James, Goose
+Creek, was established by act of the Assembly, November 30, 1706, and
+the present church, a brick building of crudely simple architecture, was
+built about 1713. The interior of the church, though in good condition,
+is the oldest looking thing, I think, in the United States. The memorial
+tablets in the walls, with their foreign names and antique lettering,
+the curious old box pews, the odd little gallery at the back, the tall
+pulpit, with its winding stair, above all the Royal Arms of Great
+Britain done in relief on the chancel wall and brilliantly colored--all
+these make Goose Creek Church more like some little Norman church in
+England, than like anything one might reasonably expect to find on this
+side of the world.
+
+Countless items of curious interest hang about the church and parish.
+Michaux, the French botanist who came to this country in 1786, lived for
+a time at Goose Creek. He brought with him the first four camellias
+seen in the United States, planting them at Middleton Place above
+Drayton Hall, where, I believe, they still stand, having reached a great
+height. A British officer known as Mad Archy Campbell was married at
+Goose Creek Church during the Revolution, under romantic circumstances.
+Miss Paulina Phelps, a young lady of the parish, was a great beauty and
+a great coquette, who amused herself alike with American and British
+officers. Campbell met and fell desperately in love with her, and it is
+said that she encouraged him, though without serious intent. One day he
+induced her to go horseback-riding with him and on the ride made love to
+her so vehemently that she was "intimidated into accepting him." They
+rode to the rectory, and Campbell, meeting the rector, demanded that he
+should marry them at once. The dominie replied that he would do so "with
+the consent of the young lady and her mother," but Campbell proposed to
+await no such formalities. Drawing his pistol he gave the minister the
+choice of performing the ceremony then and there, or perishing. This
+argument proved conclusive and the two were promptly wed.
+
+When Goose Creek was within the British lines it is said that the
+minister proceeded, upon one occasion, to utter the prayer for the King
+of England, in the Litany. At the end of the prayer there were no
+"Amens," the congregation having been composed almost entirely, as the
+story goes, of believers in American independence. Into the awkward
+pause after the prayer one voice from the congregation was at last
+injected. It was the voice of old Ralph Izard, saying heartily, not
+"Amen," but "Good Lord, deliver us!" There is a tablet in the church to
+the memory of this worthy.
+
+The story is told, also, of an old gentleman, a member of the
+congregation in Revolutionary times, who informed the minister that if
+he again read the prayer for the King he would throw his prayer-book at
+his head. The minister took this for a jest, but when he began to read
+the prayer on the following Sunday, he found that it was not, for sure
+enough the prayer-book came hurtling through the air. Prayer-books were
+heavier then than they are now, and it is said that as a result of this
+episode, the minister refused to hold service thereafter.
+
+The church is not now used regularly, an occasional memorial service
+only being held there.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Charleston is a hard place to leave. Wherever one may be going from
+there, the change is likely to be for the worse. Nevertheless, it is
+impossible to stay forever; so at last you muster up your resignation
+and your resources, buy tickets, and reluctantly prepare to leave. If
+you depart as we did, you go by rail, driving to the station in the
+venerable bus of the Charleston Transfer Company--a conveyance which,
+one judges, may be coeval with the city's oldest mansions. Little as we
+wished to leave Charleston we did not wish to defer our departure
+through any such banality as the unnecessary missing of a train.
+Therefore as we waited for the bus, on the night of leaving, and as
+train time drew nearer and nearer, with no sign of the lumbering old
+vehicle, we became somewhat concerned.
+
+When the bus did come at last there was little time to spare;
+nevertheless the conductor, an easygoing man of great volubility,
+consumed some precious minutes in gossiping with the hotel porter, and
+then with arranging and rearranging the baggage on the roof of the bus.
+His manner was that of an amateur bus conductor, trying a new
+experiment. After watching his performances for a time, looking
+occasionally at my watch, by way of giving him a hint, I broke out into
+expostulation at the unnecessary delay.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked the man in a gentle, almost grieved tone.
+
+"There's very little time!" I returned. "We don't wish to miss the
+train."
+
+"Oh, all right," said the bus conductor, making more haste, as though
+the information I had given him put a different face on matters
+generally.
+
+Presently we started. After a time he collected our fares. I have
+forgotten whether the amount was twenty-five or fifty cents. At all
+events, as he took the money from my hand he said to me reassuringly:
+
+"Don't you worry, sir! If I don't get you to the train I'll give you
+this money back. That's fair, ain't it?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+OUT OF THE PAST
+
+
+By no means all the leading citizens of Atlanta were in a frame of mind
+to welcome General Sherman when, ten or a dozen years after the Civil
+War, he revisited the city. Captain Evan P. Howell, a former Confederate
+officer, then publisher of the Atlanta "Constitution," was, however, not
+one of the Atlantans who ignored the general's visit. Taking his young
+son, Clark, he called upon the general at the old Kimball House (later
+destroyed by fire), and had an interesting talk with him. Clark Howell,
+who has since succeeded his father as publisher of the "Constitution,"
+was born while the latter was fighting at Chickamauga, and was
+consequently old enough, at the time of the call on Sherman, to remember
+much of what was said. He heard the general tell Captain Howell why he
+had made such a point of taking Atlanta, and as Sherman's military
+reasons for desiring possession of the Georgia city explain, to a large
+extent, Atlanta's subsequent development, I shall quote them as Clark
+Howell gave them to me.
+
+First however, it is perhaps worth while to remind the reader of the
+bare circumstances preceding the fall of Atlanta. After the defeat of
+the Confederate forces at Chattanooga, General Joseph E. Johnston's army
+fell back slowly on Atlanta, much as the French fell back on Paris at
+the beginning of the European War, shortening their own lines of
+communication while those of the advancing Germans were being
+continually attenuated. As the Germans kept after the French, Sherman
+kept after Johnston; and as Joffre was beginning to be criticized for
+failing to make a stand against the enemy, so was Johnston criticized as
+he continued to retire without giving battle. One of the chief
+differences between Joffre's retirement and Johnston's lies, however, in
+the length of time consumed; for whereas the French retreat on Paris
+covered a few days only, the Confederate retreat on Atlanta covered
+weeks and months, giving the Confederate Government time to become
+impatient with Johnston and finally to remove him from command before
+the time arrived when, in his judgment, the stand against Sherman should
+be made. Nor is it inconceivable that, had the French retreat lasted as
+long as Johnston's, Joffre would have been removed and would have lost
+the opportunity to justify his Fabian policy, as he did so gloriously at
+the Battle of the Marne.
+
+Though Atlanta was, at the time of the war, a city of less than 10,000
+inhabitants, it was the chief base of supply for men and munitions in
+the Far South.
+
+"When my father asked him why all his effort and power had been
+centered, after Chickamauga, on the capture of Atlanta," said Clark
+Howell, "I remember that General Sherman extended one hand with the
+fingers spread apart, explaining the strategic situation by imagining
+Atlanta as occupying a position where the wrist joins the hand, while
+the thumb and fingers represented, successively, New Orleans, Mobile,
+Savannah, Charleston, and Norfolk. 'If I held Atlanta,' he said, 'I was
+only one day's journey from these chief cities of the South.'"
+
+In spite, therefore, of the assertion, which I have heard made, that the
+prosperity of Atlanta is "founded on insurance premiums, coca-cola, and
+hot air," it seems to me that it is founded on something very much more
+solid. Nor do I refer to the layer of granite which underlies the city.
+The prosperity of Atlanta is based upon the very feature which made its
+capture seem to Sherman so desirable: its strategic position as a
+central point in the Far South.
+
+Neither in Atlanta nor in any other part of Georgia is General Sherman
+remembered with a feeling that can properly be described as
+affectionate, though it may be added that Atlanta has good reason for
+remembering him warmly. The burning of Atlanta by Sherman did not,
+however, prove an unalloyed disaster, for the war came to an end soon
+after, and the rebuilding of the city supplied work for thousands of
+former Confederate soldiers, and also drew to Atlanta many of the strong
+men who played leading parts in the subsequent commercial upbuilding of
+the place: such men as the late General Alfred Austell, Captain James W.
+English, and the three Inman brothers, Samuel, John, and Hugh--to
+mention but a few names. The First National Bank, established by General
+Austell, is, I believe, Atlanta's largest bank to-day, and was literally
+the first national bank established in Georgia, if not in the whole
+South, after the war.
+
+Woodrow Wilson was admitted to the bar in Atlanta, and, if I mistake
+not, practised law in an office not far from that meeting place of
+highways called Five Points. Here, at Five Points, two important trails
+crossed, long before there was any Atlanta: the north-and-south trail
+between Savannah and Ross's Landing, and the east-and-west trail, which
+followed the old Indian trails between Charleston and New Orleans. When
+people from this part of the country wished to go to Ohio, Indiana, or
+the Mississippi Valley, they would take the old north-and-south trail to
+Ross's Landing, follow the Tennessee River to where it empties into the
+Ohio, near Paducah, Kentucky, and proceed thence to Mississippi.
+
+In the thirties, Atlanta--or rather the site of Atlanta, for the city
+was not founded until 1840--was on the border of white civilization in
+northern Georgia, all the country to the north of the Chattahoochee
+River, which flows a few miles distant from the city, having belonged to
+the Cherokee Indians, who had been moved there from Florida. Even in
+those times the Cherokees were civilized, as Indians go, for they lived
+in huts and practised agriculture. Of course, however, their
+civilization was not comparable with that of the white man. If they had
+been as civilized as he, they might have driven him out of Florida,
+instead of having been themselves driven out, and they might have driven
+him out of Georgia, too, instead of having been pushed on, as they were,
+to the Indian Territory--eighteen thousand of them, under military
+supervision, on boats from Ross's Landing--leaving the beautiful white
+Cherokee rose, which grows wild and in great profusion, in the spring,
+as almost their sole memorial on Georgia soil.
+
+As Georgia became settled the trails developed into wagon and stage
+routes, and later they were followed, approximately, by the railroads.
+After three railroads had reached Atlanta, the State of Georgia engaged
+in what may have been the first adventure, in this country, along the
+lines of government-owned railroads: namely, the building of the Western
+& Atlantic, from Atlanta to Chattanooga, to form a link between the
+lower South and the rapidly developing West. This road was built in the
+forties, and it was along its line that Johnston retreated before
+Sherman, from Chattanooga to Atlanta. Though it is now leased and
+operated by the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railroad Company, it
+is still owned by the State of Georgia. The lease, however, expires
+soon, and (an interesting fact in view of the continued agitation in
+other parts of the country for government ownership of corporations)
+there is a strong sentiment in Georgia in favor of selling the railroad;
+for it is estimated that, at a fair price, it would yield a sum
+sufficient not only to wipe out the entire bonded indebtedness of the
+State ($7,000,000), but to leave ten or twelve millions clear in the
+State treasury.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At Roswell, Georgia, a sleepy little hamlet in the hills, not many miles
+from Atlanta, stands Bulloch Hall, where Martha ("Mittie") Bulloch,
+later Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, mother of the President, was born.
+Roswell was originally settled, long ago, by people from Savannah,
+Darien, and other towns of the flat, hot country near the coast, who
+drove there in their carriages and remained during the summer. After a
+time, however, three prosperous families--the Bullochs, Dunwoodys, and
+Barrington Kings--made their permanent homes at Roswell.
+
+Bulloch Hall is one of those old white southern colonial houses the
+whole front of which consists of a great pillared portico, in the Greek
+style, giving a look of dignity and hospitality. Almost all such houses
+are, as they should be, surrounded by fine old trees; those at Bulloch
+Hall are especially fine: tall cedars, ancient white oaks, giant osage
+oranges, and a pair of holly trees, one at either side of the walk near
+the front door.
+
+Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., and Mittie Bulloch met here when they were
+respectively seventeen and fifteen years of age. A half sister of Miss
+Mittie had married a relative of the Roosevelts and gone from Roswell to
+live in Philadelphia, and it was while visiting at her home that young
+Roosevelt, hearing a great deal of the South, conceived a desire to go
+there. This resulted in his first visit to Bulloch Hall, and his
+meeting with Mittie Bulloch. On his return to the North he was sent
+abroad, but two or three years later when he went again to visit his
+relatives in Philadelphia, Miss Mittie was also a guest at their house,
+and this time the two became engaged.
+
+Save that the Bulloch furniture is no longer there, the interior of the
+old Georgia residence stands practically as it was when Theodore
+Roosevelt and Mittie Bulloch were married in the dining room. Through
+the center, from front to back, runs a wide hall, on either side of
+which is a pair of spacious square rooms, each with a fireplace, each
+with large windows looking out over the beautiful hilly country which
+spreads all about. It is a lovely house in a lovely setting, and, though
+the Bullochs reside there no longer, Miss Mittie Bulloch is not
+forgotten in Roswell, for one of her bridesmaids, Miss Evelyn King, now
+Mrs. Baker, still resides in Barrington Hall, not far distant from the
+old Bulloch homestead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+ALIVE ATLANTA
+
+
+An army officer, a man of broad sympathies, familiar with the whole
+United States, warned me before I went south that I must not judge the
+South by northern standards.
+
+"On the side of picturesqueness and charm," he said, "the South can more
+than hold its own against the rest of the country; likewise on the side
+of office-holding and flowery oratory; but you must not expect southern
+cities to have the energy you are accustomed to in the North."
+
+As to the picturesqueness, charm, officeholding, and oratory, I found
+his judgments substantially correct, but though I did perceive a certain
+lack of energy in some small cities, I should not call that trait a
+leading one in the larger southern cities to-day. On the contrary, I was
+impressed, in almost every large center that I visited, with the fact
+that, in the South more, perhaps, than in any other part of the country,
+a great awakening is in progress. The dormant period of the South is
+past, and all manner of developments are everywhere in progress. Nor do
+I know of any city which better exemplifies southern growth and progress
+than Atlanta.
+
+My Baedeker, dated 1909, opens its description of Atlanta with the
+statement that the German consul there is Dr. E. Zoepffel. I doubt
+it--but let us pass over that. It describes Atlanta as "a prosperous
+commercial and industrial city and an important railroad center, well
+situated, 1030-1175 feet above the sea, enjoying a healthy and bracing
+climate." That is true. Atlanta is, if I mistake not, the highest
+important city east of Denver, and I believe her climate is in part
+responsible for her energy, as it is also for the fact that her
+vegetation is more like that of a northern than a southern city, elms
+and maples rather than magnolias, being the trees of the Atlanta
+streets.
+
+Baedeker gave Atlanta about 90,000 inhabitants in 1909, but the census
+of 1910 jumped her up to more than 150,000, while the estimate of 1917
+in the "World Almanac" credits her with about 180,000. Moreover, in the
+almanac's list of the largest cities of the earth, Atlanta comes
+twentieth from the top. It is my duty, perhaps, to add that the list is
+arranged alphabetically--which reminds me that some cynic has suggested
+that there may have been an alphabetical arrangement of names, also, in
+the celebrated list in which Abou Ben Adhem's "name led all the rest."
+Nevertheless, it may be stated that, according to the almanac's
+population figures, Atlanta is larger than the much more ancient city of
+Athens (I refer to Athens, Greece; not Athens, Georgia), as well as such
+considerable cities as Bari, Bochum, Graz, Kokand, and Omsk. Atlanta is,
+in short, a city of about the size of Goteborg, and if she has not yet
+achieved the dimensions of Baku, Belem, Changsha, Tashkent, or West Ham,
+she is growing rapidly, and may some day surpass them all; yes, and even
+that thriving metropolis, Yekaterinoslav.
+
+As to the "healthy and bracing climate," I know that Atlanta is cool and
+lovely in the spring, and I am told that her prosperous families do not
+make it a practice to absent themselves from home during the summer,
+according to the custom of the corresponding class in many other cities,
+northern as well as southern.
+
+Atlanta is one of the few large inland cities located neither upon a
+river nor a lake. When the city was founded, the customs of life in
+Georgia were such that no one ever dreamed that the State might some day
+go dry. Having plenty of other things to drink, the early settlers gave
+no thought to water. But, as time went on, and prohibition became a more
+and more important issue, the citizens of Atlanta began to perceive
+that, in emergency, the Chattahoochee River might, after all, have its
+uses. Water was, consequently, piped from the river to the city, and is
+now generally--albeit in some quarters mournfully--used. Though I am
+informed by an expert in Indian languages that the Cherokee word
+"chattahoochee" is short for "muddy," the water is filtered before it
+reaches the city pipes, and is thoroughly palatable, whether taken plain
+or mixed.
+
+Well-off though Atlanta is, she would esteem herself better off, in a
+material sense at least, had she a navigable stream; for her chief
+industrial drawback consists in railroad freight rates unmodified by
+water competition. She has, to be sure, a number of factories, including
+a Ford automobile plant, but she has not so many factories as her
+strategic position, stated by General Sherman, would seem to justify, or
+as her own industrial ambitions cause her to desire. For does not every
+progressive American city yearn to bristle with factory chimneys, even
+as a summer resort folder bristles with exclamation points? And is not
+soot a measure of success?
+
+Atlanta's line of business is largely office business; many great
+corporations have their headquarters or their general southern branches
+in the city; one of the twelve Federal Reserve Banks is there, and there
+are many strong banks. Indeed, I suppose Atlanta has more bankers, in
+proportion to her population, than any other city in the United States.
+Some of these bankers are active citizens and permanent residents of the
+city; others have given up banking for the time being and are in
+temporary residence at the Federal Penitentiary.
+
+The character of commerce carried on, naturally brings to Atlanta large
+numbers of prosperous and able men--corporation officials, branch
+managers, manufacturers' agents, and the like--who, with their families,
+give Atlanta a somewhat individual social flavor. This class of
+population also accounts for the fact that the enterprisingness so
+characteristic of Atlanta is not the mere rough, ebullient spirit of "go
+to it!" to be found in so many hustling cities of the Middle West and
+West, but is, oftentimes, an informed and cultivated kind of
+enterprisingness, which causes Atlanta not only to "do things," but to
+do things showing vision, and, furthermore, to do them with an "air."
+
+This is illustrated in various ways. It is shown, for example, in
+Atlanta's principal hotels, which are not small-town hotels, or
+good-enough hotels, but would do credit to any city, however great. The
+office buildings are city office buildings, and in the downtown section
+they are sufficiently numerous to look very much at home, instead of
+appearing a little bit exotic, self-conscious, and lonesome, as new
+skyscrapers do in so many cities of Atlanta's size. Even the smoke with
+which the skyscrapers are streaked is city smoke. Chicago herself could
+hardly produce smoke of more metropolitan texture--certainly not on the
+Lake Front, where the Illinois Central trains send up their black
+clouds; for Atlanta's downtown smoke, like Chicago's, comes in large
+part from railroads piercing the heart of the city. Where downtown
+business streets cross the railroad tracks, the latter are depressed,
+the highways passing above on steel bridges resembling the bridges over
+the Chicago River. The railroad's right of way is, furthermore, just
+about as wide as the Chicago River, and rows of smoke-stained brick
+buildings turn their backs upon it, precisely as similar buildings turn
+theirs upon Chicago's busy, narrow stream. I wonder if all travelers,
+familiar with Chicago, are so persistently reminded of that portion of
+the city which is near the river, as I was by that portion of Atlanta
+abutting on the tracks by which the Seaboard Air Line enters the city.
+
+Generally speaking, railroads in the South have not been so prosperous
+as leading roads in the North, and with the exception of the most
+important through trains, their passenger equipment is, therefore, not
+so good. The Seaboard Air Line, however, runs an all-steel train between
+Atlanta and Birmingham which, in point of equipment, may be compared
+with the best limited trains anywhere. The last car in this train,
+instead of being part sleeping car and part observation car, is a
+combination dining and observation car--a very pleasant arrangement, for
+men are allowed to smoke in the observation end after dinner. This is,
+to my mind, an improvement over the practice of most railroads, which
+obliges men who wish to smoke to leave the ladies with whom they may be
+traveling. All Seaboard dining cars offer, aside from regular ŕ la carte
+service, a sixty-cent dinner known as the "Blue Plate Special." This
+dinner has many advantages over the usual dining-car repast. In the
+first place, though it does not comprise bread and butter, coffee or
+tea, or dessert, it provides an ample supply of meat and vegetables at a
+moderate price. In the second place, though served at a fixed price, it
+bears no resemblance to the old-style dining car table d'hôte, but, upon
+the contrary, looks and tastes like food. The food, furthermore, instead
+of representing a great variety of viands served in microscopic helpings
+on innumerable platters and "side dishes," comes on one great plate,
+with recesses for vegetables. The "Blue Plate Special" furnishes, in
+short, the chief items in a "good home meal."
+
+This is, perhaps, as convenient a place as any in which to speak of
+certain points concerning various railroads in the South. The Central of
+Georgia Railway, running between Atlanta and Savannah, instead of
+operating Pullmans, has its own sleeping cars. This is the only railroad
+I know of in the country on which the tenant of a lower berth, below an
+unoccupied upper, may have the upper closed without paying for it. One
+likes the Central of Georgia for this humane dispensation. The
+locomotives of the Western & Atlantic carry as a distinguishing mark a
+red band at the top of the smokestack. The Southern Railway assigns
+engineers to individual engines, instead of "pooling power," as is the
+practice, I believe, on many railroads. Because of this, engineers on
+the Southern regard the locomotives to which they are regularly
+assigned, as their personal property, and exercise their individual
+taste in embellishing them. Brass bands, brass flagstaffs, brass eagles
+over the headlight, and similar adornments are therefore often seen on
+the engines of this road, giving the most elaborate of them a carnival
+appearance, by contrast with the somber black to which most of us are
+accustomed, and hinting that not all the individuality has been
+unionized out of locomotive engineers--an impression heightened by the
+Southern Railway's further pleasant custom of painting the names of its
+older and more expert engineers upon the cabs of their locomotives.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some cities are like lumbering old farm horses, plugging along a dusty
+country road. When another horse overtakes them, if they be not
+altogether wanting in spirit, they may be encouraged to jog a little
+faster for a moment, stimulated by example. If, besides being stupid,
+they are mean, then they want to kick or bite at the speedier animal
+going by. Some cities are like that, too. If an energetic city overtakes
+them, they are not spurred on to emulation, but lay back their ears, so
+to speak. Again, there are tough, sturdy little cities like buckskin
+ponies. There are skittish cities which seem to have been badly broken.
+There are old cities with a worn-out kind of elegance, like that of
+superannuated horses of good breed, hitched to an old-fashioned
+barouche. There are bad, bucking cities, like Butte, Montana. And here
+and there are cities, like Atlanta, reminding one of thoroughbred
+hunters. There is a brave, sporting something in the spirit of Atlanta
+which makes it rush courageously at big jumps, and clear them, and land
+clean on the other side, and be off again. Like a thoroughbred, she
+loves the chase. She goes in to win. She doesn't stop to worry about
+whether she can win or not. She knows she will. And as the thoroughbred,
+loving large and astonishing achievement, lacks the humbler virtues of
+the reliable family carriage horse, Atlanta, it cannot be denied, has
+"_les défauts de ses qualités_." For whereas, on the side of dashing
+performance, Atlanta held a stock fair which, in one year, surpassed any
+other held in the South, and secured the grand circuit of races, on the
+other side she is careless about hospitals and charities; and whereas,
+on the one side, she has raised millions for the building of two new
+universities (which, by the way, would be much better as one great
+university, but cannot be, because of sectarian domination), on the
+other, she is deficient as to schools; and again, whereas she is the
+only secondary city to have an annual season of Metropolitan grand opera
+(and to make it pay!) she is behind many other cities, including her
+neighbors, New Orleans and Savannah, in caring for the public health.
+
+I am by no means sure that the regular spring visit of the Metropolitan
+Grand Opera Company may be taken as a sign that Atlanta is peculiarly a
+music-loving community. Indeed, I was told by one Atlanta lady, herself
+a musician, that the city did not contain more than a thousand persons
+of real musical appreciation, that a number of these could not afford to
+attend the operatic performances, and that opera week was, consequently,
+in reality more an occasion of great social festivity than of devout
+homage to art.
+
+"Our opera week," she told me, "bears the same relation to the life of
+Atlanta as Mardi Gras does to that of New Orleans. It is an
+advertisement for the city, and an excuse for every one to have a good
+time. Every night after the performance there are suppers and dances,
+which the opera stars attend. They always seem to enjoy coming here.
+They act as though they were off on a picnic, skylarking about the
+hotel, snap-shotting one another, and playing all manner of pranks. And,
+of course, while they are here they own the town. Caruso draws his
+little caricatures for the Atlanta girls, and Atlanta men have been
+dazzled, in successive seasons, by such gorgeous beings as Geraldine
+Farrar, Alma Gluck, and Maria Barrientos--not only across the footlights
+of the auditorium, mind you, but at close range; as, for instance, at
+dances at the Driving Club, with Chinese lanterns strung on the terrace,
+a full moon above, and--one year--with the whole Metropolitan Orchestra
+playing dance music all night long!"
+
+Another lady, endeavoring to picture to me the strain involved in the
+week's gaieties, informed me that when it was all over she went for a
+rest to New York, where she attended "a house party at the Waldorf"!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of all Atlanta's undertakings, planned or accomplished, that which most
+interested my companion and me was the one for turning a mountain into a
+sculptured monument to the Confederacy.
+
+Sixteen miles to the east of the city the layer of granite which
+underlies the region stuck its back up, so to speak, forming a great
+smooth granite hump, known as Stone Mountain. This mountain is one of
+America's natural wonders. In form it may be compared with a
+round-backed fish, such as a whale or porpoise, lying on its belly,
+partly imbedded in a beach, and some conception of its dimensions may be
+gathered from the fact that from nose to tail it measures about two
+miles, while the center of its back is as high as the Woolworth Building
+in New York. Moreover, there is not a fissure in it; monoliths a
+thousand feet long have been quarried from it; it is as solid as the
+Solid South.
+
+The perpendicular streaks of light and dark gray and gray-green, made by
+the elements upon the face of the rock, coupled with the waterfall-like
+curve of that face, make one think of a sort of sublimated petrified
+Niagara--a fancy enhanced, on windy days, by the roar of the gale-lashed
+forest at the mountain's foot.
+
+The idea of turning the mountain into a Confederate memorial originated
+with Mr. William H. Terrell of Atlanta. It was taken up with inspired
+energy by Mrs. C. Helen Plane, an Atlanta lady, now eighty-seven years
+of age, who is honorary president of the United Daughters of the
+Confederacy and president of the Stone Mountain Memorial Association.
+Mrs. Plane presented the memorial plan to Mr. Samuel H. Venable of
+Venable Brothers, owners of the mountain, and Mr. Venable promptly
+turned over the whole face of the mountain to the Memorial Association.
+The exact form the memorial was to take had not at that time been
+developed. Gutzon Borglum was, however, called in, and worked out a
+stupendous idea, which he has since been commissioned to execute. On the
+side of the mountain, about four hundred feet above the ground, a
+roadway is to be gouged out of the granite. On this roadway will be
+carved, in gigantic outlines, a Confederate army, headed by Lee and
+Jackson on horseback. Other generals will follow, and will, in turn, be
+followed by infantry, cavalry and artillery. The leading groups will be
+in full relief and the equestrian figures will be fifty or more feet
+tall. This means that the faces of the chief figures will measure almost
+the height of a man. The figures to the rear of the long column will,
+according to present plans, be in bas-relief, and the whole procession
+will cover a strip perhaps a mile long, all of it carved out of the
+solid mountainside.
+
+A considerable tract of forest land at the foot of the great rock has
+already been dedicated as a park. Here, concealed by the trees, at a
+point below the main group of figures, a temple, with thirteen columns
+representing the thirteen Confederate States, is to be hewn out of the
+mountain, to be used as a place for the safe-keeping of Confederate
+relics and archives.
+
+Two million dollars is the sum spoken of to cover the total cost, and
+one of the finest things about the plans for raising this money is that
+contributions from the entire country are being accepted, so that not
+only the South, but the whole nation, may have a share in the creation
+of a memorial to that dead government which the South so poetically
+adores, yet which it would not willingly resurrect, and in the
+realization of a work resembling nothing so much as Kipling's conception
+of the artist in heaven, who paints on "a ten-league canvas, with
+brushes of comet's hair."
+
+Until the Stone Mountain Memorial is completed, Atlanta's most
+celebrated monument will continue to be that of Jack Smith. The Jack
+Smith monument stands in Oakland Cemetery, not over the grave of Jack
+Smith, but over the grave that local character intends some day to
+occupy. Mr. Smith is reputed to be rich. He built the downtown office
+building known as "The House that Jack Built." As befits the owner of an
+office building, he wears a silk hat, but a certain democratic
+simplicity may be observed in the rest of his attire, especially about
+the region of the neck, for though he apparently believes in the
+convention concerning the wearing of collars, he has a prejudice against
+the concealing of a portion of the collar by that useless and snobbish
+adornment, the necktie. Each spring, I am informed, it is his custom to
+visit his cemetery lot and inspect the statue of himself which a
+commendable foresight has caused him to erect over his proposed final
+resting place. It is said that upon the occasion of last season's vernal
+visit he was annoyed at finding his effigy cravated by a vine which had
+grown up and encircled the neck. This he caused to be removed; and it is
+to be hoped that when, at last, his monument achieves its ultimate
+purpose, those who care for the cemetery will see to it that leafy
+tendrils be not permitted to mount to the marble collar of the figure,
+to form a necktie, or to obscure the nobly sculptured collar button.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+GEORGIA JOURNALISM
+
+
+In journalism Atlanta is far in advance of many cities of her size,
+North or South. The Atlanta "Constitution," founded nearly half a
+century ago, is one of the country's most distinguished newspapers. The
+"Constitution" came into its greatest fame in the early eighties, when
+Captain Evan P. Howell--the same Captain Howell who commanded a battery
+at the battle of Peachtree Creek, in the defense of Atlanta, and who
+later called, with his son, on General Sherman, as already
+recorded--became its editor, and Henry W. Grady its managing editor.
+Like William Allen White and Walt Mason of the Emporia (Kansas)
+"Gazette," who work side by side, admire each other, but disagree on
+every subject save that of the infallibility of the ground hog as a
+weather prophet, Howell and Grady worked side by side and were devoted
+friends, while disagreeing personally, and in print, on prohibition and
+many other subjects. Grady would speak at prohibition rallies and,
+sometimes on the same night, Howell would speak at anti-prohibition
+rallies. In their speeches they would attack each other. The accounts of
+these speeches, as well as conflicting articles written by the two,
+would always appear in the "Constitution."
+
+Of the pair of public monuments to individuals which I remember having
+seen in Atlanta, one was the pleasing memorial, in Piedmont Park, to
+Sidney Lanier (who was peculiarly a Georgia poet, having been born in
+Macon, in that State, and having written some of his most beautiful
+lines under the spell of Georgia scenes), and the other the statue of
+Henry W. Grady, which stands downtown in Marietta Street.
+
+The Grady monument--one regrets to say it--is less fortunate as a work
+of art than as a deserved symbol of remembrance. Grady not only ought to
+have a monument, but as one whose writings prove him to have been a man
+of taste, he ought to have a better one than this poor mid-Victorian
+thing, placed in the middle of a wide, busy street, with Fords parked
+all day long about its base.
+
+Says the inscription:
+
+    HE NEVER SOUGHT A PUBLIC OFFICE.
+     WHEN HE DIED HE WAS LITERALLY
+      LOVING A NATION INTO PEACE.
+
+On another side of the base is chiseled a characteristic extract from
+one of Grady's speeches. This speech was made in 1899, in Boston, and
+one hopes that it may have been heard by the late Charles Francis Adams,
+who labored in Massachusetts for the cause of intersectional harmony,
+just as Grady worked for it in Georgia.
+
+     This hour [said Grady] little needs the loyalty that is loyal to
+     one section and yet holds the other in enduring suspicion and
+     estrangement. Give us the broad and perfect loyalty that loves and
+     trusts Georgia alike with Massachusetts--that knows no South, no
+     North, no East, no West; but endears with equal and patriotic love
+     every foot of our soil, every State in our Union.
+
+Grady could not only write and say stirring things; he could be witty.
+He once spoke at a dinner of the New England Society, in New York, at
+which General Sherman was also present.
+
+"Down in Georgia," he said, "we think of General Sherman as a great
+general; but it seems to us he was a little careless with fire."
+
+Nor was Grady less brilliant as managing editor than upon the platform.
+He had the kind of enterprise which made James Gordon Bennett such a
+dashing figure in newspaper life, and the New York "Herald" such a
+complete _news_paper--the kind of enterprise that charters special
+trains, and at all hazards gets the story it is after. Back in the early
+eighties Grady was running the Atlanta "Constitution" in just that way.
+If a big story "broke" in any of the territory around Atlanta, Grady
+would not wait upon train schedules, but would hire an engine and send
+his men to the scene. Once, following a sensational murder, he learned
+that the Birmingham "Age-Herald" had a big story dealing with
+developments in the case. He wired the "Age-Herald" offering a large
+price for the story. When his offer was refused Grady knew that if he
+could not devise a way to get the story, Atlanta would be flooded next
+day with "Age-Heralds" containing the "beat" on the "Constitution." He
+at once chartered a locomotive and rushed two reporters and four
+telegraph operators down the line toward Birmingham. At Aniston,
+Alabama, the locomotive met the train which was bringing "Age-Heralds"
+to Atlanta. A copy of the paper was secured. The "Constitution" men then
+broke into a telegraph office and wired the whole story in to their
+paper, with the result that the "Constitution" was out with it before
+the Birmingham papers reached Atlanta.
+
+Atlanta was at that time a town of only about 40,000 inhabitants, but
+the "Constitution," in the days of Howell and Grady, had a circulation
+four times greater than the total population of the city--a situation
+almost unheard of in journalism. Something of the breadth of its
+influence may be gathered from the fact that in several counties in
+Texas, where the law provided that whatever newspaper had the largest
+circulation in the county should be the county organ, the county organ
+was the Atlanta "Constitution."
+
+An Atlanta lady tells of having called upon Grady to complain about an
+article which she did not think the "Constitution" should have printed.
+
+"Why did you put that objectionable article in your paper?" she asked
+him.
+
+"Did you read it?" he inquired.
+
+"Yes, I did."
+
+"Then," said Grady, "that's why I put it there."
+
+Grady and Howell always ran a lively sporting department. Away back in
+the days of bare-knuckle prize fights--such as those between Sullivan
+and Ryan, and Sullivan and Kilrain--a "Constitution" reporter was always
+at the ringside, no matter where the fight might take place. For a
+newspaper in a town of forty or fifty thousand inhabitants, a large
+percentage of them colored illiterates, this was real enterprise.
+
+A favorite claim of Grady's was that his reporters were the greatest
+"leg artists" in the world. He used to organize walking matches for
+reporters, offering large prizes and charging admission. This developed,
+in the middle eighties, a general craze for such matches, and resulted
+in the holding of many inter-city contests, in which teams, four men to
+a side, took part. One of the "Constitution's" champion "leg artists"
+was Sam W. Small, now an evangelist and member of the "flying squadron"
+of the Anti-Saloon League of America.
+
+The most widely celebrated individual ever connected with the
+"Constitution" was Joel Chandler Harris, many of whose "Uncle Remus"
+stories--those negro folk tales still supreme in their field--appeared
+originally in that paper. In view of Mr. Harris's achievement it is
+pleasant to recall that there was paid to him during his life one of the
+finest tributes that an author can receive. As with "Mr. Dooley" of our
+day, he came, himself, to be affectionately referred to by the name of
+the chief character in his works. "Uncle Remus" he was, and "Uncle
+Remus" he will always be. Mr. Harris's eldest son, Julian, widely known
+as a journalist, is said to have been the little boy to whom "Uncle
+Remus" told his tales.
+
+Though there is, as yet, no public monument in Atlanta to Joel Chandler
+Harris, the "Wren's Nest," his former home, at 214 Gordon Street, is
+fittingly preserved as a memorial. Visitors may see the old letter box
+fastened to a tree by the gate--that box in which a wren built her nest,
+giving the house its name. It is a simple old house with the air of a
+home about it, and the intimate possessions of the author lie about as
+he left them. His bed is made up, his umbrella hangs upon the
+mantelshelf, his old felt hat rests upon the rack, the photograph of his
+friend James Whitcomb Riley looks down from the bedroom wall, and on the
+table, by the window, stands his typewriter--the confidant first to know
+his new productions.
+
+The presence of these personal belongings keeps alive the illusion that
+"Uncle Remus" has merely stepped out for a little while--is hiding in
+the garden, waiting for us to go away. It would be like him, for he was
+among the most modest and retiring of men, as there are many amusing
+anecdotes to indicate. Once when some one had persuaded him to attend a
+large dinner in New York, they say, he got as far as New York, but as
+the dinner hour approached could not bear to face the adulation awaiting
+him, and incontinently fled back to Atlanta.
+
+Frank L. Stanton, poet laureate of Georgia, and of the "Constitution,"
+joined the "Constitution" staff through the efforts of Mr. Harris, one
+of whose closest intimates he was. Speaking of Mr. Harris's gift for
+negro dialect, Mr. Stanton told me that there was one negro exclamation
+which "Uncle Remus" always wished to reproduce, but which he never quite
+felt could be expressed, in writing, to those unfamiliar with the negro
+at first hand: that is the exclamation of amazement, which has the
+sound, "mmm--_mh!_"--the first syllable being long and the last sharp
+and exclamatory.
+
+Mr. Stanton has for years conducted a column of verse and humorous
+paragraphic comment, under the heading "Just from Georgia," on the
+editorial page of the "Constitution." Some idea of the high estimation
+in which he is held in his State is to be gathered from the fact that
+"Frank L. Stanton Day" is annually celebrated in the Georgia schools.
+
+Mr. Stanton began his newspaper career as a country editor in the town
+of Smithville, Georgia. Mr. Harris, then a member of the
+"Constitution's" editorial staff, began reprinting in that journal
+verses and paragraphs written by Stanton, with the result that the
+Smithville paper became known all over the country. Later Stanton moved
+to Rome, Georgia, becoming an editorial writer on a paper there--the
+"Tribune," edited at that time by John Temple Graves, if I am not
+mistaken. Still later he removed to Atlanta, joined the staff of the
+"Constitution," and started the department which has now continued for
+more than twenty-five years.
+
+Joel Chandler Harris used to tell a story about Stanton's first days in
+the "Constitution" office. According to this story, the paper on which
+Stanton had worked in Rome had not been prosperous, and salaries were
+uncertain. When the business manager went out to try to raise money in
+the town, he never returned without first reading the signals placed by
+his assistant in the office window. If a red flag was shown, it
+signified that a collector was waiting in the office. In that event the
+business manager would not come in, but would circle about until the
+collector became tired of waiting and departed--a circumstance indicated
+by the withdrawal of the red flag and the substitution of a white one.
+According to the story, as it was told to me, reporters on the paper
+were seldom paid; if one of them made bold to ask for his salary, he was
+likely to be discharged. It was from this uncertain existence that
+Stanton was lured to the "Constitution" by an offer of $22.50 per week.
+When he had been on the "Constitution" for three weeks Mr. Harris
+discovered that he had drawn no salary. This surprised him--as indeed it
+would any man who had had newspaper experience.
+
+"Stanton," he said, "you are the only newspaper man I have ever seen who
+is so rich he doesn't need to draw his pay."
+
+But, as it turned out, Stanton was not so prosperous as Harris perhaps
+supposed. He was down to his last dime, and had been wondering how he
+could manage to get along; for his training on the Rome paper had
+taught him never to ask for money lest he lose his job.
+
+"Well," he said to Harris, "I could use _some_ of my salary--if you're
+sure it won't be any inconvenience?"
+
+Those familiar with the works of Mr. Stanton, Mr. Harris, and James
+Whitcomb Riley, Indiana's great poet, will perceive that certain similar
+tastes and feelings inform their writings, and will not be surprised to
+learn, if not already aware of it, that the three were friends. Mr.
+Stanton's only absence from Atlanta since he joined the "Constitution,"
+was on the occasion of a visit he paid Mr. Riley at the latter's home in
+Indianapolis. The best of Stanton's work must have appealed to Riley,
+for it contains not a little of the kindly, homely, humorous
+truthfulness, and warmth of sentiment, of which Riley was himself such a
+master. Among the most widely familiar verses of the Georgia poet are
+those of his "Mighty Like a Rose," set to music by Ethelbert Nevin, and
+"Just a-Wearying for You," with music by Carrie Jacobs Bond. "Money" is
+a verse in hilarious key, which many will remember for the comical vigor
+of the last three lines in its first stanza:
+
+    When a fellow has spent
+    His last red cent
+    The world looks blue, you bet!
+    But give him a dollar
+    And you'll hear him holler:
+    "There's life in the old land yet!"
+
+Richly humorous though Stanton is, he can also reach the heart. The
+former Governor of a Western State picked up Stanton's book, "Songs of
+the Soil," and after reading "Hanging Bill Jones," and "A Tragedy,"
+therein, commuted the sentence of a man who was to have been executed
+next day. One hopes the man deserved to escape. In another case an
+individual who was about to commit suicide chanced to see in an old
+newspaper Stanton's encouraging verses called "Keep a-Goin'," and was
+stimulated by them to have a fresh try at life on earth instead of
+elsewhere.
+
+Joel Chandler Harris wrote the introduction to "Songs of the Soil."
+Other collections of Stanton's works are "Songs of Dixie Land," and
+"Comes One With a Song." The danger in starting to quote from these
+books--which, by the way, are chiefly made up of measures that appeared
+originally in the "Constitution"--is that one does not like to stop. I
+have, however, limited myself to but one more theft, and instead of
+making my own choice, have left the selection to a friend of Mr.
+Stanton's, who has suggested the lines entitled "A Poor Unfortunate":
+
+    His hoss went dead, an' his mule went lame,
+    He lost six cows in a poker game;
+    A harricane come on a summer's day
+    An' carried the house whar he lived away,
+    Then a earthquake come when _that_ wuz gone
+    An' swallered the land that the house stood on!
+    An' the tax collector, he come roun'
+    An' charged him up fer the hole in the groun'!
+    An' the city marshal he come in view
+    An' said he wanted his street tax, too!
+
+    Did he moan an' sigh? Did he set an' cry
+    An' cuss the harricane sweepin' by?
+    Did he grieve that his old friends failed to call
+    When the earthquake come and swallered all?
+    Never a word o' blame he said,
+    With all them troubles on top his head!
+    Not him! He climbed on top o' the hill
+    Whar stan'in' room wuz left him still,
+    An', barrin' his head, here's what he said:
+    "I reckon it's time to git up an' git,
+    But, Lord, I hain't had the measles yit!"
+
+Among those who have been on the staff of the "Constitution" and have
+become widely known, may be mentioned the gifted Corra Harris, many of
+whose stories have Georgia backgrounds, and who still keeps as a country
+home in the State where she was born, a log cabin, known as "In the
+Valley," at Pine Log, Georgia; also the perhaps equally (though
+differently) talented Robert Adamson, whose administration as fire
+commissioner of the City of New York was so able as to result in a
+reduction of insurance rates.
+
+Atlanta reporters, it would seem, run to the New York Fire Department,
+for Joseph Johnson, who preceded Mr. Adamson as commissioner, was once a
+reporter on the Atlanta "Journal." The latter paper used to belong to
+Hoke Smith. It was at one time edited by John Temple Graves, who later
+edited the Atlanta "Georgian," and is now a member of the forces of
+William Randolph Hearst, in New York. The late Jacques Futrelle, the
+author, who went down with the _Titanic_, was a Georgian, and worked for
+years on the "Journal." Don Marquis, one of the most brilliant American
+newspaper "columnists," now in charge of the department known as "The
+Sun Dial" on the New York "Evening Sun," was also at one time on the
+"Journal," as was likewise Grantland Rice, America's most widely read
+sporting writer. Lollie Belle Wiley, whose poetry has a distinct
+southern quality, is, I believe, a member of the "Journal's" staff. As
+the eminent Ty Cobb once wrote a book, it seems fair to mention him also
+among Georgian authors, though so far as I know he never worked on an
+Atlanta paper. And if Atlanta's three celebrated golfers have not
+written for the papers, they have at least supplied the sporting page
+with much material. Miss Alexa Sterling of Atlanta, a young lady under
+twenty, is one of the best women golfers in the United States; Perry
+Adair also figures in national golf, and Robert T. ("Bobby") Jones, Jr.,
+who was southern champion at the age of fourteen, is, perhaps, an
+unprecedented marvel at the game--so at least my golfing friends inform
+me.
+
+The continued militancy of the "Constitution," under the editorship of
+Clark Howell, who sits in his father's old chair, with a bust of Grady
+at his elbow, is evidenced not only by its frequent editorials against
+lynching, but by its fearless campaign against another Georgia
+specialty--the "paper colonel." The ranks of the "paper colonels" in
+the South are chiefly made up of lawyers who "have been colonelized by
+custom for no other reason than that they have led their clients to
+victory in legal battles." Some of the real colonels have been objecting
+to the paper kind, and the "Constitution" has bravely backed up the
+objection.
+
+The liveliness of journalism in Georgia does not begin and end in
+Atlanta. The Savannah "Morning News" has an able editorial page, and
+there are many others in the State. Some of the small-town papers are,
+moreover, well worth reading for that kind of breeziness which we
+usually associate with the West rather than the South. Consider, for
+example, the following, in which the Dahlonega (Georgia) "Nugget,"
+published up in the mountains, in the section where gold is mined,
+discusses the failings of one Billie Adams, the editor's own son-in-law:
+
+     On Saturday last, Billie Adams and his wife waylaid the public road
+     over on Crown Mountain, where this sorry piece of humanity stood
+     and cursed while his wife knocked down and beat her sister, Emma.
+     He is a son-in-law of ours, but if the Lord had anything to do with
+     him, He must have made a mistake and thought He was breathing the
+     breath of life into a dog.
+
+     He is too lazy to work and lays around and waits for his wife to
+     get what she can procure on credit, until she can get nothing more
+     for him and the children to eat. Recently he claimed to be gone to
+     Tennessee in search of work. Upon hearing that his family had
+     nothing to eat, we had Carl Brooksher send over nearly four
+     dollars' worth of provisions. In he came and sat there and feasted
+     until every bite was gone. But this ends it with us.
+
+     There are a lot of people who have sorry kinfolks, but in this
+     instance if there were prizes offered, we would certainly win the
+     first.
+
+     Last year, thinking he would scare his mother-in-law and
+     sister-in-law off from where they live, so he could get the place,
+     he shot two holes through their window, turned their mule out of
+     the stable, and tried to run it into the bean patch, besides
+     hanging up a bunch of switches at the drawbars. Then their fence
+     was set afire twice. This is said to be the work of his wife. Then,
+     after carrying home meat, flour, lard, and vegetables to eat for
+     her mother and sister, he whipped the latter because she refused to
+     give him two of the wagon wheels.
+
+     The city made a case against both for the whipping, and the wife,
+     although coming to town alone frequently during the day, brought
+     her baby and everything to the council room, plead guilty and was
+     fined one and costs. Billie didn't appear, but if he stays in this
+     country Marshal Wimpy will have him, when all these things will
+     come to light, both in the council chamber and grand jury room.
+
+The scandal of newspaperdom in Georgia is, of course, Tom Watson, who
+publishes the "Jeffersonian"--a misnamed paper if there ever was one--in
+the town of Thomson. Many years ago, when Edward P. Thomas, now
+assistant to the president of the United States Steel Corporation, was a
+little boy in Atlanta, complaining about having his ears washed; when
+Theodore D. Rousseau, secretary to Mayor Mitchel of New York, was having
+his early education drilled into him at the Ivy Street school; when
+Ralph Peters, now president of the Long Island Railroad, had left
+Atlanta and become a division superintendent on the Panhandle Road; when
+the parents of Ivy Ledbetter Lee were wondering to what college they
+would send him when he grew to be a big boy; when Robert Adamson was a
+page in the Georgia Legislature--as long ago as that, Tom Watson was
+waving his red head and prominent Adam's apple as a member of the State
+House of Representatives. In the mad and merry days of Bryanism he
+became a Populist Member of Congress. He was nominated for
+vice-president, to run on the Populist ticket with Bryan. Later he ran
+for president on the ticket of some unheard-of party, organized in
+protest against the "conservatism" of the Populists. Watson's paper
+reminds one of Brann and his "Iconoclast." Reading it, I have never been
+able to discover what Watson was _for_. All I could find out was what he
+was violently against--and that is almost everything. He is the wild ass
+of Georgia journalism; the thistles of chaos are sweet in him, and order
+in any department of life is a chestnut burr beneath his tail.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+SOME ATLANTA INSTITUTIONS
+
+
+There has been great rejoicing in Atlanta over the raising of funds for
+the establishment there of two new universities, Emory and Oglethorpe.
+Emory was founded in 1914, as the result of a feud which developed in
+Vanderbilt University, located at Nashville, Tennessee, over the
+question as to whether the institution should be controlled by the Board
+of Bishops of the southern Methodist Episcopal Church, or by the
+University trustees, who were not so much interested in the development
+of the sectarian side of the university. The fight was taken to the
+courts where the trustees won. As a result, Methodist influence and
+support were withdrawn from Vanderbilt, which thenceforward became a
+non-sectarian college, and Emory was started--Atlanta having been
+selected as its home because nearly a million and a half dollars was
+raised in Atlanta to bring it there.
+
+Oglethorpe is to be a Presbyterian institution, and starts off with a
+million dollars.
+
+This will give Atlanta three rather important colleges, since she
+already has the technical branch of the University of Georgia, the main
+establishment of which located at Athens, Georgia, is one of the oldest
+state universities in the country, having been founded in 1801. (The
+University of Tennessee is the oldest state university in the South. It
+was founded in 1794. The University of Pennsylvania, dating from 1740,
+is the oldest of all state universities. Harvard, founded in 1636, was
+the first college established in the country; and the only other
+American colleges which survive from the seventeenth century are William
+and Mary, at Williamsburg, Virginia, established in 1693, and St. John's
+College, at Annapolis, dating from 1696.)
+
+There is a tendency in some parts of the South to use the terms
+"college" and "university" loosely. Some schools for white persons,
+doing little if anything more than grammar and high-school work, are
+called "colleges," and negro institutions doing similar work are
+sometimes grandiloquently termed "universities."
+
+Atlanta has thirteen public schools for negroes, but no public high
+school for them. There are, however, six large private educational
+institutions for negroes in the city, doing high-school, college, or
+graduate work, making Atlanta a great colored educational center. Of
+these, Atlanta University, a non-sectarian co-educational college with a
+white president (Mr. Edward T. Ware, whose father came from New England
+and founded the institution in 1867), is, I believe, the oldest and
+largest. It is very highly spoken of. Atlanta and Clark Universities are
+the only two colored colleges in Atlanta listed in the "World Almanac's"
+table of American universities and colleges. Clark also has a white man
+as president.
+
+Spelman Seminary, a Baptist institution for colored girls, has a white
+woman president, and is partially supported by Rockefeller money.
+Morehouse College, for boys, has a colored president, an able man, is of
+similar denomination and is also partially supported by Rockefeller
+funds. Spelman and Morehouse are run separately, excepting in college
+work, on which they combine. Both are said to be excellent. Morris Brown
+University is not a university at all, but does grammar and high-school
+work. It is officered and supported by colored people, all churches of
+the African Methodist Episcopal denomination subscribing funds for its
+maintenance. Gammon Theological Seminary is, I am informed, the one
+adequately endowed educational establishment for negroes in Atlanta. It
+would, of course, be a splendid thing if the best of these schools and
+colleges could be combined.
+
+Citizens of Atlanta do not, generally, take the interest they ought to
+take in these or other institutions for the benefit of negroes. To be
+sure, most Southerners do not believe in higher education for negroes;
+but, even allowing for that viewpoint, it is manifestly unfair that
+white children should have public high schools and that negro children
+should have none, but should be obliged to pay for their education above
+the grammar grades. Perhaps there are people in Atlanta who believe that
+even a high-school education is undesirable for the negro. That,
+however, seems to me a pretty serious thing for one race to attempt to
+decide for another--especially when the deciding race is not deeply and
+sincerely interested in the uplift of the race over which it holds the
+whip hand. Certainly intelligent people in the South believe in
+industrial training for the negro, and equally certainly a negro high
+school could give industrial training.
+
+Negroes are not admitted to Atlanta parks, nor are there any parks
+exclusively for them. Until recently there was no contagious-disease
+hospital to which negroes could be taken, and there is not now a
+reformatory for colored girls in the State of Georgia. Neither is there
+any provision whatsoever in the State for the care of feeble-minded
+colored children. And there is one thing even worse to be said. Shameful
+as are Georgia's frequent lynchings, shameful as is the State's
+indifference to negro welfare, blacker yet is the law upon her statute
+books making the "age of consent" _ten years_! Various women's
+organizations, and individual women, have, for decades, worked to change
+this law, but without success. The term "southern chivalry" must ring
+mocking and derisive in the ears of Georgia legislators until this
+disgrace is wiped out. Standing as it does, it means but one thing: that
+in order to protect some white males in their depravity, the voters of
+Georgia are satisfied to leave little girls, ten, eleven, twelve years
+of age, and upward, white as well as colored, utterly unprotected by the
+law in this regard.
+
+I have heard more than one woman in Georgia intimate that she would be
+well pleased with a little less exterior "chivalry" and a little more
+plain justice. Aside from their efforts to change the "age of consent"
+law, leading women in the State have been working for compulsory
+education, for the opening of the State University to women, for factory
+inspection and decent child-labor laws. The question of child labor has
+now been taken in hand by the National Government--as, of course, the
+"age of consent" should also be--but in other respects but little
+progress has been made in Georgia.
+
+From such cheerless items I turn gladly to a happier theme.
+
+As I have said elsewhere in this book, many colored people in Atlanta
+are doing well in various ways. At Atlanta University I saw several
+students whose fathers and mothers were graduates of the same
+institution. Higher education for the negro has, thus, come into its
+second generation. More prosperous negroes in Atlanta are doing social
+settlement work among less fortunate members of their race, and have
+started a free kindergarten for negro children. Many good people in
+Atlanta are unaware of these facts, and I believe their judgment on the
+entire negro question would be modified, at least in certain details,
+were they merely to inform themselves upon various creditable negro
+activities in the city. The northern stranger, attempting to ascertain
+the truth about the negro and the negro problem, has to this extent the
+advantage of the average Southerner: prejudice and indifference do not
+prevent his going among the negroes to find out what they are doing for
+themselves.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At various times in my life chance has thrown me into contact with
+charities in great variety, and philanthropic work of many kinds. I have
+seen theoretical charities, sentimental charities, silly charities,
+pauperizing charities, wild-eyed charities, charities which did good,
+and others which worked damage in the world; I have seen organized
+charities splendidly run under difficult circumstances (as in the
+Department of Charities under Commissioner Kingsbury, in New York City),
+and I have seen other organized charities badly run at great expense; I
+have seen charities conducted with the primary purpose of ministering to
+the vanity of self-important individuals who like to say: "See all the
+good that I am doing!" and I have seen other personal charities operated
+(as in the case of the Rockefeller Foundation) with a perfectly
+magnificent scope and effectiveness.
+
+Nevertheless, of all the charities I have seen, of all the efforts I
+have witnessed to improve the condition of humanity, none has taken a
+firmer hold upon my heart than the Leonard Street Orphans' Home, for
+negro girls, in Atlanta.
+
+The home is a humble frame building which was used as a barracks by
+northern troops stationed in Atlanta after the Civil War. In it reside
+Miss Chadwick, her helpers, and about seventy little negro girls; and it
+is an interesting fact that several of the helpers are young colored
+women who, themselves brought up in the home and taught to be
+self-supporting, have been drawn back to the place by homesickness. Was
+ever before an orphan homesick for an orphans' home?
+
+Miss Chadwick is an Englishwoman. Coming out to America a good many
+years ago, she somehow found Atlanta, and in Atlanta somehow found this
+orphanage, which was then both figuratively and literally dropping to
+pieces. Some one had to take hold of it, so Miss Chadwick did. How
+successful she has been it is hard to convey in words. I do not mean
+that she has succeeded in building up a great flourishing plant with a
+big endowment and all sorts of improvements. Far from it. The home
+stands on a tiny lot, the building is ramshackle and not nearly large
+enough for its purpose, and sometimes it seems doubtful where the money
+to keep it going will come from. Nevertheless the home is a hundred
+times more successful than I could have believed a home for orphans,
+colored or white, could be made, had I not seen it with my own eyes. Its
+success lies not in material possessions or prosperity, not in the food
+and shelter it provides to those who so pitifully needed it, but in the
+fact that it is in the truest and finest sense a _home_, a place endowed
+with the greatest blessings any home can have: contentment and
+affection. What Miss Chadwick has provided is, in short, an institution
+with a heart.
+
+How did she do it? That, like the other mystery of how she manages to
+house those seventy small lively people in that little building, is
+something which only Heaven and Miss Chadwick understand.
+
+But then, if you have ever visited the home and met Miss Chadwick, and
+seen her with her children, you know that Heaven and Miss Chadwick
+understand a lot of things the rest of us don't know about at all!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+A BIT OF RURAL GEORGIA
+
+    To walk with the morning and watch its rose unfold;
+    To drowse with the noontide lulled in its heart of gold;
+    To lie with the night-time and dream the dreams of old.
+
+    --MADISON CAWEIN.
+
+
+A man I know studies as a hobby something which he calls "graphics"--the
+term denoting the reaction of the mind to certain words. One of the
+words he used in an experiment with me was "winter." When he said
+"winter" there instantly came to me the picture of a snowstorm in
+Quebec. I saw the front of the Hotel Frontenac at dusk through a mist of
+driving snow. There were lights in the windows. A heavy wind was blowing
+and as I leaned against it the front of my overcoat was plastered with
+sticky white flakes. The streets and sidewalks were deep with snow, and
+the only person besides myself in the vision was a sentry standing with
+his gun in the lee of the vestibule outside the local militia
+headquarters.
+
+If my friend were to come now and try me with the word "spring," I know
+what picture it would call to mind. I should see the Burge plantation,
+near Covington, Georgia: the simple old white house with its rose-clad
+porch, or "gallery," its grove of tall trees, its carriage-house, its
+well-house, and other minor dependencies clustering nearby like
+chickens about a white hen, its background the rolling cottonfields,
+their red soil glowing salmon-colored in the sun. For, as I was never so
+conscious of the brutality of winter as in that evening snowstorm at
+Quebec, I was never so conscious, as at the time of our visit to the
+Burge plantation, of the superlative soft sweetness of the spring.
+
+In seasons, as in other things, we have our individual preferences.
+Melancholy natures usually love autumn, with its colorings so like sweet
+sad minor chords. But what kind of natures they are which rejoice in
+spring, which feel that with each spring the gloomy past is blotted out,
+and life, with all its opportunities, begins anew--what kind of natures
+they are which recognize April instead of January as the beginning of
+their year I shall not attempt to tell, for mine is such a nature, and
+one must not act at once as subject and diagnostician.
+
+So long as I endure, spring can never come again without turning my
+thoughts to northwestern Georgia; to the peculiar penetrating warmth
+which passed through the clothing to the body and made one feel that one
+was not surrounded by mere air, but was immersed in a dry bath of some
+infinitely superior vapor, a vapor volatile, soothing, tonic, distilled,
+it seemed, from the earth, from pine trees, tulip trees, balm-of-Gilead
+trees, (or "bam" trees, as they call them), blossoming Judas trees,
+Georgia crabapple, dogwood pink and white, peach blossom, wistaria,
+sweet-shrub, dog violets, pansy violets, Cherokee roses, wild
+honeysuckle and azalia, and the evanescent green of new treetops, all
+carried in solution in the sunlight. By day the brilliant cardinal adds
+his fine note of color and sound, but at night he is silent, and when
+the moon comes out one hears the mockingbird and, it may be also, two
+whippoorwills, one in the grove near the house, one in the woods across
+the road, calling back and forth. Then one is tempted to step down from
+the porch, and follow the voices of the birds into the vague recesses of
+a night webbed with dark tree shadows outlined in blue moonlight.
+
+Small wonder it is, if, as report says, no houseparty on a southern
+plantation is a success unless young couples become "sort of engaged,"
+and if in a region so provocative in springtime under a full moon, a
+distinction is recognized between being merely "engaged," and being
+engaged _to be married_.
+
+One Georgia belle we met, a sloe-eyed girl whose reputation not only for
+beauty but for charm reached through the entire South, had, at the time
+of our visit, recently become engaged in the more grave and permanent
+sense.
+
+"How does it seem?" a girl friend asked her.
+
+"I feel," she answered, "like a man who has built up a large business
+and is about to go into the hands of a receiver."
+
+Such ways as those girls have! Such voices! Such eyes! And such names,
+too! Names which would not fit at all into a northern setting,
+relatively so hard and unsentimental, but which, when one becomes
+accustomed to them, take their place gracefully and harmoniously in the
+southern picture. The South likes diminutives and combinations in its
+women's names. Its Harriets, Franceses, Sarahs, and Marthas, become
+Hatties, Fannies, Sallies and Patsies, and Patsy sometimes undergoes a
+further transition and becomes Passie. Moreover, where these diminutives
+have been passed down for several generations in a family, their origin
+is sometimes lost sight of, and the diminutive becomes the actual
+baptismal name. In one family of my acquaintance, for example, the name
+Passie has long been handed down from mother to daughter. The original
+great-grandmother Passie was christened Martha but was at first called
+Patsy; then, because her black mammy was also named Patsy, the daughter
+of the house came to be known, for purposes of differentiation, as
+Passie, and when she married and had a daughter of her own, the child
+was christened Passie. In this family the name May has more recently
+been adopted as a middle name, and it is customary for familiars of the
+youngest Passie, to address her not merely as Passie, but as Passie-May.
+The inclusion of the second name, in this fashion, is another custom not
+uncommon in the South. In Atlanta alone I heard of ladies habitually
+referred to as Anna-Laura, Hattie-May, Lollie-Belle, Sally-Maud,
+Nora-Belle, Mattie-Sue, Emma-Belle, Lottie-Belle, Susie-May, Lula-Belle,
+Sallie-Fannie, Hattie-Fannie, Lou-Ellen, Allie-Lou, Clara-Belle,
+Mary-Ella, and Hattie-Belle. Another young lady was known to her friends
+as Jennie-D.
+
+The train from Atlanta set us down at Covington, Georgia, or rather at
+the station which lies between the towns of Covington and Oxford--for
+when this railroad was built neither town would allow it a right of way,
+and to this day each is connected with the station by a street car line,
+either line equipped with one diminutive car, a pair of disconsolate
+mules, and a driver. Covington is the County seat, a quiet southern
+town, part old, part new, with a look of rural prosperity about it.
+Stopping at the postoffice to inquire for mail we saw this peremptory
+sign displayed:
+
+     When the window is down don't bang around and ask for a stamp or
+     two.
+
+     --J.L. CALLAWAY, Postmaster.
+
+As the window was down we tiptoed out and went upon our way, driving
+through Oxford before going to the plantation. This town was named for
+Oxford, England, and is, like its namesake, a college town. A small and
+very old Methodist educational institution, with a pretty though ragged
+campus and fine trees, is all there is to Oxford, save a row of
+ante-bellum houses. One of them, a pleasant white mansion, half
+concealed by the huge magnolias which stand in its front yard, was at
+one time the residence of General Longstreet. The old front gate,
+hanging on a stone post, was made by the general with his own hands--and
+well made, for it is to-day as good a gate as ever. Corra Harris lived
+at one time in Oxford; her husband, Rev. Lundy H. Harris, having been a
+professor at the college.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Though plantation life has necessarily changed since the war, I do not
+believe that there is in the whole South a plantation where it has
+changed less than on the Burge plantation. In appearance the place is
+not as Sherman's men found it, for they tore down the fences and ruined
+the beautiful old-fashioned garden, and neither has been replaced; nor,
+of course, is it run, so far as practical affairs are concerned, as it
+was before the War; that is to say, instead of being operated as a unit
+of nine-hundred acres, it is now worked chiefly on shares, and is
+divided up into "one mule farms" and "two mule farms," these being
+tracts of about thirty and sixty acres, respectively, thirty acres being
+approximately the area which can be worked by a man and a mule.
+
+Practically all the negroes on the place--perhaps a hundred in
+number--are either former slaves of the Burge family, or the children,
+grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of slaves who lived on the
+plantation. That is one reason why the plantation is less changed in
+spirit than are many others. The Burges were religious people, used
+their slaves kindly, and brought them up well, so that the negroes on
+the plantation to-day are respectable, and in some instances, exemplary
+people, very different from the vagrant negro type which has developed
+since the War, making labor conditions in some parts of the South
+uncertain, and plantation life, in some sections, not safe for
+unprotected women.
+
+The present proprietors of the Burge plantation are two ladies,
+granddaughters of Mrs. Thomas Burge, who lived here, a widow, with a
+little daughter, when General Sherman and his hosts came by. These
+ladies frequently spend months at the plantation without male protectors
+save only the good negroes of their own place, who look after them with
+the most affectionate devotion. True, the ladies keep an ugly looking
+but mild mannered bulldog, of which the negroes are generally afraid;
+true also they carry a revolver when they drive about the country in
+their motor, and keep revolvers handy in their rooms; but these
+precautions are not taken, they told me, because of any doubts about the
+men on their place, their one fear being of tramp negroes, passing by.
+
+Of their own negroes several are remarkable, particularly one old
+couple, perfect examples of the fine ante-bellum type so much beloved in
+the South, and so much regretted as it disappears.
+
+During the period of twenty years or more, while the owners were absent,
+growing up and receiving their education, the whole place, indoors and
+out, was in charge of Uncle George and Aunt Sidney. The two lived, and
+still do live, in one wing of the house--over which Aunt Sidney presides
+as housekeeper and cook, as her mother, Aunt Liddy, did before her. Aunt
+Liddy died only a short time ago, aged several years over a hundred.
+Uncle George supervises all the business of the plantation, as he has
+done for thirty or forty years. He collects all rents, markets the crops
+and receives the payments, makes purchases, pays bills, and keeps peace
+between the tenants--nor could any human being be more honorable or
+possess a finer, sweeter dignity. As for devotion, when the little girls
+who were away returned after all the years as grown women, every ribbon,
+every pin in that house was where it had been left, and the place was no
+less neat than if the "white folks" had constantly remained there.
+
+Before Georgia went dry it was customary for negroes of the rougher sort
+to get drunk in town every Saturday night. Drunken negroes would
+consequently be passing by, all night, on their way to their homes,
+yelling and (after the manner of their kind when intoxicated) shooting
+their revolvers in the air. Every Saturday night, when the ladies were
+at home, Uncle George would quietly take his gun and place himself on
+the porch, remaining there until the last of the obstreperous wayfarers
+had passed.
+
+Uncle Abe and Uncle Wiley are two other worthy and venerable men who
+live in cabins on the place. Both were there when Sherman's army passed
+upon its devastating way, and both were carried off, as were thousands
+upon thousands of other negroes out of that wide belt across the State
+of Georgia, which was overrun in the course of the March to the Sea.
+
+"Ah was goin' to mill wid de ox-caht," Uncle Abe told me, "when de
+soljas dey kim 'long an' got me. Dey tol' me, 'Heah, nigga! Git out dat
+caht, an' walk behin'. When _it_ moves _you_ move; when _it_ stops _you_
+stop!' An' like dat Ah walk all de way to Savannah [two hundred and
+fifty miles]. Den, after dat, dey took us 'long up No'th--me an' ma
+brotha Wiley, ovah deh."
+
+I asked him what regiment he went with. He said it was the Twenty-second
+Indiana, and that Dr. Joe Stilwell, of that regiment, who came from a
+place near Madison, Indiana ("Ah reckon de town was name Brownstown"),
+was good to him. An officer whom he knew, he said, was Captain John
+Snodgrass, and another Major Tom Shay.
+
+"All Ah was evvuh wo'ied about aftuh dey kim tuck me," he declared, "was
+gittin' somep'n t' eat. Dat kinda put me on de wonduh, sometahmes, but
+dey used us all right. Dr. Pegg--him dat did de practice on de
+plantation befo' de Wah--he tol' de niggas dat de Yankees would put gags
+in deh moufs an' lead 'em eroun' like dey wuz cattle. But deh wa' n't
+like dat nohow. I b'longed to de Secon' Division, Thuhd B'gade,
+Fou'teenth Co' [corps]. Cap'n Snodgrass, he got to be lieutenant-cuhnel.
+He was de highes' man Ah evuh hel' any convuhsation wid, but I _saw_ all
+de gennuls of dat ahmy."
+
+Uncle Wiley is older than Uncle Abe. He was already a grown man with
+three children when taken away by some of Sherman's men. He told me he
+was with the Fifty-second Ohio, and mentioned Captain Shepard.
+
+The two brothers got as far as Washington, D.C.
+
+"We got los' togedduh in de U.S. buildin' in dat city," said Uncle
+Wiley. "De President of de U.S. right at dat tahme he was daid. He was
+kill', Ah don' s'pose it wuz a week befo' we got to Wash'n, D.C."
+
+"How did you happen to come all the way back?" I asked.
+
+"Well-l," ruminated the old man, "home was always a-restin' on mah min'.
+Ah kep' thinkin' 'bout home. So aftuh de Wah ceasted Ah jus' kim 'long
+back."
+
+Many of the old plantation customs still survive. A little before noon
+the bell is rung to summon the hands from the cotton fields. Over the
+red plowed soil you hear a darky cry, a melodious "Oh-_oh_-oh!" as wild
+and musical as the cries of the south-Italian olive gatherers. The
+planters cease their work, mules stand still, traces are unhooked from
+singletrees, and chain-ends thrown over the mules' backs; then the men
+mount the animals and ride in to the midday meal, the women trudging
+after. Those who rent land, or work on shares, go to their own cabins,
+while those employed by the hour or by the day (the rate of pay is ten
+cents an hour or seventy-five cents a day) come to the kitchen to be
+fed. Nor is it customary to stop there at feeding negroes. As in the old
+days, any negro who has come upon an errand or who has "stopped by" to
+sell supplies, or for whatever purpose, expects to stay for "dinner,"
+and makes it a point to arrive about noon. Thus from sixteen to twenty
+negroes are fed daily at the Burge plantation house.
+
+The old Christmas traditions are likewise kept up. On Christmas day the
+negroes come flocking up to the house for their gifts. Their first
+concern is to attempt to cry "Christmas gift!" to others, before it can
+be said to them--for according to ancient custom the one who says the
+words first must have a gift from the other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+A YOUNG METROPOLIS
+
+
+An observer approaching a strange city should be "neutral even in
+thought." He may listen to what is said of the city, but he must not
+permit his opinions to take form in advance; for, like other gossip,
+gossip about cities is unreliable, and the casual stranger's estimate of
+cities is not always founded upon broad appreciations. But though it is
+unwise to judge of cities by what is said of them, it is perhaps worth
+remarking that one may often judge of men by what they say of cities.
+
+I remember an American manufacturer, broken down by overwork, who, when
+he looked at Pompeii, could think only of the wasted possibilities of
+Vesuvius as a power plant, and I remember two traveling salesmen on a
+southern railroad train who expressed scorn for the exquisite city of
+Charleston because--they said--it is but a poor market place for
+suspenders and barbers' supplies. There are those who think of Boston
+only as headquarters of the shoe trade, others who think of it only in
+the terms of culture, and still others who regard it solely as an abode
+of negrophiles.
+
+In the case of the chief city of Alabama, however, my companion and I
+noticed, as we journeyed through the South, that reports were
+singularly in accord. Birmingham is too young to have any Civil War
+history. Her history is the history of the steel industry in the South,
+and one hears always of that: of the affluence of the city when the
+industry is thriving, and hard times when it is not. One is invariably
+told that Birmingham is not a southern city, but a northern city in the
+South, and the chief glories of the place, aside from steel, are (if one
+is to believe rumors current upon railroad trains and elsewhere), a
+twenty-seven story building, Senator Oscar Underwood, the distinguished
+Democratic leader, and the Tutwiler Hotel. Even in Atlanta it is
+conceded that the Tutwiler is a good hotel, and when Atlanta admits that
+anything in Birmingham is good it may be considered as established that
+the thing is very, very good--for Birmingham and Atlanta view each other
+with the same degree of cordiality as is exchanged between St. Louis and
+Kansas City, Minneapolis and St. Paul, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
+
+Having been, in the course of our southern wanderings, in several very
+bad hotels, and having heard the Tutwiler compared with Chicago's
+Blackstone, my companion and I held eager anticipation of this hostelry.
+Nor were our hopes dashed by a first glimpse of the city on the night of
+our arrival. It was a modern-looking city--just the sort of city that
+would have a fine new hotel. The railroad station through which we
+passed after leaving the train was not the usual dingy little southern
+station, but an admirable building, and the streets along which we
+presently found ourselves gliding in an automobile hack, were wide,
+smooth, and brightly illuminated by clustered boulevard lights.
+
+True, we had long since learned not to place too much reliance upon the
+nocturnal aspects of cities. A city seen by night is like a woman
+dressed for a ball. Darkness drapes itself about her as a black-velvet
+evening gown, setting off, in place of neck and arms, the softly glowing
+façades of marble buildings; lights are her diamond ornaments, and her
+perfume is the cool fragrance of night air. Almost all cities, and
+almost all women, look their best at night, and there are those which,
+though beautiful by night, sink, in their daylight aspect, to utter
+mediocrity.
+
+Presently our motor drew up before the entrance of the Tutwiler--a proud
+entrance, all revolving doors and glitter and promise. A brisk bell boy
+came running for our bags. The signs were of the best.
+
+The lobby, though spacious, was crowded; the decorations and equipment
+were of that rich sumptuousness attained only in the latest and most
+magnificent American hotels; there was music, and as we made our way
+along we caught a glimpse, in passing, of an attractive supper room,
+with small table-lights casting their soft radiance upon white shirt
+fronts and the faces of pretty girls. In all it was a place to make glad
+the heart of the weary traveler, and to cause him to wonder whether his
+dress suit would be wrinkled when he took it from his trunk.
+
+Behind the imposing marble "desk" stood several impeccable clerks, and
+to one of these I addressed myself, giving our names and mentioning the
+fact that we had telegraphed for rooms. I am not sure that this young
+man wore a braided cutaway and a white carnation; I only know that he
+affected me as hotel clerks in braided cutaways and white carnations
+always do. While I spoke he stood a little way back from the counter,
+his chin up, his gaze barely missing the top of my hat, his nostrils
+seeming to contract with that expression of dubiousness assumed by
+delicate noses which sense, long before they encounter it, the aroma of
+unworthiness.
+
+"Not a room in the house," he said. Then, as though to forestall further
+parley, he turned and spoke with gracious lightness to one of his own
+rank and occupation who, at the request of my companion, was
+ascertaining whether letters were awaiting us.
+
+"But we telegraphed two days ago!" I protested desperately.
+
+"Can't help it. Hardware Convention. Everything taken."
+
+Over my shoulder I heard from my companion a sound, half sigh, half
+groan, which echoed the cry of my own heart.
+
+"I felt this coming!" he murmured. "Didn't you notice all these people
+with ribbons on them? There's never any room in a hotel where
+everybody's wearing ribbons. It's like a horse show. They get the
+ribbons and we get the gate."
+
+"Surely," I faltered, "you can let us have one small room?"
+
+"Impossible," he answered brightly. "We've turned away dozens of people
+this evening."
+
+"Then," I said, abandoning hope, "perhaps you will suggest some other
+hotel?"
+
+I once heard a woman, the most perfect parvenu I ever met, speak of her
+poor relations in a tone exactly similar to that in which the clerk now
+spoke the names of two hotels. Having spoken, he turned and passed
+behind the partition at one end of the marble counter.
+
+My companion and I stood there for a moment looking despondently at each
+other. Then, without a word, we retreated through that gorgeous lobby,
+feeling like sad remnants of a defeated Yankee army.
+
+Again we motored through the bright streets, but only to successive
+disappointments, for both hotels mentioned by the austere clerk were
+"turning 'em away." Our chauffeur now came to our aid, mentioning
+several small hotels, and in one of these, the Granada, we were at last
+so fortunate as to find lodgings.
+
+"It begun to look like you'd have to put up at the Roden," the chauffeur
+smiled as we took our bags out of the car and settled with him.
+
+"The Roden?"
+
+"Yes," he returned "Best ventilated hotel in the United States."
+
+Next day when the Hotel Roden was pointed out to us we appreciated the
+witticism, for the Roden is--or was at the time of our visit--merely
+the steel skeleton of a building which, we were informed, had for some
+years stood unfinished owing to disagreements among those concerned with
+its construction.
+
+As for the Granada, though a modest place, it was new and clean; the
+clerk was amiable, the beds comfortable, and if our rooms were too small
+to admit our trunks, they were, at all events, outside rooms, each with
+a private bath, at a rate of $1 per day apiece. Never in any hotel have
+I felt that I was getting so much for my money.
+
+Next morning, after breakfast, we set out to see the city. Having
+repeatedly heard of Birmingham as the "Pittsburgh of the South," we
+expected cold daylight to reveal the sooty signs of her industrialism,
+but in this we were agreeably disappointed. By day as well as by night
+the city is pleasing to the eye, and it is a fact worth noting that the
+downtown buildings of Atlanta (which is not an industrial city) are
+streaked and dirty, whereas those of Birmingham are clean--the reason
+for this being that the mills and furnaces of Birmingham are far removed
+from the heart of the town, whereas locomotives belch black smoke into
+the very center of Atlanta's business and shopping district.
+
+Moreover, the metropolis of Alabama is better laid out than that of
+Georgia. The streets of Birmingham are wide, and the business part of
+the city, lying upon a flat terrain, is divided into large, even
+squares. From this district the chief residence section mounts by easy,
+graceful grades into the hills to the southward. Because of these
+grades, and the curving drives which follow the contours of the hills,
+and the vistas of the lower city, and the good modern houses, and the
+lawns and trees and shrubbery and breezes, this Highlands region is
+reminiscent of a similar residence district in Portland, Oregon--which
+is to say that it is one of the most agreeable districts of the kind in
+the United States.
+
+Well up on the hillside, Highland Avenue winds a charming course between
+pleasant homes, with here and there a little residence park branching
+off to one side, and here and there a small municipal park occupying an
+angle formed by a sharp turn in the driveway; and if you follow the
+street far enough you will presently see the house of the Birmingham
+Country Club, standing upon its green hilltop, amidst rolling, partly
+wooded golf links, above the road.
+
+Nor is the Country Club at the summit of this range of hills. Back of it
+rise other roads, the most picturesque of them being Altamont Road,
+which runs to the top of Red Mountain, reaching a height about
+equivalent to that of the cornice line of Birmingham's tallest building.
+The houses of this region are built on streets which, like some streets
+of Portland, are terraced into the hillside, and the resident of an
+upper block can almost look down the chimneys of his neighbors on the
+block below. The view commanded from these mountain perches does not
+suggest that the lower city runs up into the Highlands. It seems to be a
+separate place, down in a distant valley, and the sense of its
+remoteness is heightened by the thin veil of gray smoke which wafts from
+the tall smokestacks of far-off iron furnaces, softening the serrated
+outlines of the city and wrapping its tall buildings in the industrial
+equivalent for autumn haze.
+
+At night the scene from the Highlands is even more spectacular, for at
+brief intervals the blowing of a converter in some distant steel plant
+illuminates the heavens with a great hot glow, like that which rises and
+falls about the crater of a volcano in eruption. Thus the city's vast
+affairs are kept before it by day in a pillar of cloud, and by night in
+a pillar of fire. Iron and steel dominate Birmingham's mind, activities
+and life. The very ground of Red Mountain is red because of the iron ore
+that it contains, and those who reside upon the charming slopes of this
+hill do not own their land in fee simple, but subject always to the
+mineral rights of mining companies.
+
+The only other industry of Birmingham which is to be compared, in
+magnitude or efficiency, with the steel industry is that of "cutting in"
+at dances. All through the South it is carried on, but whereas in such
+cities as Memphis, New Orleans and Atlanta, men show a little mercy to
+the stranger--realizing that, as he is presumably unacquainted with all
+the ladies at a dance, he cannot retaliate in kind--Birmingham is
+merciless and prosecutes the pestilential practice unremittingly, even
+going so far as to apply the universal-service principle and call out
+her highschool youths to carry on the work. Before I went to certain
+dances in Birmingham I felt that high-school boys ought to be kept at
+home at night, but after attending these dances I realized that such
+restriction was altogether inadequate, and that the only way to deal
+with them effectively would be to pickle them in vitriol.
+
+Where, in other cities of the South, I have managed to dance as much as
+half a dance without interruption, I never danced more than twenty feet
+with one partner in Birmingham. Nor did my companion.
+
+Our host was energetic in presenting us to ladies of infinite
+pulchritude and State-wide terpsichorean reputation, but we would start
+to tread a measure with them, only to have them swiftly snatched from us
+by some spindle-necked, long-wristed, big-boned, bowl-eared high-school
+youth, in a dinner suit which used to fit him when it was new, six
+months ago.
+
+As we would start to dance the lady would say:
+
+"You-all ah strangehs, ahn't you?"
+
+We would reply that we were.
+
+"Wheh do you come from?"
+
+"New York."
+
+Then, because the Hardware Convention was being held in town at the
+time, she would continue:
+
+"Ah reckon you-all ah hahdware men?"
+
+But that was as far as the conversation ever got. Just about the time
+that she began to reckon we were hardware men a mandatory hand would be
+laid upon us, and before we had time to defend ourselves against the
+hardware charge, the lady would be wafted off in the arms of some
+predatory youth who ought to have been at home considering _pons
+asinorum_.
+
+Had we indeed been hardware men, and had we had our hardware with us,
+they could have done with fewer teachers in the high schools of that
+city after the night of our first dance in Birmingham.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Up in the hills, some miles back of the Country Club, on the banks of a
+large artificial lake, stands the new clubhouse of the Birmingham Motor
+and Country Club, and around the lake runs the club's
+two-and-a-half-mile speedway. Elsewhere is the Roebuck Golf Club, the
+links of which are admitted ("even in Atlanta!") to be excellent--the
+one possible objection to the course of the Birmingham Country Club
+being that it is suited only to play with irons.
+
+I mention these golfing matters not because they interest me, but
+because they may interest you. I am not a golfer. I played the game for
+two seasons; then I decided to try to lead a better life. The first time
+I played I did quite well, but thence onward my game declined until,
+toward the last, crowds would collect to hear me play. When I determined
+to abandon the game I did not burn my clubs or break them up, according
+to the usual custom, but instead gave them to a man upon whom I wished
+to retaliate because his dog had bitten a member of my family.
+
+Small wonder that all golf clubs have extensive bars! It is not hard to
+understand why men who realize that they have become incurable victims
+of the insidious habit of golf should wish to drown the thought in
+drink. But in Birmingham they can't do it--not, at least, at bars.
+Alabama has beaten her public bars into soda fountains and quick-lunch
+rooms, and though her club bars still look like real ones, the drinks
+served are so soft that no splash occurs when reminiscent tears drop
+into them.
+
+When we were in Alabama each citizen who so desired was allowed by law
+to import from outside the State a small allotment of strong drink for
+personal use, but the red tape involved in this procedure had already
+discouraged all but the most ardent drinkers, and those found it next to
+impossible, even by hoarding their "lonesome quarts," and pooling
+supplies with their convivial friends, to provide sufficient alcoholic
+drink for a "real party."
+
+We met in Birmingham but one gentleman whose cellars seemed to be well
+stocked, and the tales of ingenuity and exertion by which he managed to
+secure ample supplies of liquor were such as to lead us to believe that
+this matter had become, with him, an occupation to which all other
+business must give second place.
+
+It was this gentleman who told us that, since the State went dry, the
+ancient form, "R.S.V.P.," on social invitations, had been revised to
+"B.W.H.P.," signifying, "bring whisky in hip pocket."
+
+To the "B.W.H.P." habit he himself strictly adhered. One night, when we
+chanced to meet him in a downtown club, he drew a flask from a hip
+pocket, and invited us to "have something."
+
+"What is it?" asked my companion.
+
+"Scotch."
+
+When my companion had helped himself he passed the flask to me, but I
+returned it to the owner, explaining that I did not drink Scotch whisky.
+
+"What do you drink?" he asked.
+
+"Bourbon."
+
+"Here it is," he returned, drawing a second flask from the other hip
+pocket.
+
+How well, too, do I remember the long, delightful evening upon which my
+companion and I sat in an Atlanta club with a group of the older
+members, the week before Georgia went bone dry. There, as in Alabama
+before 1915, there had been pretended prohibition, but now the bars of
+leading clubs were being closed, and convivial men were looking into the
+future with despair. One of the gentlemen was a justice of the Supreme
+Court of the State, and I remember his wistful declaration that
+prohibition would fall hardest upon the older men.
+
+"When a man is young," he said, "he can be lively and enjoy himself
+without drinking, because he is full of animal spirits. But we older men
+aren't bubbling over with liveliness. We can't dance, or don't want to,
+and we lack the stimulus which comes of falling continually in love. My
+great pleasure is to sit of an evening, here at a table in the café of
+this club, conversing with my friends. That is where prohibition is
+going to hurt me. I shall not see my old friends any more."
+
+The others protested at this somber view, but the judge gravely shook
+his head, saying: "You don't believe me, but I know whereof I speak, for
+I have been through something like this, in a minor way, before. A good
+many years ago I was one of a little group of congenial men to organize
+a small club. We had comfortable quarters, and we used to drop in at
+night, much as we have been doing of late years here, and have the kind
+of talks that are tonic to the soul. Of course we had liquor in the
+club, but there came a time when, for some reason or other--I think it
+was some trouble over a license--we closed our bar. We didn't think it
+was going to make a great difference, but it did. The men began to stop
+coming in, and before long the club ceased to exist.
+
+"It won't be like that here. This club will go on. But we won't come
+here. We won't want to sit around a table, like this, and drink ginger
+ale and sarsaparilla; and even if we do, the talk won't be so good. The
+thing that makes me downcast is not that liquor is going, but that we
+are really parting this week.
+
+"Every one knows that the abuse of drink does harm in the world, but
+these pious prohibitionists are not of the temperament to understand how
+alcohol ministers to the esthetic side of certain natures. It gives us
+better companions and makes us better companions for others. It
+stimulates our minds, enhances our appreciations, sharpens our wit,
+loosens our tongues, and saves brilliant conversation from becoming a
+lost art."
+
+My sympathies went out to the judge. It has always seemed to me a pity
+that the liquor question has resolved itself into a fight between
+extremists--for I think the wine and beer people might survive if they
+were not tied up with the distillers, and I do not believe that any
+considerable evil comes of drinking wine or beer.
+
+Nevertheless it must be apparent to every one who troubles to
+investigate, that prohibition invariably works great good wherever it is
+made effective. Take, for example, Birmingham.
+
+There was one year--I believe it was 1912--when there was an average of
+more than one murder a day, for every working day in the year, in the
+county in which Birmingham is located. On one famous Saturday night
+there were nineteen felonious assaults (sixteen by negroes and three by
+whites), from which about a dozen deaths resulted, two of those killed
+having been policemen.
+
+All this has changed with prohibition. Killings are now comparatively
+rare, arrests have diminished to less than a third of the former
+average, whether for grave or petty offenses, and the receiving jail,
+which was formerly packed like a pigpen every Saturday night, now stands
+almost empty, while the city jail, which used continually to house from
+120 to 150 offenders, has diminished its average population to 30 or
+35.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+BUSY BIRMINGHAM
+
+
+The fact that a man may shut off his motor and coast downhill from his
+home to his office in the lower part of Birmingham, is not without
+symbolism. Birmingham is all business. If I were to personify the place,
+it would be in the likeness of a man I know--a big, powerful fellow with
+an honest blue eye and an expression in which self-confidence, ambition,
+and power are blended. Like Birmingham, this man is a little more than
+forty years of age. Like Birmingham, he has built up a large business of
+his own. And, like Birmingham, he is a little bit naďve in his pride of
+success. His life is divided between his office and his home, and it
+would be difficult to say for which his devotion is the greater. He
+talks business with his wife at breakfast and dinner, and on their
+Sunday walks. He brings his papers home at night and goes over them with
+her, for, though her specialty is bringing up the children, she is
+deeply interested in his business and often makes suggestions which he
+follows. This causes him to admire her intensely, which he would not
+necessarily do were she merely a good wife and mother.
+
+He has no hobbies or pastimes. True, he plays golf, but with him golf is
+not a diversion. He plays because he finds the exercise increases his
+efficiency ("efficiency" is perhaps his favorite word), and because many
+of his commercial associates are golfers, and he can talk business with
+them on the links.
+
+His house is pleasant and stands upon a good-sized city lot. It is
+filled with very shiny mahogany furniture and strong-colored portičres
+and sofa cushions. It is rather more of a house than he requires, for
+his tastes are simple, but he has a feeling that he ought to have a
+large house, for the same reason that he and his wife ought to dress
+expensively--that is, out of respect, as it were, to his business.
+
+One of his chief treasures is an automatic piano, upon which he rolls
+off selections from Wagner's operas. He likes the music of the great
+German because, as he has often told me, it stirs his imagination,
+thereby helping him to solve business problems and make business plans.
+
+The thing he most abhors is general conversation, and he is never so
+amusing--so pathetically and unconsciously amusing--as when trying to
+take part in general conversation and at the same time to conceal the
+writhings of his tortured spirit. There is but one thing which will
+drive him to attempt the feat, and that is the necessity of making
+himself agreeable to some man, or the wife of some man, from whom he
+wishes to get business.
+
+The census of 1910 gave Birmingham a population of 132,000, and it is
+estimated that since that time the population has increased by 50,000.
+Birmingham not only knows that it is growing, but believes in trying to
+make ready in advance for future growth. It gives one the impression
+that it is rather ahead of its housing problems than behind them. Its
+area, for instance, is about as great as that of Boston or Cleveland,
+and its hotels may be compared with the hotels of those cities. If it
+has not so many clubs as Atlanta, it has, at least, all the clubs it
+needs; and if it has not so many skyscrapers as New York, it has several
+which would fit nicely into the Wall Street district. Moreover, the tall
+buildings of Birmingham lose nothing in height by contrast with the
+older buildings, three or four stories high, which surround them, giving
+the business district something of that look which hangs about a boy who
+has outgrown his clothing. Nor are the vehicles and street crowds,
+altogether in consonance, as yet, with the fine office buildings of the
+city, for many of the motors standing at the curb have about them that
+gray, rural look which comes of much mud and infrequent washing, and the
+idlers who lean against the rich façades of granite and marble are
+entirely out of the picture, for they look precisely like the idlers who
+lean against the wooden posts of country railroad station platforms.
+
+Such curious contrasts as these may be noted everywhere. For instance,
+Birmingham has been so busy paving the streets that it seems quite to
+have forgotten to put up street signs. Also, not far from the majestic
+Tutwiler Hotel, and the imposing apartment building called the Ridgely,
+the front of which occupies a full block, is a park so ill kept that it
+would be a disgrace to the city but for the obvious fact that the city
+is growing and wide-awake, and will, of course, attend to the park when
+it can find the time. Here are, I believe, the only public monuments
+Birmingham contains. One is a Confederate monument in the form of an
+obelisk, and the other two are statues erected in memory of Mary A.
+Cahalan, for many years principal of the Powell School, and of William
+Elias B. Davis, a distinguished surgeon. Workers in these fields are too
+seldom honored in this way, and the spirit which prompted the erection
+of these monuments is particularly creditable; sad to say, however, both
+effigies are wretchedly placed and are in themselves exceedingly poor
+things. Art is something, indeed, about which Birmingham has much to
+learn. So far as I could discover, no such thing as an art museum has
+been contemplated. But here again the critic should remember that,
+whereas art is old, Birmingham is young. She is as yet in the stage of
+development at which cities think not of art museums, but of municipal
+auditoriums; and with the latter subject, at least, she is now
+concerning herself.
+
+Even in the city's political life contrasts are not wanting, for though
+the town is Republican in sentiment, it proves itself southern by voting
+the Democratic ticket, and it is interesting to note further that the
+commission by which it is governed had as one of its five members, when
+we were there, a Socialist.
+
+Another curious and individual touch is contributed by the soda-fountain
+lunch rooms which abound in the city, and which, I judge, arrived with
+the disappearance of barroom lunch counters. In connection with many of
+the downtown soda fountains there are cooking arrangements, and business
+lunches are served.
+
+The roads leading out of the city in various directions have many
+dangerous grade crossings, and accidents must be of common occurrence.
+At all events, I have never known a city in which cemeteries and
+undertaking establishments were so widely advertised. In the street
+cars, for instance, I observed the cheerful placards of one Wallace
+Johns, undertaker, who promises "all the attention you would expect from
+a friend," and I was informed that Mr. Johns possesses business cards
+(for restricted use only) bearing the gay legend: "I'll get you yet!"
+
+As to schools the city is well off. Dr. J.H. Phillips, superintendent of
+public schools, has occupied his post probably as long as any school
+superintendent in the country. He organized the city school system in
+1883, beginning with seven teachers, as against 750 now employed. The
+colored schools are reported to be better than in most southern cities.
+
+Of the general status of the negro in Birmingham I cannot speak with
+authority. As in Atlanta, negroes are sometimes required to use separate
+elevators in office buildings, and, as everywhere south of Washington,
+the Birmingham street cars give one end to whites and the other to
+negroes. But whereas negroes use the back of the car in Atlanta, they
+use the front in Birmingham. It was attempted, at one time, to reverse
+this order, for reasons having to do with draft and ventilation, but the
+people of Birmingham had become accustomed to the existing arrangement
+and objected to the change. "After all," one gentleman said to me, in
+speaking of this matter, "it is not important which end of the car is
+given to the nigger. The main point is that he must sit where he is
+told."
+
+The means by which the negro vote is eliminated in various Southern
+States are generally similar, though Alabama has, perhaps, been more
+thorough in the matter than some other States. The importance of this
+issue to the southern white man is very great, for if all negroes were
+allowed to vote the control of certain States would be in negro hands.
+To the Southerner such an idea is intolerable, and it is my confident
+belief that if the State of Alabama were resettled by men from
+Massachusetts, and the same problems were presented to those men, they
+would be just as quick as the white Alabamans of to-day to find means to
+suppress the negro vote. With all my heart I wish that such an exchange
+of citizens might temporarily be effected, for when the immigrants from
+Massachusetts moved back to their native New England, after an
+experience of the black belt, they would take with them an
+understanding of certain aspects of the negro problem which they have
+never understood; an understanding which, had they possessed it sixty or
+seventy years ago, might have brought about the freeing of slaves by
+government purchase--a course which Lincoln advocated and which would
+probably have prevented the Civil War, and thereby saved millions upon
+millions of money, to say nothing of countless lives. Had they even
+understood the problems of the South at the end of the Civil War, the
+horrors of Reconstruction might have been avoided, and I cannot too
+often reiterate that, but for Reconstruction we should not be perplexed,
+to-day, by the unhappy, soggy mass of political inertia known as the
+Solid South.
+
+I asked a former State official how the negro vote had been eliminated
+in Alabama. "At first," he said, "we used to kill them to keep them from
+voting; when we got sick of doing that we began to steal their ballots;
+and when stealing their ballots got to troubling our consciences we
+decided to handle the matter legally, fixing it so they couldn't vote."
+
+I inquired as to details. He explained.
+
+It seems that in 1901 a constitutional convention was held, at which it
+was enacted that, in order to be eligible for life to vote, citizens
+must register during the next two years. There were, however, certain
+qualifications prescribed for registration. A man must be of good
+character, and must have fought in a war, or be the descendant of a
+person who had fought. This enactment, known as the "grandfather
+clause," went far toward the elimination of the negro. As an additional
+safeguard, however, an educational clause was added, but the educational
+requirement did not become effective at once, as that would have made
+illiterate whites ineligible as voters. Not until the latter were safely
+registered under the "grandfather clause," was the educational clause
+applied, and as, under this clause, the would-be voter must read and
+write _to the satisfaction of his examiner_, the negro's chance to get
+suffrage was still more reduced.
+
+The United States Supreme Court has, I believe, held that the
+educational clause does not constitute race discrimination.
+
+As though the above measures were not sufficient, it is further required
+that, in order to vote at November elections in Alabama, voters must pay
+a small voluntary poll tax. This tax, however, must be paid each year
+before February first--that is, about nine months before elections
+actually take place. The negro has never been distinguished for his
+foresightedness with a dollar, and, to make matters harder for him, this
+tax is cumulative from the year 1901, so that a man who wishes to begin
+to vote this year, and can qualify in other respects, must pay a tax
+amounting to nearly twenty dollars.
+
+These measures give Alabama, as my informant put it, a "very exclusive
+electorate." With a population of approximately two millions, the
+greatest number of votes ever cast by the State was 125,000. Of this
+number, 531 votes were those of negroes, "representing" a colored
+population of 840,000!
+
+The gentleman who explained these matters also told me a story
+illustrative of the old-time Southerner's attitude toward the negro in
+politics.
+
+During Reconstruction, when Alabama's Legislature was about one-third
+white and two-thirds negro, a fine old gentleman who had been a
+slaveholder and was an experienced parliamentarian, was attempting to
+preside over the Legislature. In this he experienced much difficulty,
+his greatest _bęte noir_ being a negro member, full of oratory, who
+continually interrupted other speakers.
+
+Realizing that this was a part of the new order of things, the presiding
+officer tried not to allow his irritation to get the better of him, and
+to silence the objectionable man in parliamentary fashion. "The member
+will kindly come to order!" he repeated over and over, rapping with his
+gavel. "The member will kindly come to order!"
+
+After this had gone on for some time without effect, the old gentleman's
+patience became exhausted. He laid down his gavel, arose to his feet,
+glared at the irrepressible member, and, shaking his finger savagely,
+shouted: "Sit down, you blankety-blank black blankety-blank!"
+
+Whereupon the negro dropped instantly to his seat and was no more heard
+from.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+AN ALLEGORY OF ACHIEVEMENT
+
+
+To visit Birmingham without seeing an iron and steel plant would be like
+visiting Rome without seeing the Forum. Consequently my companion and I
+made application for permission to go through the Tennessee Coal, Iron,
+& Railroad Company's plant, at Ensley, on the outskirts of the city.
+When the permission was refused us we attacked from another angle--using
+influence--and were refused again. Next we called upon a high official
+of the company, and (as we had, of course, done in making our previous
+requests for admission to the plant) explained our errand.
+
+Though this gentleman received us with the utmost courtesy, he declared
+that the company desired no publicity, and plainly indicated that he was
+not disposed to let us into the plant.
+
+"I'll tell you what the trouble is," said my companion to me. "This
+company is a part of the United States Steel Corporation, and in the old
+muckraking days it was thoroughly raked. They think that we have come
+down here full of passionate feeling over the poor, downtrodden
+workingman and the great, greedy octopus."
+
+"What makes you think that?"
+
+"Well, we are a writer and an artist. Lots of writers and artists have
+made good livings by teaching magazine readers that it is dishonest for
+a corporation, or a corporation official, to prosper; that the way to
+integrity is through insolvency; that the word 'company' is a term of
+reproach, while 'corporation' is a foul epithet, and 'trust' blasphemy."
+
+"What shall we do?"
+
+"We must make it clear to these people," he said, "that we have no
+mission. We must satisfy them that we are not reformers--that we didn't
+come to dig out a red-hot story, but to see red-hot rails rolled out."
+
+Pursuing this course, we were successful. All that any official of the
+company required of us was that we be open-minded. The position of the
+company, when we came to understand it, was simply that it did not wish
+to facilitate the work of men who came down with pencils, paper, and
+preconceived "views," deliberately to play the great American game of
+"swat the corporation."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Surely there is not in the world an industry which, for sheer pictorial
+magnificence, rivals the modern manufacturing of steel. In the first
+place, the scale of everything is inexpressibly stupendous. To speak of
+a row of six blast furnaces, with mouths a hundred feet above the
+ground, and chimneys rising perhaps another hundred feet above these
+mouths, is not, perhaps, impressive, but to look at such a row of
+furnaces, to see their fodder of ore, dolomite, and coke brought in by
+train loads; to see it fed to them by the "skip"; to hear them roar
+continually for more; to feel the savage heat generated within their
+bodies; to be told in shouts, above the din, something of what is going
+on inside these vast, voracious, savage monsters, and to see them
+dripping their white-hot blood when they are picked by a long steel bar
+in the hands of an atom of a man--this is to witness an almost
+terrifying allegory of mankind's achievement.
+
+The gas generated by blast furnaces is used in part in the hot-blast
+stoves--gigantic tanks from which hot air, at very high pressure, is
+admitted to the furnaces themselves, and is also used to develop steam
+for the blowing engines and other auxiliaries. In the furnaces the
+molten iron, because of its greater specific gravity, settles to the
+bottom, while the slag floats to the top. The slag, by the way, is not,
+as I had supposed, altogether worthless, but is used for railroad
+ballast and in the manufacture of cement.
+
+The molten iron drawn from the blast furnaces runs in glittering
+rivulets (which, at a distance of twenty or thirty feet, burn the face
+and the eyes), into ladle cars which are like a string of devils' soup
+bowls, mounted on railroad trucks ready to be hauled away by a
+locomotive and served at a banquet in hell.
+
+That is not what happens to them, however. The locomotive takes them to
+another part of the plant, and their contents, still molten, is poured
+into the mixers. These are gigantic caldrons as high as houses, which
+stand in rows in an open-sided steel shed, and the chief purpose of them
+is to keep the "soup" hot until it is required for the converters--when
+it is again poured off into ladle cars and drawn away.
+
+The converters are in still another part of the grounds. They are huge,
+pear-shaped retorts, resembling in their action those teakettles which
+hang on stands and are poured by being tilted. But a million teakettles
+could be lost in one converter, and the boiling water from a million
+teakettles, poured into a converter, would be as one single drop of ice
+water let fall into a red-hot stove.
+
+In the converters the metalloids--silicon, manganese, and carbon--are
+burned out of the iron under a flaming heat which, by means of high air
+pressure, is brought to a temperature of about 3400 degrees. It is the
+blowing of these converters, and the occasional pouring of them, which
+throws the Vesuvian glow upon the skies of Birmingham at night. The heat
+they give off is beyond description. Several hundred feet away you feel
+it smiting viciously upon your face, and the concrete flooring of the
+huge shed in which they stand is so hot as to burn your feet through the
+soles of your shoes.
+
+The most elaborate display of fireworks ever devised by Mr. Pain would
+be but a poor thing compared with the spectacle presented when a
+converter is poured. The whole world glows with golden heat, and is
+filled with an explosion of brilliant sparks, and as the molten metal
+passes out into the sunlight that light is by contrast so feeble that it
+seems almost to cast a shadow over the white-hot vats of iron.
+
+Next come the tilting open-hearth furnaces, where the iron is subjected
+to the action of lime at a very high temperature. This removes the
+phosphorus and leaves a bath of commercially pure iron which is then
+"teemed" into a hundred-ton ladle, wherein it is treated in such a way
+as to give it the properties required in the finished steel. What these
+properties may be, depends, of course, upon the purpose to which the
+steel is to be put. Rails, for example, must, above all, resist
+abrasion, and consequently have a higher carbon content than, say,
+reinforcing bars for concrete work. To obtain various qualities in steel
+are added carbon, ferro-manganese, or ferro-silicon in proportions
+differing according to requirements.
+
+In the next process steel ingots are made. I lost track of the exact
+detail of this, but I remember seeing the ingots riding about in their
+own steel cars, turning to an orange color as they cooled, and I
+remember seeing them pounded by a hammer that stood up in the air like
+an elevated railroad station, and I know that pretty soon they got into
+the blooming mill and were rolled out into "blooms," after which they
+were handled by a huge contrivance like a thumb and forefinger of steel
+which--though the blooms weigh five tons apiece--picked them up much as
+you might pick up a stick of red candy.
+
+Still orange-hot, the blooms find their way to the rolling mill, where
+they go dashing back and forth upon rollers and between rollers--the
+latter working in pairs like the rollers of large wringers, squeezing
+the blooms, in their successive passages, to greater length and greater
+thinness, until at last they take the form of long, red, glowing rails;
+after which they are sawed off, to the accompaniment of a spray of white
+sparks, into rail lengths, and run outside to cool. And I may add that,
+while there is more brilliant heat to be seen in many other departments
+of the plant, there is no department in which the color is more
+beautiful than in the piles of rails on the cooling beds--some of them
+still red as they come from the rollers, others shading off to rose and
+pink, and finally to their normal cold steel-gray.
+
+Presently along comes a great electromagnet; from somewhere in the sky
+it drops down and touches the rails; when it rises bunches of them rise
+with it, and, after sailing through the air, are gently deposited upon
+flat cars. Here, even after the current is shut off, some of them may
+try to stick to the magnet, as though fearing to go forth into the
+world. If so, it gives them a little shake, whereupon they let go, and
+it travels back to get more rails and load them on the cars.
+
+Iron ore, coal, and limestone, the three chief materials used in the
+making of steel, are all found in the hills in the immediate vicinity of
+Birmingham. I am told that there is no other place in the world where
+the three exist so close together. That is an impressive fact, but one
+grows so accustomed to impressive facts, while passing through this
+plant, that one ceases to be impressed, becoming merely dazed.
+
+If I were asked to mention one especially striking item out of all that
+welter, I should think of many things--things having to do with
+vastness, with gigantic movements and mutations, with Niagara-like
+noises, with great bursts of flame suggesting fallen fragments from the
+sun itself--but above all I think that I should speak of the apparent
+absence of men.
+
+There were some four thousand men in the plant, I believe, at the time
+we were there, but excepting when a shift changed, and a great army
+passed out through the gates, we never saw a crowd; indeed I hardly
+think we saw a group of any size. Here and there two or three men would
+be doing something--something which, probably, we did not understand; in
+the window of a locomotive cab, or that of a traveling crane, we would
+see a man; we kept passing men as we went along; and sometimes as we
+looked from a high perch over the interior of one of the great sheds, we
+would be vaguely conscious of men scattered about the place. But they
+were very small and gray and inconspicuous dots upon the surface of
+great things going on--going on, seemingly by themselves, with a sort of
+mad, mechanical, majestic, molten sweep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At this time, when the great efficient organization started by Bismarck
+is being devoted entirely to destruction, it is interesting to recall
+that the idea of industrial welfare work originated in Germany during
+the period of Bismarckian reorganization. So, paradoxically, the very
+forces which, on one hand, were building towards the new records for the
+extinction of life established in the present war, were, upon the other
+hand, developing plans for the safeguarding of life and for making it
+worth living--plans which have enormously affected the industrial
+existence of the civilized world.
+
+The broad theory of industrial welfare work was brought to this country
+by engineers, chemists, and workmen who had resided in Germany; but,
+where this work developed over there along coöperative lines, it has
+remained for Great Britain and the United States to work it out in a
+more individualistic way.
+
+In this country welfare work has come as a logical part of the general
+industrial development. The first step in this development was the
+assembling of small, weak industrial units into large, powerful,
+effective units--that is to say, the formation of great corporations and
+trusts. The second step was the coördination of these great industrial
+alliances for "efficiency." The third step was the achievement of
+material success.
+
+When our great corporations were in their formative period, effort was
+concentrated on making them successful, but with success came thoughts
+of other things. It began to be seen, for example, that whereas the old
+small employer of labor came into personal contact with his handful of
+workmen, and could himself supervise their welfare, some plan must now
+be devised for doing this work in a large, corporate way.
+
+Thus welfare work developed in the United States, and it is interesting
+to observe, now, that many of our great corporations are finding time
+and funds to expend upon purely ćsthetic improvements, and that, in the
+construction of the most modern American industrial plants, architects,
+landscape gardeners, and engineering men work in coöperation, so that,
+instead of being lopsided, the developments are harmonious and
+oftentimes beautiful.
+
+On work calculated to prevent accidents in mines, not only the Tennessee
+Coal, Iron, & Railroad Company, but all the leading mining companies in
+the State join for conference. As a result the number of accidents
+steadily decreases. Nine years ago one man was killed, on an average,
+for every 100,000 tons of iron ore raised. The record at the time of our
+visit was one man to 450,000 tons. In the coal mines, where nine years
+ago one man was killed for every 75,000 tons raised, the recent record
+is one man for 650,000 tons.
+
+In 1914, 126 men were killed in the coal mines of Alabama. In 1915,
+though the tonnage was about the same, this number was reduced to 63,
+which was a record. All this is the result of safety work.
+
+"Aside from humane considerations," said an official of the Tennessee
+Company, "this concern realizes that the man is the most valuable
+machine it has."
+
+This gentleman was one of the ablest men we met in the South. While
+taking us through the company's plant, and explaining to us the various
+operations, he was interesting, but the real enthusiasm of the man did
+not crop out until he took us to the company's villages and showed us
+what was being done for the benefit of operatives and their families,
+and, of course, for the benefit of the company as well--for he was a
+corporation official of the modern school, and he knew that by
+benefiting its men a corporation necessarily benefits itself.
+
+The story of the Tennessee Company's work among its employees, which
+began about five years ago, some time after the company was taken over
+by the United States Steel Corporation, is too great to be more than
+touched on here. In the department of health thirty-six doctors, sixteen
+nurses, and a squad of sanitary inspectors are employed. The department
+of social science covers education, welfare, and horticulture. To me the
+work of these departments was a revelation. Each camp has a first-rate
+hospital, each has its schools and guildhall, and everything is run as
+only an efficiently managed corporation can run things.
+
+The Docena Village is less like one's idea of a coal "camp" than of a
+pretty suburban development, or a military post, with officers' houses
+built around a parade. The grounds are well kept; there is a tennis
+court with vine-clad trellises about it, a fine playground for children,
+pretty brick walks, with splendid trees to shade them; and there is a
+brick schoolhouse which is a better building, better equipped, better
+lighted, and, above all, better ventilated than the schools I attended
+in my boyhood.
+
+Near the school is the guildhall, which is used for religious services,
+meetings, and entertainments. And best of all, perhaps, the houses are
+not the rows of sad, unpainted cabins one remembers having seen in
+western mining camps, but are pretty cottages, touched with a slight
+architectural variety, and with little variations of color, so that each
+home has individuality.
+
+The schools are financed partly by the company and partly by the parents
+of the three thousand scholars. The teachers are, for the most part,
+graduates of leading colleges--Smith, Wellesley, Vassar, the University
+of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin--and educational work of great
+variety is carried on, including instruction in English for foreign
+employees, and domestic-science classes for women--separate
+establishments, of course, for whites and blacks, for the color line is
+drawn in southern mining camps as elsewhere. Negroes are, however,
+better provided for by the corporation than by most southern
+municipalities, both in the way of living conditions and of education.
+
+On the whole, I believe that a child who grows up in the Docena Village,
+and is educated there, has actually a better chance than one who grows
+up in most Alabama towns, or, for the matter of that, in towns in any
+other State which has not compulsory education. Moreover, I doubt that
+there is in all Alabama another kindergarten as truly charming as the
+one we visited at Docena, or that there is, in the State, a schoolhouse
+of the same size which is as perfect as the one we saw in that camp.
+
+In another camp old houses have been remodeled, giving practical
+demonstration of what can be done in the way of making a hovel into a
+pretty home by the intelligent use of a little lattice-work, a little
+paint, and a few vines and flowers. Old boarding-houses in this
+neighborhood have been converted into community houses, with
+entertainment halls, shower baths, and other conveniences for the men
+and their families. Thus tests are being made to discover whether it is
+possible to encourage among certain classes of foreign laborers, whose
+habits of life have not, to put it mildly, been of the tidiest, some
+appreciation of the standard of civilization represented by clean,
+pretty cottages, pleasant meeting houses, and shower baths.
+
+I have not told about the billiard tables, bowling alleys, and game
+rooms of the clubs, nor about the model rooms fitted up to show
+housewives how they may make their homes attractive at but slight
+expense, nor about the annual medical examination of the children, nor
+about the company dentists who charge their patients only for the cost
+of gold actually used, nor about the fine company store at Edgewater
+Mine, nor about the excellent meats supplied by the company butchers,
+nor about the low prices of supplies, nor about the effort to
+discourage employees from buying cheap furniture at high prices on the
+installment plan, nor, above all, about the clean, decent, happy look of
+the families we chanced to see.
+
+Even had I the space in which to tell of these things, it is perhaps
+wiser that I refrain from doing so. For I am aware that in speaking
+anything but ill of a great corporation I have scandalously outraged
+precedent. Nor does it argue well for my powers of observation, or those
+of my companion. I feel confident that where our limited visions
+perceived only prosperity and contentment, certain of my brother
+writers, and his brother illustrators would, in our places, have rent
+the thin, vaporish veil of apparent corporate kindliness, and found such
+foul shame, such hideous malignity, such grasping, grubby greed, such
+despicable soul-destroying despotism, as to shock the simple nature of a
+chief of the old-time Russian Secret Police.
+
+It shames me to think what my friend Lincoln Steffens could have done
+had he but enjoyed my opportunities. It shames me to think what John
+Reed or other gifted writers for "The Masses" could have done. And I
+should think that Wallace Morgan would writhe with shame. For, where Art
+Young would have seen heavy-jowled, pig-eyed Capital, in a silk hat and
+a checked suit, whirling a cruel knout over the broad and noble (but
+bent and shuddering) back of Labor--where Boardman Robinson would have
+found a mother, her white, drawn face half hidden by the shoddy shawl
+of black, to which cling the hands of her emaciated brood--what has
+Wallace Morgan seen?
+
+A steel-plant in operation. A company steel-plant! A _corporation_
+steel-plant! A TRUST steel-plant.
+
+Yet never so much as a starving cat or a pile of garbage in the
+foreground!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+THE ROAD TO ARCADY
+
+
+Before we saw the train which was to take us from Birmingham to
+Columbus, Mississippi, we began to sense its quality. When we attempted
+to purchase parlor car seats of the ticket agent at the Union Station
+and were informed by him that our train carried no parlor car, it seemed
+to us that his manner was touched with cynicism, and this impression was
+confirmed by his reply to our further timid inquiry as to a dining car:
+
+"Where do you gentlemen reckon you're a-goin' to, anyhow?"
+
+Presently we passed through the gate and better understood the nature of
+the ticket agent's thoughts. The train consisted of several untidy day
+coaches, the first a Jim Crow car, the others for white people. The
+negro car was already so full that many of its occupants had to stand in
+the aisle, but this did not seem to trouble them, for all were gabbling
+happily, and the impression one got, in glancing through the door, was
+of many sets of handsome white teeth displayed in as many dark grinning
+faces. There are innumerable things for which we cannot envy the negro,
+but neither his teeth nor his good nature are among them.
+
+It was Saturday afternoon, and the two or three other cars, though not
+overcrowded, were well filled with people from the neighboring mining
+towns who were going home after having spent the morning shopping in the
+city. Almost all our fellow passengers carried packages, many had
+infants with them, and we were struck with the fact that the complexions
+of these people suggested a diet of pie--fried pie, if there be such a
+thing--that a peculiarly high percentage of them suffered from diseases
+of the eye, and that the pervading smell of the car in which we sat was
+of oranges, bananas, babies, and overheated adults.
+
+A young mother in the seat in front of us had with her three small
+children, the youngest an infant in arms. She was feeding a banana to
+the second child, who looked about two years old. Behind us a clean,
+capable-looking woman talked in a broad Scottish dialect with another
+housewife whose jargon was that of the mountaineers.
+
+The region through which the train presently began to wind its way was
+green and hilly, and there were many stops at villages, all of them
+mining camps apparently, made up of shabby little cabins scattered
+helter-skelter upon the hillsides. In many of the cabin doorways mothers
+lingered with their broods watching the train, and on all the station
+platforms stood crowds of idlers--men, women, and children, negro and
+white--many of the men stamped, by their coal-begrimed faces, their
+stained overalls, and the lamps above the visors of their caps, as mine
+workers.
+
+After a time my companion and I moved to the exceedingly dirty smoking
+room at the end of the car, where we sat and listened to the homely
+conversation of a group of men who seemed not only to know one another,
+but to know the same people in towns along the line. Between stations
+they gossiped, smoked, chewed, spat, and swore together like so many New
+England crossroad sages, but when the train stopped they gave
+encouraging attention to the droll performances of one of their number,
+a shaggy, unshaven, rawboned man, of middle age, gray-haired and
+collarless, who sat near the window and uttered convincing imitations of
+the sounds made by chickens, roosters, pigs, goats, and crows.
+
+The platform crowds, the negroes in particular, were mystified and lured
+by this animal chorus coming from a passenger coach. On hearing it they
+would first gaze in astonishment at the car, then edge up to the windows
+and doors, and peer in with eyes solemn, round, and wondering, only to
+be more amazed than ever by the discovery that the car housed neither
+bird nor beast. This bucolic comedy was repeated at every station until
+we reached Wyatt, Alabama, where our gifted fellow traveler arose,
+pointed his collar button toward the door, bade us farewell, and
+departed, saying that he was going to "walk over to Democrat."
+
+Presently the conductor dropped in for a chat, in the course of which
+he informed the assembly that a certain old lady in one of the towns
+along the way had died the night before, whereupon our companions of the
+smoking room, all of whom seemed to have known the old lady well, held a
+protracted discussion of her history and traits.
+
+After a time my companion and I put in a few questions about the State
+of Mississippi. Boiled down, the principal information we gathered was
+as follows:
+
+By the 1910 census Mississippi had not one city of 25,000 inhabitants.
+Meridian, with 23,000, was (and probably still is) her metropolis, with
+Jackson and Vicksburg, cities of about 20,000 each, following. The
+entire State has but fifteen cities having a population of 5000 or more,
+so that, of a total of about a million and three-quarters of people in
+the State (more than half of them colored), only about one-tenth live in
+towns with a population of 5000 or over.
+
+After a little visit the conductor went away. Now and then a man would
+leave us and get off at a station, or some new passenger would join our
+group. Presently I found myself thinking about dinner, and asked a man
+wearing an electric-blue cap if he knew what provision was made for the
+evening meal.
+
+Before he could reply the train boy, who had come into the smoking room
+a few minutes before, piped up. He was a train boy of a type I had
+supposed extinct: the kind of train boy one might have encountered on
+almost any second-rate train twenty years ago,--a bold, impudent young
+smartaleck, full of insistent salesmanship and obnoxious conversation.
+He declared that dinner was not to be had, and that the only sustenance
+available en route consisted in the uninviting assortment of fruit,
+nuts, candy, and sweet tepid beverages contained in his basket.
+
+Fortunately for us, the man we had addressed knew better.
+
+"What do you want to lie like that for, boy?" he demanded. "You know as
+well as I do that the brakeman takes on five boxes of lunch at Covin."
+
+"Well," said the boy, with a grin, "I gotta sell things, ain't I? The
+brakeman hadn't oughta have that graft anyhow. _I'd_ oughta have it. He
+gets them lunches fer two bits and sells 'em for thirty-five cents." Far
+from feeling abashed, he was pleased with himself.
+
+"Folks is funny people," remarked a man with a weather-beaten face who
+sat in the corner seat, and seemed to be addressing no one in
+particular. "I know a boy that's going to git hung some day. And when
+they've got the noose rigged nice around his neck, and everything ready,
+and the trap a-waitin' to be sprung, why, then that boy is goin' to be
+so sorry for hisself that he won't hardly know what to do. He'll say: 'I
+ain't never had no chance in life, I ain't. The world ain't never used
+me right.' ... Yes, folks is funny people."
+
+After this soliloquy there occurred a brief silence in the smoking
+room, and presently the train boy took up his basket and went upon his
+way.
+
+"You say they take on the lunches at Covin now?" one of the passengers
+asked of the man in the electric-blue cap.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What's become of old man Whitney, over to Fayetteville?"
+
+"They used to git lunches off of him," replied the other, "but the old
+man wasn't none too dependable. Now and then he'd oversleep, and folks
+on the 5 A.M. out of Columbus was like to starve for breakfast."
+
+"Right smart shock-headed boy the old man's got," put in another. "The
+old man gives 'im anything he wants. He wanted a motorcycle, and the old
+man give 'im one. Then he wanted one of them hot-candy machines; they
+cost about two hundred and fifty dollars, but the old man give it to 'im
+just the same."
+
+"The kid went to San Francisco with it, didn't he?" asked the man with
+the electric-blue cap.
+
+"He started to go there," replied the former speaker, "but he only got
+as fur as Little Rock; then he come on back home, and the old man bought
+'im a wireless-telegraph plant. Yeaup! That boy gets messages right outa
+the air--from Washington, D.C., and Berlin, and every place. The
+Govamunt don't allow 'im to tell you much of it. He tells a little,
+though--just to give you a notion."
+
+So, through the five-hour ride the conversation ran. Several times the
+talk drifted to politics and to the European War, but the politics
+discussed were local and lopsided, and the war was all too clearly
+regarded as something interesting but vague and remote. On the entire
+journey not one word was spoken indicating that the people of this
+section had the least grasp on any national question, or that they were
+considering national questions, or that they realized what the war in
+Europe is about--that it is a war for freedom and democracy, a war
+against war, a war to prevent a few individuals from ever again plunging
+the world into war. Nor, though the day of our entry into the war was
+close at hand, had the idea that we might be forced to take part in the
+conflict so much as occurred to any of them.
+
+They were not stupid people; on the contrary, some of them possessed a
+homely and picturesque philosophy; but they were not informed, and the
+reason they were not informed has to do with one of the chief needs of
+our rural population--especially the rural population of the South.
+
+What they need is good newspapers. They need more world news and
+national news in place of county news and local briefs. In the whole
+South, moreover, there is need for general political news instead of
+biased news written always from inside the Democratic party, and
+sandwiched in between patent medicine advertisements.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+A MISSISSIPPI TOWN
+
+
+It was dark when, after a journey of one hundred and twenty miles at the
+rate of twenty miles an hour, we reached Columbus, a city which was
+never intended to be a metropolis and which will never be one.
+
+Columbus is situated upon a bluff on the east bank of the Tombigbee
+River, to the west of which is a very fertile lowland region, filled
+with plantations, the owners of which, a century ago, founded the town
+in order that their families might have churches, schools, and the
+advantages of social life. As the town grew, a curious but entirely
+natural community spirit developed; when a gas plant, water works, or
+hotel was needed, prosperous citizens got together and financed the
+enterprise, not so much for profit as for mutual comfort.
+
+In these ante bellum times the planters used to make annual journeys to
+Mobile and New Orleans, going by boat on the Tombigbee and taking their
+crops and their families with them. After selling their cotton and
+enjoying themselves in the city, they would load supplies for the
+ensuing year upon river boats and return to Columbus, where the supplies
+were transferred to their vast attic storerooms.
+
+Though their only water transportation was to the southward, they did
+not journey invariably in that direction, but sometimes made excursions
+to such fashionable watering places as the Virginia Springs, or
+Saratoga, to which they drove in their own carriages.
+
+When, in the early days of railroad building, the Mobile & Ohio Railroad
+was being planned, the company proposed to include Columbus as one of
+its main-line points and asked for a right of way through the town and a
+cash bonus in consideration of the benefits Columbus would derive from
+railroad service. Both requests were refused. The railroad company then
+waived the bonus and attempted to obtain a right of way by purchase. But
+to no purpose. The citizens would not sell. They did not want a
+railroad. They were prosperous and healthy, and they contended that a
+railroad would bring poor people and disease among them, besides killing
+farm animals and causing runaways. The company was consequently forced
+to make a new survey, and when the line was built it passed at a
+distance of a dozen miles or more from the city.
+
+Gradually dawned the era of speed and impatience. People who had
+hitherto been satisfied to make long journeys in horse-drawn vehicles,
+and had refused the railroad a right of way, now began to complain of
+the twelve-mile drive to the nearest station, and to suggest that the
+company build a branch line into the town. But this time it was the
+railroad's turn to say no, and Columbus was informed that if it wished a
+branch line it could go ahead and build it at its own expense. This was
+finally done at a cost of fifty thousand dollars.
+
+With the construction of the branch line, carriages fell into disuse and
+dilapidation, and many an old barouche, landau, and brett passed into
+the hands of the negro hackmen who were former slaves of the old
+families. Among these ex-slaves the traditions of the first families of
+Columbus were upheld long after the war, and it thus happened that when,
+a few years since, a young New Yorker, arriving for a visit in the town,
+alighted from his train, he was greeted by an ancient negro who,
+indicating an equally ancient carriage, cried: "Hack, suh! Hack, suh!
+Ain't nevah been rid in by none but the Billupses."
+
+Not every young man from the North would have understood this reference,
+but by a coincidence it was at the residence of Mrs. Billups that this
+one had come to visit.
+
+Neither as to hack nor habitation were my companion and I so fortunate
+as the earlier visitor. Our conveyance was a Ford, and the driver warned
+us, as we progressed through shadowy tree-bordered streets, that the
+Gilmer Hotel was crowded with delegates who had come to attend the State
+convention of the Order of the Eastern Star. Nor was his warning without
+foundation. The wide old-fashioned lobby of the Gilmer was hung with the
+colors of the Order and packed with Ladies of the Eastern Star and their
+ecstatic families; we managed to make our way through the press only to
+be told by the single worn-out clerk on duty that not a room was to be
+had.
+
+Unlike the haughty clerk who had dismissed us from the Tutwiler Hotel in
+Birmingham, the clerk at the Gilmer was not without the quality of
+mercy. Overworked though he was, he began at once to telephone about the
+town in an effort to secure us rooms. But if this led us to conclude
+that our problem was thereby in effect solved, we discovered, after
+listening to his brief telephonic conversations with a series of unseen
+ladies, that the conclusion was premature. Though there were vacant
+rooms in several private houses, strange stray males were not desired as
+lodgers.
+
+Concerned as we were over our plight, my companion and I could not help
+being aware that a young lady who had been standing at the desk when we
+came in, and had since remained there, was taking kindly interest in the
+situation. Nor, for the matter of that, could we help being aware, also,
+that she was very pretty in her soft black dress and corsage of
+narcissus. She did not speak to us; indeed, she hardly honored us with a
+glance; but, despite her sweet circumspection, we sensed in some subtle
+way that she was sorry for us, and were cheered thereby.
+
+After a time, when the clerk seemed to have reached the end of his
+resources, the young lady hesitantly ventured some suggestions as to
+other houses where rooms might possibly be had. These suggestions she
+addressed entirely to the clerk--who, upon receiving them, did more
+telephoning.
+
+"Have you tried Mrs. Eichelberger?" the young lady asked him, after
+several more failures.
+
+He had not, but promptly did so. His conversation with Mrs. Eichelberger
+started promisingly, but presently we heard him make the damning
+admission he had been compelled repeatedly to make before:
+
+"No, ma'am. It's two men."
+
+Then, just as the last hope seemed to be fading, our angel of mercy
+spoke again.
+
+"Wait!" she put in impulsively. "Tell her--tell her I recommend them."
+
+Thus informed, Mrs. Eichelberger became compliant; but when the details
+were arranged, and we turned to thank our benefactor, she had fled.
+
+Mrs. Eichelberger's house was but a few blocks distant from the Gilmer.
+She installed us in two large, comfortable rooms, remarking, as we
+entered, that we had better hurry, as we were already late.
+
+"Late for what?" one of us asked.
+
+"Didn't you come for the senior dramatics?"
+
+"Senior dramatics where?"
+
+"At the I.I. and C."
+
+"What is the I.I. and C?"
+
+At this question a look of doubt, if not suspicion, crossed the lady's
+face.
+
+"Where are you-all from?" she demanded.
+
+The statement that we came from New York seemed to explain
+satisfactorily our ignorance of the I.I. and C. Evidently Mrs.
+Eichelberger expected little of New Yorkers. The I.I. and C., she
+explained, was the Mississippi Industrial Institute and College,
+formerly known as the Female College, a State institution for young
+women; and the senior dramatics were even then in progress in the
+college chapel, just up the street.
+
+To the chapel, therefore, my companion and I repaired as rapidly as
+might be, guided thither by frequent sounds of applause.
+
+From among the seniors standing guard in cap and gown at the chapel
+door, the quick artistic eye of my companion selected a brown-eyed
+auburn-haired young goddess as the one from whom tickets might most
+appropriately be bought. Nor did he display thrift in the transaction.
+Instead of buying modest quarter seats he magnificently purchased the
+fifty-cent kind.
+
+The dazzling ticket seller, transformed to usher, now led us into the
+crowded auditorium and down an aisle. A few rows from the stage she
+stopped, and, fastening a frigid gaze upon two hapless young women who
+were seated some distance in from the passageway, bade them emerge and
+yield their place to us.
+
+Of course we instantly protested, albeit in whispers, as the play was
+going on. But the beautiful Olympian lightly brushed aside our
+objections.
+
+"They don't belong here," she declared loftily. "They're freshmen--and
+they only bought quarter seats."
+
+Then, as the guilty pair seemed to hesitate, she summoned them with a
+compelling gesture and the command: "Come out!"
+
+At this they arose meekly enough, whereupon we redoubled our protests.
+But to no purpose. The Titian-tinted creature was relentless. Our pleas
+figured no more in her scheme of things than if they had been babblings
+in an unknown tongue. To add to our discomfiture, a large part of the
+audience seemed to have perceived the nature of our dilemma, and was
+giving us amused attention.
+
+It was a crisis; and in a crisis--especially one in which a member of
+the so-called gentle sex is involved--I have learned to look to my
+companion. He understands women. He has often told me so. And now, by
+his action, he proved it. What he did was to turn and flee, and I fled
+with him; nor did we pause until we were safely hidden away in humble
+twenty-five cent seats at the rear of the chapel, in the shadow of the
+overhanging gallery.
+
+It is not my intention to write an extended criticism of the
+performance. For one thing, I witnessed only a fragment of it, and for
+another, though I once acted for a brief period as dramatic critic on a
+New York newspaper, I was advised by my managing editor to give up
+dramatic criticism, and I have followed his advice.
+
+The scene evidently represented a room, its walls made of red screens
+behind which rose the lofty pipes of the chapel organ. On a pedestal at
+one side stood a bust of the Venus de Milo, while on the other hung an
+engraving of a familiar picture which I believe is called "The Fates,"
+and which has the appearance of having been painted by some-one-or-other
+like Leighton or Bouguereau or Harold Bell Wright.
+
+After we had given some attention to the play my companion remarked
+that, from the dialect, he judged it to be "Uncle Tom's Cabin." I had
+been told, however, that for certain reasons "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is
+never played in the South; I therefore asked the young man in front of
+me what play it was. He replied that it was Booth Tarkington and Harry
+Leon Wilson's comedy, "The Man From Home," and as he made the statement
+openly, I feel that I am violating no confidence in repeating what he
+said--especially since his declaration was supported by the program
+which he showed me.
+
+He was a pleasant young man. Perceiving that I was a stranger, he
+volunteered the additional information that the masculine rôles, as well
+as the feminine ones, were being played by girls; and I trust that I
+will not seem to be boasting of perspicacity when I declare that there
+had already entered my mind a suspicion that such was indeed the case.
+
+Behold them! Gaze upon the character called Daniel Voorhees Pike! See
+what long strides he takes, and with what pretty tiny feet! Observe the
+manliness with which he thrusts his pink little hands deep in the
+pockets of his--or somebody's--pantaloons!
+
+Look at the Grand Duke Vasili of Russia, his sweet oval face and rosy
+mouth partly obscured by mustache and goatee of a most strange
+wooliness.
+
+Observe the ineradicable daintiness of the Honorable Almeric St. Aubyn,
+but more particularly attend to that villain of helpless loveliness, the
+Earl of Hawcastle. The frightful life which, it is indicated, the Earl
+has led, leaves no tell-tale marks upon his blooming countenance. His
+only facial disfigurement consists in a mustache which, by reason of its
+grand-ducal lanateness, seems to hint at a mysterious relationship
+between the British and Russian noblemen.
+
+Take note, moreover, of the outlines of the players. If ever earl was
+belted it was this one. If ever duke in evening dress revealed
+delectable convexities of figure, it was this duke. If ever worthy male
+from Indiana spoke in a soprano voice and was lithe, alluring, and
+recurvous, she was Daniel Voorhees Pike.
+
+A young woman seated near us described to her escort the personal
+characteristics of the various young ladies on the stage, and when we
+heard her call one girl who played in a betrousered part, "a perfect
+darling," we echoed inwardly the sentiment. All were darlings. And this
+especial "perfect darling" appeared as well to be a "perfect
+thirty-six."
+
+The Earl was my undoing. At a critical point in the unfolding of the
+plot there was talk of his having been connected with a scandal in St.
+Petersburg. This he attempted to deny, and though I am unable to quote
+the exact words of his denial, the sound of it lingers sweetly in my
+memory. Nor would the exact words, could I give them, convey, in print,
+the quality of what was said, for the Earl, and all the rest, spoke in
+the soft, melodious tones of Mississippi.
+
+"What you-all fussin' raound heah for, this mownin'?" That, perhaps,
+conveys some sense of a line he spoke on entering.
+
+And when, in reply, one of the others mentioned the scandal at St.
+Petersburg, the flavor of the Earl's retort, as its cooing tones remain
+with me, was this:
+
+"Wha', honey! What you-all mean hintin' raound 'baout St. Petuhsbuhg? I
+reckon you don' know what you talkin' 'baout! Ah nevuh was in that taown
+in all ma bo'n days!"
+
+What followed I am unable to relate, for the Earl's speech caused me to
+become emotional, and my companion, after informing me severely that I
+was making myself conspicuous, removed me from the chapel.
+
+The auburn goddess was still on duty at the door as we went out.
+Advancing, she placed in each of our hands a quarter. I regret to say
+that, in my shaken state, I misinterpreted this action.
+
+"Oh, no! _Please!_" I protested, fearing that she thought we had not
+enjoyed the performance, and was therefore returning our money. "It
+really wasn't bad at all. We're only going because we have an
+engagement."
+
+"Be quiet!" interrupted my companion in a savage undertone, jerking me
+along by the arm. "It's only a rebate on the seats!" And without
+allowing me a chance to set myself right he dragged me out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+OLD TALES AND A NEW GAME
+
+
+Mrs. Eichelberger supplied us merely with a place to sleep. For meals
+she referred us to a lady who lived a few doors up the street. But when
+in the morning we went, full of hunger and of hope, to the house of this
+lady, we were coldly informed that breakfast was over, and were
+recommended to the Bell Café, downtown.
+
+My companion and I are not of that robust breed which enjoys a bracing
+walk before its morning coffee, and the fact that the streets of
+Columbus charmed us, as we now saw them for the first time by daylight,
+is proof enough of their quality. There is but little appetite for
+beauty in an empty stomach.
+
+The streets were splendidly wide, and bordered with fine old trees, and
+the houses, each in its own lawn, each with its vines and shrubs, were
+full of the suggestion of an easy-going home life and an informal
+hospitality. Most of them were of frame and in their architecture
+illustrated the decadence of the eighties and nineties, but here or
+there was a fine old brick homestead with a noble columned portico, or a
+formal Georgian house, disposed among beautiful trees and gardens and
+sheltered from the street by an ancient hedge of box. So, though
+Columbus is, as I have indicated, not too easily reached by rail, and
+though, as I have further indicated, walks before breakfast are not to
+my taste, I am compelled to say that for both the journey and the walk I
+felt repaid by the sight of some of the old houses--the Baldwin house,
+the W.D. Humphries house, the J.O. Banks house, the old McLaren house,
+the Kinnebrew house, the Thomas Hardy house, the J.M. Morgan house, with
+its garden of lilies and roses, its giant magnolia trees and its huge
+camellia bushes; and most of all, perhaps, for its Georgian beauty, the
+mellow tone of its old brick, its rich tangle of southern growths, and
+its associations, the venerable mansion of the late General Stephen D.
+Lee, C.S.A.--now the property of the latter's only son, Mr. Blewett Lee,
+general counsel of the Illinois Central Railroad, and a resident of
+Chicago.
+
+It was apropos of our visit to the Lee house that I was told of a
+dramatic and touching example of the rebirth of amity between North and
+South.
+
+Stephen D. Lee it was who, as a young artillery officer attached to the
+staff of General Beauregard, transmitted the actual order to fire on
+Fort Sumter, the shot which began the war. Two years later, having been
+promoted to the rank of lieutenant-general, the same Stephen D. Lee
+participated in the defense of Vicksburg against the assaults of
+Porter's gunboats from the river and of Grant's armies, which hemmed in
+the hilled city on landward side, until at last, on the 4th of July,
+1863, the place was surrendered, making Grant's fame secure.
+
+Years after, when the Government of the United States accepted a statue
+of General Stephen D. Lee, to be placed upon the battle ground of
+Vicksburg--now a national park--it was the late General Frederick Dent
+Grant, son of the capturer of the city, who journeyed thither to unveil
+the memorial to his father's former foe. And by a peculiarly gracious
+and fitting set of circumstances it came about that when, in April last,
+the ninety-fifth anniversary of the birth of U.S. Grant was celebrated
+in his native city, Galena, Illinois, it was Blewett Lee, only son of
+the general taken by Grant at Vicksburg, who journeyed to Galena and
+there in a memorial address, returned the earlier compliment paid to the
+memory of his own father by Grant's son.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Columbus may perhaps appreciate the charm of its old homes, but there is
+evidence to show that it did not appreciate certain other weatherworn
+structures of great beauty. I have seen photographs of an old Baptist
+Church with a fine (and not at all Baptist-looking) portico and fluted
+columns, which was torn down to make room for the present stupidly
+commonplace Baptist church: and I have seen pictures of the beautiful
+old town hall which was recently supplanted by an ignorantly ordinary
+town building of yellow pressed brick. The destruction of these two
+early buildings represents an irreparable loss to Columbus, and it is to
+be hoped that the town will some day be sufficiently enlightened to
+know that this is true and to regret that it did not restore and enlarge
+them instead of tearing them down.
+
+Until a decade or two ago Columbus had, so far as I can learn, but four
+streets possessing names: Main Street, Market Street, College Street,
+and Catfish Alley, all other streets being known as "the street that
+Mrs. Billups, or Mrs. Sykes, or Mrs. Humphries, or Mrs. Some-one-else
+lives on."
+
+Market and Main are business streets--at least they are so where they
+cross--and, like the other streets, are wide. They are lined with brick
+buildings few if any of them more than three stories in height, and it
+was in one of these buildings, on Main Street, that we found the Bell
+Café--advertised as "the most exclusive café in the State."
+
+Being in search of breakfast rather than exclusiveness, we did not sit
+at one of the tables, but at the long lunch counter, where we were
+quickly served.
+
+After breakfast we felt strong enough to look at picture post cards, and
+to that end visited first "Cheap Joe's" and then the shop of Mr.
+Divilbis, where newspapers, magazines, sporting goods, cameras, and all
+such things, are sold. Having viewed post cards picturing such scenes as
+"Main Street looking north," "The 1st Baptist Church," and "Steamer
+_America_, Tombigbee River," we were about to depart, when our attention
+was drawn to a telephonic conversation which had started between Mr.
+Divilbis's clerk and a customer who was thinking of going in for the
+game of lawn tennis. The half of the conversation which was audible to
+us proved entertaining, and we dallied, eavesdropping.
+
+The clerk began by recommending tennis. "Yes," he said, "that would be
+very nice. Everybody is playing tennis now."
+
+But that got him into trouble, for after a pause he said: "I'm sorry I
+can't tell you everything about it. I don't play tennis myself. Al could
+tell you, though. He plays."
+
+Then, after a much longer pause: "Well, ma'am, you see, in a game of
+lawn tennis everybody owns their own racquet."
+
+At this juncture a tall, thin man in what is known (excepting at Palm
+Beach) as a "Palm Beach suit," entered the shop and the clerk asked his
+inquisitor to hold the wire while he made some inquiries. After a long
+conversation with the new arrival he returned to the telephone and
+resumed his explanation.
+
+"Well, you see, they have a net, and one stands on one side and one on
+the other--yes, ma'am, there _can_ be two on each side--and one serves.
+What? Yes, he hits the ball over the net, and it has to go in the
+opposite court on the other side, and then if that one doesn't send it
+back--Yes, the court is marked with lines--why, that counts fifteen. The
+next count is thirty. What? No, ma'am, I don't know why they count that
+way. No, it's just the way they do in lawn tennis. If your opponent has
+nothing, why, they call that 'love.' Yes, that's it--l-o-v-e--just the
+same as when anybody's _in_ love. No, ma'am, I don't know why.... So
+that's the way they count.
+
+"No, ma'am, the lines are boundaries. You have to stand in a certain
+place and hit the ball in a certain place.... No, I don't mean that way.
+You've got to hit it so it _lands_ in a certain place; and the one
+that's playing against you has to hit it back in a certain place, and if
+it goes in some _other_ place, then you can't play it any more. Oh, no!
+Not all day. I mean that ends _that_ part, and you start over. You just
+keep on doing like that."
+
+But though it was apparent that he considered his explanation complete,
+the lady at the other end of the wire was evidently not yet satisfied,
+and as he began to struggle with more questions we left the shop and
+went to the Gilmer Hotel to see if any mail had come for us.
+
+The Gilmer was built by slave labor some years before the war, and was
+in its day considered a very handsome edifice. Nor is it to-day an
+unsatisfactory hotel for a town of the size of Columbus. Its old brick
+walls are sturdy, and its rooms are of a fine spaciousness. Downstairs
+it has been somewhat remodeled, but the large parlor on the second floor
+is much as it was in the beginning, even to the great mirrors and the
+carved furniture imported more than sixty years ago from France. Most of
+the doors still have the old locks, and the window cords originally
+installed were of such a quality that they have not had to be renewed.
+
+The Gilmer was still new when the Battle of Shiloh was fought, and
+several thousand of the wounded were brought to Columbus. The hotel and
+various other buildings, including that of the former Female Institute,
+were converted into hospitals, as were also many private houses in the
+town.
+
+Though there was never fighting at Columbus, the end of the war found
+some fifteen hundred soldiers' graves in Friendship Cemetery, perhaps
+twoscore of the number being those of Federals. The citizens were, at
+this time, too poor and too broken in spirit to erect memorials, but
+several ladies of Columbus made it their custom to visit the cemetery
+and care for the graves of the Confederate dead. This movement, started
+by individuals--Miss Matt Moreton, Mrs. J.T. Fontaine, and Mrs. Green T.
+Hill--was soon taken up by other ladies of the place and resulted in a
+determination to make the decoration of soldiers' graves an annual
+occurrence.
+
+In an old copy of the "Mississippi Index," published at the time, may be
+found an account of the solemn march of the women, young and old, to the
+cemetery, on April 25, 1866--one year after Robert E. Lee's
+surrender--and of the decoration of the graves not only of Confederate
+but of Federal soldiers. It is the proud boast of Columbus that this
+occasion constituted the first celebration of the now national
+Decoration Day--or, as it is more properly called, Memorial Day.
+
+It should perhaps be said here that Columbus, Georgia, disputes the
+claim of Columbus, Mississippi, as to Memorial Day. In the Georgia city
+it is contended that the idea of decorating soldiers' graves originated
+with Miss Lizzie Rutherford, later Mrs. Roswell Ellis, of that place.
+The inscription of Mrs. Ellis' monument in Linwood Cemetery, Columbus,
+Georgia, states that the idea of Memorial Day originated with her.
+
+It seems clear, however, that the same idea occurred to women in both
+cities simultaneously, and that, while the actual celebration of the day
+occurred in Columbus, Mississippi, one day earlier than in Columbus,
+Georgia, the ladies of the latter city may have been first in suggesting
+that Memorial Day be not a local celebration, but one in which the whole
+South should take part.
+
+The incident of the first decoration of the graves of Union as well as
+Confederate soldiers appears, however, to belong entirely to Columbus,
+Mississippi, and it is certain that this exhibition of magnanimity
+inspired F.W. Finch to write the famous poem, "The Blue and the Gray,"
+for when that poem was first published in the "Atlantic Monthly" for
+September, 1867, it carried the following headnote:
+
+     The women of Columbus, Miss., animated by noble sentiments, have
+     shown themselves impartial in their offerings to the memory of the
+     dead. They strewed flowers on the graves of the Confederate and of
+     the National soldiers.
+
+This episode becomes the more touching by reason of the fact that the
+Columbus lady who initiated the movement to place flowers on the Union
+graves, at a time when such action was sure to provoke much criticism in
+the South, was Mrs. Augusta Murdock Sykes, herself the widow of a
+Confederate soldier.
+
+    So with an equal splendor
+      The morning sun rays fall,
+    With a touch impartially tender
+      On the blossoms blooming for all;
+    Under the sod and the dew,
+      Waiting the Judgment Day;
+    Broidered with gold the Blue;
+    Mellowed with gold the Gray.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+OUT OF THE LONG AGO
+
+
+While local historians attempt to tangle up the exploration of De Soto
+with the early history of this region, saying that De Soto "entered the
+State of Mississippi near the site of Columbus," and that "he probably
+crossed the Tombigbee River at this point," their conclusions are
+largely the result of guesswork. But it is not guesswork to say that
+when the Kentucky and Tennessee volunteers, going to the aid of Andrew
+Jackson, at New Orleans, in 1814, cut a military road from Tuscumbia,
+Alabama, to the Gulf, they passed over the site of Columbus, for the
+road they cut remains to-day one of the principal highways of the
+district as well as one of the chief streets of the town.
+
+More clearly defined, of course, are memories of the Civil War and of
+Reconstruction, for there are many present-day residents of Columbus who
+remember both. Among these is one of those wonderful, sweet,
+high-spirited, and altogether fascinating ladies whom we call old only
+because their hair is white and because a number of years have passed
+over their heads--one of those glorious young old ladies in which the
+South is, I think, richer than any other single section of the world.
+
+It was our good fortune to meet Mrs. John Billups, and to see some of
+her treasured relics--among them the flag carried through the battles of
+Monterey and Buena Vista by the First Mississippi Regiment, of which
+Jefferson Davis was colonel, and in which her husband was a lieutenant;
+and a crutch used by General Nathan Bedford Forrest when he was housed
+at the Billups residence in Columbus, recovering from a wound. But
+better yet it was to hear Mrs. Billups herself tell of the times when
+the house in which she lived as a young woman, at Holly Springs,
+Mississippi, was used as headquarters by General Grant.
+
+Mrs. Billups, who was a Miss Govan, was educated in Philadelphia and
+Wilmington, and had many friends and relatives in the North. Her mother
+was Mrs. Mary Govan of Holly Springs, and her brother's wife, who
+resided with the Govans during the war, was a Miss Hawkes, a daughter of
+the Rev. Francis L. Hawkes, then rector of St. Thomas's Church in New
+York. All were, however, good Confederates.
+
+Mrs. Govan's house at Holly Springs was being used as a hospital when
+Grant and his army marched, unresisted, into the town, and Mrs. Govan,
+with her daughters and daughter-in-law, had already moved to the
+residence of Colonel Harvey Walter, which is to this day a show place,
+and is now the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Johnson of St.
+Louis--Mrs. Johnson being Colonel Walter's daughter.
+
+This house was selected by Grant as his headquarters, and he resided
+there for a considerable period. ("It seemed a mighty long time," says
+Mrs. Billups.) With the general was Mrs. Grant and their son Jesse, as
+well as Mrs. Grant's negro maid, Julia, who, Mrs. Grant told Mrs.
+Billups, had been given to her, as a slave, by her father, Colonel Dent.
+Mrs. Billups was under the impression that Julia was, at that time,
+still a slave. At all events, she was treated as a slave.
+
+"We all liked the Grants," Mrs. Billups said. "He had very little to
+say, but she was very sociable and used to come in and sit with us a
+great deal.
+
+"One day the general took his family and part of his army and went to
+Oxford, Mississippi, leaving Colonel Murphy in command at Holly Springs.
+While Grant was away our Confederate General Van Dorn made a raid on
+Holly Springs, capturing the town, tearing up the railroad, and
+destroying the supplies of the Northern army. He just dashed in, did his
+work, and dashed out again.
+
+"Some of his men came to the house and, knowing that it was Grant's
+headquarters, wished to make a search. My mother was entirely willing
+they should do so, but she knew that there were no papers in the house,
+and assured the soldiers that if they did search they would find nothing
+but Mrs. Grant's personal apparel--which she was sure they would not
+wish to disturb.
+
+"That satisfied them and they went away.
+
+"Next morning back came Grant with his army. He rode up on horseback,
+preceded by his bodyguard, and I remember that he looked worn and
+worried.
+
+"As he dismounted he saw my sister-in-law, Mrs. Eaton Pugh Govan--the
+one who was Miss Hawkes--standing on the gallery above.
+
+"He called up to her and said: 'Mrs. Govan, I suppose my sword is gone?'
+
+"'What sword, General?' she asked him.
+
+"'The sword that was presented to me by the army. I left it in my wife's
+closet.'
+
+"Mrs. Govan was thunderstruck.
+
+"'I didn't know it was there,' she said. 'Oh! I should have been tempted
+to send it to General Van Dorn if I had known that it was there!'
+
+"The next morning, as a reward to us for not having known that his sword
+was there, the general gave us a protection paper explicitly forbidding
+soldiers to enter the house."
+
+Of course the Govans, like all other citizens of invaded districts in
+the South, buried their family plate before the "Yankees" came.
+
+Shortly after this had been accomplished--as they thought, secretly--the
+Govans were preparing to entertain friends at dinner when a negro boy
+who helped about the dining-room remarked innocently, in the presence of
+Mrs. Govan and several of her servants:
+
+"Missus ain't gwine to have no fine table to-night, caze all de silvuh's
+done buried in de strawbe'y patch."
+
+He had seen the old gardener "planting" the plate.
+
+Thereafter it was quietly decided in the family that the negroes had
+better know nothing about the location of buried treasure. That night,
+therefore, some gentlemen went out to the strawberry patch, disinterred
+the silver, carried it to Colonel Walter's place, and there buried it
+under the front walk.
+
+"And after Grant came," said Mrs. Billups, "we used to laugh as we
+watched the Union sentries marching up and down that walk, right over
+our plate."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Among the items not already mentioned, of which Columbus is proud, are
+the facts that she has supplied two cabinet members within the past
+decade--J.M. Dickinson, Taft's Secretary of War, and T.W. Gregory,
+Wilson's Attorney General--and that J. Gano Johnson, breeder of famous
+American saddle horses, has recently come from Kentucky and established
+his Emerald Chief Stock Farm in Lowndes County, a short distance from
+the town.
+
+But items like these, let me be frank to say, do not appeal to me as do
+the picturesque old stories which cling about such a town.
+
+There is, for instance, the story of Alexander Keith McClung, famous
+about the middle of the last century as a duellist and dandy. McClung
+was a Virginian by birth, but while still a young man took up his
+residence in Columbus. His father studied law under Thomas Jefferson and
+was later conspicuous in Kentucky politics, and his mother was a sister
+of Chief Justice John Marshall. In 1828, at the age of seventeen,
+McClung became a midshipman in the navy, and though he remained in the
+service but a year, he managed during that time to fight a duel with
+another midshipman, who wounded him in the arm. At eighteen he fought a
+duel near Frankfort, Kentucky, with his cousin James W. Marshall. His
+third duel was with a lawyer named Allen, who resided in Jackson,
+Mississippi. Allen was the challenger--as it is said McClung took pains
+to see that his adversaries usually were, so that he might have the
+choice of weapons, for he was very skillful with the pistol. In his duel
+with Allen he specified that each was to be armed with four pistols and
+a bowie knife, that they were to start eighty paces apart, and upon
+signal were to advance, firing at will. At about thirty paces he shot
+Allen through the brain. His fourth duel was with John Menifee, of
+Vicksburg, and was fought in 1839, on the river bank, near that city,
+with rifles at thirty yards. Some idea of the spirit in which duelling
+was taken in those days may be gathered from the fact that the Vicksburg
+Rifles, of which Menifee was an officer, turned out in full uniform to
+see the fight. However they were doubly disappointed, for it was Menifee
+and not McClung who died. It is said that a short time after this, one
+of Menifee's brothers challenged McClung, who killed this brother, and
+so on until he had killed all seven male members of the Menifee family.
+
+McClung fought gallantly in the Mexican War, as lieutenant-colonel of
+the First Mississippi Regiment, of which Jefferson Davis was colonel.
+Though he remained always a bachelor it is said that he had many love
+affairs. He was a hard drinker, a flowery speaker, and a writer of
+sentimental verse. It is said that in his later life he was exceedingly
+unhappy, brooding over the lives he had taken in duels--fourteen in all.
+His last poem was an "Invocation to Death," ending with the line:
+
+    "Oh, Death, come soon! Come soon!"
+
+Shortly after writing it he shaved, dressed himself with the most
+scrupulous care, and shot himself. This occurred March 23, 1855, in the
+Eagle Hotel, North Capitol Street, Jackson, Mississippi.
+
+"To preserve the neatness and cleanliness of his attire after death
+should have ensued," says Colonel R.W. Banks, "it is said he poured a
+little water upon the floor to ascertain the direction the blood would
+take when it flowed from the wound. Then, placing himself in proper
+position, so that the gore would run from and not toward his body, he
+placed the pistol to the right temple, pulled the trigger and death
+quickly followed."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND HIM
+
+
+On our second evening in Columbus my companion and I returned to the
+house, near our domicile, to which we had been sent by Mrs. Eichelberger
+for our meals; but owing to a misunderstanding as to the dinner hour we
+found ourselves again too late. The family, and the teachers from the
+I.I. and C. who took meals there, were already coming out from dinner to
+sit and chat on the steps in the twilight.
+
+We were disappointed, for we were tired of restaurants, and had counted
+on a home meal that night; nor was our disappointment softened by the
+fact that the lady whom we interviewed seemed to have no pity for us,
+but dismissed us in a chilling manner, which hinted that, even had we
+been in time for dinner, we should have been none too welcome at her
+exclusive board.
+
+Crestfallen, we turned away and started once more in the direction of
+the Belle Café. In the half light the street held for us a melancholy
+loveliness. Above, the great trees made a dark, soft canopy; the air was
+balmy and sweet with the scent of lilacs and roses; lights were
+beginning to appear in windows along the way. Yet none of it was for
+us. We were wanderers, condemned forever to walk through strange streets
+whose homes we might not enter, and whose inhabitants we might not know.
+
+When we had proceeded in silence for a block or two, we perceived a
+woman strolling toward us on the walk ahead. Nor was it yet so dark that
+we could fail to notice, as we neared her, that she was very pretty in
+her soft black dress and her corsage of narcissus--that, in short, she
+was the young lady whom, though we were indebted to her for our rooms at
+Mrs. Eichelberger's, we had not been able to thank.
+
+Now, of course, we stopped and told her of our gratitude. First my
+companion told her of his. Then I told her of mine. Then we both told
+her of our combined gratitude. And after each telling she assured us
+sweetly that it was nothing--nothing at all.
+
+All this made quite a little conversation. She hoped that we were
+comfortable. We assured her that we were. Then, because it seemed so
+pleasant to be talking, on a balmy, flower-scented evening, with a
+pretty girl wearing a soft black dress and a corsage of narcissus, we
+branched out, telling her of our successive disappointments as to meals
+in the house up the street.
+
+"Which house?" she asked.
+
+We described it.
+
+"That's where I live," said she.
+
+And to think we had twice been late!
+
+"_You_ live there?"
+
+"Yes. It was my elder sister whom you saw." Then we all smiled, for we
+had spoken of the chill which had accompanied the rebuff.
+
+"Do you think your sister will let us come to-morrow for breakfast?"
+ventured my companion.
+
+"If you're there by eight."
+
+"Because," he added, "breakfast is our last meal here."
+
+"You're going away?"
+
+"Yes. About noon."
+
+"Oh," she said. And we hoped the way she said it meant that she was just
+the least bit sorry we were going.
+
+With that she started to move on again.
+
+"We'll see you at breakfast, then?"
+
+"Perhaps," she said in a casual tone, continuing on her way.
+
+"Not surely?"
+
+"Why not come and see?" The words were wafted back to us provocatively
+upon the evening air.
+
+"We will! Good night."
+
+"Good night."
+
+We walked some little way in silence.
+
+"Eight o'clock!" murmured my companion presently in a reflective, rueful
+tone. "We must turn in early."
+
+We did turn in early, and we should have been asleep early was it not
+for the fact that among the chief wonders of Columbus must be ranked its
+roosters--birds of a ghastly habit of nocturnal vocalism.
+
+But though these creatures interfered somewhat with our slumbers, and
+though eight is an early hour for us, we reached the neighboring house
+next morning five minutes ahead of time. And though the manner of the
+elder sister was, as before, austere, that made no difference, for the
+younger sister was there.
+
+After breakfast we dallied, chatting with her for a time; then a bell
+began to toll, and my companion reminded me that I had an engagement to
+visit the Industrial Institute and College before leaving.
+
+It was quite true. I had made the engagement the day before, but it had
+been my distinct understanding that he was to accompany me; for if
+anything disconcerts me it is to go alone to such a place. However sweet
+girls may be as individuals, or in small groups, they are in the mass
+diabolically cruel, and their cruelty is directed especially against
+men. I know. I have walked up to a college building to pay a call, while
+thirty girls, seated on the steps, played, sang, and whistled an inane
+marching tune, with the rhythm of which my steps could not but keep
+time. I have been the only man in a dining-room full of college girls. A
+hundred of them put down their knives and forks with a clatter as I
+entered, and a hundred pairs of mischievously solemn eyes followed my
+every movement. Voluntarily to go through such experiences alone a man
+must be in love. And certainly I was not in love with any girl at the
+Industrial Institute.
+
+"We both have an engagement," I said.
+
+"I can't go," he returned.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I have two sketches to make before train time."
+
+"You're going to make me go over there _alone_?"
+
+"I don't care whether you go or not," he replied mercilessly. "You made
+the engagement. I had nothing to do with it. But I am responsible for
+the pictures."
+
+Perceiving that it was useless to argue with him, I reluctantly departed
+and, not without misgivings, made my way to the Industrial Institute.
+
+I am thankful to say that there matters did not turn out so badly for me
+as I had anticipated. I refused to visit classrooms, and contented
+myself with gathering information. And since the going to gather this
+information cost me such uneasiness, I do not propose to waste entirely
+the fruits of my effort, but shall here record some of the facts that I
+collected.
+
+The Industrial Institute and College is for girls of sixteen years or
+over who are graduates of high schools. There are about 800 students
+taking either the collegiate, normal, industrial, or musical courses, or
+combination courses. This college, I was informed, was the first in the
+country to offer industrial education to women.
+
+Most of the students come from families in modest circumstances, and
+attend the college with the definite purpose of fitting themselves to
+become self-supporting. The cost is very slight, the only regular
+charge, aside from board and general living expenses, being a nominal
+matriculation fee of $5. There is no charge for rooms in the large
+dormitories connected with the college. Board, light, fuel, and laundry
+are paid for coöperatively, the average cost per student, for all these,
+being about ten dollars a month--which sum also includes payment for a
+lyceum ticket and for two hats per annum. Uniforms are worn by all,
+these being very simple navy-blue suits with sailor hats. Seniors and
+juniors wear cap and gown. All uniform requirements may be covered at a
+cost of twenty dollars a year, and a girl who practices economy may get
+through her college year at a total cost of about $125, though of course
+some spend considerably more.
+
+Many students work their way, either wholly or in part. Thirty or forty
+of them serve in the dining room, for which work they are allowed
+sixty-five dollars a year. Others, who clean classrooms are allowed
+fifty dollars a year, and still others earn various sums by assisting in
+the library or reading room or by doing secretarial work.
+
+Unlike the other departments of the college, the musical department is
+not a tax upon the State, but is entirely self-sustaining, each girl
+paying for her own lessons. This department is under the direction of
+Miss Weenonah Poindexter, to whose enthusiasm much if not all of its
+success is due. Miss Poindexter began her work in 1894, as the college's
+only piano teacher, giving lessons in the dormitories. Now she not only
+has a splendid music hall and a number of assistants, but has succeeded
+in making Columbus one of the recognized musical centers of the South,
+by bringing there a series of the most distinguished artists:
+Paderewski, Nordica, Schumann-Heinck, Gadski, Sembrich, Bispham, Albert
+Spaulding, Maud Powell, Damrosch's Orchestra, and Sousa's Band.
+
+So much I had learned of the I.I. and C. when it came time for me to
+flee to the train. My companion and I had already packed our suitcases,
+and it had been arranged between us that, instead of consuming time by
+trying to meet and drive together to the station, we should work
+independently, joining each other at the train.
+
+I left the college in an automobile, stopping at Mrs. Eichelberger's
+only long enough to get my suitcase. As I drove on past the next corner
+I chanced to look up the intersecting street. There, by a lilac bush,
+stood my companion. He was not alone. With him was a very pretty girl
+wearing a soft black dress and a corsage of narcissus. But the corsage
+was now smaller, by one flower, than it had been before, for, as I
+sighted them, she was in the act of placing one of the blooms from her
+bouquet in my companion's buttonhole. Her hands looked very white and
+small against his dark coat, and I recall that he was gazing down at
+them, and that his features were distorted by a sentimental smile.
+
+"Come on!" I called to him.
+
+He looked up. His expression was vague.
+
+"Go along," he returned.
+
+"Why don't you come with me now?"
+
+"I'll be there," he replied. "You buy the tickets and check the
+baggage." And with that he turned his back.
+
+"Good-by," I called to the young lady. But she was looking up at him and
+didn't seem to hear me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My companion arrived at the station in an old hack, with horses at the
+gallop. He was barely in time.
+
+When we were settled in the car, bowling along over the prairies toward
+the little junction town of Artesia, I turned to him and inquired how
+his work had gone that morning. But at that moment he caught sight,
+through the car window, of some negroes sitting at a cabin door, and
+exclaimed over their picturesqueness.
+
+I agreed. Then, as the train left them behind, I repeated my question:
+"How did your work go?"
+
+"This is very fertile-looking country," said he.
+
+This time I did not reply, but asked:
+
+"Did you finish both sketches?"
+
+"No," he answered. "Not both. There wasn't time."
+
+"Let's see the one you did."
+
+"As a matter of fact," he returned, "I didn't do any. You know how it
+is. Sometimes a fellow feels like drawing--sometimes he doesn't. Somehow
+I didn't feel like it this morning."
+
+With that he lifted the lapel of his coat and, bending his head
+downward, sniffed in a romantic manner at the sickeningly sweet flower
+in his buttonhole.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+VICKSBURG OLD AND NEW
+
+
+I should advise the traveler who is interested in cities not to enter
+Vicksburg by the Alabama & Vicksburg Railroad, which has a dingy little
+station in a sort of gulch, but by the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley
+Railroad--a branch of the Illinois Central--which skirts the river bank
+and flashes a large first impression of the city before the eyes of
+alighting passengers.
+
+The station itself is a pretty brick colonial building, backed by a neat
+if tiny park maintained by the railroad company, and facing the levee
+(pronounce "_lev_-vy"), along which the tracks are laid. Beyond the
+tracks untidy landing places are scattered along the water front, with
+here and there a tall, awkward, stern-wheel river steamer tied up,
+looking rather like an old-fashioned New Jersey seacoast hotel, covered
+with porches and jimcrack carving, painted white, embellished with a
+cupola and a pair of tall, thin smokestacks, and set adrift in its old
+age to masquerade in maritime burlesque.
+
+At other points along the bank are moored a heterogeneous assortment of
+shanty boats of an incredible and comic slouchiness. Some are nothing
+but rafts made of water-soaked logs, bearing tiny shacks knocked
+together out of driftwood and old patches of tin and canvas, but the
+larger ones have barges, or the hulks of old launches, as their
+foundation. These curious craft are moored in long lines to the
+half-submerged willow and cottonwood trees along the bank, or to stakes
+driven into the levee, or to the railroad ties, or to whatever objects,
+ashore, may be made fast an old frayed rope or a piece of telephone
+wire. Long, narrow planks, precariously propped, connect them with the
+river bank, so that the men, women, children, dogs, and barnyard
+creatures who inhabit them may pass to and fro. Some of the boats are
+the homes of negro families, some of whites. On some, negro fish markets
+are conducted, advertised by large catfish dangling from their posts and
+railings.
+
+Whether fishing for market, for personal use, or merely for the sake of
+having an occupation involving a minimum of effort, the residents of
+shanty boats--particularly the negroes--seem to spend most of their days
+seated in drowsy attitudes, with fish poles in their hands. Their eyes
+fall shut, their heads nod in the sun, their lines lag in the muddy
+water; life is uneventful, pleasant, and warm.
+
+When Porter's mortar fleet lay in the river, off Vicksburg, bombarding
+the town, that river was the Mississippi, but though it looks the same
+to-day as it did then, it is not the Mississippi now, but the Yazoo
+River. This comes about through one of those freakish changes of course
+for which the great stream has always been famous.
+
+In the old days Vicksburg was situated upon one of the loops of a large
+letter "S" formed by the Mississippi, but in 1876 the river cut through
+a section of land and eliminated the loop upon which the town stood.
+Fortunately, however, the Yazoo emptied into the Mississippi above
+Vicksburg, and it was found possible, by digging a canal, to divert the
+latter river from its course and lead its waters into the loop left dry
+by the whim of the greater stream. Thus the river life, out of which
+Vicksburg was born, and without which the place would lose its
+character, was retained, and the wicked old Mississippi, which has
+played rough pranks on men and cities since men and cities first
+appeared upon its banks, was for once circumvented. This is but one item
+from the record of grotesque tricks wrought by changes in the river's
+course: a record of farms located at night on one side of the stream,
+and in the morning on the other; of large tracts of land transferred
+from State to State by a sudden switch of this treacherous fluid line of
+boundary; of river boats crashing by night into dry land where yesterday
+a deep stream flowed; of towns built up on river trade, utterly
+dependent upon the river, yet finding themselves suddenly deserted by
+it, like wives whose husbands disappear, leaving them withering,
+helpless, and in want.
+
+Where the upper Mississippi, above St. Louis, flows between tall bluffs
+it attains a grandeur which one expects in mighty streams, but that is
+not the part of the river which gets itself talked about in the
+newspapers and in Congress, nor is it the part of the river one
+involuntarily thinks of when the name Mississippi is mentioned. The
+drama, the wonder, the mystery of the Mississippi are in the lower
+river: the river of countless wooded islands, now standing high and dry,
+now buried to the tree tops in swirling torrents of muddy water; the
+river of black gnarled snags carried downstream to the Gulf with the
+speed of motor boats; the river whose craft sail on a level with the
+roofs of houses; the river of broken levees, of savage inundations.
+
+The upper river has a beauty which is like that of some lovely, stately,
+placid, well-behaved blond wife. She is conventional and correct. You
+always know where to find her. The lower river is a temperamental
+mistress. At one moment she is all sweetness, smiles and playfulness; at
+the next vivid and passionate. Even when she is at her loveliest there
+is always the possibility of sudden fury: of her rising in a rage,
+breaking the furniture, wrecking the house--yes, and perhaps winding her
+wicked cold arms about you in a final destroying embrace.
+
+Being the "Gibraltar of the river" (albeit a Gibraltar of clay and not
+of rock), Vicksburg does not suffer when floods come. Turn your back
+upon the river, as you stand on the platform of the Yazoo & Mississippi
+railroad station, and you may gather at a glance an impression of the
+town piling up the hillside to the eastward.
+
+The first buildings, occupying the narrow shelf of land at the water's
+edge, are small warehouses, negro eating houses, dilapidated little
+steamship offices, and all manner of shacks in want of paint and
+repairs. From the station Mulberry Street runs obliquely up the hillside
+to the south. This street, which forms the main thoroughfare to the
+station, used to be occupied by wholesale houses, but has more lately
+been given over largely to a frankly and prominently exposed district of
+commercialized vice--negro and white. Not only is it at the very door of
+Vicksburg, but it parallels, and is but one block distant from, the
+city's main street.
+
+Other streets, so steep as hardly to be passable, directly assault the
+face of the hill, mounting abruptly to Washington Street, which runs on
+a flat terrace at about the height of the top of the station roof, and
+exposes to the view of the newly arrived traveler the unpainted wooden
+backs of a number of frame buildings which, though they are but two or
+three stories high in front, reach in some cases a height of five or six
+stories at the rear, owing to the steepness of the hillside to which
+they cling. The roof lines, side walls, windows, chimneys, galleries,
+posts, and railings of these sad-looking structures are all
+picturesquely out of plumb, and some idea of the general dilapidation
+may be gathered from the fact that, one day, while my companion stood on
+the station platform, drawing a picture of this scene, a brick chimney,
+a portrait of which he had just completed, softly collapsed before our
+eyes, for all the world like a sitter who, having held a pose too long,
+faints from exhaustion.
+
+A brief inspection of the life on the galleries of these foul old fire
+traps reveals them as negro tenements; and, though they front on the
+main street of Vicksburg, it should be explained that about here begins
+the "nigger end" of Washington Street--the more prosperous portion of
+the downtown section lying to the southward, where substantial brick
+office buildings may be seen.
+
+Between the ragged, bulging tenements above are occasional narrow gaps
+through which are revealed cinematographic glimpses of street traffic;
+and over the tenement roofs one catches sight of sundry other buildings,
+these being of brick, and, though old, and in no way imposing, yet of a
+more prosperous and self-respecting character than the nearer
+structures.
+
+Altogether, the scene, though it is one to delight an etcher, is not of
+a character to inspire hope in the heart of a humanitarian, or an expert
+on sanitation or fire prevention. Nor, indeed, would it achieve
+completeness, even on the artistic side, were it not for its crowning
+feature. Far off, over the roofs and above them, making an apex to the
+composition, and giving to the whole picture a background of beauty and
+of ancient dignity, rises the graceful white-columned cupola of
+Vicksburg's old stone courthouse, partially obscured by a feathery
+green tree top, hinting of space and foliage upon the summit of the
+hill.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pamphlets on Vicksburg, issued by railroad companies for the enticement
+of tourists, give most of their space to the story of the campaign
+leading to Grant's siege of Vicksburg and to descriptions of the various
+operations in the siege--the battlefield, now a national military park,
+being considered the city's chief object of interest.
+
+Though I am not constitutionally enthusiastic about seeing battlefields,
+I must admit that I found the field of Vicksburg engrossing. The siege
+of a small city presents a comparatively simple and compact military
+problem which is, therefore, comprehensible to the civilian mind, and in
+addition to this the Vicksburg battlefield is splendidly preserved and
+marked, so that the visitor may easily reconstruct the conflict.
+
+The park, which covers the fighting area, forms a loose crescent-shaped
+strip over the hills which surround the city, its points abutting on the
+river above and below. The chief drives of the park parallel each other,
+the inner one, Confederate Avenue, following, as nearly as the hills
+permit, the city's line of defense, while the other, Union Avenue, forms
+an outer semicircle and follows, in a similar manner, the trenches of
+the attacking forces.
+
+That the battlefield is so well preserved is due in part to man and in
+part to Nature. Many of the hills of Warren County, in which Vicksburg
+is situated, are composed of a curious soft limy clay, called marl,
+which, normally, has not the solidity of soft chalk. Marse Harris
+Dickson, who knows more about Vicksburg--and also about negroes, common
+law, floods, funny stories, geology, and rivers--than any other man in
+Mississippi, tells me that this marl was deposited by the river, in the
+form of silt, centuries ago, and that it was later thrown up into hills
+by volcanic action. He did not live in Vicksburg when this took place,
+but deduces his facts from the discovery of the remains of shellfish in
+the soil of the hills.
+
+Whatever its geological origin, this soil has some very strange
+characteristics. In composition it is neither stone nor sand, but a
+cross between the two--brown and brittle. One can easily crush it to
+dust in one's hand, in which form it has about the consistency of talcum
+powder, and it may be added that when this brown powder is seized by the
+winds and whirled about, Vicksburg becomes one of the most mercilessly
+dusty cities on this earth.
+
+On exposed slopes the marl washes very badly, forming great caving
+gullies, but, curiously enough, where it is exposed perpendicularly it
+does not wash, but slicks over on the outside, and stands almost as well
+as soft sandstone, although you can readily dig into it with your
+fingers.
+
+Many of the highways leading in and out of the city pass between tall
+walls of this peculiar soil, through deep cuts which a visitor might
+naturally take for the result of careful grading by the road builders;
+but Marse Harris Dickson tells me that the cuts are entirely the result
+of erosion wrought by a hundred years of wheeled traffic.
+
+So far as I know there is but one man who has witnessed this phenomenon
+without being impressed. That man is Samuel Merwin. Merwin went down and
+visited Marse Harris in Vicksburg, and saw all the sights. He was polite
+about the battlefield, and the river, and the negro stories, and
+everything else, until Marse Harris showed him how the highways had
+eroded through the hills. That did not seem to impress him at all.
+Moreover, instead of being tactful, he started telling about his trip to
+China. In China, he said, there were similar formations, but, as the
+civilization of China was much older than that of Vicksburg (fancy his
+having said a thing like that!) the gorges over there had eroded to a
+much greater extent. He said he had seen them three hundred feet deep.
+
+The more Marse Harris tried to get him to say something a little bit
+complimentary about the Vicksburg erosions, the more Merwin boasted
+about China. He declared that the Vicksburg erosions didn't amount to a
+hill of beans compared with what he could show Marse Harris if Marse
+Harris would go with him to a certain point on the banks of the Wa Choo,
+in the province of Lang Pang Si.
+
+Evidently he harped on this until he touched not only his host's local
+pride, but his pride of discovery. Before that, Marse Harris had been
+content to stick around in Mississippi, with perhaps a little run down
+to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, or up to Dogtail to see a break in the
+levee, but after Merwin's talk about China he began to grow restless,
+and it is generally said in Vicksburg that it was purely in order to
+have something to tell Merwin about, the next time he saw him, that he
+made his celebrated trip to the source of the Nile. As for Merwin, he
+has never been invited back to Vicksburg, and it is to be observed that,
+even to this day, Marse Harris, by nature of a sunny disposition, shows
+signs of erosion of the spirit when China is mentioned.
+
+It is apropos the battlefield that I mention the peculiarities of the
+soil. Had the bare ground been exposed to the rains of a few years, the
+details of redoubts, trenches, gun positions, saps, and all other
+military works would have melted away. Fortunately, however, there is a
+kind of tough, strong-rooted grass, called Bermuda grass, indigenous to
+that part of the country, and this grass quickly covered the
+battlefield, holding the soil together so effectually that all outlines
+are practically embalmed. So, although those in charge of the park have
+contributed not a little to its preservation--putting old guns in their
+former places, perpetuating saps with concrete work, and placing white
+markers on the hillsides, to show how far up those hillsides the
+assaulting Union troops made their way in various historic charges--it
+is due most of all to Nature that the Vicksburg battlefield so well
+explains itself.
+
+Could Grant and Pemberton look to-day upon the hills and valleys where
+surged their six weeks' struggle for possession of the city, I doubt
+that they would find any important landmark wanting, and it is certain
+that they could not say, as Wellington did when he revisited Waterloo:
+"They have spoiled my battlefield!"
+
+Besides the old guns and the markers, the field is dotted over with
+observation towers and all manner of memorials. Of the latter, the
+marble pantheon erected by the State of Illinois, and the beautiful
+marble and bronze memorial structure of the State of Iowa, are probably
+the finest. The marble column erected by Wisconsin carries at its summit
+a great bronze effigy of "Old Abe," the famous eagle, mascot of the
+Wisconsin troops. Guides to the battlefield are prone to relate to
+visitors--especially, I suspect, those whose accents betray a Northern
+origin--how "Old Abe," the bird of battle, went home and disgraced
+himself, after the war, by his ungentlemanly action in laying a setting
+of eggs.
+
+The handsomest monument to an individual which I saw upon the
+battlefield was the admirable bronze bust of Major General Martin L.
+Smith, C.S.A., and the one which appealed most to my imagination was
+also a memorial to a Confederate soldier: Brigadier-General States
+Rights Gist. Is there not something Roman in the thought that, thirty or
+more years before the war, a southern father gave his new-born son that
+name, dedicating him, as it were, to the cause of States Rights, and
+that the son so dedicated gave his life in battle for that cause? The
+name upon that stone made me better understand the depth of feeling that
+existed in the South long years before the War, and gave me a clearer
+comprehension of at least one reason why the South made such a gallant
+fight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of more than fourscore national cemeteries in the United States, that
+which stands among the hills and trees, overlooking the river, at the
+northerly end of the military park, is one of the most beautiful, and
+is, with the single exception of Arlington, the largest. It contains the
+graves of nearly 17,000 Union soldiers lost in this
+campaign--three-fourths of them "unknown"!
+
+It is interesting to note that, because the surrender of Pemberton to
+Grant occurred on July 4, that date has, in this region, associations
+less happy than attach to it elsewhere, and that the Fourth has not been
+celebrated in Vicksburg since the Civil War, except by the negroes, who
+have taken it for their especial holiday. This reminds me, also, of the
+fact that, throughout the South, Christmas, instead of the Fourth of
+July, is celebrated with fireworks.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+SHREDS AND PATCHES
+
+
+It was Marse Harris Dickson who showed us the battlefield. As we were
+driving along in the motor we overtook an old trudging negro, very
+picturesque in his ragged clothing and battered soft hat. My companion
+said that he would like to take a picture of this wayfarer, and asked
+Marse Harris, who, as author of the "Old Reliable" stories, seemed best
+fitted for the task, to arrange the matter. The automobile, having
+passed the negro, was stopped to wait for him to catch up. Presently, as
+he came by, Marse Harris addressed him in that friendly way Southerners
+have with negroes.
+
+"Want your picture taken, old man?" he asked.
+
+To which the negro, still shuffling along, replied:
+
+"I ain't got no money."
+
+Marse Harris, knowing the workings of the negro mind, got the full
+import of this reply at once, but I must confess that a moment passed
+before I realized that the negro took us for itinerant photographers
+looking for trade.
+
+With the possible exception of Irvin S. Cobb, I suppose Marse Harris has
+the largest collection of negro character stories of any individual in
+this country. And let me say, in this connection, that I know of no
+better place than Vicksburg for the study of southern negro types.
+
+One day Marse Harris was passing by the jail. It was hot weather, and
+the jail windows were open. Behind the bars of one window, looking down
+upon the street, stood a negro prisoner. As Marse Harris passed this
+window a negro wearing a large watch chain came by in the other
+direction. His watch chain evidently caught the eye of the prisoner, who
+spoke in a wistful tone, demanding:
+
+"What tahme is it, brotha?"
+
+"What foh you want t' know what tahme it is?" returned the other
+sternly, as he continued upon his way. "You ain't goin' nowhere."
+
+Through Marse Harris I obtained a copy of a letter written by a negro
+named Walter to Mr. W.H. Reeve of Vicksburg. Walter had looked out for
+Mr. Reeve's live stock during a flood, and had certain ideas about what
+should be done for him in consequence. I give the letter exactly as it
+was written, merely inserting, parenthetically, a few explanatory words:
+
+     _Mr. H W Reeve an bos dear sir I like to git me a par [pair] second
+     hand pance dont a fail or elce I will be dout [without] a pare to
+     go eny where so send me something. Dont a fail an send me a par of
+     youre pance [or] i will hafter go to work for somebody to git some.
+     I don't think you all is treating me right at all I stayed with
+     youre hogs in the water till the last tening [attending] to them
+     and I dont think that youre oder [ought to] fail me bout a pare old
+     pance_
+
+     WALTER
+
+Though I cannot see just why it should be so, it seemed to us that the
+Vicksburg negroes were happier than those of any other place we visited.
+Whether drowsing in the sun, walking the streets, doing a little stroke
+of work, fishing, or sitting gabbling on the curbstone, they were upon
+the whole as cheerful and as comical a lot of people as I ever saw.
+
+"Wha' you-all goin' to?" I heard a negro ask a group of mulatto women,
+in clean starched gingham dresses, who went flouncing by him on the
+street one Saturday afternoon.
+
+"Oh," returned one of the women, with the elaborate superiority of a
+member of the class of idle rich, "we're just serenadin' 'round."
+
+"Serenading," as she used the word, meant a promenade about the town.
+
+Perhaps the happiness of the negro, here, has to do with the lazy life
+of the river. The succulent catfish is easily obtainable for food, and
+the wages of the roustabout--or "rouster," as he is called for
+short--are good.
+
+The rouster, in his red undershirt, with a bale hook hung in his belt,
+is a figure to fascinate the eye. When he works--which is to say, when
+he is out of funds--he works hard. He will swing a two-hundred-pound
+sack to his back and do fancy steps as he marches with it up the springy
+gangplank to the river steamer's deck, uttering now and then a strange,
+barbaric snatch of song. He has no home, no family, no responsibilities.
+An ignorant deck hand can earn from forty to one hundred dollars a
+month. Pay him off at the end of the trip, let him get ashore with his
+money, and he is gone. Without deck hands the steamer cannot move. For
+many years there has been known to river captains a simple way out of
+this difficulty. Pay the rousters off a few hours before the end of the
+trip. Say there are twenty of them, and that each is given twenty
+dollars. They clear a space on deck and begin shooting craps. No one
+interferes. By the time the trip ends most of the money has passed into
+the hands of four or five; the rest are "broke" and therefore remain at
+work. Yet despite the ingenuity of those who have the negro labor
+problem to contend with, Marse Harris tells me that there have been
+times when the levee was lined with steamers, full-loaded, but unable to
+depart for want of a crew. Not that there was any lack of roustabouts in
+town, but that, money being plentiful, they would not work. In such
+times perishable freight rots and is thrown overboard.
+
+I am conscious of a tendency, in writing of Vicksburg, to dwell
+continually upon the negro and the river for the reason that the two
+form an enchanting background for the whole life of the place. This
+should not, however, be taken to indicate that Vicksburg is not a city
+of agreeable homes and pleasant society, or that its only
+picturesqueness is to be found in the river and negro life.
+
+The point is that Vicksburg is a patchwork city. The National Park
+Hotel, its chief hostelry, is an unusually good hotel for a city of
+this size, and Washington Street, in the neighborhood of the hotel, has
+the look of a busy city street; yet on the same square with the hotel,
+on the street below, nearer the river, is an unwholesome negro
+settlement. So it is all over the city; the "white folks" live on the
+hills, while the "niggers" inhabit the adjacent bottoms. Nor is that the
+only sense in which the town is patched together. Some of the most
+charming of the city's old homes are tucked away where the visitor is
+not likely to see them without deliberate search. Such a place, for
+example, is the old Klein house, standing amid lawns and old-fashioned
+gardens, on the bluff overlooking the Mississippi. This house was built
+long before the railroad came to Vicksburg, cutting off its grounds from
+the river. A patch in the paneling of the front door shows where a
+cannon ball passed through at the time of the bombardment, and the ball
+itself may still be seen embedded in the woodwork of one of the rooms
+within.
+
+And there are other patches. Near the old courthouse, which rears itself
+so handsomely at the summit of a series of terraces leading up from the
+street, are a number of old sand roads which must be to-day almost as
+they were in the heyday of the river's glory, when the region in which
+the courthouse stands was the principal part of the city--the days of
+heavy drinking and gambling, dueling, slave markets, and steamboat
+races. These streets are not the streets of a city, but of a small town.
+So, too, where Adams Street crosses Grove, it has the appearance of a
+country lane, the road represented by a pair of wheel tracks running
+through the grass; but Cherry Street, only a block distant, is built up
+with city houses and has a good asphalt pavement and a trolley line.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+THE BAFFLING MISSISSIPPI
+
+
+As inevitably as water flows down the hills of Vicksburg to the river,
+the visitor's thoughts flow down always to the great spectacular,
+historic, mischievous, dominating stream.
+
+Mark Twain, in that glorious book, "Life on the Mississippi," declared,
+in speaking of the eternal problems of the Mississippi, that as there
+are not enough citizens of Louisiana to take care of all the theories
+about the river at the rate of one theory per individual, each citizen
+has two theories. That is the case to-day as it was when Mark Twain was
+a pilot. I have heard half a dozen prominent men, some of them
+engineers, state their views as to what should be done. Each view seemed
+sound, yet all were at variance.
+
+Consider, for example, that part of the river lying between Vicksburg
+and the mouth. Here, quite aside from the problem as to the hands in
+which river-control work should be vested--a very great problem in
+itself--three separate and distinct physical problems are presented.
+
+From Vicksburg to Red River Landing there are swift currents which
+deposit silt only at the edge of the bank, or on sand bars. From Red
+River Landing to New Orleans the problem is different; here the channel
+is much improved, and slow currents at the sides of the river, between
+the natural river bank and the levee, deposit silt in the old "borrow
+pits"--pits from which the earth was dug for the building of the
+levees--filling them up, whereas, farther up the river, the borrow pits,
+instead of filling up, are likely to scour, undermining the levee. From
+New Orleans to the head of the Passes--these being the three main
+channels by which the river empties into the Gulf--the banks between the
+natural river bed and the levees build up with silt much more rapidly
+than at any other point on the entire stream; here there are no sand
+bars, and the banks cave very little. In this part of the river it is
+not current, but wind, which forms the great problem, for the winds are
+terrific at certain times of year, and when they blow violently against
+the current, waves are formed which wash out the levees.
+
+This is the barest outline of three chief physical problems with which
+river engineers must contend. There are countless others which have to
+be met in various ways. In some places the water seeps through, under
+the levee, and bubbles up, like a spring, from the ground outside. This,
+if allowed to continue, soon undermines the levee and causes a break.
+The method of fighting such a seepage is interesting. When the water
+begins to bubble up, a hollow tower of sand-filled sacks is built up
+about the place where it comes from the ground, and when this tower has
+raised the level of the water within it to that of the river, the
+pressure is of course removed, on the siphon principle.
+
+As river-control work is at present handled, there is no centralization
+of authority, and friction, waste, and politics consequently play a
+large part.
+
+Consider, for example, the situation in the State of Louisiana. Here
+control is, broadly speaking, in the hands of three separate bodies: (1)
+the United States army engineer, who disburses the money appropriated by
+Congress for levees and bank revetment, working under direction of the
+Mississippi River Commission; (2) the State Board of Engineers, which
+disburses Louisiana State funds wherever it sees fit, and which,
+incidentally, does not use, in its work, the same specifications as are
+used by the Government; and (3) the local levee boards, of which there
+are eight in Louisiana, one to each river parish--a parish being what is
+elsewhere called a county. Each of these eight boards has authority as
+to where parish money shall be spent within its district, and it may be
+added that this last group (considering the eight boards as a unit) has
+the largest sum to spend on river work.
+
+The result of this division of authority creates chaos, and has built up
+a situation infinitely worse than was faced by General Goethals when
+Congress attempted to divide control in the building of the Panama
+Canal. It will be remembered that, in that case, a commission was
+appointed, but that Roosevelt circumvented Congress by making General
+Goethals head of the commission with full powers.
+
+While the canal was in course of construction, General Goethals appeared
+before the Senate Committee on Commerce. When asked what he knew of
+levee building and work on the Mississippi, he replied:
+
+"I don't know a single, solitary thing about the work on the Mississippi
+except that it is being carried on under the annual appropriation
+system. If we had that system to hamper us, the Panama Canal would not
+be completed on time and within the estimate, as it will be. That system
+leaves engineers in uncertainty as to how much they may plan to do in
+the year ahead of them. Big works cannot be completed economically,
+either as to time or money, unless the man who is making the plan can
+proceed upon the theory that the money will be forthcoming as fast as he
+can economically spend it."
+
+In view of the foregoing, I cannot myself claim to be free from river
+theory. It seems to me clear that the Mississippi should be under
+exclusive Federal control from source to mouth; that the various
+commissions should be abolished, and that the whole matter should be in
+the hands of the chief of United States Engineers, who would have ample
+funds with which to carry on work of a permanent character.
+
+As one among countless items pointing to the need of Federal control,
+consider the case of the Tensas Levee Board, one of the eight local
+boards in Louisiana. This board does not build any levees whatsoever in
+the State of Louisiana, but does all its work with Louisiana money, in
+the State of Arkansas, where it has constructed, and maintains,
+eighty-two miles of levees, protecting the northeastern corner of
+Louisiana from floods which would originate in Arkansas. These same
+levees, however, also protect large tracts of land in Arkansas, for
+which protection the inhabitants of Arkansas do not pay one cent,
+knowing that their Louisiana neighbors are forced, for their own safety,
+to do the work.
+
+Cairo, Illinois, is the barometer of the river's rise and fall, the gage
+at that point being used as the basis for estimates for the entire river
+below Cairo. These estimates are made by computations which are so
+accurate that Vicksburg, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans know, days or even
+weeks in advance, when to expect high water, and within a few inches of
+the precise height the floods will reach.
+
+Some years since, the United States engineer in charge of a river
+district embracing a part of Louisiana, notified the local levee boards
+that unusually high water might be expected on a certain date and that
+several hundred miles of levees would have to be "capped" in order to
+prevent overflow. The local boards in turn notified the planters, in
+sections where capping was necessary.
+
+One of the planters so notified was an old Cajun--Cajun being a
+corruption of the word "Acadian," denoting those persons of French
+descent driven from Acadia, in Canada, by the British many years ago.
+This old man did not believe that the river would rise as high as
+predicted and was not disposed to cap his levee.
+
+"But," said the member of the local levee board, who interviewed him,
+"the United States engineer says you will have to put two twelve-inch
+planks, one above the other, on top of your levee, and back them with
+earth, or else the water will come over."
+
+At last the old fellow consented.
+
+Presently the floods came. The water mounted, mounted, mounted. Soon it
+was halfway up the lower plank; then it rose to the upper one. When it
+reached the middle of that plank the Cajun became alarmed and called
+upon the local levee board for help to raise the capping higher still.
+
+"No," said the local board member who had given him the original
+warning, "that will not be necessary. I have just talked to the United
+States engineer. He says the water will drop to-morrow."
+
+The old man was skeptical, however, and was not satisfied until the
+board member agreed that in case the flood failed to abate next day, as
+predicted, the board should do the extra capping. This settled, a nail
+was driven into the upper plank to mark the water's height.
+
+Sure enough, on the following morning the river had dropped away from
+the nail, and thereafter it continued to fall.
+
+After watching the decline for several days, the Cajun, very much
+puzzled, called on his friend, the local levee board member, to talk the
+matter over.
+
+"Say," he demanded, "what kinda man dis United States engineer is,
+anyhow? Firs' he tell when de water comes. Den he tell jus' how high she
+comes. Den he tell jus' when she's agoin' to fall. What kinda man is
+dat, anyhow? Is he been one Voodoo?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The spirit of the people of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, who
+live, in flood time, in the precarious safety afforded by the levees, is
+characterized by the same optimistic fatalism that is to be found among
+the inhabitants of the slopes of Vesuvius in time of eruption.
+
+One night, a good many years ago, I ascended Vesuvius at such a time,
+and I remember well a talk I had with a man who gave me wine and sausage
+in his house, far up on the mountain side, at about two o'clock that
+morning.
+
+Seventeen streams of lava were already flowing down, and signs of
+imminent disaster were at hand.
+
+"Aren't you afraid to stay here with your family?" I asked the man.
+
+"No," he replied. "Three times I have seen it worse than this. I have
+lived here always, and"--with a good Italian smile--"it is evident,
+signore, that I am still alive."
+
+Less than a week later I read in a newspaper that this man's house,
+which was known as Casa Bianca, together with his vineyards and his
+precious wine cellars, tunneled into the mountain side, had been
+obliterated by a stream of lava.
+
+Precisely as he went about his affairs when destruction threatened, so
+do the planters along the Mississippi. But there is this difference:
+against Vesuvius no precaution can avail; whereas, in the case of a
+Mississippi flood, foresight may save life and property. For instance,
+many planters build mounds large enough to accommodate their barns, and
+all their live stock. Likewise, when floods are coming, they construct
+false floors in their houses, elevating their furniture above high-water
+mark, so that, if the whole house is not carried away, they may return
+to something less than utter ruin. It is the custom, also, to place
+ladders against trees, in the branches of which provisions are kept in
+time of danger, and to have skiffs, containing food and water, ready on
+the galleries of the houses.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+OLD RIVER DAYS
+
+
+Among the honored citizens of Vicksburg, at the time of our visit, were
+a number of old steamboat men who knew the river in its golden days;
+among them, Captain "Mose" Smith, Captain Tom Young, Captain W.S.
+("Billy") Jones, and Captain S.H. Parisot--the latter probably the
+oldest surviving Mississippi River captain.
+
+We were sent to see Captain Parisot at his house, where he received us
+kindly, entertained us for an hour or more with reminiscences, and
+showed us a most interesting collection of souvenirs of the river,
+including photographs of famous boats, famous deck loads of cotton, and
+famous characters: among the latter the celebrated rivals, Captain John
+W. Cannon of the _Robert E. Lee_ and Captain Thomas P. Leathers of the
+_Natchez_. Captain Parisot knew both these men well, and was himself
+aboard the _Lee_ at the time of her famous race with the _Natchez_ from
+New Orleans to St. Louis.
+
+"We left New Orleans 3˝ minutes ahead of the _Natchez_," said Captain
+Parisot, "made the run to Vicksburg in 24 hours and 28 minutes, beat her
+to Cairo by 1 hour and 12 minutes, and to St. Louis by more than 3
+hours."
+
+Captain Parisot's father was a soldier under Napoleon I, and moved to
+Warren County, Mississippi, after having been wounded at Moscow. He
+built, at the foot of Main Street, Vicksburg, the first brick house that
+city had.
+
+"There was a law in France," said the captain, "that any citizen absent
+from the country for thirty-five years lost all claim to property. My
+father's people were pretty well off, so in '42 he started back, but he
+was taken ill and died in New Orleans."
+
+Captain Parisot was born in 1828, and in 1847 began "learning the
+river." In 1854 he became part owner of a boat, and three years later
+purchased one of his own.
+
+"I bought her in Cincinnati," he said. Then, reflectively, he added:
+"There was a good deal of drinking in those days. When I brought her
+down on her first trip I had 183 tons of freight, and 500 barrels of
+whisky, from Cincinnati, for one little country store--Barksdale &
+McFarland's, at Yazoo City."
+
+"There was a good deal of gambling, too, wasn't there?" one of us
+suggested.
+
+"There was indeed," smiled the old captain. "Every steamboat was a
+gambling house, and there used to be big games before the war."
+
+"How big?"
+
+"Well," he returned, "as Captain Leathers once put it, it used to be
+'nigger ante and plantation limit.' And that's no joke about playing for
+niggers either. Those old planters would play for anything. I've known
+people to get on a boat at Yazoo City to come to Vicksburg, and get in a
+game, and never get off at Vicksburg at all--just go back to Yazoo; yes,
+and come down again, to keep the game going.
+
+"There was a saloon called the Exchange near our house in Yazoo, and I
+remember once my father got into a game, there, with a gambler named
+Spence Thrift. That was before the war. Thrift was a terrible stiff
+bluffer. When he got ready to clean up, he'd shove up his whole pile.
+Well, he did that to my father. Thrift's pile was twenty-two hundred
+dollars, and all my father had in front of him was eight hundred. But he
+owned a young negro named Calvin, so he called Calvin, and told him:
+'Here, boy! Jump up on the table.' That equalled the gambler's pile; and
+it finished him--he threw down his hand, beaten.
+
+"Business in those times was done largely on friendship. It used to be
+said that I 'owned' the Yazoo River when I was running my line. I knew
+everybody up there. They were my friends, and they gave me their
+business for that reason, and also because I brought the cotton down
+here to Vicksburg, and reshipped it from here on, down the river. It was
+considered an advantage to reship cotton because moving it from one boat
+to another knocked the mud off the bales.
+
+"There used to be some enormous cargoes of cotton carried. The largest
+boat on the river was the _Henry Frank_, owned by Frank Hicks of
+Memphis. She ran between Memphis and New Orleans, and on one trip
+carried 9226 bales. Those were the old-style bales, of course. They
+weighed 425 to 450 pounds each, as against 550 to 600 pounds, which is
+the weight of a bale to-day, now that powerful machinery is used to make
+them. The heavy bale came into use partly to beat transportation
+charges, as rates were not made by weight, but at so much per bale.
+
+"The land up the Yazoo belonged to the State, and the State sold it for
+$1.25 per acre. The fellows that got up there first weren't any too
+anxious to see new folks coming in and entering land. Used to try all
+kinds of schemes to get them out.
+
+"There were two brothers up there named Parker. One of them was a
+surveyor--we called him 'Baldy'--and the other was lumbering, getting
+timber out of the cypress breaks and rafting it down. Almost all the
+timber used from Vicksburg to New Orleans came out of there.
+
+"One time a man came up the Yazoo to take up land and went to stop with
+Baldy Parker. When they sat down to dinner Baldy took some flour and
+sprinkled it all over his meat.
+
+"'What's that?' asked the stranger.
+
+"'Quinine,' says Baldy. 'Haven't you got any?'
+
+"'No,' says the fellow; 'what would I want it for?'
+
+"'You'll find out if you go out there in the swamps,' Baldy tells him.
+'It's full of malaria. We eat quinine on everything.'
+
+"The fellow was quiet through the rest of the meal.
+
+"Pretty soon they got up to go out, and Baldy took up a pair of
+stovepipes.
+
+"'What do you do with them pipes?' asks the stranger.
+
+"'Wear 'em, of course,' says Baldy. 'Haven't you got any?'
+
+"'No,' says the fellow. 'What for?'
+
+"'Why,' says Baldy, 'the rattlesnakes out there will bite the legs right
+off of you.'
+
+"With that the fellow had enough. He didn't go any farther, but turned
+around and took the boat down the river."
+
+In all his years as captain and line owner on the river, Captain Parisot
+never lost a vessel. "I never insured against sinking," he told us.
+"Just against fire. But I got the best pilots I could hire. In all I
+built twenty-seven steamboats. I had $150,000 worth of boats when I sold
+my line in 1880. After I sold they did lose some boats."
+
+Later we saw Captain "Billy" Jones, a much younger man than Captain
+Parisot, yet old enough to have known the river in its prime. Captain
+Jones deserted the river years ago, and is now a golfer with a
+prosperous banking business on the side.
+
+"Captain Parisot was right when he said business on the river was done
+largely on friendship," said Captain Jones. "Also business used to be
+turned down for the opposite reason. There was a historic case of that
+in this town.
+
+"Captain Tom Leathers was in the habit of refusing to take freight on
+the _Natchez_ if he didn't like the shipper or the consignee. For some
+reason or other he had it in for the firm of Lamkin & Eggleston,
+wholesale grocers here in Vicksburg, and declined their freight. They
+sued him in the Circuit Court and got judgment. Leathers carried the
+case to the Supreme Court, but the verdict was sustained and he had to
+pay $2500 damages. He was furious.
+
+"'What's the use,' he said, 'of being a steamboat captain if you can't
+tell people to go to hell?'"
+
+It is the lamentable fact, and I must face it, and so must you if you
+intend to read on, that the language of the river was rough. At least
+ninety-nine out of every hundred river stories are, therefore, not
+printable in full. Either they must be vitiated by deletions, or
+interpreted at certain points by blanks and "blanketys." As for me, I
+prefer the blankety-blanks and I consider that this method of avoiding
+the complete truth relieves me of all responsibility. And of course, if
+that is so, it absolves, at the same time, good Captain "Billy" Jones,
+or any one else who may have happened to tell me the stories.
+
+Both Leathers and Cannon were large, powerful men, and they always hated
+each other. Leathers was never popular, for he was very arrogant, but he
+had a great reputation for pushing the _Natchez_ through on time. Also,
+such friends as he did have always stuck by him.
+
+Something of the feeling between the two old river characters is
+revealed in the following story related by Captain Jones:
+
+"Ed Snodgrass, who lived in St. Joseph, La., was a friend of both Cannon
+and Leathers. When the _Natchez_ would arrive at St. Joseph, he would go
+and give Leathers news about Cannon, and when the _Lee_ came in he would
+see Cannon and tell him about Leathers.
+
+"Well, one time Leathers was laid up with a carbuncle on his back, and
+brought a doctor up on the boat with him. So, of course, Ed Snodgrass
+told Cannon about it when he came along.
+
+"'A carbuncle, eh?' said Cannon.
+
+"'Yes,' said Ed.
+
+"'Well,' said Cannon, 'you tell the old blankety-blank-blank that I had
+a brother--a bigger, stronger man than I am--and he had one o' them
+things and died in two weeks.'
+
+"Soon after that Cannon made a misstep when backing the _Natchez_ out,
+at Natchez, and fell, breaking his collar bone. Of course Ed Snodgrass
+gave the news to Leathers when he came along.
+
+"'Huh!' said Leathers. 'His collar bone, eh? You tell the old
+blankety-blank-blank that I wish it had been his blankety-blank neck!'"
+
+I asked Captain Jones for stories about gambling.
+
+"After the war," he said, "there weren't the big poker games there used
+to be. Mostly we had sucker games then. There was a gambler named George
+Duval who wrote a book--or, rather, he had somebody write it for him,
+for he was a very ignorant fellow, and began his life calking the seams
+of boats in a shipyard. He had a partner who was known as 'Jew Mose,'
+who used to dress like a rich planter. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and a
+very elegant tail coat, and was a big, handsome man.
+
+"After the boat left New Orleans, this 'Jew Mose' would disguise himself
+with whiskers and goggles, go to the barber shop and lay out his game.
+George Duval and a fellow called 'Canada Bill' were the cappers. They
+would bring in suckers, get their money, and generally get off the boat
+about Baton Rouge.
+
+"Once when I was a clerk on the _Robert E. Lee_, Duval got a young
+fellow in tow, and the young fellow wanted to bet on the game, but he
+had a friend with him, and his friend kept pulling him away.
+
+"Later, when Duval had given up the idea of getting this young fellow's
+money, and closed up his game, he appeared in the social hall of the
+boat with a small bag held up to his face.
+
+"Somebody asked him what was in the bag.
+
+"'It's hot salt,' he said. 'I've got a toothache, and a bag of hot salt
+is the best thing in the world for toothache.'
+
+"Presently, when he went to his stateroom to get something, he left the
+bag of salt on the stove to heat it up. While he was gone somebody
+suggested, as a joke, that they dump out the salt and fill the bag with
+ashes, instead. So they did it. And when Duval came back he held it up
+to his face again, and seemed perfectly satisfied.
+
+"'How does it feel now?' one of the fellows asked.
+
+"'Fine,' said Duval. 'Hot salt is the best thing going.'
+
+"At that, the man who had prevented the young fellow from betting, down
+in the barber shop, earlier in the day, offered to bet Duval a hundred
+dollars that the bag didn't contain salt.
+
+"Duval took the bet and raised him back another hundred. But the man had
+only fifty dollars left. However, another fellow, standing in the crowd,
+put in the extra fifty to make two hundred dollars a side.
+
+"Then Duval opened the bag, and it _was_ salt. He had changed the bags,
+and the fellows who worked up the trick were his cappers."
+
+One of the old-time river gamblers was an individual, blind in one eye,
+known as "One-eyed Murphy." Murphy was an extremely artful manipulator
+of cards, and made a business of cheating. One day, shortly after the
+_Natchez_ had backed out from New Orleans and got under way, Marion
+Knowles, a picturesque gentleman of the period, and one who had the
+reputation of being polite even in the most trying circumstances, and no
+matter how well he had dined, came in and stood for a time as a
+spectator beside a table at which Murphy was playing poker with some
+guileless planters. Mr. Knowles was not himself guileless, and very
+shortly he perceived that the one-eyed gambler was dealing himself cards
+from the bottom of the pack. Thereupon he drew his revolver from his
+pocket and rapping with it on the table addressed the assembly:
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, speaking in courtly fashion, "I regret to say that
+there is something wrong here. I will not call any names, neither will I
+make any personal allusions. _But if it doesn't stop, damn me if I don't
+shoot his other eye out!_"
+
+I cannot drop the river, and stories of river gambling, without
+referring to one more tale which is a classic. It is a long story about
+a big poker game, and to tell it properly one must know the exact words.
+I do not know them, and therefore shall not attempt to tell the whole
+story, but shall give you only the beginning.
+
+It is supposed to be told by a Virginian.
+
+"There was me," he says, "and another very distinguished gentleman from
+Virginia and a gentleman from Kentucky, and a man from Ohio, and a
+fellow from New York, and a blankety-blank from Boston--"
+
+That is all I know of the story, but I can guess who got the money in
+that game.
+
+Can't you?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+WHAT MEMPHIS HAS ENDURED
+
+
+An article on Memphis, published in the year 1855, gives the population
+of the place as about 13,000 (one quarter of the number slaves), and
+calls Memphis "the most promising town in the Southwest." It predicts
+that a railroad will some day connect Memphis with Little Rock,
+Arkansas, and that a direct line between Memphis and Cincinnati may even
+be constructed. This article begins the history of Memphis in the year
+1820, when the place had 50 inhabitants. In 1840 the settlement had
+grown to 1,700, and fifteen years thereafter it was almost eight times
+that size.
+
+Your Memphian, however, is not at all content to date from 1820. He
+begins the history of Memphis with the date May 8, 1541--a time when
+Henry VIII was establishing new matrimonial records in England, when
+Queen Elizabeth was a little girl, and Shakespeare, Bacon, Galileo and
+Cromwell were yet unborn. For that was the date when a Spanish gentleman
+bearing some personal resemblance to "Uncle Joe" Cannon--though he was
+younger, had black hair and beard, was differently dressed and did not
+chew long black cigars--arrived at the lower Chickasaw Bluffs, from
+which the city of Memphis now overlooks the Mississippi River. This
+gentleman was Hernando De Soto, and with his soldiers and horses he had
+marched from Tampa Bay, Florida, hunting for El Dorado, but finding
+instead, a lot of poor villages peopled by savages whom he killed in
+large numbers, having been brought up to that sort of work by Pizarro,
+under whom he served in the conquest of Peru. It seems to be well
+established, through records left by De Soto's secretary, and other men
+who were with him, and through landmarks mentioned by them, that De Soto
+and his command camped where Memphis stands, crossed the Mississippi at
+this point in boats which they built for the purpose, and marched on to
+an Indian village situated on the mound, a few miles distant, which now
+gives Mound City, Arkansas, its name. One hundred and thirty-two years
+later Marquette passed by on his way down the river, and nine years
+after him La Salle, but so far as is known, neither stopped at the site
+of Memphis, though they must have noticed as they passed, that the river
+is narrower here than at any point within hundreds of miles, and that
+the Chickasaw Bluffs afford about as good a place for a settlement as
+may be found along the reaches of the lower river, being high enough for
+safety, and flat on top. The first white man known to have visited the
+actual site of Memphis after De Soto, was De Bienville, the French
+Governor of Louisiana, who came in 1739. De Bienville found the
+Chickasaw village where De Soto had found it two centuries earlier; but
+whereas De Soto managed to avoid battle with the inhabitants of this
+particular village, De Bienville came to attack them. He fought them
+near their village, was defeated, and retired to Mobile.
+
+Thus this part of the United States belonged first to Spain, and then to
+France; but in 1762 France ceded it back to Spain, and in the year
+following, Spain and France together ceded their territory in the
+eastern part of the continent to England. The next change came with the
+Revolution, when the United States came into being. The Spanish were,
+however, still in possession of the vast territory of Louisiana, to the
+west of the Mississippi. In 1795, Gayoso, Spanish Governor of Louisiana,
+came across and built a fort on the east side of the river, but was
+presently ousted by the United States. In 1820, as has been said, the
+settlement of Memphis had begun, one of the early proprietors having
+been Andrew Jackson. Some of the first settlers wished to name the place
+Jackson, in honor of the general, but Jackson himself, it is said,
+decided on the name Memphis, because the position of the town suggested
+that of ancient Memphis, on the Nile.
+
+In 1857 Memphis got her first railroad--the Memphis &
+Charleston--connecting her with Charleston, South Carolina. About the
+time the road was completed there were severe financial panics which
+held the city back; also there was trouble, as in so many other river
+towns, with hordes of gamblers and desperadoes. Judge J.P. Young, in
+his "History of Memphis," tells of an interesting episode of those
+times. There were two professional gamblers, father and son, of the name
+of Able. The father shot a man in a saloon brawl, and soon after, the
+son committed a similar crime of violence. A great mob started to take
+the younger Able out of jail and lynch him, but one firm citizen,
+addressing them from the balcony of a hotel, persuaded them to desist.
+Next day, however, there was a mass meeting to discuss the case of Able.
+At this meeting the hotheads prevailed, and Able was taken from the jail
+by a mob of three thousand men. When the noose was around his neck, and
+he and his mother and sister were pleading that his life be spared, the
+same man who had previously prevented mob action, stepped boldly up, cut
+the rope from Abel's neck, and assisted him to fly, standing between him
+and the mob, fighting the mob off, and finally getting Able back into
+the jail. When the mob stormed the jail, furious at having been
+circumvented by a single man, the same powerful figure appeared at the
+jail door with a pistol, and, incredible though it seems, actually held
+the mob at bay until it finally dispersed. This man was Nathan Bedford
+Forrest, later the brilliant Confederate cavalry leader. Forrest and his
+wife are buried in Memphis, in a square called Forrest Park, under a
+fine equestrian monument, by C.H. Niehaus.
+
+Before the war Forrest was a member of the slave-dealing firm of Forrest
+& Maples, of Memphis. Subjoined is a photographic reproduction of an
+advertisement of this firm, which appeared in the Memphis City
+Directory for 1855-6.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+                         CITY DIRECTORY. 251
+                         --------------------
+
+                         #FORREST & MAPLES,#
+                           #SLAVE DEALERS,#
+
+                           #87 Adams Street#,
+                        Between Second and Third,
+                          #MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE#,
+
+        Have constantly on hand the best selected assortment of
+
+                #FIELD HANDS, HOUSE SERVANTS & MECHANICS#,
+      at their Negro Mart, to be found in the city. They are daily
+    receiving from Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri, fresh supplies of
+                           likely Young Negroes.
+
+                      #Negroes Sold on Commission#,
+
+    and the highest market price always paid for good stock. Their Jail
+     is capable of containing Three Hundred, and for comfort, neatness
+       and safety, is the best arranged of any in the Union. Persons
+      wishing to purchase, are invited to examine their stock before
+                         purchasing elsewhere.
+
+    They have on hand at present, Fifty likely young Negroes, comprising
+             Field hands, Mechanics, House and Body Servants, &c.
+
+]
+
+When the Civil War loomed close, sentiment in Memphis was divided, but
+at a call for troops for the Union, the State of Tennessee balked, and
+soon after it seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy. Many
+people believed, at that time, that if the entire South united, the
+North would not dare fight. When the war came, however, Memphis knew
+where she stood; it is said that no city of the same size (22,600)
+furnished so many men to the Confederate armies. In 1862, when the Union
+forces got control of the river to the north and the south of the city,
+it became evident that Memphis was likely to be taken. A fleet of Union
+gunboats came down and defeated the Confederate fleet in the river
+before the city, while the populace lined the banks and looked on. The
+city, being without military protection, then surrendered, and was
+occupied by troops under Sherman. Nor, with the exception of one period
+of a few hours' duration, did it ever again come under Confederate
+control. That was when Forrest made his famous raid in 1864, an event
+which exhibited not only the dash and hardihood of that intrepid leader,
+but also his strategy and his sardonic humor.
+
+General A.J. Smith, with 13,000 Union soldiers was marching on the great
+grain district of central Mississippi, and was forcing Forrest, who had
+but 3,500 men, to the southward. Unable to meet Smith's force on
+anything like equal terms, Forrest conceived the idea of making a "run
+around the end" and striking at Memphis, which was Smith's base. Taking
+1,500 picked men and horses, he executed a flanking movement over night,
+and before Smith knew he was gone, came careering into Memphis at dawn
+at the head of 500 galloping, yelling men--many of them Memphis boys.
+There were some 7,000 Union troops in and about Memphis at this time,
+but they were surprised out of their slumbers, and made no effective
+resistance. The only part of Forrest's plan which miscarried was his
+scheme to capture three leading Union officers, who were then stationed
+in Memphis: Generals C.C. Washburn, S.A. Hurlbut and R.P. Buckland.
+General Hurlbut's escape occurred by reason of the fact that instead of
+having passed the night at the old Gayoso Hotel, where he made his
+headquarters, he happened to be visiting a brother officer, elsewhere.
+General Washburn was warned by a courier and made his escape in his
+nightclothes and bare feet from the residence he occupied as
+headquarters, running down alleys to the river, and thence along under
+the bluff to the Union fortifications. Forrest's men found the general's
+papers, uniform, hat, boots and sword in his bedroom, and also found
+there Mrs. Washburn. The only things they failed to find were the
+general's nightshirt and the general himself, who was inside it. General
+Buckland also avoided capture by the narrowest margin. The soldiers
+first went to the wrong house to look for him. That gave him time to
+escape.
+
+It is recorded that, later in the day, under a flag of truce, Forrest
+sent General Washburn his sword and clothing with a humorous message,
+informing him, at the same time, that he had 600 Federal prisoners
+without shoes or clothing, and that he would like supplies for them.
+The supplies, we are told, were promptly forthcoming.
+
+Forrest waited until he was sure that news of the raid had been
+telegraphed to General Smith in the field. Then he cut the wires. Smith
+immediately came back toward Memphis with his army, which was what
+Forrest desired him to do. The Confederates then retired from the
+immediate vicinity of the city.
+
+Judge Young, in his history, reports that when General Hurlbut heard of
+the raid he exclaimed, "There it goes again! They superseded me with
+Washburn because I could not keep Forrest out of West Tennessee, and
+Washburn cannot keep him out of his own bedroom!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After the War there was corruption and carpet-bag rule in Memphis, and
+Forrest was again to the fore, becoming "Grand Wizard" of the famous Ku
+Klux Klan, the mysterious secret organization designed to intimidate
+Scalawags, Carpet-baggers and negroes, whose arrogance had become
+intolerable. General George W. Gordon prepared the oath and ritual for
+the Klan, which was founded in the town of Pulaski, Giles County,
+Tennessee. General Forrest took the oath in 1866, in Room 10 of the old
+Maxwell House, at Nashville.
+
+It is my belief that the Ku Klux Klan has been a good deal maligned.
+Many of its members were men of high type. I have been told, for
+instance, that one southern gentleman who has since been in the cabinet
+of a President of the United States, was active in the Ku Klux. I
+withhold his name because the purposes of the Ku Klux Klan, and the
+urgent need which called it into being, are not yet fully understood in
+the North, and for the further reason that depredations committed by
+other bodies were frequently charged to the Ku Klux, giving it a bad
+name. So far as I can discover the Ku Klux endeavored to avoid violence
+where it could be avoided. Its aim seems to have been to frighten
+negroes and bad whites into behaving themselves or going away; though
+sometimes, of course, bad characters had to be killed. It must be
+remembered that the ballot was denied former Confederate soldiers for
+quite a period after the War, that they were not allowed to possess
+firearms, and that, at the same time, negro troops were quartered in the
+South. In many parts of the South the government and the courts were in
+the hands of third-rate Northerners (carpet-baggers) who had come down
+to dominate the defeated section, and who used the Scalawags (disloyal
+southern whites) and negroes for their own purposes. Obviously this was
+outrageous, and equally obviously, a proud people, even though defeated,
+could not endure it. The service performed by the Ku Klux Klan seems to
+have been comparable with that rendered by the Vigilantes of early
+western days. Something had to be done and the Klan did it.
+
+In 1869 General Forrest ordered the Klan to disband, which it did; but
+owing to the fact that it was a secret organization, and that disguises
+had been used, it was an easy matter for mobs, not actually associated
+with the Ku Klux, to assume its costume and commit outrages in its name.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In writing of Raleigh I referred to the post-bellum activities of the
+Confederate cruiser _Shenandoah_. Captain Dabney M. Scales, a
+distinguished citizen of Memphis, was on the _Shenandoah_. Born in
+Orange County, Virginia, in 1842, Captain Scales was appointed to the
+Naval Academy by L.Q.C. Lamar. He was a classmate of Captain Clark,
+later of the _Oregon_. When the war broke out, young Scales was in his
+second year at the Academy, but like most of the other southern cadets
+he resigned and offered his services to the South. When commissioned he
+was the youngest naval officer in the Confederate service. Eight months
+after the War was over, the _Shenandoah_ was still cruising in the South
+Seas, looking for Federal merchantmen. In January 1866, somewhere south
+of Australia, she overhauled the British bark _Baracouta_, taking her
+for a Yankee man-o'-war flying the British flag as a ruse. Young Scales
+was sent in command of a boarding party, and was informed by the skipper
+of the _Baracouta_ that the Civil War had terminated months and months
+ago. The _Shenandoah_ then made for Liverpool. In the meantime a Federal
+court had ruled that her officers were guilty of piracy--a hanging
+offense. Naturally, they did not dare return to the United States. Young
+Scales went to Mexico and remained there two years before coming home.
+When the Spanish War came, Captain Scales volunteered and was made
+navigating officer of a naval vessel. At the time of our visit he was a
+practising lawyer in Memphis, and was in command of Company A of the
+Uniform Confederate Veterans, a body of old heroes who go out every now
+and then and win the first prize for the best drilled organization
+operating Hardee's tactics.
+
+Another distinguished citizen of Memphis who has lively recollections of
+the Civil War, is the Right Reverend Thomas F. Gailor, Episcopal Bishop
+of Tennessee. Bishop Gailor, who succeeded the famous Bishop Quintard,
+is my ideal of everything an Episcopal bishop--or I might even say a
+Church of England bishop--ought to be. The Episcopal Church seems to me
+to have about it more "style" than most other churches, and an Episcopal
+bishop ought not to look the ascetic. He ought to be well filled out,
+well dressed, well fed. He ought to have a distinguished appearance, a
+ruddy complexion, a good voice, and a lot of what we call
+"humanness"--including humor. All these qualities Bishop Gailor has.
+
+In the bishop's study, in Memphis, hangs the sword of his father, Major
+Frank M. Gailor, who commanded the 33rd Mississippi Regiment. Major
+Gailor was killed while giving a drink of water to a wounded brother
+officer, and that officer, though dying, directed a soldier to take the
+Major's sword and see that it reached Mrs. Gailor, in Memphis, within
+the Union lines. A young woman, a Confederate spy, took the sword, and
+wearing it next her body, brought it through to Mrs. Gailor. Somehow or
+other it became known that the widow had her husband's sword, and as the
+possession of arms was prohibited to citizens, a corporal and guard were
+sent to the house to search for it. They found it between the mattresses
+of Mrs. Gailor's bed, and confiscated it. Mrs. Gailor then went with
+another lady to see General Washburn. Her friend started a long harangue
+upon the injustice which had been done, but Mrs. Gailor, seeing that the
+General was becoming impatient, broke in saying: "General, soldiers came
+to my house and took away my dead husband's sword. I can't use it, nor
+can my little son. I want it back. You would want your boy to have your
+sword, wouldn't you?"
+
+"Of course I would!" cried Washburn. "Thank God for a woman who can say
+what she has to say, and be done with it!"
+
+The sword was returned.
+
+In the Spring of 1863, when Bishop Gailor was a child of about seven
+years, he accompanied his mother on a journey by wagon from Memphis to
+Jackson, Mississippi. The only other member of the party was a lady who
+had driven in the same wagon from Jackson to Kentucky, to get the body
+of her brother, a Confederate soldier who had been killed there. The
+coffin containing the remains was carried in the wagon. When it was
+known in Memphis that Mrs. Gailor was going through the lines, a great
+many people came to her with letters which they wished to send to
+friends. Mrs. Gailor sewed many of the letters into the clothing of the
+little boy. ("I remember it well," said the bishop. "I felt like a
+mummy.") Also one of Forrest's spies came with important papers, asking
+if she would undertake to deliver them. Only by very clever manipulation
+did Mrs. Gailor get the papers through, for everything was carefully
+searched. After they had passed out of the northern lines they met one
+of Forrest's pickets. Mrs. Gailor told him that she had papers for the
+general, and before long Forrest rode up with his staff and received
+them. Then the two women and the little boy, with their tragic burden in
+the wagon, drove along on their two-hundred mile journey. And later,
+when Jackson was bombarded, they were there.
+
+Before the war Major Gailor had been editor of the Memphis "Avalanche,"
+a paper which was suppressed when the Union troops took the town. After
+the War the "Avalanche" was started up again, and had a stormy time of
+it, because it criticized a Carpet-bag judge who had come to Memphis. In
+1889 the "Avalanche" was consolidated with the "Appeal," another famous
+ante-bellum journal, surviving to-day in the "Commercial-Appeal," a
+strong newspaper, edited by one of the ablest journalists in the South,
+Mr. C.P.J. Mooney.
+
+When Memphis was captured the "Appeal" would have been suppressed, as
+the "Avalanche" was, had it been there. But when it became evident that
+Memphis would fall, Mr. S.C. Toof (later a well-known book publisher)
+who was then connected with the "Appeal," packed up the press and other
+equipment and shipped them to Grenada, Mississippi, where Mr. B.F. Dill,
+editor of the paper, continued to bring it out. When Grenada was
+threatened, a few months later, Mr. Dill moved with his newspaper
+equipment to Birmingham, where for a second time he resumed publication.
+His next move was to Atlanta. There, when he could not get news-print,
+he used wallpaper, or any sort of paper he could lay his hands on. When
+Sherman took Atlanta the "Appeal" moved again, this time to Columbus,
+Georgia, where, at last, it was captured, and its press destroyed.
+Wherever it went it remained the "Memphis Daily Appeal," with
+correspondents in all southern armies. No wonder a paper with such
+vitality as that, has survived and become great!
+
+Poor Memphis! After the War she had Reconstruction to contend with;
+after Reconstruction, financial difficulties; after that, pestilence. In
+1873, when the population of the city was about 40,000, and there had
+been a long period of hard times, yellow fever broke out. The condition
+of the city was exceedingly unsanitary, and after the pestilence had
+passed, was allowed to remain so, though at that time the origin of
+yellow fever was, of course, not known, and it was assumed that the
+disease resulted from lack of proper sanitation.
+
+In 1878 there was another yellow fever epidemic. The first case
+developed August 2, but the news was suppressed until the middle of the
+month, by which time a number of cases had come down. The day after the
+news became known 22 new cases were reported. Terror spread through the
+town. Hordes of people tried to flee at once. Families left their houses
+with the doors wide open and silver standing on the sideboards. People
+flocked to the trains; when they could not get seats they stood in the
+aisles or clambered onto the roofs of the cars; if they could not get in
+at car doors they climbed in through the windows, and sometimes, when
+the father of a family was refused admittance to a crowded car, he would
+force a way in for his wife and children at the pistol's point.
+
+In the first week of the panic there were 1,500 cases, with an average
+of ten deaths daily; in the next week, 3,000 cases with fifty deaths
+daily, and so on into September during which month there was an average
+of 8,000 to 10,000 cases with about two hundred deaths a day.
+
+Not every one fled, however. Leading citizens remained, forming a relief
+committee, and some brave helpers came from outside. Thus the sick and
+needy were attended to, though of course many of the volunteers
+contracted the disease and perished.
+
+Added to the epidemic there was, as so often happens in such
+circumstances, an outbreak of thievery and other crime, which had to be
+put down. It is related that in the height of the epidemic hardly any
+one was seen upon the streets save an occasional nurse, doctor, or
+other member of the relief committee; household pets starved to death
+or fled the city; among the newspapers the staffs were so reduced that
+only two or three men were left in each office, and in the case of the
+"Appeal," but one, that one Colonel J.M. Keating, the proprietor, who
+stuck to Memphis and for a time wrote, set up and printed the paper
+without assistance, feeling that refugees must have news from the city.
+
+The next year the epidemic came again, but in less violent form, there
+being, this time, but 2,000 cases. However the effect was cumulative.
+Memphis dropped from a city of nearly 50,000 to one of 20,000 and the
+reputation of the place was such that a bill was proposed in Congress to
+purchase the ground on which the city stood and utterly destroy it as
+unfit for human habitation.
+
+Stricken as she was, however, Memphis "came back." A great campaign for
+sanitation was begun; city sewage-disposal was installed, and after a
+few years, artesian wells were bored for a new water supply. And though,
+as we now know, yellow fever does not come from the same sources as
+typhoid, nevertheless the new sanitary measures did greatly reduce the
+city's death rate.
+
+Memphis, like all other cities, has her troubles now and then, but since
+the great pestilence there has never been a real disaster. The city has
+grown and thriven. Indeed, she had become so used to growing fast that
+when, in 1910, the Federal census gave her but 131,000, she indignantly
+demanded a recount, for she had been talking to herself, and had
+convinced herself that she had a great many more than that number of
+inhabitants. However, the census was taken again, and the first count
+proved accurate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+MODERN MEMPHIS
+
+
+To be charmed by the social side of a city, yet to find little to admire
+in its physical aspect, is like knowing a brilliant and beautiful woman
+whose housekeeping is not of the neatest. If one were compelled to
+discuss such a woman, and wished to do so sympathetically but with
+truth, one might avoid brutal comment on the condition of her rooms by
+likening them to other rooms elsewhere: rooms which one knew to be
+untidy, but which the innocent listener might not understand to be so.
+By this device one may even appear to pay a compliment, while, in
+reality, indicating the grim truth. In such a case, I, for example,
+might say that this supposititious lady's rooms reminded me of those I
+occupied on the second floor of the famous restaurant called Antoine's,
+in New Orleans; whereupon the reader, knowing the high reputation of
+Antoine's cuisine, and never having seen the apartments to which I
+refer, might assume an implication very favorable.
+
+Let me say, then, that Memphis reminds me of St. Louis. Like St. Louis,
+Memphis has charming society. Like St. Louis she has pretty girls. Like
+St. Louis she is hospitable. And without particularizing too much, I
+may say that her streets remind me of St. Louis streets, that many of
+her houses remind me of St. Louis houses, and that her levee, with its
+cobbled surface sloping down to the yellow, muddy Mississippi, the
+bridges in the distance, the strange looking river steamers loading and
+unloading below, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, is much like the St.
+Louis levee. So, if the reader happens to be unfamiliar with the
+physical appearance of St. Louis, he may, at all events, perceive that I
+have likened Memphis to a much larger city--thus, (it seems fair to
+suppose) paying Memphis a handsome tribute.
+
+Memphis has a definite self-given advantage over St. Louis in possessing
+a pretty little park at the heart of the city, overlooking the river;
+also she has the advantage of lying to the east of the great stream,
+instead of to the west, so that, in late afternoon, when the sun
+splashes down into the mysterious deserted reaches of the Arkansas
+flats, across the way, sending splatterings of furious color across the
+sky, one may seat oneself on a bench in the park and witness a
+stupendous natural masterpiece. A sunset over the sea can be no more
+wonderful than a sunset over this terrible, beautiful, inspiring,
+enigmatic domineering flood. Or one may see the sunset from the
+readingroom of the Cossitt Library, with its fine bay window commanding
+the river almost as though it were the window of a pilot-house.
+
+The Cossitt Library is only one of several free libraries in the city.
+There is, for example, a free library in connection with the Goodwyn
+Institute, an establishment having an endowment of half a million
+dollars, left to Memphis by the late William A. Goodwyn. The Goodwyn
+Institute provides courses of free lectures, by well-known persons, on a
+great variety of subjects. The library is designed to add to the
+educational work. Books are not, however, loaned, as they are from the
+Cossitt Library, an institution to which I found myself returning more
+than once; now for a book, now to look at the interesting collection of
+mound-builder relics contained in an upper room, now merely because it
+is a place of such reposeful hospitality that I liked to make excuses to
+go back.
+
+The library, a romanesque building of Michigan red sandstone, is by a
+southern architect, but is in the style of Richardson, and is one of the
+few buildings in that style which I have ever liked. It was given to
+Memphis as a memorial to Frederick H. Cossitt, by his three daughters,
+Mrs. A.D. Juilliard, Mrs. Thomas Stokes, and Mrs. George E. Dodge, all
+of New York. Mr. Cossitt was born in Granby, Connecticut, but as a young
+man moved South and in 1842 adopted Memphis as his home, residing there
+until 1861. At the outbreak of the Civil War he made an amicable
+division of his business with his partner, and removed to New York,
+where he resided until the time of his death. Finding among his papers a
+memorandum indicating that he had intended to endow a library in
+Memphis, his daughters carried out his wish.
+
+Having already spoken of a number of Memphis' interesting citizens, I
+find myself left with an ill-assorted trio of names yet to be mentioned,
+because, different as they are, each of the three supplies a definite
+part of the character of the city. First, then, Memphis has the honor of
+possessing what not many of our cities possess: a man who stands high
+among the world's artist-bookbinders. This gentleman is Mr. Otto Zahn,
+executive head of the publishing house of S.C. Toof & Co. Mr. Zahn
+himself has done some famous bindings, and books bound by him are to be
+found in some of the finest private libraries in the land. Until a few
+years ago he conducted an art-bindery in connection with the Toof
+company's business, but it was unprofitable and finally had to be given
+up.
+
+Second, to descend to a more popular form of art, but one from which the
+revenue is far more certain, Memphis has, in W.C. Handy, a negro ragtime
+composer whose dance tunes are widely known. Among his compositions may
+be mentioned the "Memphis Blues," the "St. Louis Blues," "Mr. Crump,"
+and "Joe Turner." "Mr. Crump" is named in honor of a former mayor of
+Memphis who was ousted for refusing to enforce the prohibition law; "Joe
+Turner" is the name of a negro pianist who plays for Memphis to
+dance--as Handy also does. Most of Handy's tunes are negro "rags" in
+fox-trot time, and they are so effective that Memphis dances them
+generally in preference to the one step.
+
+My third celebrity is of a more astounding type. While in Memphis I
+called aboard the river steamer _Grand_, and had a talk with Mrs. Nettie
+Johnson, who is captain of that craft. Some one told me that Mrs.
+Johnson was the only woman steamboat captain in the world, but she
+informed me that at Helena, Arkansas, there lives another Mrs.
+Johnson--no relative of hers--who follows the same calling.
+
+The steamer _Grand_ is almost entirely a Johnson family affair. Mrs.
+Johnson is captain; her husband, I.S. Johnson is pilot (though Mrs.
+Johnson has, in addition to her master's license, a pilot's license, and
+often takes the wheel); her elder son, Emery, is clerk; Emery's wife is
+assistant clerk, while Arthur, the captain's younger son, is engineer.
+Russell Johnson, Mrs. Johnson's grandson, is the only member of the
+family I saw aboard the boat who does not take part in running it.
+Russell was five years old when I met him, but that was nearly a year
+ago, and by now he is probably chief steward, boatswain, or ship's
+carpenter.
+
+The regular route of the _Grand_ is from Memphis to Mhoon's Landing, on
+the Arkansas River, a round trip of 120 miles, with thirty landings.
+
+I asked Mrs. Johnson if she had ever been shipwrecked. Indeed she had!
+Her former ship, the _Nettie Johnson_, struck thin ice one night in the
+Arkansas River and went down.
+
+"What did you do?" I asked.
+
+"I reached after an iron ring," she replied, "and clumb on up into the
+rigging. She went down about four-thirty A.M. and we stayed on her till
+daylight; then we all swum ashore. I tell you it was cold! There was
+icicles on my dress; my son Emery put his arms around me to keep me
+warm, and his clothes froze onto mine."
+
+"How long a swim was it to shore?" I asked.
+
+"Oh," put in her husband, "it didn't amount to nothing. She was only
+swimming about two minutes."
+
+This statement, however, was repudiated by the captain. "Two minutes, my
+foot!" she flung back at her spouse. "It was more than that, all right!"
+
+Mrs. Johnson has done flood rescue work for the Government, with the
+_Grand_. In the spring previous to our visit she rescued sixty families
+from one plantation, besides towing barge-loads of provisions to various
+points on the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers.
+
+Captaining and piloting a river boat are clearly good for the health.
+Mrs. Johnson looks too young to be a grandmother. Her skin is clear, her
+cheeks are rosy, her brown eyes flash and twinkle, her voice, somewhat
+hoarse from shouting commands, is deep and strong, and her laugh is like
+the hearty laugh of a big man.
+
+"Are you a suffragist?" I asked her.
+
+"Not on your life!" was her reply.
+
+"Now, what do you want to talk like that for?" objected her husband.
+"You know women ought to be allowed to vote."
+
+"I don't think so," she returned firmly.
+
+At that her daughter-in-law, the assistant clerk of the _Grand_, took up
+the cudgels.
+
+"Of course they ought to vote!" she insisted. "You know _you_ can do
+just as good as a man can do!"
+
+"No," asseverated Captain Nettie. "Women ought to stay home and tend to
+their families."
+
+"As you do?" I suggested, mischievously.
+
+"That's all right!" she flung back. "I stayed home and raised my family
+until it was big enough to do its own navigating. Then I started in
+steamboating. I had to have _something_ to do."
+
+But the daughter-in-law did not intend to let the woman suffrage issue
+drop.
+
+"Do you mean to say," she demanded of Captain Nettie, "that you think
+women haven't got as much sense as men?"
+
+"Sure I do!" the captain tossed back. "There never was a woman on earth
+that had as much sense as the men. Take it from me, that's so. I know
+what I'm talking about--and that's more than a half of these other women
+do!"
+
+Then, as it was about time for the _Grand_ to cast off, Captain Nettie
+terminated the interview by blowing the whistle; whereupon my companion
+and I went ashore.
+
+One of the best boats on the river is the _Kate Adams_ and one of the
+most delightful two-days' outings I can imagine would be to make the
+round trip with her from Memphis to Arkansas City. But if I were seeking
+rest I should not take the trip at the time when it is taken by a score
+or more of Memphis young men and women, who, with their chaperones, and
+with Handy to play their dance-music, make the _Kate Adams_ an extremely
+lively craft on one round trip each year.
+
+Apropos of Arkansas, I am reminded that Memphis is not only the
+metropolis of Tennessee, but is the big city of Arkansas and
+Mississippi, as well. The Peabody Hotel in Memphis, a somewhat
+old-fashioned hostelry, is a sort of Arkansas political headquarters,
+and is sometimes humorously referred to as "Peabody township, Arkansas."
+It is also used to a considerable extent by Mississippi politicians, as
+well as by the local breed. The Peabody grill has a considerable
+reputation for good cookery, and the Peabody bar, though it still looks
+like a bar, serves only soft drinks, which are dispensed by female
+"bartenders." The Gayoso hotel, named for the Spanish governor who
+intruded upon Memphis territory for a time, stands where stood the old
+Gayoso, which figured in Forrest's raid. The Gayoso made me think a
+little of the old Victoria, in New York, torn down some years ago. The
+newest hotel in town, at the time of our visit, was the Chicsa, an
+establishment having a large and rather flamboyant office, and
+considerably used, we were told, as a place for conventions. If I were
+to go again to Memphis I should have a room at the Gayoso and go to the
+Peabody for meals.
+
+The axis of the earth, which Oliver Wendell Holmes declared, "sticks out
+visibly through the center of each and every town or city," sticks out
+in Memphis at Court Square, which the good red Baedeker dismisses
+briefly with the remark that it "contains a bust of General Andrew
+Jackson and innumerable squirrels." This is not meant to indicate that
+the squirrels are a part of the bust of Jackson. The two are separate
+and distinct. So are the pigeons which alight on friendly hands and
+shoulders as do other confident pigeons on Boston Common, and in the
+Piazza San Marco, in Venice.
+
+I am always disposed to like the people of a city in which pigeons and
+squirrels are tame. Every day, at noon, an old policeman, a former
+Confederate soldier I believe he is, comes into the square with a basket
+of corn. When he arrives all the pigeons see him and rush toward him in
+a great flapping cloud, brushing past your face if you happen to be
+walking across the square at the time. Nor is he the only one to feed
+them. Numbers of citizens go at midday to the square, where they buy
+popcorn and peanuts for the squirrels and pigeons--which, by the way,
+are all members of old Memphis families, being descendants of other
+squirrels and pigeons which lived in this same place before the Civil
+War. One might suppose that the pigeons, being able to fly up to the
+seventeenth floor windowsills of the Merchants' Exchange Building, where
+men of the grain and hay bureau of the exchange are in the habit of
+leaving corn for them, would prosper more than the squirrels, but that
+is not the case for--and I regret to have to report such immorality--the
+squirrels are in the habit of adding to the stores of peanuts which are
+thrown to them, by thievery. Like rascally urchins they will watch the
+peanut venders, and when their backs are turned, will make swift dashes
+at the peanut stands, seizing nuts and scampering away again. Sometimes
+the venders detect them, and give chase for a few steps, but that is
+dangerous, for the minute the vender goes after one squirrel, others
+rush up and steal more. It is saddening to find that even squirrels are
+corrupted by metropolitan life!
+
+In reviewing my visit to Memphis I find myself, for once, kindly
+disposed toward a Chamber of Commerce and Business Men's Club. I like
+the Business Men's Club because, besides issuing pamphlets shrieking the
+glory of the city, it has found time to do things much more worth
+while--notably to bring to Memphis some of the great American
+orchestras.
+
+A pamphlet issued by these organizations tells me that Memphis is the
+largest cotton market in the country, the largest hardwood producing
+market, the third largest grocery and jobbing market.
+
+Cotton is, indeed, much in evidence in the city. The streets in some
+sections are full of strange little two-wheel drays, upon which three
+bales are carried, and which display, in combination, those three
+southern things having such perfect artistic affinity: the negro, the
+mule, and the cotton bale. The vast modern cotton warehouses on the
+outskirts of the city cover many acres of ground, and with their gravity
+system of distribution for cotton bales, and their hydraulic compresses
+in which the bales are squeezed to minimum size, to the accompaniment of
+negro chants, are exceedingly interesting.
+
+The same pamphlet speaks also of the unusually large proportion of the
+city's area which is given over to parks and playgrounds, and it seems
+worth adding that though Memphis follows the general southern custom of
+barring negroes--excepting, of course, nursemaids in charge of
+children--from her parks, she has been so just as to provide a park for
+negroes only. In this she stands ahead of most other southern cities.
+
+Memphis has the only bridge crossing the Mississippi below the mouth of
+the Ohio. At the time of our visit a new bridge was being built very
+near the old one, and an interesting experience of our trip was our
+visit to this bridge, under the guidance of Mr. M.B. Case, a young
+engineer in charge.
+
+On a great undertaking, such as this one, where the total cost mounts
+into millions, the first work done is not on the proposed bridge itself,
+but on the plant and equipment to be used in construction--derricks,
+barges, concrete-mixers, air compressors for the caissons, small
+engines, dump-cars and all manner of like things. This preparatory work
+consumes some months. Caissons are then sunk far down beneath the river
+bed. Caisson work is dangerous, and the insurance rate on "sand
+hogs"--the men who work in the caissons--is very high. The scale of
+wages, and of time, varies in proportion to the risk, which is according
+to the depth at which work is being done. On this enterprise, for
+example, men working from mean level to a depth of 50 feet received $3
+for an eight-hour day. From 50 to 70 feet they worked but six hours and
+received $3.75. From 90 to 105 feet they worked in three shifts of one
+hour each, and received $4.25. And while they were placing concrete to
+seal the working chamber there was an additional allowance of fifty
+cents a day.
+
+The chief danger of caisson work is the "bends," or "caisson disease."
+In the caisson a man works under high air pressure. When he comes out,
+the pressure on the fluids of the body is reduced, and this sometimes
+causes the formation of a gas bubble in the vascular system. If this
+bubble reaches a nerve-center it causes severe pain, similar to
+neuralgia; if it gets to the brain it causes paralysis. Day after day
+men will go into the caisson and come out without trouble, but sooner or
+later from 2 to 8 per cent. of caisson workers are affected. Of 320
+"sand-hogs" who labored in the caissons of this bridge, three died of
+paralysis, and of course a number of others had slight attacks of the
+"bends," in one form or another.
+
+The bridge, when we visited it, was more than half completed. On the
+Memphis side the approaches were almost ready, and the steel framework
+of the bridge reached from the shore across the front pier, and was
+being built out far beyond the pier, on the cantilever principle,
+hanging in the air above the middle of the stream. By walking out on the
+old bridge we could survey the extreme end of the new one, which was
+being extended farther and farther, daily, by the addition of new steel
+sections. There were then about 100 journeymen bridgemen on the
+work--these being workmen of the class that erects steel skyscraper
+frames--with some fifty apprentices and carpenters, and about twenty
+common laborers. Bridgemen are among the highest paid of all workmen. In
+New York, at that time, their wage was $6 for eight hours' work. Here it
+was $4.50. Very few of the men had families with them in Memphis. They
+are the soldiers of fortune among wage-earners, a wild, reckless, fine
+looking lot of fellows, with good complexions like those of men in
+training, and eyes like the eyes of aviators. No class of men in the
+world, I suppose, have steadier nerves, think quicker, or react more
+rapidly from stimulus to action, whether through sight or sound. They
+have to be like that. For where other workmen pay for a mistake by loss
+of a job, these men pay with life. Yet they will tell you that their
+work is not dangerous. It is "just as safe as any other kind of
+job"--that, although four of their number had already been lost from
+this bridge alone. One went off the end of the structure with a derrick,
+the boom of which he lowered before the anchor-bolts had been placed.
+Two others fell. A fourth was struck by a falling timber.
+
+Once, while we were watching the men scrambling about upon the steel
+members of the uncompleted cantilever arm, one of them thought something
+was about to fall, and ran swiftly in, over a steel beam, toward the
+body of the structure; whereafter, as nothing did fall, he was
+unmercifully twitted by his fellow workers for having shown timidity.
+
+Many of the men working on this bridge had worked on the older structure
+paralleling it. This was true not only of the laboring men, but of the
+engineers. Ralph Modjeski, the consulting engineer at the head of the
+work (he is, by the way, a son of Madame Modjeska), was chief
+draughtsman when the earlier structure was designed; W.E. Angier,
+assistant chief engineer in the present work, was a field engineer on
+the first bridge, and it is interesting to know that, in constructing
+the approach to the old bridge he unearthed a Spanish halbert which, it
+is thought, may date from the time of De Soto. These bridge engineers
+and bridgebuilders move in a large orbit. Their last job may have been
+in Mexico, in the far West, or in India; their next may be in France.
+Many of the men here, worked on the Blackwell's Island bridge, on the
+Quebec bridge (which fell), on the Thebes bridge over the Mississippi,
+twenty miles above Cairo, on the Vancouver and Portland bridges over the
+Columbia and Willamette rivers, and on the great Oregon Trunk Railway
+bridges.
+
+After standing for a time on the old bridge watching work on the new,
+and shuddering, often enough, at the squirrel-like way in which the men
+scampered about up there, so far above the water, we walked in and moved
+out again upon the partially completed floor of the new bridge. Here it
+was necessary to walk on railroad ties, with gaps, six or eight inches
+wide, between them. Even had one tried, one could hardly have managed to
+squeeze one's body through these chinks; to fall through was impossible;
+nevertheless it gave me an uncomfortable feeling in the region of the
+stomach to walk out there, seeing the river all the time between the
+interstices. When we had progressed for some distance we came to a gap
+where, for perhaps a yard, there were no ties--just open space, with the
+muddy water shining cold and cruel below. The opening was only about as
+wide as the hall of a small New York flat, and heaven knows that to step
+across such a hall is easy enough. But this was not so easy. When we
+came to the gap I stopped. Mr. Case, the young engineer, who loved all
+bridges with a sort of holy passion, and loved this bridge in
+particular, was talking as we went along. I liked to hear him talk. He
+had been telling us how a thing that is to _be_ strong ought to _look_
+strong, too, and from that had got somehow to the topic of expansion and
+contraction in bridges, with variations of temperature. "It isn't only
+the steel bridges that do it," he said. "Stone arch bridges do it, too.
+The crown of the arch rises and falls. The Greeks and Romans and
+Egyptians knew that expansion and contraction occurred. They--"
+
+While talking he had gone across the gap, stepping lightly upon a
+stringpiece probably a foot wide, and proceeding over the ties. Now,
+however, he ceased speaking and looked back, for I was no longer beside
+him. At the gap I had stopped. I intended to step across, but I did not
+propose to do so without giving the matter the attention it seemed to me
+to deserve.
+
+Mr. Case did not laugh at me. He came back and stood on the string-piece
+where it crossed the opening, telling me to put my hand on his shoulder.
+But I did not want to do that. I wanted to cross alone--when I got
+ready. It took me perhaps two minutes to get ready. Then I stepped over.
+It was, of course, absurdly easy. I had known it would be. But as we
+walked along I kept thinking to myself: "I shall have to cross that
+beastly place again when we come back," and I marveled the more at the
+amazing steadiness of eye and mind and nerve that enables some men to go
+continually prancing about over emptiness infinitely more engulfing than
+that which had troubled and was troubling me.
+
+Returning I stepped across without physical hesitation. But after I had
+crossed I continued to hate that gap. I hated it as I drove back to the
+hotel, that afternoon, as I ate dinner that night, as I went to bed, and
+in my dreams I continued to cross it, and to see the river waiting for
+me, seeming to look up and leer and beckon. I woke up hating the gap in
+the bridge as much as ever; I hated it down into the State of
+Mississippi, and over into Georgia; and wherever I have gone since, I
+have continued to hate it. Of course there isn't any gap there now. It
+was covered long ago. Yet for me it still exists, like some obnoxious
+person who, though actually dead, lives on in the minds of those who
+knew him.
+
+
+
+
+FARTHEST SOUTH
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+BEAUTIFUL SAVANNAH
+
+
+How often it occurs that the great work a man set out originally to
+accomplish, is lost sight of, by future generations, in contemplation of
+other achievements of that man, which he himself regarded as of
+secondary importance.
+
+In 1733, the year in which General Oglethorpe started his Georgia
+colony, there were more than a hundred offenses for which a person might
+be hanged in England; Oglethorpe's primary idea in founding the colony
+was to provide a means of freeing debtors from prison, and giving them a
+fresh start in life; yet it is as the man responsible for the laying out
+of the beautiful city of Savannah, that Oglethorpe is probably most
+widely remembered to-day.
+
+Oglethorpe was a first-rate soldier. He defeated a superior Spanish
+force from Florida, and successfully resisted attacks from the Indians.
+Also, he was a man whose ethical sense was in advance of his period. He
+did not permit slavery in Georgia, and it was not adopted there until he
+went back to England. In planning Savannah he was assisted by a
+Charleston engineer named Bull, for whom the chief street of Savannah
+is named. The place is laid out very simply; it has rectangular blocks
+and wide roads, with small parks, or squares, at regular intervals.
+There are some two dozen of these small parks, aside from one or two
+larger parks, a parade ground, and numerous boulevards with double
+roadways and parked centers, and the abundance of semi-tropical foliage
+and of airy spaces, in Savannah, gives the city its most distinctive and
+charming quality--the quality which differentiates it from all other
+American cities. Originally these parks were used as market-places and
+rallying points in case of Indian attack; now they serve the equally
+utilitarian purposes of this age, having become charming public gardens
+and playgrounds. One of them--not the most important one--is named
+Oglethorpe Square; but the monument to Oglethorpe is placed elsewhere.
+
+Madison Square, Savannah, is relatively about as important as Madison
+Square, New York, and though smaller than the latter, is much prettier.
+It contains a monument to Sergeant Jasper, the Revolutionary hero who,
+when the flag was shot down from Fort Moultrie, off Charleston, by the
+British, flung it to the breeze again, under fire. Jasper was later
+killed with the flag in his arms, in the French-American attempt to take
+Savannah from the British. Monterey Square has a statue of Count
+Pulaski, who also fell at the siege of Savannah. Another Revolutionary
+hero remembered with a monument is General Nathanael Greene who, though
+born in Rhode Island, moved after the war to Georgia where, in
+recognition of his services, he was given an estate not far from
+Savannah. "Mad" Anthony Wayne, a Pennsylvanian by birth, also accepted
+an estate in Georgia and resided there after the Revolution.
+
+An interesting story attaches to Greene's settlement in Georgia. The
+estate given to him was that known as Mulberry Grove, above the city, on
+the Savannah River. The property had previously belonged to
+Lieutenant-governor John Graham, but was confiscated because Graham was
+a loyalist. Along with the property, Greene apparently took over the
+Graham vault in Colonial Cemetery--now a city park, and a very
+interesting one because of the old tombs and gravestones--and there he
+was himself buried. After a while people forgot where Greene's remains
+lay, and later, when it was decided to erect a monument to his memory in
+Johnson Square, they couldn't find any Greene to put under it. However,
+they went ahead and made the monument, and Lafayette laid the
+cornerstone, when he visited Savannah in March, 1825. Greene's remains
+were lost for 114 years. They did not come to light until 1902, when
+some one thought of opening the Graham vault. Thereupon they were
+removed and reinterred in their proper resting place beneath the
+monument which had so long awaited them. That monument, by the way, was
+not erected by Savannah people, or even by Southerners, but was paid for
+by the legislature of the general's native Rhode Island. When the
+remains were discovered, Rhode Island asked for them, but Savannah,
+which had lost them, also wanted them. The matter was settled by a vote
+of Greene's known descendants, who decided almost unanimously to leave
+his remains in Savannah.
+
+The foundation of the general's former home at Mulberry Grove may still
+be seen. It was in this house that Eli Whitney invented the cotton-gin.
+Whitney was a tutor in the Greene family after the general's death, and
+it was at the suggestion of Mrs. Greene that he started to try and make
+"a machine to pick the seed out of cotton." It is said that Whitney's
+first machine would do, in five hours, work which, if done by hand,
+would take one man two years. This was, of course, an epoch-making
+invention and caused enormous commercial growth in the South, where
+cotton-gins are as common things as restaurants in the city of New York.
+Which reminds me of a story.
+
+A northern man was visiting Mr. W.D. Pender, at Tarboro, North Carolina.
+On the day of the guest's arrival Mr. Pender spoke to his cook, a negro
+woman of the old order, telling her to hurry up the dinner, because he
+wished to take his friend down to see the cotton-gin. "You know," he
+explained, "this gentleman has never seen a cotton-gin."
+
+The cook looked at him in amazement.
+
+"Lor'! Mistuh Penduh," she exclaimed. "An' dat man _look_ like he was
+edjacated!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another item in Savannah history is that John Wesley came over about
+the middle of the eighteenth century to convert the Indians to
+Christianity. It was not until after this attempt, when he returned to
+England, that he began the great religious movement which led to the
+founding of the Methodist Church. George Whitfield also preached in
+Savannah. Evidently Wesley did not get very far with the savages who, it
+may be imagined, were more responsive to the kind of "conversion"
+attempted in South Carolina, by a French dancing-master, who went out
+from Charleston in the early days and taught them the steps of the
+stately minuet.
+
+Another great event in Savannah history was the departure from that
+port, in 1819, of the _City of Savannah_, the first steamship to cross
+the Atlantic. If I may make a suggestion to the city, it is that the
+centennial of this event be celebrated, and that a memorial be erected.
+Inspiration for such a memorial might perhaps be found in the simple and
+charming monument, crowned by a galleon in bronze, which has been
+erected in San Francisco, in memory of Robert Louis Stevenson. A ship in
+bronze can be a glorious thing--which is more than can be said of a
+bronze statesman in modern pantaloons.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+More lately Savannah initiated another world-improvement: she was the
+first city to abolish horses entirely from her fire department,
+replacing them with automobile engines, hook-and-ladders, and
+hose-carts. That is in line with what one would expect of Savannah, for
+she is not only a progressive city, but is a great automobile city,
+having several times been the scene of important international
+automobile road races, including the Grand Prize and the Vanderbilt Cup.
+
+Nor is there want of other history. The Savannah Theater, though gutted
+by fire and rebuilt, is the same theater that Joseph Jefferson owned and
+managed for a time, in the fifties; in the house on Lafayette Square,
+now occupied by Judge W.W. Lambdin, Robert E. Lee once stayed, and
+Thackeray is said to have written there a part of "The Virginians."
+
+A sad thing was happening in Savannah when we were there. The Habersham
+house, one of the loveliest old mansions of the city, was being torn
+down to make room for a municipal auditorium.
+
+The first Habersham in America was a Royal Governor of Georgia. He had
+three sons one of whom, Joseph, had, by the outbreak of the Revolution,
+become a good enough American to join a band of young patriots who took
+prisoner the British governor, Sir James Wright. The governor's house
+was situated where the Telfair Academy now is. He was placed under
+parole, but nevertheless fled to Bonaventure, the Tabnall estate, not
+far from the city, where he was protected by friends until he could
+escape to the British fleet, which then lay off Tybee Island at the
+mouth of the Savannah River, some eighteen miles below the city. This
+same Joseph Habersham, it is said, led a party which went out in 1775
+in skiffs--called _bateaux_ along this part of the coast--boarded the
+British ship _Hinchenbroke_, lying at anchor in the river, and captured
+her in a hand-to-hand conflict. Mr. Neyle Colquitt of Savannah, a
+descendant of the Habershams, tells me that the powder taken from the
+_Hinchenbroke_ was used at the Battle of Bunker Hill. After the war, in
+which Joseph Habersham commanded a regiment of regulars, he was made
+Postmaster General of the United States. The old house itself was built
+by Archibald Bulloch, a progenitor of that Miss "Mittie" Bulloch who
+later became Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., mother of the President. It
+was designed by an English architect named Jay, who did a number of the
+fine old houses of Savannah, which are almost without exception of the
+Georgian period. Archibald Bulloch bought the lot on which he built the
+house from Matthew McAllister, great-grandfather of Ward McAllister.
+When sold by Bulloch it passed through several hands and finally came
+into the possession of Robert Habersham, a son of Joseph.
+
+The old house was spacious and its interiors had a fine formality about
+them. The staircase, fireplace and chandeliers were handsome, and there
+was at the rear a charming oval room, the heavy mahogany doors of which
+were curved to conform to the shape of the walls. To tear down such a
+house was sacrilege--also it was a sacrilege hard to commit, for some of
+the basement walls were fifteen feet thick, and of solid brick straight
+through.
+
+Sherman's headquarters were on the Square, just south of the De Soto
+Hotel, in the battlemented brick mansion which is the residence of
+General Peter W. Meldrim, ex-president of the American Bar Association,
+and former Mayor of Savannah.
+
+Among other old houses characteristic of Savannah, are the Scarborough
+house, the Mackay house, the Thomas house in Franklin Square (also known
+as the Owens house), in which Lafayette was entertained, and the Telfair
+house, now the Telfair Academy. The Telfair and Thomas houses were built
+by the architect who built the Habersham house, and it is to be hoped
+that they will never go the way of the latter mansion.
+
+In 1810, about the time these houses were built, Savannah had 5,000
+inhabitants; by 1850 the population had trebled, and 1890 found it a
+place of more than 40,000. Since then the city has grown with wholesome
+rapidity, and attractive suburban districts have been developed. The
+1910 census gives the population as 65,000, but the city talks
+exuberantly of 90,000. Well, perhaps that is not an exaggerated claim.
+Certainly it is a city to attract those who are free to live where they
+please. In fall, winter and spring it leaves little to be desired. I
+have been there three times, and I have never walked up Bull Street
+without looking forward to the day when I could go there, rent an old
+house full of beautiful mahogany, and pass a winter. Not even New
+Orleans made me feel like that. I feel about New Orleans that it is a
+place to visit rather than to settle down in. I want to go back to New
+Orleans, but I do not want to stay more than a few weeks. I want to see
+some people that I know, prowl about the French quarter, and have Jules
+Alciatore turn me out a dinner; then I want to go away. So, too, I want
+to go back to Atlanta--just to see some people. I want to stay there a
+week or two. Also I want to go to St. Augustine when cold weather comes,
+and bask in the warm sun, and breathe the soft air full of gold dust,
+and feel indolent and happy as I watch the activities about the
+excellent Ponce de Leon Hotel; but there are two cities in the South
+that I dream of going to for a quiet happy winter of domesticity and
+work, in a rented house--it must be the right house, too--and those
+cities are, first Charleston; then Savannah.
+
+The Telfair Academy in the old Telfair mansion was left, by a member of
+the family, to the city, to be used as a museum. Being somewhat
+skeptical about museums in cities of the size of Savannah, not to say
+much larger cities, especially when they are art museums, I very nearly
+omitted a visit to this one. Had I done so I would have missed seeing
+not only a number of exceedingly interesting historic treasures, but
+what I believe to be the best public art collection contained in any
+southern city.
+
+The museum does, to be sure, contain a number of old "tight" paintings
+of the kind with which the country was deluged at the time of the
+Chicago World's Fair, but upstairs there is a surprise in shape of an
+exhibition of modern American paintings (the best paintings being
+produced in the world to-day) showing brilliant selection. I was utterly
+amazed when I found this collection. There were excellent canvases by
+Childe Hassam, Ernest Lawson, George Bellows, and other living American
+painters whose work, while it is becoming more and more widely
+appreciated each year, is still beyond all but the most advanced and
+discriminating buyers of paintings. I went into ecstasies over this
+collection, and I said to myself: "Away down here in Savannah there is
+some one buying better paintings for a little museum than the heads of
+many of the big museums in the country have had sense enough or courage
+enough to buy. This man ought to be 'discovered' and taken to some big
+museum where his appreciation will be put to the greatest use." With
+that I rushed downstairs, sought out the curator, and asked who had
+purchased the modern American pictures. And then my bubble was pricked,
+for who had they had, down there, buying their pictures for them, but
+Gari Melchers! Naturally the pictures were good!
+
+In one room of the building, on the ground floor, is a collection of
+fine old furniture, etc., which belonged to the Telfair family,
+including two beautiful mantelpieces of black and white marble, some
+cabinets, and a very curious and fascinating extension dining-table,
+built of mahogany. The table is perfectly round, and the leaves, instead
+of being added in the middle, are curved pieces, fitting around the
+outer edge in two series, so that when extended to its full capacity the
+table is still round. I have never seen another such table.
+
+Also I found many interesting old books and papers passed down from the
+Telfairs. One of these was a ledger with records of slave sales.
+
+In a sale held Friday, October 14, 1774, Sir James Wright, the same
+British governor who was presently put to flight, purchased four men,
+five women, nine boys, and one girl, at a total cost of Ł820, or about
+$3,280. Sir Patrick Houston bought two women at Ł90, or $450. The whole
+day's sale disposed of thirty-five men, seventeen women, twenty-seven
+boys and ten girls, at a grand total of Ł3206, or roughly between nine
+and ten thousand dollars.
+
+The Telfairs were great planters. Among the papers was one headed "Rules
+and Directions to be strictly attended to by all overseers at Thorn
+Island Plantation." This plantation was on the North Carolina side of
+the river, and was owned by Alexander Telfair, a brother of Miss Mary
+Telfair who gave the Academy to the city. Dates which occur in the
+papers stamp them as having been issued some time prior to 1837. Here
+are some of the regulations:
+
+    The allowance for every grown negro, let him or her be old and good
+    for nothing, and every young one that works in the field, is a peck
+    of corn a week and a pint of salt and a piece of meat not exceeding
+    fourteen pounds per month.
+
+    No negro to have more than forty lashes, no matter what his crime.
+
+    The suckling children and all small ones who do not work in the
+    field draw a half allowance of corn and salt.
+
+    Any negro can have a ticket to go about the neighborhood, but cannot
+    leave it without a pass. No strangers allowed to come on the place
+    without a pass.
+
+    The negroes to be tasked when the work allows it. I require a
+    reasonable day's work well done. The task to be regulated by the
+    state of the ground and the strength of the negro.
+
+    All visiting between the Georgia plantation to be refused. [The
+    Telfairs owned another plantation on the Georgia side of the river.]
+    No one to get husbands or wives across the river. No night meeting
+    or preaching allowed on the place except on Saturday or Sunday
+    morning.
+
+    If there is any fighting on the place whip all engaged in it, no
+    matter what may be the cause it may be covered with.
+
+    In extreme cases of sickness employ a physician. After a dose of
+    castor oil is given, a dose of calomel, and blister applied, if no
+    relief, then send.
+
+    My negroes are not allowed to plant cotton for themselves.
+    Everything else they may plant. Give them ticket to sell what they
+    make.
+
+    I have no Driver (slave-driver). You are to task the negroes
+    yourself. They are responsible to you alone for work.
+
+Certain negroes are mentioned by name:
+
+    Many persons are indebted to Elsey for attending upon their negroes.
+    I wish you to see them or send to them for the money.
+
+    If Dolly is unable to return to cooking she must take charge of all
+    the little negroes.
+
+    Pay Free Moses two dollars and a half for taking care of things left
+    at his landing.
+
+Bull Street, the fashionable street of the city, is a gem of a street,
+despite the incursions made at not infrequent intervals, by
+comparatively new, and often very ugly buildings. Every few blocks Bull
+Street has to turn out of its course and make the circuit of one of the
+small parks of which I have spoken, and this gives it charm and variety.
+On this street stands the De Soto Hotel, which, when I first went to
+Savannah, years ago, was by all odds the leading hostelry of the city.
+It is one of those great rambling buildings with a big porch out in
+front, an open court in back, and everything about it, including the
+bedchambers, very spacious and rather old fashioned. Lately the Savannah
+Hotel has been erected down at the business end of Bull Street. It is a
+modern hotel of the more conventional commercial type. But even down
+there, near the business part of town, it is not confronted by congested
+cobbled streets and clanging trolley cars, but looks out upon one of the
+squares, filled with magnolias, oaks and palms. But another time I
+think I shall go back to the De Soto.
+
+The building of the Independent Presbyterian Church, on Bull Street, is
+one of the most beautiful of its kind in the country, inside and out. It
+reminds one of the old churches in Charleston, and it is gratifying to
+know that though the old church which stood on this site (dedicated in
+1819) burned in 1889, the congregation did not seize the opportunity to
+replace it with a hideosity in lemon-yellow brick, but had the rare good
+sense to duplicate the old church exactly, with the result that, though
+a new building, it has all the dignity and simple beauty of an old one.
+
+Broughton Street, the shopping street, crosses Bull Street in the
+downtown section, and looks ashamed of itself as it does so, for it is
+about as commonplace a looking street as one may see. There is simply
+nothing about it of distinction save its rather handsome name.
+
+Elsewhere, however, there are several skyscrapers, most of them good
+looking buildings. It seemed to me also that I had never seen so many
+banks as in Savannah, and I am told that it is, indeed, a great banking
+city, and that the record of the Savannah banks for weathering financial
+storms is very fine. On a good many corners where there are not banks
+there are clubs, and some of these clubs are delightful and thoroughly
+metropolitan in character. I know of no city in the North, having a
+population corresponding to that of Charleston or of Savannah, which has
+clubs comparable with the best clubs of these cities, or of New
+Orleans. When it is considered that of the population of these southern
+cities approximately one half, representing negroes, must be deducted in
+considering the population from which eligibles must be drawn, the
+excellence of southern clubs becomes remarkable in the extreme.
+Savannah, by the way, holds one national record in the matter of clubs.
+It had the first golf club founded in America. Exactly when the club was
+founded I cannot say, but Mr. H.H. Bruen, of Savannah, has in his
+possession an invitation to a golf club ball held in the old City Hall
+in the year 1811.
+
+The commercial ascendancy of Savannah over Charleston is due largely to
+natural causes. The port of Savannah drains exports from a larger and
+richer territory than is tapped by Charleston, though new railroads are
+greatly improving Charleston's situation in this respect. Savannah is a
+shipping port for cotton from a vast part of the lower and central
+South, and is also a great port for lumber, and the greatest port in the
+world for "naval stores." I did not know what naval stores were when I
+went to Savannah. The term conjured up in my mind pictures of piles of
+rope, pulleys and anchors. But those are not naval stores. Naval stores
+are gum products, such as resin and turpentine, which are obtained from
+the long-leafed pines of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Florida.
+The traveler through these States cannot have failed to notice gashes on
+the tree-trunks along the way. From these the resinous sap exudes and
+is caught in cups, after which it is boiled, there in the woods, and
+thus separated into turpentine, resin and pitch. Vast quantities of
+these materials are stored on the great modern docks of Savannah. It is
+said that owing to wasteful methods, the long-leafed pine forests are
+being rapidly destroyed, and that this industry will die out before very
+long because the eager grabbers of to-day's dollars, having no thought
+for the future, fail to practise scientific forestry.
+
+All about Savannah, within easy reach by trolley, motor or boat, lie
+pleasant retreats and interesting things to see. The roads of the
+region, built by convict labor, are of the finest, and the convict
+prison camps are worth a visit. In the Brown Farm camp, living
+conditions are certainly more sanitary than in ninety nine out of a
+hundred negro homes. The place fairly shines with cleanliness, and there
+are many cases in which "regulars" at this camp are no sooner released
+than they offend again with the deliberate purpose of carrying out what
+may be termed a "back to the farm" movement. The color line is drawn in
+southern jails and convict camps as elsewhere. White prisoners occupy
+one barracks; negroes another. The food and accommodations for both is
+the same. The only race discrimination I could discover was that when
+white prisoners are punished by flogging, they are flogged with their
+clothes on, whereas, with negroes, the back is exposed. The men in this
+camp are minor offenders and wear khaki overalls in place of the stripes
+in which the worse criminals, quartered in another camp, are dressed.
+Strict discipline is maintained, but the life is wholesome. The men are
+marched to work in the morning and back at night escorted by guards who
+carry loaded shotguns, and who always have with them a pack of ugly
+bloodhounds to be used in case escape is attempted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All the drives in this region are extremely picturesque, for the
+live-oak grows here at its best, and is to be seen everywhere, its trunk
+often twenty or more feet in circumference, its wide-spreading branches
+reaching out their tips to meet those of other trees of the same
+species, so that sometimes the whole world seems to have a groined
+ceiling of foliage, a ceiling which inevitably suggests a great shadowy
+cathedral from whose airy arches hang long gray pennons of Spanish moss,
+like faded, tattered battle-flags.
+
+On country roads you will come, now and then, upon a negro burial ground
+of very curious character. There may be such negro cemeteries in the
+upper Southern States, but if so I have never seen them. In this portion
+of Georgia they are numerous, and their distinguishing mark consists in
+the little piles of household effects with which every grave is covered.
+I do not know whether this is done to propitiate ghosts and devils
+(generally believed to "hant" these graveyards), or whether it is the
+idea that the deceased can still find use for the assortment of
+pitchers, bowls, cups, saucers, knives, forks, spoons, statuettes,
+alarm-clocks, and heaven only knows what else, which were his treasured
+earthly possessions.
+
+In Savannah, I have heard Commodore Tatnall, who used to live at
+Bonaventure, credited with having originated the saying "Blood is
+thicker than water," but I am inclined to believe that the Commodore
+merely made apposite use of an old formula. The story is told of one of
+the old Tatnalls that in the midst of a large dinner-party which he was
+giving at his mansion at Bonaventure plantation, a servant entered and
+informed him that the house was on fire. Whereupon the old thoroughbred,
+instead of turning fireman, persisted in his rôle of host, ordering the
+full dining-room equipment to be moved out upon the lawn, where the
+company remained at dinner while the house burned down.
+
+Most of the old houses of the plantations on the river have long since
+been destroyed. That at Whitehall was burned by the negroes when
+Sherman's army came by, but the old trees and gardens still endure,
+including a tall hedge of holly which is remarkable even in this
+florescent region. The old plantation house at the Hermitage, approached
+by a handsome avenue of live-oaks, is, I believe, the only one of those
+ancient mansions which still stands, and it does not stand very
+strongly, for, beautiful though it is in its abandonment and decay, it
+is like some noble old gentleman dying alone in an attic, of age,
+poverty and starvation--dying proudly as poor Charles Gayarré did in New
+Orleans.
+
+The Hermitage has, I believe, no great history save what is written in
+its old chipped walls of stucco-covered brick, and the slave-cabins
+which still form a background for it. It is a story of baronial decay,
+resulting, doubtless, from the termination of slavery. Hordes of negroes
+of the "new issue" infest the old slave-cabins and on sight of visitors
+rush out with almost violent demands for money, in return for which they
+wish to sing. Their singing is, however, the poorest negro singing I
+have ever heard. All the spontaneity, all the relish, all the vividness
+which makes negro singing wonderful, has been removed, here, by the
+fixed idea that singing is not a form of expression but a mere noise to
+be given vent to for the purpose of extracting backsheesh. It is
+saddening to witness the degradation, through what may be called
+professionalism, of any great racial quality. These negroes, half
+mendicant, half traders on the reputation of their race, express
+professionalism in its lowest form. They are more pitiful than the
+professional tarantella dancers who await the arrival of tourists, in
+certain parts of southern Italy, as spiders await flies.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII
+
+MISS "JAX" AND SOME FLORIDA GOSSIP
+
+    "Or mebbe you 're intendin' of
+      Investments? Orange-plantin'? Pine?
+    Hotel? or Sanitarium? What above
+      This yea'th _can_ be your line?..."
+
+    SIDNEY LANIER ("A FLORIDA GHOST.")
+
+
+It is the boast of Jacksonville (known locally by the convenient
+abbreviation "Jax") that it stands as the "Gate to Florida." But the
+fact that a gate is something through which people pass--usually without
+stopping--causes some anguish to an active Chamber of Commerce, which
+has been known to send bands to the railway station to serenade tourists
+in the hope of enticing them to alight.
+
+If I were to personify Jacksonville, it would be, I think, as an amiable
+young woman, member of a domestic family, whose papa and mama had moved
+to Florida from somewhere else--for it is as hard to find a native of
+Jacksonville in that city as to find a native New Yorker in New York.
+Miss Jacksonville's papa, as I conceive it, has prospered while daughter
+has been growing up, and has bought for her a fine large house on a main
+corner, where many people pass. Having reached maturity Miss
+Jacksonville wishes to be in Florida society--to give, as it were,
+house parties, like those of her neighbors, the other winter resorts.
+She sees people passing her doors all winter long, and she says to
+herself: "I must get some of these people to come in."
+
+To this end she brushes off the walk, lays a carpet on the steps, puts
+flowers in the vases, orders up a lot of fancy food and drink (from the
+very admirable Hotel Mason), turns on the lights and the Victor, leaves
+the front door invitingly open, and hopes for the best. Soon people
+begin to come in, but as she meets them she discovers that most of them
+have come to see papa on business; only a few have come on her account.
+They help themselves to sandwiches, look about the room, and listen to
+what Miss Jacksonville has to say.
+
+Time passes. Nothing happens. She asks how they like the chairs.
+
+"Very comfortable," they assure her.
+
+"Do have some more to eat and drink," says she.
+
+"What is your history?" a guest asks her presently.
+
+"I haven't much history to speak of," she replies. "They tell me Andrew
+Jackson had his territorial government about where my house stands, but
+I don't know much about it. We don't care much about history in our
+family."
+
+"What do you do with yourself?"
+
+"Oh, I keep house, and go occasionally to the Woman's Club, and in the
+evenings father tells me about his business."
+
+"Very nice," says one guest, whom we shall picture as a desirable and
+wealthy young man from the North. "Now let's do something. Do you play
+or sing? Are you athletic? Do you go boating on the St. John's River? Do
+you gamble? Can you make love?"
+
+"I dance a little and play a little golf out at the Florida Country
+Club," she says, with but small signs of enthusiasm. "The thing I'm
+really most interested in, though, is father's business. He lost a lot
+of money in the fire of 1901, but he's made it all back and a lot more
+besides."
+
+"What about surf-bathing?" asks the pleasure-seeking visitor, stifling a
+yawn.
+
+"There's Atlantic Beach only eighteen miles from here. It's a wonderful
+beach. Father's putting a million in improvements out there, but there's
+no time to go there just now. However, if you'd like to, I can take you
+down and show you the new docks he has built."
+
+"Oh, no, thanks," says the guest. "I don't care for docks--not, that is,
+unless we can go boating."
+
+"I'm afraid we can't do that," says Miss Jacksonville. "We don't use the
+river much for pleasure. I can't say just why, unless it is that every
+one is too busy.... But please eat something more, and do have something
+to drink. There's plenty for every one."
+
+"I must be running along," says the visitor. "I've been invited to call
+at some other houses down the block. By the way, what is the name of
+your neighbor next door?"
+
+"St. Augustine," says Jacksonville, with a little reluctance. "She is of
+Spanish descent and sets great store by it. If you call there she'll
+show you a lot of interesting old relics she has, but I assure you that
+when it comes to commercial success her family isn't one-two-three with
+papa."
+
+"Thanks," says the visitor, "but just at the moment commerce doesn't
+appeal to me. Who lives beyond her?"
+
+Miss Jacksonville sighs. "There are some pleasant, rather attractive
+people named Ormonde, beyond," she says, "and a lively family named
+Daytona next door to them. Neither family is in business, like papa.
+They just play all the time. Then come a number of modest places, and
+after them, in the big yellow and white house with the palm trees all
+around it--but I'd advise you to keep away from there! Yes, you'd better
+go by that house. On the other side of it, in another lovely house, live
+some nicer, simpler people named Miami. Or if you like fishing, you
+might drop in on Mrs. Long-Key--she's wholesome and sweet, and goes out
+every day to catch tarpon. Or, again, you might--"
+
+"What's the matter with the people in the big yellow and white house
+surrounded by palm trees? Why shouldn't I go there?" asks the guest.
+
+"A young widow lives there," says Miss Jacksonville primly. "I don't
+know much about her history, but she looks to me as though she had been
+on the stage. She's frightfully frivolous--not at all one of our
+representative people."
+
+"Ah!" says the visitor. "Is she pretty?"
+
+"Well," admits Miss Jacksonville, "I suppose she _is_--in a fast way.
+But she's all rouged and she overdresses. Her bathing suits are too
+short at the bottom and her evening gowns are too short at the top. Yes,
+and even at that, she has a trick of letting the shoulder straps slip
+off and pretending she doesn't know it has happened."
+
+"What's her name?"
+
+"Mrs. Palm-Beach."
+
+"Oh," says the visitor. "I've heard of her. She's always getting into
+the papers. Tell me more."
+
+Miss Jacksonville purses her lips and raises her eyebrows. "Really," she
+says, "I don't like to talk scandal."
+
+"Oh, come on! Do!" pleads the visitor. "Is she bad--bad and beautiful
+and alluring?"
+
+"Judge for yourself," says Miss Jacksonville sharply. "She keeps that
+enormous place of hers shut up except for about two months or so in the
+winter, when she comes down gorgeously dressed, with more jewelry than
+is worn by the rest of the neighborhood put together. Few Southerners go
+to her house. It's full of rich people from all over the North."
+
+"Is she rich?"
+
+"You'd think so to look at her--especially if you didn't know where she
+got her money. But she really hasn't much of her own. She's a grafter."
+
+"How does she manage it?"
+
+"Men give her money."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Because she knows how to please the rich. She understands them. She
+makes herself beautiful for them. She plays, and drinks, and gambles,
+and dances with them, and goes riding with them in wheel chairs by
+moonlight, and sits with them by the sea, and holds their hands, and
+gets them sentimental. There's some scent she uses that is very
+seductive--none of the rest of us have been able to find out exactly
+what it is."
+
+"But how does she get their money?"
+
+"She never tells a hard-luck story--you can't get money out of the kind
+she goes with, that way. She takes the other tack. She whispers to them,
+and laughs with them, and fondles them, and makes them love her, and
+when they love her she says: 'But dearie, be reasonable! Think how many
+people love me! I like to have you here, you fat old darling with the
+gold jingling in your pockets! but I can't let you sit with me unless
+you pay. Yes, I'm expensive, I admit. But don't you love this scent I
+wear? Don't you adore my tropical winter sea, my gardens, my palm trees,
+my moonlight, and my music? They are all for you, dearie--so why
+shouldn't you pay? Don't I take you from the northern cold and slush?
+Haven't I built a siding for your private car, and made an anchorage for
+your yacht? Don't I let you do as you please? Don't I keep you amused?
+Don't you love to look at me? Don't I put my warm red lips to yours?
+Well, then, dearie, what is all your money for?' ... That is her way of
+talking to them! That is the sort of creature that she is!"
+
+"Shocking!" says the visitor, rising and looking for his hat "You say
+hers is the third large house from here?"
+
+"Yes. Remember, she's as mercenary as can be!"
+
+"Thanks. I can take care of myself. If she's amusing that suits me.
+Good-by."
+
+In the vestibule he pauses to count his money.
+
+"Jacksonville seems to be a nice girl," he says to himself as he hastens
+down the block. "I imagine she might make a good wife and mother, and
+that she'd help her husband on in business. However, I'm not thinking of
+getting married and settling down in Florida. I'm out for some fun. I
+think I'll run in and call upon Mrs. Palm-Beach."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII
+
+PASSIONATE PALM BEACH
+
+    A very merry, dancing, drinking,
+    Laughing, quaffing and unthinking time.
+
+    --DRYDEN.
+
+
+Like all places in which idlers try to avoid finding out that they are
+idle, Palm Beach has very definite customs as to where to go, and at
+what time to go there. Excepting in its hours for going to bed and
+getting up, it runs on schedule. The official day begins with the
+bathing hour--half past eleven to half past twelve--when the two or
+three thousand people from the pair of vast hotels assemble before the
+casino on the beach. Golfers will, of course, be upon the links before
+this hour; fishermen will be casting from the pier or will be out in
+boats searching the sail fish--that being the "fashionable" fish at the
+present time; ladies of excessive circumference will be panting rapidly
+along the walks, their eyes holding that look of dreamy determination
+which painters put into the eyes of martyrs, and which a fixed intention
+to lose twenty pounds puts into the eyes of banting women. So, too,
+certain gentlemen of swarthy skin make their way to the casino sun
+parlor, where they disrobe and bake until the bathing hour. The object
+of this practice is to acquire, as nearly as a white man may, the
+complexion of a mulatto, and it is surprising to see how closely the
+skins of some more ardent members of the "Browning Club," as this group
+is called, match those of their chair boys. The underlying theory of the
+"Browning Club" is that a triple-plated coat of tan, taken north in
+March, advertises the wearer as having been at Palm Beach during the
+entire winter, thus establishing him as a man not merely of means, but
+of great endurance.
+
+The women of Palm Beach seem to be divided into two distinct schools of
+thought on the subject of tanning. While none of them compete with the
+radicals of the "Browning Club," one may nevertheless observe that, in
+evening dress, many young ladies reveal upon their necks, shoulders, and
+arms, stenciled outlines of the upper margins of their bathing suits.
+Ladies of the opposing school, upon the contrary, guard the whiteness of
+their skins as jealously as the men of the "Browning Club" guard their
+blackness. Rather than be touched with tan, many ladies of the latter
+group deny themselves the pleasures of the surf. The parasols beneath
+which they arrive upon the sands are not lowered until they are safely
+seated beneath the green and blue striped canvas tops of their beach
+chairs, and it may be observed that even then they are additionally
+fortified against the light, by wide black hats and thick dark veils
+draped to mask their faces up to the eyes; "harem" veils, they call
+them--the name, however, signifying nothing polygamous.
+
+A pleasant diversion at the beginning of the bathing hour occurs when
+some mere one-horse millionaire from a Middle-Western town appears on
+the beach with his family. He is newly arrived and is under the fond
+delusion that he is as good as anybody else and that his money is as
+good as any other person's money. Seeing the inviting rows of beach
+chairs, he and his family plump into several of them. They are hardly
+settled, however, when the man who attends to the beach chairs comes and
+asks them to get out, saying that the chairs are reserved.
+
+The other thinks the man is lying like a head waiter, and demands to
+know for whom the chairs are reserved.
+
+In reply the beach-chair man mentions, with suitable deference, the name
+of Mrs. Hopkinson Skipkinson Jumpkinson-Jones.
+
+"Well," cries the Middle-Westerner, "Mrs. Jones isn't here yet, is she?
+She can't use the chairs _now_, can she, if she isn't here?"
+
+Even without this evidence that he does not grasp at all, the
+seriousness of the beach-chair situation, the fact that the uncouth
+stranger has referred to Mrs. H.S. Jumpkinson-Jones merely as "Mrs.
+Jones," brands him among the Palm Beach "regulars" who have overheard
+him, as a barbarian of the barbarians. People in neighboring chairs at
+once turn their backs upon him and glance at each other knowingly with
+raised eyebrows. At this juncture, let us hope, the daughter of the
+intruder manages to pry him loose; let us hope also that she takes him
+aside and tells him what everybody ought to know: namely, that Mrs. H.S.
+Jumpkinson-Jones has been a society leader ever since the "Journal"
+published the full-page Sunday story about her having gold fillings put
+in her Boston terrier's teeth. That was away back in 1913, just before
+she was allowed to get her divorce from Royal Tewksbury Johnson III of
+Paris, Newport, and New York. The day after the divorce she married her
+present husband, and up to last year, when the respective wives of a
+munitions millionaire and a moving-picture millionaire began to cut in
+on her, no one thought of denying her claim to be the most wasteful
+woman in Palm Beach.
+
+True, she may not come down to the beach to-day, but in that case it is
+obviously proper that her chairs--including those of her dog and her
+husband--remain magnificently vacant throughout the bathing hour.
+
+The lady is, however, likely to appear. She will be wearing one of the
+seventy hats which, we have learned by the papers, she brought with her,
+and a pint or so of her lesser pearls. Her dog--which is sometimes
+served beside her at table at the Beach Club, and whose diet is the same
+as her own, even to strawberries and cream followed by a demi
+tasse--will be in attendance; and her husband, whose diet is even
+richer, may also appear if he has recovered from his matutinal headache.
+Here she will sit through the hour, gossiping with her friends,
+watching the antics of several beautiful, dubious women, camp followers
+of the rich, who add undoubted interest to the place; calling languidly
+to her dog: "_Viens, Tou-tou! Viens vite!_" above all waiting patiently,
+with crossed knees, for news-service photographers to come and take her
+picture--a picture which, when we see it presently in "Vogue," "Vanity
+Fair," or a Sunday newspaper, will present indisputable proof that Mrs.
+H.S. Jumpkinson-Jones and the ladies sitting near her (also with legs
+crossed) refrained from wearing bathing suits neither through excessive
+modesty nor for fear of revealing deformity of limb.
+
+Many a Mrs. H.S. Jumpkinson-Jones has beaten her way to glory by the
+Palm Beach route. Many of the names which sound vaguely familiar when
+you read them in connection with the story of a jewel robbery, in lists
+of "those present," or in an insinuating paragraph in the tattered copy
+of "Town Topics" which you pick up, in lieu of reading matter, from the
+table in your dentist's waiting room, first broke into the paradise of
+the society column by way of this resort. For a woman with money and the
+press-agent type of mind it is not a difficult thing to accomplish. One
+must think of sensational things to do--invent a new fad in dress, or
+send one's dog riding each day in a special wheel chair, or bring down
+one's own private dancing instructor or golf instructor at $5,000 for
+the season. Above all, one must be nice to the correspondents of
+newspapers. Never must one forget to do that. Never must one imagine
+oneself so securely placed in society columns that one may forget the
+reporters who gave one that place.
+
+One lady who, for several seasons, figured extensively in the news from
+Palm Beach, fell into this error. She thought herself safe, and altered
+her manner toward newspaper folk. But, alas! thereupon they altered
+their manner toward her. The press clippings sent by the bureau to which
+she subscribed became fewer and fewer. Her sensational feats went
+unnoticed. At last came a ball--one of the three big balls of the
+season; a New York paper printed a list of names of persons who went to
+the ball; a column of names in very small type. Lying in bed a few
+mornings later she read through the names and came to the end without
+finding her own. Thinking that she must have skipped it, she read the
+names over again with great care. Then she sent for her husband, and he
+read them. When it was clear to them both that her name was actually not
+there, it is said she went into hysterics. At all events, her husband
+came down in a rage and complained to the hotel management. But what
+could the management do? What can they do? The woman is doomed. The Palm
+Beach correspondents who "made" her have been snubbed by her and have
+unanimously declared "thumbs down." It is theirs to give, but let no
+climber be unmindful of the fact that it is also theirs to take away!
+
+As Mrs. H.S. Jumpkinson-Jones looks over the top of her harem veil she
+may see a great glistening steam yacht, with rakish masts and funnel,
+lying off the pier-head; and down on the sand she may see the young
+master and mistress of that yacht: a modest, attractive pair, possessors
+of one of the world's great fortunes, yet not nearly so elaborately
+dressed, nor so insistent upon their "position," as the
+Jumpkinson-Joneses. By raising the brim of her hat a trifle Mrs. H.S.
+Jumpkinson-Jones may see, sweeping in glorious circles above the yacht,
+the hydroplane which, when it left the edge of the beach a few minutes
+since, blew back with its propeller a stinging storm of sand, and caused
+skirts to snap like flags in a hundred-mile-an-hour hurricane; and in
+that hydroplane she knows there is another multimillionaire.
+
+Near by, sitting disconsolately upon the sand, are the one-horse
+Middle-Western millionaire with his wife and daughter--the three who
+were ousted from her seats by the beach-chair man. Mrs. H.S.
+Jumpkinson-Jones, like every one who has spent a season, let alone half
+a dozen seasons, at Palm Beach, immediately recognizes the type.
+
+Father is the leading merchant of his town; mother the social arbiter;
+daughter the regnant belle. Father definitely didn't wish to come here,
+nor was mother anxious to, but daughter made them. Often she has read
+the lists of prominent arrivals at Palm Beach and seen alluring pictures
+of them taken on the sand. She has dreamed of the place, and in her
+dreams has seemed to hear the call of Destiny. Who knows? may it not be
+at Palm Beach that she will meet _him_?--the beautiful and wealthy
+scion of a noble house who (so the fortune teller at the Elks' Club
+bazaar told her) will rescue her from the narrow life at home, and
+transport her, as his bride, into a world of wonder and delight, and
+footmen in knee-breeches. Daughter insisted on Palm Beach. So mother got
+a lot of pretty clothes for daughter, and father purchased several yards
+of green and yellow railroad tickets, and off they went. They arrived at
+Palm Beach. They walked the miles of green carpeted corridor. They were
+dazed--as every one must be who sees them for the first time--at the
+stunning size of the hotels. They looked upon the endless promenade of
+other visitors. They went to the beach at bathing hour, to the cocoanut
+grove at the time for tea and dancing, in wheel chairs through the
+jungle trail and _Reve d'Eté_, to the waiters' cake walk in the
+Poinciana dining room, to the concert at the Breakers, to the palm room,
+and to the sea by moonlight; everywhere they went they saw people,
+people, people: richly dressed people, gay people, people who knew
+quantities of other people; yet among them all was not one single being
+that they had ever seen before. After several days of this, father met a
+man he knew--a business friend from Akron. A precious lot of good that
+did! Why didn't father know the two young men who sat last night at the
+next table in the dining room? Even those two would have done just now.
+Clearly they had been mad to know her too, for they were likewise
+feeling desolate. Perhaps mother can get father to scrape up an
+acquaintance with them. But alas, before this plan can be set in motion,
+the two young men have formed their own conclusions as to what Palm
+Beach is like when you do not know anybody in the place. They have
+departed. Next day, when mother enters daughter's room to say good
+night, she finds her weeping; and next day, to father's infinite relief,
+they start for home. So it has gone with many a bush-league belle.
+
+Even the Mrs. Jumpkinson-Joneses, satiated though they be with private
+cars, press notices, and Palm Beach, can hardly fail to be sensible to
+the almost delirious beauty of the scene at bathing hour.
+
+Nowhere is the sand more like a deep, warm dust of yellow gold; nowhere
+is there a margin of the earth so splashed with spots of brilliant
+color: sweaters, parasols, bathing suits, canvas shelters--blue, green,
+purple, pink, yellow, orange, scarlet--vibrating together in the sharp
+sunlight like brush marks on a high-keyed canvas by Sorolla; nowhere has
+flesh such living, glittering beauty as the flesh of long, white, lovely
+arms which flash out, cold and dripping, from the sea; nowhere does
+water appear less like water, more like a flowing waste of liquid
+emeralds and sapphires, held perpetually in cool solution and edged with
+a thousand gleaming, flouncing strings of pearls.
+
+Over the beach lies a layer of people, formed in groups, some of them
+costumed for the water, some for the shore; some of them known to the
+great lady, many of them unknown to her. The groups are forever
+shifting as their members rise and run down to the sea, or come back
+shiny and dripping, to fling themselves again upon the warm sand, roll
+in it, or stretch out in lazy comfort while their friends shovel it over
+them with their hands. Now one group, or another, will rise and form a
+grinning row while a snap-shot is taken; now they recline again; now
+they scamper down to see the hydroplane come in; now they return, drop
+to the sand, and idly watch women bathers tripping past them toward the
+water. Here comes a girl in silken knickerbockers, with cuffs buttoning
+over her stockings like the cuffs of riding breeches. Heads turn
+simultaneously as she goes by. Here is a tomboy in a jockey cap; here
+two women wearing over their bathing suits brilliant colored satin wraps
+which flutter revealingly in the warm, fresh fragrant breeze. And now
+comes the slender, aristocratic, foreign-looking beauty who wears
+high-heeled slippers with her bathing costume, and steps gracefully to
+the water's edge under the shade of a bright colored Japanese parasol.
+It seems that every one must now be on the beach. But no! Here come the
+three most wonderful of all: the three most watched, most talked about,
+most spoiled, most coveted young women at Palm Beach. Their bathing
+suits are charming: very short, high waisted, and cut at the top like
+Empire evening gowns, showing lovely arms and shoulders. Hovering about
+them, like flies about a box of sweets, yet also with something of the
+jealous guardianship of watchdogs, is their usual escort of young
+men--for though they know none of the fashionable women, their beauty
+gives them a power of wide selection as to masculine society.
+
+One is a show girl, famous in the way such girls become famous in a New
+York season, vastly prosperous (if one may judge by appearances), yet
+with a prosperity founded upon the capitalization of youth and amazing
+loveliness of person. The other two, less advertised, but hardly less
+striking in appearance, have been nicknamed, for the convenience of the
+gossips, "The Queen of Sheba," and "The Queen of the May." They too
+suggest, somehow, association with the trivial stage, but it is said
+that one of them--the slender wonderfully rounded one--has never had the
+footlights in her face, but has been (in some respects, at least), a
+model.
+
+Like the climbers, like the bush league belle, these girls, we judge,
+brought definite ambitions with them to Palm Beach. Partly, no doubt,
+they came for pleasure, but also one hears stories of successful
+ventures made by men, on their behalf, at Beach Club tables, and of
+costly rings and brooches which they now possess, although they did not
+bring them with them. But after all, the sources from which come their
+jeweled trinkets may only be surmised, whereas, to the success of their
+desire for fun, the eyes and ears of the entire smiling beach bear
+witness. Watch them as they clasp hands and run down to the water's
+edge; see them prancing playfully where the waves die on the sand, while
+devoted swains launch the floating mattress upon which it is their
+custom to bask so picturesquely; see them now as they rush into the
+green waves and mount the softly rocking thing; observe the gleam of
+their white arms as, idly, they splash and paddle; note the languid
+grace of their recumbence: chins on hands, heels waving lazily in air;
+hear them squeal in inharmonious unison, as a young member of the
+"Browning Club," makes as though to splatter them, or mischievously
+threatens to overturn their unwieldy couchlike craft. Free from the
+restriction of ideas about "society," about the "tradition" of Palm
+Beach, about "convention," they seem to detect no difference between
+this resort and certain summer beaches, more familiar to them, and at
+the same time more used to boisterousness and cachinnation. They go
+everywhere, these girls. You will see them having big cocktails, in a
+little while, on the porch of the Breakers; you will see them having
+tea, and dancing under the dry rustling palm fronds of the cocoanut
+grove, when the colored electric lights begin to glow in the luminous
+semi-tropical twilight; and you will see them, resplendent, at the Beach
+Club, dining, or playing at the green-topped tables.
+
+The Beach Club has been for some time, I suppose, the last redoubt held
+in this country by the forces of open, or semi-open gambling. Every now
+and then one hears a rumor that it is to be stormed and taken by the
+hosts of legislative piety, yet on it goes, upon its gilded way--a
+place, it should be said, of orderly, spectacular distinction. The Beach
+Club occupies a plain white house, low-spreading and unpretentious, but
+fitted most agreeably within, and boasting a superb cuisine. Not every
+one is admitted. Members have cards, and must be vouched for, formally,
+by persons known to those who operate the place. Many of the quiet
+pleasant people who, leading their own lives regardless of the splurging
+going on about them, form the background of Palm Beach life--much as
+"walking ladies and gentlemen" form the crowd in a spectacular
+theatrical production--have never seen the inside of the Beach Club; and
+I have little doubt that many visitors who drop in at Palm Beach for a
+few days never so much as hear of it. It is not run for them, nor for
+the "piker," nor for the needy clerk, but for the furious spenders.
+
+Let us therefore view the Beach Club only as an interesting adjunct to
+Palm Beach life, and let us admit that, as such, it is altogether in the
+picture. Let us, in short, seek, upon this brief excursion, not only to
+recover from our case of grippe, but to recover also that sense of the
+purely esthetic, without regard to moral issues, which we used to enjoy
+some years ago, before our legislatures legislated virtue into us. Let
+us soar, upon the wings of our checkbook, in one final flight to the
+realms of unalloyed beauty. Let us, in considering this most
+extravagantly passionate and passionately extravagant of American
+resorts, be great artists, who are above morals. Let us refuse
+pointblank to consider morals at all. For by so doing we may avoid
+giving ourselves away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The season wanes. Crowds on the beach grow thinner. Millionaires begin
+to move their private cars from Palm Beach sidings, and depart for other
+fashionable places farther north. Croupiers at the Beach Club stand idle
+for an hour at a time, though ready to spin the wheel, invitingly, for
+any one who saunters in. The shops hold cut-price sales. And we,
+regarding somewhat sadly our white trousers, perceive that there does
+not remain a single spotless pair. The girl in Mr. Foster's fruit store
+has more leisure, now, and smiles agreeably as we pass upon our way to
+the hotel dining-room. The waiter, likewise, is not pressed for time.
+
+"They was seven-hunduhd an' twe've folks heah yestahday," he says. "On'y
+six-fohty-three to-day. Ah reckon they a-goin' t' close the Breakuhs day
+aftuh t'-mo'w."
+
+Still the flowers bloom; still the place is beautiful; still the weather
+is not uncomfortably warm. Nevertheless the season dies. And so it comes
+about that we depart.
+
+The ride through Florida is tedious. The miles of palmettoes, with
+leaves glittering like racks of bared cutlasses in the sun, the miles of
+dark swamp, in which the cypresses seem to wade like dismal club-footed
+men, the miles of live-oak strung with their sad tattered curtains of
+Spanish moss, the miles of sandy waste, of pineapple and orange groves,
+of pines with feathery palm-like tops, above all the sifting of fine
+Florida dust, which covers everything inside the car as with a coat of
+flour--these make you wish that you were North again.
+
+The train stops at a station. You get off to walk upon the platform. The
+row of hackmen and hotel porters stand there, in gloomy silent defiance
+of the rapidly approaching end of things, each holding a sign bearing
+the name of some hotel. In another week the railway company may, if it
+wishes, lift the ban on shouting hotel runners. Let them shout. There
+will be nobody to hear.
+
+You buy a newspaper.
+
+Ah! What is this? "Great Blizzard in New York--Trains Late--Wires Down."
+
+You know what New York blizzards are. You picture the scenes being
+enacted there to-day. You see the icy streets with horses falling down.
+You see cyclonic clouds of snow whirl savagely around the corners of
+high buildings, pelting the homegoing hoards, whirling them about,
+throwing women down upon street crossings. You have a vision of the
+muddy, slushy subway steps, and slimy platforms, packed with people,
+their clothing caked with wet white spangles. You see them wedged, cross
+and damp, into the trains, and hear them coughing into one another's
+necks. You see emaciated tramps, pausing to gaze wanly into bakery
+windows: men without overcoats, their collars turned up, their hands
+deep in the pockets of their trousers, their heads bent against the
+storm; you see them walk on to keep from freezing. You remember Roscoe
+Conkling. That sort of thing can happen in a New York blizzard! Little
+tattered newsboys, thinly clad, will die to-night upon cold corners.
+Poor widows, lacking money to buy coal, are shuddering even now in
+squalid tenements, and covering their wailing little ones with shoddy
+blankets.
+
+"Horrible!" you say, sighing upon the balmy air. Then, with the sweetly
+resigned philosophy of Palm Beach, you add:
+
+"Oh, well, what does it matter? _I'm_ in Florida anyhow. After all it is
+a pretty good old world!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV
+
+ASSORTED AND RESORTED FLORIDA
+
+    "Some year or more ago, I s'pose,
+      I roamed from Maine to Floridy,
+    And,--see where them Palmettoes grows?
+      I bought that little key...."
+
+    --SIDNEY LANIER ("A FLORIDA GHOST.")
+
+
+Florida in winter comes near to being all things to all men. To all she
+offers amusement plus her climate, and in no one section is the contrast
+in what amusement constitutes, and costs, set forth more sharply than
+where, on the west coast of the State, Belleair and St. Petersburg are
+situated, side by side.
+
+The Hotel Belleview at Belleair compares favorably with any in the
+State, and is peopled, during the cold months, with affluent golf
+maniacs, for whom two fine courses have been laid out.
+
+When the pipes supplying water for the greens of his home course, at
+Brook, Indiana, freeze, annually, George Ade, for instance, knows that,
+instead of hibernating, it is time for him to take his white flannel
+suits, hang them on the clothesline in the back yard until the fragrance
+of the moth-ball has departed, pack them in his wardrobe trunk, and take
+his winter flight to the Belleview. He knows that, at the Belleview, he
+will meet hundreds of men and women who are suffering from the malady
+with which he is afflicted.
+
+The conversation at Belleair is, so far as my companion and I could
+learn, confined entirely to comparisons between different courses,
+different kinds of clubs and balls, and different scores. Belleair turns
+up its nose at Palm Beach. It considers the game of golf as played at
+Palm Beach a trifling game, and it feels that the winter population of
+Palm Beach wastes a lot of time talking about clothes and the stock
+market when it might be discussing cleeks, midirons, and mashies. The
+woman who thinks it essential to be blond whether she is blond or not,
+and who regards Forty-second Street as the axle upon which the universe
+turns, would be likely to die of ennui in a week at Belleair, whereas,
+in Palm Beach, if she died in that time, it would probably be of
+delight--with a possibility of alcoholism as a contributing cause. And
+likewise, though Belleair has plutocrats in abundance, they are not
+starred for their wealth, as are the Palm Beach millionaires, nor yet
+for their social position, but are rated strictly according to their
+club handicap. Hence it happens that if, speaking of a Palm Beach
+millionaire, you ask: "How did he make it?" you will be told the story
+of some combine of trusts, some political grafting, or some widely
+advertised patent medicine; but if you ask in Belleair: "How did he make
+it?" the answer is likely to be: "He made it in 4, with a cleek."
+
+Consider on the other hand, St. Petersburg, with its cheap hotels, its
+boarding houses, its lunch rooms and cafeterias, and its winter
+population of farmers and their wives from the North. The people you see
+in St. Petersburg are identical with those you might see on market day
+in a county town of Ohio or Indiana. Several thousands of them come
+annually from several dozen States, and many a family of them lives
+through the winter comfortably on less than some other families spend at
+Belleair in a week, or at Palm Beach in a day.
+
+If I am any judge of the signs of happiness, there is plenty of it in
+the hearts of those who winter at St. Petersburg. The city park is full
+of contented people, most of them middle-aged or old. The women listen
+to the band, and the men play checkers under the palmetto-thatched
+shelter, or toss horseshoes on the greensward, at the sign of the
+Sunshine Pleasure Club--an occupation which is St. Petersburg's
+equivalent for Palm Beach's game of tossing chips on the green-topped
+tables of a gambling house. And yet--
+
+Is it always pleasant to be virtuous? Is it always delightful to be
+where pious people, naďve people, people who love simple pastimes, are
+enjoying themselves? I am reminded of a talk I had with a negro whose
+strong legs turned the pedals of a wheel chair in which my companion and
+I rode one day through the Palm Beach jungle trail. It is a wonderful
+place, that jungle, with its tangled trunks and vines and its green
+foliage swimming in sifted sunlight; with its palms, palmettoes, ferns,
+and climbing morning-glories, its banana trees, gnarled rubber banyans,
+and wild mangoes--which are like trees growing upside down, digging
+their spreading branches into the ground. For a time we forgot the
+pedaling negro behind us, but a faint puffing sound on a slight up-grade
+reminded us, presently, that our party was not of two, but three. When
+the chair was running free again, one of us inquired of the chairman:
+
+"What would you do if you had a million dollars?"
+
+"Well, boss," replied the negro seriously, "Ah knows one thing Ah'd do.
+No mattuh how much o' dis worl's goods Ah haid, Ah'd allus get mah
+exuhcize."
+
+"That's wise," my companion replied. "What kind of exercise would you
+take?"
+
+"Ah ain't nevvuh jest stedied dat out, boss," returned the man. "But it
+sho' would be some kind o' exuhcize besides pushin' one o' dese-heah
+chaihs."
+
+"When you weren't exercising would you go and have a good time?"
+
+"No, boss."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Well, boss, y' see Ah's a 'ligious man, Ah is."
+
+"But can't people who are religious have a good time?"
+
+"Oh," said the negro, "dey might have deh little pleasuhs now an' den,
+but dey cain't hev no sich good times like othah folks kin. A man 't 's
+a 'ligious man, he cain't hev no sich good times like Mistuh
+Wahtuhbe'y's an' dem folks 'at was heah up to laist week. Ah was Mistuh
+Wahtuhbe'y's chaih boy. He gimme ninety-two dollahs an' fifty cents
+tips one week! Yassuh! Dat might be _cha'ity_ but 't ain't 'ligion.
+Mistuh Dodge, his chaih boy's been a-wohkin' foh 'im six weeks. I 'spec'
+Mistuh Dodge give dat boy fahve hund'ud dollahs if he give 'im a cent!
+Mistuh Wahtuhbe'y's pahty, dey haid nineteen chaihs waitin' on 'em all
+de time, jest foh t' drive 'em f'om de _ho-_tel to de club, an' de
+casino. Dat cos' 'em nineteen hund'ud dollahs a week, and de boys, dey
+ain't one o'em 'at git less'n hund'ud dolluhs fo' hisself. Dat's de kin'
+o' gen'men Mistuh Wahtuhbe'y an' his pahty is. Ah's haid sev'ul gen'men
+dis season dat ain't what you'd jes' say, 'ligious, but dey was, as
+folks calls it, p'ofuse. Dey was one ol' gen'man heah two weeks, an' deh
+was a young lady what he haid a attachment on, an' evvy evenin' 'e use'
+t' take huh foh a wheel-chaih ride in de moonlight. Fuhst night Ah took
+'em out he tuhn to me, an' he says: 'Look-a-heah, boy! You sho you knows
+youah duties?'
+
+"'Yassuh, boss,' Ah tell 'im. 'Deed Ah does!'
+
+"'Den what is youah duties den?' sez 'e.
+
+"Ah say: 'Boss, de chaih boy's duties, dey's to be dumb, an' deef, an'
+blin', an' dey cain't see nothin', an' dey cain't say nothin', an' dey
+cain't heah nothin', and dey cain't--'
+
+"'Dass 'nuff,' he say. 'Ah sees you knows youah business. Heah's fiffy
+dollahs.'"
+
+"Well," one of us asked presently, "what happened?"
+
+"Ah took 'em ridin' through de jungle trail, boss," he returned,
+innocently.
+
+"What did they do?"
+
+"How does Ah know, boss? Di'n' Ah have ma eyes covuhed wi' dat fiffy
+dollahs? Di'n' Ah have ma eahs stuff' wid it? Yassuh! An' Ah got ma
+_mouf_ full o' it _yit_!"
+
+The chair boys, bell boys, waiters, barbers, porters, bartenders,
+waitresses, chambermaids, manicures, and shop attendants one finds in
+Palm Beach, Belleair, Miami, and many other winter resorts, are,
+numerically, a not inconsiderable part of the season's population, and
+the lives of these people who form a background of service, of which
+many an affluent visitor is hardly conscious, parallel the lives of the
+rich in a manner that is not without a note of caricature.
+
+When the rich go South so do the hordes that serve them; when the
+Florida season begins to close and the rich move northward, the serving
+population likewise begins to melt away; if you are in Palm Beach near
+the season's end, and move up to St. Augustine, or Jacksonville, or
+Augusta, or any one of a dozen other places, you are likely to
+recognize, here and there, a waiter, a bell-boy, or a chambermaid whom
+you tipped, some weeks earlier, preparatory to leaving a latitude
+several degrees nearer the Equator. When you leave the Poinciana or the
+Breakers at the season's close, your waiter may, for all you know, be in
+the Jim Crow car, ahead, and when you go in to dinner at the Ponce de
+Leon at St. Augustine, or the Mason at Jacksonville, you may discover
+that he too has stopped off there for a few days, to gather in the
+final tips. Nor must you fancy, when you depart for the North, that you
+have seen the last of him. Next summer when you take a boat up the
+Hudson, or go to Boston by the Fall River Line, or drop in at a hotel at
+Saratoga, there he will be, like an old friend. The bartender who mixes
+you a pick-me-up on the morning that you leave the Breakers, will be
+ready to start you on the downward path, at the beginning of the summer,
+at some Northern country club; the barber who cuts your hair at the
+Royal Palm in Miami will be ready to perform a like service, later on,
+at some hotel in the Adirondacks or the White Mountains; the neat
+waitress who serves you at the Belleview at Belleair will appear before
+you three or four months hence at the Griswold near New London; the
+adept waiter from the Beach Club at Palm Beach will seem to you to look
+like some one you have seen before when, presently, he places viands
+before you at Sherry's, or the Ritz, or some fashionable restaurant in
+London or Paris. Likewise, when you enter the barber shop of a large
+hostelry just off the board walk in Atlantic City, next July, you will
+find there, in the same generously ventilated shirt waist, the
+manicurist who caused your nails to glisten so superbly in the Florida
+sunlight; and if she has the memory for faces which is no small part of
+a successful manicurist's stock in trade, she will remember you, and
+where she saw you last, and will tell you just which of the young women
+from "The Follies" and the Century Theater are to be seen upon the
+beach that day, and whether they are wearing, here on the Jersey coast,
+those same surprising bathing suits which, last February, caused blasé
+gentlemen basking upon the Florida sands to sit up, arise, say it was
+time for one last dip before luncheon, and then, without seeming too
+deliberate about it, follow the amazing nymphs in the direction of a
+matchless sea--that sea which, as a background for these Broadway girls
+in their long silken hosiery, takes on a tone of spectacular unreality,
+like some fantastic marine back drop devised by Mr. Dillingham or Mr.
+Ziegfeld.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV
+
+A DAY IN MONTGOMERY
+
+    I have walk'd in Alabama
+      My morning walk....
+
+    --WALT WHITMAN.
+
+
+As I have remarked before, it is a long haul from the peninsula of
+Florida to New Orleans. There are two ways to go. The route by way of
+Pensacola, following the Gulf Coast, looks shorter on the map but is, I
+believe, in point of time consumed, the longer way. My companion and I
+were advised to go by way of Montgomery, Alabama--a long way around it
+looked--where we were to change trains, catching a New Orleans-bound
+express from the North.
+
+It was nearly midnight when, after a long tiresome journey, we arrived
+in Alabama's capital, and after midnight when we reached the comfortable
+if curiously called Hotel Gay-Teague, which is not named for an Indian
+chief or a kissing game, but for two men who had to do with building it.
+
+We had heard that Montgomery was a quiet, sleepy old town, and had
+expected to go immediately to bed on our arrival. What then was our
+amazement at hearing, echoing through the wide street in front of the
+hotel, the sound of strident ragtime. Investigation disclosed a gaudily
+striped tent of considerable size set up in the street and illuminated
+by those flaring naphtha lamps they use in circuses. Going over to the
+tent, we learned that there was dancing within, whereupon we paid our
+fifteen cents apiece and entered. I have forgotten what produced the
+music--it may have been a mechanical piano or a hurdy-gurdy--but there
+was music, and it was loud, and there was a platform laid over the
+cobble-stones of the street, and on that platform ten or more couples
+were "ragging," their shoulders working like the walking beams of
+side-wheelers. The men were of that nondescript type one would expect to
+see in a fifteen-cent dancing place, but the women were of curious
+appearance, for all were dressed alike, the costume being a fringed
+khaki suit with knee-length skirt, a bandana at the neck, and a
+sombrero. On inquiry I learned that this was called a "cowgirl" costume.
+The dances were very brief, and in the intervals between them most of
+the dancers went to a "bar" at the end of the tent where (Alabama being
+a dry State) the beverage called "coca-cola"--a habit as much as a
+drink--was being served in whisky glasses.
+
+Unable to understand why this pageant of supposed western mining-camp
+life should confront us in the streets of Alabama's capital, I made
+inquiry of an amiable policeman who was on duty in the tent, and learned
+that this was not a regular Montgomery institution, but one of the
+attractions of a street fair which had invaded the city--the main body
+of the fair being a block or two distant.
+
+These fairs, he said, travel about the country much as circuses do,
+making arrangements in advance with various organizations in different
+places to stand sponsor for them.
+
+Long after we were in our beds that night we were kept awake by the
+sound of ragtime from the tent across the way. I arose next morning with
+the feeling of one who has had insufficient sleep, and a glance at my
+companion, who was already at table when I reached the hotel dining
+room, informed me that he was suffering from a like complaint. I took my
+seat opposite him in silence, and he acknowledged my presence with a nod
+which he accomplished without looking up from his newspaper.
+
+After breakfast there arrived a pleasant gentleman who announced himself
+as secretary of one of the city's commercial organizations.
+
+"We have a motor here," said the secretary, "and will show you points of
+interest. Is there anything in particular you wish to see?"
+
+"I think," said my companion, "that it would be a good thing to see the
+street fair."
+
+"Oh, no," said the secretary earnestly. "You don't want to see that.
+There is nothing about it that is representative of Montgomery. It is
+just a traveling show such as you might run into anywhere."
+
+"Yes," I said, "but we never _have_ run into one before, and here it
+is."
+
+"I have said right along," declared the secretary, somberly, "that it
+was a great mistake to bring this fair here at all. I don't think you
+ought to pay any attention to it in your book. It will give people a
+wrong impression of our city."
+
+"Do you think it will, if I explain that it is just a traveling fair?"
+
+"Yes. Wait until you see what we have to show you. We want you to
+understand that Montgomery is a thriving metropolis, sir!"
+
+"What is there to see?"
+
+"Montgomery," he replied, "is known as 'The City of Sunshine.' It is
+rich in history. It has superior hotels, picturesque highways, good
+fishing and hunting, two golf courses, seven theaters, a number of
+tennis courts, and unsurpassed artesian water. It has free factory
+sites, the cheapest electric power rates in the United States, and is
+the best-lighted city in the country."
+
+"We have some pretty fair street lighting in New York," interjected my
+companion, who takes much pride in his home town.
+
+"I said '_one_ of the best lighted,'" replied the secretary.
+
+"What is the population?"
+
+"Montgomery," the other returned, "is typical of both the Old and the
+New South. Though it may be called a modern model city, its wealth of
+history and tradition are preserved with loving care by its myriad
+inhabitants."
+
+"How many inhabitants?"
+
+"Roses and other flowers are in bloom here throughout the year," said
+he. "Also there are six hundred miles of macadamized and picturesque
+highways in Montgomery County. Indeed, this region is a motorist's
+paradise."
+
+"How many people did you say?"
+
+"Montgomery," he answered, "is the trading center for a million
+prosperous souls."
+
+At this my companion, who had been reading up Montgomery in a guidebook,
+began to bristle with hidden knowledge.
+
+"You say there are a million people here?" he demanded.
+
+"Not right _here_," admitted the secretary.
+
+"Well, how many do you claim?"
+
+"Fifty-five thousand four hundred and ten."
+
+"Right _in_ the city?"
+
+"Well, in the trolley-car territory."
+
+"But in the city itself?" my companion insisted.
+
+The secretary was fairly cornered. "The 1910 census," he said, with a
+smile, "gave us about forty thousand."
+
+"Thirty-eight thousand one hundred and thirty-six," corrected my
+companion. He had not spent hours with the guidebook for nothing.
+
+When, presently, we got into the automobile, I gave another feeble
+chirp about the fair, but the secretary was adamant, so we yielded
+temporarily, and were whirled about the city.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Montgomery is a charming old town, not only by reason of the definite
+things it has to show, but also because of a general rich suggestion of
+old southern life.
+
+The day, by a fortunate chance, was Saturday, and everywhere we went we
+encountered negroes driving in from the country to market, in their
+rickety old wagons. On some wagons there would be four or five men and
+women, and here and there one would be playing a musical instrument and
+they would all be singing, while the creaking of the wagon came in with
+an orchestral quality which seemed grotesquely suitable. The mules, too,
+looked as though they ought to creak, and an inspection of the harness
+suggested that it was held together, not so much by the string and wire
+with which it was mended, as by the fingers of that especial Providence
+which watches over all kinds of absurd repairs made by negroes, and
+makes them hold for negroes, where they would not hold for white men.
+
+In an old buff-painted brick building standing on the corner of Commerce
+and Bibb Streets, the Confederate Government had its first offices, and
+from this building, if I mistake not, was sent the telegraphic order to
+fire on Fort Sumter. Another historical building is the dilapidated
+frame residence at the corner of Bibb and Lee Streets, which was the
+first "White House of the Confederacy." This building is now a boarding
+house, and is in a pathetic state of decay. But perhaps when Montgomery
+gets up the energy to build a fine tourist hotel, or when outside
+capital comes in and builds one, the old house will be furbished up to
+provide a "sight" for visitors.
+
+There are several reasons why Montgomery would be a good place for a
+large winter-resort hotel, and if I were a Montgomery "booster" I should
+give less thought to free factory sites than to building up the town as
+a winter stopping place for tourists. The town itself is picturesque and
+attractive; as to railroads it is well situated (albeit the claim that
+Montgomery is the "Gateway to Florida" strikes me as a little bit
+exaggerated); the climate is delightful, and the surrounding country is
+not only beautiful but fertile. Furthermore, there are already two golf
+clubs--one for Jews and one for Gentiles--and the links are reputed to
+be good.
+
+Unlike many southern cities of moderate size, Montgomery has well-paved
+streets, and the better residence streets, being wide, and lined with
+trees and pleasant houses, each in its own lawn, give a suggestion of an
+agreeable home and social life--a suggestion which, by implication at
+least, report substantiates: for it has been said that the chief
+industry of Montgomery is that of raising beautiful young women to make
+wives for the rich men of Birmingham.
+
+On such pleasant thoroughfares as South Perry Street, it may be noticed
+that many of the newer houses have taken their architectural inspiration
+from old ones, with the result that, though "originality" does not jump
+out at the passer-by, as it does on so many streets, North and South,
+which are lined with the heterogeneous homes of prosperous families,
+there is an agreeable architectural harmony over the town.
+
+This is not, of course, invariably true, but it is truer, I think, in
+Montgomery than in most other cities, and if Montgomery is defaced by
+the funny little settlement called Bungalow City, that settlement is, at
+least, upon the outskirts of the town. Bungalow City is without
+exception the queerest real-estate development I ever saw. It consists
+of several blocks of tiny houses, standing on tiny lots, the scale of
+everything being so small as to suggest a play village for children. The
+houses are, however, homes, and I was told that in some of them all
+sorts of curious space-saving devices are installed--as, for instance,
+tables and beds which can be folded into the walls. Not far from this
+little settlement is an old house which used to be the home of Tweed,
+New York's notorious political boss, who, it is said, used to spend much
+time here.
+
+The chief lion of the city is the old State House, which stands on a
+graceful eminence in a small well-kept park. Just as the New York State
+Capitol is probably the most shamefully expensive structure of the kind
+in the entire country, that of Alabama is, I fancy, the most creditably
+inexpensive. Building and grounds cost $335,000. Moreover, the Capitol
+of Alabama is a better-looking building than that of New York, for it is
+without gingerbread trimmings, and has about it the air of honest
+simplicity that an American State House ought to have. Of course it has
+a dome, and of course it has a columned portico, but both are plain, and
+there is a large clock, in a quaint box-like tower, over the peak of the
+portico, which contributes to the building a curious touch of
+individuality. At the center of the portico floor, under this clock, a
+brass plate marks the spot where Jefferson Davis stood when he delivered
+his inaugural address, February 18, 1861, and in the State Senate
+Chamber, within--a fine simple room with a gallery of peculiar
+grace--the Provisional Government of the Confederacy was organized. The
+flag of the Confederacy was, I believe, adopted in this room, and was
+first flung to the breeze from the Capitol building.
+
+It was past three in the afternoon when we left the State House, and we
+had had no luncheon.
+
+"Now," said my companion as we returned to the automobile, "I think we
+had better have something to eat, and then go to the fair."
+
+"But you were going to give up the fair," put in the secretary.
+
+"Oh, no," we said in chorus.
+
+"I have arranged about luncheon," he returned. "We will have it served
+at the hotel in a short time. But first there are some important sights
+I wish you to see."
+
+"Man shall not live by sights alone," objected my companion. "What are
+you going to show us?"
+
+"We have a beautiful woman's college."
+
+"That," said my companion, "is the one thing that could tempt me. How
+many beautiful women are there?"
+
+"It's not the women--it's the building," the secretary explained.
+
+"Then," said my companion firmly, "I think we'd better go and have our
+lunch."
+
+It seemed to me time to back him up in this demand. By dint of
+considerable insistence we persuaded our enthusiastic cicerone to drive
+to the hotel, where we found a table already set for us.
+
+"I want to tell you," said the secretary as we sat down, "about the
+agricultural progress this section has been making. Until recently our
+farmers raised nothing but cotton; they didn't even feed themselves, but
+lived largely on canned goods. But the boll weevil and the European War,
+affecting the cotton crop and the cotton market as they did, forced the
+farmers to wake up."
+
+The secretary talked interestingly on this subject for perhaps a quarter
+of an hour, during which time we waited for luncheon to be served.
+
+"You see," he said, "our climate is such that it is possible to rotate
+crops more than in most parts of the country. Cotton is now a surplus
+crop with us, and our farmers are raising cattle, vegetables, and food
+products."
+
+"Speaking of food products," said my companion, "I wonder if we could
+hurry up the lunch?"
+
+"It will be along in a little while," soothed the secretary. Then he
+returned to agriculture.
+
+Ten minutes more passed. I saw that my companion was becoming nervous.
+
+"I'm sorry to trouble you," he said at last, "but if we can't speed up
+this luncheon, I don't see how I can wait. You see, we are leaving town
+this evening, and I have an awful lot to do."
+
+"I'll step back and investigate," the secretary said, rising and moving
+toward the kitchen door.
+
+When he was out of hearing, my companion leaned toward me.
+
+"I suspect this fellow!" he said.
+
+"What of?"
+
+"I think he's delaying us on purpose. He's a nice chap, but it's his
+business to boost this town, and he's artful. He doesn't want us to see
+the street fair. That's why he's stalling like this!"
+
+Now, however, the secretary returned, followed by a waiter bearing soup.
+
+The soup was fine, but it was succeeded by another long interval, during
+which the secretary said some very, very beautiful things about the
+charm of Montgomery life. However, it was clear to me that my companion
+was not interested. After he had looked at his watch several times, and
+drummed a long tattoo upon the table, he arose, declaring:
+
+"I can't wait another minute."
+
+"Sit down, my dear fellow," said the secretary in his most genial tone.
+"I am having some special southern dishes prepared for you."
+
+"You're very kind," said my companion, "but I must get to work. It's
+half-past four now; we are leaving in a few hours. It will take me an
+hour to make my sketches, and the light will be failing pretty soon."
+
+"What are you going to sketch?" It seemed to me that there was
+suppressed emotion in the secretary's voice as he asked the question.
+
+"Why, the street fair."
+
+"Surely, you're not going to _draw_ it?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It's not representative of Montgomery. You ought to do something
+representative! What pictures have you made here?"
+
+"I made one of those negroes driving in to market," said my companion,
+"and one of the dancing cowgirls in the tent across the way--the ones
+who kept us awake last night."
+
+"My God!" cried the secretary, turning to me. "You intend to print such
+pictures and say that they represent the normal life of this city?"
+
+"No, I won't say anything about it."
+
+"But--" the secretary arose and looked wanly at the illustrator--"but
+you haven't drawn any of our pretty homes! You didn't draw the golf
+clubs--not either one of them! You didn't draw the State House, or the
+Confederate Monument, or the Insane Asylum, or anything!"
+
+"I haven't had time."
+
+"Well, you have time now! I tell you what: We'll let this luncheon go.
+I'll take you to the top of our tallest building, and you can draw a
+panoramic bird's-eye view of the entire city. That will be worth while."
+
+My companion reached out, helped himself to a French roll, and put it in
+his pocket.
+
+"No," he said. "I will not go to the top of a high building with you."
+
+"But why not?"
+
+"Because," he replied, "I am afraid you would try to push me off the
+roof to prevent my drawing the street fair."
+
+I do not remember that the secretary denied having harbored such a plan.
+At all events, he countermanded the remainder of the luncheon order and
+departed with us.
+
+At the entrance of an office building he made one final desperate
+appeal: "Just come up to the top floor and see the view!"
+
+But we stood firm, and he continued with us on our way.
+
+The fair was strung along both sides of a wide, cobbled street. It was
+really a very jolly fair, with the usual lot of barkers and the usual
+gaping crowd, plus many negroes, who stood fascinated before the highly
+colored canvas signs outside the tents, with their bizarre pictures of
+wild animals, snake charmers, "Nemo, the Malay Prince," and "The
+Cigarette Fiend," pictured as a ghastly emaciated object with a blue
+complexion, and billed as "Endorsed by the Anti-Cigarette League of
+America." I wished to inquire why an anti-cigarette league should
+indorse a cigarette fiend, but lack of time compelled us to press on,
+leaving the apparent paradox unsolved.
+
+As we progressed between the tents and the booths with their catchpenny
+"wheels of fortune," and ring-tossing enticements, the secretary
+maintained a protesting silence.
+
+Near the end of the block we stopped to listen to a particularly
+vociferous barker. I saw my companion take his pad from his pocket and
+place it under his arm, while he sharpened a pencil.
+
+"Come!" cried the secretary. "Come across the square and let me show you
+our beautiful bronze fountain. Draw that!"
+
+But my companion was already beginning to sketch. He was drawing the
+barker and the crowd.
+
+Meanwhile an expression of horror came into the secretary's face.
+Looking at him, I became conscience-stricken.
+
+"Come away," I said gently, taking him by the arm. "Don't watch him
+draw. He draws wonderfully, but Art for Art's sake doesn't appeal to
+you just now. The better he draws the worse it will make you feel. Let
+me get your mind off all this. Let me take you over to the autodrome,
+where we can see Mr. O.K. Hager and his beautiful sister, Miss Olive
+Hager, the 'Two Daredevil Motorcyclists, in the Thrilling Race against
+Death.' That will make you forget."
+
+"No," said the secretary, shaking his head with a despondency the very
+sight of which made me sad; "I have letters to sign at the office."
+
+"And we have taken up your whole day!"
+
+"It has been a pleasure," he said kindly. "There is only one thing that
+worries me. Those drawings are not going to represent what is typical of
+Montgomery life. Not in the least!"
+
+There arose in me a sudden desire to comfort him.
+
+"How would it be," I suggested, "if I were to print that statement in my
+book?"
+
+He looked at me in surprise.
+
+"But you couldn't very well do that, could you?"
+
+"Certainly," I replied.
+
+His face brightened. It was delightful to see the change come over him.
+
+"For that matter," I went on, "I might say even more. I could say that,
+while I admire my companion as a man, and as an artist, he lacks
+ingenuity in ordering breakfast. He always reads over the menu and then
+orders a baked apple and scrambled eggs and bacon. Would you like me to
+attack him on that line also?"
+
+"Oh, no," said the secretary. "Nothing of that kind. It's just about
+these pictures. They aren't representative. If you'll say that, I'll be
+more than satisfied."
+
+Presently we parted.
+
+"Don't forget!" he said as we shook hands in farewell.
+
+And I have not forgotten. Moreover, to give full measure, I am going to
+ask the printer to set the statement in italics:
+
+_The drawings accompanying this chapter are not representative of what
+is typical of Montgomery life._
+
+With this statement my companion is in full accord. He admits that he
+would have drawn the State House had there been no fair, to interfere.
+But, as with certain items on the breakfast bill, street fairs are a
+passion with him. And so they are with me.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI
+
+THE CITY OF THE CREOLE
+
+
+When a poet, a painter, or a sculptor wishes to personify a city, why
+does he invariably give it the feminine gender? Why is this so, even
+though the city be named for a man, or for a masculine saint? And why is
+it so in the case of commonplace cities, commercial cities, and ugly,
+sordid cities? It is not difficult to understand why a beautiful,
+sparkling city, like Washington or Paris, suggests a handsome woman,
+richly gowned and bedecked with jewels, but it is hard to understand why
+some other cities, far less pleasing, seem somehow to be stamped with
+the qualities of woman-nature rather than man-nature. Is it perhaps
+because the nature of all cities is so complicated? Is it because they
+are volatile, changeful, baffling? Or is it only that they are the
+mothers of great families of men?
+
+When I arrive in a strange city I feel as though I were making the
+acquaintance of a woman of whom I have often heard. I am curious about
+her. I am alert. I gaze at her eagerly, wondering if she is as I have
+imagined her. I try to read her expression while listening to her voice.
+I consider her raiment, noticing whether it is fine, whether it is good
+only in spots, and whether it is well put together. I inspect the
+important buildings, boulevards, parks, and monuments with which she is
+jeweled, and judge by them not only of her prosperity, but of her sense
+of beauty. Before long I have a distinct impression of her. Sometimes,
+as with a woman, this first impression has to be revised; sometimes not.
+Sometimes, on acquaintance, a single feature, or trait, becomes so
+important in my eyes that all else seems inconsequential. A noble spirit
+may cover physical defects; beauty may seem to compensate for weaknesses
+of character. The spell of a beautiful city which is bad resembles the
+spell of such a city's prototype among women.
+
+Some young growing cities are like young growing women of whom we think:
+"She is as yet unformed, but she will fill out and become more charming
+as she grows older." Or again we think: "She is somewhat dowdy and run
+down at the heels but she is ambitious, and is replenishing her wardrobe
+as she can afford it." One expects such failings in young cities, and
+readily forgives them where there is wholesome promise for the future.
+But where old cities become slovenly, the affair is different, for then
+it means physical decay, and physical decay should never come to a
+city--for a city is not only feminine, but should be immortal. The
+symbol for every city should be a goddess, forever in her prime.
+
+Among southern cities Richmond is the _grande dame_; she is gray and
+distinguished, and wears handsome old brocades and brooches. Richmond
+is aquiline and crisp and has much "manner." But though Charleston is
+actually the older, the wonderful beauty of the place, the softness of
+the ancient architectural lines, the sweet scents wafting from walled
+gardens, the warmth of color everywhere, gives the place that very
+quality of immortal youth and loveliness which is so rare in cities, and
+is so much to be desired. Charleston I might allegorize in the person of
+a young woman I met there. I was in the drawing-room of a fine old
+house; a beautifully proportioned room, paneled to the ceiling, hung
+with family portraits and other old paintings, and furnished with
+mahogany masterpieces a century and a half old. The girl lived in this
+house. She was not exactly pretty, nor was her figure beautiful in the
+usual sense; yet it was beautiful, all the same, with a sort of
+long-limbed, supple, aristocratic aliveness. Most of all there was about
+her a great fineness--the kind of fineness which seems to be the
+expression of generations of fineness. She was the granddaughter of a
+general in the Civil War, the great-granddaughter of an ambassador, the
+great-great-granddaughter of a Revolutionary hero, and though one could
+not but be thankful that she failed of striking resemblance to the
+portraits of these admirable ancestors, nevertheless it seemed to me
+that, had I not known definitely of their place in her family history, I
+might almost have sensed them hovering behind her: a background,
+nebulous and shadowy, out of which she had emerged.
+
+Memphis, upon the other hand, will always be to me a lively modern
+débutante. I vision her as dancing--dancing to Handy's ragtime
+music--all shoulders, neck, and arms, and tulle, and twenty-dollar satin
+slippers. Atlanta, too, is young, vivid, affluent, altogether modern;
+while as for Birmingham, she is pretty, but a little strident, a little
+overdressed; touched a little with the amiability, and the other
+qualities, of the _nouveau riche_.
+
+The beauty of New Orleans is of a different kind. She is a full-blown,
+black-eyed, dreamy, drawly creature, opulent of figure, white of skin,
+and red of lip. Like San Francisco she has Latin blood which makes her
+love and preserve the carnival spirit; but she is more voluptuous than
+San Francisco, for not only is she touched with the languor and the fire
+of her climate, but she is without the virile blood of the forty-niner,
+or the invigorating contact of the fresh Pacific wind. In my imaginary
+picture I see her yawning at eleven in the morning, when her negro maid
+brings black coffee to her bedside--such wonderful black
+coffee!--whereas, at that hour, I conceive San Francisco as having long
+been up and about her affairs. Even in the afternoon I fancy my New
+Orleans beauty as a little bit relaxed. But at dinner she becomes alive,
+and after dinner more alive, and by midnight she is like a flame.
+
+I must admit, however, that of late years New Orleans has developed a
+perfect case of dual personality, and that, as often happens where there
+is dual personality, one side of her nature seems altogether
+incompatible with the other. The very new New Orleans has no
+resemblance to the picture I have drawn; moreover, my picture is not her
+favorite likeness of herself. She prefers more recent ones--pictures
+showing the lines of determination which, within the last ten years have
+stamped themselves upon her features, as she has fought and overcome the
+defects of character which logically accompanied her peculiar,
+temperamental type of charm. I, upon the other hand, am like some lover
+who values most an older picture of the woman he adores. I admire her
+for building character, but it is by her languorous beauty that I am
+infatuated, and the portrait which most effectively displays that beauty
+is the one for which I care.
+
+Her very failings were so much a part of her that they made us the more
+sympathetic; she was too lovely to be greatly blamed for anything;
+gazing into her eyes, we hardly noticed that there was dust under the
+piano and in the corners; dining at her sumptuous table, we gave but
+little thought to the fact that the cellar was damp, the house none too
+healthy, and that there were mosquitoes and rats about the place; nor
+did it seem to matter, in face of her allurements, that she was
+shiftless, extravagant, improvident in the management of her affairs. If
+these things were brought to our attention, we excused them on the
+grounds of Latin blood and enervating climate.
+
+But if we excused her, she did not excuse herself. Without being shaken
+awake by an earthquake, or forced to action by a devastating fire or
+flood, she set to work, calmly and of her own volition, to reform her
+character.
+
+First she cleaned house, providing good surface drainage, an excellent
+filtered water supply from the river in place of her old
+mosquito-breeding cisterns, and modern sewers in place of cesspools. She
+killed rats by the hundreds of thousands, rat-proofed her buildings, and
+thus, at one stroke, eliminated all fear of bubonic plague. She began to
+take interest in the public schools, and soon trebled their advantages.
+She concerned herself with the revision of repressive tax laws. She
+secured one of the best street railway systems in the country. But,
+perhaps most striking of all, she set to work to build scientifically
+toward the realization of a gigantic dream. This dream embodies the
+resumption by New Orleans of her old place as second seaport city. To
+this end she is doing more than any other city to revive the commerce of
+the Mississippi River, and is at the same time making a strong bid for
+trade by way of the Panama Canal, as well as other sea traffic. She has
+restored her forty miles of water front to the people, has built
+municipal docks and warehouses at a cost of millions, and has so
+perfectly coördinated her river-rail-sea traffic-handling agencies that
+rates have been greatly reduced. Upon these, and related enterprises,
+upward of a hundred millions are being spent, and the vast plan is
+working out with such promise that one almost begins to fear lest New
+Orleans become too much enamored of her new-found materialism--lest the
+easy-going, pleasure-loving, fascinating Creole belle be transformed
+into the much-less-rare and much-less-desirable business type of woman:
+a woman whose letters, instead of being written in a fine French hand
+and scented with the faint fragrance of vertivert, are typewritten upon
+commercial paper; whose lips, instead of causing one to think of kisses,
+are laden with the deadly cant of commerce; whose skin, instead of
+seeming to be made of milk and rose leaves, is dappled with industrial
+soot.
+
+Lord Chesterfield in one of his letters to his son, intimated that
+beautiful women desire to be flattered upon their intelligence, while
+intelligent women who are not altogether ugly like to be told that they
+are beautiful. So with New Orleans. Speak of her individuality, her
+picturesqueness, her gift of laughter, and she will listen with polite
+ennui; but admire her commercial progress and she will hang upon your
+words. Gaiety and charm are so much a part of her that she not only
+takes them as a matter of course, but seems to doubt, sometimes, that
+they are virtues. She is like some unusual and fascinating woman who,
+instead of rejoicing because she is not like all other women, begins to
+wonder if she ought not to be like them. Perhaps she is wrong to be gay?
+Perhaps her carnival proves her frivolous? Perhaps she ought not to
+continue to hold a carnival each year?
+
+Far to the north of New Orleans the city of St. Paul was afflicted, some
+years since, by a similar agitation. It will be remembered that St.
+Paul used to build an ice palace each year. People used to go to see it
+as they go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Then came some believer in the
+standardization of cities, advancing the idea that ice palaces
+advertised St. Paul as a cold place. As a result they ceased to be
+built. St. Paul threw away something which drew attention to her and
+which gave her character. Moreover, I am told this mania went so far
+that when folders were issued for the purpose of advertising the region,
+they were designed to suggest the warmth and brilliance of the tropics.
+Had St. Paul a bad climate, instead of a peculiarly fine one, we might
+feel sympathetic tolerance for these performances, but a city which
+enjoys cool summers and dry, bracing winters has no apologies to make
+upon the score of climate, and only need apologize if she tries to make
+us think that bananas and cocoanuts grow on sugar-maple trees. However,
+in the last year or two, St. Paul has perceived the folly of her course,
+and has resumed her annual carnival.
+
+In the case of New Orleans I cannot believe there is real danger that
+the carnival will be given up. Instead, I believe that the business
+enthusiasts will be appeased--as they were a year or two ago, for the
+first time in carnival history--by the inclusion of an industrial
+pageant glorifying the city's commercial renaissance. Also the New
+Orleans newspapers soothe the spirit of the Association of Commerce, at
+carnival time, by publishing items presumably furnished by that capable
+organization, showing that business is going on as usual, that bank
+clearings have not diminished during the festivities, and that, despite
+the air of happiness that pervades the town, New Orleans is not really
+beginning to have such a good time as a stranger might suppose from
+superficial signs. With such concessions made to solemn visaged
+commerce, is the carnival continued.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are at least six cities on this continent which every one should
+see. Every one should see New York because it is the largest city in the
+world, and because it combines the magnificence, the wonder, the beauty,
+the sordidness, and the shame of a great metropolis; every one should
+see San Francisco because it is so vivid, so alive, so golden; every one
+should see Washington, the clean, white splendor of which is like the
+embodiment of a national dream; every one should see the old gray
+granite city of Quebec, piled on its hill above the river like some
+fortified town in France; every one should see the sweet and
+aristocratic city of Charleston, which suggests a museum of tradition
+and early American elegance; and of course every one should see New
+Orleans.
+
+As to whether it is best to see the city in everyday attire, or masked
+for the revels, that is a matter of taste, and perhaps of age as well.
+To any one who loves cities, New Orleans is always good to see, while to
+the lover of spectacles and fętes the carnival is also worth
+seeing--once. The two are, however, hardly to be seen to advantage
+simultaneously. To visit New Orleans in carnival time is like visiting
+some fine old historic mansion when it is all in a flurry over a
+fancy-dress ball. The furniture is moved, master, mistress and servants
+are excited, the cook is overworked and is perhaps complaining a little,
+and the brilliant costumes of the masquerade divert the eye of the
+visitor so that he hardly knows what sort of house he is in. Attend the
+ball if you like, but do not fail to revisit the house when normal
+conditions have been restored; see the festivities of Mardi Gras if you
+will, but do not fail to browse about old New Orleans and sit down at
+her famous tables when her chefs have time to do their best.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII
+
+HISTORY, THE CREOLE, AND HIS DUELS
+
+
+Canal Street is to New Orleans much more than Main Street is to Buffalo,
+much more than Broad Street is to Philadelphia, much more than Broadway
+and Fifth Avenue are to New York, for Canal Street divides New Orleans
+as no other street divides an American city. It divides New Orleans as
+the Seine divides Paris, and there is not more difference between the
+right bank of the Seine and the Latin Quarter than between American New
+Orleans and Creole New Orleans: between the newer part of the city and
+the _vieux carré_. The sixty squares ("islets" according to the Creole
+idiom, because each block was literally an islet in time of flood) which
+comprise the old French town established in 1718 by the Sieur de
+Bienville, are unlike the rest of the city not merely in architecture,
+but in all respects. The street names change at Canal Street, the
+highways become narrower as you enter the French quarter, and the
+pavements are made of huge stone blocks brought over long ago as ballast
+in sailing ships. Nor is the difference purely physical. For though they
+will tell you that this part of the city is not so French and Spanish as
+it used to be, that it has run down, that large parts of it have been
+given over to Italians of the lower class, and to negroes, it remains
+not only in appearance, but in custom, thought and character, the most
+perfectly foreign little tract of land in the whole United States. Long
+ago, under the French flag, it was a part of the Roman Catholic
+bishopric of Quebec; later under the Spanish flag, a part of that of
+Havana; and it is charming to trace in old buildings, names, and customs
+the signs of this blended French and Spanish ancestry.
+
+La Salle, searching out a supposed route to China by way of the
+Mississippi River, seems to have perceived what the New Orleans
+Association of Commerce perceives to-day: that the control of the mouth
+of the river ought to mean also the control of a vast part of the
+continent. At all events, he took possession in 1682 in the name of the
+French King, calling the river St. Louis and the country Louisiana. The
+latter name persisted, but La Salle himself later rechristened the
+river, giving it the name Colbert, thereby showing that in two attempts
+he could not find a name one tenth as good as that already provided by
+the savages. The "St. Louis River" might, from its name, be a fair-sized
+stream, but "Colbert" sounds like the name of a river about twenty miles
+long, forty feet wide at the mouth, and five feet deep at the very
+middle.
+
+La Salle intended to build a fort at a point sixty leagues above the
+mouth of the river, but his expedition met with disaster upon disaster,
+until at last he was assassinated in Texas, when setting out on foot to
+seek help from Canada. In 1699 came Iberville, the Canadian, exploring
+the river and fixing on the site for the future city. Iberville
+established settlements at old Biloxi (now Ocean Springs) and Mobile,
+but before he had time to make a town at New Orleans he caught yellow
+fever at Havana, and died there. It therefore remained for his brother,
+Bienville, actually to establish the town, and New Orleans is
+Bienville's city, just as Detroit is Cadillac's, and Cleveland General
+Moses Cleveland's.
+
+Bienville's settlers were hardy pioneers from Canada, and presently we
+find him writing to France: "Send me wives for my Canadians. They are
+running in the woods after Indian girls." The priests also urged that
+unless white wives could be sent out for the settlers, marriages with
+Indians be sanctioned.
+
+Having now a considerable investment in Louisiana, France felt that a
+request for wives for the colony was practical and legitimate. Louisiana
+must have population. A bonus of so much per head was offered for
+colonists, and hideous things ensued: servants, children, and helpless
+women were kidnapped, and the occupants of hospitals, asylums, and
+houses of correction were assembled and deported. Incidentally it will
+be remembered that out of these black deeds flowered "the first
+masterpiece of French literature which can properly be called a novel,"
+the Abbé Prévost's "Manon Lescaut," which has been dramatized and
+redramatized, and which is the theme of operas by both Massenet and
+Puccini. Though a grave alleged to be that of Manon used to be shown on
+the outskirts of the city, there is doubt that such a person actually
+existed, although those who wish to believe in a flesh-and-blood Manon
+may perhaps take encouragement from the fact that the arrival in the
+colony of a Chevalier des Grieux, in the year 1719, fourteen years
+before the book appeared, has been established, and, further, that the
+name of the Chevalier des Grieux may be seen upon a crumbling tomb in
+one of the river parishes.
+
+When the girls arrived they were on inspection in the daytime, but at
+night were carefully guarded by soldiers, in the house where they were
+quartered together. Miss Grace King, in her delightful book, "New
+Orleans, the Place and the People," tells us that in these times there
+were never enough girls to fill the demand for wives, and that in one
+instance two young bachelors proposed to fight over a very plain
+girl--the last one left out of a shipload--but that the commandant
+obliged them to settle their dispute by the more pacific means of
+drawing lots. As the place became settled Ursuline sisters arrived and
+established schools. And at last, a quarter of a century after the
+landing of the first shipment of girls, the curious history of female
+importations ended with the arrival of that famous band of sixty
+demoiselles of respectable family and "authenticated spotless
+reputation," who came to be taken as wives by only the more prosperous
+young colonists of the better class. The earlier, less reputable girls
+have come down to us by the name of "correction girls," but these later
+arrivals--each furnished by the Company of the West with a casket
+containing a trousseau--are known to this day as _les filles ŕ la
+cassette_, or "casket girls."
+
+A curious feature of this bit of history, as it applies to present-day
+New Orleans, is that though one hears of many families that claim
+descent from some nice, well-behaved "casket girl," one never by any
+chance hears of a family claiming to be descended from a lady of the
+other stock. When it is considered that the "correction girls" far
+outnumbered their virtuous sisters of the casket, and ought, therefore,
+by the law of averages, to have left a greater progeny, the matter
+becomes stranger still, taking on a scientific interest. The explanation
+must, however, be left to some mind more astute than mine--some mind
+capable, perhaps, of unraveling also those other riddles of New Orleans
+namely: Who was the mysterious chevalier who many years ago invented
+that most delectable of _sucreries_, the praline, and whither did he
+vanish? And how, although the refugee Duc d'Orleans (later Louis
+Philippe of France) stayed but a short time in New Orleans, did he
+manage to sleep in so many hundred beds, and in houses which were not
+built until long after his departure? And why are so many of the signs,
+over bars, restaurants, and shops, of that blue and white enamel one
+associates with the signs of the Western Union Telegraph Company? And
+why is the nickel as characteristic of New Orleans as is the silver
+dollar of the farther Middle West, and gold coin of the Pacific
+Slope--why, when one pays for a ten-cent purchase with a half-dollar,
+does one receive eight nickels in change? Ah, but New Orleans is a
+mysterious city!
+
+Once, when the French and English were fighting for the possession of
+Canada and New Orleans was depending for protection on Swiss
+mercenaries, the French officer in command of these troops disciplined
+them by stripping them and tying them to trees, where they were a prey
+to the terrible mosquitoes of the Gulf. One day they killed him and
+fled, but some of them were captured. These were taken back to New
+Orleans, court-martialed, and punished according to the regulations:
+they were nailed alive to their coffins and sawed in two.
+
+Ceded to Spain by a secret clause in the Treaty of Paris, of which she
+did not know until 1764, Louisiana could not believe the news. Even when
+the Acadians, appeared, after having been so cruelly ejected from their
+lands in what is now New Brunswick, Louisiana could not believe that
+Louis XV would coldly cast off his loyal colony. The fact that he had
+done so was not credited until a Spanish governor arrived. For three
+years after, there was confusion. Then a strong force was sent from
+Spain under Count O'Reilly, a man of Irish birth, but Spanish
+allegiance, and the flag of Spain was raised. O'Reilly maintained
+viceregal splendor; he invited leading citizens to a levee; here in his
+own house he caused his soldiers to seize the group of prominent men who
+had attempted to prevent the accomplishment of Spanish rule, and five
+of these he presently caused to be shot as rebels.
+
+Spanish governors came and went. The people settled down. At one time
+Padre Antonio de Sedella, a Spanish Capuchin, arrived with a commission
+to establish in the city the Holy office of the Inquisition, but he was
+discouraged and shipped back to Cadiz. Miss King tells us that when,
+half a century later, the calaboose was demolished, secret dungeons
+containing instruments of torture were discovered.
+
+On Good Friday, 1788, fire broke out, and as the priests refused to let
+the bells be rung in warning, saying that all bells must be dumb on Good
+Friday, the conflagration gained such headway that it could not be
+checked, and a large part of the old French town was reduced to ashes.
+Six years later another fire equally destructive, completed the work of
+blotting out the French town, and the old New Orleans we now know is the
+Spanish city which arose in its place: a city not of wood but of adobe
+or brick, stuccoed and tinted, of arcaded walks, galleries, jalousies,
+ponderous doors, and inner courts with carriage entrances from the
+street, and, behind, the most charming and secluded gardens. Also, owing
+to premiums offered by Baron Carondelet, the governor, tile roofs came
+into vogue, so that the city became comparatively fireproof. Much of the
+present-day charm of the old city is due also to the noble Andalusian,
+Don Andreas Almonaster y Roxas, who having immigrated and made a great
+fortune in the city, became its benefactor, building schools and other
+public institutions, the picturesque old Cabildo, or town hall, which is
+now a most fascinating museum, the cathedral, which adjoins the Cabildo,
+and which, like it, faces Jackson Square, formerly the Place d'Armes. In
+front of the altar of his cathedral Don Andreas is buried, and masses
+are said, in perpetuity, for his soul. When the Don's young widow
+remarried, she and her husband were pursued by a charivari lasting three
+days and three nights--the most famous charivari in the history of a
+city widely noted for these detestable functions. The Don's daughter, a
+great heiress, became the Baronne Pońtalba and resided in magnificence
+in Paris, where she died, a very old woman, in 1874.
+
+In the Place d'Armes much of the early history of New Orleans, and
+indeed, of Louisiana, was written. Here, and in the Cabildo, the
+transfers from flag to flag took place, ending with the ceding of
+Louisiana by Spain to France, and by France to the United States. At
+this time New Orleans had about ten thousand inhabitants, most of the
+whites being Creoles.
+
+Harris Dickson, who knows a great deal about New Orleans, declared in an
+article published some years ago, that outside lower Louisiana the word
+"Creole" is still misunderstood, and added this definition of the term:
+"A person of mixed French and Spanish blood, born in Louisiana." As I
+understand it, however, the blood need not necessarily be mixed, but may
+be pure Spanish or pure French, or again, there may be some admixture
+of English blood. The word itself was, I am informed, originally
+Spanish, and signified an American descended from Spaniards; later it
+got into the language of the French West Indies, whence it was imported,
+to Louisiana, about the end of the eighteenth century, by refugees who
+arrived in considerable numbers from San Domingo, after the revolution
+of the blacks there. Thus, the early French settlers did not use the
+word.
+
+If any misapprehension as to whether a Creole is a white person does
+still exist, that misunderstanding is, I believe, to be traced to the
+doors of an old-time cheap burlesque theater in Chicago, where the late
+impresario, Sam T. Jack, put on a show in which mulatto women were
+billed as "a galaxy of Creole beauties." This show traveled about the
+country libeling the Creoles and doubtless causing many persons of that
+class which attended Sam T. Jack's shows, to believe that "Creole" means
+something like "quadroon." But when the show got to Baton Rouge the
+manager was waited upon by a committee of citizens who said certain
+things to him which caused him to give up his engagement there and
+cancel any other engagements he had in the Creole country.
+
+True, one frequently hears references in New Orleans to "Creole
+mammies," and "Creole negroes," but the word used in that sense merely
+indicates a negro who has been the servant of Creoles, and who speaks
+French--"gombo French" the curious dialect is called. Similarly one
+hears of "Creole ponies"--these being ponies of the small, strong type
+used by the Cajan farmers. According to the Louisiana dialect
+Longfellow's "Evangeline" was a Cajan, the word being a corruption of
+"Acadian." About a thousand of these unfortunate expatriates arrived in
+New Orleans between 1765 and 1768. Within a century they had multiplied
+to forty times that number, spreading over the entire western part of
+the State.
+
+Much of the temperament, the gaiety, the sensitiveness of New Orleans
+comes from the Creole. He was Latin enough to be a good deal of a
+gambler, to love beautiful women, and on slight provocation to draw his
+sword.
+
+The street names of New Orleans--not only those of the French Quarter,
+but of the whole city--reflect his various tastes. Many of the streets
+bear the names of historic figures of the French and Spanish régimes;
+Rampart Street, formerly the rue des Ramparts marks, like the outer
+boulevards of Paris, the line of the old city wall. Other streets were
+given pretty feminine names by the old Creole gallants: Suzette,
+Celeste, Estelle, Angelie, and the like. The devout doubtless had their
+share in the naming of Religious Street, Nuns Street, Piety Street,
+Assumption Street, and Amen Street. The taste for Greek and Roman
+classicism which developed in France at the time of the Revolution,
+found its way to Louisiana, and is reflected in New Orleans by streets
+bearing the names of gods, demi gods, the muses and the graces. The
+pronunciation given to some of these names is curious: Melpomene,
+instead of being given four syllables is called Melpomeen; Calliope is
+similarly Callioap; Euterpe, Euterp, and so on. This, however, is the
+result not of ignorance, but of a slight corruption of the correct
+French pronunciations, the Americans having taken their way of
+pronouncing the names from the French. The Napoleonic wars are
+commemorated in the names of Napoleon Avenue, and Austerlitz and Jena
+Streets, and the visit of Lafayette in the naming for him of both a
+street and an avenue. But perhaps the most striking names of all the old
+ones were Mystery Street, Madman's Street, Love Street (Rue de l'Amour),
+Goodchildren Street (Rue des Bons Enfants), and above all those two
+streets in the Faubourg Marigny which old Bernard Marigny amused himself
+by naming for two games of chance at which, it is said, he had lost a
+fortune--namely Bagatelle and Craps--the latter not the game played with
+dice, but an old-time game of cards.
+
+The French spoken by cultivated Creoles bears to the French of modern
+France about the same relation as the current English of Virginia does
+to that of England. Creole French is founded largely upon the French of
+the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, just as many of the
+so-called "Americanisms" of older parts of the country, including
+Virginia and New England, are Elizabethan. The early English and French
+colonists, coming to this country with the language of their times,
+dropped, over here, into a linguistic backwater. In the mother
+countries language continued to renew itself as it flowed along, by
+elisions, by the adoption and legitimatizing of slang words (as for
+instance the word "cab," to which Dean Swift objected on the ground that
+it was slang for "cabriolet"), and by all the other means through which
+our vocabularies are forever changing. But to the colonies these changes
+were not carried, and such changes as occurred in the French and English
+of America were, for the most part, separate and distinct (as exampled
+by such Creole words as "banquette" for "sidewalk," in place of the
+French word _trottoir_, and the word "baire," whence comes the American
+term "mosquito bar.") The influence of colloquial French from Canada may
+also be traced in New Orleans, and the language there was further
+affected by the strange jargon spoken by the Creole negro--precisely as
+the English dialect of negroes in other parts of the South may be said
+to have affected the speech of all the Southern States.
+
+Between the dialect of the Louisiana Cajan and that of the French
+Canadian of Quebec and northern New York there is a strong resemblance;
+but the Creole negro language is a thing entirely apart, being made up,
+it is said, partly from French and partly from African word sounds, just
+as the "gulla" of the South Carolina coast is made up from African and
+English. The one is no more intelligible to a Frenchman than the other
+to a Londoner. The ignorant Creole negro wishing to say "I do not
+understand," would not say "moi je ne comprends pas," but "mo pas
+connais"; similarly for "I am going away," he does not say, "je m'en
+vais," but "ma pe couri"; while for "I have a horse," instead of "j'ai
+un cheval," he will put the statement, "me ganyé choue." It is a dialect
+lacking mood, tense, and grammar.
+
+To this day one may occasionally see in New Orleans and in other lower
+river towns an old "mammy" wearing the bandanna headdress called a
+_tignon_, which, toward the end of the eighteenth century, was made
+compulsory for colored women in Louisiana. The need for some such
+distinguishing racial badge was, it is said, twofold. Yellow sirens from
+the French West Indies, flocking to New Orleans, were becoming
+exceedingly conspicuous in dress and adornment; furthermore one hears
+stories of wealthy white men, fathers of octoroon or quadroon girls, who
+sent these illegitimate daughters abroad to be educated. The latter, one
+learns from many sources, were very often beautiful in the extreme, as
+were also the Domingan girls, and history is full of the tales of the
+curious, wild, fashionably caparisoned, declassé circle of society,
+which came to exist in New Orleans through the presence there of so many
+alluring women of light color and equally light character. Some of these
+women, it is said, could hardly be distinguished from brunette whites,
+and it was largely for this reason that the _tignon_ was placed by law
+upon the heads of all women having negro blood.
+
+No morsels from the history of old New Orleans are more suggestive to
+the imagination than the hints we get from many sources of wildly
+dissipated life centering around the notorious quadroon balls--or as
+they were called in their day, _cordon bleu_ balls. An old guide book
+informs me that the women who were the great attraction at these
+functions were "probably the handsomest race of women in the world, and
+were, besides, splendid dancers and finished dressers." Authorities seem
+to agree that these balls were exceedingly popular among the young
+Creole gentlemen, as well as with men visiting the city, and that duels,
+resulting from quarrels over the women, were of common occurrence. If a
+Creole had the choice of weapons slender swords called _colichemardes_
+were used, whereas pistols were almost invariably selected by Americans.
+Duels with swords were often fought indoors, but when firearms were to
+be employed the combatants repaired to one of the customary dueling
+grounds. Under the fine old live oaks of the City Park--then out in the
+country--it is said that as many as ten duels have been fought in a
+single day. Duels having their beginnings at the quadroon balls were,
+however, often fought in St. Anthony's Garden, for the ballroom was in a
+building (now occupied by a sisterhood of colored nuns) which stands on
+Orleans Street, near where it abuts against the Garden. This garden,
+bearing the name of the saint whose temptations have been of such
+conspicuous interest to painters of the nude, is not named for him so
+much in his own right, as because he was the patron of that same Padre
+Antonio de Sedella, already mentioned, who came to New Orleans to
+institute the Inquisition, but who, after having been sent away by
+Governor Miro, returned as a secular priest and became much beloved for
+his good works. Padre Antonio lived in a hut near the garden, and it is
+he who figures in Thomas Bailey Aldrich's story "Pčre Antoine's Date
+Palm."
+
+To the Creole, more than to any other source, may be traced the origin
+of dueling in the United States, and no city in the country has such a
+dueling history as New Orleans. The American took the practice from the
+Latin and by the adoption of pistols made the duel a much more serious
+thing than it had previously been, when swords were employed and first
+blood usually constituted "satisfaction." Up to the time of the Civil
+War the man who refused a challenge became a sort of outcast, and I have
+been told that even to this day a duel is occasionally fought. Governor
+Claiborne, first American governor of Louisiana, was a duelist, and his
+monument--a family monument in the annex of the old Basin Street
+division of St. Louis cemetery--bears upon one side an inscription in
+memory of his brother-in-law, Micajah Lewis, "who fell in a duel,
+January 14, 1804."
+
+Gayarré, in his history of Louisiana, tells a story of six young French
+noblemen who, one night, paired off and fought for no reason whatever
+save out of bravado. Two of them were killed.
+
+Two famous characters of New Orleans, about the middle of the last
+century, were Major Joe Howell, a brother-in-law of Jefferson Davis, and
+Major Henry, a dare-devil soldier of fortune who had filibustered in
+Nicaragua and fought in the Mexican War. One day while drinking together
+they quarreled, and as a result a duel was arranged to take place the
+same afternoon. Henry kept on drinking, but Howell went to sleep and
+slept until it was time to go to the dueling ground, when he took one
+cocktail, and departed.
+
+Feeling that a duel over a disagreement the occasion for which neither
+contestant could remember, was the height of folly, friends intervened,
+and finally succeeded in getting Major Henry to say that the fight could
+be called off if Howell would apologize.
+
+"For what?" he was asked.
+
+"Don't know and don't care," returned the old warrior.
+
+As Howell would not apologize, navy revolvers were produced and the two
+faced each other, the understanding being that they should begin at ten
+paces with six barrels loaded, firing at will and advancing. At the word
+"Fire!" both shot and missed, but Howell cocked his revolver with his
+right thumb and fired again immediately, wounding Henry in the arm.
+Henry then fired and missed a second time, while Howell's third shot
+struck his antagonist in the abdomen. Wounded as he was, Henry managed
+to fire again, narrowly missing the other, who was not only a giant in
+size, but was a conspicuous mark, owing to the white clothing which he
+wore. At this Howell advanced a step and took steady aim, and he would
+almost certainly have killed his opponent had not his own second
+reached out and thrown his pistol up, sending the shot wild. This
+occurred after the other side has cried "Stop!"--as it had been agreed
+should be done in case either man was badly wounded. A foul was
+consequently claimed, the seconds drew their pistols, and a general
+battle was narrowly averted. After many weeks Henry recovered.
+
+A great number of historic duels were over politics. Such a one was the
+fight which took place in 1843, between Mr. Hueston, editor of the Baton
+Rouge "Gazette" and Mr. Alcee La Branche, a Creole gentleman who had
+been speaker of the Louisiana House of Representatives, and was running
+for Congress. Mr. La Branche was one of the few public men in the State
+who had never fought a duel, and in the course of a violent political
+campaign, Hueston twitted him on this subject in the columns of the
+"Gazette," trying to make him out a coward. Soon after the insulting
+article appeared, the two men met in the billiard room of the old St.
+Charles Hotel, and when La Branche demanded an apology, and was refused,
+he struck Hueston with a cane, or a cue, and knocked him down. A duel
+was, of course, arranged, the weapons selected being double-barreled
+shotguns loaded with ball. At the first discharge Hueston's hat and coat
+were punctured by bullets. He demanded a second exchange of shots, which
+resulted about as before--his own shots going wild, while those of his
+opponent narrowly missed him. Hueston, however, obstinately insisted
+that the duel be continued, and the guns were loaded for the third
+time. In the next discharge the editor received a scalp wound. It was
+now agreed by all present that matters had gone far enough, but Hueston
+remained obdurate in his intention to kill or be killed, and in the face
+of violent protests, demanded that the guns again be loaded. The next
+exchange of shots proved to be the last. Hueston let both barrels go
+without effect, and fell to the ground shot through the lungs. Taken to
+the Maison de Santé, he was in such agony that he begged a friend to
+finish the work by shooting him through the head. Within a few hours he
+was dead.
+
+The old guide book from which I gather these items cites, also, cases in
+which duels were fought over trivial matters, such, for instance, as a
+mildly hostile newspaper criticism of an operatic performance, and an
+argument between a Creole and a Frenchman over the greatness of the
+Mississippi River.
+
+Professor Brander Matthews tells me of an episode in which the wit
+exhibited by a Creole lawyer, in the course of a case in a New Orleans
+court, caused him to be challenged. The opposing counsel, likewise a
+Creole, was a great dandy. He appeared in an immaculate white suit and
+boiled shirt, but the weather was warm, and after he had spoken for
+perhaps half an hour his shirt was wilted, and he asked an adjournment.
+The adjournment over, he reappeared in a fresh shirt, but this too
+wilted presently, whereupon another adjournment was taken. At the end of
+this he again reappeared wearing a third fresh shirt, and in it managed
+to complete his plea.
+
+It now became the other lawyer's turn. He arose and, speaking with the
+utmost gravity, addressed the jury.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said (Professor Matthews tells it in French), "I shall
+divide my speech into three shirts." He then announced: "First
+shirt"--and made his first point. This accomplished, he paused briefly,
+then proclaimed: "Second shirt," and followed with his second point.
+Then: "Third and last shirt," and after completing his argument sat
+down. The delighted jury gave him the verdict, but his witticism
+involved him in a duel with the worsted advocate. The result of this
+duel Professor Matthews does not tell, but if the wag's _colichemarde_
+was as swift and penetrating as his wit, we may surmise that his
+opponent of the Code Napoléon and the code duello had a fourth shirt
+spoiled.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII
+
+FROM ANTIQUES TO PIRATES
+
+
+The numerous antique shops of the French quarter, with their gray,
+undulating floors and their piled-up, dusty litter of old furniture,
+plate, glass, and china, and the equally numerous old book stores, with
+their piles of French publications, their shadowy corners, their
+pleasant ancient bindings and their stale smell, are peculiarly
+reminiscent of similar establishments in Paris.
+
+That Eugene Field knew these shops well we have reason to know by at
+least two of his poems. In one, "The Discreet Collector," he tells us
+that:
+
+    Down south there is a curio shop
+    Unknown to many men;
+    Thereat do I intend to stop
+    When I am South again;
+    The narrow street through which to go--
+    Aha! I know it well!
+    And maybe you would like to know--
+    But no--I will not tell!
+
+But later, when filled with remorse over his extravagance in "blowing
+twenty dollars in by nine o'clock A.M.," he reveals the location of his
+favorite establishment, saying:
+
+    In Royal Street (near Conti) there's a lovely curio shop,
+    And there, one balmy fateful morn, it was my chance to stop--
+
+So that, at least, is the neighborhood in which he learned that:
+
+    The curio collector is so blindly lost in sin
+    That he doesn't spend his money--he simply blows it in!
+
+In his verses called "Doctor Sam," Field touched on another fascinating
+side of Creole negro life: the mysterious beliefs and rites of
+voodooism--or, as it is more often spelled, voudouism.
+
+Until a few years ago it used to be possible for a visitor with a "pull"
+in New Orleans to see some of the voudou performances and to have "a
+work made" for him, but the police have dealt so severely with those who
+believe in this barbarous nonsense, that it is practised in these times
+only with the utmost secrecy.
+
+Voudouism was brought by the early slaves from the Congo, but in
+Louisiana the negroes--probably desiring to imitate the religion of
+their white masters--appropriated some of the Roman Catholic saints and
+made them subject to the Great Serpent, or _Grand Zombi_, who is the
+voudou god. These saints, however, are given voudou names, St. Michael,
+for example, being _Blanc Dani_, and St. Peter, _Papa Liba_. This
+situation is the antithesis of that to be found in Brittany, where
+Druidical beliefs, handed down for generations among the peasants, may
+now be faintly traced running like on odd alien threads through the
+strong fabric of Roman Catholicism.
+
+Voudouism is not, however, to be dignified by the name "religion." It is
+superstition founded upon charms and hoodoos. It is witchcraft of the
+maddest kind, involving the most hideous performances. Moreover, it is
+said that a hoodoo is something of which a French negro is very much
+afraid, and that his fear is justifiable, for the reason that the
+throwing of a _wanga_, or curse, may also involve the administering of
+subtle poisons made from herbs.
+
+Legend is rich with stories of Marie Le Veau, the voudou queen, who
+lived long ago in New Orleans, and of love and death accomplished by
+means of voudou charms. Charms are brought about in various ways. Among
+these the burning of black candles, accompanied by certain performances,
+brings evil upon those against whom a "work" is made, while blue candles
+have to do with love charms. It may also be noted that "love powders"
+can be purchased now-a-days in drug stores in New Orleans.
+
+In the days of long ago the great negro gathering place used to be Congo
+Square--now Beauregard Square--and here, on Sunday nights, wild dances
+used to occur--the "bamboula" and "calinda"--and sinister spells were
+cast. Later the voudous went to more secluded spots on the shores of
+Lake Pontchartrain, and on St. John's Eve, which is their great
+occasion, many of the whites of the city used to go to the lake in hopes
+of discovering a voudou séance, and being allowed to see it. A friend of
+mine, who has seen several of these séances, says that they are
+unbelievably weird and horrible. They will make a gombo, put a snake in
+it, and then devour it, and they will wring a cat's neck and drink its
+blood. And of course, along with these loathsome ceremonies, go
+incantations, chants, dances, and frenzies, sometimes ending in
+catalepsis.
+
+There are weird stories of white women of good family who have believed
+in voudou, and have taken part in the rites; and there are other tales
+of evil spells, such as that of the Creole bride of long ago, whose
+affianced had been the lover of a quadroon girl, a hairdresser. The
+hairdresser when she came to do the bride's hair for the wedding, gave
+her a bouquet of flowers. The bride smelled the bouquet--and died at the
+church door.
+
+It was, I think, in an old book store on Royal Street--or else on
+Chartres--that I found the tattered guide book to which I referred in an
+earlier chapter. It was "edited and compiled by several leading writers
+of the New Orleans Press," and published in 1885, and it contains an
+introductory recommendation by George W. Cable--which is about the
+finest guarantee that a book on New Orleans can have.
+
+Mr. Cable, of course, more than all the rest of the people who have
+written of New Orleans put together, placed the city definitely in
+literature. And it is interesting, if somewhat saddening, to recall that
+for lifting the city into the world of belles lettres, for adorning it
+and preserving it in such volumes as "Old Creole Days," "The
+Grandissimes," "Madame Delphine," and other valuable, truthful, and
+charming works, he was roundly abused by his own fellow-townsmen. Far
+from attacking Mr. Cable, New Orleans ought to build him a monument, and
+I am glad to say that, though the monument is not there yet, the city
+does seem to have come to its senses, and that the prophet is no longer
+without honor in his own country.
+
+Some further leaves are added to the literary laurels of the city by
+what Thomas Bailey Aldrich has written of it, and the wreath is made the
+greater by the fact that in New Orleans was born "the only literary man
+in New York," Professor Brander Matthews.
+
+Another distinguished name in letters, connected with the place, is that
+of Lafcadio Hearn, who was at one time a reporter on a New Orleans
+newspaper, and who not only wrote about the French quarter, but
+collected many proverbs of the Creoles in a book which he called "Gombo
+Zebes." In his little volume, "Chita," Hearn described the land of
+lakes, bayous, and _chęničres_, which forms a strip between the city and
+the Gulf, and which, with its wild birds, wild scenery, and wild storms,
+and its extraordinary population of hunters and fishermen--Cajuns,
+Italians, Japanese, Spanish, Kanakas, Filipinos, French, and half-breed
+Indians, all intermarrying--is the strangest, most outlandish section of
+this country I have ever visited. The Filipinos, who introduced shrimp
+fishing in this region, building villages on stilts, like those of their
+own islands, were not there when Hearn wrote "Chita," nor was Ludwig
+raising diamond-back terrapin on Grand Isle, but the live-oaks, draped
+with sad Spanish moss, lined the bayous as they do to-day, and the
+alligators, turtles and snakes were there, and the tall marsh grass, so
+like bamboo, fringed the banks as it does now, and water hyacinth
+carpeted the pools, and the savage tropical storms came sweeping in, now
+and then, from the Gulf, flooding the entire country, tearing everything
+up by the roots, then receding, carrying the floating debris back with
+them to the salt sea. One has to see what they call a "slight" storm, in
+that country, to know what a great storm there must be. Hearn surely saw
+storms there, for in "Chita" he describes with terrifying vividness that
+historic tempest which, in 1856, obliterated, at one stroke, Last
+Island, with its fashionable hotel and all the guests of that hotel. I
+have seen a "little" thunderstorm in Barataria Bay and I do not want to
+see a big one. I have seen brown men who, in the storm of 1915 (which
+did a million dollars' worth of damage in New Orleans), floated about
+the Baratarias for days, upon the roofs of houses, and I have seen
+little children, half Italian, half Filipino, who were saved by being
+carried by their parents into the branches of an old live-oak, where
+they waited until good Horace Harvey, "the little father of the
+Baratarias," came down there in his motor yacht, the _Destrehan_,
+rescued them, warmed them, fed them, and gave them back to life. I was
+told in New Orleans that there were ten seconds in that storm when the
+wind reached a velocity of 140 miles per hour at the mouth of the
+Mississippi, that it blew for four hours at the rate of 90 miles, and
+that the lowest barometrical reading ever recorded in the United States
+(28.11) was recorded in New Orleans during this hurricane.
+
+Of the summer climate of New Orleans I know nothing at first hand, and
+judging from what people have told me, that is all I want to know. The
+winter climate suited me very well while I was there, although the boast
+that grass is green and roses bloom all the year round, does not imply
+such intense heat as some people may suppose. Furthermore, I believe
+that the thermometer has once or twice in the history of the city
+dropped low enough to kill any ordinary rose, for a friend of mine told
+me a story about some water pipes that froze and burst during an
+unprecedented cold snap which occurred some years ago. He said that an
+English colonel, whom he knew, was visiting the city at the time and
+that, finding himself unable to get water in his bathtub, he sent out
+for several cases of Apollinaris, and with true British phlegm proceeded
+to empty them into the tub and get in among the bubbles.
+
+Still another figure having to do with literature, and also with the
+history of New Orleans, is Jean Lafitte, known as a pirate, whose life
+is said to have inspired Byron's poem, "The Corsair." There was a time,
+long ago, when Lafitte, together with his brother, his doughty
+lieutenant, Dominique You, and his rabble of Baratarians, caused New
+Orleans a great deal of annoyance, but like many other doubtful
+characters, they have, since their death, become entirely picturesque,
+and the very idea that Lafitte was not a first-class blood-and-thunder
+pirate is as distasteful to the people of New Orleans to-day, as his
+being any kind of a near-pirate at all, used to be to their ancestors.
+Nevertheless Frank R. Stockton, who made a great specialty of pirates,
+says of Lafitte: "He never committed an act of piracy in his life; he
+was [before he went to Barataria] a blacksmith, and knew no more about
+sailing a ship or even the smallest kind of a boat than he knew about
+the proper construction of a sonnet.... It is said of him that he was
+never at sea but twice in his life: once when he came from France, and
+once when he left this country, and on neither occasion did he sail
+under the Jolly Roger." According to Stockton, Lafitte, when he gave up
+his blacksmith shop (in which he is said to have made some of the fine
+wrought iron balcony railings which still adorn the old town), and went
+to Barataria, became nothing more nor less than a "fence" for pirates
+and privateers, taking their booty, smuggling it up to New Orleans, and
+selling it there on commission.
+
+But if the fact that he was not a gory-handed freebooter is against
+Lafitte, there is one great thing in his favor. When the British were
+making ready to attack New Orleans in 1814, they tried both to bribe and
+to browbeat Lafitte into joining forces with them. As the American
+government was planning, at this very time, a punitive expedition
+against him, it would perhaps have seemed good policy for the
+pseudo-pirate to have accepted the British offer, but what Lafitte did
+was to go up and report the matter at New Orleans, giving the city the
+first authentic information of the contemplated attack, and offering to
+join with his men in the defense, in exchange for amnesty.
+
+A good many people, however, did not believe his story, and a good many
+others thought it beneath the dignity of the government to treat with a
+man of his dubious occupation. Therefore poor Lafitte was not listened
+to, but, upon the contrary, only succeeded in stirring up trouble for
+himself, for an expedition was immediately sent against him; his
+settlement at Barataria--on the gulf, about forty miles below the
+city--was demolished and the inhabitants driven to the woods and swamps.
+
+But in spite of this discouraging experience, Lafitte would not join the
+British, and it came about that when the Battle of New Orleans was about
+to be fought, Andrew Jackson, who had a short time before referred to
+Lafitte and his men as a band of "hellish banditti," was glad to accept
+their aid. Dominique You--with his fine pirate name--commanded a gun,
+and the others fought according to the best piratical tradition. After
+the battle was won, the Baratarians were pardoned by President Madison.
+Incidentally it may be remarked here that the American line of defense
+on the plains of Chalmette, below the city, had been indicated some
+years before by the French General Moreau, hero of Hohenlinden, as the
+proper strategic position for safeguarding New Orleans on the south.
+
+Even after he had been pardoned, Lafitte felt, not without some justice,
+that he had been ill-used by the Americans, and because of this he
+determined to leave the country. He set sail with a band of his
+followers for other climes, but what became of them is not known. Some
+think their ship went down in a storm which crossed the Gulf soon after
+their departure; others believe that they reached Yucatan, and that
+Lafitte died there. Whatever his fate, he did not improve it by
+departing from New Orleans, for had he not done so he would, at the end,
+have been given a handsome burial and a nice monument like that of
+Dominique You--which may be seen to this day in the old cemetery on
+Claiborne Avenue, between Iberville and St. Louis Streets.
+
+Having disposed of literary men and pirates, we now come in logical
+sequence to composers and actors. Be it known, then, that E.H. Sothern
+first raised, in the house at 79 Bienville Street, the voice which has
+charmed us in the theater, and that Louis Gottschalk, composer of the
+almost too well-known "Last Hope," was also born in New Orleans.
+
+The records of the opera and the theater might, in themselves, make a
+chapter. As early as 1791 a French theatrical company played in New
+Orleans, using halls, and in 1808 a theater was built in St. Philip
+Street. It is said that the first play given in the city in English was
+performed December 24, 1817, the play being "The Honey Moon," and the
+manager Noah M. Ludlow; but it was not until some years later that the
+English drama became a feature of the city's life, with the
+establishment of a stock company under the management of James H.
+Caldwell. Edwin Forrest appeared, in 1824, with Mr. Caldwell's company
+at the Camp Street Theater, which he built on leaving the Orleans
+Theater. The former was, when opened, out in the swamp, and people had
+to walk to it from Canal Street on a narrow path of planks. It was the
+first building in the city to be lighted by gas.
+
+The annals of the old St. Charles theater, called "old Drury," are rich
+with history. Practically all our great players from 1835 until long
+after the Civil War, appeared in this theater, and an old prompter's
+book which, I believe, is still in existence, records, among many other
+things, certain details of the appearance there, in 1852, of Junius
+Brutus Booth, father of Edwin Booth, and mentions also that Joseph
+Jefferson (Sr.) then a young man, was reprimanded for being noisy in his
+dressing-room.
+
+New Orleans was, I believe, the first American city regularly to support
+grand opera and to give it a home. For a great many years before 1859
+(in which year the present French Opera House on Bourbon Street was
+built) there was a regular annual season of opera at the Orleans
+Theater, long since destroyed.
+
+In the days of the city's operatic grandeur great singers used to visit
+New Orleans before visiting New York, as witness, for example, the début
+at the French Opera House of Adelina Patti. Since the time of the Civil
+War, however, the city has suffered a decline in this department of art.
+Opera seasons have not been regular, and in spite of occasional attempts
+to revive the old-time spirit, the ancient Opera House, with its brave
+columned front, its cracking veneer of stucco, and its surrounding of
+little vari-colored one story cafés and shops (which are themselves like
+bits of operatic scenery), does not so much suggest to the imagination a
+home of modern opera, as a mournful mortuary chapel haunted by the
+ghosts of old half-forgotten composers: Herold, Spontini, Mehul, Varney;
+old conductors, long since gone to dust: Prevost, John, Calabresi; old
+arias of Meyerbeer, Auber, and Donizetti; and above all, by the ghosts
+of pretty pirouetting ballerinas, and of great singers whose voices
+have, these many years, been still.
+
+An old lady who knew Louisiana in the forties and fifties, has left
+record of the fact that plantation negroes used to know and sing the
+French operatic airs, just as the Italian peasants of to-day know and
+sing the music of Puccini and Leoncavallo. But if opera no longer
+reaches the negro, it cannot be said that it has failed to leave its
+stamp on the French quarter. From open windows and doors, from little
+shops and half-hidden courtyards, from shuttered second story galleries,
+there comes floating to the ears of the wayfarer the sound of music. In
+one house a piano is being played with dash; in another a child is
+practising her scales; from still another comes a soprano voice, the sad
+whistling of a flute, the tinkle of a guitar, or the anguished squeal of
+a tortured violin. Never except in Naples have I heard, on one block, so
+many musical instruments independently at work, as in some single blocks
+of the _vieux carré_; and never anywhere have I seen a sign which struck
+as more expressive of the industries of a locality, than that one which
+I saw near the house of Mme. Lalurie, which read: "Odd Jobs Done, and
+Music."
+
+The reason for this musical congestion is twofold. Not only is the
+Creole a great lover of good light music, but the whole region for
+blocks about the Opera House is populated by old musicians from the
+opera's orchestra, and women, some middle aged, some old, who used to be
+in the ballet or the chorus, and who not only keep alive the musical
+tradition of the district, but pass it on to the younger generation.
+Indeed there are almost as many places in the French quarter where music
+may be heard, as where stories are told.
+
+In one street may be seen a house where the troubles with the Mafia
+began. On a corner--the southeast corner of Royal and St. Peter--is
+shown the house in which Cable's "'Sieur George" resided. This house is,
+I believe, the same one which, when erected, caused people to move away
+from its immediate neighborhood, for fear that its height would cause it
+to fall down. It is a four story house--the first built in the city. At
+the southeast corner of Royal and Hospital Streets stands that
+"haunted" house of Mme. Lalaurie, who fled the town when indignation was
+aroused because of devilish tortures she inflicted on her slaves. This
+house is now an Italian tenement, but even in its decay it will be
+recognized as a mansion which, in its day, was fit to house such guests
+as Louis Philippe, Lafayette, and Ney. A guest even more distinguished
+than these, was to have been housed in the mansion at the northeast
+corner of St. Louis and Chartres Streets, for the Creoles had a plan to
+rescue Napoleon from St. Helena and bring him here, and had this house
+prepared to receive him.
+
+And are we to forget where Andrew Jackson was entertained before and
+after the Battle of New Orleans--where General Beauregard, military idol
+of the Creoles, resided--where Paul Morphy the "chess king" lived--where
+General Butler took up his quarters when, in 1862, under the guns of
+Farragut's fleet, the city surrendered--? Shall we fail to visit the
+curious old tenements and stables surrounding the barnyard which once
+was the _remise_ of the old Orleans Hotel? Shall we neglect old Metaire
+cemetery, with its graves built above ground in the days when drainage
+was less perfect? Shall we fail to go to the levee (pronounced "levvy")
+and see the savage flood of the muddy Mississippi coursing toward the
+gulf behind the embankment which alone saves the city from inundation?
+Shall we ignore the French Market with its clean stalls piled with fresh
+vegetables, sea food, and all manner of comestibles, including _filé_
+for the glorious Creole gombo. Shall we not view the picturesque if
+sinister old Absinthe House, dating from 1799, with its court and
+stairway so full of mysterious suggestion, and its misty
+paregoric-flavored beverage, containing opalescent dreams? Shall we not
+go to Sazerac's for a cocktail, or to Ramos' for one of those delectable
+gin-fizzes suggesting an Olympian soda-fountain drink? Are we to ignore
+all these wonders of the city?
+
+Yes, for it is time to go to luncheon at Antoine's!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIX
+
+ANTOINE'S AND MARDI GRAS
+
+
+Antoine's is to me one of the four or five most satisfactory restaurants
+in the United States,--two of the others being the Louisiane and
+Galatoire's. But one has one's slight preferences in these things; and
+just as I have a feeling that the cuisine of the Hotel St. Regis in New
+York surpasses, just a little bit, that of any other eating place in the
+city, I have a feeling about Antoine's in New Orleans. This is not,
+perhaps, with me, altogether a culinary matter, for whereas I remember
+delightful meals at the Louisiane and Galatoire's--meals which, indeed,
+could hardly be surpassed--I lived for a week at Antoine's, and felt at
+home there, and became peculiarly attached to the quaint, rambling old
+restaurant, up stairs and down.
+
+Antoine's has never been "fixed up." The café makes one think of such
+old Parisian restaurants as the Boeuf ŕ la Mode, or the Tour d'Argent.
+Far from being a showy place, it is utterly simple in its decorations
+and equipment, but if there is in this country a restaurant more French
+than Antoine's, I do not know where that restaurant is.
+
+Antoine Alciatore, founder of the establishment, departed nearly forty
+years ago to the realms to which great chefs are ultimately taken.
+Coming from France as a young man he established himself in a small café
+opposite the slave market, where he proceeded to cook and let his
+cooking speak for him. His dinde ŕ la Talleyrand soon made him famous,
+and he prospered, moving before long to the present building. His sons,
+Jules and Fernand, were sent to Paris to learn at headquarters the best
+traditions of the haute cuisine, doing service as apprentices in such
+establishments as the Maison d'Or and Brabant's. Jules is now proprietor
+of Antoine's, while Fernand is master of the Louisiane.
+
+The two brothers are of somewhat different type. Fernand is, above all,
+a chef; I have never seen him outside his own kitchen. His son, Fernand
+Jr., superintends the front part of the Louisiane, which he has
+transformed into a place having the appearance of a New York restaurant.
+The young man has made a successful bid for the fashionable patronage of
+New Orleans, and there is dancing in the Louisiane in the evening.
+Jules, upon the other hand, is perhaps more the director than his
+brother Fernand--more the suave delightful host, less the man of cap and
+apron. Jules loves to give parties--to astonish his guests with a
+brilliant dinner and with his unrivaled grace as gérant. That he is able
+to do these things no one is better aware than my companion and I, for
+it was our good fortune to be accepted by Jules as friends and fellow
+artists.
+
+Never while my companion and I lived at Antoine's did we escape the
+feeling that we were not in the United States, but in some foreign land.
+To go to his rooms he went upstairs, around a corner, down a few steps,
+past a pantry, and a back stairway by which savory smells ascended from
+the kitchen, along a latticed gallery overlooking a courtyard like that
+of some inn in Segovia, along another gallery running at right angles to
+the first and overlooking the same court, including the kitchen door and
+the laundry, and finally to a chamber with French doors, a canopied bed,
+and French windows opening upon a balcony that overlooked the side
+street. His room was called "The Creole Yacht," while mine was the
+"Maison Vert."
+
+I remember a room in that curious little hotel opposite the Café du
+Dôme, in Paris (the hotel in which it is said Whistler stayed when he
+was a student), which almost exactly resembled my room at Antoine's,
+even to the dust which was under the bed--until 'Génie got to work with
+broom and brush. Moreover, connected with my room there was a bath which
+actually had a _chaufbain_ to heat the water: one of those weird French
+machines resembling the engine of a steam launch, which pops savagely
+when you light the gas beneath it, and which, as you are always
+expecting it to blow up and destroy you, converts the morning ablutions
+from a perfunctory duty into a great adventure.
+
+Then too, there was Marie who has attended to the _linge_ at Antoine's
+for the last fifty years, and who helped the gray-haired genial Eugénie
+to "make proper the rooms." Ever since 'Génie--as she is called, for
+short--came from her native Midi, she has been at Antoine's; and like
+François--the gentle, kindly, white-mustached old waiter who, when we
+were there, had just moved up to Antoine's after thirty-five years'
+service at the Louisiane--'Génie is always ready with a smile; yes, even
+in the rush of Mardi Gras!
+
+Antoine's does not set up to be a regular hotel, and we stopped there
+because, during the carnival, all rooms in the large modern hotels
+across Canal Street were taken. The carnival rush made room-service at
+Antoine's a little slow, now and then; sometimes the bell would not be
+answered when we rang for breakfast; or again, our morning coffee and
+_croissants_ would be forty minutes on the way; sometimes we became a
+little bit impatient--though we could never bring ourselves to say so to
+such amiable servitors. As a result, when we were leaving the city for a
+little trip, we determined to stay, on our return, at the Grunewald, a
+hotel like any one of a hundred others in the United States--marble
+lobbies, gold ceilings, rathskellers, cabaret shows, dancing, and page
+boys wandering through the corridors and dining-rooms, calling in nasal,
+sing-song voices: "_Mis_-ter _Shoss_-futt! _Mis_-ter _Ahm_-kaplopps!
+_Mis_-ter _Praggle_-fiss! _Mis_-ter Blahms!"
+
+We did return and go to the Grunewald. But comfortable as we were made
+there, we had to own to each other that we missed Antoine's. We missed
+our curious old rooms. I even missed my _chaufbain_, and was bored at
+the commonplace matutinal performance of turning on hot water without
+preliminary experiments in marine engineering. We thought wistfully of
+'Génie's patient smile, and of her daily assurance to us, when we went
+out, that "when she had made the apartments she would render the key to
+the bureau, _alors_,"--which is to say, leave the key at the office. We
+yearned for the café, for good François, for the deliciously flavored
+oysters cooked on the half-shell and served on a pan of hot rock-salt
+which kept them warm; for the cold tomatoes _ŕ la Jules César_; for the
+bisque of crayfish _ŕ la Cardinal_; for the bouillibasse (which
+Thackeray admitted was as good in New Orleans as in Marseilles, and
+which Otis Skinner says is better); for the unrivaled gombo _ŕ la
+Créole_, and pompano _en Papillotte_, and pressed duck _ŕ la Tour
+d'Argent_, and orange Brulôt, and the wonderful Café Brulôt
+Diabolique--that spiced coffee made in a silver bowl from which emerge
+the blue flames of burning cognac, and in honor of which the lights of
+the café are always temporarily dimmed.
+
+Nor least of all was it that we wished to see again the mother of Jules,
+who sits back of the _caisse_ and takes in the money, like many another
+good French wife and mother--a tiny little old lady more than
+ninety-five years old, who came to New Orleans in 1840 as the bride of
+the then young Antoine Alciatore.
+
+So we put on our hats and coats when evening came, and went back to
+Antoine's for dinner, and as long as we were in New Orleans we kept on
+going back.
+
+That is not to say, of course, that we did not go also to the Louisiane
+and Galatoire's, or that we did not drop in for luncheon, sometimes, at
+Brasco's, in Gravier Street, or at Kolb's, a more or less conventional
+German restaurant in St. Charles Street; or that we failed to go out to
+Tranchina's at Spanish Fort, on Lake Pontchartrain, or to the quainter
+little place called Noy's where, we learned, Ernest Peixotto had been
+but a short time before, gathering material for indigestion and an
+article in "Scribner's Magazine." But when all is said and done there
+remain the three restaurants of the old quarter.
+
+I should like to give some history of Galatoire's as well as of the
+other two, but when I asked the _patron_ for the story of his
+restaurant, he smiled, and with a shrug replied: "But Monsieur, the
+story is in the food!"
+
+Do not expect any of these places to present the brilliant appearance of
+distinguished New York restaurants. They are comparatively simple, all
+of them, and are engaged not with soft carpets and gilt ceilings, but
+with the art of cookery.
+
+I have been told that some of them have what may be termed "tourist
+cooking," which is not their best, but if you know good food, and let
+them know you know it, and if you visit them at any time except during
+the carnival, then you have a right to expect in any one of these
+establishments, a superb dinner. For as I once heard my friend Col.
+Beverly Myles, one of the city's most distinguished _gourmets_, remark:
+"To talk of 'tolerably good food' in a French restaurant is like
+talking of 'a tolerably honest man.'"
+
+The carnival of Mardi Gras and the several days preceding, is one of
+those things about which I feel as I do concerning Niagara Falls, and
+gambling houses, and the red light district of Butte, Montana, and the
+underground levels of a mine, and the world as seen from an aëroplane,
+and the Quatres Arts ball, and a bull fight--I am glad to have seen it
+once, but I have no desire to see it again. During the carnival my
+companion and I enjoyed a period of sleepless gaiety. To be sure, we
+went to bed every morning, but what is the use in doing that if you also
+get up every morning? We went to the street pageants, we went to the
+balls at the French Opera House, we saw the masking on the streets, and
+when the carnival was finished we were finished, too.
+
+The great thing about the carnival, it seems to me, is that it bears the
+relation to the life of the city, that a well-developed hobby does to
+the life of an individual. It keeps the city young. It keeps it from
+becoming pompous, from taking itself too seriously, from getting into a
+rut. It stimulates not alone the young, but the grave and reverend
+seigniors also, to give themselves up for a little while each year to
+play, and moreover to use their imaginations in annually devising new
+pageants and costumes. From this point of view such a carnival would be
+a good thing for any city.
+
+But that is where the Latin spirit of New Orleans comes in, with its
+pleasing combination of gaiety and restraint. You could not hold such a
+carnival in every city. You could not do it in New York. For more
+important even than the pageants and the balls, is the carnival frame of
+mind. To hold a carnival such as New Orleans holds, a city must know how
+to be lively and playful without becoming drunk, without breaking
+barroom mirrors, upsetting tables, annoying women, thrusting "ticklers"
+into people's faces, jostling, fighting, committing the thousand rough
+vulgar excesses in which New York indulges every New Year's Eve, and in
+which it would indulge to an even more disgusting extent under the
+additional license of the mask.
+
+The carnival--_carne vale_, farewell flesh--which terminates with Mardi
+Gras--"Fat Tuesday," or Shrove Tuesday, the day before the beginning of
+Lent--comes down to us from pagan times by way of the Latin countries.
+The "Cowbellions," a secret organization of Mobile, in 1831 elaborated
+the idea of historical and legendary processions, and as early as 1837
+New Orleans held grotesque street parades. Twenty years later the
+"Mystic Krewe," now known as "Comus," appeared from nowhere and
+disappeared again. The success of Comus encouraged the formation of
+other secret societies, each having its own parade and ball, and in
+1872, Rex, King of the Carnival, entered his royal capital of New
+Orleans in honor of the visit of the Grand Duke Alexis--who, by the way,
+is one of countless notables who have feasted at Antoine's.
+
+The three leading carnival societies, Comus, Momus, and Proteus, are
+understood to be connected with three of the city's four leading clubs,
+all of which stand within easy range of one another on the uptown side
+of Canal Street: the Boston Club (taking its name from an old card
+game); the Pickwick (named for Dickens' genial gentleman, a statue of
+whom stands in the lobby); the Louisiana, a young men's club; and the
+Chess, Checkers and Whist Club. The latter association is, I believe,
+the one that takes no part in the carnival.
+
+Each of the carnival organizations has its own King and Queen, and the
+connection between certain clubs and certain carnival societies may be
+guessed from the fact that the Comus Queen and Proteus Queen always
+appear on the stand in front of the Pickwick Club, to witness their
+respective parades, and that the Queen of the entire Carnival appears
+with her maids of honor on the stand before the Boston Club upon the day
+of Mardi Gras, to witness the triumphal entry and parade of Rex. As Rex
+passes the club he sends her a bouquet--the official indication of her
+queenship. That night she appears for the first time in the glory of her
+royal robes at the Rex Ball, which is held in a large hall; and the
+great event of the carnival, from a social standpoint, is the official
+visit, on the same night, of Rex and his Queen, attended by their court,
+to the King and Queen of Comus, at the Comus Ball, held in the Opera
+House.
+
+Passing between the brilliantly illuminated flag-draped buildings,
+under festoons of colored electric lights, the street parades, with
+their spectacular colored floats, their bands, their negro
+torch-bearers, their strangely costumed masked figures, throwing favors
+into the dense crowds, are glorious sights for children ranging anywhere
+from eight to eighty years of age. Public masking on the streets, on the
+day of Mardi Gras, is also an amusing feature of the carnival.
+
+The balls, upon the other hand, are social events of great importance in
+the city, and as spectacles they are peculiarly fine. Invitations to
+these balls are greatly coveted, and the visitor to the city who would
+attend them, must exert his "pull" some time in advance. The
+invitations, by the way, are not sent by individuals, but by the
+separate organizations, and even those young ladies who are so fortunate
+as to have "call-outs"--cards inclosed with their invitations,
+indicating that they are to be asked to dance, and may therefore have
+seats on the ground floor--are not supposed to know from what man these
+cards come. Ladies who have not received call-outs, and gentlemen who
+are not members of the societies, are packed into the boxes and seats
+above the parquet floor, and do not go upon the dancing floor until very
+late in the evening. Throughout each ball the members of the society
+giving the ball continue to wear their costumes and their masks, so that
+ladies, called from their seats to dance, often find themselves treading
+a measure with some gallant who speaks in a strange assumed voice,
+striving to maintain the mystery of his identity. The ladies, upon the
+other hand, are not in costume and are not masked; about them, there is
+no more mystery than women always have about them. After each dance the
+masker produces a present for his partner--usually a pretty bit of
+jewelry. Etiquette not only allows, but insists, that a woman accept any
+gift offered to her at a carnival ball, and it is said that by this
+means many a young gentleman has succeeded in bestowing upon the lady of
+his heart a piece of jewelry the value of which would make acceptance of
+the gift impossible under other than carnival conditions.
+
+After the balls many of the younger couples go to the Louisiane and
+Antoine's, to continue the dance, and as my room at Antoine's was
+directly over one of the dancing rooms of the establishment, I might
+make a shrewd guess as to how long they stayed up, after my companion
+and I retired.
+
+Let it not be supposed that we retired early. I remember well the look
+of the pale blue dawn of Ash Wednesday morning, and no less do I
+remember a conversation with a gentleman I met at the Louisiane, just
+before the dawn broke. I never saw him before and I have never seen him
+since; nor do I know his name, or where he came from. I only know that
+he was an agreeable, friendly person who did not wish to go to bed.
+
+When I said that I was going home he protested.
+
+"Don't do that!" he urged. "There's a nice French restaurant in this
+town. I can't think of the name of it. Let's go there."
+
+"Well, how can we go if you don't know what place it is?" I asked,
+intending to be discouraging.
+
+The young man looked dazed at this. Then his face brightened suddenly.
+
+"Oh, yes!" he cried. "I remember the name now! It's the Louisiane! Come
+on! Let's get our coats an' go there!"
+
+"But," I said, "this is the Louisiane right here."
+
+The thought seemed to stagger him, for he swayed ever so slightly.
+
+"All right," he said, regarding me with great solemnity. "Let's go
+there!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have wondered since if this same young man may not have been the one
+who, returning to the St. Charles Hotel in the early hours of that sad
+Ash Wednesday morning, was asked by the clerk, who gave him his key,
+whether he wished to leave a call.
+
+"What day's this?" he inquired.
+
+"Wednesday," said the clerk.
+
+"All ri'," replied the other, moving toward the elevator. "Call me
+Saturday."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LX
+
+FINALE
+
+    Yonder the long horizon lies, and there by night and day
+    The old ships draw to home again, the young ships sail away;
+    And come I may, but go I must, and if men ask you why,
+    You may put the blame on the stars and the sun and the white road and
+        the sky!
+
+    --GERALD GOULD.
+
+
+It is good to look about the world; but always there comes a time when
+the restless creature, man, having yielded to the call of the seas and
+the stars and the sky, and gone a-journeying, begins to think of home
+again. Even were home a less satisfactory, a less happy place than it
+is, he would be bound to think of it after so long a journey as that
+upon which my companion and I had spent so many months. For, just as it
+is necessary for a locomotive to go every so often for an overhauling,
+so it is necessary for the traveler to return to headquarters. The
+fastenings of his wardrobe trunk are getting loose, and the side of it
+has been stove in; his heels are running down in back, his watch needs
+regulating, his umbrella-handle is coming loose, he is running out of
+notebooks and pencils and has broken a blade of his knife in trying to
+open a bottle with it (because he left his corkscrew in a hotel
+somewhere along the way). His fountain pen has sprung a leak and
+spoiled a waistcoat, his razors are dull, his strop is nicked, and he
+has run out of the kind of cigarettes and cigars he likes. One lens of
+his spectacles has gotten scratched, his mail has ceased to reach him,
+his light suits are spotted, baggy and worn, and his winter suits are
+becoming too heavy for comfort as the spring advances. His neckties are
+getting stringy, he has hangnails and a cough; he never could fix his
+own hangnails, and he cannot cure his cough because the bottle of
+glycerine and wild cherry provided for just such an emergency by the
+loved ones at home, got broken on the trip from Jacksonville to
+Montgomery, and went dribbling down through the trunk, ruining his
+reference books, three of his best shirts, and the only decent pair of
+russet shoes he had left. The other shoes have been ruined in various
+ways; one pair was spoiled in a possum hunt at Clinton, North
+Carolina--and it was worth it, and worth the overcoat that was ruined at
+the same time; two pairs of black shoes have been caked up with layers
+and layers of sticky blacking, and one pair of russets was ruined by a
+well intentioned negro lad in Memphis, who thought they would look
+better painted red. His traveler's checks are running low and he is
+continually afraid that, amid his constantly increasing piles of notes
+and papers, he will lose the three books in each of which remains a few
+feet of "yellow scrip"--the mileage of the South--which will take him on
+his return journey as far as Washington.
+
+Nor is that all. The determining factor in his decision to go home lies
+in the havoc wrought by a long succession of hotel laundries--laundries
+which starch the bosoms of soft silk shirts, which mark the owner's name
+in ink upon the hems of sheer linen handkerchiefs which already have
+embroidered monograms, which rip holes in those handkerchiefs and then
+fold them so that the holes are concealed until, some night, he whips
+one confidently from the pocket of his dress suit, and reveals it
+looking like a tattered battle-flag; laundries which leave long trails
+of iron rust on shirt-bosoms, which rip out seams, tear off buttons,
+squeeze out new standing collars to a saw-tooth edge, iron little pieces
+of red and brown string into collars, cuffs, and especially into the
+bosoms of dress shirts, and "finish" dress shirts and collars, not only
+in the sense of ending their days of usefulness as fast as possible, but
+also by making them shine like the interiors of glazed porcelain
+bathtubs. But the greatest cruelty of the hotel laundry is to socks. It
+is not that they do more damage to socks, than to other garments, but
+that the laundry devil has been able to think of a greater variety of
+means for the destruction of socks than for the destruction of any other
+kind of garment. He begins by fastening to each sock a cloth-covered tin
+tag, attached by means of prongs. On this tag he puts certain marks
+which will mean nothing to the next laundry. The next laundry therefore
+attaches other tin tags, either ripping off the old ones (leaving holes
+where the prongs went through) or else letting them remain in place, so
+that, after a while, the whole top of the sock is covered with tin,
+making it an extraordinarily uncomfortable thing to wear, and a strange
+thing to look at. There is still another way in which the laundry devil
+tortures the sock-owner. He can find ways to shrink any sock that is not
+made of solid heavy silk; and of course he can rip silk socks all to
+pieces. He will take silk-and-wool socks of normal length, and in one
+washing will so reduce them that you can hardly get your foot into them,
+and that the upper margins of them come only about an inch above your
+shoe-tops. People who have no business to do so, are thus enabled, when
+you are seated, to see the tops of your socks and to amuse themselves by
+counting the tin tags with which they are adorned. Also, the socks,
+being so short, become better pullers than the garters, so that instead
+of the garters holding the socks up, the socks pull the garters down.
+This usually occurs as you are walking up the aisle in church, or in the
+middle of a dance, and of course your garter manages to come unclasped,
+into the bargain, and goes trailing after you, like a convict's ball and
+chain.
+
+For a time you can stand this sort of thing, but presently you begin to
+pine for the delicate washtub artistry of Amanda, at home; for vestments
+which, when sent to the wash, do not come back riddled with holes, or
+smelling as though they had been washed in carbolic acid, or in the tub
+with a large fish.
+
+So, presently, you fold up your rags like the Arabs, fasten your
+battered baggage shut as best you can, put it on a taxi, and head for
+the railway station. No train ever looks so handsome as the home-bound
+train you find there. No engineer ever looks so sturdy and capable,
+leaning from the window of his cab, as the one who is to take you home.
+
+Up through the South you fly, past many places you have seen before,
+past towns where you have friends whom you would like to see again--only
+not now! Now nothing will do but home! Out of the region of magnolias,
+palmettoes and live-oaks you pass into the region of pines, and out of
+the region of pines into that of maples and elms. At last you come to
+Washington.... Only a few hours longer! How satisfyingly the train slips
+along! You are not conscious of curves, or even of turning wheels
+beneath you. Your progress is like the swift glide of a flying sled.
+Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, Trenton. Nothing to do but look
+from the car windows and rejoice. Not that you love the South less, but
+that you love home more.
+
+"I wonder if we will ever go on such a trip as this again?" you say to
+your companion.
+
+"I don't believe so," he replies.
+
+"It doesn't seem now as though we should," you return. "But do you
+remember?--we talked the same way when we were coming home before. What
+will it be two years hence?"
+
+"True," he says. "And of course there's Conan Doyle. He always thinks
+he's never going to do it any more. But in a year or so Sherlock Holmes
+pops out again, drawn by Freddy Steele, all over the cover of
+'Collier's.' Not that your stuff is as good as Doyle's, but that the
+general case is somewhat parallel."
+
+"Doyle has killed Holmes," you put in.
+
+"Yes," he agrees, "and several times you've almost killed me."
+
+Then as the train speeds scornfully through Newark, without stopping, he
+catches sight of a vast concrete building--a warehouse of some kind,
+apparently.
+
+"Look!" he cries. "Isn't it wonderful?"
+
+"That building?"
+
+"Not the building itself. The thought that we don't have to get off here
+and go through it. Think what it would be like if we were on our
+travels! There would be a lot of citizens in frock coats. Probably the
+mayor would be there, too. They would drive us to that building, and
+take us in, and then they would cry if we refused to go to the
+fourteenth floor, where they keep the dried prunes."
+
+The train slips across the Jersey meadows and darts into the tunnel.
+
+"Now," he remarks hopefully, "we are really going to get home--if this
+tunnel doesn't drop in on us."
+
+And when the train has emerged from the tunnel, and you have emerged
+from the train, he says: "Now there's no doubt that we are going to get
+home--unless we are smashed up in a taxi, on the way."
+
+And when the taxi stops at your front door, and you bid him farewell
+before he continues on his way to his own front door, he says: "Now
+you're going to get home for sure--unless the elevator drops."
+
+And when the elevator has not dropped, but has transported you in safety
+to the door of your apartment, and you have searched out the old key,
+and have unlocked the door, and entered, and found happiness within,
+then you wonder to yourself as I once heard a little boy wonder, when he
+had gone out of his own yard, and had found a number of large cans of
+paint, and had upset them on himself:
+
+"I have a very happy home," he said, reflectively. "I wonder why I don't
+seem to stay around it more?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: Charleston is the last stronghold of a unified American
+upper class; the last remaining American city in which Madeira and Port
+and _noblesse oblige_ are fully and widely understood, and are employed
+according to the best traditions]
+
+[Illustration: "Railroad ticket!" said the baggageman with exaggerated
+patience. I began to feel in various pockets]
+
+[Illustration: Can most travellers, I wonder, enjoy as I do a solitary
+walk, by night, through the mysterious streets of a strange city?]
+
+[Illustration: Coming out of my slumber with the curious and unpleasant
+sense of being stared at, I found his eyes fixed upon me]
+
+[Illustration: Mount Vernon Place is the centre of Baltimore. Everything
+begins there, including Baedeker]
+
+[Illustration: If she is shopping for a dinner party, she may order the
+costly and aristocratic diamond-back terrapin, sacred in Baltimore as is
+the Sacred Cod in Boston]
+
+[Illustration: Doughoregan Manor--The house was of buff-colored brick.
+It was low and very long, with wings extending from its central
+structure like beautiful arms flung wide in welcome]
+
+[Illustration: I began to realize that there was no one coming; that no
+one had opened the door; that it had begun to swing immediately upon my
+saying the word "ghosts"]
+
+[Illustration: Harpers Ferry is an entrancing old town; a drowsy place
+piled up beautifully yet carelessly upon terraced roads clinging to
+steep hillsides]
+
+[Illustration: "What's the matter with him?" I asked, stopping]
+
+[Illustration: When I came down, dressed for riding, my companion was
+making a drawing; the four young ladies were with him, none of them in
+riding habits]
+
+[Illustration: Claymont Court is one of the old Washington houses. But
+in all its history it has never been a happier home or a more
+interesting one than it is to-day]
+
+[Illustration: Chatham, the old Fitzhugh house, now the residence of
+Mark Sullivan. Washington, Madison, Monroe, Washington Irving, Lee and
+Lincoln have known the shelter of its roof]
+
+[Illustration: Monticello stands on a lofty hilltop, with vistas,
+between trees of neighboring valleys, hills, and mountains]
+
+[Illustration: Like Venice, the University of Virginia should first be
+seen by moonlight]
+
+[Illustration: One party was stationed on the top of an old-time
+mail-coach bearing the significant initials "F.F.V."]
+
+[Illustration: The Piedmont Hunt Race Meet--There is a distinct note of
+histrionism about many of the rich Americans who "go in for" elaborate
+ruralness, and there is a touch of it, also, about ultra-"horsey"
+people]
+
+[Illustration: The southern negro is the world's peasant supreme]
+
+[Illustration: The Country Club of Virginia, out to the west of
+Richmond, is one of the most charming clubs of its kind in the United
+States]
+
+[Illustration: Judge Crutchfield--a white-haired, hook-nosed man of more
+than seventy, peering over his eyeglasses with a look of shrewd,
+merciless divination]
+
+[Illustration: Negro women squatting upon boxes in old shadowy lofts
+stem the tobacco leaves]
+
+[Illustration: THE JUDGE: What did he do, Mandy?
+
+THE WIFE: Jedge, he come bustin' in, an' he come so fas' he untook de
+do' off'n de hinges!]
+
+[Illustration: Some genuine old-time New York ferryboats help to
+complete the illusion that Norfolk is New York]
+
+[Illustration: "The Southern Statesman who serves his section best,
+serves the country best."]
+
+[Illustration: St. Philip's is the more beautiful for the open space
+before it, and the graceful outward bend of Church Street in deference
+to the projecting portico]
+
+[Illustration: Or, opposite St. Philip's, a perfect example of the rude
+architecture of an old French village; stucco walls, tinted and chipped,
+red tile roofs and all]
+
+[Illustration: In the doorway and gates of the Smyth house, in Legaré
+Street, I was struck with a Venetian suggestion]
+
+[Illustration: Nor is the Charleston background a mere arras of
+recollection. It exists everywhere in the wood and brick and stone of
+ancient and beautiful buildings, in iron grilles and balconies
+unrivalled in any other American city....]
+
+[Illustration: Charleston has a stronger, deeper-rooted city entity than
+all the cities of the middle west rolled into one]
+
+[Illustration: The interior is the oldest looking thing in the United
+States--Goose Creek Church]
+
+[Illustration: A reminder of the Chicago River--Atlanta]
+
+[Illustration: With the whole Metropolitan Orchestra playing dance music
+all night long]
+
+[Illustration: The office buildings are city office buildings, and are
+sufficiently numerous to look very much at home]
+
+[Illustration: The negro roof-garden, Odd Fellows' Building, Atlanta]
+
+[Illustration: I was never so conscious, as at the time of our visit to
+the Burge plantation, of the superlative soft sweetness of the spring]
+
+[Illustration: The planters cease their work]
+
+[Illustration: Birmingham--The thin veil of smoke from far-off iron
+furnaces softens the city's serrated outlines]
+
+[Illustration: Birmingham practices unremittingly the pestilential habit
+of "cutting in" at dances]
+
+[Illustration: Gigantic movements and mutations, Niagara-like noises,
+great bursts of flame like fallen fragments from the sun]
+
+[Illustration: A shaggy, unshaven, rawboned man, gray-haired and
+collarless, sat near the window and uttered convincing imitations of the
+sounds made by chickens, roosters, pigs, goats and crows]
+
+[Illustration: Gaze upon the character called Daniel Voorhees Pike!
+Observe the manliness with which he thrusts his pink little hands deep
+in the pockets of his--or somebody's--pantaloons!]
+
+[Illustration: The houses were full of the suggestion of an easy-going
+home life and an informal hospitality. (Back yard of the former home of
+General Stephen D. Lee.)]
+
+[Illustration: Her hands looked very white and small against his dark
+coat. He was gazing down at them, his features distorted by a shockingly
+sentimental smile]
+
+[Illustration: As water flows down the hills of Vicksburg to the river,
+so the visitor's thoughts flow down to the great spectacular,
+mischievous, dominating stream]
+
+[Illustration: Over the tenement roofs one catches sight of sundry other
+buildings of a more self-respecting character, and, far off, the cupola
+of Vicksburg's old stone court house]
+
+[Illustration: Vicksburg negroes. Whether drowsing in the sun, doing a
+little stroke of work, or sitting gabbling on the curbstone, they were
+upon the whole as cheerful and comical a lot of people as I ever saw]
+
+[Illustration: In some of the boats negro fish-markets are conducted,
+advertised by large catfish dangling from posts and railing]
+
+[Illustration: The old Klein house, standing amid lawns and
+old-fashioned gardens on the bluff overlooking the river]
+
+[Illustration: Citizens go at midday to the square where they buy
+popcorn for the squirrels and pigeons--Memphis]
+
+[Illustration: Hanging in the air above the middle of the stream]
+
+[Illustration: These small parks give Savannah a quality which
+differentiates it from all other American cities]
+
+[Illustration: The Thomas House in Franklin Square in which Lafayette
+was entertained]
+
+[Illustration: You will see them having tea, and dancing under the palm
+fronds of the cocoanut grove, when the electric lights begin to glow in
+the luminous semi-tropical twilight]
+
+[Illustration: Cocktail hour at The Breakers]
+
+[Illustration: Nowhere is the sand more like a deep warm dust of yellow
+gold; nowhere is there a margin of the earth so splashed with spots of
+brilliant color; nowhere is water less like water, more like a flowing
+waste of liquid emeralds and sapphires edged with a thousand gleaming
+flouncing strings of pearls]
+
+[Illustration: The couples on the platform were "ragging," their
+shoulders working like the walking-beams of side-wheelers]
+
+[Illustration: Harness held together by that especial Providence which
+watches over negro mendings]
+
+[Illustration: It was a very jolly fair, with the usual lot of barkers
+and the usual gaping crowd]
+
+[Illustration: The mysterious old Absinthe House, founded 1799]
+
+[Illustration: St. Anthony's Garden, where duels originating at the
+quadroon balls were fought]
+
+[Illustration: Courtyard of the old Orleans Hotel]
+
+[Illustration: The little lady who sits behind the desk is more than
+ninety-five years old, and came to New Orleans as the bride of Antoine]
+
+[Illustration: The lights are always lowered at Antoine's when the
+spectacular Café Boulot Diabolique is served]
+
+[Illustration: Passing between the brilliantly illuminated buildings,
+under festoons of electric lights the Mardi Gras parades, with their
+floats, their bands, their torch-bearers, their masked figures, are
+glorious sights for children from eight to eighty years of age]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes.
+
+    Page 82: changed "Ridgleys" to "Ridgelys" (of present
+    Ridgelys)
+
+    Page 83: changed "her serious, eyes" to "her serious
+    eyes"
+
+    Page 138: Added missing word "we" (said as we were about
+    to leave)
+
+    Page 161: removed hyphen from "one-course" (prescribed
+    one course)
+
+    Page 169: changed "not" to "now" (now know that I did)
+
+    Page 172: added missing quotation mark (such a long
+    telegram.")
+
+    Page 209: changed "Virgina" to "Virginia" (in Virginia,
+    save,)
+
+    Page 217: changed "it" to "in" (harm in it)
+
+    Page 217: added missing quotation mark (raised with
+    niggers around him."")
+
+    Page 245: removed superfluous quotation marks from end
+    of two lines (Yass, Jedge, drunk. _Always_ drunk.)
+                 (he come so fast he untook the do' off'n
+                  de hinges; den 'e begins--")
+
+    Page 283: added missing quotation mark (you very
+    definitely don't.")
+
+    Page 287: changed "Okrakoke" to "Ocracoke" (legend
+    around Okracoke)
+
+    Page 295: changed "seem" to "see" (them to see him)
+
+    Page 328: changed "new York" to "New York" (New York
+    "Sun,")
+
+    Page 334: changed "coffe" to "coffee" (coffee, hot and
+    iced.)
+
+    Page 355: changed "maried" to "married" (were married in
+    the dining room)
+
+    Page 438: changed "corporaton" to "corporation"
+    (corporation I have scandalously)
+
+    Page 449: changed "constructon" to "construction" (With
+    the construction)
+
+    Page 450: changed "conversatons" to "conversations" and
+    "wth" to "with" (telephonic conversations with a)
+
+    Page 453: changed "objectons" to "objections" (brushed
+    aside our objections.)
+
+    Page 514: changed " to ' ("'Yes,' said Ed.)
+
+    Page 518: added missing quotation mark (town in the
+    Southwest.")
+
+    Page 521: changed "repreduction" to "reproduction" (is a
+    photographic reproduction)
+
+    Page 527: changed "crusing" to "cruising" (was still
+    cruising in the South)
+
+    Page 528: added missing word "a" (officer of a naval
+    vessel.)
+
+    Page 532: changed "stading" to "standing" (and silver
+    standing on the)
+
+    Page 538: added missing word "ago" (years ago he
+    conducted)
+
+    Page 542: added missing quotation mark (innumerable
+    squirrels.")
+
+    Page 590: changed "redout" to "redoubt" (last redoubt
+    held)
+
+    Page 631: changed "hardly" to "hardy" (hardy pioneers
+    from Canada,)
+
+    Page 640: added missing ) ("mosquito bar.") The)
+
+    Page 649: changed "This, situation is" to "This
+    situation is" (This situation is)
+
+    Page 649: changed "may" to "my" (it was my chance)
+
+    Page 655: added missing quotation mark (the Jolly
+    Roger.")
+
+    Page 657: changed "well-know" to "well-known" (too
+    well-known "Last)
+
+    Page 669: changed "is" to "it" (that it bears the
+    relation)
+
+    Page 670: changed "that" to "than" (even than the
+    pageants)
+
+    Page 734: changed "coconut" to "cocoanut" in image
+    caption (palm fronds of the cocoanut grove,)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of American Adventures, by Julian Street
+
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of American Adventures, by Julian Street.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of American Adventures, by Julian Street
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: American Adventures
+       A Second Trip 'Abroad at home'
+
+Author: Julian Street
+
+Illustrator: Wallace Morgan
+
+Release Date: May 3, 2006 [EBook #18304]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMERICAN ADVENTURES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 464px;">
+<a name="frontispiece" id="frontispiece"></a>
+<img src="images/front.jpg" width="464" height="600" alt="Charleston is the last stronghold of a unified American upper class; the last remaining
+American city in which Madeira and Port and noblesse oblige are fully
+and widely understood, and are employed according to the best traditions" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Charleston is the last stronghold of a unified American upper class; the last remaining
+American city in which Madeira and Port and <i>noblesse oblige</i> are fully
+and widely understood, and are employed according to the best traditions</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h1>AMERICAN ADVENTURES</h1>
+
+<p class='center' style='font-size: x-large;'><span style="font-size: 75%;">A SECOND TRIP "ABROAD AT HOME" BY</span><br />
+JULIAN STREET</p>
+
+
+<p class='center' style='font-size: x-large;'><span style="font-size: 75%;">WITH PICTORIAL SIDELIGHTS<br />
+BY<br /></span>
+WALLACE MORGAN</p>
+
+
+
+<p class='center'>NEW YORK<br />
+THE CENTURY CO.<br />
+1917</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class='center'>Copyright, 1917, by<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Century Co.</span><br />
+</p>
+<hr style="width: 5%;" />
+<p class='center'>Copyright, 1916, 1917, by<br />
+<span class="smcap">P.&nbsp;F. Collier &amp; Son, Inc.</span></p>
+<hr style="width: 5%;" />
+<p class='center'><i>Published, November, 1917</i></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<p class="center">TO MY AUNT
+AND SECOND MOTHER</p>
+
+<p class="center">JULIA ROSS LOW</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="FOREWORD" id="FOREWORD"></a>FOREWORD</h2>
+
+
+<p>Though much has been written of the South, it
+seems to me that this part of our country is less understood
+than any other part. Certainly the South, itself,
+feels that this is true. Its relationship to the North
+makes me think of nothing so much as that of a pretty,
+sensitive wife, to a big, strong, amiable, if somewhat
+thick-skinned husband. These two had one great
+quarrel which nearly resulted in divorce. He thought
+her headstrong; she thought him overbearing. The
+quarrel made her ill; she has been for some time recovering.
+But though they have settled their difficulties and
+are living again in amity together, and though he, man-like,
+has half forgotten that they ever quarreled at all,
+now that peace reigns in the house again, <i>she</i> has <i>not</i>
+forgotten. There still lingers in her mind the feeling
+that he never really understood her, that he never understood
+her problems and her struggles, and that he
+never will. And it seems to me further that, as is
+usually the case with wives who consider themselves misunderstood,
+the fault is partly, but by no means altogether,
+hers. He, upon one hand, is inclined to pass the
+matter off with a: "There, there! It's all over now.
+Just be good and forget it!" while she, in the depths of
+her heart, retains a little bit of wistfulness, a little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span>
+wounded feeling, which causes her to say to herself:
+"Thank God our home was not broken up, but&mdash;I wish
+that he could be a little more considerate, sometimes, in
+view of all that I have suffered."</p>
+
+<p>For my part, I am the humble but devoted friend of
+the family. Having known him first, having been from
+boyhood his companion, I may perhaps have sympathized
+with him in the beginning. But since I have
+come to know her, too, that is no longer so. And I
+do think I know her&mdash;proud, sensitive, high-strung,
+generous, captivating beauty that she is! Moreover,
+after the fashion of many another "friend of the
+family," I have fallen in love with her. Loving her
+from afar, I send her as a nosegay these chapters gathered
+in her own gardens. If some of the flowers are of
+a kind for which she does not care, if some have thorns,
+even if some are only weeds, I pray her to remember
+that from what was growing in her gardens I was forced
+to make my choice, and to believe that, whatever the defects
+of my bouquet, it is meant to be a bunch of roses.</p>
+
+
+<p class='signature'>J.&nbsp;S.</p>
+<p><i>October 1, 1917.</i></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The Author makes his grateful acknowledgments to
+the old friends and the new ones who assisted him upon
+this journey. And once more he desires to express his
+gratitude to the friend and fellow-traveler whose illustrations
+are far from being his only contribution to this
+volume.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class='signature'>&mdash;J.&nbsp;S.</p>
+
+
+<p>New York, October, 1917.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='3' style='font-size: large;'>THE BORDERLAND</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>CHAPTER</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'>PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I</a></td><td align='left'>ON JOURNEYS THROUGH THE STATES</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II</a></td><td align='left'>A BALTIMORE EVENING</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_III">III</a></td><td align='left'>WHERE THE CLIMATES MEET</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_27">27</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV</a></td><td align='left'>TRIUMPHANT DEFEAT</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_38">38</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V</a></td><td align='left'>TERRAPIN AND THINGS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_44">44</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI</a></td><td align='left'>DOUGHOREGAN MANOR AND THE CARROLLS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_53">53</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII</a></td><td align='left'>A RARE OLD TOWN</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_69">69</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII</a></td><td align='left'>WE MEET THE HAMPTON GHOST</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_80">80</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX</a></td><td align='left'>ARE WE STANDARDIZED?</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_89">89</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_X">X</a></td><td align='left'>HARPER'S FERRY AND JOHN BROWN</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_97">97</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI</a></td><td align='left'>THE VIRGINIAS AND THE WASHINGTONS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_105">105</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII</a></td><td align='left'>I RIDE A HORSE</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_117">117</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII</a></td><td align='left'>INTO THE OLD DOMINION</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_136">136</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV</a></td><td align='left'>CHARLOTTESVILLE AND MONTICELLO</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_150">150</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">XV</a></td><td align='left'>THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_159">159</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">XVI</a></td><td align='left'>FOX-HUNTING IN VIRGINIA</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_169">169</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">XVII</a></td><td align='left'>"A CERTAIN PARTY"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_186">186</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">XVIII</a></td><td align='left'>THE LEGACY OF HATE</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_193">193</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">XIX</a></td><td align='left'>"YOU-ALL" AND OTHER SECTIONAL MISUNDERSTANDINGS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_203">203</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">XX</a></td><td align='left'>IDIOMS AND ARISTOCRACY</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_214">214</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">XXI</a></td><td align='left'>THE CONFEDERATE CAPITAL</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_222">222</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">XXII</a></td><td align='left'>RANDOM RICHMOND NOTES</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_233">233</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">XXIII</a></td><td align='left'>JEDGE CRUTCHFIELD'S COT</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_242">242</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">XXIV</a></td><td align='left'>NORFOLK AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_248">248</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">XXV</a></td><td align='left'>COLONEL TAYLOR AND GENERAL LEE</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_258">258</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='3' style='font-size: large;'>THE HEART OF THE SOUTH</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">XXVI</a></td><td align='left'>RALEIGH AND JOSEPHUS DANIELS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_273">273</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">XXVII</a></td><td align='left'>ITEMS FROM "THE OLD NORTH STATE"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_285">285</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII"> XXVIII</a></td><td align='left'>UNDER ST. MICHAEL'S CHIMES</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_296">296</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">XXIX</a></td><td align='left'>HISTORY AND ARISTOCRACY</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_312">312</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">XXX</a></td><td align='left'>POLITICS, A NEWSPAPER AND ST. CECILIA</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_326">326</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI">XXXI</a></td><td align='left'>"GULLA" AND THE BACK COUNTRY</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_338">338</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII">XXXII</a></td><td align='left'>OUT OF THE PAST</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_349">349</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIII"> XXXIII</a></td><td align='left'>ALIVE ATLANTA</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_356">356</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIV">XXXIV</a></td><td align='left'>GEORGIA JOURNALISM</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_369">369</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXV">XXXV</a></td><td align='left'>SOME ATLANTA INSTITUTIONS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_384">384</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVI">XXXVI</a></td><td align='left'>A BIT OF RURAL GEORGIA</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_392">392</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVII"> XXXVII</a></td><td align='left'>A YOUNG METROPOLIS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_403">403</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVIII">XXXVIII</a></td><td align='left'>BUSY BIRMINGHAM</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_417">417</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIX">XXXIX</a></td><td align='left'>AN ALLEGORY OF ACHIEVEMENT</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_426">426</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XL">XL</a></td><td align='left'>THE ROAD TO ARCADY</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_440">440</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XLI">XLI</a></td><td align='left'>A MISSISSIPPI TOWN</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_447">447</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XLII">XLII</a></td><td align='left'>OLD TALES AND A NEW GAME</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_458">458</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XLIII">XLIII</a></td><td align='left'>OUT OF THE LONG AGO</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_467">467</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XLIV">XLIV</a></td><td align='left'>THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND HIM</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_474">474</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XLV">XLV</a></td><td align='left'>VICKSBURG OLD AND NEW</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_482">482</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XLVI">XLVI</a></td><td align='left'>SHREDS AND PATCHES</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_494">494</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XLVII">XLVII</a></td><td align='left'>THE BAFFLING MISSISSIPPI</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_500">500</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XLVIII"> XLVIII</a></td><td align='left'>OLD RIVER DAYS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_508">508</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XLIX">XLIX</a></td><td align='left'>WHAT MEMPHIS HAS ENDURED</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_518">518</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_L">L</a></td><td align='left'>MODERN MEMPHIS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_535">535</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='3' style='font-size: large;'>FARTHEST SOUTH</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_LI">LI</a></td><td align='left'>BEAUTIFUL SAVANNAH</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_553">553</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_LII">LII</a></td><td align='left'>MISS "JAX" AND SOME FLORIDA GOSSIP</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_572">572</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_LIII">LIII</a></td><td align='left'>PASSIONATE PALM BEACH</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_579">579</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_LIV">LIV</a></td><td align='left'>ASSORTED AND RESORTED FLORIDA</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_595">595</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_LV">LV</a></td><td align='left'>A DAY IN MONTGOMERY</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_603">603</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_LVI">LVI</a></td><td align='left'>THE CITY OF THE CREOLE</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_619">619</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_LVII">LVII</a></td><td align='left'>HISTORY, THE CREOLE, AND HIS DUELS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_629">629</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_LVIII">LVIII</a></td><td align='left'>FROM ANTIQUES TO PIRATES</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_648">648</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_LIX">LIX</a></td><td align='left'>ANTOINE'S AND MARDI GRAS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_663">663</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_LX">LX</a></td><td align='left'>FINALE</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_675">675</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS" id="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<p>[Transcriber's Note: Illustrations were interleaved between pages in the original text. In this version,
+they have been moved beside the relevant section of the text. Page numbers below reflect the position of the
+illustration in the original text but links link to current position of illustrations.]</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>FACING PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Charleston is the last stronghold of a unified American upper class;
+the last remaining American city in which Madeira and Port and
+<i>noblesse oblige</i> are fully and widely understood, and are employed
+according to the best traditions</td><td align='right'><i><a href="#frontispiece">Frontispiece</a></i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"Railroad tickets!" said the baggageman with exaggerated patience</td><td align='right'><a href="#p8jpg">8</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Can most travellers, I wonder, enjoy as I do a solitary walk, by
+night, through the mysterious streets of a strange city?</td><td align='right'><a href="#p17jpg">17</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Coming out of my slumber with the curious and unpleasant sense of
+being stared at, I found his eyes fixed upon me</td><td align='right'><a href="#p24jpg">24</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Mount Vernon Place is the centre of Baltimore</td><td align='right'><a href="#p32jpg">32</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>If she is shopping for a dinner party, she may order the costly and
+aristocratic diamond-back terrapin, sacred in Baltimore as is the
+Sacred Cod in Boston</td><td align='right'><a href="#p48jpg">48</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Doughoregan Manor&mdash;the house was a buff-colored brick</td><td align='right'><a href="#p65jpg">65</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>I began to realize that there was no one coming</td><td align='right'><a href="#p80jpg">80</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Harper's Ferry is an entrancing old town; a drowsy place piled up
+beautifully yet carelessly upon terraced roads clinging to steep
+hillsides</td><td align='right'><a href="#p100jpg">100</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"What's the matter with him?" I asked, stopping</td><td align='right'><a href="#p117jpg">117</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>When I came down, dressed for riding, my companion was making a
+drawing; the four young ladies were with him, none of them in riding habits</td><td align='right'><a href="#p124jpg">124</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Claymont Court is one of the old Washington houses</td><td align='right'><a href="#p132jpg">132</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Chatham, the old Fitzhugh house, now the residence of Mark Sullivan</td><td align='right'><a href="#p148jpg">148</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Monticello stands on a lofty hilltop, with vistas, between trees of
+neighboring valleys, hills, and mountains</td><td align='right'><a href="#p157jpg">157</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Like Venice, the University of Virginia should first be seen by
+moonlight</td><td align='right'><a href="#p168jpg">168</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>One party was stationed on the top of an old-time mail-coach,
+bearing the significant initials "F.&nbsp;F.&nbsp;V."</td><td align='right'><a href="#p180jpg">180</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Piedmont Hunt Race Meet</td><td align='right'><a href="#p189jpg">189</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Southern negro is the world's peasant supreme</td><td align='right'><a href="#p200jpg">200</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Country Club of Virginia, out to the west of Richmond</td><td align='right'><a href="#p216jpg">216</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Judge Crutchfield</td><td align='right'><a href="#p228jpg">228</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Negro women squatting upon boxes in old shadowy lofts stem the
+tobacco leaves</td><td align='right'><a href="#p237jpg">237</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Judge: "What did he do, Mandy?"</td><td align='right'><a href="#p244jpg">244</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Some genuine old-time New York ferryboats help to complete the
+illusion that Norfolk is New York</td><td align='right'><a href="#p253jpg">253</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"The Southern statesman who serves his section best, serves his
+country best"</td><td align='right'><a href="#p280jpg">280</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>St. Philip's is the more beautiful for the open space before it</td><td align='right'><a href="#p300jpg">300</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Opposite St. Philip's, a perfect example of the rude architecture of
+an old French village</td><td align='right'><a href="#p305jpg">305</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>In the doorway and gates of the Smyth house, in Legar&eacute; Street, I was
+struck with a Venetian suggestion</td><td align='right'><a href="#p316jpg">316</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Nor is the Charleston background a mere arras of recollection</td><td align='right'><a href="#p320jpg">320</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Charleston has a stronger, deeper-rooted city entity than all the
+cities of the Middle West rolled into one</td><td align='right'><a href="#p328jpg">328</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The interior is the oldest looking thing in the United States&mdash;Goose
+Creek Church</td><td align='right'><a href="#p344jpg">344</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A reminder of the Chicago River&mdash;Atlanta</td><td align='right'><a href="#p353jpg">353</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>With the whole Metropolitan Orchestra playing dance music all night long</td><td align='right'><a href="#p368jpg">368</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The office buildings are city office buildings, and are sufficiently
+numerous to look very much at home</td><td align='right'><a href="#p376jpg">376</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The negro roof-garden, Odd Fellows' Building, Atlanta</td><td align='right'><a href="#p385png">385</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>I was never so conscious, as at the time of our visit to the Burge
+Plantation, of the superlative soft sweetness of the spring</td><td align='right'><a href="#p396jpg">396</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The planters cease their work</td><td align='right'><a href="#p400jpg">400</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Birmingham&mdash;the thin veil of smoke from far-off iron furnaces
+softens the city's serrated outlines</td><td align='right'><a href="#p408jpg">408</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Birmingham practices unremittingly the pestilential habit of
+"cutting in" at dances</td><td align='right'><a href="#p424jpg">424</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Gigantic movements and mutations, Niagara-like noises, great bursts
+of flame like falling fragments from the sun</td><td align='right'><a href="#p437jpg">437</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A shaggy, unshaven, rawboned man, gray-haired and collarless, sat
+near the window</td><td align='right'><a href="#p444jpg">444</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Gaze upon the character called Daniel Voorhees Pike!</td><td align='right'><a href="#p456jpg">456</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The houses were full of the suggestion of an easy-going home life
+and an informal hospitality</td><td align='right'><a href="#p465jpg">465</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Her hands looked very white and small against his dark coat</td><td align='right'><a href="#p480jpg">480</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>As water flows down the hills of Vicksburg to the river, so the
+visitor's thoughts flow down to the great spectacular, mischievous, dominating stream</td><td align='right'><a href="#p485jpg">485</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Over the tenement roofs one catches sight of sundry other buildings
+of a more self-respecting character</td><td align='right'><a href="#p492jpg">492</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Vicksburg negroes</td><td align='right'><a href="#p497jpg">497</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>On some of the boats negro fish-markets are conducted</td><td align='right'><a href="#p504jpg">504</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The old Klein house</td><td align='right'><a href="#p512jpg">512</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Citizens go at midday to the square</td><td align='right'><a href="#p526jpg">520</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Hanging in the air above the middle of the stream</td><td align='right'><a href="#p536jpg">536</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>These small parks give Savannah the quality which differentiates it
+from all other American cities</td><td align='right'><a href="#p556jpg">556</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Thomas house, in Franklin Square</td><td align='right'><a href="#p561jpg">561</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>You will see them having tea, and dancing under the palm fronds of
+the cocoanut grove</td><td align='right'><a href="#p576jpg">576</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Cocktail hour at The Breakers</td><td align='right'><a href="#p581jpg">581</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Nowhere is the sand more like a deep warm dust of yellow gold</td><td align='right'><a href="#p588jpg">588</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The couples on the platform were "ragging"</td><td align='right'><a href="#p600jpg">600</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Harness held together by that especial Providence which watches over
+negro mending</td><td align='right'><a href="#p613jpg">613</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>It was a very jolly fair</td><td align='right'><a href="#p616jpg">616</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The mysterious old Absinthe House, founded 1799</td><td align='right'><a href="#p620jpg">620</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>St. Anthony's Garden</td><td align='right'><a href="#p632jpg">632</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Courtyard of the old Orleans Hotel</td><td align='right'><a href="#p641jpg">641</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The little lady who sits behind the desk</td><td align='right'><a href="#p656jpg">656</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The lights are always lowered at Antoine's when the spectacular Caf&eacute;
+Boulot Diabolique is served</td><td align='right'><a href="#p664jpg">664</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Passing between the brilliantly illuminated buildings, the Mardi
+Gras parades are glorious sights for children from eight to eighty years of age</td><td align='right'><a href="#p672jpg">672</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_BORDERLAND" id="THE_BORDERLAND"></a>THE BORDERLAND</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O magnet-South! O glistening, perfumed South!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and love! good and evil!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">O all dear to me!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0 smcap signature">Walt Whitman.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1>AMERICAN ADVENTURES</h1>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I<br />
+<br />
+ON JOURNEYS THROUGH THE STATES</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">On journeys through the States we start,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">... We willing learners of all, teachers of all, lovers of all.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We dwell a while in every city and town ...<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0 smcap signature">&mdash;Walt Whitman.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<p>Had my companion and I never crossed the continent
+together, had we never gone "abroad at
+home," I might have curbed my impatience at
+the beginning of our second voyage. But from the
+time we returned from our first journey, after having
+spent some months in trying, as some one put it,
+to "discover America," I felt the gnawings of excited
+appetite. The vast sweep of the country continually
+suggested to me some great delectable repast: a banquet
+spread for a hundred million guests; and having
+discovered myself unable, in the time first allotted, to devour
+more than part of it&mdash;a strip across the table, as
+it were, stretching from New York on one side to San
+Francisco on the other&mdash;I have hungered impatiently
+for more. Indeed, to be quite honest, I should like to
+try to eat it all.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Months before our actual departure for the South
+the day for leaving was appointed; days before we fixed
+upon our train; hours before I bought my ticket. And
+then, when my trunks had left the house, when my taxicab
+was ordered and my faithful battered suitcase
+stood packed to bulging in the hall, my companion, the
+Illustrator, telephoned to say that certain drawings he
+must finish before leaving were not done, that he would
+be unable to go with me that afternoon, as planned, but
+must wait until the midnight train.</p>
+
+<p>Had the first leap been a long one I should have waited
+for him, but the distance from New York to the other
+side of Mason and Dixon's Line is short, and I knew
+that he would join me on the threshold of the South next
+morning. Therefore I told him I would leave that afternoon
+as originally proposed, and gave him, in excuse,
+every reason I could think of, save the real one: namely,
+my impatience. I told him that I wished to make the
+initial trip by day to avoid the discomforts of the sleeping
+car, that I had engaged hotel accommodations for the
+night by wire, that friends were coming down to see me
+off.</p>
+
+<p>Nor were these arguments without truth. I believe
+in telling the truth. The truth is good enough for
+any one at any time&mdash;except, perhaps, when there is a
+point to be carried, and even then some vestige of it
+should, if convenient, be preserved. Thus, for example,
+it is quite true that I prefer the conversation of my fellow
+travelers, dull though it may be, to the stertorous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>
+sounds they make by night; so, too, if I had not telegraphed
+for rooms, it was merely because I had forgotten
+to&mdash;and that I remedied immediately; while as to
+the statement that friends were to see me off, that was
+absolutely and literally accurate. Friends had, indeed,
+signified their purpose to meet me at the station for last
+farewells, and had, furthermore, remarked upon the very
+slight show of enthusiasm with which I heard the news.</p>
+
+<p>The fact is, I do not like to be seen off. Least of all,
+do I like to be seen off by those who are dear to me.
+If the thing must be done, I prefer it to be done by
+strangers&mdash;committees from chambers of commerce and
+the like, who have no interest in me save the hope that I
+will live to write agreeably of their city&mdash;of the civic
+center, the fertilizer works, and the charming new abattoir.
+Seeing me off for the most practical of reasons,
+such gentlemen are invariably efficient. They provide
+an equipage, and there have even been times when, in
+the final hurried moments, they have helped me to jam
+the last things into my trunks and bags. One of them
+politely takes my suitcase, another kindly checks my
+baggage, and all in order that a third, who is usually the
+secretary of the chamber of commerce, may regale me
+with inspiring statistics concerning the population of
+"our city," the seating capacity of the auditorium, the
+number of banks, the amount of their clearings, and the
+quantity of belt buckles annually manufactured. When
+the train is ready we exchange polite expressions of regret
+at parting: expressions reminiscent of those little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
+speeches which the King of England and the Emperor
+of Germany used to make at parting in the old days before
+they found each other out and began dropping
+high explosives on each other's roofs.</p>
+
+<p>Such a committee, feeling no emotion (except perhaps
+relief) at seeing me depart, may be useful. Not so with
+friends and loved ones. Useful as they may be in the
+great crises of life, they are but disturbing elements in
+the small ones. Those who would die for us seldom
+check our trunks.</p>
+
+<p>By this I do not mean to imply that either of the two
+delightful creatures who came to the Pennsylvania
+Terminal to bid me good-by would die for me. That
+one has lived for me and that both attempt to regulate
+my conduct is more than enough. Hardly had I alighted
+from my taxicab, hardly had the redcap seized my suitcase,
+when, with sweet smiles and a twinkling of daintily
+shod feet, they came. Fancy their having arrived ahead
+of me! Fancy their having come like a pair of angels
+through the rain to see me off! Enough to turn a man's
+head! It did turn mine; and I noticed that, as they approached,
+the heads of other men were turning too.</p>
+
+<p>Flattered to befuddlement, I greeted them and started
+with them automatically in the direction of the concourse,
+forgetting entirely the driver of my taxicab, who,
+however, took in the situation and set up a great shout&mdash;whereat
+I returned hastily and overpaid him.</p>
+
+<p>This accomplished, I rejoined my companions and,
+with a radiant dark-haired girl at one elbow and a blonde,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
+equally delectable, at the other, moved across the concourse.</p>
+
+<p>How gay they were as we strolled along! How amusing
+were their prophecies of adventures destined to befall
+me in the South. Small wonder that I took no
+thought of whither I was going.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, having reached the wall at the other side
+of the great vaulted chamber, we stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"Which train, boss?" asked the porter who had meekly
+followed.</p>
+
+<p>Train? I had forgotten about trains. The mention
+of the subject distracted my attention for the moment
+from the <i>Loreleien</i>, stirred my drugged sense of duty,
+and reminded me that I had trunks to check.</p>
+
+<p>My suggestion that I leave them briefly for this purpose
+was lightly brushed aside.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no!" they cried. "We shall go with you."</p>
+
+<p>I gave in at once&mdash;one always does with them&mdash;and inquired
+of the porter the location of the baggage room.
+He looked somewhat fatigued as he replied:</p>
+
+<p>"It's away back there where we come from, boss."</p>
+
+<p>It was a long walk; in a garden, with no train to
+catch, it would have been delightful.</p>
+
+<p>"Got your tickets?" suggested the porter as we passed
+the row of grilled windows. He had evidently concluded
+that I was irresponsible.</p>
+
+<p>As I had them, we continued on our way, and presently
+achieved the baggage room, where they stood talking
+and laughing, telling me of the morning's shopping<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
+expedition&mdash;hat-hunting, they called it&mdash;in the rain. I
+fancy that we might have been there yet had not a baggageman,
+perhaps divining that I had become a little bit
+distrait and that I had business to transact, rapped
+smartly on the iron counter with his punch and demanded:</p>
+
+<p>"Baggage checked?"</p>
+
+<p>Turning, not without reluctance, from a pair of violet
+eyes and a pair of the most mysterious gray, I began
+to fumble in my pockets for the claim checks.</p>
+
+<p>"How long shall you stay in Baltimore?" asked the
+girl with the gray eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed!" I answered, still searching for the
+checks.</p>
+
+<p>"That doesn't make sense," remarked the blue-eyed
+girl as I found the checks and handed them to the baggageman.
+"She asked how long you'd stay in Baltimore,
+and you said: 'Yes, indeed.'"</p>
+
+<p>"About a week I meant to say."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't believe a week will be enough," said Gray-eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"We can't stay longer," I declared. "We must keep
+pushing on. There are so many places in the South to
+see."</p>
+
+<p>"My sister has just been there, and she&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Where to?" demanded the insistent baggageman.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Baltimore, of course," I said. Had he paid
+attention to our conversation he might have known.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You were saying," reminded Violet-eyes, "that your
+sister&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"She just came home from there, and says that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Railroad ticket!" said the baggageman with exaggerated
+patience.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p8jpg" id="p8jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p8.jpg" width="600" height="345" alt="&quot;Railroad ticket!&quot; said the baggageman with exaggerated patience. I began to feel in various pockets" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;Railroad ticket!&quot; said the baggageman with exaggerated patience. I began to feel in various pockets</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>I began again to feel in various pockets.</p>
+
+<p>"She says," continued Gray-eyes, "that she never met
+more charming people or had better things to eat. She
+loves the southern accent too."</p>
+
+<p>I don't know how the tickets got into my upper right
+vest pocket; I never carry tickets there; but that is
+where I found them.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you like it?" asked the other girl of me.</p>
+
+<p>"Like what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, the southern accent."</p>
+
+<p>"Any valuation?" the baggageman demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," I answered them both at once.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you <i>do</i>?" cried Violet-eyes, incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes; I think&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Put down the amount and sign here," the baggageman
+directed, pushing a slip toward me and placing a
+pencil in my hand.</p>
+
+<p>I obeyed. The baggageman took the slip and went off
+to a little desk. I judged that he had finished with me
+for the moment.</p>
+
+<p>"But don't you think," my fair inquisitor continued,
+"that the southern girls pile on the accent awfully, because
+they know it pleases men?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," I said. "But then, what better reason
+could they have for doing so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Listen to that!" she cried to her companion. "Did
+you ever hear such egotism?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's nothing but a man," said Gray-eyes scornfully.
+"I wouldn't be a man for&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"A dollar and eighty-five cents," declared the baggageman.</p>
+
+<p>I paid him.</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't be a man for anything!" my fair friend
+finished as we started to move off.</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't have you one," I told her, opening the
+concourse door.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Hay!</i>" shouted the baggageman. "Here's your
+ticket and your checks!"</p>
+
+<p>I returned, took them, and put them in my pocket.
+Again we proceeded upon our way. I was glad to leave
+the baggageman.</p>
+
+<p>This time the porter meant to take no chances.</p>
+
+<p>"What train, boss?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"The Congressional Limited."</p>
+
+<p>"You got jus' four minutes."</p>
+
+<p>"Goodness!" cried Gray-eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought," said Violet-eyes as we accelerated our
+pace, "that you prided yourself on always having time
+to spare?"</p>
+
+<p>"Usually I do," I answered, "but in this case&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What car?" the porter interrupted tactfully.</p>
+
+<p>Again I felt for my tickets. This time they were in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+my change pocket. I can't imagine how I came to put
+them there.</p>
+
+<p>"But in this case&mdash;<i>what</i>?" The violet eyes looked
+threatening as their owner put the question.</p>
+
+<p>"Seat seven, car three," I told the porter firmly as we
+approached the gate. Then, turning to my dangerous
+and lovely cross-examiner: "In this case I am unfortunate,
+for there is barely time to say good-by."</p>
+
+<p>There are several reasons why I don't believe in railway
+station kisses. Kisses given in public are at best
+but skimpy little things, suggesting the swift peck of a
+robin at a peach, whereas it is truer of kissing than of
+many other forms of industry that what is worth doing
+at all is worth doing well. Yet I knew that one of these
+enchantresses expected to be kissed, and that the other
+very definitely didn't. Therefore I kissed them both.</p>
+
+<p>Then I bolted toward the gate.</p>
+
+<p>"Tickets!" demanded the gateman, stopping me.</p>
+
+<p>At last I found them in the inside pocket of my overcoat.
+I don't know how they got there. I never carry
+tickets in that pocket.</p>
+
+<p>As the train began to move I looked at my watch and,
+discovering it to be three minutes fast, set it right.
+That is the sort of train the Congressional Limited is.
+A moment later we were roaring through the blackness
+of the Hudson River tunnel.</p>
+
+<p>There is something fine in the abruptness of the escape
+from New York City by the Pennsylvania Railroad.
+From the time you enter the station you are as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
+good as gone. There is no progress between the city's
+tenements, with untidy bedding airing in some windows
+and fat old slatterns leaning out from others to survey
+the sordidness and squalor of the streets below. A swift
+plunge into darkness, some thundering moments, and
+your train glides out upon the wide wastes of the New
+Jersey meadows. The city is gone. You are even in
+another State. Far, far behind, bathed in glimmering
+haze which gives them the appearance of palaces in a
+mirage, you may see the tops of New York's towering
+sky-scrapers, dwarfed yet beautified by distance. Outside
+the wide car window the advertising sign-boards
+pass to the rear in steady parade, shrieking in strong
+color of whiskies, tobaccos, pills, chewing gums, cough
+drops, flours, hams, hotels, soaps, socks, and shows.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II<br />
+<br />
+A BALTIMORE EVENING</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I felt her presence by its spell of might,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Stoop o'er me from above;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The calm, majestic presence of the night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As of the one I love.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0 smcap signature">&mdash;Longfellow.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>Before I went to Baltimore I had but two
+definite impressions connected with the place:
+the first was of a tunnel, filled with coal gas,
+through which trains pass beneath the city; the second
+was that when a southbound train left Baltimore the
+time had come to think of cleaning up, preparatory to
+reaching Washington.</p>
+
+<p>Arriving at Baltimore after dark, one gathers an impression
+of an adequate though not impressive Union
+Station from which one emerges to a district of good
+asphalted streets, the main ones wide and well lighted.
+The Baltimore street lamps are large and very brilliant
+single globes, mounted upon the tops of substantial
+metal columns. I do not remember having seen lamps
+of the same pattern in any other city. It is a good pattern,
+but there is one thing about it which is not good
+at all, and that is the way the street names are lettered
+upon the sides of the globes. Though the lettering is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>
+not large, it is large enough to be read easily in the daytime
+against the globe's white surface, but to try to
+read it at night is like trying to read some little legend
+printed upon a blinding noon-day sun. I noticed this
+particularly because I spent my first evening in wandering
+alone about the streets of Baltimore, and wished
+to keep track of my route in order that I might the more
+readily find my way back to the hotel.</p>
+
+<p>Can most travelers, I wonder, enjoy as I do a solitary
+walk, by night, through the mysterious streets of
+a strange city? Do they feel the same detached yet
+keen interest in unfamiliar highways, homes, and human
+beings, the same sense of being a wanderer from
+another world, a "messenger from Mars," a Harun-al-Rashid,
+or, if not one of these, an imaginative adventurer
+like Tartarin? Do they thrill at the sight of an
+ill-lighted street leading into a no-man's-land of menacing
+dark shadows; at the promise of a glowing window
+puncturing the blackness here or there; at the invitation
+of some open doorway behind which unilluminated
+blackness hangs, threatening and tempting? Do they
+rejoice in streets the names of which they have not
+heard before? Do they&mdash;as I do&mdash;delight in irregularity:
+in the curious forms of roofs and spires against
+the sky; in streets which run up hill or down; or which,
+instead of being straight, have jogs in them, or curves,
+or interesting intersections, at which other streets dart
+off from them obliquely, as though in a great hurry to
+get somewhere? Do they love to emerge from a street<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+which is narrow, dim, and deserted, upon one which is
+wide, bright, and crowded; and do they also like to
+leave a brilliant street and dive into the darkness of
+some somber byway? Does a long row of lights lure
+them, block by block, toward distances unknown? Are
+they tempted by the unfamiliar signs on passing street
+cars? Do they yearn to board those cars and be transported
+by them into the mystic caverns of the night?
+And when they see strangers who are evidently going
+somewhere with some special purpose, do they wish to
+follow; to find out where these beings are going, and
+why? Do they wish to trail them, let the trail lead to
+a prize fight, to a church sociable, to a fire, to a fashionable
+ball, or to the ends of the world?</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 466px;">
+<a name="p17jpg" id="p17jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p17.jpg" width="466" height="600" alt="Can most travellers, I wonder, enjoy as I do a solitary walk, by night, through
+the mysterious streets of a strange city?" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Can most travellers, I wonder, enjoy as I do a solitary walk, by night, through
+the mysterious streets of a strange city?</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>For the traveler who does not know such sensations
+and such impulses as these&mdash;who has not at times indulged
+in the joy of yielding to an inclination of at least
+mildly fantastic character&mdash;I am profoundly sorry.
+The blind themselves are not so blind as those who, seeing
+with the physical eye, lack the eye of imagination.</p>
+
+<p>Residence streets like Chase and Biddle, in the blocks
+near where they cross Charles Street, midway on its
+course between the Union Station and Mount Vernon
+Place, are at night, even more than by day, full of the
+suggestion of comfortable and settled domesticity.
+Their brick houses, standing wall to wall and close to
+the sidewalk, speak of honorable age, and, in some
+cases of a fine and ancient dignity. One fancies
+that in many of these houses the best of old ma<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>hogany
+may be found, or, if not that, then at least the
+fairly old and quite creditable furniture of the period
+of the sleigh-back bed, the haircloth-covered rosewood
+sofa, and the tall, narrow mirror between the two front
+windows of the drawing room.</p>
+
+<p>Through the glass panels of street doors and beneath
+half-drawn window shades the early-evening wayfarer
+may perceive a feeble glow as of illuminating gas turned
+low; but by ten o'clock these lights have begun to disappear,
+indicating&mdash;or so, at all events, I chose to believe&mdash;that
+certain old ladies wearing caps and black silk
+gowns with old lace fichus held in place by ancient
+cameos, have proceeded slowly, rustlingly, upstairs to
+bed, accompanied by their cats.</p>
+
+<p>At Cathedral Street, a block or two from Charles,
+Biddle Street performs a jog, dashing off at a tangent
+from its former course, while Chase Street not only jogs
+and turns at the corresponding intersection, but does
+so again, where, at the next corner, it meets at once with
+Park Avenue and Berkeley Street. After this it runs
+but a short way and dies, as though exhausted by its
+own contortions.</p>
+
+<p>Here, in a region of malformed city blocks&mdash;some of
+them pentagonal, some irregularly quadrangular, some
+wedge-shaped&mdash;Howard Street sets forth upon its way,
+running first southwest as far as Richmond Street, then
+turning south and becoming, by degrees, an important
+thoroughfare.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere near the beginning of Howard Street my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+attention was arrested by shadowy forms in a dark
+window: furniture, andirons, chinaware, and weapons
+of obsolete design: unmistakable signs of a shop in
+which antiquities were for sale. After making mental
+note of the location of this shop, I proceeded on my
+way, keeping a sharp lookout for other like establishments.
+Nor was I to be disappointed. These birds of
+a feather bear out the truth of the proverb by flocking
+together in Howard Street, as window displays, faintly
+visible, informed me.</p>
+
+<p>Since we have come naturally to the subject of antiques,
+let us pause here, under a convenient lamp-post,
+and discuss the matter further.</p>
+
+<p>Baltimore&mdash;as I found out later&mdash;is probably the
+headquarters for the South in this trade. It has at least
+one dealer of Fifth Avenue rank, located on Charles
+Street, and a number of humbler dealers in and near
+Howard Street. Among the latter, two in particular
+interested me. One of these&mdash;his name is John A.
+Williar&mdash;I have learned to trust. Not only did I make
+some purchases of him while I was in Baltimore, but
+I have even gone so far, since leaving there, as to buy
+from him by mail, accepting his assurance that some
+article which I have not seen is, nevertheless, what I
+want, and that it is "worth the price."</p>
+
+<p>At the other antique shop which interested me I made
+no purchases. The stock on hand was very large, and
+if those who exhibited it to me made no mistakes in
+differentiating between genuine antiques and copies,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
+the assortment of ancient furniture on sale in that establishment,
+when I was there, would rank among the
+great collections of the world.</p>
+
+<p>However, human judgment is not infallible, and
+antique dealers sometimes make mistakes, offering, so
+to speak, "new lamps for old." The eyesight of some
+dealers may not be so good as that of others; or perhaps
+one dealer does not know so well as another the
+difference between, say, an old English Chippendale
+chair and a New York reproduction; or again, perhaps,
+some dealers may be innocently unaware that there exist,
+in this land of ours, certain large establishments
+wherein are manufactured most extraordinary modern
+copies of the furniture of long ago. I have been in
+one of these manufactories, and have there seen chairs
+of Chippendale and Sheraton design which, though
+fresh from the workman's hands, looked older than
+the originals from which they had been plagiarized;
+also I recall a Jacobean refectory table, the legs of which
+appeared to have been eaten half away by time, but
+which had, in reality, been "antiqued" with a stiff
+wire brush. I mention this because, in my opinion, antique
+dealers have a right to know that such factories
+exist.</p>
+
+<p>What curious differences there are between the customs
+of one trade and those of another. Compare, for
+instance, the dealer in old furniture with the dealer in
+old automobiles. The latter, far from pronouncing a
+machine of which he wishes to dispose "a genuine an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>tique,"
+will assure you&mdash;and not always with a strict
+regard for truth&mdash;that it is "practically as good as
+new." Or compare the seller of antiques with the horse
+dealer. Can you imagine the latter's taking you up to
+some venerable quadruped&mdash;let alone a three-year-old&mdash;and
+discoursing upon its merits in some such manner as
+the following:</p>
+
+<p>"This is the oldest and most historic horse that has
+ever come into my possession. Just look at it, sir!
+The farmer of whom I bought it assured me that it
+was brought over by his ancestors in the <i>Mayflower</i>.
+The place where I found it was used as Washington's
+headquarters during the Revolutionary War, and it is
+known that Washington himself frequently sat on this
+very horse. It was a favorite of his. For he was a
+large man and he liked a big, comfortable, deep-seated
+horse, well braced underneath, and having strong arms,
+so that he could tilt it back comfortably against the wall,
+with its front legs off the floor, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But no! That won't do. It appears I have gotten
+mixed. However, you know what I meant to indicate.
+I merely meant to show that a horse dealer wouldn't
+talk about a horse as an antique dealer would talk about
+a chair. Even if the horse was once actually ridden by
+the Father of his Country, the dealer won't stress the
+point. You can't get him to admit that a horse has
+reached years of discretion, let alone that it is one hundred
+and forty-five years old, or so. It is this difference
+between the horse dealer and the dealer in antiques<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+which keeps us in the dark to-day as to exactly which
+horses Washington rode and which he didn't ride; although
+we know every chair he ever sat in, and every
+bed he ever slept in, and every house he ever stopped
+in, and how he is said to have caught his death of cold.</p>
+
+<p>Having thus wandered afield, let me now resume my
+nocturnal walk.</p>
+
+<p>Proceeding down Howard Street to Franklin, I
+judged by the signs I saw about me&mdash;the conglomerate
+assortment of theaters, hotels, rathskellers, bars, and
+brilliantly lighted drug stores&mdash;that here was the center
+of the city's nighttime life.</p>
+
+<p>Not far from this corner is the Academy, a very
+spacious and somewhat ancient theater, and although
+the hour was late, into the Academy I went with a ticket
+for standing room.</p>
+
+<p>Arriving during an intermission, I had a good view
+of the auditorium. It is reminiscent, in its interior
+"decoration," of the recently torn-down Wallack's Theater
+in New York. The balcony is supported, after the
+old fashion, by posts, and there are boxes the tops of
+which are draped with tasseled curtains. It is the kind
+of theater which suggests traditions, dust, and the possibility
+of fire and panic.</p>
+
+<p>After looking about me for a time, I drew from my
+pocket a pamphlet which I had picked up in the hotel,
+and began to gather information about the "Monumental
+City," as Baltimore sometimes calls itself&mdash;thereby
+misusing the word, since "monumental" means, in one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+sense, "enduring," and in another "pertaining to or
+serving as a monument": neither of which ideas it is
+intended, in this instance, to convey. What Baltimore
+intends to indicate is, not that it pertains to monuments,
+but that monuments pertain to it: that it is a city in
+which many monuments have been erected&mdash;as is indeed
+the pleasing fact. My pamphlet informed me that
+the first monument to Columbus and the first to George
+Washington were here put up, and that among the city's
+other monuments was one to Francis Scott Key. I had
+quite forgotten that it was at Baltimore that Key wrote
+the words of "The Star-Spangled Banner," and, as
+others may have done the same, it may be well here to
+recall the details.</p>
+
+<p>In 1814, after the British had burned a number of
+Government buildings in Washington, including "the
+President's palace" (as one of their officers expressed
+it), they moved on Baltimore, making an attack by land
+at North Point and a naval attack at Fort McHenry on
+Whetstone Point in the estuary of the Patapsco River&mdash;here
+practically an arm of Chesapeake Bay. Both attacks
+were repulsed. Having gone on the United States
+cartel ship <i>Minden</i> (used by the government in negotiating
+exchanges of prisoners) to intercede for his
+friend, Dr. William Beanes, of Upper Marlborough,
+Maryland, who was held captive on a British vessel, Key
+witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry from the
+deck of the <i>Minden</i>, and when he perceived "by the
+dawn's early light" that the flag still flew over the fort,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
+he was moved to write his famous poem. Later it was
+printed and set to music; it was first sung in a restaurant
+near the old Holliday Street Theater, but neither the
+restaurant nor the theater exists to-day. It is sometimes
+stated that Key was himself a prisoner, during
+the bombardment, on a British warship. That is a mistake.</p>
+
+<p>By a curious coincidence, only a few minutes after
+my pamphlet had reminded me of the origin of "The
+Star-Spangled Banner" here in Baltimore, I heard the
+air played under circumstances very different from any
+which could have been anticipated by the author of the
+poem, or the composer who set it to music.</p>
+
+<p>The entertainment at the Academy that night was
+supplied by an elaborate "show" of the burlesque variety
+known as "The Follies," and it so happened that in the
+course of this hodgepodge of color, comedy, scenery,
+song, and female anatomy, there was presented a "number"
+in which actors, garbed and frescoed with intent
+to resemble rulers of various lands, marched successively
+to the front of the stage, preceded in each instance by a
+small but carefully selected guard wearing the full-dress-uniform
+of Broadway Amazons. This uniform consists
+principally of tights and high-heeled slippers, the
+different nations being indicated, usually, by means of
+color combinations and various types of soldiers' hats.
+No arms are presented save those provided by nature.</p>
+
+<p>The King of Italy, the Emperor of Austria, the Czar,
+the Mikado, the British Monarch, the President of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>
+France, the King of the Belgians, the Kaiser (for the
+United States had not then entered the war), and, I
+think, some others, put in an appearance, each accompanied
+by his Paphian escort, his standard, and the appropriate
+national air. Apprehending that this symbolic
+travesty must, almost inevitably, end in a grand
+orgy of Yankee-Doodleism, I was impelled to flee the
+place before the thing should happen. Yet a horrid
+fascination held me there to watch the working up of
+"patriotic" sentiment by the old, cheap, stage tricks.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, of course, the supreme moment came.
+When all the potentates had taken their positions, right
+and left, with their silk-limbed soldiery in double ranks
+behind them, there came into view upstage a squad of
+little white-clad female naval officers, each, according to
+my recollection, carrying the Stars and Stripes. As
+these marched forward and deployed as skirmishers before
+the footlights, the orchestra struck up "The Star-Spangled
+Banner," fortissimo, and with a liberal sounding
+of the brasses. Upon this appeared at the back a
+counterfeit President of the United States, guarded on
+either side by a female militia&mdash;or were they perhaps
+secret-service agents?&mdash;in striking uniforms consisting
+of pink fleshings partially draped with thin black lace.</p>
+
+<p>As this incongruous parade proceeded to the footlights,
+American flags came into evidence, and, though
+I forget whether or not Columbia appeared, I recollect
+that a beautiful young woman, habited in what appeared
+to be a light pink union suit of unexceptionable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+cut and material, appeared above the head of the pseudo-chief
+executive, suspended at the end of a wire. Never
+having heard that it was White House etiquette to hang
+young ladies on wires above the presidential head, I
+consulted my program and thereby learned that this
+young lady represented that species of poultry so popular
+always with the late Secretary of State, Mr. Bryan,
+and so popular also at one time with the President himself:
+namely, the Dove of Peace.</p>
+
+<p>The applause was thunderous. At the sound of "The
+Star-Spangled Banner" a few members of the audience
+arose to their feet; others soon followed&mdash;some of them
+apparently with reluctance&mdash;until at last the entire house
+had risen. Meanwhile the members of the company
+lined up before the footlights: the mock president smirking
+at the center, the half-clad girls posing, the pink
+young lady dangling above, the band blaring, the Stars
+and Stripes awave. It was a scene, in all, about as conducive
+to genuine or creditable national pride as would
+be the scene of a debauch in some fabulous harem.</p>
+
+<p>The difference between stupidity and satire lies, not
+infrequently, in the intent with which a thing is done.
+Presented without essential change upon the stage of a
+music hall in some foreign land, the scene just described
+would, at that time, when we were playing a timid part
+amongst the nations, have been accepted, not as a glorification
+of the United States, but as having a precisely
+opposite significance. It would have been taken for
+burlesque; burlesque upon our country, our President,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
+our national spirit, our peace policy, our army, and perhaps
+also upon our women&mdash;and insulting burlesque at
+that.</p>
+
+<p>Some years since, it was found necessary to pass a law
+prohibiting the use of the flag for advertising purposes.
+This law should be amended to protect it also from
+the even more sordid and vulgarizing associations to
+which it is not infrequently submitted on the American
+musical-comedy stage.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In the morning, before I was awake, my companion
+arrived at the hotel, and, going to his room, opened the
+door connecting it with mine. Coming out of my slumber
+with that curious and not altogether pleasant sense
+of being stared at, I found his eyes fixed upon me, and
+noticed immediately about him the air of virtuous superiority
+which is assumed by all who have risen early,
+whether they have done so by choice or have been shaken
+awake.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p24jpg" id="p24jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p24.jpg" width="600" height="393" alt="Coming out of my slumber with the curious and unpleasant sense of being stared at, I found his eyes fixed upon me" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Coming out of my slumber with the curious and unpleasant sense of being stared at, I found his eyes fixed upon me</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Hello," I said. "Had breakfast?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I thought we could breakfast together if you
+felt like getting up."</p>
+
+<p>Though the phraseology of this remark was unexceptionable,
+I knew what it meant. What it really
+meant was: "Shame on you, lying there so lazy after
+sunup! Look at <i>me</i>, all dressed and ready to begin!"</p>
+
+<p>I arose at once.</p>
+
+<p>For all that I don't like to get up early, it recalled old
+times, and was very pleasant, to be away with him again<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
+upon our travels; to be in a strange city and a strange
+hotel, preparing to set forth on explorations. For he
+is the best, the most charming, the most observant of
+companions, and also one of the most patient.</p>
+
+<p>That is one of his greatest qualities&mdash;his patience.
+Throughout our other trip he always kept on being patient
+with me, no matter what I did. Many a time
+instead of pushing me down an elevator shaft, drowning
+me in my bath, or coming in at night and smothering
+me with a pillow, he has merely sighed, dropped
+into a chair, and sat there shaking his head and staring
+at me with a melancholy, ruminative, hopeless expression&mdash;such
+an expression as may come into the face of
+a dumb man when he looks at a waiter who has spilled
+an oyster cocktail on him.</p>
+
+<p>All this is good for me. It has a chastening effect.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore in a spirit happy yet not exuberant, eager
+yet controlled, hopeful yet a little bit afraid, I dressed
+myself hurriedly, breakfasted with him (eating ham
+and eggs because he approves of ham and eggs), and
+after breakfast set out in his society to obtain what&mdash;despite
+my walk of the night before&mdash;I felt was not
+alone my first real view of Baltimore, but my first
+glimpse over the threshold of the South: into the land
+of aristocracy and hospitality, of mules and mammies,
+of plantations, porticos, and proud, flirtatious belles, of
+colonels, cotton, chivalry, and colored cooking.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III<br />
+<br />
+WHERE THE CLIMATES MEET</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Here, where the climates meet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That each may make the other's lack complete&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0 smcap signature">&mdash;Sidney Lanier.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>Because Baltimore was built, like Rome, on
+seven hills, and because trains run under it instead
+of through, the passing traveler sees but
+little of the city, his view from the train window being
+restricted first to a suburban district, then to a black
+tunnel, then to a glimpse upward from the railway
+cut, in which the station stands. These facts, I think,
+combine to leave upon his mind an impression which,
+if not actually unfavorable, is at least negative; for certainly
+he has obtained no just idea of the metropolis of
+Maryland.</p>
+
+<p>Let it be declared at the outset, then, that Baltimore
+is not in any sense to be regarded as a suburb
+of Washington. Indeed, considering the two merely as
+cities situated side by side, and eliminating the highly
+specialized features of Washington, Baltimore becomes,
+according to the standards by which American cities
+are usually compared, the more important city of the
+two, being greater both in population and in commerce.
+In this aspect Baltimore may, perhaps, be pictured as the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
+commercial half of Washington. And while Washington,
+as capital of the United States, has certain physical
+and cosmopolitan advantages, not only over Baltimore,
+but over every other city on this continent, it must
+not be forgotten that, upon the other hand, every other
+city has one vast advantage over Washington, namely,
+a comparative freedom from politicians. To be sure,
+Congress did once move over to Baltimore and sit there
+for several weeks, but that was in 1776, when the British
+approached the Delaware in the days before the pork
+barrel was invented.</p>
+
+<p>As a city Baltimore has marked characteristics.
+Though south of Mason and Dixon's Line, and though
+sometimes referred to as the "metropolis of the South"
+(as is New Orleans also), it is in character neither a city
+entirely northern nor entirely southern, but one which
+partakes of the qualities of both; where, in the words
+of Sidney Lanier, "the climates meet," and where northern
+and southern thought and custom meet, as well.
+This has long been the case. Thus, although slaves
+were held in Baltimore before the Civil War, a strong
+abolitionist society was formed there during Washington's
+first Administration, and the sentiment of the city
+was thereafter divided on the slavery question. Thus
+also, while the two candidates of the divided Democratic
+party who ran against Lincoln for the presidency in
+1860 were nominated at Baltimore, Lincoln himself was
+nominated there by the Union-Republican party in 1864.</p>
+
+<p>Speaking of the blending of North and South in Balti<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>more,
+you will, of course, remember that the Sixth
+Massachusetts Regiment was attacked by a mob as it
+passed through the city on the way to the Civil War.
+The regiment arrived in Baltimore at the old President
+Street Station, which was then the main station of the
+Pennsylvania Railroad, and which, now used as a freight
+station, looks like an old war-time woodcut out of
+<i>Harper's Weekly</i>. It was the custom in those days
+to hitch horses to passenger coaches which were going
+through and draw them across town to the Baltimore &amp;
+Ohio Station; but when it was attempted thus to transport
+the northern troops a mob gathered and blocked
+the Pratt Street bridge over Jones's Falls, forcing the
+soldiers to leave the cars and march through Pratt
+Street, along the water front, where they were attacked.
+It is, however, a noteworthy fact that Mayor Brown
+of Baltimore bravely preceded the troops and attempted
+to stop the rioting. A few days later the city was occupied
+by northern troops, and the warship <i>Harriet Lane</i>
+anchored at a point off Calvert Street, whence her guns
+commanded the business part of town. After this
+there was no more serious trouble. Moreover, it will
+be remembered that though Maryland was represented
+by regiments in both armies, the State, torn as it
+was by conflicting feeling, nevertheless held to the
+Union.</p>
+
+<p>A pretty sequel to the historic attack on the Sixth
+Massachusetts occurred when the same regiment passed
+through Baltimore in 1898, on its way to the Spanish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
+War. On this occasion it was "attacked" again in the
+streets of the city, but the missiles thrown, instead of
+paving-stones and bricks, were flowers.</p>
+
+<p>Continuing the category of contrasts, one may observe
+that while the general appearance of Baltimore
+suggests a northern city rather than a southern one&mdash;Philadelphia,
+for instance, rather than Richmond&mdash;Baltimore
+society is strongly flavored with the tradition and
+the soft pronunciation of the South; particularly of
+Virginia and the "Eastern Shore."</p>
+
+<p>So, too, the city's position on the border line is reflected
+in its handling of the negro. Of American cities,
+Washington has the largest negro population, 94,446,
+New York and New Orleans follow with almost as
+many, and Baltimore comes fourth with 84,749, according
+to the last census. New York has one negro to
+every fifty-one whites, Philadelphia one to every seventeen
+whites, Baltimore one to every six, Washington a
+negro to every two and a half whites, and Richmond not
+quite two whites to every negro. But, although Baltimore
+follows southern practice in maintaining separate
+schools for negro children, and in segregating negro
+residences to certain blocks, she follows northern practice
+in casting a considerable negro vote at elections, and
+also in not providing separate seats for negroes in her
+street cars.</p>
+
+<p>Have you ever noticed how cities sometimes seem
+to have their own especial colors? Paris is white and
+green&mdash;even more so, I think, than Washington. Chi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>cago
+is gray; so is London usually, though I have seen it
+buff at the beginning of a heavy fog. New York used
+to be a brown sandstone city, but is now turning to one
+of cream-colored brick and tile; Naples is brilliant with
+pink and blue and green and white and yellow; while as
+for Baltimore, her old houses and her new are, as Baedeker
+puts it, of "cheerful red brick"&mdash;not always, of
+course, but often enough to establish the color of red
+brick as the city's predominating hue. And with the
+red-brick houses&mdash;particularly the older ones&mdash;go clean
+white marble steps, on the bottom one of which, at the
+side, may usually be found an old-fashioned iron
+"scraper," doubtless left over from the time (not very
+long ago) when the city pavements had not reached their
+present excellence.</p>
+
+<p>The color of red brick is not confined to the center of
+the city, but spreads to the suburbs, fashionable and
+unfashionable. At one margin of the town I was shown
+solid blocks of pleasant red-brick houses which, I was
+told, were occupied by workmen and their families, and
+were to be had at a rental of from ten to twenty dollars
+a month. For though Baltimore has a lower East
+Side which, like the lower East Side of New York, encompasses
+the Ghetto and Italian quarter, she has not
+tenements in the New York sense; one sees no tall, cheap
+flat houses draped with fire escapes and built to make
+herding places for the poor. Many of the houses in
+this section are instead the former homes of fashionables
+who have moved to other quarters of the city<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>&mdash;handsome
+old homesteads with here and there a lovely,
+though battered, doorway sadly reminiscent of an earlier
+elegance. So, also, red brick permeates the prosperous
+suburbs, such as Roland Park and Guilford, where, in a
+sweetly rolling country which lends itself to the arrangement
+of graceful winding roads and softly contoured
+plantings, stand quantities of pleasing homes,
+lately built, many of them colonial houses of red brick.
+Indeed, it struck us that the only parts of Baltimore
+in which red brick was not the dominant note were the
+downtown business section and Mount Vernon Place.</p>
+
+<p>Mount Vernon Place is the center of Baltimore.
+Everything begins there, including Baedeker, who, in
+his little red book, gives it the asterisk of his approval,
+says that it "suggests Paris in its tasteful monuments
+and surrounding buildings," and recommends the view
+from the top of the Washington Monument.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p32jpg" id="p32jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p32.jpg" width="600" height="393" alt="Mount Vernon Place is the centre of Baltimore. Everything begins there, including Baedeker" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Mount Vernon Place is the centre of Baltimore. Everything begins there, including Baedeker</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>This monument, standing upon an eminence at the
+point where Charles and Monument Streets would cross
+each other were not their courses interrupted by the
+pleasing parked space of Mount Vernon Place, is a
+gray stone column, surmounted by a figure of Washington&mdash;or,
+rather, by the point of a lightning rod under
+which the figure stands. Other monuments are known
+as this monument or that, but when "the monument"
+is spoken of, the Washington Monument is inevitably
+meant. This is quite natural, for it is not only the most
+simple and picturesque old monument in Baltimore, but
+also the largest, the oldest, and the most conspicuous:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
+its proud head, rising high in air, having for nearly
+a century dominated the city. One catches glimpses of
+it down this street or that, or sees it from afar over the
+housetops; and sometimes, when the column is concealed
+from view by intervening buildings, and only the surmounting
+statue shows above them, one is struck by a
+sudden apparition of the Father of his Country strolling
+fantastically upon some distant roof.</p>
+
+<p>Though it may be true that Mount Vernon Place,
+with its symmetrical parked center and its admirable
+bronzes (several of them by Bary&eacute;), suggests Paris,
+and though it is certainly true that it is more like a
+Parisian square than a London square, nevertheless it is
+in reality an American square&mdash;perhaps the finest of its
+kind in the United States. If it were Parisian, it would
+have more trees and the surrounding buildings would be
+uniform in color and in cornice height. It is perhaps
+as much like Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia as any
+other, and that resemblance is of the slightest, for Mount
+Vernon Place has a quality altogether its own. It
+has no skyscrapers or semi-skyscrapers to throw it out
+of balance; and though the structures which surround
+it are of white stone, brown stone, and red brick, and of
+anything but homogeneous architecture, nevertheless a
+comparative uniformity of height, a universal solidity
+of construction, and a general grace about them, combine
+to give the Place an air of equilibrium and dignity
+and elegance.</p>
+
+<p>Including the Washington Monument, Baltimore has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
+three lofty landmarks, likely to be particularly noticed
+by the roving visitor. Of the remaining two, one is the
+old brick shot-tower in the lower part of town, which
+legend tells us was put up without the use of scaffolding
+nearly a hundred years ago; while the other, a more
+modern, if less modest structure, proudly surmounts a
+large commercial building and is itself capped by the
+gigantic effigy of a bottle. This bottle is very conspicuous
+because of its emplacement, because it revolves,
+and because it is illuminated at night. You can never
+get away from it.</p>
+
+<p>One evening I asked a man what the bottle meant up
+there.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a memorial to Emerson," he told me.</p>
+
+<p>"Are they so fond of Emerson down here?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know as they are so all-fired fond of him,"
+he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"But they <i>must</i> be fond of him to put up such a big
+memorial. Why, even in Boston, where he was born,
+they have no such memorial as that."</p>
+
+<p>"He put it up himself," said the man.</p>
+
+<p>That struck me as strange. It seemed somehow out
+of character with the great philosopher. Also, I could
+not see why, if he did wish to raise a memorial to himself,
+he had elected to fashion it in the form of a bottle
+and put it on top of an office building.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose there is some sort of symbolism about it?"
+I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Now you got it," approved the man.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I gazed at the tower for a while in thought. Then
+I said:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you suppose that Emerson meant something like
+this: that human life or, indeed, the soul, may be likened
+to the contents of a bottle; that day by day we use up
+some portion of the contents&mdash;call it, if you like, the
+nectar of existence&mdash;until the fluid of life runs low, and
+at last is gone entirely, leaving only the husk, as it were&mdash;or,
+to make the metaphor more perfect, the shell, or
+empty bottle: the container of what Emerson himself
+called, if I recollect correctly, 'the soul that maketh all'&mdash;do
+you suppose he meant to teach us some such thing
+as that?"</p>
+
+<p>The man looked a little confused by this deep and
+beautiful thought.</p>
+
+<p>"He <i>might</i> of meant that," he said, somewhat dubiously.
+"But they tell me Captain Emerson's a practical
+man, and I reckon what he <i>mainly</i> meant was that he
+made his money out of this-here Bromo Seltzer, and he
+was darn glad of it, so he thought he'd put him up a big
+Bromo Seltzer bottle as a kind of cross between a monument
+and an ad."</p>
+
+<p>If the bottle tower represents certain modern concepts
+of what is suitable in architecture, it is nevertheless
+pleasant to record the fact that many honorable
+old buildings&mdash;most of them residences&mdash;survive in
+Baltimore, and that, because of their survival, the city
+looks older than New York and fully as old as either
+Philadelphia or Boston. But in this, appearances are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+misleading, for New York and Boston were a century
+old, and Philadelphia half a century, when Baltimore
+was first laid out as a town. Efforts to start a settlement
+near the city's present site were, it is true, being
+made before William Penn and his Quakers established
+Philadelphia, but a letter written in 1687 by Charles Calvert,
+third Baron Baltimore, explains that: "The people
+there [are] not affecting to build nere each other but
+soe as to have their houses nere the watters for conveniencye
+of trade and their lands on each side of and
+behynde their houses, by which it happens that in most
+places there are not fifty houses in the space of thirty
+myles."<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<p>The difficulty experienced by the Barons Baltimore,
+Lords Proprietary of Maryland, in building up communities
+in their demesne was not a local problem, but one
+which confronted those interested in the development
+of the entire portion of this continent now occupied by
+the Southern States. Generally speaking, towns came
+into being more slowly in the South than in the North,
+and it seems probable that one of the principal reasons
+for this may be found in the fact that settlers throughout
+the South lived generally at peace with the Indians,
+whereas the northern settlers were obliged to congregate
+in towns for mutual protection. Thus, in colonial
+days, while the many cities of New York and New England
+were coming into being, the South was developing
+its vast and isolated plantations. Farms on the St.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
+Lawrence River and on the Detroit River, where the
+French were settling, were very narrow and very deep,
+the idea being to range the houses close together on the
+river front; but on such rivers as the Potomac, the Rappahannock
+and the James, no element of early fear is to
+be traced in the form of the broad baronial plantations.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, when Baltimore began at last to grow,
+she became a prodigy, not only among American cities,
+but among the cities of the world. Her first town directory
+was published in 1796, and she began the next
+year as an incorporated city, with a mayor, a population
+of about twenty thousand, and a curiously assorted early
+history containing such odd items as that the first umbrella
+carried in the United States was brought from
+India and unfurled in Baltimore in 1772; that the town
+had for some time possessed such other useful articles
+as a fire engine, a brick theater, a newspaper, and
+policemen; that the streets were lighted with oil lamps;
+that such proud signs of metropolitanism as riot and epidemic
+were not unknown; that before the Revolution
+bachelors were taxed for the benefit of his Britannic
+Majesty; and that at fair time the "lid was off," and the
+citizen or visitor who wished to get himself arrested
+must needs be diligent indeed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV<br />
+<br />
+TRIUMPHANT DEFEAT</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0 smcap signature">&mdash;Montaigne.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>Following the incorporation of the city, Baltimore
+grew much as Chicago was destined to
+grow more than a century later; within less than
+thirty years, when Chicago was a tiny village, Baltimore
+had become the third city in the United States: a
+city of wealthy merchants engaged in an extensive foreign
+trade; for in those days there was an American
+merchant marine, and the swift, rakish Baltimore clippers
+were known the seven seas over.</p>
+
+<p>The story of modern Baltimore is entirely unrelated
+to the city's early history. It consists in a simple but
+inspiring record of regeneration springing from disaster.
+It is the story of Chicago, of San Francisco, of
+Galveston, of Dayton, and of many a smaller town: a
+cataclysm, a few days of despair, a return of courage,
+and another beginning.</p>
+
+<p>Imagine yourself being tucked into bed one night by
+your valet or your maid, as the case may be, calm in the
+feeling that all was secure: that your business was returning
+a handsome income, that your stocks and bonds<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>
+were safe in the strong box, that the prosperity of your
+descendants was assured. Then imagine ruin coming
+like lightning in the night. In the morning you are
+poor. Your business, your investments, your very
+hopes, are gone. Everything is wiped out. The labor
+of a lifetime must be begun again.</p>
+
+<p>Such an experience was that of Baltimore in the fire
+of 1904.</p>
+
+<p>On the sickening morning following the conflagration
+two Baltimore men, friends of mine, walked down
+Charles Street to a point as near the ruined region as it
+was possible to go.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said one, surveying the smoking crater, "what
+do you think of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Baltimore is gone," was the response. "We are off
+the map."</p>
+
+<p>How many citizens of Chicago, of San Francisco, of
+Galveston, of Dayton have known the anguish of that
+first aftermath of hopelessness! How many citizens of
+Baltimore knew it that day! And yet how bravely
+and with what magic swiftness have these cities risen
+from their ruins! Was not Rome burned? Was
+not London? And is it not, then, time for men to learn
+from the history of other men and other cities that disaster
+does not spell the end, but is oftentimes another
+name for opportunity?</p>
+
+<p>Always, after disaster to a city, come improvements,
+but because disaster not only cleans the slate but simultaneously
+stuns the mind, a portion of the opportunity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>
+is invariably lost. The task of rebuilding, of widening
+a few streets, looks large enough to him who stands
+amidst destruction&mdash;and there, consequently, improvement
+usually stops. That is why the downtown boulevard
+system of Chicago has yet to be completed, in spite
+of the fact that it might with little difficulty have been
+completed after the Chicago fire (although it is only
+just to add that city planning was almost an unknown
+art in America at that time); and that also is why the
+hills of San Francisco are not terraced, as it was suggested
+they should be after the fire, but remain to-day
+inaccessible to frontal attack by even the maddest mountain
+goat of a taxi driver.</p>
+
+<p>These matters are not mentioned in the way of criticism:
+I have only admiration for the devastated cities
+and for those who built them up again. I call attention
+to lost opportunities with something like reluctance,
+and only in the wish to emphasize the fact that our
+crippled or destroyed cities do invariably rise again, and
+that if the next American city to sustain disaster shall
+but have this simple lesson learned in advance, it may
+thereby register a new high mark in municipal intelligence
+and a new record among the rebuilt cities, by
+making more sweet than any other city ever made them,
+the uses of adversity.</p>
+
+<p>The fire of 1904 found Baltimore a town of narrow
+highways, old buildings, bad pavements, and open gutter
+drains. The streets were laid in what is known as
+"southern cobble," which is the next thing to no pave<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>ment
+at all, being made of irregular stones, large and
+small, laid in the dirt and tamped down. For bumps
+and ruts there is no pavement in the world to be compared
+with it. There were no city sewers. Outside a
+few affluent neighborhoods, the citizens of which clubbed
+together to build private sewers, the cesspool was in general
+use, while domestic drainage emptied into the roadside
+gutters. These were made passable, at crossings,
+by stepping stones, about the bases of which passed interesting
+armadas of potato peelings, floating, upon
+wash days, in water having the fine Mediterranean hue
+which comes from diluted blueing. Everybody seemed
+to find the entire system adequate; for, it was argued,
+the hilly contours of the city caused the drainage quickly
+to be carried off, while as for typhoid and mosquitoes&mdash;well,
+there had always been typhoid and mosquitoes, just
+as there had always been these open gutters. It was all
+quite good enough.</p>
+
+<p>Then the fire.</p>
+
+<p>And then the upbuilding of the city&mdash;not only of the
+acres and acres comprising the burned section, in which
+streets were widened and skyscrapers arose where fire-traps
+had been&mdash;but outside the fire zone, where sewers
+were put down and pavements laid. Nor was the change
+merely physical. With the old buildings, the old spirit
+of <i>laissez faire</i> went up in smoke, and in the embers a
+municipal conscience was born. Almost as though by
+the light of the flames which engulfed it, the city began
+to see itself as it had never seen itself before: to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>
+take account of stock, to plan broadly for the future.</p>
+
+<p>Nor has the new-born spirit died. Only last year an
+extensive red-light district was closed effectively and
+once for all. Baltimore is to-day free from flagrant
+commercialized vice. And if not quite all the old cobble
+pavements and open-gutter drains have been eliminated,
+there are but few of them left&mdash;left almost as though for
+purposes of contrast&mdash;and the Baltimorean who takes
+you to the Ghetto and shows you these ancient remnants
+may immediately thereafter escort you to the Fallsway,
+where the other side of the picture is presented.</p>
+
+<p>The Fallsway is a brand-new boulevard of pleasing
+aspect, the peculiar feature of which is that it is nothing
+more or less than a cover over the top of Jones's Falls,
+which figured in the early history of Baltimore as a
+water course, but which later came to figure as a great,
+open, trunk sewer.</p>
+
+<p>Every one in Baltimore is proud of the Fallsway, but
+particularly so are the city engineers who carried the
+work through. While in Baltimore I had the pleasure
+of meeting one of these gentlemen, and I can assure you
+that no young head of a family was ever more delighted
+with his new cottage in a suburb, his wife, his children,
+his garden, and his collie puppy, than was this engineer
+with his boulevard sewer. Like a lover, he carried pictures
+of it in his pocket, and like a lover he would assure
+you that it was "not like other sewers." Nor could
+he speak of it without beginning to wish to take you out
+to see it&mdash;not merely for a motor ride along the top of it,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>
+either. No, his hospitality did not stop there. When
+<i>he</i> invited you to a sewer he invited you <i>in</i>. And if you
+went in with him, no one could make you come out until
+you wanted to.</p>
+
+<p>As he told my companion and me of the three great
+tubes, the walks beside them, the conduits for gas and
+electricity, and all the other wonders of the place, I began
+to wish that we might go with him, for, though we
+have been to a good many places together, this was
+something new: it was the first time we had ever been
+invited to drop into a sewer and make ourselves as much
+at home as though we lived there.</p>
+
+<p>My companion, however, seemed unsympathetic to the
+project.</p>
+
+<p>"Sewers, you know," he said, when I taxed him with
+indifference, "have come to have a very definite place in
+both the literary and the graphic arts. How do you propose
+to treat it?"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"When you write about it: Are you going to write
+about it as a realist, a mystic, or a romanticist?"</p>
+
+<p>I said I didn't know.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, a man who is going to write of a sewer <i>ought</i>
+to know," he told me severely. "You're not up to
+sewers yet. They're too big for you. If you take my
+advice you'll keep out of the sewers for the present and
+stick to the gutters."</p>
+
+<p>So I did.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V<br />
+<br />
+TERRAPIN AND THINGS</h2>
+
+
+<p>Baltimore society has a Maryland and Virginia
+base, but is seasoned with families of
+Acadian descent, and with others descended from
+the Pennsylvania Dutch&mdash;those "Dutch" who, by the
+way, are not Dutch at all, being of Saxon and Bavarian
+extraction. Many Virginians settled in Baltimore after
+the war, and it may be in part owing to this fact, that
+fox-hunting with horse and hound, as practised for
+three centuries past in England, and for nearly two
+centuries by Virginia's country gentlemen, is carried on
+extensively in the neighborhood of Baltimore, by the
+Green Spring Valley Hunt Club, the Elkridge Fox-Hunting
+Club and some others&mdash;which brings me to the
+subject of clubs in general.</p>
+
+<p>The Baltimore Country Club, at Roland Park, just
+beyond the city limits, has a large, well-set clubhouse, an
+active membership, and charming rolling golf links, one
+peculiarity of the course being that a part of the city's
+water-supply system has been utilized for hazards.</p>
+
+<p>The two characteristic clubs of the city itself, the
+Maryland Club and the Baltimore Club, are known the
+country over. The former occupies a position in Baltimore
+comparable with that of the Union Club in New<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
+York, the Chicago Club in Chicago, or the Pacific Union
+in San Francisco, and has to its credit at least one
+famous dish: Terrapin, Maryland Club Style.</p>
+
+<p>The Baltimore Club is used by a younger group of
+men and has a particularly pleasant home in a large
+mansion, formerly the residence of the Abell family,
+long known in connection with that noteworthy old sheet,
+the Baltimore "Sun," which, it may be remarked in passing,
+is curiously referred to by many Baltimoreans, not
+as the "Sun," but as the "Sun-paper."</p>
+
+<p>This odd item reminds me of another: In the Balti-telephone
+book I chanced to notice under the letter "F"
+the entry:</p>
+
+<p>Fisher, Frank, of J.</p>
+
+<p>Upon inquiry I learned that the significance of this
+was that, there being more than one gentleman of the
+name of Frank Fisher in the city, this Mr. Frank Fisher
+added "of J" to his name (meaning "son of John") for
+purposes of differentiation. I was informed further
+that this custom is not uncommon in Baltimore, in cases
+where a name is duplicated, and I was shown another
+example: that of Mr. John Fyfe Symington
+of S.</p>
+
+<p>A typically southern institution of long standing, and
+highly characteristic of the social life of Baltimore, is
+the Bachelors' Cotillion, one of the oldest dancing clubs
+in the country. During the season this organization
+gives a series of some half-dozen balls which are the
+events of the fashionable year.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The organization and general character of the Bachelors'
+Cotillion is not unlike that of the celebrated St.
+Cecilia Society of Charleston. The cost of membership
+is so slight that almost any eligible young man
+can easily afford it. There is, however, a long waiting-list.
+The club is controlled by a board of governors,
+the members of which hold office for life, and who, instead
+of being elected by the organization are selected
+<i>in camera</i> by the board itself, when vacancies occur.</p>
+
+<p>The balls given by this society are known as the Monday
+Germans, and at these balls, which are held in the
+Lyric Theater, the city's d&eacute;butantes are presented to
+society. As in all southern cities, much is made of
+d&eacute;butantes in Baltimore. On the occasion of their first
+Monday German all their friends send them flowers,
+and they appear flower-laden at the ball, followed by
+their relatives who are freighted down with their darlings'
+superfluous bouquets. The modern steps are
+danced at these balls, but there are usually a few cotillion
+figures, albeit without "favors." And perhaps the best
+part of it all is that the first ball of the season, and the
+Christmas ball, end at one o'clock, and that all the others
+end at midnight. That seems to me a humane arrangement,
+although the opinion may only signify that I am
+growing old.</p>
+
+<p>Another very characteristic phase of Baltimore life,
+and of southern life&mdash;at least in many cities&mdash;is that,
+instead of dealing with the baker, and the grocer, and
+the fish-market man around the corner, all Baltimore<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+women go to the great market-sheds and do their own
+selecting under what amounts to one great roof.</p>
+
+<p>The Lexington Market, to which my companion and
+I had the good fortune to be taken by a Baltimore lady,
+is comparable, in its picturesqueness with <i>Les Halles</i> of
+Paris, or the fascinating market in Seattle, where the
+Japanese pile up their fresh vegetables with such charming
+show of taste. The great sheds cover three long
+blocks, and in the countless stall-like shops which they
+contain may be found everything for the table, including
+flowers to trim it and after-dinner sweets. I doubt
+that any northern housewife knows such a market or
+such a profusion of comestibles. In one stall may be
+purchased meat, in the next vegetables, in the next fish,
+in the next bread and cake, in the next butter and buttermilk,
+in the next fruit, or game, or flowers, or&mdash;at Christmas
+time&mdash;tree trimmings. These stalls, with their contents,
+are duplicated over and over again; and if your
+fair guide be shopping for a dinner party, at which two
+men from out of town are to be initiated into the delights
+of the Baltimore cuisine, she may order up the
+costly and aristocratic <i>Malacoclemmys</i>, the diamond-back
+terrapin, sacred in Baltimore as is the Sacred Cod
+himself in Boston.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 434px;">
+<a name="p48jpg" id="p48jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p48.jpg" width="434" height="469" alt="If she is shopping for a dinner party, she may order the costly and aristocratic
+diamond-back terrapin, sacred in Baltimore as is the Sacred Cod in Boston" title="" />
+<span class="caption">If she is shopping for a dinner party, she may order the costly and aristocratic
+diamond-back terrapin, sacred in Baltimore as is the Sacred Cod in Boston</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The admirable encyclopedia of Messrs. Funk &amp; Wagnall's
+informs me that "the diamond-back salt-water terrapin ...
+is caught in salt marshes along the coast
+from New England to Texas, <i>the finest being those of
+the Massachusetts and the northern coasts</i>." The italics<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>
+are mine; and upon the italicized passage I expect the
+mayor and town council of Baltimore, or even the
+Government of the State of Maryland, to proceed against
+Messrs. Funk &amp; Wagnalls, whose valuable volumes
+should forthwith be placed upon the State's <i>index expurgatorius</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Of a marketman I obtained the following lore concerning
+the tortoise of the terrapin species:</p>
+
+<p>In the Baltimore markets four kinds of terrapin are
+sold&mdash;not counting muskrat, which is sometimes disguised
+with sauce and sherry and served as a substitute.
+The cheapest and toughest terrapin is known as the
+"slider." Slightly superior to the "slider" is the "fat-back,"
+measuring, usually, about nine or ten inches in
+length, and costing, at retail, fifty cents to a dollar, according
+to season and demand. Somewhat better than
+the "fat-back," but of about the same size and cost, is
+the "golden-stripe" terrapin; but all these are the merest
+poor relations of the diamond-back. Some diamond-back
+terrapin are supplied for the Baltimore market
+from North Carolina, but these, my marketman assured
+me, are inferior to those of Chesapeake Bay. (Everything
+in, or from, North Carolina seems to be inferior,
+according to the people of the other Southern States.)</p>
+
+<p>Although there is a closed season for terrapin, the
+value of the diamond-back causes him to be relentlessly
+hunted during the open season, with the result that, like
+the delectable lobster, he is passing. As the foolish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
+lobster-fishermen of northern New England are killing
+the goose&mdash;or, rather, the crustacean&mdash;that lays the
+golden eggs, so are the terrapin hunters of the Chesapeake.
+Two or three decades ago, lobster and terrapin
+alike were eaten in the regions of their abundance as
+cheap food. One Baltimore lady told me that her
+father's slaves, on an Eastern Shore plantation, used to
+eat terrapin. Yet behold the cost of the precious diamond-back
+to-day! In his smaller sizes, according to
+my marketman, he is worth about a dollar an inch,
+while when grown to fair proportions he costs as much
+as a railroad ticket from Baltimore to Chicago. And
+for my part I would about as soon eat the ticket as the
+terrapin.</p>
+
+<p>Of a number of other odd items which help to give
+Baltimore distinct flavor I find the following in my notebooks:</p>
+
+<p>There are good street railways; also 'bus lines operated
+by the United Railways Company. Under the
+terms of its charter this company was originally obliged
+to turn over to the city thirteen per cent. of its gross income,
+to be expended upon the upkeep of parks. Of
+late years the amount has been reduced to nine per cent.
+The parks are admirable.</p>
+
+<p>Freight rates from the west to Baltimore are, I am
+informed, enough lower than freight rates to New York,
+Boston, or Philadelphia, to give Baltimore a decided advantage
+as a point of export. Also she is admirably<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+situated as to sources of coal supply. (I do not care
+much for the last two items, myself, but put them in to
+please the Chamber of Commerce.)</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It is the habit of my companion and myself, when
+visiting strange cities, to ask for interesting eating-places
+of one sort or another. In Baltimore there seems
+to be no choice but to take meals in hotels&mdash;unless one
+may wish to go to the Dutch Tea room or the Woman's
+Exchange for a shoppers' lunch, and to see (in the latter
+establishment) great numbers of ladies sitting upon
+tall stools and eating at a lunch-counter&mdash;a somewhat
+curious spectacle, perhaps, but neither pleasing to the
+eye nor thrilling to the senses.</p>
+
+<p>The nearest thing to "character" which I found in a
+Baltimore eating-place was at an establishment known
+as Kelly's Oyster House, a place in a dark quarter of the
+town. It had the all-night look about it, and the negro
+waiters showed themselves not unacquainted with certain
+of the city's gilded youth. Kelly's is a sort of
+southern version of "Jack's"&mdash;if you know Jack's.
+But I don't think Jack's has any flight of stairs to fall
+down, such as Kelly's has.</p>
+
+<p>The dining rooms of the various hotels are considerably
+used, one judges, by the citizens of Baltimore. The
+Kernan Hotel, which we visited one night after the
+theater, looked like Broadway. Tables were crowded
+together and there was dancing between them&mdash;and between
+mouthfuls. So, too, at the Belvedere, which is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+used considerably by Baltimore's gay and fashionable
+people.</p>
+
+<p>My companion and I stayed at the Belvedere and
+found it a good hotel, albeit one which has, I think,
+become a shade too well accustomed to being called
+good. Perhaps because of a city ordinance, perhaps
+because the waiters want to go to bed, they have a
+trick, in the Belvedere dining-room, during the cold
+weather, of opening the windows and freezing out such
+dilatory supper-guests as would fain sit up and talk.
+This is a system even more effective than the ancient
+one of mopping up the floors, piling chairs upon the
+tables, and turning out enough lights to make the room
+dull. A good post-midnight conversationalist&mdash;and
+Baltimore is not without them&mdash;can stand mops, buckets,
+and dim lights, but turn cold drafts upon his back and he
+gives up, sends for his coat, buttons it about his paunch
+and goes sadly home.</p>
+
+<p>It is fitting that last of all should be mentioned the
+man who views you with keen eye as you arrive in
+Baltimore, and who watches you depart. If you are in
+Baltimore he knows it. And when you go away he
+knows that, too. Also, during racing season, he knows
+whether you bet, and whether you won or lost. He is
+always at the station and always at the race track, and
+if you don't belong in Baltimore he is aware of it the
+instant he sets eyes upon you, because he knows every
+man, woman, child, and dog in Baltimore, and they all
+know him. If you are a Baltimorean you are already<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+aware that I refer to the sapient McNeal, policeman at
+the Union Station.</p>
+
+<p>McNeal and Cardinal Gibbons are, I take it, the two
+pre&euml;minent figures of the city. Their duties, I admit,
+are not alike, but each performs his duties with discretion,
+with devotion, with distinction. The latter has already
+celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of his nomination
+as cardinal, but the former is well on the way
+toward his fortieth anniversary as officer at the Union
+Station.</p>
+
+<p>McNeal is an artist. He loves his work. And when
+his day off comes and he puts on citizen's clothing and
+goes out for a good time, where do you suppose he goes?</p>
+
+<p>Why down to the station, of course, to talk things
+over with the man who is relieving him!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI<br />
+<br />
+DOUGHOREGAN MANOR AND THE CARROLLS</h2>
+
+
+<p>If I am to be honest about the South, and about myself&mdash;and
+I propose to be&mdash;I must admit that,
+though I approached the fabled land in a most
+friendly spirit, I had nevertheless become a little tired
+of the southern family tree, the southern ancestral
+hall, and the old southern negro servant of stage and
+story, and just a little skeptical about them. Almost
+unconsciously, at first, I had begun to wonder whether,
+instead of being things of actuality, they were not,
+rather, a mere set of romantic trade-marks, so to speak;
+symbols signifying the South as the butler with side
+whiskers signifies English comedy; as "Her" visit to
+"His" rooms, in the third act, signifies English drama;
+or as double doorways in a paneled "set" signify French
+farce.</p>
+
+<p>Furthermore, it had occurred to me that of persons
+of southern accent, or merely southern extraction,
+whom I had encountered in the North, a strangely high
+percentage were not only of "fine old southern family,"
+but of peculiarly tenacious purpose in respect to having
+the matter understood.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I cannot pretend to say when the "professional Southerner,"
+as we know him in New York, began to operate,
+nor shall I attempt to place the literary blame for his
+existence&mdash;as Mark Twain attempted to place upon Sir
+Walter Scott the blame for southern "chivalry," and
+almost for the Civil War itself. Let me merely say,
+then, that I should not be surprised to learn that "Colonel
+Carter of Cartersville"&mdash;that lovable old fraud who
+did not mean to be a fraud at all, but whose na&iuml;vet&eacute;
+passed the bounds of human credulity&mdash;was not far removed
+from the bottom of the matter.</p>
+
+<p>In the tenor of these sentiments my companion shared&mdash;though
+I should add that he complained bitterly about
+agreeing with me, saying that with hats alike, and overcoats
+alike, and trunks alike, and suitcases alike, we already
+resembled two members of a minstrel troupe, and
+that now since we were beginning to think alike, through
+traveling so much together, our friends would not
+be able to tell us apart when we got home again&mdash;in
+spite of this he admitted to the same suspicion of the
+South as I expressed. Wherefore we entered the region
+like a pair of agnostics entering the great beyond:
+skeptical, but ready to be "shown."</p>
+
+<p>It was with the generous purpose of "showing" us
+that a Baltimore friend of ours called for us one day
+with his motor car and was presently wafting us over
+the good oiled roads of Maryland, through sweet, rolling
+country, which seemed to have been made to be ridden
+over upon horseback.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was autumn, but though the chill of northern
+autumn was in the air, the coloring was not so high in
+key as in New York or New England, the foliage being
+less brilliant, but rich with subtle harmonies of brown
+and green, blending softly together as in a faded tapestry,
+and giving the landscape an expression of brooding
+tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>After passing through Ellicott City, an old, shambling
+town quite out of character with its new-sounding
+name, which has such a western ring to it, we traversed
+for several miles the old Frederick Turnpike&mdash;formerly
+a national highway between East and West&mdash;swooping
+up and down over a series of little hills and vales, and
+at length turned off into a private road winding through
+a venerable forest, which was like an old Gothic cathedral
+with its pavement of brown leaves and its tree-trunk
+columns, tall, gray, and slender.</p>
+
+<p>When we had progressed for perhaps a mile, we
+emerged upon a slight eminence commanding a broad
+view of meadow and of woodland, and in turn commanded
+by a great house.</p>
+
+<p>The house was of buff-colored brick. It was low and
+very long, with wings extending from its central structure
+like beautiful arms flung wide in welcome, and at
+the end of each a building like an ornament balanced in
+an outstretched hand. The graceful central portico,
+rising by several easy steps from the driveway level, the
+long line of cornice, the window sashes, the delicate
+wooden railing surmounting the roof, the charming lit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>tle
+tower which so gracefully held its place above the
+geometrical center of the house, the bell tower crowning
+one wing at its extremity&mdash;all these were white.</p>
+
+<p>No combination of colors can be lovelier, in such a
+house, than yellow-buff and white, provided they be
+brightened by some notes of green; and these notes were
+not lacking, for several aged elms, occupying symmetrical
+positions with regard to the house, seemed to gaze
+down upon it with the adoration of a group of mothers,
+aunts, and grandmothers, as they held their soft draperies
+protectively above it. The green of the low terrace&mdash;called
+a "haha," supposedly with reference to the
+mirth-provoking possibilities of an accidental step over
+the edge&mdash;did not reach the base of the buff walls, but
+was lost in a fringe of clustering shrubbery, from which
+patches of lustrous English ivy clambered upward over
+the brick, to lay strong, mischievous fingers upon the
+blinds of certain second-story windows. The blinds
+were of course green; green blinds being as necessary
+to an American window as eyelashes to an eye.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately before the portico and centering upon it
+the drive swung in a spacious circle, from which there
+broke, at a point directly opposite the portico, an avenue,
+straight and long as a rifle range, and lovely as
+the loveliest of New England village greens. Down the
+middle of this broad way, between grass borders each as
+wide as a great boulevard, and double rows of patriarchal
+trees, ran a road which, in the old days, continued
+straight to Annapolis, thirty or more miles away,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
+where was the town house of the builder of this manor.
+As it stands to-day the avenue is less than half a mile
+long, but whatever its length, and whether one look
+down it from the house, or up the gentle grade from
+the far end, to where the converging lines of grass and
+foliage and sky melt into the house, it has about it something
+of unreality, something of enchantment, something
+of that quality one finds in the rhapsodic landscapes of
+those poet painters who dream of distant shimmering
+palaces and supernal vistas peopled by fauns and nymphs
+dancing amid the trunks of giant trees whose luxuriant
+dark tops are contoured like the cumulus white clouds
+floating above them.</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing "baronial," nothing arrogant, about
+Doughoregan Manor, for though the house is noble, its
+nobility, consisting in spaciousness, simplicity, and grace
+combined with age, fits well into what, it seems to me,
+should be the architectural ideals of a republic. No
+house could be freer of unessential embellishment; in detail
+it is plain almost to severity; yet the full impression
+that it gives, far from being austere, is of friendliness
+and hospitality. An approachable sort of house, a
+"homelike" house, it is perhaps less "imposing" than
+some other mansions, coeval with it, in Virginia, in
+Annapolis, and in Charleston; and yet it is as impressive,
+in its own way, as Warwick Castle, or Hurstmonceaux,
+or Loches, or Chinon, or Chenonceaux, or Heidelberg&mdash;not
+that it is so vast, that it has glowering battlements,
+or that it stuns the eye, but for precisely opposite rea<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>sons:
+because it is a consummate expression of republican
+cultivation, of a fine old American home, and of
+the fine old American gentleman who built it, and whose
+descendants inhabit it to-day: Charles Carroll of Carrollton,
+last to survive of those who signed the Declaration
+of Independence.</p>
+
+<p>The first Charles Carroll, known in the family as "the
+Settler," came from Ireland in 1688, and became a great
+landowner in Maryland. He was a highly educated
+gentleman and a Roman Catholic, as have also been his
+descendants. He acted as agent for Lord Baltimore.</p>
+
+<p>His son, Charles Carroll of Annapolis, or "Breakneck
+Carroll" (so called because he was killed by a fall
+from the steps of his house), built the Carroll mansion
+at Annapolis, now the property of the Redemptionist
+Order.</p>
+
+<p>The third and most famous member of the family
+was Charles Carroll of Carrollton, "the Signer," builder
+of the manor house at Doughoregan&mdash;which, by the
+way, derives its name from a combination of the old
+Irish words <i>dough</i>, meaning "house" or "court," and
+<i>O'Ragan</i>, meaning "of the King"; the whole being pronounced,
+as with a slight brogue, "Doo-ray-gan," the accent
+falling on the middle syllable&mdash;this Charles Carroll,
+"the Signer," most famous of his line, was "Breakneck's"
+only son. When eight years old he was sent to
+France to be educated by the Jesuits. He spent six
+years at Saint-Omer, one at Rheims, two at the College
+of Louis le Grand, one at Bourges, where he studied civil<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
+law, and after some further time in college in Paris went
+to London, entered the Middle Temple and there worked
+at the common law until his return to Maryland in 1765.</p>
+
+<p>Although Maryland was founded by the Roman Catholic
+Baron Baltimore on a basis of religious toleration,
+the Church of England had later come to be the established
+church in the British colonies in America, and
+Roman Catholics were unjustly used, being disfranchised,
+taxed for the support of the English Church, and
+denied the right to establish schools or churches of their
+own, to celebrate the Mass, or to bear arms&mdash;the bearing
+of arms having been "at that time the insignia of social
+position and gentle breeding."</p>
+
+<p>Finding this situation well-nigh intolerable, Carroll
+of Carrollton, already a man of great wealth, joined
+with his cousin, Father John Carroll, who later became
+first Archbishop of Baltimore (for many years
+the only Roman Catholic diocese in the United States,
+embracing all States and Territories), in an appeal to
+the King of France for a grant of land in what is now
+Arkansas, but was then a part of Louisiana, this land
+to be used as a refuge for Roman Catholics and Jesuits,
+whom the Carrolls proposed to lead thither precisely as
+Cecilius Calvert, Lord Baltimore, had led them to Maryland
+to escape persecution.</p>
+
+<p>The Roman Catholics were not, however, by this time
+the only American colonists who felt themselves abused;
+the whole country was chafing, and the seeds of revolution
+were beginning to show their red sprouts.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It might have been expected that Mr. Carroll, being
+the richest man in the country, would hesitate at rebellion,
+but he did not. Unlike some of our present-day
+citizens of foreign extraction, and in circumstances involving
+not merely sentiment, but property and perhaps
+life, he showed no tendency to split his Americanism, but
+boldly threw his noble old cocked hat into the ring. Nor
+did he require a Roosevelt to make his duty clear to him.</p>
+
+<p>In 1775 Mr. Carroll was a delegate to the Revolutionary
+Convention of Maryland; in 1776 he went with
+three other commissioners (Benjamin Franklin, Samuel
+Chase, and Father John Carroll) to try to induce the
+Canadian colonies to join in the revolt; and soon after
+his return from this unsuccessful journey he signed the
+Declaration of Independence. Of the circumstances of
+the signing the late Robert C. Winthrop of Boston gave
+the following description:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Will you sign?" said Hancock to Charles Carroll.</p>
+
+<p>"Most willingly," was the reply.</p>
+
+<p>"There goes two millions with the dash of a pen," says one of
+those standing by; while another remarks: "Oh, Carroll, you will
+get off, there are so many Charles Carrolls."</p>
+
+<p>And then we may see him stepping back to the desk and putting
+that addition "of Carrollton" to his name, which will designate
+him forever, and be a prouder title of nobility than those in the
+peerage of Great Britain, which were afterward adorned by his
+accomplished and fascinating granddaughters.</p></div>
+
+<p>Some doubt has been cast upon this tale by the fact
+that papers in possession of the Carroll family prove
+that Mr. Carroll was wont to sign as "of Carrollton"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
+long before the Declaration. Further, it is recorded
+that John H.&nbsp;B. Latrobe, Mr. Carroll's contemporaneous
+biographer, never heard the story from the subject of his
+writings.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, I believe that it is true, for it seems to
+me likely that though Mr. Carroll used the subscription
+"of Carrollton" in conducting his affairs at home,
+where there was chance for confusion between his son
+Charles, his cousin Charles, and himself, he might well
+have been inclined to omit it from a public document, as
+to the signers of which there could be no confusion.
+Further, the fact that he never told the story to Latrobe
+does not invalidate it, for as every man (and every
+man's wife) knows, men do not remember to tell everything
+to their wives, and it is still less likely that
+they tell everything to their biographers. Further still,
+Mr. Winthrop visited Mr. Carroll just before the latter's
+death, and as he certainly did not invent the story
+it seems probable that he got it from "the Signer" himself.
+Last, I like the story and intend to believe it anyway&mdash;which,
+it occurs to me, is the best reason of all, and
+the one most resembling my reason for being more or
+less Episcopalian and Republican.</p>
+
+<p>Latrobe tells us that Mr. Carroll was, in his old age,
+"a small, attenuated old man, with a prominent nose and
+somewhat receding chin, and small eyes that sparkled
+when he was interested in conversation. His head was
+small and his hair white, rather long and silky, while
+his face and forehead were seamed with wrinkles."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>From the same source, and others, we glean the information
+that he was a charming and courteous gentleman,
+that he practised early rising and early retiring,
+was regular at meals, and at morning and evening prayer
+in the chapel, that he took cold baths and rode horseback,
+and that for several hours each day he read the
+Greek, Latin, English, or French classics.</p>
+
+<p>At the age of eighty-three he rode a horse in a procession
+in Baltimore, carrying in one hand a copy of the
+Declaration of Independence; and six years later, when
+by that strange freak of chance ex-Presidents Adams
+and Jefferson died simultaneously on July 4, leaving Mr.
+Carroll the last surviving signer of the Declaration, he
+took part in a memorial parade and service in their
+memory. In 1826, at the age of eighty-nine, he was
+elected a director of the Baltimore &amp; Ohio Railroad
+Company, and at the age of ninety he laid the foundation
+stone marking the commencement of that railroad&mdash;the
+first important one in the United States.
+We are told that at this time Mr. Carroll was erect in
+carriage and that he could see and hear as well as most
+men. In 1832, having lived to within five years of a
+full century, having been active in the Revolution, having
+seen the War of 1812, he died less than thirty years before
+the outbreak of the Civil War, and was buried in
+the chapel of the manor house.</p>
+
+<p>This chapel, the like of which does not, so far as I
+know, exist in any other American house, is the burial
+place of a number of the Carrolls. It is used to-day,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
+regular Sunday services being held for the people of the
+neighborhood. An alcove to the south of the chancel
+contains seats for members of the family, and has access
+to the main portion of the house by a passageway which
+passes the bedroom known as the Cardinal's room, a
+large chamber furnished with massive old pieces of mahogany
+and decorated in red. This room has been occupied
+by Lafayette, by John Carroll, cousin of "the
+Signer" and first archbishop of Baltimore, and by Cardinal
+Gibbons. It is on the ground floor and its windows
+command the series of terraces, with their plantings
+of old box, which slope away to gardens more than
+a century old.</p>
+
+<p>Viewed in one light Doughoregan Manor is a monument,
+in another it is a treasure house of ancient portraits
+and furniture and silver, but above all it is a home.
+The beautifully proportioned dining-room, the wide hall
+which passes through the house from the front portico
+to another overlooking the terraces and gardens at the
+back, the old shadowy library with its tree-calf bindings,
+the sunny breakfast room, the spacious bedchambers
+with their four-posters and their cheerful chintzes,
+the big bright shiny pantries and kitchens, all have that
+pleasant, easy air which comes of being lived in, and
+which is never attained in a "show place" which is
+merely a "show place" and nothing more. No dining
+table at which great personages have dined in the past
+has the charm of one the use of which has been steadily
+continued; no old chair but is better for being sat in; no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
+ancient Sheffield tea service but gains immeasurably in
+charm from being used for tea to-day; no old Venetian
+mirror but what is lovelier for reflecting the beauties of
+the present as it reflected those of the past; no little old-time
+crib but what is better for a modern baby in it. It
+is pleasant, therefore, to report that, like all other things
+the house contains, the crib at Doughoregan Manor was
+being used when we were there, for in it rested the baby
+son of the house; by name Charles, and of his line the
+ninth. Further, it may be observed that from his
+youthful parents, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Bancroft Carroll,
+present master and mistress of the place, Master
+Charles seemed to have inherited certain amiable traits.
+Indeed, in some respects, he outdoes his parents. For
+example, where the father and mother were cordial, the
+son chewed ruminatively upon his fingers and fastened
+upon my companion a gaze not merely interested,
+but expressive of enraptured astonishment. Likewise,
+though his parents received us kindly, they did not crow
+and gurgle with delight; and though, on our departure,
+they said that we might come again, they neither waved
+their hands nor yet blew bubbles.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p65jpg" id="p65jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p65.jpg" width="600" height="335" alt="Doughoregan Manor&mdash;The house was of buff-colored brick. It was low and very long, with wings extending from
+its central structure like beautiful arms flung wide in welcome" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Doughoregan Manor&mdash;The house was of buff-colored brick. It was low and very long, with wings extending from
+its central structure like beautiful arms flung wide in welcome</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Though the house has been "done over" four times,
+and though the paneling was torn out of one room
+to make way for wall paper when wall paper came into
+style, everything has now been restored, and the place
+stands to-day to all intents and purposes exactly as it
+was. That so few changes were ever made in it, that it
+weathered successfully, with its contents, the disastrous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+period of Eastlake furniture and the American mansard
+roof, is a great credit to the Carroll family, and it is delightful
+to see such a house in the possession of those
+who can love it as it deserves to be loved, and preserve
+it as it deserves to be preserved.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Charles Bancroft Carroll, who is a graduate of
+Annapolis and a grandson of the late Governor John Lee
+Carroll of Maryland, now farms some twenty-four hundred
+acres of the five or six thousand which surround the
+manor house. He raises blooded cattle and horses, and,
+though he rides with the Elkridge Hunt, also keeps his
+own pack and is starting the Howard County Hounds,
+an organization that will hunt the country around the
+manor, which is full of foxes.</p>
+
+<p>Of the innumerable family portraits contained in the
+house not a few are valuable and almost all are pleasing.
+When I remarked upon the high average of good looks
+among his progenitors, Mr. Carroll smiled in agreement,
+saying: "Yes, I'm proud of these pictures of my
+ancestors; most people's ancestors seem to have looked
+like the dickens."</p>
+
+<p>Among these noteworthy family portraits I recollect
+one of "the Signer" as a boy, standing on the shore and
+watching a ship sail out to sea; one of the three beautiful
+Caton sisters, his granddaughters, who lived at
+Brooklandwood, in the Green Spring Valley, now the
+home of Mr. Isaac Emerson; one of Charles Carroll of
+Homewood, son of "the Signer"; and one of Governor
+John Lee Carroll, who was born at Homewood.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Caton sisters and Charles Carroll of Homewood
+supply to the Carroll family archives that picturesqueness
+which the history of every old family should possess;
+the former contributing beauty, the latter dash and
+extravagance, those qualities so annoying in a living
+relative, but so delightfully suggestive in an ancestor
+long defunct. If anything more be needed to round out
+the composition, it is furnished by the ghosts of Doughoregan
+Manor: an old housekeeper with jingling keys,
+and an invisible coach, the wheels of which are heard
+upon the driveway before the death of any member of
+the family.</p>
+
+<p>Of the Caton sisters there were four, but because one
+of them, Mrs. McTavish, stayed at home and made the
+life of her grandfather happy, we do not hear so much of
+her as of the other three, who were internationally
+famous for their pulchritude, and were known in England
+as "the Three American Graces." All three married
+British peers, one becoming Marchioness of Wellesley,
+another Duchess of Leeds, while the third became
+the wife of Lord Stafford, one of the noblemen embalmed
+in verse by Fitz-Greene Halleck:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Duke of Norfolk deals in malt,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Douglas in red herrings.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>As for Charles Carroll of Homewood, he was handsome,
+charming, and athletic, and, as indicated in letters
+written to him by his father, caused that old gentle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>man
+a good deal of anxiety. It is said that at one time&mdash;perhaps
+during some period of estrangment from his
+wealthy parent&mdash;he acted as a fencing master in Baltimore.</p>
+
+<p>At the age of twenty-five he settled down&mdash;or let us
+hope he did&mdash;for he married Harriet Chew, whose sister
+"Peggy," Mrs. John Eager Howard of Baltimore, was a
+celebrated belle, and of whose own charm we may judge
+by the fact that General Washington asked her to remain
+in the room while he sat to Gilbert Stuart, declaring that
+her presence there would cause his countenance to "wear
+its most agreeable expression." The famous portrait
+painted under these felicitous conditions hung in the
+White House when, in 1814, the British marched on
+Washington; but when they took the city and burned the
+White House, the portrait did not perish with it,
+for history records that Dolly Madison carried it to
+safety, and along with it the original draft of the Declaration
+of Independence.</p>
+
+<p>Charles Carroll of Homewood died before his father,
+"the Signer," but the house, Homewood, which the latter
+built for his son and daughter-in-law in 1809, stands
+to-day near the Baltimore city limits, at the side of
+Charles Street Boulevard, amid pleasant modern houses,
+many of which are of a design not out of harmony with
+the old mansion. Though not comparable in size with
+the manor house at Doughoregan, Homewood is an even
+more perfect house, being one of the finest examples of
+Georgian architecture to be found in the entire country.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+The fate of this house is hardly less fortunate than that
+of the paternal manor, for, with its surrounding lands, it
+has come into the possession of Johns Hopkins University.
+The fields of Homewood now form the campus
+and grounds of that excellent seat of learning, and the
+trustees of the university have not merely preserved
+the residence, using it as a faculty club, but have had the
+inspiration to find in it the architectural motif for the entire
+group of new college buildings, so that the campus
+may be likened to a bracelet wrought as a setting for
+this jewel of a house.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII<br />
+<br />
+A RARE OLD TOWN</h2>
+
+
+<p>The drive from Baltimore to the sweet, slumbering
+city of Annapolis is over a good road, but
+through barren country. Taken in the crisp
+days of autumn, by a northern visitor sufficiently misguided
+to have supposed that beyond Mason and
+Dixon's Line the winters are tropical it may prove an
+uncomfortable drive&mdash;unless he be able to borrow a
+fur overcoat. It was on this drive that my disillusionment
+concerning the fall and winter climate of the South
+began, for, wearing two cloth overcoats, one over the
+other, I yet suffered agonies from cold. The sun shone
+down upon the open automobile in which we tore along,
+but its rays were no competitors for the biting wind.
+Through lap robes, cloth caps, and successive layers of
+clothing, and around the edges of goggles, fine little
+frozen fangs found their way, like the pliable beaks of a
+race of gigantic, fabulous mosquitoes from the Arctic
+regions. I have driven an open car over the New England
+snows for miles in zero weather, and been warm
+by comparison, because I was prepared.</p>
+
+<p>My former erroneous ideas as to the southern climate
+may be shared by others, and it is therefore well, per<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>haps,
+to enlarge a little bit upon the subject. Never,
+except during a winter passed in a stone tile-floored villa
+on the island of Capri, whither I went to escape the cold,
+have I been so conscious of it, as during fall, winter, and
+spring in the South.</p>
+
+<p>In the hotels of the South one may keep warm in cold
+weather, but in private homes it is not always possible
+to do so, for the popular illusion that the "sunny South"
+is of a uniformly temperate climate in the winter persists
+nowhere more violently than in the South itself.
+Many a house in Virginia, let alone the other States farther
+down the map, is without a furnace, and winter life
+in such houses, with their ineffectual wood fires, is like
+life in a refrigerator tempered by the glow of a safety
+match. As in Italy and Spain, so in the South it is often
+warmer outdoors than in; more than once during my
+southern voyage I was tempted to resume the habit, acquired
+in Capri, of wearing an overcoat in the house and
+taking it off on going out into the sunshine. True, in
+Capri we had roses blooming in the garden on Christmas
+Day, but that circumstance, far from proving warmth,
+merely proved the hardiness of roses. So, in the far
+South&mdash;excepting Florida and perhaps a strip of the
+Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama&mdash;the
+blooming of flowers in the winter does not prove that
+"Palm Beach suits" and panama hats invariably make a
+desirable uniform.</p>
+
+<p>Furthermore, I am inclined to believe that because
+some southern winter days are warm and others cold, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+Northerner feels cold in the South more than he feels
+the corresponding temperature at home&mdash;on somewhat
+the principle which caused the Italians who went with
+the Duke of the Abruzzi on his polar expedition to withstand
+cold more successfully than did the Scandinavians.</p>
+
+<p>Of the southern summer I have no experience, but I
+have been repeatedly assured that certain of the southern
+beaches are nearly, if not quite, as comfortable in hot
+weather as are those of New Jersey or Long Island,
+while in numerous southern mountain retreats one may
+be fairly cool through the hot months&mdash;a fact which
+spells fortune for the hotel keepers of such high-perched
+resorts as Asheville, White Sulphur Springs, and the
+Hot Springs of Virginia, who have their houses full of
+Northerners in winter and Southerners in summer.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The experience of arrival in Annapolis, delightful in
+any weather and at any time of year, gives one a satisfaction
+almost ecstatic after a cold, windy automobile
+ride such as we had suffered. To ache for the shelter of
+almost any town, or any sort of building, and, with such
+yearnings, to arrive in this dreamy city, whose mild air
+seems to be compounded from fresh winds off a glittering
+blue sea, arrested by the barricade of ancient hospitable-looking
+houses, warmed by the glow of their sun-baked
+red brick, and freighted with a ghostly fragrance,
+as from the phantoms of the rose gardens of a century
+or two ago&mdash;to arrive, frigid and forlorn in such a haven,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>
+to drink a cup of tea in the old Paca house (now a hotel),
+is to experience heaven after purgatory. For there is
+no town that I know whose very house fronts hold out
+to the stranger that warm, old-fashioned welcome that
+Annapolis seems to give.</p>
+
+<p>The Paca house, which as a hotel has acquired the
+name Carvel Hall, is the house that Winston Churchill
+had in mind as the Manners house, of his novel "Richard
+Carvel." A good idea of the house, as it was, may be
+obtained by visiting the Brice house, next door, for the
+two are almost twins. When Mr. Churchill was a cadet
+at Annapolis, before the modern part of the Carvel Hall
+hotel was built, there were the remains of terraced gardens
+back of the old mansion, stepping down to an old
+spring house, and a rivulet which flowed through the
+grounds was full of watercress. The book describes a
+party at the house and in these gardens. The Chase
+house on Maryland Avenue was the one Mr. Churchill
+thought of as the home of Lionel Carvel, and he described
+the view from upper windows of this house, over
+the Harwood house, across the way, to the Severn.</p>
+
+<p>Annapolis, Baedeker tells me, was the first chartered
+city in the United States, having been granted its charter
+by Queen Anne considerably more than two centuries
+ago. It is, as every little boy and girl should know, the
+capital of Maryland, and is built around a little hill upon
+the top of which stands the old State House in which
+Washington surrendered his commission and in which
+met the first Constitutional Convention.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In its prime Annapolis was nearly as large a city as it
+is to-day, but that is not saying a great deal, for at the
+present time it has not so many inhabitants as Amarillo,
+Texas, or Brazil, Indiana.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the life of Annapolis in colonial days,
+and in the days which followed them, was very brilliant,
+and we learn from the diary of General Washington and
+from the writings of amazed Englishmen and Frenchmen
+who visited the city in its period of glory that there
+were dinners and balls night after night, that the theater
+was encouraged in Annapolis more than in any other
+city, that the race meets compared with English race
+meets both as to the quality of the horses and of the
+fashionable attendance, that there were sixteen clubs,
+that the women of the city were beautiful, charming, and
+superbly dressed, that slaves in sumptuous liveries were
+to be seen about the streets, that certain gentlemen paid
+calls in barges which were rowed by half a dozen or
+more blacks, in uniform, and that the perpetual hospitality
+of the great houses was gorgeous and extravagant.</p>
+
+<p>The houses hint of these things. If you have seen the
+best old brick mansions of New England, and will
+imagine them more beautifully proportioned, set off by
+balancing wings and having infinitely finer details as to
+doorways, windows, porticos, and also as to wood carvings
+and fixtures within&mdash;as, for instance, the beautiful
+silver latches and hinges of the Chase house at Annapolis&mdash;you
+will gather something of the flavor of these
+old Southern homes. For though such venerable man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>sions
+as the Chase, Paca, Brice, Hammond, Ridout, and
+Bordley houses, in Annapolis, are not without family
+resemblance to the best New England colonial houses,
+the resemblance is of a kind to emphasize the differences,
+not only between the mansions of the North and
+South, but between the builders of them. The contrast
+is subtle, but marked.</p>
+
+<p>Your New England house, beautiful as it is, is stamped
+with austere simplicity. The man who built it was
+probably a scholar but he was almost certainly a Calvinist.
+He habited himself in black and was served by
+serving maids, instead of slaves in livery. If a woman
+was not flat-chested and forlorn, he was prone to regard
+her as the devil masquerading for the downfall
+of man&mdash;and no doubt with some justice, too. Night
+and morning he presided at family prayers, the purpose
+of which was to impress upon his family and servants
+that to have a good time was wicked, and that to be gay
+in this life meant hell-fire and damnation in the next.</p>
+
+<p>Upon this pious person his cousin of Annapolis looked
+with something not unlike contempt; for the latter,
+though he too was a scholar, possessed the sort of
+scholarliness which takes into account beauty and the
+lore of cosmopolitanism. He may have been religious
+or he may not have been, but if religious he demanded
+something handsome, something stylish, in his religion,
+as he did also in his residence, in his wife, his sons, his
+daughters, his horses, coaches, dinners, wines, and
+slaves. He did things with a flourish, and was not be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>set
+by a perpetual consciousness and fear of hell. He
+approved of pretty women; he made love to them; he
+married them; he was the father of them. His pretty
+daughters married men who also admired pretty women,
+and became the mothers of other pretty women, who
+became, in turn, the mothers and grandmothers of the
+pretty women of the South to-day.</p>
+
+<p>Your old-time Annapolis gentleman's ideas of a republic
+were far indeed from those now current, for he
+understood perfectly the difference between a republic
+and a democracy&mdash;a difference which is not now so well
+understood. He believed that the people should elect
+the heads of the government, but he also believed that
+these heads should be elected from his own class, and
+that, having voted, the people should go about their business,
+trusting their betters to run the country as it should
+be run.</p>
+
+<p>This, at least, is my picture of the old aristocrats of
+Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina, as conveyed to
+me by what I have seen of their houses and possessions
+and what I have read of their mode of life. They were
+the early princes of the Republic and by all odds its
+most picturesque figures.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Very different from the spirit of appreciation and
+emulation shown by the trustees of Johns Hopkins University
+with regard to the old house, Homewood, in
+Baltimore, is that manifested in the architecture of the
+Naval Academy at Annapolis, where, in a city fairly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
+flooded with examples of buildings, both beautiful and
+typically American, architectural hints were ignored,
+and there were erected great stone structures whose
+chief characteristics are size, solidity, and the look of
+being "government property." The main buildings of
+the Academy, with the exception of the chapel, suggest
+the sort of sublimated penitentiary that Mr. Thomas
+Mott Osborne might, one fancies, construct under a
+carte-blanche authorization, while the chapel, the huge
+dome of which is visible to all the country round, makes
+one think of a monstrous wedding cake fashioned in the
+form of a building and covered with white and yellow
+frosting in ornamental patterns.</p>
+
+<p>This chapel, one imagines, may have been inspired by
+the Invalides in Paris, but of the Invalides it falls far
+short. I know nothing of the history of the building,
+but it is easy to believe that the original intention may
+have been to place at the center of it, under the dome, a
+great well, over the parapet of which might have been
+seen the sarcophagus of John Paul Jones, in the crypt.
+One prefers to think that the architect had some such
+plan; for the crypt, as at present arranged, is hardly
+more than a dark cellar, approached by what seems to
+be a flight of humble back stairs. To descend into it,
+and find there the great marble coffin with its bronze
+dolphins, is not unlike going down into the cellar of a
+residence and there discovering the family silver reposing
+in the coal-bin.</p>
+
+<p>In this connection it is interesting to recall the fact<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+that our sometimes piratical and always brilliant Revolutionary
+naval hero died in Paris, and that until a few
+years ago his resting place was unknown. The reader
+will remember that while General Horace Porter was
+American ambassador to France a search was instituted
+for the remains of John Paul Jones, the greater
+part of the work having been conducted by Colonel H.
+Baily Blanchard, then first secretary of the Embassy,
+assisted by the ambassador and Mr. Henry Vignaud,
+dean of secretaries of embassy. The resting place of
+Jones was finally discovered in an abandoned cemetery
+in the city of Paris, over which houses had been built.
+The body was contained in a leaden casket and was preserved
+in alcohol so that identification was easily accomplished
+by means of a contemporaneous likeness of
+Jones, and also by means of measurements taken from
+Houdin's bust. The remains were accorded military
+honors in Paris, and were brought to this country on a
+war vessel.</p>
+
+<p>Why the crypt at Annapolis is as it is, I do not know,
+but in my own purely imaginary picture of what happened,
+I see the architect's plans for a heroic display of
+Jones's tomb knocked on the head by some "practical
+man," some worthy dunce in the Navy Department,
+whom I can imagine as protesting: "But no! We
+can't take up space at the center of the chapel for any
+such purpose. It must be floored over to make room for
+pews. Otherwise where will the cadets sit?"</p>
+
+<p>So, although the grounds of the academy, with their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
+lawns, and aged trees, and squirrels, and cadets, are
+charming, and although the solemn and industrious
+Baedeker assures me that the academy is the "chief lion"
+of Annapolis, and although I know that it is a great
+school, and that we need another like it in order properly
+to officer our navy, I prefer the old town with its old
+houses, and old streets bearing such reminiscent names
+as Hanover, Prince George, and Duke of Gloucester.</p>
+
+<p>For certain slang expressions used by cadets I am indebted
+to a member of the corps. From this admiral-to-be
+I learn that a "bird" or "wazzo" is a man or boy;
+that a "pap sheet" is a report covering delinquencies,
+and that to "hit the pap" is to be reported for delinquency;
+that "steam" is marine engineering, and to be
+"bilged for juice" is to fail in examinations in electrical
+engineering&mdash;to get an "unsat," or unsatisfactory mark,
+or even a "zip" or "swabo," which is a zero. Cadets do
+not escort girls to dances, but "drag" them; a girl is a
+"drag," and a "heavy drag" or "brick" is an unattractive
+girl who must be taken to a dance. A "sleuth" or
+"jimmylegs" is a night watchman, and to be "ragged" is
+to be caught. Mess-hall waiters are sometimes called
+"mokes," while at other times the names of certain exalted
+dignitaries of the Navy Department, or of the
+academy, are applied to them.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I shall never cease to regret that dread of the cold kept
+us from seeing ancient Whitehall, a few miles from Annapolis,
+which was the residence of Governor Horatio<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+Sharpe, and is one of the finest of historic American
+homes; nor shall I, on the other hand, ever cease to
+rejoice that, in spite of cold we did, upon another day,
+visit Hampton, the rare old mansion of the Ridgelys, of
+Maryland, which stands amid its own five thousand acres
+some dozen miles or so to the north of Baltimore. The
+Ridgelys were, it appears, the great Protestant land
+barons of this region as the Carrolls were the great
+Catholics, and, like the Carrolls, they remain to-day the
+proprietors of a vast estate and an incomparable house.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII<br />
+<br />
+WE MEET THE HAMPTON GHOST</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If the ill spirit have so fair a house,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Good things will strive to dwell with 't.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0 smcap signature">&mdash;The Tempest.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>Hampton is probably the largest of Maryland's
+old mansions, and the beauty of it is more
+theatrical than the beauty of Doughoregan
+Manor; for although the latter is the older of the two,
+the former is not only spectacular by reason of its
+spaciousness, the delicacy of its architectural details, and
+the splendor of its dreamlike terraced gardens, but also
+for a look of beautiful, dignified, yet somehow tragic
+age&mdash;a look which makes one think of a wonderful old
+lady; a belle of the days of minuets and powdered wigs
+and patches; a woman no less wonderful in her declining
+years than in her youth, but wonderful in another way;
+a proud old aristocrat, erect and spirited to the last;
+her bedchamber a storehouse of ivory lace and ancient
+jewelry, her memory a storehouse of recollections, like
+chapters from romantic novels of the days when all men
+were gallant, and all women beautiful: recollections of
+journeys made in the old coach, which is still in the
+stable, though its outriders have been buried in the
+slaves' burying ground these many years; recollections<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
+of the opening of Hampton, when, as the story goes,
+gay Captain Charles Ridgely, builder of the house, held a
+card party in the attic to celebrate the event, while his
+wife, Rebecca Dorsey Ridgely, a lady of religious turn,
+marked the occasion simultaneously with a prayer-meeting
+in the drawing room; of the ball given by the
+Ridgelys in honor of Charles Carroll's granddaughters,
+the exquisite Caton sisters; of hunt meets here, long,
+long ago, and hunt balls which succeeded them; of
+breakneck rides; of love-making in that garden peopled
+with the ghosts of more than a century of lovers; of duels
+fought at dawn. Of such vague, thrilling tales the old
+house seems to whisper.</p>
+
+<p>Never, from the moment we turned into the tree-lined
+avenue, leading to Hampton, from the moment when I
+saw the fox hounds rise resentfully out of beds which
+they had dug in drifts of oak leaves in the drive, from
+the moment when I stood beneath the stately portico and
+heard the bars of the shuttered doors being flung back
+for our admittance&mdash;never, from my first glimpse of the
+place, have I been able to dispel the sense of unreality I
+felt while there, and which makes me feel, now, that
+Hampton is not a house that I have seen, but one built
+by my imagination in the course of a particularly charming
+and convincing dream.</p>
+
+<p>Stained glass windows bearing the Ridgely coat of
+arms flank the front doorway, and likewise the opposing
+doorway at the end of the enormous hall upon which one
+enters, and the light from these windows gives the hall<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
+a subdued yet glowing illumination, so that there is
+something spectral about the old chairs and the old portraits
+with which the walls are solidly covered. There
+are portraits here by Gilbert Stuart and other distinguished
+painters of times gone by, and I particularly
+remember one large canvas showing a beautiful young
+woman in evening dress, her hair hanging in curls beside
+her cheeks, her tapering fingers touching the strings
+of a harp. She was young then; yet the portrait is that
+of the great-grandmother, or great-great-grandmother,
+of present Ridgelys, and she has lain long in the brick-walled
+family burying ground below the garden. But
+there beneath the portrait stands the harp on which she
+played.</p>
+
+<p>One might tell endlessly of paneling, of the delicate
+carving of mantels and overmantels, of chairs, tables,
+desks, and sofas of Chippendale, Hepplewhite, Phyfe
+and Sheraton, yet giving such an inventory one might
+fail utterly to suggest the feeling of that great house,
+with its sense of homelike emptiness, its wealth of old
+furniture and portraits, blending together, in the dim
+light of a late October afternoon, to form shadowy
+backgrounds for autumnal reverie, or for silent, solitary
+listening&mdash;listening to the tales told by the soughing
+wind outside, to the whisper of embers in the fireplace,
+the slow somber tick of the tall clock telling of ages past
+and passing, the ghostly murmur of the old house talking
+softly to itself.</p>
+
+<p>From the windows of the great dining-room one looks<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>
+away toward Hampton Gate, a favorite meeting place
+for the Elkridge Hunt, or, at another angle, toward the
+stables where the hunters are kept, the old slave cabins,
+and the overseer's house, with its bell tower&mdash;a house
+nearly two hundred years old. But the library is perhaps
+the more natural resting place for the guest, and
+it looks out over the garden, with its enormous descending
+terraces, its geometrical walks and steps, its beautiful
+old trees, and arbors of ancient box. Such terraces
+as these were never built by paid labor.</p>
+
+<p>We were given tea in the library, our hostess at this
+function being a young lady of five or six years&mdash;a
+granddaughter of Captain John Ridgely, present master
+of Hampton&mdash;who, with her pink cheeks, her serious
+eyes and demeanor, looked like a canvas by Sir Joshua
+come to life, as she sat in a large chair and ate a large
+red apple.</p>
+
+<p>Nor did Bryan, Captain Ridgely's negro butler, fit
+less admirably into the pervasive atmosphere of fiction
+which enveloped the place. In the absence of his master,
+Bryan did the honors of the old house with a style which
+was not "put on," because it did not have to be put on&mdash;nature
+and a good bringing-up having supplied all needs
+in this respect. There was about him none of that
+affectation of being a graven image, which one so often
+notices in white butlers and footmen imported from Europe
+by rich Americans, and which, of all shams, is one
+of the most false and absurd, as carried out on both
+sides&mdash;for we pretend to think these functionaries the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>
+deft mechanisms, incapable of thought, that they pretend
+to be; yet all the time we know&mdash;and they know we
+know&mdash;that they see and hear and think as we do, and
+that, moreover, they are often enough observant cynics
+whose elaborate gentility is assumed for hire, like the
+signboard of a sandwich man.</p>
+
+<p>Bryan was without these artificial graces. His manner,
+in showing us the house, in telling us about the various
+portraits, indicated some true appreciation of the
+place and of its contents; and the air he wore of natural
+dignity and courtesy&mdash;of being at once acting-host and
+servitor&mdash;constituted as graceful a performance in a not
+altogether easy r&ocirc;le as I have ever seen, and satisfied me,
+once for all, as to the verity of legends concerning the
+admirable qualities of old-time negro servants in the
+South.</p>
+
+<p>After tea, when fading twilight had deepened the
+shadows in the house, we went up the stairway, past the
+landing with its window containing the armorial bearings
+of the family in stained glass, and, achieving the
+upper hall, crossed to a great bedchamber, the principal
+guest room, and paused just inside the door.</p>
+
+<p>And now, because of what I am about to relate, I
+shall give the names of those who were present. We
+were: Dr. Murray P. Brush, A.&nbsp;B., Ph.D., acting Dean
+of Johns Hopkins University; Dr. John McF. Bergland
+of Baltimore; my companion, Wallace Morgan, illustrator;
+and myself.</p>
+
+<p>The light had, by this time, melted to a mere faint<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>
+grayness sifting like mist through the many oblong
+panes of several large windows. Nevertheless I could
+discern that it was a spacious room, and from the
+color of it and certain shadowy lines upon the walls, I
+judged that it was paneled to the ceiling in white-painted
+wood. I am under the impression that it contained a
+fireplace, and that the great four-post bed, standing to
+the right of the doorway, was placed upon a low platform,
+a step or two above the floor&mdash;though of this I
+am not quite certain, the bulk of the bed and the dim
+light having, perhaps, deceived me. The rest of the
+furniture in the room was dark in color, and massed in
+heavy vague spots against the lighter background of
+the walls.</p>
+
+<p>Directly before the door, at about the center of the
+wall against which it was backed, stood something which
+loomed tall and dark, and which I took to be either a
+gigantic clothespress or a closet built into the room.
+Looking past the front of this obstruction, I saw one of
+the windows; the piece of furniture was therefore exhibited
+sidewise, in silhouette.</p>
+
+<p>I do not think that I had definitely thought of ghost
+stories before, and I know that ghosts had not been
+spoken of, but as I looked into this room, and reflected
+on the long series of persons who had occupied it, and on
+where they were now, and on all the stories that the
+room must have heard, there entered my mind thoughts
+of the supernatural.</p>
+
+<p>Having taken a step or two into the room, I was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
+a little in advance of my three friends, and as these
+fancies came strongly to me, I spoke over my shoulder
+to one of them, who was at my right and a little behind
+me, saying, half playfully:</p>
+
+<p>"There ought to be ghosts in a room like this."</p>
+
+<p>Hardly had I spoken when without a sound, and
+swinging very slowly, the door of the large piece of
+furniture before me gently opened. My first idea was
+that the thing must be a closet, built against the wall,
+with a door at the back opening on a passageway, or
+into the next room, and that the little girl whom we had
+met downstairs had opened it from the other side and
+was coming in.</p>
+
+<p>I fully expected to see her enter. But she did not
+enter, for, as I learned presently, she was in the nursery
+at the time.</p>
+
+<p>After waiting for an instant to see who was coming,
+I began to realize that there was no one coming; that no
+one had opened the door; that, like an actor picking up a
+cue, the door had begun to swing immediately upon my
+saying the word "ghosts."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 465px;">
+<a name="p80jpg" id="p80jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p80.jpg" width="465" height="600" alt="I began to realize that there was no one coming; that no one had opened the door;
+that it had begun to swing immediately upon my saying the word &quot;ghosts&quot;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">I began to realize that there was no one coming; that no one had opened the door;
+that it had begun to swing immediately upon my saying the word &quot;ghosts&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The appropriateness of the coincidence was striking.
+I turned quickly to my friends, who were in conversation
+behind me, and asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Speaking of ghosts&mdash;did you see that door open?"</p>
+
+<p>It is my recollection that none of them had seen it.
+Certainly not more than one of them had, for I remember
+my feeling of disappointment that any one present<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>
+should have missed so strange a circumstance. Some
+one may have asked what I had seen; at all events I
+was full of the idea, and, indicating the open door, I
+began to tell what I had seen, when&mdash;exactly as though
+the thing were done deliberately to circumstantiate my
+story&mdash;with the slow, steady movement of a heavy door
+pushed by a feeble hand, the other portal of the huge
+cabinet swung open.</p>
+
+<p>This time all four of us were looking.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, as we moved across the wide hall to go
+downstairs again, Bryan came from one of the other
+chambers, whither, I think, he had carried the young
+lady's supper on a tray.</p>
+
+<p>"Are there supposed to be any ghosts in this house?" I
+asked him.</p>
+
+<p>Bryan showed his white teeth in the semi-darkness.
+Whether he believed in ghosts or not, evidently he did
+not fear them.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," he said. "We're supposed to have a ghost
+here."</p>
+
+<p>"Where?"</p>
+
+<p>"In that room over there," he answered, indicating the
+bedroom from which we had come.</p>
+
+<p>We listened attentively to Bryan while he told how
+the daughter of Governor Swan had come to attend a
+ball at Hampton, and how she had died in the four-post
+bed in that old shadowy guest room, and of how, since
+then, she had been seen from time to time.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"They's several people say they saw her," he finished.
+"She comes out and combs her hair in front of the long
+mirror."</p>
+
+<p>However, as we drove back to Baltimore that evening,
+we repeatedly assured one another that we did not
+believe in ghosts.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX<br />
+<br />
+ARE WE STANDARDIZED?</h2>
+
+
+<p>Almost all modern European critics of the
+United States agree in complaining that our telephones
+and sleeping cars are objectionable, and
+that we are "standardized" in everything. Their
+criticism of the telephone seems to be that the state of
+perfection to which it has been brought in this country
+causes it to be widely used, while their disapproval of
+our sleeping cars is invariably based on the assumption
+that they have no compartments&mdash;which is not the fact,
+since most of the great transcontinental railroads do run
+compartment cars, and much better ones than the best
+<i>wagons lits</i>, and since, also, all our sleeping cars have
+drawing-rooms which are incomparably better than the
+most comfortable European compartments.</p>
+
+<p>The charge of standardization will, however, bear
+a little thought. It is true that most American cities
+have a general family resemblance&mdash;that a business
+street in Atlanta or Memphis looks much like a business
+street in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo, Milwaukee,
+St. Paul, Kansas City, or St. Louis&mdash;and that much the
+same thing may be said of residence streets. Houses
+and office buildings in one city are likely to resemble<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
+those of corresponding grade in another; the men who
+live in the houses and go daily to the offices are also
+similar; so are the trolley cars in which they journey
+to and fro; still more so the Fords which many of them
+use; the clothing of one man is like that of another, and
+all have similar conventions concerning the date at which&mdash;without
+regard to temperature&mdash;straw hats should be
+discarded. Their womenfolk, also, are more or less
+alike, as are the department stores in which they shop
+and the dresses they buy. And the same is true of their
+children, the costumes of those children, and the schools
+they attend.</p>
+
+<p>Every American city has social groups corresponding
+to similar groups in other cities. There is always the
+small, affluent group, made up of people who keep butlers
+and several automobiles, and who travel extensively.
+In this group there are always some snobs: ladies who
+give much time to societies founded on ancestry, and
+have a Junkerish feeling about "social leadership."</p>
+
+<p>Every city has also its "fast" group: people who
+consider themselves "unconventional," who drink more
+than is good for them, and make much noise. Some
+members of this group may belong to the first group,
+as well, but in the fast group they have a following
+of well-dressed hangers-on: unmarried men and
+women, youngish rather than young, who, with little
+money, yet manage to dress well and to be seen eating
+and drinking and dancing in public places. There is
+usually to be found in this group a hectic widow or two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>&mdash;be
+it grass or sod&mdash;and a few pretty girls who, having
+been given too much freedom at eighteen, begin
+to wonder at twenty-eight, why, though they have always
+been "good fellows," none of the dozens of men
+who take them about have married them. To this
+aggregation drift also those restless husbands and wives
+whose glances rove hopefully away from their mates, a
+few well-bred drunkards, and a few men and women
+who are trying to forget things they cannot forget.</p>
+
+<p>Then there is always the young married group&mdash;a
+nice group for the most part&mdash;living in comfortable new
+houses or apartments, and keeping, usually, both a small
+automobile and a baby carriage. They also go to the Country
+Club on Saturday nights, leave their motors standing
+in the drive, eat a lukewarm supper that tastes like
+papier-m&acirc;ch&eacute;, and dance themselves to wiltedness.</p>
+
+<p>Another group is entirely masculine, being made up
+of husbands of various ages, their mutual bond being
+the downtown club to which they go daily, and in which
+the subjects discussed are politics, golf, and the evils of
+prohibition. To this group always belong the black-sheep
+husbands who, after taking their wives to the
+Country Club, disappear and remain away until they are
+sent for because it is time to go home, when they come
+back shamefaced and scented with Scotch.</p>
+
+<p>Every American city has also what Don Marquis
+calls its "little group of serious thinkers"&mdash;women, most
+of them&mdash;possessed of an ardent desire to "keep abreast
+of the times." These women belong to clubs and lit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>erary
+societies which are more serious than war. They
+are always reading papers or attending lectures, and
+at these lectures they get a strange assortment of
+"cultural" information and misinformation, delivered
+with ghastly assurance by heterogeneous gentlemen in
+cutaway coats, who go about and spout for pay. If you
+meet these ladies, and they suspect you of being infested
+by the germs of "culture," they will open fire on you
+with a "thought," about which you may detect a curious
+ghostly fragrance, as of Alfred Noyes's lecture, last
+week, or of "the New Republic" or the "Literary Digest."
+The most "liberal" of them may even take "The
+Masses," precisely as people rather like them used to
+take "The Philistine," a generation or two ago. Among
+the members of this group are the women who work
+violently for suffrage&mdash;something in which I personally
+believe, but which, merely because I believe in it, I do
+not necessarily like to take in my coffee as a substitute
+for sugar, on my bread as a substitute for butter, and in
+my ear as a substitute for pleasant general conversation.</p>
+
+<p>I do not wish to seem to speak disparagingly of
+women of this type, for they are doing good, and they
+will do more good when they have become more accustomed
+to possessing minds. Having but recently discovered
+their minds, they are playing with them enthusiastically,
+like children who have just discovered their
+new toys on Christmas morning. It is delightful to
+watch them. It is diverting to have them pop ideas at
+you with that bright-eyed, efficient, assertive look which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
+seems to say: "See! I am a liberal woman&mdash;a woman
+of the new type. I meet men on their own ground. Do
+you wish to talk of birth control, social hygiene, and sex
+attraction? Or shall we reverse the order? Or shall I
+show you how much I know about Brieux, and household
+economics, and Ellen Key, and eugenics, and George
+Meredith, and post-impressionism, and "Roberts' Rules
+of Order," and theosophy, and conditions in the Sixteenth
+Ward?"</p>
+
+<p>When one thinks of these city groups, and of mail-order
+houses, and Fords, one may begin to fear it is
+indeed true that we are becoming standardized, but
+when one lets one's mind drift over the country as
+the eye drifts over a map; when one thinks of the
+quantities of modest, thoughtful, gentle, generous, intelligent,
+sound American families which are to be found
+in every city and every town, and thinks again, in a
+twinkling, of sheriffs and mining-camp policemen in
+the Far West, of boys going to Harvard, and other
+boys going to the University of Kansas, others to the
+old Southern universities, so rich in tradition, and still
+others to Annapolis or West Point; when one thinks of
+the snow glittering on the Rocky Mountain wall, back of
+Denver; of sleepy little towns drowsing in the sun beside
+the Mississippi; of Charles W. Eliot of Cambridge, and
+Hy Gill of Seattle; of Dr. Lyman Abbott of New York
+and Tom Watson of Georgia; of General Leonard Wood
+and Colonel William Jennings Bryan; of ex-slaves living
+in their cabins behind Virginia manor houses, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>
+Filipino and Kanaka fishermen living in villages built
+on stilts beside the bayous below New Orleans; of the
+dry salt desert of Utah, and two great rivers meeting
+between green rocky hills, at Harper's Ferry; of men
+working in offices at the top of the Woolworth Building
+in New York, and other men working thousands of feet
+below the ground, in the copper mines of Butte and the
+iron and coal mines of Birmingham&mdash;when one thinks
+of these things one quickly ceases to fear that the United
+States is standardized, and instead begins to fear that
+few Americans will ever know the varied wonder of
+their country, and the varied character of its inhabitants,
+their problems, hopes, and views.</p>
+
+<p>If I lived somewhere in the region of Boston, New
+York, or Philadelphia and wished quickly to learn
+whether the country were really standardized or not, I
+should get into my automobile&mdash;or into some one else's&mdash;and
+take an autumn tour through Baltimore, past
+Doughoregan Manor, some miles to the west of Baltimore,
+on to Frederick, Maryland (where they dispute,
+quite justly, I believe, the truth of the Barbara Frietchie
+legend), and thence "over the mountain wall" and down
+into the northeastern corner of the most irregularly
+shaped State in the Union, West Virginia. I should
+strike for Harper's Ferry, and from there run to
+Charles Town, a few miles distant (where John Brown
+was tried and executed for the Harper's Ferry raid),
+and after circulating about that corner of the State, I
+should go down into Virginia by the good highway<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>
+which leads from Charles Town to Berryville&mdash;"Bur'v'l,"
+they pronounce it&mdash;and to "Winchester twenty
+miles away" (where they say that Sheridan's Ride was
+nothing to make such a lot of talk about!), and then
+back, by way of Berryville, and over the Blue Ridge
+Mountains into the great fox-hunting counties of Virginia:
+Clark, Loudon, and Fauquier. Here I should
+see a hunt meet or a race meet. There are many other
+places to which I might go after that, but as I meant only
+to suggest an easy little tour, I shall stop at this point,
+contenting myself with saying that not far to the south
+is Charlottesville, where Jefferson built that most beautiful
+of all universities, the University of Virginia, and
+his wonderful house Monticello; that Staunton (pronounced
+as without the "u"), where Woodrow Wilson
+was born, lies west of Charlottesville, while Fredericksburg,
+where Washington's mother lived, lies to the
+northeast.</p>
+
+<p>Some such trip as this I should take instead of a conventional
+New England tour. And before starting I
+should buy a copy of Louise Closser Hale's delightful
+book, "Into the Old Dominion."</p>
+
+<p>One beauty of the trip that I suggest is that it isn't all
+the same. In one place you get a fair country hotel,
+in another an inn, and somewhere along the way you
+may have to spend a night in a private house. Also,
+though the roads through Maryland, and the part of
+West Virginia I speak of, are generally good, my experience
+of Virginia roads, especially through the moun<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>tains,
+leads me to conclude that in respect to highways
+Virginia remains a backward State. But who
+wants to ride always over oiled roads, always to hotels
+with marble lobbies, or big white porches full of hungry-eyed
+young women, and old ladies, knitting? Only the
+standardized tourist. And I am not addressing him.</p>
+
+<p>I am talking to the motorist who is not ossified in
+habit, who has a love of strangeness and the picturesque&mdash;not
+only in scenery but in houses and people and
+the kind of life those people lead. For it is quite true
+that, as Professor Roland C. Usher said in his "Pan
+Americanism," "the information in New York about
+Buenos Aires is more extended, accurate, and contemporaneous
+than the notions in Maine about Alabama....
+Isolation is more a matter of time than of
+space, and common interests are due to the ease of transportation
+and communication more often than geographical
+location."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X<br />
+<br />
+HARPER'S FERRY AND JOHN BROWN</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">Mad Old Brown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Osawatomie Brown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With his eighteen other crazy men, went in and took the town.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0 smcap signature">&mdash;Edmund Clarence Stedman.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>Three States meet at Harper's Ferry, and the
+line dividing two of them is indicated where it
+crosses the station platform. If you alight at
+the rear end of the train, you are in Maryland; at the
+front, you are in West Virginia. This I like. I have
+always liked important but invisible boundaries&mdash;boundaries
+of states or, better yet, of countries. When
+I cross them I am disposed to step high, as though not
+to trip upon them, and then to pause with one foot in
+one land and one in another, trying to imagine that I
+feel the division running through my body.</p>
+
+<p>Harper's Ferry is an entrancing old town; a drowsy
+place, piled up beautifully, yet carelessly, upon terraced
+roads clinging to steep hills, which slope on one
+side to the Potomac, on the other to the Shenandoah,
+and come to a point, like the prow of a great ship, at the
+confluence of the two.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p100jpg" id="p100jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p100.jpg" width="600" height="428" alt="Harpers Ferry is an entrancing old town; a drowsy place piled up beautifully yet carelessly upon terraced roads
+clinging to steep hillsides" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Harpers Ferry is an entrancing old town; a drowsy place piled up beautifully yet carelessly upon terraced roads
+clinging to steep hillsides</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>There is something foreign in the appearance of the
+place. Many times, as I looked at old stone houses,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+a story or two high on one side, three or four stories on
+the other, seeming to set their claws into the cliffs and
+cling there for dear life, I thought of houses in Capri
+and Amalfi, and in some towns in France; and again
+there were low cottages built of blocks of shale covered
+with a thin veneer of white plaster showing the outlines
+of the stones beneath, which, squatting down amid their
+trees and flowers, resembled peasant cottages in Normandy
+or Brittany, or in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>It is a town in which to ramble for an hour, uphill,
+down and around; stopping now to delight in a crumbling
+stone wall, tied together with Kenilworth ivy;
+now to watch a woman making apple butter in a
+great iron pot; now to see an old negro clamber slowly
+into his rickety wagon, take up the rope reins, and start
+his skinny horse with the surprising words: "Come
+hither!"; now to look at an old tangled garden, terraced
+rudely up a hillside; now to read the sign, on a telegraph
+pole in the village, bearing the frank threat: "If you
+Hitch your Horses Here they will be Turned Loose."
+Now you will come upon a terraced road, at one side of
+which stands an old house draped over the rocks in such
+a way as to provide entrance from the ground level, on
+any one of three stories; or an unexpected view down a
+steep roadway, or over ancient moss-grown housetops
+to where, as an old book I found there puts it, "between
+two ramparts, in a gorge of savage grandeur, the lordly
+Potomac takes to his embrace the beautiful Shenandoah."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The liaison between the rivers, described in this
+Rabelaisian manner by the author of "The Annals of
+Harper's Ferry," has been going on for a long time with
+all the brazen publicity of a love scene on a park bench.
+I recommend the matter to the attention of the Society
+for the Suppression of Vice, which once took action
+to prohibit a novel by Mr. Theodore Dreiser. A great
+many people wish to read Mr. Dreiser's books yet no one
+has to read them if he does not want to. But it is a
+different matter with these rivers. Sensitive citizens of
+Harper's Ferry and pure-minded passengers on the
+Baltimore &amp; Ohio Railroad are obliged daily to witness
+what is going on.</p>
+
+<p>Before the days of the Society for the Suppression of
+Vice, and of the late Anthony Comstock, when we had
+no one to make it clear to us exactly what was shocking,
+little was thought of the public scandal between
+the Potomac and the Shenandoah. Thomas Jefferson
+seems to have rather liked it; there is a point above the
+town, known as Jefferson's Rock, at which, it is said,
+the author of the Declaration of Independence stood
+and uttered a sentiment about the spectacle. Everybody
+in Harper's Ferry agrees that Jefferson stood at
+Jefferson's Rock and said something appropriate, and
+any one of them will try to tell you what he said, but
+each version will be different.</p>
+
+<p>A young lady told me that he said: "This view is
+worth a trip across the Atlantic Ocean."</p>
+
+<p>A young man in a blue felt hat of the fried-egg<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
+variety said that Jefferson declared, with his well-known
+simplicity: "This is the grandest view I ever seen."</p>
+
+<p>An old man who had to go through the tobacco
+chewer's pre-conversational rite before replying to my
+question gave it as: "Pfst!&mdash;They ain't nothin' in
+Europe ner Switzerland ner nowheres else, I reckon', to
+beat this-here scenery."</p>
+
+<p>The man at the drug store quoted differently alleging
+the saying to have been: "Europe has nothing on this":
+whereas the livery stable man's version was: "This has
+that famous German river&mdash;the Rhine River don't they
+call it?&mdash;skinned to death."</p>
+
+<p>Whatever Jefferson's remark was, there has been
+added to the spectacle at Harper's Ferry, since his day,
+a new feature, which, could he have but seen it, must
+have struck him forcibly, and might perhaps have
+caused him to say more.</p>
+
+<p>At a lofty point upon the steep wall of Maryland
+Heights, across the Potomac from the town, far, far
+up upon the side of the cliff, commanding a view not only
+of both rivers, but of their meeting place and their joint
+course below, and of the lovely contours of the Blue
+Ridge Mountains, fading to smoky coloring in the remote
+distance, there has, of late years, appeared the outline
+of a gigantic face, which looks out from its emplacement
+like some Teutonic god in vast effigy, its huge
+luxuriant mustaches pointing East and West as though
+in symbolism of the conquest of a continent. A blue
+and yellow background, tempered somewhat by the ele<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>ments,
+serves to attract attention to the face and to the
+legend which accompanies it, but the thing one sees
+above all else, the thing one recognizes, is the face itself,
+with its look half tragic, half resigned, yet always
+so inscrutable: for it is none other than the beautiful
+brooding countenance of Gerhard Mennen, the talcum-powder
+gentleman.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The great story of Harper's Ferry is of course the
+John Brown story. Joseph I.&nbsp;C. Clarke, writing in the
+New York "Sun" of Sir Roger Casement's execution
+for treason in connection with the Irish rebellion, compared
+him with John Brown and also with Don Quixote.
+The spiritual likeness between these three bearded figures
+is striking enough. All were idealists; all were
+fanatics. Brown's ideal was a noble one&mdash;that of freedom&mdash;but
+his manner of attempting to translate it into
+actuality was that of a madman. He believed not only
+that the slaves should be freed, but that the blood of
+slaveholders should be shed in atonement. In "bleeding
+Kansas" he led the Ossawatomie massacre, and
+committed cold-blooded murders under the delusion that
+the sword of the Lord was in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>In October, 1859, Brown, who had for some time been
+living under an assumed name in the neighborhood of
+Harper's Ferry, led a score of his followers, some of
+them negroes, in a surprise attack upon the Government
+arsenal at this place, capturing the watchmen and taking
+possession of the buildings. It was his idea to get the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
+weapons the arsenal contained and give them to the
+slaves that they might rise and free themselves. Before
+this plan could be executed, however, Brown and his
+men were besieged in the armory, and here, after a day
+or two of bloody fighting, with a number of deaths on
+both sides, he was captured with his few surviving men,
+by Colonel (later General) Robert E. Lee, whose aide,
+upon this occasion, was J.&nbsp;E.&nbsp;B. Stuart, later the Confederate
+cavalry leader. Stuart had been in Kansas,
+and it was he who recognized the leader of the raid as
+Brown of Ossawatomie.</p>
+
+<p>It is said that Brown's violent anti-slavery feeling was
+engendered by his having seen, in his youth, a colored
+boy of about his own age cruelly misused. He brooded
+over the wrongs of the blacks until, as some students of
+his life believe, he became insane on this subject. His
+utterances show that he was willing to give up his life
+and those of his sons and other followers, if by such
+action he could merely draw attention to the cause which
+had taken possession of his soul. In the course of the
+fighting he saw his two sons mortally wounded, and was
+himself stabbed and cut. Throughout the fight and his
+subsequent trial at Charles Town he remained imperturbable;
+when taken to the gallows he sat upon his
+coffin, in a wagon, and he not only mounted the scaffold
+without a tremor, but actually stood there, apparently
+unmoved, for ten or fifteen minutes, with the noose
+around his neck, while the troops which had formed his
+escort were marched to their positions.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A large number of troops were present at the execution,
+for it was then believed in the South that the Brown
+raid was not the mere suicidal stroke of an individual
+fanatic, but an organized movement on the part of the
+Republican party; an effort to rescue Brown was therefore
+apprehended. This idea was later shown to be a
+fallacy, Brown having made his own plans, and been
+financed by a few northern friends, headed by Gerrit
+Smith of New York.</p>
+
+<p>There has been a tendency in the North to make a
+saint of John Brown, and in the South to make a devil
+of him. As a matter of fact he was a poor, misguided
+zealot, with a wild light in his eye, who had set out to
+do a frightful thing; for, bad though slavery was, its
+evils were not comparable with the horrors which would
+have resulted from a slave rebellion.</p>
+
+<p>It must be conceded, however, that those who would
+canonize John Brown have upon their side a strange and
+impressive piece of evidence. The jail where he was
+lodged in Charles Town and the courthouse where he
+was tried, still stand, and it is the actual fact that, when
+the snow falls, it always miraculously melts in a path
+which leads diagonally across the street from the one to
+the other. That this is true I have unimpeachable testimony.
+<i>Snow will not stand on the path by which
+John Brown crossed back and forth from the jail to the
+court-house.</i> There will be snow over all the rest of
+the street, but not on that path; there you can see it
+melting.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But, as with certain other "miracles," this one is not
+so difficult to understand if you know how it is brought
+about. The courthouse is heated from the jail, and the
+hot pipes run under the pavement.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI<br />
+<br />
+THE VIRGINIAS AND THE WASHINGTONS</h2>
+
+
+<p>In colonial times, and long thereafter, the present
+State of West Virginia was a part of Virginia.
+Virginia, in the old days, used to have no western
+borders to her most westerly counties, which, in theory,
+ran out to infinity. As the western part of the State
+became settled, county lines were drawn, and new
+counties were started farther back from the coast. For
+this reason, towns which are now in Jefferson County,
+West Virginia, used to be in that county of Virginia
+which lies to the east of Jefferson County, and some
+towns have been in several different counties in the
+course of their history.</p>
+
+<p>The people in the eastern part of West Virginia are,
+so far as I am capable of judging, precisely like Virginians.
+The old houses, when built, were in Virginia,
+the names of the people are Virginian names, and customs
+and points of view are Virginian. Until I went
+there I was not aware how very much this means.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know who wrote the school history I studied
+as a boy, but I do know now that it was written by a lopsided
+historian, and that his "lop," like that of many
+another of his kind, led him to enlarge upon American<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+naval and military victories, to minimize American defeats,
+to give an impression that the all-important early
+colonies were those of New England, and that the all-important
+one of them was Massachusetts. From this
+bias I judge that the historian was a Boston man. It
+takes a Bostonian to think in that way. They do it still.</p>
+
+<p>From my school history I gathered the idea that although
+Sir Walter Raleigh and Captain John Smith
+were so foolish as to dally more or less in the remote
+fastnesses of Virginia, and although there was a little
+ineffectual settlement at Jamestown, all the important
+colonizing of this country occurred in New England. I
+read about Peregrine White, but not about Virginia
+Dare; I read much of Miles Standish, but nothing of
+Christopher Newport; I read a great deal of the <i>Mayflower</i>,
+but not a word of the <i>Susan Constant</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Yet Virginia Dare, if she lived, must have been nearing
+young ladyhood when Peregrine White was born;
+Captain Christopher Newport passed the Virginia
+capes when Miles Standish was hardly more than a
+youth, in Lancashire; and the <i>Susan Constant</i> landed
+the Jamestown settlers more than a dozen years before
+the <i>Mayflower</i> landed her shipload of eminent furniture
+owners at Plymouth. Even Plymouth itself had
+been visited years before by John Smith, and it was he,
+not the Pilgrims, who named the place.</p>
+
+<p>I find that some boys, to-day, know these things.
+But though that fact is encouraging, I am not writing
+for boys, but for their comparatively ignorant parents.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Not only did the first English colony establish itself
+in Virginia, and the first known tobacco come from there&mdash;a
+point the importance of which cannot be overstated&mdash;but
+the history of the Old Dominion is in every way
+more romantic and heroic than that of any other State.
+The first popular government existed there long before
+the Revolution, and at the time of the break with the
+mother country Virginia was the most wealthy and
+populous of the Colonies. Some historians say that
+slavery was first introduced there when some Dutchmen
+sold to the colonists a shipload of negroes, but I
+believe this point is disputed. The Declaration of Independence
+was, of course, written by a Virginian, and
+made good by the sword of one. The first President of
+the United States was a Virginian, and so is the present
+Chief Executive. The whole of New England has produced
+but four presidents; Ohio has produced six; but
+Virginia has given us eight. The first British army to
+land on this continent (Braddock's) landed in Virginia,
+and in that State our two greatest wars were terminated
+by the surrenders of Cornwallis and of Lee. And, last,
+the gallant Lee himself was a Virginian of the Virginians&mdash;a
+son of the distinguished Henry Lee who said
+of Washington that he was "first in war, first in peace,
+and first in the hearts of his countrymen."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>On the pleasant drive of perhaps a dozen miles, from
+Harper's Ferry to Charles Town, I noticed here and
+there, at the roadside, pyramidal stones, suggesting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
+monuments, but bearing no inscription save that each
+had a number. On inquiry I learned that these were
+indeed Confederate monuments, but that to find out
+what they marked it was necessary to go to the county
+courthouse at Charles Town and look up the numbers
+in a book, of which there is but one copy. These monuments
+were set out three or four years ago. They appeared
+suddenly, almost as though they had grown overnight,
+and many people wondered, as I had, what they
+meant.</p>
+
+<p>"Eloise," one Charles Town young lady asked another,
+"what's that monument out in front of your
+house with the number twenty-one on it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," replied Eloise, "that's where all my suitors are
+buried."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>One of the things which gives Jefferson County, West
+Virginia, its Virginian flavor is the collection of fine
+old houses which adorn it. Many of these houses are
+the homes of families bearing the name of Washington,
+or having in their veins the blood of the Washingtons.
+It is said that there is more Washington blood in
+Charles Town (which, by the way, should not be confused
+with Charleston, capital of the same State), than
+in any other place, if not in all the rest of the world
+together. The nearest competitors to Charles Town in
+this respect are Westmoreland County, Virginia, and
+the town of Kankakee, Illinois, where resides the
+Spottswood Augustine Washington family, said to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>
+the only Washington group to have taken the Union
+side in the Civil War. It is rumored also that all the
+Washingtons are Democrats, although that fact is hard
+to reconcile, at the present time, with the statement that,
+among the five thousand of them, there is but a single
+Federal officeholder.</p>
+
+<p>The settling of the Washingtons in Jefferson County,
+West Virginia, came about through the fact that George
+Washington, when a youth of sixteen or seventeen, became
+acquainted with that part of what was then Virginia,
+through having gone to survey for Lord Fairfax,
+who had acquired an enormous tract of land in the
+neighboring county of Clarke, which is still in the
+mother State. To this estate, called Greenaway Court,
+his lordship, it is recorded, came from England to isolate
+himself because a woman with whom he was in love
+refused to marry him.</p>
+
+<p>In this general neighborhood George Washington
+lived for three years, and local enthusiasts affirm that to
+his having drunk the lime-impregnated waters of this
+valley was due his great stature. The man who informed
+me of this theory had lived there aways. He
+was about five feet three inches tall, and had drunk the
+waters all his life&mdash;plain and otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>Washington's accounts of the region so interested his
+brothers that they finally moved there, acquired large
+tracts of land, and built homes. Charles Town, indeed,
+was laid out on the land of Charles Washington, and
+was named for him, and there is evidence that George<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
+Washington, who certainly gave the lines for the roads
+about the place, also laid out the town.</p>
+
+<p>Another brother, John Augustine, left a large family,
+while Samuel, the oldest, described as "a rollicking country
+squire," was several years short of fifty when he
+died, but for all that had managed to marry five times
+and to find, nevertheless, spare moments in which to lay
+out the historic estate of Harewood, not far from
+Charles Town. It is said that George Washington was
+his brother's partner in this enterprise, but excepting
+in its interior, which is very beautiful, there is no
+sign, about the building, of his graceful architectural
+touch.</p>
+
+<p>George Washington spent much time at Harewood,
+Lafayette and his son visited there, and there the
+sprightly widow, Dolly Todd, married James Madison.
+This wedding was attended by President Washington
+and his wife and by many other national figures; the
+bride made the journey to Harewood in Jefferson's
+coach, escorted by Madison and a group of his friends
+on horseback, and history makes mention of a very large
+and very gay company.</p>
+
+<p>This is all very well until you see Harewood; for, substantial
+though the house is, with its two-foot stone
+walls, it has but five rooms: two downstairs and three
+up.</p>
+
+<p>Where did they all sleep?</p>
+
+<p>The question was put by the practical young lady
+whom I accompanied to Harewood, but the wife of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
+farmer to whom the place is rented could only smile and
+shake her head.</p>
+
+<p>The bedroom now occupied by this farmer and his
+wife has doubtless been occupied also by the first President
+of the United States and his wife, the fourth President
+and his wife, by Lafayette, and by a King of France&mdash;for
+Louis-Philippe, and his brothers, the Duc de
+Montpensier and the Comte de Beaujolais, spent some
+time at Harewood during their period of exile.</p>
+
+<p>Having read in an extract from the Baltimore "Sun"
+that Harewood, which is still owned in the Washington
+family, was a place in which all Washingtons took great
+and proper pride, that it was "the lodestone which draws
+the wandering Washingtons back to the old haunts,"
+I was greatly shocked on visiting the house to see the
+shameful state of dilapidation into which it has been allowed
+to pass. The porches and steps have fallen down,
+the garden is a disreputable tangle, and the graves in
+the yard are heaped with tumble-down stones about
+which the cattle graze. The only parts of the building
+in good repair are those parts which time has not yet
+succeeded in destroying. The drawing-room, containing
+a mantelpiece given to Washington by Lafayette,
+and the finest wood paneling I have seen in any American
+house, has held its own fairly well, as has also
+the old stairway, imported by Washington from England.
+But that these things are not in ruins, like the
+porches, is no credit to the Washingtons who own the
+property to-day, and who, having rented the place, actu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>ally
+leave family portraits hanging on the walls to crack
+and rot through the cold winter.</p>
+
+<p>If there are indeed five thousand Washingtons, and if
+they are proud of their descent, a good way for them to
+show it would be to contribute twenty-five cents each to be
+expended on putting Harewood in respectable condition.</p>
+
+<p>The last member of the Washington family to own
+Mount Vernon was John Augustine Washington, of
+Charles Town, who sold the former home of his distinguished
+collateral ancestor. This Mr. Washington was
+a Confederate officer in the Civil War. He had a son
+named George, whose widow, if I mistake not, is the
+Mrs. George Washington of Charles Town, of whom I
+heard an amusing story.</p>
+
+<p>With another Charles Town lady this Mrs. Washington
+went to the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and
+the two attended the Fair together on Washington Day.
+On this occasion Mrs. Washington made a purchase in
+one of the buildings, and ordered it sent to her home in
+Charles Town.</p>
+
+<p>"What name?" asked the clerk.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. George Washington."</p>
+
+<p>The clerk concluded that she was joking.</p>
+
+<p>"I want your <i>real</i> name," he insisted with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"But," plaintively protested the gentle Mrs. Washington,
+"that is the only name I <i>have</i>!"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>One of the most charming of the old houses in the
+neighborhood of Charles Town, and one of the few<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
+which is still occupied by the descendants of its builder,
+is Piedmont, the residence of the Briscoe family. It is
+a brick house, nearly a century and a half old, with a
+lovely old portico, and it contains two of the most interesting
+relics I saw on my entire journey in the South.
+The first of these is the wall paper of the drawing-room,
+upon which is depicted, not in pattern, but in a series
+of pictures with landscape backgrounds, various scenes
+representing the adventures of Telemachus on his search
+for his father. I remember having seen on the walls
+of the parlor of an old hotel at South Berwick, Maine,
+some early wall paper of this character, but the pictures
+on that paper were done in various shades of gray,
+whereas the Piedmont wall paper is in many colors.
+The other relic is a letter which Mrs. Briscoe drew from
+her desk quite as though it had been a note received that
+morning from a friend. It was written on tough buff-colored
+paper, and, though the ink was brown with age,
+the handwriting was clear and legible and the paper
+was not broken at the folds. It was dated "Odiham,
+Sept. 1st, 1633," and ran as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">To Dr. John Briscoe</span>, <i>Greetings</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>: As the Privy Council have decided that I shall
+not be disturbed or dispossessed of the charter granted by his
+Majesty&mdash;the <i>Ark</i> and Pinnace <i>Dove</i> will sail from Gravesend
+about the 1st of October, and if you are of the same mind as
+when I conversed with you, I would be glad to have you join
+the colony.</p>
+
+<p>With high esteem, &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Your most obedient servant,</p>
+<p><span class="smcap" style="margin-left: 12em;">Cecilius Baltimore.</span></p>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This letter from the second Lord Baltimore refers
+to the historic voyage which resulted in the first settlement
+of Maryland, thirteen years after the landing of
+the Pilgrims at Plymouth. As for Dr. Briscoe, to
+whom the letter was written, he was one of the three
+hundred original colonists, but after settling in St.
+Mary's, near the mouth of the Potomac, removed to the
+place where his descendants still reside.</p>
+
+<p>Farther out in Jefferson County the motorist may
+pass through two curious hamlets which, though not
+many miles from Charles Town, have the air of being
+completely removed from the world. One of these was
+known, many years ago, as Middleway, and later as
+Smithfield, but is now called Clip&mdash;and for a curious
+reason.</p>
+
+<p>When the stagecoaches were running, the town was
+quite a place, as its several good old houses indicate;
+but the railroads, when they were built, ignored the
+town, but killed the stage lines, with the result that the
+little settlement dried up. Even before this an old plaster-covered
+house, still standing, became haunted. The
+witches who resided in it developed the unpleasant custom
+of flying out at night and cutting pieces from the
+clothing of passers-by. And that is how the town came
+to be called Clip.</p>
+
+<p>A century or so ago, when the rudeness of the witches
+had long annoyed the inhabitants of Clip, and had
+proved very detrimental to their clothing, a Roman
+Catholic priest came along and told them that if they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
+would give him a certain field, he would rid them of
+the evil spirits. This struck the worthy citizens of
+Clip as a good bargain; they gave the priest his field
+(it is still known as the Priest's Field, and is now used
+as a place for basket picnics) and forthwith the operations
+of the witches ceased. So, at least, the story
+goes.</p>
+
+<p>Not far beyond Clip lies the hamlet of Leetown, taking
+its name from that General Charles Lee who commanded
+an American army in the Revolutionary War,
+but who was suspected by Washington of being a traitor,
+and was finally court-martialed and cashiered from
+the army. The old stone house which Lee built at Leetown,
+and in which he lived after his disgrace, still remains.
+Instead of having partitions in his house the
+old general lived in one large room, upon the floor of
+which he made chalk marks to indicate different chambers.
+Here he dwelt surrounded by innumerable dogs,
+and here he was frequently visited by Generals Horatio
+Gates and Adam Stephen, who were neighbors and
+cronies of his, and met at his house to drink wine and
+exchange stories.</p>
+
+<p>It is said that upon one of these occasions Lee got up
+and declared:</p>
+
+<p>"The county of Berkeley is to be congratulated upon
+having as citizens three noted generals of the Revolution,
+each of whom was ignominiously cashiered. You,
+Stephen, for getting drunk when you should have been
+sober; you, Gates, for advancing when you should have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+retreated; and your humble servant for retreating when
+he should have advanced."</p>
+
+<p>Lee was a turbulent, insubordinate, hard-drinking
+rascal, and nothing could be more characteristic than the
+will, written in his own handwriting, filed by the old
+reprobate with the clerk of the Berkeley County Court,
+and expressing the following sentiments:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>I desire most earnestly that I may not be buried in any church
+or churchyard, or within a mile of any Presbyterian or Anabaptist
+meeting house, for since I have resided in this county I
+have kept so much bad company when living that I do not desire
+to continue it when dead.</p></div>
+
+<p>During Lee's life there, Leetown was probably a livelier
+place than it is to-day. Something of its present
+state may be gathered from the fact that when a lady
+of my acquaintance stopped her motor there recently,
+and asked some men what time it was, they stared
+blankly at her for a moment, after which one of them
+said seriously:</p>
+
+<p>"We don't know. We don't have time here."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII<br />
+<br />
+I RIDE A HORSE</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And vaulted with such ease into his seat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As if an angel dropp'd down from the clouds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And witch the world with noble horsemanship.<br /></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class="i0 smcap signature">&mdash;King Henry IV.<br /></span></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Claymont Court, near Charles Town, the
+house in which my companion and I were so
+fortunate as to be guests during our visit to
+this part of the country, is one of the old Washington
+houses, having been built by Bushrod Corbin Washington,
+a nephew of the first President. It is a beautiful
+brick building, with courts at either end, the brick walls
+of which, connecting with the house, extend its lines
+with peculiar grace, and tie to the main structure the
+twin buildings which balance it, according to the delightful
+fashion of early Virginia architecture. The
+hexagonal brick tile of the front walk at Claymont
+Court, and the square stone pavement of the portico,
+resemble exactly those at Mount Vernon, and are said
+to have been imported at the same time; and it is believed
+also that the Claymont box trees were brought over with
+those growing at Mount Vernon.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p132jpg" id="p132jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p132.jpg" width="600" height="354" alt="Claymont Court is one of the old Washington houses. But in all its history it has never been a happier home or a
+more interesting one than it is to-day" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Claymont Court is one of the old Washington houses. But in all its history it has never been a happier home or a
+more interesting one than it is to-day</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The estate was sold out of the Washington family<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
+in 1870, when it was acquired by a Colonel March, who
+later sold it to a gentleman whose wild performances
+at Claymont are not only remembered, but are commemorated
+in the house. In the cellar, for instance,
+bricked up in a room barely large enough to hold it,
+whence it cannot be removed except by tearing down a
+heavy wall, stands a huge carved sideboard to which
+the young man took a dislike, and which he therefore
+caused to be carried to the cellar and immured, despite
+the protests of his family. It is said that upon another
+occasion he conceived the picturesque idea of riding his
+horse upstairs and hitching it to his bedpost; and that
+he did so is witnessed by definite marks of horseshoes
+on the oak treads of the stair. Later Frank R. Stockton
+purchased the place, and there he wrote his story
+"The Captain of the Toll-Gate," which was published
+posthumously.</p>
+
+<p>But in all its history this glorious old house has never
+been a happier home, or a more interesting one, than it
+is to-day. For now it is the residence of four young
+ladies, sisters, who, because of their divergent tastes
+and their complete congeniality, continually suggest the
+fancy that they have stepped out of a novel. One of
+them is the Efficient Sister, who runs the automobile
+and the farm of two or three hundred acres, sells the
+produce, keeps the accounts, and pays off the men; another
+is the Domestic Sister, who conducts the admirable
+m&eacute;nage; another is the Sociological and Artistic
+Sister, who draws and plays and thinks about the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>
+masses; while the fourth is the Sprightly Sister Who
+Likes to Dance.</p>
+
+<p>Never had my companion or I seen a more charming,
+a more varied household, an establishment more
+self-contained, more complete in all things from vegetables
+to brains. No need to leave the place for anything.
+Yet if one wished to look about the country,
+there was the motor, and there were the saddle horses
+in the stable&mdash;all of them members of old Virginian
+families&mdash;and there were four equestrian young ladies.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you-all like to ride to-day?" one of the sisters
+asked us at breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>To my companion, horseback riding is comparatively
+a new thing. He had taken it up a year before&mdash;partly
+because of appeals from me, partly because of changes
+which he had begun to notice in his topography. Compared
+with him I was a veteran horseman, for it was
+then a year and three months since I had begun my riding
+lessons.</p>
+
+<p>I said that I would like to ride, but he declared that he
+must stay behind and make a drawing.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, in the past, I had thought I would prefer
+to make my living as a painter or an illustrator than
+as a writer, but at this juncture it occurred to me that,
+though the writer's medium of expression is a less
+agreeable one than that of the graphic artist, it is much
+pleasanter to ride about with pretty girls than to sit
+alone and draw a picture of their house. I began to
+feel sorry for my companion: the thought of our rid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>ing
+gaily off, and leaving him at work, made him seem
+pathetic. My appeals, however, made no impression
+upon his inflexible sense of duty, and I soon ceased trying
+to persuade him to join us, and began to speculate,
+instead, as to whether all four sisters would accompany
+me, or whether only two or three of them would go&mdash;and
+if so, which.</p>
+
+<p>"What kind of horse do you like?" asked one.</p>
+
+<p>Such a question always troubles me. It is embarrassing.
+Imagine saying to a young lady who likes to
+ride thoroughbred hunters across fields and over ditches
+and fences: "I should like a handsome horse, one that
+will cause me to appear to advantage, one that looks
+spirited but is in reality tame."</p>
+
+<p>Such an admission would be out of character with the
+whole idea of riding. One could hardly make it to one's
+most intimate male friend, let alone to a girl who knows
+all about withers and hocks and pastern joints, and
+talks about "paneled country," and takes the "Racing
+Calendar."</p>
+
+<p>To such a young lady it is impossible to say: "I
+have ridden for a little more than a year; the horses
+with which I am acquainted are benevolent creatures
+from a riding school near Central Park; they go around
+the reservoir twice, and return automatically, and they
+sigh deeply when one mounts and again when one gets
+off."</p>
+
+<p>No; that sort of thing will not do at all; for the horse&mdash;besides
+having been placed in a position more aristo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>cratic
+than ever, through the philanthropies of Henry
+Ford&mdash;is essentially "sporty." You must be a "sport"
+or you must keep away from him. You must approach
+him with dash or you must not approach him at all.
+And when a young lady inquires what kind of horse you
+like, there is but one way to reply.</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't matter at all," I answered. "Any horse
+will do for me." Then, after a little pause, I added, as
+though it were merely an amusing afterthought: "I
+suppose I shall be stiff after my ride. I haven't been on
+a horse in nearly two months."</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said the sympathetic young lady, "you'll
+want an easy ride."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it <i>might</i> be more sensible," I conceded.</p>
+
+<p>"Better give him the black mare," put in the Efficient
+Sister.</p>
+
+<p>"She hasn't been out lately," said the other. "You
+know how she acts when she hasn't been ridden enough.
+He might not know just how to take her. I was thinking
+of giving him 'Dr. Bell.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Bell's too gentle," said the Efficient Sister.</p>
+
+<p>"Which horse do you think you'd like?" the other
+asked me. "Dr. Bell has plenty of life, but he's gentle.
+The black mare's a little bit flighty at first, but if
+you can ride her she soon finds it out and settles down."</p>
+
+<p>I want to ask: "What happens if she finds out that
+you <i>can't</i> ride her? What does she do then?" But I
+refrained.</p>
+
+<p>"She's never thrown anybody but a stable boy and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
+a man who came up here to visit&mdash;and neither one of
+them could ride worth a cent," said the Efficient Sister.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile I had been thinking hard.</p>
+
+<p>"What color is Dr. Bell?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a sorrel."</p>
+
+<p>"Then," I said, "I believe I'd rather ride Dr. Bell.
+I don't like black horses. It is simply one of those peculiar
+aversions one gets."</p>
+
+<p>They seemed to accept this statement, and so the matter
+was agreeably settled.</p>
+
+<p>When, at ten o'clock, I came down dressed for riding,
+my companion was out in front of the house, making
+a drawing; the four young ladies were with him, all
+seemingly enchanted with his work, and none of them in
+riding habits.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p124jpg" id="p124jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p124.jpg" width="600" height="429" alt="When I came down, dressed for riding, my companion was making a drawing; the four young ladies were with him,
+none of them in riding habits" title="" />
+<span class="caption">When I came down, dressed for riding, my companion was making a drawing; the four young ladies were with him,
+none of them in riding habits</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Who's going with me?" I asked as I strolled toward
+them.</p>
+
+<p>They looked at one another inquiringly. Then the
+Efficient Sister said: "I'd like to go, but this is pay
+day and I can't leave the place."</p>
+
+<p>"I have to go to town for some supplies," said the
+Domestic Sister.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to stay and watch this," said the Sociological
+and Artistic Sister. (She made a gesture toward
+my companion, but I think she referred to his drawing.)</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going away to a house party," said the Sprightly
+Sister who Likes to Dance. "I must pack."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't get lost," said the Domestic Sister.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Even if you should," put in the Efficient Sister, "Dr.
+Bell would bring you home."</p>
+
+<p>During this conversation my companion did not look
+up from his work, neither did he speak; yet upon his
+back there was an expression of derisive glee which
+made me hope, vindictively, that he would smudge his
+drawing. However inscrutable his face, I have never
+known a man with a back so expressive.</p>
+
+<p>"Here comes Dr. Bell," remarked the Sociological
+and Artistic Sister, as a negro groom appeared leading
+the sorrel steed.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," I said, trying to speak debonairely as I
+started toward the drive, "I'll be going."</p>
+
+<p>I wished to leave them where they were and go
+around to the other side of the house to mount. I had
+noticed a stone block there and meant to use it if no one
+but the groom were present; also I intended to tip the
+groom and ask him a few casual questions about the
+ways of Dr. Bell.</p>
+
+<p>I might have managed this but for a sudden manifestation
+of interest on the part of my companion.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on," he said to the young ladies, "let's go
+and see him off." It seemed to me that he emphasized
+the word "off" unpleasantly. However I tried to seem
+calm as we moved toward the drive.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Bell had a bright brown eye; there was something
+alert in the gaze with which he watched us moving
+toward him. However, to my great relief he stood
+quite still while two of the sisters who preceded me by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
+a few steps, went up and patted him. Evidently he liked
+to be patted. I decided that I would pat him also.</p>
+
+<p>I had approached him from the left and in order to
+mount I now found it necessary to circle around, in
+front of him. I was determined that if the horse would
+but remain stationary I should step up to him, speak to
+him, give him a quick pat on the neck, gather the reins
+in my hand, place my foot swiftly in the stirrup, take
+a good hop, and be on his back before any one had time
+to notice.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Bell, however, caused me to alter these plans;
+for though he had stood docile as a dog while the sisters
+patted him, his manner underwent a change on sight
+of me. I do not think this change was caused by any
+personal dislike for me. I believe he would have done
+the same had any stranger appeared before him in riding
+boots. The trouble was, probably, that he had expected
+to be ridden by one of the young ladies, and was
+shocked by the abrupt discovery that a total stranger
+was to ride him. This is merely my surmise. I do not
+claim deep understanding of the mental workings of
+any horse, for there is no logic about them or their
+performances. They are like crafty lunatics, reasoning,
+if they reason at all, in a manner too treacherous
+and devious for human comprehension. Their very
+usefulness, the service they render man, is founded on
+their own folly; were it not for that, man could not even
+catch them, let alone force them to submit, like weak-minded
+giants, to his will.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The fact is that, excepting barnyard fowls, the horse
+is the most idiotic of all animals, and, pound for pound,
+even the miserable hen is his intellectual superior. Indeed,
+if horses had brains no better than those of hens,
+but proportionately larger, they would not be drawing
+wagons, and carrying men upon their backs, but would
+be lecturing to women's clubs, and holding chairs in universities,
+and writing essays on the Development of the
+Short Story in America.</p>
+
+<p>Horse lovers, who are among the most prejudiced of
+all prejudiced people, and who regard horses with an
+amiable but fatuous admiration such as young parents
+have for their babies, will try to tell you that these
+great creatures which they love are not mentally deficient.
+Ask them why the horse, with his superior
+strength, submits to man, and they will tell you that the
+horse's eye magnifies, and that, to the horse, man consequently
+appears to be two or three times his actual
+size.</p>
+
+<p>Nonsense! There is but one reason for the yielding
+of the horse: he is an utter fool.</p>
+
+<p>Everything proves him a fool. He will charge into
+battle, he will walk cheerfully beside a precipice, he
+will break his back pulling a heavy wagon, or break
+his leg or his neck in jumping a hurdle; yet he will go
+into a frenzy of fright at the sight of a running child,
+a roadside rock, or the shadow of a branch across the
+path, and not even a German chancellor could shy as he
+will at a scrap of paper.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As I passed in front of Dr. Bell he rolled his eyes at
+me horribly, and rose upon his hind legs, almost upsetting
+the groom as he went up and barely missing him
+with his fore feet as he brought them to earth again.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with him?" I asked, stopping.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 425px;">
+<a name="p117jpg" id="p117jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p117.jpg" width="425" height="582" alt="&quot;What&#39;s the matter with him?&quot; I asked, stopping" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;What&#39;s the matter with him?&quot; I asked, stopping</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"I guess he just feels good," said the Efficient Sister.</p>
+
+<p>"Yassuh, tha 's all," said the groom cheerfully.
+"<i>He's</i> aw' right. Gentle ath a lamb."</p>
+
+<p>As he made this statement, I took another step in the
+direction of the horse, whereat he reared again.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Well</i>, now!" said the groom, patting Dr. Bell upon
+the neck. "Feelin' pretty good 's mawnin', is you?
+There, there!"</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Bell, however, paid little attention to his attendant,
+but gazed steadily at me with an evil look.</p>
+
+<p>"Does he always do like that?" I asked the Domestic
+Sister.</p>
+
+<p>"I never saw him do it before," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe he doesn't admire the cut of your riding
+breeches," suggested my companion.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, suh," protested the groom. "It 's jes' his
+li'l way tryin' t' tell you he likes de ladies t' ride him
+better 'n he likes de gemmen."</p>
+
+<p>"He means he doesn't want me to ride him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yassuh, da 's jes' his li'l idee 't he 's got <i>now</i>. He
+be all right once you in de saddle."</p>
+
+<p>"But how am I to get in the saddle if he keeps doing
+that?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I hold 'im all right," said the groom. "You jes' get
+on 'im, suh. He soon find out who 's boss."</p>
+
+<p>"I think he will," said my heartless companion.</p>
+
+<p>"Nevvah you feah, suh," the man said to me. "Ah
+knowed the minute Ah saw yo' laigs 't you was a <i>horse</i>man.
+Yassuh! Ah says t' ole Gawge, Ah says, 'Dat
+gemman's certain'y been 'n de cava'ry, he has, wid dem
+fine crooked laigs o' hisn.'"</p>
+
+<p>"You should have told that to Dr. Bell, instead," suggested
+my companion.</p>
+
+<p>At this every one laughed. Even the groom laughed
+a wheezy, cackling negro laugh. The situation was
+becoming unbearable. Clearly I must try to mount.
+Perhaps I should not succeed, but I must try. As I
+was endeavoring to adjust my mind to this unpleasant
+fact the Efficient Sister spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"That horse is going to be ridden," she said firmly,
+"if I have to go upstairs and dress and ride him myself."</p>
+
+<p>That settled it.</p>
+
+<p>"Now you hold him down," I said to the groom, and
+stepped forward.</p>
+
+<p>As I did so Dr. Bell reared again, simultaneously
+drawing back sidewise and turning his flank away from
+me, but this time the Efficient Sister hit him with a crop
+she had found somewhere, and he came down hastily,
+and began to dance a sort of double clog with all four
+feet.</p>
+
+<p>After several efforts I managed to get beside him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
+Gathering the reins in my left hand I put my foot up
+swiftly, found the stirrup, and with a hop, managed to
+board the beast.</p>
+
+<p>As I did so, the groom let him go. Both stirrups
+were short, but it was too late to discuss that, for by
+the time I was adjusted to my seat we had traveled,
+at a run, over a considerable part of the lawn and
+through most of the flowerbeds. The shortness of the
+stirrups made me bounce, and I had a feeling that I
+might do better to remove my feet from them entirely,
+but as I had never ridden without stirrups I hesitated
+to try it now. Therefore I merely dug my knees desperately
+into the saddle flaps and awaited what should
+come, while endeavoring to check the animal. He,
+however, kept his head down, which not only made it
+difficult to stop him, but also gave me an unpleasant
+sense as of riding on the cowcatcher of a locomotive
+with nothing but space in front of me. Once, with a
+jerk, I managed to get his head up, but when I did that
+he reared. I do not care for rearing.</p>
+
+<p>To add to my delight, one of the dogs now ran out
+and began to bark and circle around us, jumping up at
+the horse's nose and nipping at his heels. This brought
+on new activities, for now Dr. Bell not only reared but
+elevated himself suddenly behind, to kick at the dog.
+However, there was one good result. We stopped running
+and began to trot rapidly about in circles, dodging
+the dog, and this finally brought us back toward the
+house.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"My stirrups are too short!" I shouted to the groom.</p>
+
+<p>"Ride oveh heah, suh," he called back.</p>
+
+<p>I tried to do it, but Dr. Bell continued to move in
+circles. At last, however, the man managed to catch us
+by advancing with his hand extended, as though offering
+a lump of sugar, at the same time talking gently to my
+steed. Then, while my companion held the bit the
+negro adjusted the stirrup leathers. I was glad of the
+breathing spell. I wished that it took longer to adjust
+stirrups.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better go out by the drive this time," said the
+Efficient Sister.</p>
+
+<p>"I intended to before," I told her, "but he didn't seem
+to understand the signals."</p>
+
+<p>"You've got spurs on. Give him the spur."</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact, I had hesitated to give him the
+spur. It seemed to me that he was annoyed with me
+anyway, and that the spur would only serve to increase
+his prejudice. I wanted to rule him not by brute force
+but by kindness. I wished that I could somehow make
+him know that I was a regular subscriber to the S.&nbsp;P.&nbsp;C.&nbsp;A.,
+that I loved children and animals and all helpless
+creatures, both great and small, that I used the dumb
+brutes gently and only asked in return that they do the
+same by me. But how is one to communicate such
+humanitarian ideas to a big, stupid, wilful, perverse,
+diabolical creature like a horse?</p>
+
+<p>I was determined that when we started again we
+should not run over the lawn if I could possibly pre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>vent
+it. Therefore I had the groom head the horse
+down the drive, and the moment he released him, I
+touched Dr. Bell with the spurs. The result was
+magical. He started on a run but kept in the road
+where I wanted him to be, giving me, for the moment, a
+sense of having something almost like control over him.
+At the foot of the drive was a gate which I knew could
+be opened without dismounting, by pulling a rope, and
+as no horse, unless quite out of his mind, will deliberately
+run into a gate, I had reason to hope that Dr. Bell would
+stop when he got there. Imagine my feelings, then,
+when on sight of the gate he not only failed to slacken
+his pace, but actually dashed at it faster than ever.
+Within a few feet of the barrier he seemed to pause
+momentarily, hunching himself in a peculiar and alarming
+manner: then he arose, sailed through the air like a
+swallow, came down beyond like a load of trunks falling
+off from a truck, and galloped down the highway, seemingly
+quite indifferent to the fact that the stirrups were
+flapping at his sides and that I had moved from the
+saddle to a point near the base of his neck.</p>
+
+<p>My position at the moment was one of considerable
+insecurity. By holding on to his mane and wriggling
+backward I hoped to stay on, provided he did not put
+down his head. If he did that, I was lost. Fortunately
+for me, however, Dr. Bell did not realize with
+what ease he could have dropped me at that moment,
+and by dint of cautious but eager gymnastics, I managed
+to regain the saddle and the stirrups, although in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
+doing so I pricked him several times with the spurs, with
+the result that, though he ran faster than ever for a
+time, he must have presently concluded that I didn't
+care how fast he went; at all events, he slackened his
+pace to a canter, from which, shortly, I managed to
+draw him down to a trot and then to a walk.</p>
+
+<p>I am glad to say that not until now had we met any
+vehicle. Even while he was running, even while I was
+engaged in maintaining a precarious seat upon his neck,
+I had found time to hope fervently that we should not
+encounter an automobile. I was afraid that he would
+jump it if we did.</p>
+
+<p>Now, however, I saw a motor approaching. Dr. Bell
+saw it, too, and pricked up his ears. Seizing the reins
+firmly in one hand, I waved with the other, signalling to
+the motorist to stop, which he did, pulling out into the
+ditch. Meanwhile I talked to Dr. Bell, patting him on
+the neck and telling him to go on and not to be afraid,
+because it was all right. Dr. Bell did go on. He went
+up to the front of the motor, past the side of it, and
+on behind it, without showing the least sign of alarm.
+He did not mind it at all. But the man in the motor
+minded. Annoyed with me for having stopped him unnecessarily,
+he shouted something after me. But I paid
+no attention to him. Under the circumstances, it
+seemed the only thing to do. I might have gotten off;
+I might conceivably have beaten him; but I never could
+have held the horse while doing it, or have gotten on
+again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Presently, when I was changing the position of the
+reins, which were hurting my fingers because I had
+gripped them so tight, I accidentally shifted the gears
+in some way, so to speak, sending Dr. Bell off at a pace
+which was neither a trot nor a canter, but which carried
+us along at a sort of smooth, rapid glide. At first I took
+this gait to be a swift trot, and attempted to post to it;
+then, as that did not work, I sat still in the saddle and,
+finding the posture comfortable, concluded that Dr. Bell
+must be single-footing. I had never single-footed before.
+Just as I was beginning to like it, however, he
+changed to a trot, then back to single-footing again, and
+so on, in a curious puzzling manner.</p>
+
+<p>Except for the changes of gait, we were now going on
+rather well, and I had begun, for the first time, to feel
+a little security, when all of a sudden he swerved off
+and galloped with me up a driveway leading toward a
+white house which stood on a hill two or three hundred
+yards from the road. Again I tried to stop him, but
+when I pulled on the reins he shook his head savagely
+from side to side and snorted in a loud and threatening
+manner.</p>
+
+<p>As we neared the house I saw that two ladies were sitting
+on the porch regarding our approach with interest.
+I hoped that Dr. Bell would find some way of keeping
+on past the house and into the fields, but he had no such
+intention. Instead of going by, he swung around the
+circle before the porch, and stopped at the steps, upon
+which the two ladies were sitting.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One of them was a white-haired woman of gentle
+mien; the other was a girl of eighteen or twenty with
+pretty, mischievous eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Both the ladies looked up inquiringly as Dr. Bell and
+I stopped.</p>
+
+<p>I lifted my hat. It was the only thing I could think of
+to do at the moment. At this they both nodded gravely.
+Then we sat and stared at one another.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" said the old lady, when the silence had become
+embarrassing.</p>
+
+<p>I felt that I must say something, so I remarked:
+"This is a very pretty place you have here."</p>
+
+<p>At this, though the statement was quite true, they
+looked perplexed.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there any message?" asked the young woman,
+after another pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no," I answered lightly. "I was riding by and
+thought I'd take the liberty of coming up and telling
+you&mdash;telling you that although I am a Northerner and a
+stranger here, I love the South, the quaint old Southern
+customs, the lovely old houses, the delicious waffles,
+the&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That is very gratifying," said she "I am sorry to say
+we are all out of waffles at present."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't want any now," I replied politely.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if you don't mind my asking, what <i>do</i> you
+want?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want," I said, desperately, "to see your groom for a
+moment, if possible."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He's gone to town," she replied. "Is there anything
+I can do? I see that your stirrup leather is twisted."
+With that she arose, came down, removed my foot from
+the stirrup, in a businesslike manner, reversed the iron,
+and put my foot back for me.</p>
+
+<p>I thanked her.</p>
+
+<p>"Anything else?" she asked, her wicked eye twinkling.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," I ventured, "perhaps you know how to
+make a horse single-foot?"</p>
+
+<p>"There are different ways," she said. "With Dr. Bell
+you might try using the curb gently, working it from
+side to side."</p>
+
+<p>"I will," I said. "Thank you very much."</p>
+
+<p>"And," said the girl, "if he ever takes a notion to bolt
+with you, or to go up to some house where you don't
+want him to go, just touch him with the curb. That
+will fix him. He's very soft-bitted."</p>
+
+<p>"But I tried that," I protested.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at my reins, then shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she said, "you've got your curb rein and your
+snaffle rein mixed."</p>
+
+<p>"I am very much indebted to you," I said, as I changed
+the position of the reins between my fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all," said she. "I hope you'll get safely back
+to the Claymont. If you want to jump him, give him
+his head. He'll take off all right."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks," I returned. "I don't want to jump him."</p>
+
+<p>Then lifting my hat and thanking her again, I wiggled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>
+the curb gently from side to side, as directed, and departed,
+singlefooting comfortably.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Bell and I got home very nicely. He wanted to
+jump the gate again, but I checked him with the curb.
+After pulling the rope to open the gate I must have got
+the reins mixed once more, for as I was nearing the
+house, calm in the feeling that I had mastered the animal,
+and intent upon cantering up to the porch in fine
+style, Dr. Bell swerved suddenly off to the stable, went
+into the door, and, before I could stop him, entered his
+stall.</p>
+
+<p>There I dismounted in absolute privacy. It was
+quite easy. I had only to climb on to the partition and
+drop down into the next stall, which, by good fortune,
+was vacant.</p>
+
+<p>With a single exception, this was the only riding I did
+in the South, and on the one other occasion of which I
+speak I did not ride alone, but had, surrounding me, the
+entire Eleventh United States Cavalry.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII<br />
+<br />
+INTO THE OLD DOMINION</h2>
+
+
+<p>When two men are traveling together on an
+equal footing, and it becomes necessary to
+decide between two rooms in a hotel, how
+is the decision to be made? Which man is to take the
+big, bright corner room, and which the little room that
+faces on the court and is fragrant of the bakery below?
+Or again, which man shall occupy the lower berth in a
+Pullman drawing-room, and which shall try to sleep
+upon the shelf-like couch? Or when there is but one
+lower left, which shall take the upper? If an extra
+kit bag be required for the use of both, who shall pay
+for it and own it at the journey's end? Who shall pay
+for this meal and who for that? Or yet again, if there
+be but one cheap heavy overcoat in a shop, and both desire
+to own that coat, which one shall have the right of
+purchase? Who shall tip the bell boy for bringing up
+the bags, or the porter for taking down the trunks?
+Who shall take home from a dance the girl both want
+to take, and who shall escort the unattractive one who
+resides in a remote suburb?</p>
+
+<p>Between two able-bodied men there is no uncomfortable
+complication of politeness in such matters. On a
+brief journey there might be, but on a long journey the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
+thin veil of factitious courtesy is cast aside; each wants
+his fair share of what is best and makes no pretense to
+the contrary.</p>
+
+<p>Upon our first long journey together, some years ago,
+my companion and I established a custom of settling
+all such questions by matching coins, and we have maintained
+this habit ever since. Upon the whole it has
+worked well. We have matched for everything except
+railroad fares and hotel bills, and though fortune has
+sometimes favored one or the other for a time, I believe
+that, had we kept accounts, we should find ourselves
+to-day practically even.</p>
+
+<p>Our system of matching has some correlated customs.
+Now and then, for instance, when one of us is unlucky
+and has been "stuck" for a series of meals, the other, in
+partial reparation, will declare a "party." Birthdays
+and holidays also call for parties, and sometimes there
+will be a party for no particular reason other than that
+we feel like having one.</p>
+
+<p>Two of our parties on this journey have been given in
+the basement caf&eacute; of the Shoreham Hotel in Washington.
+Both were supper parties. The first I gave in
+honor of my companion, for the reason that we both like
+the Shoreham caf&eacute;, and that a party seemed to be about
+due. That party brought on the other, which occurred
+a few nights later and was given by us jointly in honor
+of a very beautiful and talented young actress. And
+this one, we agree, was, in a way, the most amusing of
+all the parties we have had together.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was early in the morning, when we were leaving the
+caf&eacute; after the first party, that we encountered the lady
+who caused the second one. I had never met her, but I
+was aware that my companion knew her, for he talked
+about her in his sleep. She was having supper with a
+gentleman at a table near the door, and had you seen her
+it would be unnecessary for me to tell you that my companion
+stopped to speak to her, and that I hung around
+until he introduced me.</p>
+
+<p>After we had stood beside her, for a time, talking and
+gazing down into her beautiful world-wise eyes, the
+gentleman with whom she was supping took pity upon
+us, and upon the waiters, whose passageway we blocked,
+and invited us to sit down.</p>
+
+<p>It was doubly delightful to meet her there in Washington,
+for besides being beautiful and celebrated, she
+had just come from New York and was able to give us
+news of mutual friends, bringing us up to date on suits
+for separation, alimony, and alienation of affections, on
+divorces and remarriages, and all the little items one
+loses track of when one has been away for a fortnight.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be playing in Washington all this week," she
+said as we were about to leave. "I hope that we may
+see each other again."</p>
+
+<p>Whom did she mean by "we"? True, she looked at
+my companion as she spoke, but he was seated at one
+side of her and I at the other, and even with such eyes
+as hers, she could not have looked at both of us at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
+once. Certainly the hope she had expressed was shared
+by me. <i>I</i> hoped that "we" might meet again, and it
+seemed to me desirable at the moment that she should
+understand (and that my companion should be reminded)
+that he and I were as Damon and Pythias, as
+Castor and Pollux, as Pylades and Orestes, and all that
+sort of thing. Therefore I leaped quickly at the word
+"we," and, before my companion had time to answer,
+replied:</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so too."</p>
+
+<p>This brought her eyes to me. She looked surprised,
+I thought, but what of that? Don't women like to be
+surprised? Don't they like men to be strong, resolute,
+determined, like heroes in the moving pictures? Don't
+they like to see a man handle matters with dash? I was
+determined to be dashing.</p>
+
+<p>"We are off to Virginia to-morrow morning," I continued.
+"We are going to Fredericksburg and Charlottesville,
+and into the fox-hunting country. If we
+can get back here Saturday night let's have a party."</p>
+
+<p>I spoke of the hunting country debonairely. I did not
+care what she thought my companion was going to the
+hunting country for, but I did not wish her to think that
+I was going only to look on. On the contrary, I desired
+her to suppose that I should presently be wearing a pair
+of beautiful, slim-legged riding boots and a pink coat,
+and leaping a thoroughbred mount over fences and
+gates. I wished her to believe me a wild, reckless, devil<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>
+of a fellow, and to worry throughout the week lest I be
+killed in a fall from my horse, and she never see me more&mdash;poor
+girl!</p>
+
+<p>That she felt such emotions I have since had reason
+to doubt. However, the idea of a party after the play
+on Saturday night seemed to appeal to her, and it was
+arranged that my companion and I should endeavor to
+get back to Washington after the Piedmont Hunt races,
+which we were to attend on Saturday afternoon, and
+that if we could get back we should telegraph to her.</p>
+
+<p>We kept our agreement&mdash;but I shall come to that
+later.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Next morning we took train for Fredericksburg.</p>
+
+<p>The city manager who runs the town is a good housekeeper;
+his streets are wide, pretty, and clean; and
+though there are many historic buildings&mdash;including
+the home of Washington's mother and the house in
+which Washington became a Mason&mdash;there are enough
+good new ones to give the place a progressive look.</p>
+
+<p>In the days of the State's magnificence Fredericksburg
+was the center for all this part of northeastern Virginia,
+and particularly for the Rappahannock Valley;
+and from pre-Revolutionary times, when tobacco was
+legal tender and ministers got roaring drunk, down to
+the Civil War, there came rolling into the town the
+coaches of the great plantation owners of the region,
+who used Fredericksburg as a headquarters for drinking,
+gambling, and business. Among these probably the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
+most famous was "King" Carter, who not only owned
+miles upon miles of land and a thousand slaves, but was
+the husband of five (successive) Mrs. Carters.</p>
+
+<p>Falmouth, a river town a mile above Fredericksburg,
+where a few scattered houses stand to-day, was in early
+times a busy place. It is said that the first flour mill in
+America stood there, and that one Gordon, who made
+his money by shipping flour and tobacco direct from his
+wharf to England, and bringing back bricks as ballast
+for his ships, was the first American millionaire.</p>
+
+<p>Besides having known intimately such historic figures
+as Washington, Monroe, and Robert E. Lee, and having
+been the scene of sanguinary fighting in the Civil War,
+the neighborhood of Fredericksburg boasts the birth-place
+of a man of whom I wish to speak briefly here, for
+the reason that he was a great man, that he has been
+partially overlooked by history, and that it is said in the
+South that the fame which should justly be his has been
+deliberately withheld by historians and politicians for
+the sole reason that as a naval officer he espoused the
+southern cause in the Civil War.</p>
+
+<p>Every one who has heard of Robert Fulton, certainly
+every one who has heard of S.&nbsp;F.&nbsp;B. Morse or Cyrus
+W. Field, ought also to have heard of Matthew Fontaine
+Maury. But that is not the case. For myself, I
+must confess that, until I visited Virginia, I was ignorant
+of the fact that such a person had existed; nor
+have northern schoolboys, to whom I have spoken of
+Maury, so much as heard his name. Yet there is no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>
+one living in the United States, or in any civilized country,
+whose daily life is not affected through the scientific
+researches and attainments of this man.</p>
+
+<p>Maury's claim to fame rests on his eminent services
+to navigation and meteorology. If Humboldt's work,
+published in 1817, was the first great contribution to
+meteorological science, it remained for Maury to make
+that science exact.</p>
+
+<p>While it is perhaps an exaggeration to say that
+Maury alone laid the foundation for our present
+Weather Bureau, he certainly shares with Professors
+Redfield, Espy, Loomis, Joseph Henry, Dr. Increase
+Lapham, and others, the honor of having been one of
+the first to suggest the feasibility of our present systematic
+storm warnings.</p>
+
+<p>Maury was born in 1806. When nineteen years of
+age he secured a midshipman's warrant, and, as there
+was no naval academy at Annapolis then, was immediately
+assigned to a man-of-war. Within six years he
+was master of an American war vessel. Before starting
+on a voyage to the Pacific he sought information on
+the winds and currents, and finding that it was not available,
+determined himself to gather it for general publication.
+This he did, issuing a book upon the subject.</p>
+
+<p>When a broken leg, the result of a stage-coach accident,
+caused his retirement from active service at sea,
+he continued his studies, and, in recognition of his services
+to navigation, was given charge of the Depot of
+Charts and Instruments at Washington. There he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>
+found stored away the log books of American naval
+vessels, and from the vast number of observations they
+contained, began the compilation of the Wind and Currents
+Charts known to all mariners.</p>
+
+<p>A monograph on Maury, issued by N.&nbsp;W. Ayer &amp;
+Son, of Philadelphia, says of these charts:</p>
+
+<p>"They were, at first, received with indifference and
+incredulity. Finally, a Captain Jackson determined to
+trust the new chart absolutely. As a result he made
+a round trip to Rio de Janeiro in the time often required
+for the outward passage alone. Later, four
+clipper ships started from New York for San Francisco,
+via Cape Horn. These vessels arrived at their
+destination in the order determined by the degree of
+fidelity with which they had followed the directions of
+Maury's charts. The arrival of these ships in San
+Francisco marked, likewise, the arrival of Maury's
+Wind and Currents Charts in the lasting favor of the
+mariners of the world. The average voyage to San
+Francisco was reduced, by use of the charts, from one
+hundred and eighty-three to one hundred and thirty-five
+days, a saving of forty-eight days.</p>
+
+<p>"Soon after this, the ship <i>San Francisco</i>, with hundreds
+of United States troops on board, foundered in
+an Atlantic hurricane. The rumor reached port that
+there was need of help. Maury was called upon to
+indicate her probable location. He set to work to show
+where the wind and currents would combine to place
+a helpless wreck, and marked the place with a blue pen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>cil.
+There the relief was sent, and there the survivors
+of the wreck were found. From that day to this,
+Maury's word has been accepted without challenge by
+the matter-of-fact men of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>"These charts, only a few in number, are among the
+most wonderful and useful productions of the human
+mind. One of them combined the result of 1,159,353
+separate observations on the force and direction of the
+wind, and upward of 100,000 observations on the height
+of the barometer, at sea. As the value of such observations
+was recognized, more of them were made.
+Through the genius and devotion of one man, Commander
+Maury, every ship became a floating observatory,
+keeping careful records of winds, currents, limits
+of fogs, icebergs, rain areas, temperature, soundings,
+etc., while every maritime nation of the world
+co&ouml;perated in a work that was to redound to the benefit
+of commerce and navigation, the increase of knowledge,
+the good of all.</p>
+
+<p>"In 1853, at the instance of Commander Maury, the
+United States called the celebrated Brussels Conference
+for the co&ouml;peration of nations in matters pertaining to
+maritime affairs. At this conference, Maury advocated
+the extension of the system of meteorological observation
+to the land, thus forming a weather bureau
+helpful to agriculture. This he urged in papers and
+addresses to the close of his life. Our present Weather
+Bureau and Signal Service are largely the outcome of
+his perception and advocacy."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Maury's "Physical Geography of the Sea," the work
+by which he is best known, was published in 1855. He
+discovered, among other things, the causes of the Gulf
+Stream, and the existence of the still-water plateau of
+the North Atlantic which made possible the laying of
+the first cable. Cyrus W. Field said, with reference to
+Maury's work in this connection: "Maury furnished
+the brains, England gave the money, and I did the work."</p>
+
+<p>Maury was decorated by many foreign governments
+but not by his own. Owing, it is said, to his having
+taken up the Confederate cause, national honors were
+withheld from him, not only during the remainder of his
+life, but until 1916, when one of the large buildings at
+the Naval Academy&mdash;the establishment of which, by the
+way, Maury was one of the first to advocate&mdash;was
+named for him, and Congress passed a bill appropriating
+funds for the erection of a monument to the "Pathfinder
+of the Sea," in Washington.</p>
+
+<p>Maury died in 1873, one of the most loved and honored
+men in the State of Virginia.</p>
+
+<p>It is recorded that, near the end, he asked his son:
+"Am I dragging my anchors?"</p>
+
+<p>And when the latter replied in the affirmative, the
+father gave a brave sailor's answer:</p>
+
+<p>"All's well," he said.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Across the river from Fredericksburg stands Chatham,
+the old Fitzhugh house, one of the most charming of
+early Virginian mansions. Chatham was built in 1728,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>
+and it is thought that the plans for it were drawn by
+Sir Christopher Wren at the order of William Pitt,
+Earl of Chatham, and sent by the latter to William
+Fitzhugh, who had been his classmate at Eton and Oxford.
+Not only does the name of the house lend color
+to the tale, but so do its proportions, which are very
+beautiful, reminding one somewhat of those of Doughoregan
+Manor. Chatham, however, has the advantage
+of being (as the Hon. Charles Augustus Murray wrote
+of it in his quaint "Travels in North America," published
+in 1839) "situated on an eminence commanding
+a view of the town, and of the bold, sweeping course
+of the Rappahannoc." Murray also tells of the beautiful
+garden, with its great box trees and its huge slave-built
+terraces, stepping down to the water like a giant's
+stairway.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p148jpg" id="p148jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p148.jpg" width="600" height="374" alt="Chatham, the old Fitzhugh house, now the residence of Mark Sullivan. Washington, Madison, Monroe, Washington
+Irving, Lee and Lincoln have known the shelter of its roof" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Chatham, the old Fitzhugh house, now the residence of Mark Sullivan. Washington, Madison, Monroe, Washington
+Irving, Lee and Lincoln have known the shelter of its roof</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In this house my companion and I were guests, and
+as I won the toss for the choice of rooms, mine was the
+privilege of sleeping in the historic west bedchamber,
+the principal guest room, and of opening my eyes, in the
+morning, upon a lovely wall all paneled in white-painted
+wood.</p>
+
+<p>I shall always remember the delightful experience
+of awakening in that room, so vast, dignified, and beautiful,
+and of lying there a little drowsy, and thinking of
+those who had been there before me. This was the
+room occupied by George and Martha Washington when
+they stopped for a few days at Chatham on their wedding
+journey; this was the room occupied by Madison,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
+by Monroe, by Washington Irving, and by Robert E.
+Lee when he visited Chatham and courted Mary Custis,
+who became his wife. And, most wonderful of all to
+me, this was the room occupied by Lincoln when he came
+to Fredericksburg to review the army, while Chatham
+was Union headquarters, and the embattled Lee had
+headquarters in the old house known as Brompton, still
+standing on Marye's Heights back of the river and the
+town. It is said that Lee during the siege of Fredericksburg
+never trained his guns on Chatham, because
+of his sentiment for the place. As I lay there in the
+morning I wondered if Lee had been aware, at the time,
+that Lincoln was under the roof of Chatham, and
+whether Lincoln knew, when he slept in "my" room,
+that Washington and Lee had both been there before
+him.</p>
+
+<p>War, I thought, not only makes strange bedfellows,
+but strange combinations in the histories of bedrooms.</p>
+
+<p>Then the maid rapped for the second time upon my
+door, and though this time I got up at once, my ruminations
+made me scandalously late for breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast came the motor, which was to take us
+to the battlefields, its driver a thin dry-looking, dry-talking
+man, with the air of one a little tired of the
+story he told to tourists day in and day out, yet conscientiously
+resolved to go through with it. Before the
+huge cemetery which overlooks the site of the most violent
+fighting that occurred in the bloody and useless
+Battle of Fredericksburg, he paused briefly; then drove<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
+us to the field of Chancellorsville, to that of the Battles
+of the Wilderness, and finally to the region of Spottsylvania
+Courthouse; and at each important spot he stopped
+and told us what had happened there. He knew all
+about the Civil War, that man, and he had a way of
+passing out his information with a calm assumption that
+his hearers knew nothing about it whatever. This
+irritated my companion, who also knows all about the
+War, having once passed three days in the neighborhood
+of a Soldiers' Home. Consequently he kept cutting
+in, supplying additional details&mdash;such, for instance,
+as that Stonewall Jackson, who died in a house which
+the driver pointed out, was shot by some of his own men,
+who took him for a Yankee as he was returning from a
+reconnaissance.</p>
+
+<p>Either one of these competitive historians alone, I
+could have stood, but the way they picked each other
+up, fighting the old-time battles over again, got on my
+nerves. Besides, it was cold, and as I have taken occasion
+to remark before, I do not like cold motor rides.
+Indeed, as I think it over, it seems to me I do not like
+battlefields, either. At all events, I became more and
+more morose as we traversed that bleak Virginia landscape,
+and I am afraid that before the day was over I
+was downright sulky.</p>
+
+<p>As we drove back to Fredericksburg and to the train
+which was to take us to Charlottesville, my companion
+made remarks of a general character about people who
+were trivial minded, and who didn't take a proper in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>terest
+in the scenes of great historical occurrences.
+When he had continued for some time in this vein, I
+remarked feebly that I loved to read about battles; but
+that, far from mitigating his severity, only caused him
+to change his theme. He said that physical laziness
+was a terrible thing because it not only made the body
+soft but by degrees softened the brain, as well. He
+said that when people didn't want to see battlefields,
+preferring to lie in bed and read about them, that was
+a sign of the beginning of the end.</p>
+
+<p>On various occasions throughout the week he brought
+this subject up again, and I was glad indeed when, as
+the time for our party with the beautiful young actress,
+in Washington, drew near, he began to forget about
+my shortcomings and think of more agreeable things.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV<br />
+<br />
+CHARLOTTESVILLE AND MONTICELLO</h2>
+
+
+<p>When Virginians speak of "the university,"
+they do not mean Harvard, Princeton, Yale,
+or even Washington and Lee, but always the
+University of Virginia, which is at Charlottesville.</p>
+
+<p>The city of Charlottesville, in its downtown parts, is
+no more and no less dingy and dismal than many another
+town of six or seven thousand inhabitants, be it
+North or South. It has a long main street, lined with
+little shops and moving-picture shows, and the theatrical
+posters which thrill one at first sight with hopes of evening
+entertainment, prove, on inspection, to have survived
+long after the "show" they advertise has come and
+gone, or else to presage the "show" that is coming for
+one night, week after next.</p>
+
+<p>Nor is this scarcity of theatrical entertainment confined
+alone to small towns of the South. Not all important
+stars and important theatrical productions visit
+even the largest cities, for the South is not regarded
+by theatrical managers as particularly profitable territory.
+It would be interesting to know whether an&aelig;mia
+of the theater in the South, as well as the falling off
+generally of theatergoing in lesser American cities<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>&mdash;usually
+attributed to the popularity and cheapness of the
+"movies"&mdash;is not due in large measure to the folly of
+managers themselves in sending out inferior companies.
+Any one who has seen a theatrical entertainment
+in New York and seen it later "on the road" is
+likely to be struck by the fact that even the larger American
+cities do not always get the full New York cast,
+while smaller cities seldom if ever get any part of it.
+The South suffers particularly in this respect. The
+little "river shows," which arrive now and then in river
+towns, and which are more or less characteristic of the
+South, have the excuse of real picturesqueness, however
+bad the entertainment given, for the players live and
+have their theater on flatboats, which tie up at the
+wharf. But the plain fact about the ordinary little
+southern "road show" is that it does not deserve to
+make money.</p>
+
+<p>The life of a poor player touring the South must be
+very wretched, for generally, excepting in large cities,
+hotels are poor. Before we had gone far upon our way,
+my companion and I learned to inquire carefully in
+advance as to the best hotels, and when we found in
+any small city one which was not a fire trap, and which
+was clean, we were surprised, while if the service was
+fairly good, and the meals were not very bad, we considered
+it a matter for rejoicing.</p>
+
+<p>We were advised to stop, in Charlottesville, at the
+New Gleason, and when we alighted at the dingy old
+brick railroad station&mdash;a station quite as unprepossess<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>ing
+as that at New Haven, Connecticut&mdash;we began to
+feel that all was not for the best. A large gray horse
+hitched to the hack in which we rode to the Gleason evidently
+felt the same, for at first he balked, and later tried
+to run away.</p>
+
+<p>The hotel lobby was a perfect example of its kind.
+There were several drummers writing at the little desks,
+and several more sitting idly in chairs adjacent to brass
+cuspidors. All of them looked despondent with a despondency
+suggesting pie for breakfast. Behind the
+desk was a sleepy-looking old clerk who, as we arrived,
+was very busy over a financial transaction involving
+change of ownership in a two-cent stamp. This enterprise
+concluded, he assigned us rooms.</p>
+
+<p>Never have I wished to win the toss for rooms as I
+wished it when I saw the two allotted to us, for though
+the larger one could not by a flight of fancy be termed
+cheerful, the sight of the lesser chamber filled me with
+thoughts of madness.</p>
+
+<p>Of course I lost.</p>
+
+<p>Never shall I forget that room. It was too small to
+accommodate my trunks with any comfort, so I left them
+downstairs with the porter, descending, now and then,
+to get such articles as I required. The furniture, what
+there was of it, was of yellow pine; the top of the
+dresser was scarred with the marks of many glasses and
+many bottles; the lace window curtains were long, hard
+and of a wiry stiffness, and the wall-paper was of a
+scrambled pattern all in bilious brown. During the eve<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>ning
+I persuaded my companion to walk with me through
+the town, and once I got him out I kept him going on and
+on through shadowy streets unknown to us, until, exhausted,
+he insisted upon returning to our hostelry. I
+fancy that there are picturesque old houses on the outskirts
+of the town, but with that wall paper and a terrible
+nostalgia occupying my mind, I was in no state to judge
+of what was there.</p>
+
+<p>On reaching the hotel my companion went to bed, but
+I remained until late in the office, writing letters, doing
+anything rather than go up to my room. When
+at last I did ascend I planned to read, but the arrangement
+of the light was bad, so presently I put it out and
+lay there sleepless and miserable, thinking of foolish
+things that I have said and done during a life rich with
+such items, and having chills and fever over each separate
+recollection. How I drifted off to sleep at last I
+do not know; all I remember is waking up next morning,
+leaping out of bed and dressing in frantic haste to get
+out of my room. There was but one thing in it which
+did not utterly offend the eye: that was the steam pipe
+which ascended from floor to ceiling at one corner, and
+which, being a simple, honest metal tube, was not objectionable.</p>
+
+<p>As we passed through the office on our way to breakfast,
+the bus man entered, and in a loud, retarded chant
+proclaimed: "Train for the South!"</p>
+
+<p>The impressive tones in which this announcement was
+delivered seemed to call for a sudden stir, a rush for bags<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
+and coats, a general exodus, but no one in the office
+moved, and I remember feeling sorry for the bus man as
+he turned and went out in the midst of a crushing anti-climax.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder," I said to my companion, "if anybody ever
+gets up and goes when that man calls out the trains."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe so," he replied. "I don't think he
+calls trains for any such purpose. He only warns people
+so they will expect to hear the train, and not be frightened
+when it goes through."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Thomas Jefferson is most widely remembered, I suppose,
+as the author of the Declaration of Independence,
+the third President, the purchaser of Louisiana, and the
+unfortunate individual upon whom the Democratic party
+casts the blame for its existence, precisely as the Republican
+party blames itself on Washington and Lincoln&mdash;although
+the lamentable state into which both parties
+have fallen is actually the fault of living men.</p>
+
+<p>It is significant, however, that of this trio of Jeffersonian
+items, Jefferson himself selected but one to be
+included in the inscription which he wrote for his tombstone&mdash;a
+modest obelisk on the grounds at Monticello.
+The inscription mentions but three of his achievements:
+the authorship of the Declaration, that of the Virginia
+statute for religious freedom, and the fact that he was
+"Father of the University of Virginia."</p>
+
+<p>Regardless of other accomplishments, the man who
+built the university and the house at Monticello was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+great. It is more true of these buildings than of any
+others I have seen that they are the autobiography, in
+brick and stone, of their architect. To see them, to see
+some of the exquisitely margined manuscript in Jefferson's
+clean handwriting, preserved in the university library,
+and to read the Declaration, is to gain a grasp of
+certain sides of Jefferson's nature which can be achieved
+in no other way.</p>
+
+<p>Monticello stands on a lofty hilltop, with vistas, between
+trees, of neighboring valleys, hills, and mountains.
+It is a supremely lovely house, unlike any other,
+and, while it is too much to say that one would recognize
+it as the house of the writer of the Declaration, it is not
+too much to say that, once one does know it, one can trace
+a clear affinity resulting from a common origin&mdash;an
+affinity much more apparent, by the way, than may be
+traced between the work of Michelangelo on St. Peter's
+at Rome, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and in his
+"David."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 520px;">
+<a name="p157jpg" id="p157jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p157.jpg" width="520" height="600" alt="Monticello stands on a lofty hilltop, with vistas, between trees of neighboring
+valleys, hills, and mountains" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Monticello stands on a lofty hilltop, with vistas, between trees of neighboring
+valleys, hills, and mountains</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The introductory paragraph to the Declaration
+ascends into the body of the document as gracefully and
+as certainly as the wide flights of easy steps ascend to
+the doors of Monticello; the long and beautifully balanced
+paragraph which follows, building word upon
+word and sentence upon sentence into a central statement,
+has a form as definite and graceful as that of the
+finely proportioned house; the numbered paragraphs
+which follow, setting forth separate details, are like
+rooms within the house, and&mdash;I have just come upon the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>
+coincidence with a pleasant start such as might be felt by
+the discoverer of some complex and important cipher&mdash;as
+there are twenty-seven of the numbered paragraphs
+in the Declaration, so there are twenty-seven rooms in
+Monticello. Last of all there are two little phrases in
+the Declaration (the phrases stating that we shall hold
+our British brethren in future as we hold the rest of
+mankind&mdash;"enemies in war; in peace, friends"), which
+I would liken to the small twin buildings, one of them
+Jefferson's office, the other that of the overseer, which
+stand on either side of the lawn at Monticello, at some
+distance from the house. These office buildings face,
+and balance upon each other, and upon the mansion, but
+they are so much smaller that to put them there required
+daring, while to make them "compose" (as painters say)
+with the great house, required the almost superhuman
+sense of symmetry which Jefferson assuredly possessed.</p>
+
+<p>The present owner of Monticello is Mr. Jefferson
+Monroe Levy, former United States congressman from
+New York. Mr. Levy is a Democrat and a bachelor, according
+to the Congressional Directory, which states
+further that he inherited Monticello from an uncle, Commodore
+Uriah P. Levy, U.&nbsp;S.&nbsp;N., and that the latter purchased
+the place in 1830 "at the suggestion of President
+Jackson."</p>
+
+<p>Dorothy Dix, writing in "Good Housekeeping," tells
+a tale which I have heard repeatedly of the acquisition
+of Monticello by Uriah Levy. Says Miss Dix:</p>
+
+<p>"Monticello was sold to a stranger, and Jefferson's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>
+only daughter, Mrs. Randolph, widowed and with eleven
+children, was left homeless.... A subscription of three
+thousand dollars was raised ... to buy back the house ...
+and this money was intrusted to a young relative of
+the Jeffersons' to convey to Charlottesville. Traveling
+in the stagecoach with the young man was Captain
+Uriah P. Levy, to whom he confided his mission. The
+young man became intoxicated and dallied, but Captain
+Levy hastened on to Charlottesville, and purchased
+Monticello for two thousand five hundred dollars. The
+next day the repentant and sober young man arrived and
+besought Captain Levy to take the three thousand dollars ...
+and let Monticello go back to the Jefferson
+family. Captain Levy refused to part with his bargain,
+but at his death he willed Monticello to 'the people of
+the United States to be held as a memorial of Thomas
+Jefferson'.... The Levy heirs contested the will, and it
+was finally decided upon a technicality that 'the people of
+the United States' was too indefinite a term to make the
+bequest binding, and the estate passed into the hands of
+the Levys, and so to its present owner...."</p>
+
+<p>In a biographical note upon the latter, the Congressional
+Directory states that the house is "kept open to
+the public all the year." My companion and I were admitted
+to the grounds, but were informed that, though
+the building was unoccupied, no one was permitted to
+enter. While we were in the vicinity of the house we
+were attended by one of the men employed on the place,
+who told us that when people were allowed to roam<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>
+about at will, there had been much vandalism; ivy had
+been pulled from the walls, shrubbery broken, pieces of
+brick chipped out of the steps, and teeth knocked from
+the heads of the marble lions which flank them.</p>
+
+<p>Of recent years there has been on foot a movement,
+launched, I believe, by Mrs. Martin W. Littleton, of New
+York, to influence the Government to purchase Monticello
+from its present owner. It is difficult to see precisely
+how Mr. Levy could be forced to part with his
+property, if he did not wish to. Nevertheless public
+sentiment on this subject has become so strong that he
+has agreed to let the Government have Monticello "at a
+price"&mdash;so, at least, I was informed in Charlottesville.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV<br />
+<br />
+THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The opening of the University of Virginia was an event of prime importance
+for the higher education in the whole country, and really marks
+a new era.</p></div>
+
+<p class="smcap signature">&mdash;Charles Forster Smith.</p>
+
+
+<p>Like Monticello, the buildings of the University
+of Virginia are those of an intellectual, a classicist,
+a purist, and, like it, they might have been
+austere but for the warmth of their red brick and the
+glow of their white-columned porticos. But they are
+cheerful buildings, which, individually and as a group,
+attain a geometrical yet soft perfection, a supreme harmony
+of form and color.</p>
+
+<p>The principal buildings are grouped about a large
+campus, called the Lawn, which is dominated by the rotunda,
+suggesting in its outlines the Pantheon at Rome.
+From the rotunda, at either side, starts a white-columned
+arcade connecting the various houses which are distributed
+at graceful intervals along the margins of the
+rectangular lawn, above which loom the tops of even
+rows of beautiful old trees. Flanking the buildings of
+the lawn, and reached by brick walks which pass between
+the famous serpentine walls (walls but one brick
+thick which support themselves on the snake-fence principle,
+by progressing in a series of reverse curves), are
+the "ranges": solid rows of one-story student dormito<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>ries
+built of brick and fronted by colonnades which command
+other lawns and other trees.</p>
+
+<p>With a single exception, restorations and additions to
+the university have been made with reverence and taste,
+and the Brooks Museum, the one architectural horror of
+the place, fortunately does not stand upon the lawn.
+Since it is said that beauty could not exist were there not
+ugliness for contrast, this building may have its uses;
+certainly, after a glance at it, one looks back with renewed
+delight at the structures of the central group.</p>
+
+<p>Most superb of all, always there hangs at night, above
+the buildings and the tree-tops, a glorious full moon.
+At least I suppose it always hangs there, for though it
+seemed to us very wonderful, every one else seemed used
+to it.</p>
+
+<p>Like Venice, the University of Virginia should first
+be seen by moonlight. There could not have been a
+finer moonlit night, I thought, than that cold, crisp one
+upon which my companion stood for two hours beside
+the rotunda, gazing at the lawn and drawing it, its frosty
+grass and trees decked with diamonds, its white columns
+standing out softly from their shadow backgrounds like
+phosphorescent ghosts in the luminous blue darkness.
+Until I was nearly frozen I stayed there with him.
+That drawing cost him one of the worst colds he ever
+had.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p168jpg" id="p168jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p168.jpg" width="600" height="474" alt="Like Venice, the University of Virginia should first be seen by moonlight" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Like Venice, the University of Virginia should first be seen by moonlight</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The university ought to have, and has, many traditions,
+and life there ought to be, and is, different from
+life in any other college. Jefferson brought from Italy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>
+the men who carved the capitals of the columns (the descendants
+of some of these Italian workmen live in
+Charlottesville to-day), and when the columns were in
+place he brought from Europe the professors to form
+the faculty, creating what was practically a small English
+university in the United States. Never until, a
+dozen years ago, Dr. E.&nbsp;A. Alderman became president,
+had there been such an office; before that time the university
+had a rector, and the duties of president were
+performed by a chairman of the faculty, elected by the
+faculty from among its members. This was the first
+university to adopt the elective system, permitting the
+students, as Jefferson wrote, "uncontrolled choice in the
+lectures they shall attend," instead of prescribing one course
+of reading for all. No less important, the
+University of Virginia was the first college to introduce
+(1842) the honor system, and still has the most complete
+honor system to be found among American colleges.
+This system is an outgrowth of the Jeffersonian
+idea of student self-government; under it each
+student signs, with examination papers, a pledge that
+he has neither given nor received assistance. That is
+found sufficient; students are not watched, nor need
+they be. With time this system has been extended,
+so that it now covers not only examinations, but many
+departments of college life, eliminating professionalism
+in athletics and plagiarism in literary work, and resulting
+in a delightful mutual confidence between the student
+body and the faculty.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Madison and Monroe were active members of the
+university's first board of visitors; the first college Y.&nbsp;M.&nbsp;C.&nbsp;A.
+was started there; and among many famous men
+who have attended the university may be mentioned Edgar
+Allan Poe, Thomas Nelson Page, and Thomas
+Woodrow Wilson, whose name appears thus upon the
+"University Magazine" for 1879-80, as one of its three
+editors. The ill-starred Poe attended the university for
+only one year, at the end of which time his adopted
+father, Mr. Allan, of Richmond, withdrew him because
+of debts he had contracted while acquiring his education
+in gambling and drinking champagne. Poe's former
+room, No. 13 West Range, is now the office of the
+magazine.</p>
+
+<p>The clean, lovely manuscript in Jefferson's handwriting,
+of the first Anglo-Saxon grammar written in the
+United States, is to be seen in the university library;
+Jefferson was Vice-President of the United States when
+he wrote it; he put Anglo-Saxon in the first curriculum
+of the university, and it has been taught there ever since.
+In a note which is a part of the manuscript, he advocates
+the study of Anglo-Saxon as an introduction to modern
+English on the ground that though about half the words
+in our present language are derived from Latin and
+Greek, these being the scholarly words, the other half,
+the words we use most often, are Anglo-Saxon.</p>
+
+<p>Before the war it was not uncommon for students at
+the university to have their negro body servants with
+them, and it has occasionally happened since that some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+young sprig of southern aristocracy has come to college
+thus attended.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the most striking and characteristic feature
+of student life to-day, from the point of view of the
+stray visitor, is the formal attitude of students toward
+one another. There is no easy-going casualness
+between them, no calling back and forth, no "hello," by
+way of greeting. They pass each other on the walks
+either without speaking (men have been punished at
+the university by being ignored by the entire student
+body), or if they do greet each other the customary
+salutation is "How are you, sir?" or "How are you,
+gentlemen?" First-year men are expected to wear hats,
+and not to speak to upper classmen until they have been
+spoken to; and, though there is no hazing at the university,
+woe betide them if they do not heed these rules.</p>
+
+<p>In the early days of the university there was an effort
+to exercise restraint over students, to make them account
+for their goings and comings, and to prevent their going
+to taverns or betting upon horse races. Also they were
+obliged to wear a uniform. The severity was so great
+that they appealed to Jefferson, who sided with them.
+He, however, died in the same year, and friction prevailed
+for perhaps a decade longer, with many student
+disorders, culminating in the shooting of a professor by
+a student. In 1840 the students were at last granted full
+freedom, and two years later the honor system was
+adopted.</p>
+
+<p>During the university's first years young men from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
+the far South, where dueling was especially prevalent,
+did not come in large numbers to the University of Virginia,
+but went, as a rule, to the northern colleges,
+but about the middle of the century, as feeling between
+North and South over taxation, States' Rights
+and slavery became more acute, these men began to flock
+to the college at Charlottesville. Between 1850 and
+1860 the university almost doubled in size, and at about
+the same time there developed a good deal of dueling between
+students.</p>
+
+<p>When the War ended many men who had gone into
+the Confederate army at sixteen or seventeen years of
+age came to Charlottesville to complete their education.
+The hard life of the army had made some of these into a
+wild lot, and there was a great deal of gambling and
+drinking during their time, and also after it, for several
+succeeding generations of students looked up to the ex-soldiers
+as heroes, and carried on the unfortunate traditions
+left by them at the university. In the nineties,
+however, a change came, and though there is still some
+drinking and gambling, it is doubtful whether such vices
+are now more prevalent at the University of Virginia
+than at many other colleges. The honor system has
+never been extended to cover these points.</p>
+
+<p>It is related that, in Poe's time, gambling became such
+a serious obstacle to discipline and work that the university
+authorities set the town marshal after a score or
+so of gambling students, Poe among them, whereupon
+these students fled to the Ragged Mountains, near by,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
+and remained for two weeks, during which time Poe is
+said to have mightily entertained them with stories and
+prophecies, including a forecast of the Civil War, in
+which, he declared, two of the youths present would fight
+on opposite sides.</p>
+
+<p>The Poe tradition is kept vigorously alive at the university.
+Not long ago a member of the Raven Society,
+one of the rather too numerous student organizations,
+discovered the burial place of Poe's mother, who was
+an actress, and who died penniless in Richmond at the
+age of twenty-four and was buried with the destitute.
+By a happy inspiration a fund was raised among the
+students for the erection of a monument to her&mdash;an example
+of fine and chivalrous sentiment on the part of
+these young men, which, one feels, is somehow delicately
+intertwined with the traditions of the honor system.</p>
+
+<p>The Poe professor of English at the university, when
+we were there, was Dr. C. Alphonso Smith, who has
+since taken the professorship of English at the United
+States Naval Academy. By a coincidence which has
+proved a happy one for those who love the stories of the
+late Sidney Porter (O. Henry), Dr. Smith grew up
+as a boy with Porter, in Greensboro, North Carolina.
+Because of this, and also because of Dr. Smith's own
+gifts as a writer and an analyst, it is peculiarly fitting
+that he should have undertaken the work which has occupied
+him for several years past, the result of which
+has recently been given to us in the form "The O. Henry
+Biography."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Dr. Smith was Roosevelt exchange professor at the
+University of Berlin in 1910-11, holding the chair of
+American History and Institutions. While occupying
+that professorship he met the Kaiser.</p>
+
+<p>"I talked with him twice," he said, "and upon the
+second occasion under very delightful circumstances,
+for I was invited to dinner at the Palace at Potsdam, and
+was the only guest, the Kaiser, Kaiserin, and Princess
+Victoria Luise being present.</p>
+
+<p>"The Kaiser is, of course, a very magnetic man.
+His eyes are his most remarkable feature. They are
+very large, brilliant, and sparkling, and he rolls them
+in a manner most unusual. While he is always the
+king and the soldier, he can be genial and charming.
+One might expect a man in his position to be blas&eacute;, but
+that, most of all, is what he is not. He is like a boy
+in his vitality and vividness, and he has a great and persistent
+intellectual curiosity. It is this, I think, which
+used to cause him to be compared with Colonel Roosevelt.
+Both would like to know all things, and both have
+had, and have exercised more, perhaps, than any other
+two living men, the power to bring to themselves the
+central figures in all manner of world events, and thus
+learn at first hand, from acknowledged authorities, about
+the subjects that interest them&mdash;which is to say, everything.</p>
+
+<p>"He frankly admired America. I don't mean that
+he said so for the sake of courtesy to me, but that he
+has&mdash;or did have, then&mdash;an immense and rather roman<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>tic
+interest in this country. A great many Germans
+used to resent this trait in him. America held in his
+mind the same romantic position that the idea of
+monarchy did in the minds of some of us. I mean that
+the average American went for romance to stories of
+monarchy, but that the Kaiser, being used to the monarchial
+idea, found his romance over here. (I am, of
+course, speaking of him as he was five or six years ago.)
+He wished to come to America, but was never able to do
+so, since German law forbids it. And, perhaps because
+he could not come, America was the more a sort of
+dream to him.</p>
+
+<p>"He asked me about some of the things in Berlin
+which I had noticed as being different from things at
+home, and when I mentioned the way that history was
+kept alive in the very streets of Berlin, his eyes danced,
+and he said that was one of the things he had tried
+to accomplish by the erection of the numerous monuments
+which have been placed in Berlin during his reign.
+He told me of other means by which history was kept
+alive in Germany: among them that every officer has
+to know in detail the history of his regiment, and that
+German regiments always celebrate the anniversaries of
+their great days.</p>
+
+<p>"He speaks English without an accent, though we
+might say that he spoke it with an English accent. He
+told me that he had learned English before he learned
+German, and had also caused his children to learn it
+first. He reads Mark Twain, or had read him, and he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>
+enjoyed him, but he said that when he met Mark Twain
+the latter had little or nothing to say, and that it was
+only with the greatest difficulty that he got him to talk
+at all. He subscribed, he told me, to 'Harper's Magazine,'
+and he was in the habit of reading short stories
+aloud to his family, in English. He admired the American
+short story, and I remember that he declared:
+'The Americans know how to plunge into a short story.
+We Germans are too long-winded.'"</p>
+
+<p>When Professor Smith talks about the Kaiser, you
+say to yourself: "I know that it is growing late, but
+I cannot bear to leave until I have heard the rest of
+this"; when he drifts presently to O. Henry, you say
+the same; and so it is always, no matter what his subject.
+At last, however, the grandfather's clock in the
+hall below his study sends up a stern message which is
+not to be mistaken, whereupon you arise reluctantly
+from your comfortable chair, spill the cigar ashes out of
+your lap onto the rug, dust off your clothing, and take
+your leave. Nor is your regret at departing lessened
+by the fact that you must go to your bilious-colored
+bedroom in the New Gleason, and that you will not see
+the university, or Professor C. Alphonso Smith, or Mrs.
+Smith again, because you are leaving upon the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>So it must always be with the itinerant illustrator and
+writer. They are forever finding new and lovely scenes
+only to leave them; forever making new and charming
+friends only to part with them, faring forth again into
+the unknown.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI<br />
+<br />
+FOX-HUNTING IN VIRGINIA</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Better to hunt in fields for health unbought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wise for cure on exercise depend;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God never made his work for man to mend.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0 smcap signature">&mdash;Dryden.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>It is my impression that the dining-car conductor on
+the Chesapeake &amp; Ohio train by which we left
+Charlottesville was puzzled when I asked his name;
+but if he sees this and remembers the incident he will
+now know that I did so because I wished here to mention
+him as a humane citizen. His name is C.&nbsp;G.
+Mitchell, and he was so accommodating as to serve a
+light meal, after hours, when he did not have to, to two
+hungry men who needed it. If travel has taught my
+companion and me anything, it has taught us that not
+all dining-car conductors are like that. Nor, I judge,
+can all dining-car conductors play the violin, pleasantly,
+in off hours, as does Mr. Mitchell. Better one merciful
+dining-car conductor than twenty who wear white carnations
+at their left lapels, but wear no hearts below
+them!</p>
+
+<p>The road by which we drove from the railroad
+into the fastnesses of Loudon County, where, near the
+little settlement of Upperville, the race meet of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
+Piedmont Hunt was to be held, suggested other times
+and other manners, for though we rode in a motor car,
+and though we passed another now and then, machines
+were far outnumbered by the horses which, under saddle,
+or hitched to buggies, surreys, and carts of all descriptions,
+were heading toward the meeting place.</p>
+
+<p>On these roads, one felt, the motor was an outsider;
+this was the kingdom of the horse that we were visiting;
+soft dirt roads were there for him to trot and
+gallop on, and fences of wood or stone, free from barbed
+wire, were everywhere, for him to jump.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the week we had looked forward to this
+day, and even more, perhaps, to the party which, if we
+could get back to Washington that night, was to follow
+it; wherefore the first thing we did on reaching a place
+where information was obtainable was to inquire about
+facilities for leaving. Herein my companion had the
+advantage of me, for there was nothing to prevent his
+departing immediately after the races, whereas I must
+remain behind for an hour or two, to learn something of
+fox-hunting as practised in this region.</p>
+
+<p>By motoring immediately after the races to a neighboring
+town&mdash;Bluemont if I remember rightly&mdash;and
+there taking an interurban trolley to some other place,
+and changing cars, and going without his dinner, my
+companion found that he could get to Washington by
+nine o'clock. My case was different. Should I be delayed
+more than two hours I could not get away at all
+that night, but must miss the much anticipated party<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
+altogether; and, though my companion seemed to view
+this possibility with perfect equanimity, my memories
+of the charming lady whom we were to meet at the
+stage door, after the performance, were too clear to
+permit of indifference in me. The trolley my companion
+meant to catch was, however, the last one; my
+only hope, therefore, was to motor a distance of perhaps
+a dozen miles, over roads which I was frankly
+told were "middling to bad," and try to catch a train
+at The Plains station. If I missed this train, I was lost,
+and must spend a solitary night in such a room as I
+might be able to find in a strange village. That possibility
+did not appeal to me. I began to wish that there
+was no such thing as fox-hunting, or that, there being
+such a thing, I had chosen to ignore it.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," said my companion cheerfully, "we'll telegraph
+her."</p>
+
+<p>At a telegraph office he seized the pencil and wrote
+the following message:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Will call for you to-night after performance.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>To this he signed his own name.</p>
+
+<p>"What about me?" I suggested, after glancing over
+his shoulder at the message.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well," said he, "there's no use in going into all
+that in a telegram. It's sufficient to let her know that
+one of us is coming."</p>
+
+<p>"But I proposed this party."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well," he gave in, with an air of pained patience,
+"what shall I say, then? Shall I add that you are unavoidably
+detained?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not by a jugful!" I returned. "Add that I hope to
+get there too, and will make every effort to do so."</p>
+
+<p>He wrote it out, sighing as he did so. Then, by careful
+cutting, he got it down to fourteen words. By that
+time the operator couldn't read it, so he wrote it out
+again&mdash;gloomily.</p>
+
+<p>This accomplished, we matched coins to see who
+should pay for the message. He lost.</p>
+
+<p>"All right!" he said. "I'll pay for it, but it's all foolishness
+to send such a long telegram."</p>
+
+<p>"No," I returned, as we left the office and got into the
+machine, "it is not foolishness. If I can make life a
+little brighter for a beautiful woman, by adding a few
+words to a telegram, and sticking you for it, I shall do it
+every time."</p>
+
+<p>He looked away over the fields and did not answer
+me. So we drove on in silence to where stands the beautiful
+manor house called Huntland, which is the residence
+of Mr. Joseph B. Thomas, M.&nbsp;F.&nbsp;H. of the Piedmont
+Hunt.</p>
+
+<p>There is, I have been told, no important hunt in the
+United States in which the master of foxhounds is not
+the chief financial supporter, the sport being a very
+costly one. Of American hunts, the Middlesex, in Massachusetts,
+of which Mr. A. Henry Higginson is M.&nbsp;F.&nbsp;H.,
+has the reputation of being the best appointed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
+The Piedmont Hunt is, however, one of the half dozen
+leading organizations of the kind, and it is difficult indeed
+to imagine a finer.</p>
+
+<p>In a well-kept park near Mr. Thomas's house stand
+extensive English-looking buildings of brick and
+stucco, which, viewed from a distance, suggest a beautiful
+country house, and which, visited, teach one that
+certain favored hounds and horses in this world live
+much better than certain human beings. One building
+is given over to the kennels, the other the stables; each
+has a large sunlit court, and each is as beautiful and
+as clean as a fine house&mdash;a house full of trophies, hunting
+equipment, and the pleasant smell of well-cared-for
+saddlery. In a rolling meadow, not far distant, is the
+race course, all green turf, and here, soon after luncheon,
+gathered an extraordinary diversified crowd.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p180jpg" id="p180jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p180.jpg" width="600" height="462" alt="One party was stationed on the top of an old-time mail-coach bearing the significant initials &quot;F.&nbsp;F.&nbsp;V.&quot;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">One party was stationed on the top of an old-time mail-coach bearing the significant initials &quot;F.&nbsp;F.&nbsp;V.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>For the most part the crowd was a fashionable one:
+men and women of the type whose photographs appear
+in "Vogue" and "Vanity Fair," and whose costumes
+were like fashion suggestions for "sport clothes" in
+those publications. One party was stationed on the
+top of an old-time mail coach, the boot of which bore
+the significant initials "F.&nbsp;F.&nbsp;V."&mdash;standing, as even
+benighted Northerners must be aware, for "First Families
+of Virginia"; others were in a line of motors
+and heterogeneous horse-drawn vehicles, parked beside
+the course; and scattered through the gathering, like
+brushmarks on an impressionist canvas, one saw the
+brilliant color of pink coats. Handsome hunters were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>
+being ridden or led about by negro grooms, and others
+kept arriving, ridden in by farmers and breeders, while
+here and there one saw a woman rider, her hair tightly
+drawn back under a mannish derby hat, her figure
+slender and graceful in a severely-cut habit coat.
+Jumbled together in a great green meadow under a
+sweet autumnal sun, these things made a picture of
+what, I am persuaded, is the ultimate in extravagant
+American country life. There was something, too,
+about this blending of fashionables and farmers, which
+made me think of the theater; for there is, in truth, a
+distinct note of histrionism about many of the rich
+Americans who "go in for" elaborate ruralness, and there
+is a touch of it very often, also, about "horsey" people.
+They like to "look the part," and they dress it with no
+less care than they exercise, at other seasons, in dressing
+the parts of opera-going cosmopolites, or wealthy
+loungers at the beaches. In other words, these fashionables
+had the overtrained New York look all over
+them, and the local rustics set them off as effectively
+as the villainous young squire of the Drury Lane
+melodrama is set off by contrast with honest old Jasper,
+the miller, who wears a smock, and comes to the
+Great House to beg the Young Master to "make an
+honest woman" of poor Rose, the fairest lass in all
+Hampshire.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p189jpg" id="p189jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p189.jpg" width="600" height="390" alt="The Piedmont Hunt Race Meet&mdash;There is a distinct note of histrionism about many of the rich Americans who
+&quot;go in for&quot; elaborate ruralness, and there is a touch of it, also, about ultra-&quot;horsey&quot; people" title="" />
+<span class="caption">The Piedmont Hunt Race Meet&mdash;There is a distinct note of histrionism about many of the rich Americans who
+&quot;go in for&quot; elaborate ruralness, and there is a touch of it, also, about ultra-&quot;horsey&quot; people</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>About the races themselves there was something fascinatingly
+nonprofessional. They bore the same relation
+to great races on great tracks that a very fine perform<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>ance
+of a play by amateurs might bear to a professional
+performance.</p>
+
+<p>First came a two-mile steeplechase, with brush
+hurdles. Then, after a couple of minor events, a four-mile
+point-to-point race for hunters ridden by gentlemen
+in hunt uniform. This was as stiff a race for
+both horses and riders as I have ever seen, and it was
+very picturesque to watch the pink coats careering up
+hill and down dale, now over a tall stone wall, now over
+a brook or a snake fence; and when a rider went head
+over heels, and lay still upon the ground where he fell,
+while his horse cantered along after the field, in that
+aimless and pathetic way that riderless horses have, one
+had a real sensation&mdash;which was the pleasanter for
+knowing, a few minutes later, that the horseman had
+only broken an arm.</p>
+
+<p>Next was run a rollicking race for horses owned by
+farmers, and others, whose land is hunted over by the
+Piedmont and Middleburg foxhounds; and last occurred
+a great comedy event&mdash;a mule race, free for all, in which
+one of the hunting men, in uniform, made such a handsome
+showing against a rabble of white and colored
+boys, all of them yelling, all of them beating their long-eared
+animals with sticks, that he would have won, had
+he not deliberately pulled his mount and "thrown" the
+race.</p>
+
+<p>The last event was not yet finished when my companion,
+who had become nervous about his interurban
+trolley, got into a machine to drive to Bluemont.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Of course," he said as we parted, "we'll miss you
+to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," I said, "I hope not. I expect to get there."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see how you can make it," said he. "You
+have a lot of material to gather."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall work fast."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said he, trying to speak like the voice of Conscience,
+"I hope you won't forget your <i>duty</i>&mdash;that's all."</p>
+
+<p>"I proposed this party to-night. It is my duty to be
+there."</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't make any definite engagement," said he,
+"and, besides, your first duty is to your editors and your
+readers."</p>
+
+<p>Having tossed me this disgusting thought, he departed
+in a cloud of dust, leaving me sad and alone, but not yet
+altogether in despair.</p>
+
+<p>The last race over, I hastened to Mr. Thomas's house,
+which, by this time, looked like an old English hunting
+print come to life, for it was now crowded with pink
+coats. For most of the technical information contained
+in this chapter I am indebted to various gentlemen
+whom I encountered there.</p>
+
+<p>In Virginia&mdash;which is the oldest fox-hunting State in
+the Union, the sport having been practised there for
+nearly two centuries&mdash;the words "hunt" or "hunting"
+never by any chance apply to shooting, but always refer
+to hunting the fox with horse and hounds. A "hunter"
+is not a man but a horse; a huntsman is not a member
+of the hunt but a hunt-servant; the "field" may be the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
+terrain ridden over by the hunt, or it may be the group
+of riders following the hounds&mdash;"hunt followers,"
+"hunting men," and "hunting women."</p>
+
+<p>The following items, from "Baily's Hunting Directory,"
+a British annual, give some idea of certain primary
+formalities and practicalities of hunting:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class='center'>HINTS TO BEGINNERS</p>
+
+<p>Buy the best horses you can afford; but remember that a workably
+sound horse, though blemished or a bit gone in the wind, will
+give you plenty of fun, if you do not knock him about.</p>
+
+<p>Obey the Master's orders without argument; in the field he is
+supreme.</p>
+
+<p>Hold up your hat if you view the fox away; do not halloa. If
+none of the hunt servants see your uplifted hat, go and tell the
+nearest of them.</p>
+
+<p>Ride fast at water; if hounds clear a brook a horse has a good
+chance of doing so. Steady your horse and let him take his own
+pace at big timber.</p>
+
+<p>Keep well away from hounds, and down wind of them at a
+check. The steam from heated horses adds a fresh difficulty to
+recovery of lost scent. Look out for signs that may indicate the
+whereabouts or passing of the fox. Huddling sheep, staring cattle,
+chattering magpies, circling rooks, may mean that they see,
+or have just seen, the fox.</p>
+
+<p>Never lark over fences; it tires your horse needlessly and may
+cause damage and annoy the farmer.</p>
+
+<p>Never take a short cut through a covert that is likely to be
+drawn during the day; and keep well away from a covert that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
+hounds are drawing if you start for home before the day's sport
+is over, lest you head the fox.</p>
+
+<p>Always await your turn at a gate or gap; do not try and push
+forward in a crowd.</p>
+
+<p>If you follow a pilot, do not "ride in his pocket"; give him
+plenty of room, say fifteen lengths, at fences, or if he falls you
+might jump on him.</p>
+
+<p>If your horse kicks, tie a knot of red ribbon in his tail. N.&nbsp;B.&mdash;Do
+not be guilty of using this "rogue's badge" for the sake of
+getting room in a crowd, as some men have been known to do.</p>
+
+<p>If a man is down and in danger of being kicked, put your own
+saddle over his head.</p>
+
+
+<p class='center'>HINTS CONCERNING THE HUNTER</p>
+
+<p>It should be remembered that in the ordinary routine the horse
+is fed three or four times a day. On a hunting day he gets one
+good feed early in the morning and loses one or two feeds.
+Moreover, he is doing hard work for hours together, with a
+weight on his back. Carry a couple of forage biscuits in your
+pocket to give him during the day. Also get off and relieve him
+of your weight when you can do so.</p>
+
+<p>When he is brought home, put him in his stall or box, slack
+the girths, take off the bridle and give him his gruel at once.
+Throw a rug over his loins and pull his ears for a minute or two.</p>
+
+<p>An old horse needs more clothing than a young one.</p>
+
+<p>Condition is a matter of seasons, not of months; a horse in
+hard condition can take without injury a fall that would disable a
+soft one for weeks.</p></div>
+
+<p>In old times many of Virginia's country gentlemen
+kept their own packs, but though some followed the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>
+hounds according to the English tradition, there developed
+a less sportsmanlike style of hunting called "hilltopping,"
+under which the hunting men rode to an elevated
+point and watched the hounds run the fox, without
+themselves attempting to follow across country and
+be in at the kill. As a result, the fox was, if caught,
+torn to pieces by the hounds, and the brush and head
+were infrequently saved.</p>
+
+<p>Under the traditions of English fox-hunting&mdash;traditions
+the strictness of which can hardly be exaggerated&mdash;"hilltopping"
+is a more than doubtful sport, and, since
+organized fox-hunting in the United States is taken entirely
+from the English idea, the practice is tabooed on
+first-class hunting regions.</p>
+
+<p>The origin of hilltopping is, however, easily understood.
+The old fox-hunters simply did not, as a rule,
+have horses adequate to negotiate the country, hunters
+not having been developed to any great extent in America
+in early times.</p>
+
+<p>The perfect type of hunter is of thoroughbred stock.
+By the term "thoroughbred" horsemen do not mean
+highly bred horses of any kind, as is sometimes supposed,
+but only running horses. All such horses come
+originally of British stock, for it is in Great Britain that
+the breed has been developed, although it traces back,
+through a number of centuries, to a foundation of
+Arabian blood. I am informed that climatic and other
+conditions in a certain part of Ireland are for some reason
+peculiarly favorable to the development of hunters<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>
+and that these conditions are duplicated in the Piedmont
+section of Virginia, and nowhere else in the
+whole world. Only the stanchest, bravest, fastest type
+of horse is suited for hunting in Virginia, and for this
+reason the more experienced riders to hounds prefer
+the thoroughbred, though half-bred and three-quarter-bred
+horses are also used to some extent, the thoroughbred
+often being too mettlesome, when he becomes excited,
+for any but the best riders. The finest qualities
+of a horse are brought out in hunting in the Piedmont
+section, for the pace here is very fast&mdash;much faster than
+in England, though it should be added that in the English
+hunting country there are more hedges than over
+here, and that the jumps are, upon the whole, stiffer.</p>
+
+<p>The speed of the Piedmont Hunt and other hunts in
+Virginia is doubtless due to the use of southern hounds,
+these being American hounds, smaller and faster than
+English hounds, from which, however, they were originally
+bred. The desirable qualities in a pack of hounds
+are uniformity of type, substance, speed, and color.
+These points have to do not only with the style of a
+pack, but also with its hunting quality. Thus in the
+Piedmont pack they breed for a red hound with white
+markings, so that the pack may have an individual appearance,
+but in all packs a great effort is made to secure
+even speed, for a slow hound lags, while a fast one
+becomes an individual hunter. The unusual hound is
+therefore likely to be "drafted" from the pack.</p>
+
+<p>There has been a long controversy as to whether the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
+English or American type of hound is best suited for
+hunting in this country, and the matter seems still to
+remain one of opinion. Probably the best English pack
+in the United States is that of Mr. A. Henry Higginson.
+Some years since, Mr. Higginson and Mr. Harry
+Worcester Smith, of Worcester, Massachusetts, master
+of the Grafton pack, made a bet of $5000 a side, each
+backing his own hounds, the question being that of the
+general suitability of the American versus the English
+hound for American country. The trials were made in
+the Piedmont region of Virginia, and Mr. Smith's
+American hounds won the wager for him.</p>
+
+<p>In the last ten or twenty years hunting in the United
+States has been organized under the Hunts Committee
+of the National Steeplechase Association. Practically
+all the important hunting organizations are members of
+this association, there being forty of these: eleven in
+Virginia, nine in Pennsylvania, six in New York, four
+in Massachusetts, three each in Maryland and New Jersey,
+and one each in Connecticut, Vermont, Ohio, and
+Michigan&mdash;the Grosse Pointe Hounds, near Detroit, being
+the most westerly of recognized hunts, although
+there is some unrecognized hunting near Chicago.</p>
+
+<p>An idea of the comparative importance of hunting in
+the United States and in England may be gathered from
+the fact that in England and Wales alone there are more
+than 180 packs of foxhounds, 88 packs of beagles, and
+16 packs of staghounds, while Ireland and Scotland
+have many also. The war, however, has struck hard at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>
+hunting in the British Isles. Baily's Hunting Directory
+for 1915-16, says:</p>
+
+<p>"Hunting has given her best, for of those who have
+gone from the hunting field to join the colors, the masters
+lead, as they have led in more happy days, with a
+tale of over 80 per cent. of their number, the hunt secretaries
+following with over 50 per cent., while the hunt
+servants show over 30 per cent. No exact data are
+available to tell of the multitude from the rank and file
+that has followed this magnificent lead, excepting that
+from all the hunts there comes the same report, that
+practically every man fit for service has responded to
+the call."</p>
+
+<p>It is estimated that 17,000 horses were drafted from
+hunting for the cavalry in England at the beginning
+of the war; and it is to be noticed that so soon after
+the outbreak as July, 1915, the "Directory" published
+a list of names of well-known hunting men killed in action,
+which occupied more than seven large pages printed
+in small type.</p>
+
+<p>Under the heading "Incidents of the 1914-15 Season"
+are to be found many items of curious early war-time
+interest, a few of which I quote:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Lady Stalbridge announces willingness to act as field master of
+the South and West Wilts Hounds during her husband's absence
+in France.</p>
+
+<p>Lieutenant Charles Romer Williams took out to the front a
+pack of beagles, with which the officers of the Second Cavalry
+Brigade hoped to hunt Belgian hares.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Capt. E.&nbsp;K. Bradbury, a member of the Cahir Harriers, earned
+the V.&nbsp;C. at Nery, but died from wounds.</p>
+
+<p>The Grafton Hounds have seventy-six followers with the colors.</p>
+
+<p>Admiral Sir David Beatty, of North Sea fame, has a hunting
+box at Brooksby Hall, in the Melton Mowbray country.</p>
+
+<p>Five members of the Crawley and Horsham Hounds have
+been killed, three wounded, and two are missing.</p>
+
+<p>Quorn fields down to about 30, instead of 300 last season.</p>
+
+<p>Captain the Honorable R.&nbsp;B.&nbsp;F. Robertson (Twenty-first Lancers)
+a prisoner of war. He took over the North Tipperary
+Hounds in May, and, of course, did not get a chance to have any
+sport.</p>
+
+<p>We now learn that the French authorities have discouraged
+fox-hunting behind the fighting lines. So did the Germans.
+One day British hounds took up the scent on their own initiative.
+The usual followers had bigger game afoot, and were in the
+thick of an engagement. The Germans gained ground and occupied
+the kennels. When the hounds returned from their chase
+and challenged the intruders they were shot down one by one.</p></div>
+
+<p>Such is the lore I had acquired when the motor came
+for me; whereupon, taking a few sandwiches to sustain
+me until supper time, I set forth through the night
+by Ford, for the station at The Plains.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The publication of the larger part of the foregoing
+chapter on fox hunting, in "Collier's Weekly," brought
+me a number of letters containing hunting anecdotes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mr. J.&nbsp;R. Smith of Martinsville, Virginia, calls my
+attention to marked difference in character between the
+red fox and the gray. The red fox, he says, depends
+upon his legs to elude the hounds, and will sometimes
+lead the hunt twenty-five miles from the place where he
+gets up, but the gray fox depends on cunning, and is
+more prone to run a few miles and "tack."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smith tells the following story illustrative of the
+gray fox's amazing artfulness:</p>
+
+<p>"We had started a fox on three different occasions,"
+he writes, "running him a warm chase for about four
+miles and losing him every time in a sheep pasture.
+Finally we stationed a servant in that pasture to see
+what became of the fox. We started him again and
+he took the same route to the pasture. There the mystery
+was solved. The fox jumped on the back of a large
+ram, which, in fright, ran off about half a mile. The
+fox then jumped off and continued his run. When the
+hounds came up we urged them on to the point where
+the fox dismounted, and soon had his brush."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Another correspondent calls my attention to the fact
+that, in Virginia, hunting is not merely the sport of the
+rich, but that the farmers are enthusiastic members of
+the field&mdash;sometimes at the expense of their cattle and
+crops. He relates the following story illustrative of the
+point of view of the sporting Virginia farmer:</p>
+
+<p>"A man from the Department of Agriculture came
+down into our section to look over farms and give ad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>vice
+to farmers. He went to see one farmer in my
+county and found that he had absolutely nothing growing,
+and that his livestock consisted of three hunters
+and thirty-two couples of hounds. The agricultural expert
+was scandalized. He told the farmer he ought to
+begin at once to raise hogs. 'You can feed them what
+you feed the dogs,' he said, 'and have good meat for your
+family aside from what you sell.'</p>
+
+<p>"After hearing his visitor out, the farmer looked off
+across the country and spat ruminatively.</p>
+
+<p>"'I ain't never seen no hawg that could catch a fox,'
+he said, and with that turned and went into the barn,
+evidently regarding the matter as closed. Clearly he
+did not share the view of the Irishman who dismissed
+fox hunting with the remark that a fox was 'damned
+hard to catch and no good when you got him.'"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII<br />
+<br />
+"A CERTAIN PARTY"</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Kind are her answers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But her performance keeps no day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Breaks time, as dancers<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From their own music when they stray.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lost is our freedom<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When we submit to women so:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why do we need 'em<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When, in their best, they work our woe?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0 smcap signature">&mdash;Thomas Campion.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>The motor ride to The Plains was a cold and
+rough one. I remember that we had to ford a
+stream or two, and that once, where the mud had
+been churned up and made deep by the wheels of many
+vehicles, we almost stuck. Excepting at the fords, the
+road was dusty, and the dust was kept in circulation by
+the feet of countless saddle horses, on which men from
+the country to the south of Upperville were riding home
+from the races. All the way to The Plains our lights
+kept picking up these riders, sometimes alone, sometimes
+in groups, all of them going our way, we taking
+their dust until we overhauled them, then giving them
+ours.</p>
+
+<p>Dust was over me like a close-fitting gray veil when
+I reached the railroad station only to find that the train<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>
+was late. I had a magazine in my bag, but the light
+in the waiting-room was poor, so I took a place near
+the stove and gave myself up to anticipations of a bath,
+a comfortable room, clean clothing, and a good supper
+with my companion&mdash;and another companion much
+more beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>I tried to picture her as she would look. She would
+be in evening dress, of course. After thinking over different
+colors, and trying them upon her in my mind, I
+decided that her gown should be of a delicate pink, and
+should be made of some frail, beautiful material which
+would float about her like gossamer when she moved,
+and shimmer like the light of dawn upon the dew. You
+know the sort of gown I mean: one of those gowns upon
+which a man is afraid to lay his finger-tips lest the material
+melt away beneath them; a gown which, he feels,
+was never touched by seamstress of the human species,
+but was made by fairies out of woven moonlight, star
+dust, afterglow, and the fragrance of flowers. Such a
+gown upon a lovely woman is man's proof that woman
+is indeed the thing which so often he believes her&mdash;that
+she is more goddess than earthly being; for man knows
+well that he himself is earthly, and that a costume made
+from such dream stuffs and placed on him, would not
+last out the hour. He has but to look up at the stars
+to realize the infinity of space, and, similarly, but to
+look at her in her evening gown to realize the divinity of
+woman.</p>
+
+<p>And that is where she has him. For it isn't so!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At last came the train&mdash;just the dingy train to stop
+at such a station. I boarded it, found a seat, and continued
+to dream dreams as we rattled on toward Washington.</p>
+
+<p>Even when I found myself walking through that great
+terminal by which all railroads enter the capital, I
+hardly believed that I was there, nor did I feel entirely
+myself until I had reached my room in the New Willard.</p>
+
+<p>Having started my bath, I went and knocked upon
+the door of the near-by room where the clerk had told
+me I should find my fellow traveler.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," he said, without enthusiasm as he discovered
+me. "You're here, are you?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked imposing and severe in his evening dress.
+I felt correspondingly dirty and humble.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," I replied meekly. "Any news?"</p>
+
+<p>"None," he replied. "I've reserved a table at Harvey's.
+They dance there. At first they said there was
+not a table to be had&mdash;Saturday night, you know&mdash;but
+I told them who was to be with us, and they changed
+their minds."</p>
+
+<p>"Good. I'll be dressed in a little while. Silk hats?"</p>
+
+<p>He nodded. I returned to my own room.</p>
+
+<p>Less than an hour later, my toilet completed, I rejoined
+him, and together we descended, in full regalia,
+to the lobby.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we take a taxi?" he suggested, as we passed
+out of the side entrance.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"How far away is the theater?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>We asked the carriage starter. He said it was only
+two or three blocks.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's walk," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't feel like walking," he returned.</p>
+
+<p>We rode.</p>
+
+<p>The theater was just emptying when we arrived.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose we'd better let the cab go?" I said.
+"There'll be quite a while to wait while she's changing."</p>
+
+<p>"Better keep it," he disagreed. "Might not find another."</p>
+
+<p>We kept it.</p>
+
+<p>At the stage door there was confusion. Having completed
+its week in Washington, the play was about to
+move elsewhere, and furniture was already coming out
+into the narrow passage, and being piled up to be taken
+on wagons to the train. It took us some time to find
+the doorman, and it took the doorman&mdash;as it always does
+take doormen&mdash;a long, long time to depart into the unknown
+region of dressing rooms, with the cards we gave
+him, and a still longer time to return.</p>
+
+<p>"Says to wait," he grunted when he came back.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile more and more furniture had come out,
+menacing our shins and our beautifully polished hats
+in passing, and leaving us less room in which to stand.</p>
+
+<p>We waited.</p>
+
+<p>After ten minutes had passed, I remarked:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I wish we had let the taxi go."</p>
+
+<p>After twenty minutes I remarked:</p>
+
+<p>"I always feel like an idiot when I have to wait at a
+stage door."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see why you do it, then," said he.</p>
+
+<p>"And I hate it worse when I'm in evening dress. I
+hate the way the actors look at us, when they come out.
+They think we're a couple of Johnnies."</p>
+
+<p>"And supposing they do?"</p>
+
+<p>I do not know how long this unsatisfactory dialogue
+might have continued had not some one come to the
+inside of the stage door and spoken to the doorman,
+whereat he indicated us with a gesture and said:</p>
+
+<p>"There they are."</p>
+
+<p>At this a woman emerged. The light was dim, but I
+saw that she wore no hat and had on an apron. As she
+came toward us we advanced.</p>
+
+<p>"You wait for madame?" she asked, with the accent
+of a Frenchwoman.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Madame receive your telegram only this afternoon,"
+she said. "All week, she say, she wait to hear. This
+morning she have receive a telegram from Mr. Woods
+that say she mus' come to New York. She think you
+not coming, so she say 'Yes.' Then she receive your
+message. She don't know where to reach you. She
+can do nossing. She is desolated! She mus' fly to the
+train. She is ver' sorry. She hope that maybe the
+gentlemans will be in Baltimore nex' week? Yes?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You mean she can't come to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, monsieur. She cannot. She are fill with regret.
+She&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," said my companion, recovering, "we can
+drive her to the train?"</p>
+
+<p>The maid, however, did not seem to wish to discuss
+this point. She shook her head and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Madame ver' sorry she cannot come."</p>
+
+<p>"But I say," repeated my companion, "that we shall be
+delighted to drive her to the train if she wishes."</p>
+
+<p>"She ver' sorry," persisted the maid negatively.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I see," he said. "Very well. Please say to her
+that we are sorry, too."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, monsieur." The maid retired.</p>
+
+<p>"I want something to eat," I remarked as we passed
+down the long furniture-piled passage leading to the
+street.</p>
+
+<p>"So do I. We have that table at Harvey's."</p>
+
+<p>"I know; but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That's a fact," he put in. "I mentioned her name.
+We can't very well go there without her."</p>
+
+<p>"And all dressed up like a pair of goats."</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"There's always the hotel."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to go back there&mdash;not now."</p>
+
+<p>"Neither do I. Let's make it the Shoreham," I suggested
+as we emerged upon the street.</p>
+
+<p>"All right." Then, looking across the sidewalk, he
+added: "There's that damned taxi!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes. We'll drive around there in it."</p>
+
+<p>"No," said he, "send it away. I don't feel like riding."</p>
+
+<p>We walked to the Shoreham. The caf&eacute; looked cheerful,
+as it always does. We ordered an extensive supper.
+It was good. There were pretty women in the
+room, but we looked at them with the austere eyes of
+disillusioned men, and talked cynically of life. I cannot
+recall any of the things we said, though I remember
+thinking at the time that both of us were being rather
+brilliant, in an icy way. I suppose it was mainly about
+women. That was to be expected. Women, indeed!
+What were women to us? Nothing! And pretty
+women, least of all. Ah, pretty women! Pretty
+women!... Yes, yes!</p>
+
+<p>I had ordered fruit to finish off the meal, and I remember
+that as the dish was set upon the table, it occurred
+to me that we had made a very pleasant party of
+it after all.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know," I said, as I helped myself to some
+hothouse grapes, "I've had a bully evening. It has
+been fine to sit here and have a party all to ourselves.
+I'm not so sorry that she did not come!"</p>
+
+<p>Then I ate a grape or two.</p>
+
+<p>They were very handsome grapes, but they were sour.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII<br />
+<br />
+THE LEGACY OF HATE</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">... Immortal hate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And courage never to submit or yield.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0 smcap signature">&mdash;Paradise Lost.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>The last time I went abroad, a Briton on the boat
+told me a story about an American tourist who
+asked an old English gardener how they made
+such splendid lawns over there.</p>
+
+<p>"First we cut the grass," said the gardener, "and then
+we roll it. Then we cut it, and then we roll it."</p>
+
+<p>"That's just what we do," said the American.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," returned the gardener, "but over here we've
+been doing it five hundred years!"</p>
+
+<p>In Liverpool another Englishman told me the same
+story. Three or four others told it to me in London.
+In Kent I heard it twice, and in Sussex five or six times.
+After going to Oxford and the Thames I lost count.</p>
+
+<p>In the South my companion and I had a similar experience
+with the story about that daughter of the Confederacy
+who declared she had always thought "damn
+Yankee" one word. In Maryland that story amused us,
+in Virginia it seemed to lose a little of its edge, and we
+are proud to this day because, in the far southern States,
+we managed to grin and bear it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Doubtless the young lady likewise thought that "you-all"
+was one word. However I refrained from suggesting
+that, lest it be taken for an attempt at retaliation.
+And really there was no occasion to retaliate, for
+the story was always told with good-humored appreciation
+not only of the dig at "Yankees"&mdash;collectively all
+Northerners are "Yankees" in the South&mdash;but also of
+the sweet absurdity of the "unreconstructed" point of
+view.</p>
+
+<p>Speaking broadly of the South, I believe that there
+survives little real bitterness over the Civil War and the
+destructive and grotesquely named period of "reconstruction."
+When a southern belle of to-day damns
+Yankees, she means by it, I judge, about as much, and
+about as little, as she does by the kisses she gives young
+men who bear to her the felicitous southern relationship
+of "kissing cousins."</p>
+
+<p>Even from old Confederate soldiers I heard no expressions
+of violent feeling. They spoke gently, handsomely
+and often humorously of the war, but never
+harshly. Real hate, I think, remains chiefly in one
+quarter: in the hearts of some old ladies, the wives and
+widows of Confederate soldiers&mdash;for there are but few
+mothers of the soldiers left. The wonder is that more
+of the old ladies of the South have not held to their resentment,
+for, as I have heard many a soldier say,
+women are the greatest sufferers from war. One veteran
+said to me: "My arm was shattered and had to
+be amputated at the shoulder. There was no anesthetic.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
+Of course I suffered, but I never suffered as my mother
+did when she learned what I had endured."</p>
+
+<p>Be they haters of the North or not, the old ladies of
+the South are among its chief glories, and it should be
+added that another of those glories is the appreciation
+that the South has for the white-haired heroines who
+are its mothers, grandmothers, and great grandmothers,
+and the unfailing natural homage that it pays them. I
+do not mean by this merely that children and grandchildren
+have been taught to treat their elders with respect.
+I do not mean merely that they love them. The thing
+of which I speak is beyond family feeling, beyond the
+respect of youth for age. It is a strong, superb sentiment,
+something as great as it is subtle, which floods
+the South, causing it to love and reverence its old ladies
+collectively, and with a kind of national spirit, like the
+love and reverence of a proud people for its flag.</p>
+
+<p>Among young men, I met many who told me, with
+suitable pride, of the parts played by their fathers and
+uncles in the war. Of these only one spoke with heat.
+He was a Georgian, and when I mentioned to him
+that, in all my inquiries, I had heard of no cases of
+atrocious attacks upon women by soldiers&mdash;such attacks
+as we heard of at the time of the German invasion
+of Belgium and France&mdash;he replied with a great
+show of feeling that I had been misinformed, and that
+many women had been outraged by northern soldiers
+in the course of Sherman's march to the sea. At this
+my heart sank, for I had treasured the belief that, de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>spite
+the roughness of war, unprotected women had
+generally been safe from the soldiers of North and
+South alike. What was my relief, then, on later receiving
+from this same young man a letter in which he declared
+that he had been mistaken, and that after many
+inquiries in Georgia he had been unable to learn of a
+single case of such crime. If it is indeed true that such
+things did not occur in the Civil War&mdash;and I believe confidently
+that it is true&mdash;then we have occasion, in the
+light of the European War, to revise the popular belief
+that of all wars civil war is the most horrible.</p>
+
+<p>The attitude of the modern South (the "New South"
+which, by the way, one Southerner described to me as
+meaning "northern capital and smoke") toward its
+own "unreconstructed" citizens, for all its sympathy and
+tenderness, is not without a glint of gentle humor.
+More than once, when my companion and I were received
+in southern homes with a cordiality that precluded
+any thought of sectional feeling, we were nevertheless
+warned by members of the younger generation&mdash;and
+their eyes would twinkle as they said it&mdash;to "look
+out for mother; she's unreconstructed." And you may
+be sure that when we were so warned we did "look
+out." It was well to do so! For though the mother
+might be a frail old lady, past seventy, with the face
+of an angel and the normal demeanor of a saint, we
+could see her bridle, as we were presented to her, over
+the thought there here were two Yankees in her home&mdash;Yankees!&mdash;we
+could see the light come flashing up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+into her eyes as they encountered ours, and could
+feel beneath the veil of her austere civility the dagger
+points of an eternal enmity. By dint of self-control
+on her part, and the utmost effort upon ours to be
+tactful, the presentation ceremony was got over with,
+and after some formal speeches, resembling those
+which, one fancies, may be exchanged by opposing generals
+under a flag of truce, we would be rescued from
+her, removed from the room, before her forbearance
+should be strained, by our presence, to the point of breaking.
+A baleful look would follow us as we withdrew,
+and we would retire with a better understanding of the
+flaming spirit which, through that long, bloody conflict
+against overwhelming odds in wealth, supplies, and
+men, sustained the South, and which at last enabled
+it to accept defeat as nobly as it had accepted earlier
+victories.... How one loves a gentle old lady who can
+hate like that!</p>
+
+<p>In this chapter, when it appeared originally, in "Collier's
+Weekly," I made the statement that I had seldom
+spent an hour in conversation with a Southerner without
+hearing some mention of the Civil War, and that I
+had heard other Northerners remark upon this matter,
+and express surprise at the tenacity with which the war
+holds its place in the foreground of the southern mind.</p>
+
+<p>This, like many another of my southern observations,
+brought me letters from readers of "Collier's," residing
+in the South. A great number of the letters thus elicited,
+as well as comments made upon these chapters by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>
+the southern press, have been of no small interest to me.
+On at least one subject (the question discussed in the
+next chapter, as to whether the expression "you-all" is
+ever used in the singular) my correspondents have convinced
+me that my earlier statement was an error, while
+on other subjects they have modified my views, and on
+still others made my convictions more profound.
+Where it has been possible, and where it has seemed, for
+one reason or another, to be worth while, I have endeavored,
+while revising the story of my southern wanderings
+for this book, to make note of the other fellow's
+point of view, especially in cases where he disagrees
+with me.</p>
+
+<p>The following, then, is from a letter written on the
+stationery of Washington and Lee University, and applies
+to certain statements contained in this chapter:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>In 1813, Thomas Jefferson wrote to a newspaper publisher:
+"Were I the publisher of a paper, instead of the usual division
+into Foreign, Domestic, etc., I think I should distribute everything
+under the following heads: 1. True. 2. Probable. 3. Wanting
+confirmation. 4. Lies, and be careful in subsequent papers to
+correct all errors in preceding ones."</p>
+
+<p>Allow me to suggest that your story might, under Mr. Jefferson's
+category, be placed under "2." Perhaps you went to see
+"The Birth of a Nation" before you wrote it. It has been my
+experience that my acquaintances among the F.&nbsp;F.&nbsp;V.'s have
+been far more interested in whether Boston or Brooklyn would
+win the pennant than in discussing the Civil War. By the young
+men of the South the War was forgotten long ago.</p></div>
+
+<p>This letter has caused me to wonder whether the frequency
+with which my companion and I heard the Civil<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>
+War discussed, may not, perhaps, have been due, at
+least in part, to our own inquiries, resulting from the
+consuming interest that we had in hearing of the War
+from those who lived where it was fought.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, after all, it seems to me most natural that the
+South should remember, while the North forgets.
+Not all Northerners were in the war. But all Southerners
+were; if a boy was big enough to carry a gun, he
+went. The North almost completely escaped invasion,
+and upon one occasion when a southern army did march
+through northern territory, the conduct of the invading
+troops toward the civilian population (the false Barbara
+Frietchie legend to the contrary notwithstanding) was
+so exemplary as to set a record which is probably unequaled
+in history.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> The South, upon the other hand,
+was constantly under invasion, and the record of destruction
+wrought by northern armies in the valley of
+the Shenandoah, on the March to the Sea, and in some
+other instances, is writ in poverty and mourning unto
+this day.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, except politically, the North now feels not the
+least effect from the war. But the South knew the
+terrors of invasion and the pangs of conquest, and is
+only growing strong again after having been ruined&mdash;as
+instanced by the fact, which I came across the other
+day, that the tax returns from one of the southern
+States have, for the first time since the Civil War,
+reached the point at which they stood when it began.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p>
+<p>So, very naturally, while the War has begun to
+take its place in the northern mind along with the
+Revolutionary War, as something to be studied in school
+under the heading "United States History," it has not,
+in southern eyes, become altogether "book history," but
+is history that lives&mdash;in swords hanging upon the walls
+of many homes, in old faded letters, in sacks of worthless
+Confederate bills, in the ruins of great houses, in
+lovingly preserved gray uniforms, in southern battle
+fields, and in southern burial grounds where rows upon
+rows of tombstones, drawn up in company front, stand
+like gray armies forever on parade.</p>
+
+<p>Small wonder if, amid its countless tragic memorials,
+the South does not forget. The strange thing is that bitterness
+has gone so soon; that remembering the agonies
+of war and the abuses of reconstruction, the South does
+not to-day hate the North as violently as ever. If to err
+is human, the North has, in its treatment of the South,
+richly proved its humanness; and if forgiveness is divine,
+the South has, by the same token, attained something
+like divinity.</p>
+
+<p>Had the numbskull North understood these things as
+it should have understood them, there would not now be
+a solid Democratic South.</p>
+
+<p>Such rancor as remains is, I believe, strongest in the
+smaller towns in those States which suffered the greatest
+hardships. I know, for instance, of one lady, from
+a little city in Virginia, who refused to enter the Massachusetts
+Building at the Chicago World's Fair, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>
+there are still to be found, in Virginia, ladies who do
+not leave their houses on the Fourth of July because
+they prefer not to look upon the Stars and Stripes. The
+Confederate flag is still, in a sense, the flag of the South.
+Southerners love it as one loves a pressed flower from
+a mother's bridal wreath. When the Eleventh Cavalry
+rode from Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, to Winchester,
+Virginia, a few years since, they saw many Confederate
+flags, but only one Union flag, and that in the hands of
+a negro child. However, war had not then broken out
+in Europe. It would be different now.</p>
+
+<p>A Virginia lady told me of having gone to a dentist
+in Winchester, Virginia, and having taken her little
+niece with her. The child watched the dentist put a
+rubber dam in her aunt's mouth, and then, childlike, began
+to ask questions. She was a northern child, and
+she had evidently heard some one in the town speak of
+Sheridan's ride.</p>
+
+<p>"Auntie," she said, "was Sheridan a Northerner or a
+Southerner?"</p>
+
+<p>Owing to the rubber dam the aunt was unable to reply,
+but the dentist answered for her. "He was a
+drunken Yankee!" he declared vehemently.</p>
+
+<p>When, later, the rubber dam was removed, the aunt
+protested.</p>
+
+<p>"Doctor," she reproved, "you should not have said
+such a thing to my niece. She is from New York."</p>
+
+<p>"Then," returned the unrepentant dentist, "she has
+heard the truth for once!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Doubtless this man was an inheritor of hate, like the
+descendants of one uncompromisingly bitter old Southerner
+whose will, to be seen among the records of the
+Hanover County courthouse, in Virginia, bequeaths to
+his "children and grandchildren and their descendants
+throughout all future generations, the bitter hatred and
+everlasting malignity of my heart and soul against the
+Yankees, including all people north of Mason and
+Dixon's line."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p200jpg" id="p200jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p200.jpg" width="600" height="374" alt="The southern negro is the world&#39;s peasant supreme" title="" />
+<span class="caption">The southern negro is the world&#39;s peasant supreme</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX<br />
+<br />
+"YOU-ALL" AND OTHER SECTIONAL MISUNDERSTANDINGS</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let us make an honorable retreat.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0 smcap signature">&mdash;As You Like It.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>Those who write school histories and wish them
+adopted by southern schools have to handle
+the Civil War with gloves. Such words as
+"rebel" and "rebellion" are resented in the South, and
+the historian must go softly in discussing slavery,
+though he may put on the loud pedal in speaking
+of State Rights, the fact being that the South not
+only knows now, but, as evidenced by the utterances
+of her leading men, from Jefferson to Lee, knew
+long before the war that slavery was a great curse;
+whereas, on the question of State Rights, including
+the theoretical right to secede from the Union&mdash;this
+being the actual question over which the South took
+up arms&mdash;there is much to be said on the southern
+side. Colonel Robert Bingham, superintendent of the
+Bingham School, Asheville, North Carolina, has made
+an exhaustive study of the question of secession, and
+has set forth his findings in several scholarly and temperately
+written booklets.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Bingham proves absolutely, by quotation of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
+their own words, that the framers of the Constitution
+regarded that document as a <i>compact</i> between the several
+States. He shows that three of the States (Virginia,
+New York, and Rhode Island) joined in this compact
+<i>conditionally</i>, with the clear purpose of resuming
+their independent sovereignty as States, should the general
+government use its power for the oppression of the
+States; that up to the time of the Mexican War the
+New England States contended for, not against, the
+right to secede; that John Quincy Adams went so far
+as to negotiate with England with a view to the secession
+of the New England States, because of Jefferson's
+Embargo Act, and moreover that up to 1840 the United
+States Government used as a textbook for cadets at
+West Point, Rawle's "View of the Constitution," a book
+which teaches that the Union is dissoluble. Robert E.
+Lee and Jefferson Davis, were, therefore, in all probability,
+given this book as students at West Point, and
+consequently, if we would have honest history, we must
+face the astonishing fact that there is evidence to show
+<i>that they learned the doctrine of secession at the United
+States Military Academy</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Bingham, who, it may be remarked, served
+with distinction in the Confederate Army, has very
+kindly supplemented, in a letter to me, his published
+statements. He writes:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Secession was legal <i>theoretically</i>, but practically the conditions
+on which the thirteen Independent Republics, covering a little
+strip on the Atlantic coast, came to an agreement, could not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
+possibly be applied to the great inter-Oceanic Empire into which
+these thirteen Independent Republics had developed.</p>
+
+<p>"Theory is a good horse in the stable, but may make an arrant
+jade on the journey"&mdash;to paraphrase Goldsmith&mdash;and the only
+way in which these irreconcilable differences could be settled was
+by bullet and bayonet, which settled them right and finally.</p></div>
+
+<p>Once such matters as these are fully understood in the
+North, there will be left but one grave issue between
+North and South, that issue being over the question of
+whether or not Southerners, under any circumstances,
+use the phrase "you-all" in the singular.</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever you write of the South," said our hostess
+at a dinner party in Virginia, "don't make the mistake
+of representing any one from this paht of the country,
+white oh black, educated oh ignorant, as saying 'you-all'
+meaning one person only."</p>
+
+<p>When I remarked mildly that it seemed to me I had
+often seen the phrase so used in books, and heard it in
+plays, eight or ten southern ladies and gentlemen at the
+table pounced upon me, all at once. "Yes!" they agreed,
+with a kind of polite violence, "books and plays by
+Yankees!"</p>
+
+<p>"If," one of the gentlemen explained, "you write to
+a friend who has a family, and say, according to the
+northern practice, 'I hope to see you when you come to
+my town,' you write something which is really ambiguous,
+since the word 'you' may refer only to your friend,
+or may refer also to his family. Our southern 'you-all'
+makes it explicit."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I told him that in the North we also used the word
+"all" in connection with "you," though we accented the
+two evenly, and did not compound them, but he seemed
+to believe that "you" followed by "all" belonged exclusively
+to the South.</p>
+
+<p>The argument continued almost constantly throughout
+the meal. Not until coffee was served did the subject
+seem to be exhausted. But it was not, for after
+pouring a demi-tasse our hostess lifted a lump of sugar
+in the tongs, and looking me directly in the eye inquired:
+"Do you-all take sugah?"</p>
+
+<p>Undoubtedly it would have been wiser, and politer,
+to let this pass, but the discussion had filled me with
+curiosity, not only because of my interest in the localism,
+but also because of the amazing intensity with which it
+had been discussed.</p>
+
+<p>"But," I exclaimed, "you just said 'you-all,' apparently
+addressing me. Didn't you use it in the singular?"</p>
+
+<p>No sooner had I spoken than I was sorry. Every one
+looked disconcerted. There was silence for a moment.
+I was very much ashamed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no," she said at last. "When I said 'you-all' I
+meant you and Mr. Morgan." (She pronounced it
+"Moh-gan," with a lovely drawl.) As she made this
+statement, she blushed, poor lady!</p>
+
+<p>Being to blame for her discomfiture, I could not bear to
+see her blush, and looked away, but only to catch the eye
+of my companion, and to read in its evil gleam the
+thought: "Of course they use it in the singular. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>
+aren't you ashamed of having tripped up such a pretty
+creature on a point of dialect?"</p>
+
+<p>Though my interest in the southern idiom had caused
+me to forget about the sugar, my hostess had not forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," she said, still balancing the lump above the
+cup, and continuing gamely to put the question in the
+same form, and to me: "Do you-all take sugah, oh
+not?"</p>
+
+<p>I had no idea how my companion took his coffee, but
+it seemed to me that tardy politeness now demanded that
+I tacitly&mdash;or at least demi-tacitly&mdash;accede to the alleged
+plural intent of the question. Therefore, I replied: "Mr.
+Morgan takes two lumps. I don't take any, thanks."</p>
+
+<p>Late that night as we were returning to our hotel, my
+companion said to me somewhat tartly: "In case such
+a thing comes up again, I wish you would remember that
+sugar in my coffee makes me ill."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, why didn't you say so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because," he returned, "I thought that you-all ought
+to do the answering. It seemed best for me-all to keep
+quiet and try to look plural under the singular conditions."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>No single thing I ever wrote has brought to me so
+many letters, nor letters so uniform in sentiment (albeit
+widely different in expression), as the foregoing, seemingly
+unimportant tale, printed originally in "Collier's
+Weekly."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Some one has pointed out that various communities
+have "fighting words," and as the letters poured in I
+began to realize that in discussing "you-all" I had inadvertently
+hit upon a term which aroused the ire of the
+South&mdash;or rather, that I had aroused ire by implying
+that the expression is sometimes used in the singular&mdash;the
+Solid South to the contrary notwithstanding.</p>
+
+<p>Never, upon any subject, have I known people to agree
+as my southern correspondents did on this. The unanimity
+of their dissent was an impressive thing. So was
+the violence some of them displayed.</p>
+
+<p>For a time, indeed, the heat with which they wrote,
+obscured the issue. That is to say, most of them instead
+of explaining merely denied, and added comments, more
+or less unflattering, concerning me.</p>
+
+<p>Wrote a lady from Lexington, Kentucky:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>I have lived in Kentucky all of my life, and have never yet
+heard "you-all" used in the singular, not even among the negroes.
+My grandparents and friends say they have never heard it, either.</p>
+
+<p>It was needless for you to tell your Virginia hostess that "you-all"
+(meaning you and your friend) were Yankees. The fact
+that you criticized her language proved it. Southern people
+pride themselves on their tact, and no doubt, at the time, she
+was struggling to conceal a smile because of some of your own
+localisms.</p></div>
+
+<p>Many of the letters were more severe than this one,
+and most of them made the point that I had been impolite
+to my hostess, and that, in all probability, when
+she looked at me and asked, "Do you-all take sugah?"
+she was playing a joke upon me, apropos the discussion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>
+which had preceded the question. For example, this,
+from a gentleman of Pell City, Alabama:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>My wife is the residuary legatee of Virginia's language, inherited,
+acquired and affected varieties, including the vanishing
+<i>y</i>; annihilated <i>g</i>; long-distance <i>a</i>, and irresistible drawl.</p>
+
+<p>To quell the unfortunate tumult that has arisen in our household
+as a result of your last article in "Collier's" I am commanded
+to advise you that the use of "you-all" in the singular
+is absodamnlutely <i>non est factum</i> in Virginia, save, perhaps,
+among the hill people of the Blue Ridge.</p>
+
+<p>Also, take notice that when your hostess, with apparent inadvertence,
+used the expression in connection with sugar in your
+demi-tasse, the subsequent blush was due to your failure to catch
+her witticism, ignorantly mistaking it for a lapse of hers.</p>
+
+<p>My wife was going to write to you herself, but I managed to
+divert this cruel determination by promising to uphold the honor
+of the Old Dominion. There is already too much blood being
+shed in the world without spilling that of non-combatants as
+would have been "you-all's" fate had she gone after you with a
+weapon more mighty than the sword when in the hands of Mr.
+Wilson or an outraged woman.</p></div>
+
+<p>In face of all this and much more, however, my conviction
+was unshaken. I talked it over with my companion.
+He remembered the episode of the dinner table
+exactly as I did. Moreover, I still had my notes, made
+in the hotel that night. The lady looked at me. My
+companion was several places removed from her at the
+other side of the table. How could she have meant to
+include him? And how could she have expected me to
+say how he took his after-dinner coffee?</p>
+
+<p>At last, to reassure myself, I wrote to the wisest, clev<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>erest,
+most trustworthy lady in the South, and asked her
+what it all meant.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," she wrote back from Atlanta, "I will tell you,
+but I am not sure that you will understand me. The answer
+is: <i>She did, but she didn't</i>. She looked at and
+spoke to you and, of course, by all rules of logic she
+could not have been intending to make you Morg's
+keeper in the matter of coffee dressing. <i>But</i> she never
+would have said 'you-all' if Morg had not been in her
+mind as joined with you. The response, according to
+her thought-connotation, would have been from you <i>and</i>
+from him."</p>
+
+<p>This was disconcerting. So was a letter, received in
+the same mail, from a gentleman in Charleston:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>It is as plain as the nose on your face that you are not yet convinced
+that we in the South <i>never</i> use "you-all" with reference
+to one person. The case you mentioned proves nothing at all.
+The very fact that there were <i>two</i> strangers present justified the
+use of the expression; we continually use the expression in that
+way, and in such cases we expect an answer from <i>both</i> persons
+so addressed. To illustrate: just a few days ago I "carried"
+two girls into an "ice-cream parlor." After we were seated,
+I looked at the one nearest me, and said: "Well, what will
+you-all have?"</p>
+
+<p>Physically we are so constructed that unless a person is cross-eyed
+it is impossible to look at two persons at once; the mere fact
+that I looked at the one nearest me did not mean that I was not
+addressing both. I expected an answer from both, and I got it,
+too (as is generally the case where ice-cream is concerned).</p>
+
+<p>The subject is one to which I have devoted the most careful
+attention for many years. I have been so interested in it that
+almost unconsciously, whenever I myself use the expression "you-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>all,"
+or hear any one else use it, I note whether it is intended to
+refer to one or to more than one person. I have heard thousands
+of persons, white, black and indifferent, use the expression,
+and the only ones I have ever heard use it incorrectly are what
+we might call "professional Southerners." For instance, last
+week I went to a vaudeville show, and part of the performance
+was given by two "black-face" comedians, calling themselves
+"The Georgia Blossoms." Their dialect was excellent, with the
+single exception that one of them <i>twice</i> used the expression "you-all"
+where it could not <i>possibly</i> have meant more than one person.
+And I no sooner heard it than I said to myself: "There
+is <i>one</i> blossom that never bloomed in Georgia!"</p>
+
+<p>Another instance is the following: I was once approached by
+a beggar in Atlanta, who saluted me thus: "Say, mister, can't
+you-all give me a nickel?" Had I been accompanied it would
+have been all right, but I was alone, and there was no other person
+near me except the hobo. Did I give him the nickel? I
+should say not! I said to myself: "He is a damned Yankee
+trying to pass himself off for a Southerner."</p></div>
+
+<p>Horrid glimmerings began to filter dimly through.
+And yet&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Next day came a letter calling my attention to an article,
+written years ago by Joel Chandler Harris and
+Thomas Nelson Page, jointly, in which they plead with
+northern writers not to misuse the disputed expression
+by applying it in the singular.</p>
+
+<p>That was another shock. I felt conviction tottering....
+But she <i>did</i> look at me.... She <i>didn't</i> expect an
+answer from my companion....</p>
+
+<p>And then behold! a missive from Mr. H.&nbsp;E. Jones, a
+member&mdash;and a worthy one&mdash;of the Tallapoosa County
+Board of Education, and a resident of Dadeville, Ala<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>bama.
+Mr. Jones' educational activities reach far beyond
+Tallapoosa County, and far beyond the confines
+of his State, for he has educated me. He has made me
+see the light.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to straighten you out," he wrote, kindly.
+"We never use 'you-all' in the singular. Not even the
+most ignorant do so. But, as you know," (Ah, that was
+mercifully said!) "there are some peculiar, almost unexplainable,
+shades of meaning in local idioms of speech,
+which are not easy for a stranger to understand. I have
+a friend who was reared in Milwaukee and is a graduate
+of the University of Wisconsin, who tells me he
+would have argued the 'you-all' point with all comers
+for some years following his taking up his residence
+here, but he is at this time as ready as I to deny the allegation
+and 'chaw the alligator.'</p>
+
+<p>"When your young lady, in Virginia, asked, 'Do you-all
+take sugar?' she mentally included Mr. Morgan, and
+perhaps all other Yankees. I would ask my local grocer,
+'Will you-all sell me some sugar this morning?'
+meaning his establishment, collectively, although I addressed
+him personally; but I would <i>not</i> ask my only
+servant, 'Have you-all milked the cow?'"</p>
+
+<p>And that is the exact truth.</p>
+
+<p>I was absolutely wrong. And though, having printed
+the ghastly falsehood in my original article, I can hardly
+hope now for absolution from the outraged South, I
+can at least retract, as I hereby do, and can, moreover,
+thank Mr. H.&nbsp;E. Jones, of Tallapoosa County, Alabama,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
+for having saved me from a double sin; for had he
+not given me the simple illustration of the grocery store,
+I might have repeated, now, my earlier misstatement.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX<br />
+<br />
+IDIOMS AND ARISTOCRACY</h2>
+
+
+<p>Southerners have told me that they can tell
+from what part of the South a person comes,
+by his speech, just as an Easterner can distinguish,
+by the same means a New Englander, a
+New Yorker, a Middle-Westerner, and a Brooklynite.
+I cannot pretend to have become an authority upon
+southern dialect, but it is obvious to me that the speech
+of New Orleans is unlike that of Charleston, and that of
+Charleston unlike that of Virginia.</p>
+
+<p>The chief characteristic of the Virginian dialect is the
+famous and fascinating localism which Professor C. Alphonso
+Smith has called the "vanishing <i>y</i>"&mdash;a <i>y</i> sound
+which causes words like "car" and "garden" to be pronounced
+"cyar" and "gyarden"&mdash;or, as Professor Smith
+prefers to indicate it: "C<sup>y</sup>ar" and "g<sup>y</sup>arden." I am
+told that in years gone by the "vanishing <i>y</i>" was common
+to all Virginians, but though it is still common
+enough among members of the old generation, and is
+used also by some young people&mdash;particularly, I fancy,
+young ladies, who realize its fetching quality&mdash;there can
+be no doubt that it is, in both senses, vanishing, and that
+not half the Virginians of the present day pronounce<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>
+"cigar" as "segyar," "carpet" as "cya&acute;pet," and "Carter,"
+as "Cyahtah."</p>
+
+<p>In Virginia and many other parts of the South one
+hears such words as "aunt" correctly pronounced with
+the broad <i>a</i>, and such words as "tube" and "new" properly
+given the full <i>u</i> sound (instead of "toobe," and
+"noo," as in some parts of the North); but, on the other
+hand, while the South gives the short <i>o</i> sound in such
+words as "log" and "fog," it invariably calls a dog a
+"dawg." "Your" is often pronounced "yore," "sure"
+as "shore," and, not infrequently, "to" as "toe."</p>
+
+<p>The South also uses the word "carry" in a way that
+strikes Northerners as strange. If a Southerner offers
+to "carry" you to the station, or over his plantation, he
+does not signify that he intends to transport you by
+means of physical strength, but that he will escort you.
+If he "carries you to the run" you will find that the
+"run" is what Northerners call a creek; if to the
+"branch," or "dreen," that is what we call a brook.</p>
+
+<p>This use of the word "carry," far from being a corruption,
+is pure old English, and is used in the Bible, and
+by Smollett, though it is amusing to note that the "Georgia
+Gazetteer" for 1837, mentions as a lamentable provincialism
+such an application of the word as "to <i>carry</i>
+(instead of <i>lead</i>) a horse to water." If the "Gazetteer"
+were indeed correct in this, then the Book of Genesis
+contains an American provincialism.</p>
+
+<p>The customary use of the word in the North, as "to
+<i>carry</i> a cane, or a bag," is equally but no more correct<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>
+than the southern usage. I am informed by Mr. W.&nbsp;T.
+Hall, Editor of the Dothan (Alabama) "Eagle," that
+the word used in his part of the country, as signifying
+"to bear on the back, or shoulder," is "tote." "Tote"
+is a word not altogether unknown in the North, and it
+has recently found its way into some dictionaries,
+though the old "Georgia Gazetteer" disapproved of it.
+Even this word has some excuse for being, in that it is a
+deformed member of a good family, having come from
+the Latin, <i>tollit</i>, been transformed into the early English
+"tolt," and thus into what I believe to be a purely American
+word.</p>
+
+<p>Other expressions which struck me as being characteristic
+of the South are "stop by," as for instance, "I
+will stop by for you," meaning, "I will call for you in
+passing"; "don't guess," as "I don't guess I'll come";
+and "Yes indeedy!" which seems to be a kind of emphatic
+"Yes indeed."</p>
+
+<p>"As I look back over the old South," said one white-haired
+Virginian, "there were two things it was above.
+One was accounts and the other was grammar. Tradesmen
+in prosperous neighborhoods were always in distress
+because of the long credits, though gambling debts
+were, of course, always punctiliously paid. As to the
+English spoken in old Virginia&mdash;and indeed in the whole
+South&mdash;there is absolutely no doubt that its softness and
+its peculiarities in pronunciation are due to the influence
+of the negro voice and speech on the white race. Some
+of the young people seem to wish to dispute this, but we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>
+older ones used to take the view&mdash;half humorously, of
+course&mdash;that if a Southerner spoke perfect English, it
+showed he wasn't a gentleman; "that he hadn't been
+raised with niggers around him.""</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you shouldn't tell him that!" broke in a lady who
+was present.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" demanded the old gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>"He'll print it!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he answered, "ain't it true? What's the
+harm in it?"</p>
+
+<p>"There!" she exclaimed. "You said '<i>ain't</i>.' He'll
+print that Virginians say 'ain't'!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he answered, "I reckon we do, don't we?"</p>
+
+<p>She laughed and gave up. "I remember," she told me,
+"the very spot on the turnpike going out to Ripon, where
+I made up my mind to break myself of saying 'ain't.'
+But I want to tell you that we are talking much better
+English than we used to. Even the negroes are. You
+don't hear many white people saying 'gwine' for 'going'
+any more, for instance, and the young people don't say
+'set' for 'sit' and 'git' for 'get,' as their fathers did."</p>
+
+<p>"I've heard folks say, though," put in the old gentleman,
+"that they'd ruther speak like a Virginian than
+speak correctly. The old talk was pretty nice, after all.
+I don't hold to all these new improvements. They've
+been going too far in this Commonwealth."</p>
+
+<p>"What have they been doing?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Doing!" he returned, "Why, they're gradually taking
+the cuspidors out of the church pews!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Before the question of dialect is dropped, it should be
+said that those who do not believe the soft southern
+pronunciation is derived from negroes, can make out
+an interesting case. If, they ask, the negro has corrupted
+the English of the South, why is it that he has
+not also corrupted the language of the West Indies&mdash;British
+and French? French negroes speak like French
+persons of white blood, and British West Indian negroes
+often speak the cockney dialect, without a trace of "nigger."
+Moreover, it is pointed out that in southern
+countries, the world over, there is a tendency to soften
+the harsh sounds of language, to elide, and drop out
+consonants. The Andalusians speak a Spanish comparable
+in many of its peculiarities with the English of
+our own South, and the south-Italians exhibit similar
+dialectic traits. Nor do the parallels between the north
+and south of Spain and Italy, and of the United States,
+end there. The north-Italians and north-Spaniards are
+the "Yankees" of their respective countries&mdash;the
+shrewd, cold business people&mdash;whereas the south-Italians
+and south-Spaniards are more poetic, more
+dashing, more temperamental. The merchants are of
+the north of Spain, but the dancers and bull-fighters are
+Andalusians. And just as our Americans of the North
+admire the lazy dialect of the South, so the north-Spaniards
+admire the dialect of Andalusia, and even
+imitate it because they think it has a fashionable sound&mdash;quite
+as British fashionables cultivate the habit of
+dropping final <i>g</i>'s, as in "huntin'" for "hunting."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Virginia, more than any other State I know of, feels
+its entity as a State. If you meet a Virginian traveling
+outside his State, and ask where he is from, he will not
+mention the name of the city in which he resides, but will
+reply: "I'm from Va'ginia." If, on the other hand,
+you are in Virginia, and ask him the same question, he
+will proudly reply: "I'm from Fauquier," or "I'm
+from Westmoreland," or whatever the name of his
+county may be. The chances are, also, that his trunks
+and traveling bags will be marked with his initials, followed
+not by the name of his town, but by the abbreviation,
+"Va."</p>
+
+<p>I was told of one old unreconstructed Virginian who
+had to go to Boston on business. The gentleman he
+went to see there was exceedingly polite to him, asking
+him to his house, putting him up at his club, and showing
+him innumerable courtesies. The old Confederate, writing
+to his wife, indicated his amazement: "Although
+he is not a Virginian," he declared, "I must confess that
+he lives like a gentleman."</p>
+
+<p>The name of his Bostonian acquaintance was John
+Quincy Adams.</p>
+
+<p>I heard this story from a northern lady who has a
+country place near a small town in Virginia. In the
+North this lady's family is far from being unknown, but
+in Virginia, she assured me, all persons originating outside
+the State are looked upon as vague beings without
+"family."</p>
+
+<p>"They seem to think," she said, "that Northerners<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>
+have no parents&mdash;that they are made chemically."</p>
+
+<p>This does not imply, however, that well-bred Northerners
+are excluded from society. Even if they are well
+off they may get into society; for though money does not
+count in one's favor in such a town, it does not count
+against one. The social requirement of the place is
+simple. If people are "nice people," that is enough.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, however, it is one thing to be admitted to
+Virginia society and another to belong to it by right. A
+case in point is that of a lady visiting in a Virginia city
+who, while calling at the house of some "F.&nbsp;F.V's," was
+asked by a little girl, the daughter of the house, where she
+had been born.</p>
+
+<p>"Mawtha," said the little girl's mother, after the caller
+had departed, "you must not ask people where they were
+bo'n. If they were bo'n in Va'ginia they will tell you
+so without asking, and if they weren't bo'n in Va'ginia
+it's very embarrassing."</p>
+
+<p>Some of the old families of the inner circle are in a
+tragic state of decay, owing to inbreeding; others, in a
+more wholesome physical and mental condition, are perpetually
+wrestling with the heritage of poverty left over
+from the War&mdash;"too proud to whitewash and too poor
+to paint"&mdash;clinging desperately to the old acres, and
+to the old houses which are like beautiful, tired ancestral
+ghosts.</p>
+
+<p>Until a few years ago the one resource of Virginian
+gentlewomen in need of funds was to take boarders, but
+more lately the daughters of distinguished but poverty-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>stricken
+families have found that they may work in offices.
+Thus, in the town of which I speak, several ladies
+who are very much "in society," support themselves by
+entertaining "paying guests," while others are stenographers.
+The former, I was told, by the way, make it
+a practice to avoid first-hand business contacts with their
+guests by sending them their bills through the mail, and
+requiring that response be made by means of the same
+impersonal channel.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI<br />
+<br />
+THE CONFEDERATE CAPITAL</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and
+every town or city.</p>
+
+<p class="smcap signature">&mdash;Oliver Wendell Holmes.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Richmond is the Boston of Virginia; Norfolk
+its New York. The comparison does not, of
+course, hold in all particulars, Richmond being,
+for instance, larger than Norfolk, and not a seaport.
+Yet, on the other hand, Boston manages, more than any
+seaport that I know of, to conceal from the visitor the
+signs of its maritime life; wherefore Richmond looks
+about as much like a port as does the familiar part of
+Boston.</p>
+
+<p>The houses on the principal residence streets of Richmond
+are not built in such close ranks as Boston houses;
+they have more elbow-room; numbers of them have yards
+and gardens; and there is not about Richmond houses the
+Bostonian insistence upon red brick; nevertheless many
+houses of both cities give off the same suggestion of having
+long been lived in by the descendants of their builders.
+So, too, though the Capitol at Richmond has little
+architectural resemblance to Boston's gold-domed State
+House&mdash;the former having been copied by Thomas
+Jefferson from the Maison Carr&eacute;e at N&icirc;mes, and being a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
+better building than the Massachusetts State House,
+and better placed&mdash;the two do, nevertheless, suggest
+each other in their gray granite solidity.</p>
+
+<p>It is perhaps in the quality of solidity&mdash;architectural,
+commercial, social, even spiritual&mdash;that Richmond and
+Boston are most alike. Substantialness, conservatism,
+tradition, and prosperity rest like gray mantles over both.</p>
+
+<p>Broad Street in Richmond is two or three times as
+wide as Granby Street, Norfolk's chief shopping street,
+and for this reason, doubtless, its traffic seems less,
+though I believe it is in fact greater. A fine street
+to look upon at night, with its long, even rows of
+clustered boulevard lights, and its bright windows,
+Broad Street in the daytime is a disappointment, because,
+for all its fine spaciousness, it lacks good buildings.
+I must confess, too, that I was disappointed in the
+appearance of the women in the shopping crowds on
+Broad Street; for, as every one knows, Richmond has
+been famous for its beauties. In vain I looked for
+young women fitted to inherit the d&eacute;butante mantles of
+such nationally celebrated beauties as Miss Irene Langhorne
+(Mrs. Charles Dana Gibson), Miss May Handy
+(Mrs. James Brown Potter), Miss Lizzie Bridges (Mrs.
+Hobson), and Miss Sally Bruce (Mrs. Arthur B. Kinsolving).</p>
+
+<p>In the ten years between 1900 and 1910 the population
+of Richmond increased 50 per cent. Her population
+by the last census was about 130,000, of which a
+third is colored. Norfolk's population is about 70,000,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>
+with approximately the same percentage of negroes.
+In both cities there is much new building&mdash;offices downtown,
+and pretty new brick homes in outlying suburban
+tracts. Likewise, in both, the charming signs of other
+days are here and there to be seen.</p>
+
+<p>Richmond is again like its ancient enemy, Boston, in
+the wealth of its historical associations, and I know of
+no city which gives the respectful heed to its own history
+that Richmond does, and no State which in this
+matter equals the State of Virginia. If Richmond was
+the center of the South during the Civil War, Capitol
+Square was, as it is to-day, the center of that center.
+In this square, in the shadow of Jefferson's beautiful
+classic capitol building, which has the glowing gray tone
+of one of those water colors done on tinted paper by
+Jules Gu&eacute;rin, Confederate soldiers were mustered into
+service under Lee and Jackson. Within the old building
+the Confederate Congress met, Aaron Burr was tried
+for treason, and George Washington saw, in its present
+position, his own statue by Houdon. Across the way
+from the square, where the post office now stands, was
+the Treasury Building of the Confederate States, and
+there Jefferson Davis appeared seven times, to be tried
+for treason, only to have his case postponed by the Federal
+Government, and finally dismissed. East of the
+square is the State Library, containing a remarkable collection
+of portraits and documents, including likenesses
+of all governors of Virginia from John Smith to Tyler,
+a portrait of Pocahontas, and the bail bond of Jefferson<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
+Davis, signed by Horace Greeley, Cornelius Vanderbilt,
+Gerrit Smith, and seventeen other distinguished men of
+the day. To the west of the square is old St. Paul's
+Church, with the pews of Lee and Davis. It was while
+attending service in this church, on Sunday, April 2,
+1865, that Davis received Lee's telegram from Petersburg,
+saying that Richmond must be evacuated. A
+block or two west of the church, in East Franklin Street,
+is a former residence of Lee. It was given by the late
+Mrs. Joseph Bryan and her sisters to the Virginia Historical
+Society, and is now, appropriately enough, the
+home of that organization.</p>
+
+<p>In the old drawing room, now the office of the Historical
+Society, I found Mr. William G. Stanard, the corresponding
+secretary, and from him heard something of
+Lee's life there immediately after the War.</p>
+
+<p>By the Northerners in Richmond at that time, including
+the Federal troops stationed in the city, Lee was of
+course respected and admired, while by the whole South
+he was, and is to-day, adored. As for his own ex-soldiers,
+they could not see him without emotion, and
+because of the demonstrations which invariably attended
+his appearance on the Richmond streets, he went out but
+little, passing much time upon the back porch of the
+house. Here most of the familiar Brady photographs
+of him were taken. Brady sent a young photographer
+to Richmond to get the photographs. Lee was at first
+disposed to refuse to be taken, but his family persuaded
+him to submit, on the ground that if there were any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>
+impertinence in the request it was not the fault of the
+young man, and that the latter might lose his position if
+he failed to obtain the desired pictures.</p>
+
+<p>Finding the continued attention of the crowds too
+much for him, the general left Richmond after two
+months, removing to a small house in Cumberland
+County, on the James, and it was there that he was residing
+when called to the presidency of Washington College&mdash;now
+Washington and Lee University&mdash;at Lexington,
+Virginia. As is well known, he accepted this offer,
+built up the institution, remained its president until the
+time of his death, and now lies buried in the university
+chapel.</p>
+
+<p>To Mr. Stanard I am also indebted for the following
+information regarding John Smith and Pocahontas:</p>
+
+<p>About a mile below Richmond, in what is now the
+brickyard region, there used to stand the residence of the
+Mayo family, a place known as Powhatan. This place
+has long been pointed out as the scene of the saving of
+Smith by the Indian girl, but late research indicates
+that, though Smith did come up the James to the present
+site of Richmond, his capture by the Indians did not
+occur here, but in the vicinity of Jamestown. Then Indians
+took him first to one of their villages on York
+River, near the present site of West Point, Virginia, and
+thence to a place, on the same stream, in the county
+of Gloucester, where the tribal chief resided. I was
+under the impression that this worthy's name was Powhatan,
+but Mr. Stanard declared "powhatan" was not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
+a proper name, but an Indian word meaning "chief."</p>
+
+<p>The Virginia Historical Society is satisfied that Smith
+was rescued by Pocahontas at a point about nine miles
+from Williamsburg on the west side of York River, but
+there are historians who contend that the whole story
+of the rescue is a fiction. One of these is Dr. Albert
+Bushnell Hart, of Harvard, who lists Smith among
+"Historical Liars." Virginians, who regard Smith as
+one of their proudest historical possessions, are somewhat
+disposed to resent this view, but it appears to me
+that there is at least some ground for it. Matthew Page
+Andrews, another historian, himself a Virginian, points
+out that many of our ideas of the Jamestown colony have
+been obtained from Smith's history of the settlement,
+which he wrote in England, some years after leaving
+Virginia.</p>
+
+<p>"From these accounts," says Mr. Andrews, "we get
+an unfavorable impression of Smith's associates in the
+colony and of the management of the men composing the
+popular or people's party in the London Company. As
+we now know that this party in the London Company
+was composed of very able and patriotic Englishmen, we
+are inclined to think that Captain Smith not only overrated
+his achievement, but was very unjust to his fellow-colonists
+and the Company."</p>
+
+<p>The story of the rescue of Smith by Pocahontas, with
+the strong implication that the Indian girl was in love
+with him, comes to us from Smith himself. We know
+that when Pocahontas was nineteen years of age (seven<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>
+years after the Smith rescue is said to have occurred),
+she married John Rolfe&mdash;the first Englishman to begin
+the cultivation of the tobacco plant. We know that she
+was taken to England, that she was welcomed at court
+as a princess, that she had a son born in England, and
+that she herself died there in 1617. We know also that
+her son, Thomas Rolfe, settled in Virginia, and that
+through him a number of Virginians trace descent from
+Pocahontas. (Mr. Andrews points out that in 1915 one
+of these descendants became the wife of the President of
+the United States.)</p>
+
+<p>But we know also that John Smith, brave and daring
+though he was, was not above twisting and embroidering
+a tale to his own glorification. While, therefore, it is
+too much to affirm that his rescue story is false, it is well
+to remember that Pocahontas was but twelve years old
+when the rescue is said to have occurred, and that Smith
+waited until after she had become famous, and had died,
+to promulgate his romantic story.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Immediately to the north of Capitol Square stands the
+City Hall, an ugly building, in the cellar of which is the
+Police Court presided over by the celebrated and highly
+entertaining Judge Crutchfield, otherwise known as "One
+John" and "the Cadi"&mdash;of whom more presently. A
+few blocks beyond the City Hall, in the old mansion at
+the corner of East Clay and Twelfth Streets, which was
+the "White House of the Confederacy," the official residence
+of Jefferson Davis during the war, is the Confeder<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>ate
+Museum&mdash;one of the most fascinating museums I
+ever visited.</p>
+
+<p>Not the least part of the charm of this museum is the
+fact that it is not of great size, and that one may consequently
+visit it without fatigue; but the chief fascination
+of the place is the dramatic personalness of its exhibits.
+To me there is always something peculiarly engaging
+about intimate relics of historic figures, and it is
+of such relics that the greater part of the collection of the
+Confederate Museum consists. In one show case, for
+example, are the saddle and bridle of General Lee, and
+the uniform he wore when he surrendered. The effects
+of General Joseph E. Johnston are shown in another
+case, and in still another those of the picturesque J.&nbsp;E.&nbsp;B.
+Stuart, who, as here one may see, loved the little touch
+of individuality and dash which came of wearing a
+feather in a campaign hat. So also one learns something
+of Stonewall Jackson when one sees in the cabinet,
+along with his old blue hat and other possessions, the
+gold spurs which were given to him by the ladies of
+Baltimore, beside the steel spurs that he <i>wore</i>. All
+Jackson's personal effects were very simple.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most striking relics in the museum is the
+Great Seal of the Confederacy, which was only returned
+to Richmond within the last few years, after having been
+lost track of for nearly half a century&mdash;a strange chapter
+in the annals of the Civil War.</p>
+
+<p>Records in the Library of Congress, including the
+Confederate state papers purchased by the United States<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>
+Government in 1872, of William J. Bromwell, formerly
+a clerk in the Confederate State Department, brought to
+light, a few years ago, the fact that the seal was in the
+possession of Rear Admiral Thomas O. Selfridge, U.&nbsp;S.&nbsp;N.,
+retired.</p>
+
+<p>At the time of the evacuation of Richmond, Bromwell
+carried off a number of the Confederate state papers,
+and Mrs. Bromwell took charge of the seal, transporting
+it through the lines in her bustle. When later, through
+Colonel John T. Pickett, Bromwell sold the papers to
+the Government, Rear Admiral Selfridge&mdash;then a captain&mdash;was
+the officer assigned to go to Hamilton, Ontario,
+to inventory and receive them. It is said that
+Pickett gave the seal to Selfridge at about this time,
+first, however, having a duplicate made. This duplicate,
+or a copy of it, was later offered for sale as the
+original, but was found to be spurious. When examination
+of the Pickett papers by Gaillard Hunt, of the Library
+of Congress, finally traced the original seal to Rear
+Admiral Selfridge, an effort was made to buy it back.
+In 1912 three Richmond gentlemen, Messrs. Eppa Hunton,
+Jr., William H. White and Thomas P. Bryan, purchased
+the Seal of the admiral for three thousand dollars,
+subject to proof of its authenticity. Mr. St. George
+Bryan and Mr. William Gray, of Richmond, then took
+the seal to London, where the makers are still well-known
+engravers. Here, by means of hall marks, the
+identification was made complete.</p>
+
+<p>No less appealing than the relics of the deceased gov<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>ernment
+and great generals who are gone, are some of
+the humbler items connected with the deaths of privates
+in the ranks of North and South alike. One of the most
+pathetic was a small daguerreotype of a beautiful young
+girl. On a card, beside the picture, is the story of it,
+so far as that story is ever likely to be known:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Picture found on the dead body of an unidentified Federal
+soldier.</p>
+
+<p>Presented by C.&nbsp;C. Calvert, Upperville, Va.</p></div>
+
+<p>"We have always hoped," said Miss Susan B. Harrison,
+house regent of the museum, "that some day
+some one would come in and recognize this little picture,
+and that it would find its way back to those who
+ought to have it, and who might by this means at last
+discover what became of the soldier who was dear to
+them."</p>
+
+<p>An even more tragic souvenir is a letter addressed to
+A.&nbsp;V. Montgomery, Camden, Madison County, Mississippi,
+in which a mortally wounded soldier of Confederacy
+bids a last good-by to his father. The letter was
+originally inclosed with one from Lieutenant Ethelbert
+Fairfax, C.&nbsp;S.&nbsp;A., informing the father that his son
+passed away soon after he had written. The text,
+pitiful and heroic as it is, can give but the faintest idea
+of the original, with its feeble, laborious writing, and the
+dark-brown spots dappling the three sheets of paper
+where blood from the boy's mangled shoulder dripped
+upon them while he wrote:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>
+<span class="smcap" style="margin-left: 10em;">Spotsylvania County, Va.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">May 10, 1864.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Father</span>:</p>
+
+<p>This is my last letter to you. I went into battle this evening
+as courier for Gen'l Heth. I have been struck by a piece of shell
+and my right shoulder is horribly mangled &amp; I know death is
+inevitable. I am very weak but I write to you because I know
+you would be delighted to read a word from your dying son. I
+know death is near, that I will die far from home and friends
+of my early youth, but I have friends here, too, who are kind
+to me. My Friend Fairfax will write you at my request and
+give you the particulars of my death. My grave will be marked
+so that you may visit it if you desire to do so, but it is optionary
+with you whether you let my remains rest here or in Mississippi.
+I would like to rest in the graveyard with my dear
+mother and brothers, but it is a matter of minor importance.
+Let us all try to reunite in heaven. I pray my God to forgive
+my sins &amp; I feel that his promises are true, that he will forgive
+me and save me. Give my love to all my friends. My strength
+fails me. My horse &amp; my equipments will be left for you.
+Again a long farewell to you. May we meet in heaven.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Your Dying Son,</span><br />
+<span class="smcap" style="margin-left: 4em;">J.&nbsp;R. Montgomery</span>.
+</p>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII<br />
+<br />
+RANDOM RICHMOND NOTES</h2>
+
+
+<p>Richmond may again be likened to Boston as
+a literary center. In an article published some
+years ago in "Book News" Alice M. Tyler refers
+to Colonel William Byrd, who founded Richmond
+in 1733, as the sprightliest and most genial native
+American writer before Franklin. In the time of Chief
+Justice Marshall, Richmond had a considerable group
+of novelists, historians and essayists, but the great
+literary name connected with the place is that of Edgar
+Allan Poe, who spent much of his boyhood in the city
+and later edited the "Southern Literary Messenger."
+Matthew Fontaine Maury, the great scientist, mentioned
+in an earlier chapter, was, at another time, editor of the
+same periodical, as was also John Reuben Thompson,
+"Poet of the Confederacy," who wrote, among other
+poems, "Music in Camp," and who translated Gustave
+Nadaud's familiar poem, "Carcassonne."</p>
+
+<p>Thomas Nelson Page made his home in Richmond for
+thirty years; Am&eacute;lie Rives was born there and still
+maintains her residence in Albemarle County, Virginia,
+while among other writers of the present time connected
+with the city either by birth or long association are,
+Henry Sydnor Harrison, Mary Johnston, Ellen Glas<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>gow,
+Marion Harland, Kate Langley Bosher, James
+Branch Cabell, Edward Peple, dramatist, J.&nbsp;H. Whitty,
+biographer of Poe, and Colonel W. Gordon McCabe, soldier,
+historian, essayist, and local character&mdash;a gentleman
+upon whose shoulders such imported expressions as
+<i>litt&eacute;rateur</i>, <i>bon viveur</i>, and <i>raconteur</i> alight as naturally
+as doves on friendly shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel McCabe is a link between present-day Richmond
+and the traditions and associations of England.
+He was the friend of Lord Roberts, he introduced Lord
+Tennyson to Bull Durham tobacco, and, as is fitting
+under the circumstances, he speaks and writes of a hotel
+as "<i>an</i> hotel."</p>
+
+<p>Henry Sydnor Harrison did his first writing as book
+reviewer on the Richmond "Times-Dispatch," of which
+paper he later became paragrapher and daily poet, and
+still later editor in chief. It is commonly reported in
+Richmond that the characters in his novel "Queed," the
+scenes of which are laid in Richmond, were "drawn
+from life." I asked Mr. Harrison about this.</p>
+
+<p>"When the book appeared," he said, "I was much embarrassed
+by the disposition of Richmond people&mdash;human
+and natural, I suppose, when you 'know the author'&mdash;to
+identify all the imaginary persons with various local
+characters. Some characteristics of the political boss in
+my story were in a degree suggested by a local celebrity;
+Stewart Bryan is indicated, in passing, as Stewart
+Byrd; and the bare bones of a historic case, altered at
+will, were employed in another connection. But I think<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>
+I am stating the literal truth when I say that no figure
+in the book is borrowed from life."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The recent residential development in Richmond has
+been to the west of the city in the neighborhood of Monument
+Avenue, a fine double drive, with a parked center,
+lined with substantial new homes, and having at intervals
+monuments to southern heroes: Lee, Davis, and
+J.&nbsp;E.&nbsp;B. Stuart.</p>
+
+<p>The parks are on the outskirts of the city and, as in
+most other cities, it is in these outlying regions that new
+homes are springing up, thanks in no small degree to the
+automobile. The Country Club of Virginia is out to
+the west of the town, in what is known as Westhampton,
+and is one of the most charming clubs of its kind
+in the South or, indeed, in the country.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p216jpg" id="p216jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p216.jpg" width="600" height="425" alt="The Country Club of Virginia, out to the west of Richmond, is one of the most charming clubs of its kind in the
+United States" title="" />
+<span class="caption">The Country Club of Virginia, out to the west of Richmond, is one of the most charming clubs of its kind in the
+United States</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Richmond has one of the most beautiful and several
+of the most curious cemeteries I have ever seen. Hollywood
+Cemetery stands upon rolling bluffs overlooking
+the James, and under its majestic trees are the tombs of
+many famous men, including James Monroe, John Tyler,
+Jefferson Davis and Fitzhugh Lee. An inscription on
+the Davis monument, which was erected by the widow
+and daughter of the President of the Confederacy, describes
+him as "an American soldier and defender of the
+Constitution." At the back of the pedestal is another
+inscription:</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p>
+<p class='center'>
+<span class="smcap">President of the Confederate
+States of America 1861-1865.<br />
+Faithful to All Trusts, a Martyr
+to Principle.<br />
+He Lived and Died the Most
+Consistent of American Soldiers
+and Statesmen.</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>It occasionally happens that, instead of having monuments
+because in life they were famous, men are made
+famous after death, by the inscriptions placed upon their
+tombstones. Such is the case with James E. Valentine,
+a locomotive engineer killed in a collision many years
+ago. The Valentine monument in Hollywood Cemetery
+is almost as well known as the monuments erected in
+memory of the great, the reason for this being embodied
+in the following verse adorning the stone:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Until the brakes are turned on Time,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Life's throttle valve shut down,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He wakes to pilot in the crew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That wear the martyr's crown.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">On schedule time on upper grade<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Along the homeward section,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He lands his train at God's roundhouse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The morn of resurrection.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His time all full, no wages docked;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His name on God's pay roll.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And transportation through to Heaven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A free pass for his soul.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the burial ground of old St. John's Church&mdash;the
+building in which Patrick Henry delivered his "Give me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>
+Liberty or give me Death" oration&mdash;are a number of old
+gravestones bearing strange inscriptions which appeal
+to the imagination, and also, alas! elicit sad thoughts
+concerning those who wrote the old-time gravestone
+doggerel.</p>
+
+<p>The custodian of the church is glad to indicate the interesting
+stones, but is much more taken up with his own
+gift of oratory, as displayed when, on getting visitors
+inside the church, he takes his place on the spot where
+Patrick Henry stood, and delivers the famous oration.
+Having done this to us&mdash;or perhaps it would seem more
+generous to say <i>for</i> us&mdash;the caretaker told us that many
+persons who had heard him had declared that Patrick
+Henry himself would have had a hard time doing it
+better. But when he threatened, for contrast, to deliver
+the oration as a less gifted elocutionist might speak
+it, my companion, in whom I had already observed signs
+of restlessness, interrupted with the statement that we
+were late for an engagement, and fled from the place,
+followed by me.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In certain parts of the city, often at a considerable
+distance from the warehouse and factory sections, one
+may occasionally catch upon the breeze the faint, spicy
+fragrance of tobacco; and should one trace these pleasant
+scents to their sources, one would come to a region
+of factories in which rich brown leaves are transformed
+into pipe tobacco, plug tobacco, or cigarettes. In the
+simpler processes of this work, negro men and women<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
+are employed, and these with their natural picturesqueness
+of pose and costume, and their singing, in the setting
+of an old shadowy loft, make a tobacco factory a
+fascinating place. In one loft you will see negro men
+and boys handling the tobacco leaves with pitchforks,
+much as farm hands handle hay; in another, negro
+women squatting upon boxes, stemming the leaves, or
+"pulling up ends," their black faces blending mysteriously
+with the dark shadows of beams and rafters.
+Here the air is laden not only with the sweet tobacco
+smell, mixed with a faint scent of licorice and of fruit,
+but is freighted also with a fine brown dust which is
+revealed where bars of sunlight strike in through the
+windows, and which seems, as it shifts and sparkles, to
+be a visible expression of the smell.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p237jpg" id="p237jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p237.jpg" width="600" height="378" alt="Negro women squatting upon boxes in old shadowy lofts stem the tobacco leaves" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Negro women squatting upon boxes in old shadowy lofts stem the tobacco leaves</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the busy season "street niggers" are generally used
+for stemming, which is, perhaps, the leading part of the
+tobacco industry in Richmond, and these "street niggers,"
+a wild yet childlike lot, who lead a hand-to-mouth
+existence all year round, bring to the tobacco trade a
+wealth of semi-barbaric color. To give us an idea of the
+character of a Richmond "street nigger" the gentleman
+who took my companion and me through the factory told
+us of having wanted a piece of light work done, and
+having asked one of these negroes: "Want to earn a
+quarter?"</p>
+
+<p>To which the latter replied without moving from his
+comfortable place beside a sun-baked brick wall: "No,
+boss, Ah <i>got</i> a quahtah."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The singing of the negroes is a great feature of the
+stemming department in a tobacco factory. Some of
+the singers become locally famous; also, I was told by
+the superintendent, they become independent, and for
+that reason have frequently to be dismissed. The wonderful
+part of this singing, aside from the fascinating
+harmonies made by the sweet, untrained negro voices,
+is the utter lack of prearrangement that there is about
+it. Now there will be silence in the loft; then there will
+come a strange, half-savage cry from some dark corner,
+musical, yet seemingly meaningless; soon a faint
+humming will begin, and will be taken up by men and
+women all over the loft; the humming will swell into a
+chant to which the workers rock as their black hands
+travel swiftly among the brown leaves; then, presently,
+it will die away, and there will be silence until they
+are again moved to song.</p>
+
+<p>From shadowy room to shadowy room, past great
+dark bins filled with the leaves, past big black steaming
+vats, oozing sweet-smelling substances, past moist fragrant
+barrels, always among the almost spectral forms
+of negroes, treading out leaves with bare feet, working
+over great wicker baskets stained to tobacco color, piling
+up wooden frames, or operating the powerful hydraulic
+presses which convert the soft tobacco into plugs of concrete
+hardness&mdash;so one goes on through the factory.
+The browns and blacks of these interiors are the browns
+and blacks of etchings; the color of the leaves, the old
+dark timbers, the black faces and hands, and the ragged<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>
+clothing, combined with the humming of negro voices,
+the tobacco fragrance, and the golden dust upon the
+air, make an indescribably complete harmony of shade,
+sound, and scent.</p>
+
+<p>The department in which the pipe tobacco is packed
+in tins is a very different sort of place; here white labor
+is employed: a great many girls seated side by side at
+benches working with great digital dexterity: measuring
+out the tobacco, folding wax paper cartons, filling
+them, and slipping them into the narrow tins, all at a
+rate of speed so great as to defy the sight, giving a sense
+of fingers flickering above the bench with a strange,
+almost supernatural sureness, like the fingers of a
+magician who makes things disappear before your eyes;
+or like the pictures in which post-impressionist and
+cubist painters attempt to express motion.</p>
+
+<p>"May I speak to one of them?" I asked the superintendent.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure," said he.</p>
+
+<p>I went up to a young woman who was working, if
+anything, more rapidly than the other girls at the same
+bench.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you think, while you are doing this?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she replied, without looking up, while her
+fingers flashed on ceaselessly.</p>
+
+<p>"About other things?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"How many cans do you fill in a day?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"About thirty-four to thirty-five hundred on the average."</p>
+
+<p>"May I ask your name?" She gave it.</p>
+
+<p>I took up one of the small identification slips which
+she put into each package, and wrote her name upon the
+back of it. The number on the slip&mdash;for the purpose of
+identifying the girl who packed the tin&mdash;was 220. Let
+the reader, therefore, be informed that if he smokes
+Edgeworth Ready Rubbed, and finds in a tin a slip
+bearing that number, he has been served by no less a
+person than Miss Katie Wise, of the astonishingly speedy
+fingers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII<br />
+<br />
+JEDGE CRUTCHFIELD'S CO'T</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Dar's a pow'ful rassle 'twix de Good en de Bad,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">En de Bad's got de all-under holt;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">En w'en de wuss come, she come i'on-clad,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">En you hatter holt yo' bref fer de jolt.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0 smcap signature">&mdash;Uncle Remus.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>My companion and I had not traveled far into
+the South before we discovered that our comfort
+was likely to be considerably enhanced if,
+in hotels, we singled out an intelligent bell boy and, as
+far as possible, let this one boy serve us. Our mainstay
+in the Jefferson Hotel was Charles Jackson, No. 144,
+or, when Charles was "off," his "side partner," whom
+we knew as Bob.</p>
+
+<p>Having one day noticed a negro in convict's stripes,
+but without a guard, raking up leaves in Capitol Square,
+I asked Charles about the matter.</p>
+
+<p>"Do they let the convicts go around unguarded?" I
+inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"They 's some of 'em can," said he. "Those is
+trustees."</p>
+
+<p>This talk of "trustees" led to other things and finally
+to a strong recommendation, by Charles, of the Richmond
+Police Court, as a place of entertainment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Is it interesting?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Inter-<i>resting</i>? Yes, <i>suh</i>! Judge Crutchfield he
+suttinly <i>is</i>. He done chahge me twenty-six dollahs and
+fo'ty cents. My brothah, he got in fight down street,
+heah. Some niggers set on him. I went to he'p him
+an' p'leeceman got me. He say I was resistin' p'leece.
+I ain't resisted no p'leece! No, <i>suh</i>! Not <i>me</i>! But
+Judge Crutchfield, you can't tell him nothin'. 'Tain't
+no use to have a lawyer, nuther. Judge Crutchfield
+don't want no lawyers in his co't. Like 's not he cha'ge
+you <i>mo'</i> fo' <i>havin'</i> lawyer. Then you got pay lawyer,
+too.</p>
+
+<p>"Friend mine name Billy. One night Billy he wake
+up and heah some one come pushin' in his house. He
+hollah: 'Who thar?'</p>
+
+<p>"Othah nigger he kep' pushin' on in. He say: 'This
+Gawge.'</p>
+
+<p>"Billy, he say: 'Git on out heah, niggah! Ain't no
+Gawge live heah!'</p>
+
+<p>"Othah niggah, he say: 'Don't make no diff'unce
+Gawge live heah o' not. He sure comin' right in!
+Ain't nobody heah kin stop ol' Gawge! He eat 'em
+alive, Gawge do! He de boss of Jackson Ward. Bettah
+say yo' prayehs, niggah, fo' yo' time&mdash;has&mdash;come!'</p>
+
+<p>"Billy he don't want hit nobody, but this-heah Gawge
+he drunk, an' Billy <i>have</i> t' hit 'im. Well, suh, what you
+think this Gawge done? He go have Billy 'rested.
+<i>Yes</i>, suh! But you can't tell Judge Crutchfield nothin'.
+Next mo'nin' in p'leece co't he say to Billy: 'I fine you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>
+twenty-five dollahs, fo' hittin' this old gray-haihed man.'
+Yes, <i>suh</i>! 'at 's a way Judge Crutchfield is. Can't tell
+<i>him</i> nothin'. He jes' set up theh on de bench, an' he
+chaw tobacco, an' he heah de cases, an' he spit, an' evvy
+time he spit he spit a fine. Yes, <i>suh</i>! He spit like dis:
+'Pfst! Five dollahs!'&mdash;'Pfst! Ten dollahs!'&mdash;'Pfst!
+Fifteen dollahs!'&mdash;just how he feel. He suttinly is
+some judge, 'at man."</p>
+
+<p>Encouraged by this account of police court justice as
+meted out to the Richmond negro, my companion and I
+did visit Justice Crutchfield's court.</p>
+
+<p>The room in the basement of the City Hall was
+crowded. All the benches were occupied and many persons,
+white and black, were standing up. Among the
+members of the audience&mdash;for the performance is more
+like a vaudeville show with the judge as headliner than
+like a serious tribunal&mdash;I noticed several actors and actresses
+from a company which was playing in Richmond
+at the time&mdash;these doubtless drawn to the place by the
+fact that Walter C. Kelly, billed in vaudeville as "The
+Virginia Judge," is commonly reported to have taken
+Judge Crutchfield as a model for his exceedingly amusing
+monologue. Mr. Kelly himself has, however, told
+me that his inspiration came from hearing the late Judge
+J.&nbsp;D.&nbsp;G. Brown, of Newport News, hold court.</p>
+
+<p>At the back of the room, in what appeared to be a sort
+of steel cage, were assembled the prisoners, all of them,
+on this occasion, negroes; while at the head of the chamber
+behind the usual police-court bulwark, sat the judge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>&mdash;a
+white-haired, hook-nosed man of more than seventy,
+peering over the top of his eyeglasses with a look of
+shrewd, merciless divination.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 392px;">
+<a name="p228jpg" id="p228jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p228.jpg" width="392" height="500" alt="Judge Crutchfield&mdash;a white-haired, hook-nosed man of more than seventy, peering
+over his eyeglasses with a look of shrewd, merciless divination" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Judge Crutchfield&mdash;a white-haired, hook-nosed man of more than seventy, peering
+over his eyeglasses with a look of shrewd, merciless divination</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"William Taylor!" calls a court officer.</p>
+
+<p>A negro is brought from the cage to the bar of
+justice. He is a sad spectacle, his face adorned with
+a long strip of surgeon's plaster. The judge looks at
+him over his glasses. The hearing proceeds as follows:</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Court Officer</span> (to prisoner)&mdash;Get over there!
+(Prisoner obeys.)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Judge Crutchfield</span>&mdash;Sunday drunk&mdash;Five dollars.</p>
+
+<p>It is over.</p>
+
+<p>The next prisoner is already on his way to the bar.
+He is a short, wide negro, very black and tattered. A
+large black negress, evidently his consort, arises as witness
+against him. The case goes as follows:</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Judge Crutchfield</span>&mdash;Drunk?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Wife</span> (looking contemptuously at her spouse)&mdash;Drunk?
+Yass, Jedge, drunk. <i>Always</i> drunk.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Prisoner</span> (meekly)&mdash;I ain't been drunk, Jedge.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Judge</span>&mdash;Yes, you have. I can see you've got
+your sign up this morning. (Looking toward cage at
+back of room): Make them niggers stop talkin' back
+there! (To the wife): What did he do, Mandy?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Wife</span> (angrily)&mdash;Jedge, he come bustin' in, and
+he come so fast he untook the do' off'n de hinges; den 'e
+begins&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p244jpg" id="p244jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p244.jpg" width="600" height="347" alt="THE JUDGE: What did he do, Mandy?
+
+THE WIFE: Jedge, he come bustin&#39; in, an&#39; he come so fas&#39; he untook de do&#39; off&#39;n de hinges!" title="" />
+<span class="caption">THE JUDGE: What did he do, Mandy?
+
+THE WIFE: Jedge, he come bustin&#39; in, an&#39; he come so fas&#39; he untook de do&#39; off&#39;n de hinges!</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Judge</span> (to the prisoner, sarcastically)&mdash;You
+wasn't drunk, eh?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Prisoner</span> (weakly)&mdash;I might of had a drink oh
+two.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Judge</span> (severely)&mdash;Was&mdash;you&mdash;<i>drunk</i>?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Prisoner</span>&mdash;No, suh, Jedge. Ah wasn't drunk.
+Ah don't think no man's drunk s' long 's he can navigate,
+Jedge. I don't&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Judge</span>&mdash;Oh, yes, he can be! He can navigate
+and navigate mighty mean!&mdash;Ten dollars.</p>
+
+<p>(At this point an officer speaks in a low tone to the
+judge, evidently interceding for the prisoner.)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Judge</span> (loudly)&mdash;No. That fine's very small.
+If it ain't worth ten dollars to get drunk, it ain't worth
+nothing at all. Next case!</p>
+
+<p>(While the next prisoner is being brought up, the
+judge entertains his audience with one of the humorous
+monologues for which he is famous, and which, together
+with the summary "justice" he metes out, keeps ripples
+of laughter running through the room): I'm going to
+get drunk myself, some day, and see what it does to me.
+[Laughter.] Mebbe I'll take a little cocaine, too.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A Negro Voice</span> (from back of room, deep bass, and
+very fervent)&mdash;Oh, <i>no-o-o</i>! Don't do dat, Jedge!
+[More laughter.]</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Judge</span>&mdash;Where's that prisoner? If he was a
+Baptist, he wouldn't be so slow.</p>
+
+<p>(The prisoner, a yellow negro, is brought to the bar.
+His trousers are mended with a large safety pin and his
+other equipment is to match.)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Judge</span> (inspecting the prisoner sharply)&mdash;You<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
+ain't a Richmond nigger. I can tell that to look at you.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Prisoner</span>&mdash;No, suh, Jedge. That's right.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Judge</span>&mdash;Where you from? You're from No'th
+Ca'lina, ain't you?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Prisoner</span>&mdash;Yas, suh, Jedge.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Judge</span>&mdash;Six months!</p>
+
+<p>(A great laugh rises from the courtroom at this. On
+inquiry we learn that the "joke" depends upon the
+judge's well-known aversion for negroes from North
+Carolina.)</p>
+
+<p>Only recently I have heard Walter C. Kelly as "The
+Virginia Judge." Save for a certain gentle side which
+Mr. Kelly indicates, and of which I saw no signs in
+Judge Crutchfield, I should say that, even though Judge
+Crutchfield is not his model, the suggestion of him is
+strongly there. Two of Mr. Kelly's "cases" are particularly
+reminiscent of the Richmond Police Court.
+One is as follows:</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Judge</span>&mdash;First case&mdash;Sadie Anderson.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Prisoner</span>&mdash;Yassir! That's me!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Judge</span>&mdash;Thirty days in jail. That's me!
+Next case.</p>
+
+<p>The other:</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Judge</span>&mdash;What's your name?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Prisoner</span>&mdash;Sam Williams.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Judge</span>&mdash;How old are you, Sam?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Prisoner</span>&mdash;Just twenty-four.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Judge</span>&mdash;You'll be just twenty-five when you get
+out. Next case!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV<br />
+<br />
+NORFOLK AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD</h2>
+
+
+<p>Just as New York looks newer than Boston, but
+is actually older, Norfolk looks newer than Richmond.
+Business and population grow in Richmond,
+but you do not feel them growing as you do in
+Norfolk. You feel that Richmond business men already
+have money, whereas in Norfolk there is less old wealth
+and a great deal more scrambling for new dollars. Also
+you feel that law and order count for more in Richmond
+than in Norfolk, and that the strict prohibition law which
+not long ago became effective in Virginia will be more
+easily enforced in the capital than in the seaport. Norfolk,
+in short, likes the things New York likes. It likes
+tall office buildings, and it dotes on the signs of commercial
+activity by day and social activity by night.
+Furthermore, from the tops of some of the high buildings
+the place actually looks like a miniature New York:
+the Elizabeth River masquerading as the East River;
+Portsmouth, with its navy yard, pretending to be Brooklyn,
+while some old-time New York ferryboats, running
+between the two cities, assist in completing the illusion.
+In the neighboring city of Newport News, Norfolk has
+its equivalent for Jersey City and Hoboken, while Will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>oughby
+Spit protrudes into Hampton Roads like Sandy
+Hook reduced to miniature.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p253jpg" id="p253jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p253.jpg" width="600" height="335" alt="Some genuine old-time New York ferryboats help to complete the illusion that Norfolk is New York" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Some genuine old-time New York ferryboats help to complete the illusion that Norfolk is New York</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The principal shopping streets of Norfolk and Richmond
+are as unlike as possible. Broad Street, Richmond,
+is very wide, and is never overcrowded, whereas
+Granby Street, Norfolk (advertised by local enthusiasts
+as "the livest street in Virginia," and appropriately
+spanned, at close intervals, by arches of incandescent
+lights), is none too wide for the traffic it carries, with
+the result that, during the afternoon and evening, it is
+truly very much alive. To look upon it at the crowded
+hours is to get a suggestion of a much larger city than
+Norfolk actually is&mdash;a suggestion which is in part accounted
+for by the fact that Norfolk's spending population,
+drawn from surrounding towns and cities, is much
+greater than the number of its inhabitants.</p>
+
+<p>Norfolk's extraordinary growth in the last two or
+three decades may be traced to several causes: to the
+fertility of the soil of the surrounding region, which,
+intensively cultivated, produces rich market-garden
+crops, making Norfolk a great shipping point for
+"truck"; to the development of the trade in peanuts,
+which are grown in large quantities in this corner of
+Virginia; to a great trade in oysters and other sea-food,
+and to the continually increasing importance of the
+Norfolk navy yard.</p>
+
+<p>In connection with the navy Norfolk has always
+figured prominently, Hampton Roads having been a
+favorite naval rendezvous since the early days of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>
+American fleet. Now, however, it is announced that
+the cry of our navy for a real naval base&mdash;something we
+have never had, though all other important navies have
+them, Britain alone having three&mdash;has been heard in
+Washington, and that Norfolk has been selected as the
+site for a base. This is an important event not only for
+the Virginia seaport, but for the United States.</p>
+
+<p>Farmers who think they are in a poor business will do
+well to investigate Norfolk's recent history. The
+"trucking" industry of Norfolk is said to amount in the
+aggregate to twelve or fourteen million dollars annually,
+and many fortunes have been made from it. The
+pioneer "trucker" of the region was Mr. Richard Cox.
+A good many years ago Mr. Cox employed a German
+boy, a blacksmith by trade, named Henry Kern. Kern
+finally branched out for himself. When, in 1915, he
+died, his real estate holdings in Norfolk and Portsmouth
+were valued at two million dollars, all of which had been
+made from garden truck. He was but one of a considerable
+class of wealthy men whose fortunes have sprung
+from the same source.</p>
+
+<p>Many of the truck farms have access to the water.
+The farmers bring their produce to the city in their own
+boats, giving the port a picturesque note. At Norfolk it
+is transferred to steamers which carry it to New York,
+Philadelphia, Boston, Providence, Baltimore and Washington.
+Lately a considerable amount of truck has
+been shipped west by rail, as well.</p>
+
+<p>Hundreds of acres of ground in the vicinity of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>
+city are under glass and large crops of winter vegetables
+are raised. Kale and spinach are being grown and harvested
+throughout the cold months; strawberries, potatoes,
+beans, peas, cucumbers, cabbage, lettuce and other
+vegetables follow through the spring and summer, running
+on into the fall, when the corn crop becomes important.
+Corn is raised chiefly by the peanut farmer,
+whose peanuts grow between his corn-rows.</p>
+
+<p>While the banks are "carrying" the peanut farmers,
+pending their fall harvest, the activities of the "truckers"
+are at their height, so that the money loaned to one
+class of agriculturist is replaced by the deposits of the
+other class; and by the same token, of course, the peanut
+farmers are depositing money in the banks when the
+"truckers" want to borrow. This situation, one judges,
+is not found objectionable by Norfolk and Portsmouth
+bankers, and I have been told that, as a corollary, these
+banks have never been forced, even in times of dire
+panic, to issue clearing house certificates, but have always
+paid cash.</p>
+
+<p>Norfolk has grown so fast and has so rapidly replaced
+the old with the new, that the visitor must keep his eyes
+open if he would not miss entirely such lovely souvenirs
+of an earlier and easier life, as still remain. Who would
+imagine, seeing it to-day, that busy Granby Street had
+ever been a street of fine residences? Yet a very few
+years have passed since the old Newton, Tazwell, Dickson
+and Taylor residences surrendered to advancing
+commerce and gave place to stores and office buildings<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>&mdash;the
+two last mentioned having been replaced by the Dickson
+Building and the Taylor Building, erected less than
+fifteen years ago.</p>
+
+<p>Freemason Street is the highway which, more
+than any other, tells of olden times. For though the
+downtown end of this lovely old thoroughfare has lapsed
+into decay, many beautiful mansions, dating from long
+ago, are to be seen a few blocks out from the busier
+portion of the city. Among these should be mentioned
+the Whittle house, the H.&nbsp;N. Castle house, and particularly
+the exquisite ivy-covered residence of Mr. Barton
+Myers, at the corner of Bank Street. The city of Norfolk
+ought, I think, to attempt to acquire this house and
+preserve it (using it perhaps as a memorial museum to
+contain historical relics) to show what has been, in Norfolk,
+as against what is, and to preach a silent sermon on
+the high estate of beauty from which a fine old city may
+fall, in the name of progress and commercial growth.</p>
+
+<p>To the credit of Norfolk be it said that old St. Paul's
+Church, with its picturesque churchyard and tombs, is
+excellently cared for and properly valued as a pre-Revolutionary
+relic. The church was built in 1730, and
+was struck by a British cannon-ball when Lord Dunmore
+bombarded the place in 1776. Baedeker tells me, however,
+that the cannon-ball now resting in the indentation
+in the wall of the church is "not the original."</p>
+
+<p>When I say that St. Paul's is properly valued I mean
+that many citizens told my companion and me to be sure
+to visit. I observe, however&mdash;and I take it as a sign<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>
+of the times in Norfolk&mdash;that an extensive, well-printed
+and much illustrated book on Norfolk, issued by the
+Chamber of Commerce, contains pictures of banks,
+docks, breweries, mills, office buildings, truck farms, peanut
+farms, battleships, clubhouses, hotels, hospitals, factories,
+and innumerable new residences, but no picture
+of the church, or of the lovely old homes of Freemason
+Street. Nor do I find in the booklet any mention of the
+history of the city or the surrounding region&mdash;although
+that region includes places of the greatest beauty and
+interest: among them the glorious old manor houses of
+the James River; the ancient and charming town of
+Williamsburg, second capital of the Virginia colony, and
+seat of William and Mary College, the oldest college in
+the United States excepting Harvard; Yorktown,
+"Waterloo of the Revolution"; many important battlefields
+of the Civil War; Hampton Institute, the famous
+negro industrial school at Hampton, nearby; the lovely
+stretch of water on which the <i>Monitor</i> met the <i>Merrimac</i><a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a>;
+the site of the first English settlement in America<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>
+at Jamestown, and, for mystery and desolation, the
+Dismal Swamp with Lake Drummond at its heart. But
+then, I suppose it is natural that the Chamber of Commerce
+mind should thrust aside such things in favor of
+the mighty "goober," which is a thing of to-day, a thing
+for which Norfolk is said to be the greatest of all markets.
+For is not history dead, and is not the man who
+made a fortune out of a device for shelling peanuts without
+causing the nuts to drop in two, still living?</p>
+
+<p>And yet the modernness on which Norfolk so evidently
+prides herself is not something to be lightly valued.
+Fine schools, fine churches and miles of pleasant, recently
+built homes are things for any American city to rejoice
+in. Therefore Norfolk rejoices in Ghent, her chief
+modern residence district, which is penetrated by arms
+of the Elizabeth River, so that many of the houses in
+this part of the city look out upon pretty lagoons, dotted
+over with all manner of pleasure craft. Less than
+twenty years ago, the whole of what is now Ghent was a
+farm, and there are other suburban settlements, such as
+Edgewater, Larchmont, Winona and Lochhaven, out in
+the direction of Hampton Roads, which have grown up
+in the last six or eight years. The Country Club of
+Norfolk, with a very pleasing club-house on the water,
+and an eighteen-hole golf course, is at Lochhaven, and
+the new naval base is, I believe, to be located somewhat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
+farther out, on the site of the Jamestown Exposition.</p>
+
+<p>Norfolk is well provided with nearby seaside recreation
+places, of which probably the most attractive is
+Virginia Beach, facing the ocean. Ocean View, so
+called, is on Chesapeake Bay, and there are summer cottage
+colonies at Willoughby Spit and Cape Henry. On
+the bay side of Cape Henry is Lynnhaven Inlet connecting
+Lynnhaven Bay and River with Chesapeake Bay.
+From Lynnhaven Bay come the famous oysters of that
+name, now to be had in most of the large cities of the
+East, but which seemed to me to taste a little better at
+the Virginia Club, in Norfolk, than oysters ever tasted
+anywhere. Perhaps that was because they were real
+Lynnhavens, just as the Virginia Club's Smithfield ham
+is real Smithfield ham from the little town of Smithfield,
+Virginia, a few miles distant. On the bank of the
+Lynnhaven River is situated the Old Donation farm with
+a ruined church, and an ancient dwelling house which
+was used as the first courthouse in Princess Anne
+County; and not far distant from this place is Witch
+Duck Point, where Grace Sherwood, after having been
+three times tried, and finally convicted as a witch, was
+thrown into the river.</p>
+
+<p>The several waterside places I have mentioned are
+more or less local in character, but there is nothing local
+about Fortress Monroe, on Old Point Comfort, just
+across Hampton Roads, which has for many years been
+one of the most beautiful and highly individualized idling
+places on the Atlantic Coast.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The old moated fortress, the interior of which is more
+like some lovely garden of the last century than a military
+post, remains an important coast artillery station, and is
+a no less lovely spot now than when our grandparents
+went there on their wedding journeys, stopping at the
+old Hygiea Hotel, long since gone the way of old hotels.</p>
+
+<p>The huge Chamberlin Hotel, however, remains apparently
+unchanged, and is to-day as spacious, comfortable
+and homelike as when our fathers and mothers, or
+perhaps we ourselves, stopped there years ago. The
+Chamberlin, indeed, seems to have the gift of perennial
+youth. I remember a ball which was given there in
+honor of Admiral Sampson and the officers of his fleet,
+after the Spanish War. The ballroom was so full of
+naval and military uniforms that I, in my somber civilian
+clothing, felt wan and lonely. Most of the evening I
+passed in modest retirement, looking out upon the brilliant
+scene from behind a potted palm. And yet, when
+my companion and I, now in our dotage, recently visited
+the Chamberlin, there stood the same potted palm in the
+same place. Or if it was not the same, it was one
+exactly like it.</p>
+
+<p>The Chamberlin is of course a great headquarters for
+army and navy people, and we observed, moreover, that
+honeymooning couples continue to infest it&mdash;for Fortress
+Monroe has long ranked with Washington and
+Niagara Falls as a scene to be visited upon the wedding
+journey.</p>
+
+<p>There they all were, as of old: the young husband<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>
+scowling behind his newspaper and pretending to read
+and not to be thinking of his pretty little wife across the
+breakfast table; the fat blonde bride being continually
+photographed by her adoring mate&mdash;now leaning against
+a pile on the pier, now seated on a wall, with her feet
+crossed, now standing under a live-oak within the fortress;
+also there was the inevitable young pair who
+simply couldn't keep their hands off from each other; we
+came upon them constantly&mdash;in the sun-parlor, where
+she would be seated on the arm of his chair, running her
+hand through his hair; wandering in the eventide
+along the shore, with arms about each other, or going in
+to meals, she leading him down the long corridor by his
+"ickle finger".</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I recall that it was as we were going back to Norfolk
+from Old Point Comfort, having dinner on a most excellent
+large steamer, running to Norfolk and Cape Charles,
+that my companion remarked to me, out of a clear sky,
+that he had made up his mind, once for all, that, come
+what might, he would never, never, never get married.
+No, never!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV<br />
+<br />
+COLONEL TAYLOR AND GENERAL LEE</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Forth from its scabbard all in vain<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Bright flashed the sword of Lee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis shrouded now in its sheath again,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It sleeps the sleep of our noble slain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Defeated, yet without a stain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Proudly and peacefully.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0 smcap signature">&mdash;Abram J. Ryan.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>Though I had often heard, before going into
+the South, of the devotion of that section to
+the memory of General Robert E. Lee, I never
+fully realized the extent of that devotion until I began to
+become a little bit acquainted with Virginia. I remember
+being struck, while in Norfolk, with the fact that
+portraits of General Lee were to be seen in many offices
+and homes, much as one might expect, at the present
+time, to find portraits of Joffre and Nivelle in the homes
+of France, or of Haig in the homes of Britain. It is not
+enough to say that the memory of Lee is to the South
+like that of Napoleon I to France, for it is more. The
+feeling of France for Napoleon is one of admiration, of
+delight in a national military genius, of hero-worship,
+but there is not intermingled with it the quality of pure
+affection which fully justifies the use of the word <i>love</i>,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>
+in characterizing the feeling of the South for its great
+military leader&mdash;the man of whom Lord Wolseley said:
+"He was a being apart and superior to all others in every
+way; a man with whom none I ever knew, and very few
+of whom I ever read are worthy to be compared; a man
+who was cast in a grander mould and made of finer
+metal than all other men."</p>
+
+<p>Nor is this love surprising, for whereas Napoleon was
+a self-seeking man, and one whose personal character
+was not altogether admirable in other respects, and
+whereas he could hardly be said to typify France's ideal
+of everything a gentleman should be, Lee sought nothing
+for himself, was a man of great nobility of character,
+and was in perfection a Virginia gentleman. At the
+end, moreover, where Napoleon's defeat was that of an
+aspirant to conquest, glory and empire, Lee's defeat was
+that of a cause, and the cause was regarded in the entire
+South as almost holy, so that, in defeat, the South felt
+itself martyred, and came to look upon its great general
+with a love and veneration unequaled in history, and
+much more resembling the feeling of France for the
+canonized Joan of Arc, than for the ambitious Corsican.</p>
+
+<p>When, therefore, my companion and I heard, while in
+Norfolk, that Colonel Walter H. Taylor, president of
+the Marine Bank of that city, had served through the
+Civil War on General Lee's staff, we naturally became
+very anxious to meet him; and I am glad to say that
+Colonel Taylor, though at the time indisposed and confined
+to his home, was so kind as to receive us.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He was seated in a large chair in his library, on the
+second floor of his residence, a pleasant old-fashioned
+brick house at the corner of York and Yarmouth Streets&mdash;a
+slender man, not very tall, I judged (though I did
+not see him standing), not very strong at the moment,
+but with nothing of the decrepitude of old age about
+him, for all his seventy-seven years. Upon the contrary
+he was, in appearance and manner, delightfully alert,
+with the sort of alertness which lends to some men and
+women, regardless of their years, a suggestion of perpetual
+youthfulness. Such alertness, in those who have
+lived a long time, is most often the result of persistent
+intellectual activity, and the sign of it is usually to be
+read in the eyes. Colonel Taylor's keen, dark, observant,
+yet kindly eyes, were perhaps his finest feature,
+though, indeed, all his features were fine, and his head,
+with its well-trimmed white hair and mustache, was one
+of great distinction.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Taylor (of whom we had previously been warned
+to beware, because she had not yet forgiven the "Yankees"
+for their sins) was also present: a beautiful old
+lady of unquenchable spirit, in whose manner, though
+she received us with politeness, we detected lurking
+danger.</p>
+
+<p>And why not? Do not women remember some things
+longer than men remember them? Do not the sweethearts
+who stayed at home remember the continual dull
+dread they suffered while the men they loved faced
+danger, whereas the absent lovers were at least in part<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>
+compensated for the risks they ran, by the continual
+sense of high adventure and achievement?</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Taylor was Miss Elizabeth Selden Saunders,
+daughter of Captain John L. Saunders of Virginia, who
+died in 1860, in the service of his country, a commander
+in the United States Navy. When the war broke out
+Miss Saunders, wishing to serve the Confederate Government,
+became a clerk in the Surgeon General's office,
+at Richmond, and there she remained while Colonel
+Taylor, whose training at the Virginia Military Institute,
+coupled with his native ability, made him valuable
+as an officer, followed the fortunes of General Lee, part
+of the time as the general's aide-de-camp, and the rest
+of the time as adjutant-general and chief of staff of the
+Army of Northern Virginia, in which capacities he was
+present at all general engagements of the army, under
+Lee.</p>
+
+<p>On April 2, 1865, when Lee's gallant but fast dwindling
+army, short of supplies, and so reduced in numbers
+as to be no longer able to stand against the powerful
+forces of Grant, was evacuating its lines at Petersburg,
+when it was evident that the capital of the Confederacy
+was about to fall, and the orders for retreat had been
+despatched by Colonel Taylor, in his capacity as adjutant&mdash;then
+the colonel went to his commander and asked for
+leave of absence over night, for the purpose of going to
+Richmond and being married. He tells the story in his
+exceedingly interesting and valuable book, "General Lee&mdash;His
+Campaigns in Virginia":<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>At the close of the day's work, when all was in readiness for
+the evacuation of our lines under cover of the darkness of night,
+I asked permission of General Lee to ride over to Richmond and
+to rejoin him early the next morning, telling him that my mother
+and sisters were in Richmond and that I would like to say
+good-by to them, and that my sweetheart was there, and we had
+arranged, if practicable, to be married that night. He expressed
+some surprise at my entertaining such a purpose at that time,
+but when I explained to him that the home of my bride-elect was
+in the enemy's lines, that she was alone in Richmond and employed
+in one of the departments of the government, and wished
+to follow the fortunes of the Confederacy should our lines be re&euml;stablished
+farther South, he promptly gave his assent to my
+plans. I galloped to the railroad station, then at Dunlops, on the
+north side of the river, where I found a locomotive and several
+cars, constituting the "ambulance train," designed to carry to
+Richmond the last of the wounded of our army requiring hospital
+treatment. I asked the agent if he had another engine, when,
+pointing to one rapidly receding in the direction of Richmond, he
+replied, "Yonder goes the only locomotive we have besides the
+one attached to this train." Turning my horse over to the courier
+who accompanied me, with directions to join me in Richmond as
+soon as he could, I mounted the locomotive in waiting, directed
+the engineer to detach it from the cars and to proceed to overtake
+the engine ahead of us. It was what the sailors call a stern chase
+and a long one. We did not overtake the other locomotive until
+it had reached Falling Creek, about three-fourths of the distance,
+when I transferred to it and sent the other back to Petersburg.
+I reached Richmond without further incident, and soon after
+midnight I was married to Elizabeth Selden Saunders.... As
+will be readily understood, the occasion was not one of great
+hilarity, though I was very happy; my eyes were the only dry ones
+in the company....</p>
+
+<p>The people of Richmond were greatly excited and in despair
+in the contemplation of the abandonment of their beautiful city
+by our troops. General Lee had for so long a time thwarted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>
+the designs of his powerful adversaries for the capture of the
+city, and seemed so unfailing and resourceful in his efforts to
+hold them at bay, that the good people found it difficult to realize
+that he was compelled at last to give way. There was universal
+gloom and despair at the thought that at the next rising of the
+sun the detested Federal soldiers would take possession of the
+city and occupy its streets. The transportation companies were
+busily engaged in arranging for the removal of the public stores
+and of the archives of the government. A fire in the lower part
+of the city was fiercely raging, and added greatly to the excitement.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere near four o'clock on the morning of the 3d of
+April I bade farewell to all my dear ones, and in company with
+my brother-in-law, Colonel John S. Saunders, proceeded toward
+Mayo's Bridge, which we crossed to the south side of the James,
+in the lurid glare of the fire, and within the sound of several
+heavy explosions that we took to be the final scene in the career of
+the Confederate navy, then disappearing in smoke on the James
+River, near Rockets.</p></div>
+
+<p>Before we departed from the colonel's library, which
+we felt obliged to do much sooner than we wished to,
+owing to the condition of his health, he called our attention
+to an oil portrait of his old commander, which occupied
+the place of honor above the mantelpiece, and asked
+his daughters to let us see his scrap-book, containing
+personal letters from General Lee, Jefferson Davis, and
+other distinguished men, as well as various war documents
+of unusual interest.</p>
+
+<p>We felt it a great privilege to handle these old letters
+and to read them, and the charm of them was the greater
+for the affection in which the general held Colonel Taylor,
+as evidenced by the tone in which he wrote. To us<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>
+it was a wonderful evening.... And it still seems to
+me wonderful to think that I have met and talked with
+a man who issued Lee's orders, who rode forth with Lee
+when he went to meet Grant in conference at Appomattox,
+just before the surrender, who once slept under the
+same blanket with Lee, who knew Lee as well perhaps
+as one man can know another, and under conditions calculated
+to try men to the utmost.</p>
+
+<p>As adjutant, Colonel Taylor took an active part in
+arranging details of surrender and parole. He says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Each officer and soldier was furnished for his protection from
+arrest or annoyance with a slip of paper containing his parole,
+signed by his commander and countersigned by an officer of the
+Federal army.</p>
+
+<p>I signed these paroles for all members of the staff, and when
+my own case was reached I requested General Lee to sign mine,
+which I have retained to the present time.</p></div>
+
+<p>This document, with Colonel Taylor's name and title
+in his own handwriting, and the signature of General
+Lee, I am able to reproduce here through the courtesy
+of the colonel's daughters, Mrs. William B. Baldwin
+and Miss Taylor, of Norfolk. It is the only parole
+which was signed personally by General Lee.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/276.png" width="400" height="138" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On the back of the little slip, which is of about the
+size of a bank check, is the countersignature of George
+H. Sharpe, Assistant Provost Marshal general:</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/277.png" width="390" height="237" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>Following his parole Colonel Taylor rode with General
+Lee to Richmond. The general seemed to be in a
+philosophical frame of mind, but thought much of the future.
+The subject of the surrender and its consequences
+was about exhausted. The Colonel tells of one incident:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>On the route General Lee stopped for the night near the residence
+of his brother, Mr. Carter Lee, in Powhatan County; and
+although importuned by his brother to pass the night under his
+roof, the general persisted in pitching his tent by the side of the
+road and going into camp as usual. This continued self-denial
+can only be explained upon the hypothesis that he desired to have
+his men know that he shared their privations to the very last.</p></div>
+
+<p>This was perfectly in character with Lee. Throughout
+the War, we learn from Colonel Taylor's book, the
+general used the army ration, and lived the army life.
+He would not take up his quarters in a house, because
+he wished to share the lot of his men, and also because
+he feared that, in the event of the house falling into the
+hands of the enemy, the very fact of its having been
+occupied by him might possibly cause its destruction. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>
+was only during the last year of the War, when his
+health was somewhat impaired, that he consented sometimes
+to vary this rule.</p>
+
+<p>Lee's chivalrous nature is well shown forth in his
+famous General Orders, No. 73, issued at Chambersburg,
+Pennsylvania, a few days before Gettysburg.</p>
+
+<p>After congratulating the troops on their good conduct
+the general continued as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>There have, however, been instances of forgetfulness on the
+part of some that they have in keeping the yet unsullied reputation
+of the army, and that the duties exacted of us by civilization and
+Christianity are not less obligatory in the country of the enemy
+than in our own.</p>
+
+<p>The commanding general considers that no greater disgrace
+could befall the army, and through it our whole people, than the
+perpetration of the barbarous outrages upon the unarmed and
+defenseless, and the wanton destruction of private property, that
+have marked the course of the enemy in our own country.</p>
+
+<p>Such proceedings not only degrade the perpetrators and all
+connected with them, but are subversive to the discipline and efficiency
+of the army, and destructive of the ends of our present
+movement. It must be remembered that we make war only upon
+armed men, and that we cannot take vengeance for the wrongs
+our people have suffered without lowering ourselves in the eyes
+of all whose abhorrence has been excited by the atrocities of our
+enemies, and offending against Him to whom vengeance belongeth,
+without whose favor and support our efforts must all prove
+in vain. The commanding general, therefore, earnestly exhorts
+the troops to abstain with most scrupulous care from unnecessary
+or wanton injury to private property, and he enjoins upon all
+officers to arrest and bring to summary punishment all who shall
+in any way offend against the orders on this subject.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="smcap" style="margin-left: 2em;">R.&nbsp;E. Lee</span>,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">General.</span>
+</p>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Truly, a document to serve as a model for warriors
+of all future generations, albeit one showing an utter
+lack of "Kultur"!</p>
+
+<p>Said Charles Francis Adams, of Massachusetts: "I
+doubt if a hostile force ever advanced into an enemy's
+country, or fell back from it in retreat, leaving behind
+it less cause of hate and bitterness than did the Army
+of Northern Virginia in that memorable campaign."</p>
+
+<p>After the war, Colonel Taylor and his wife settled in
+Norfolk, where, within a very short time, a United
+States grand jury indicted Jefferson Davis and General
+Lee for treason&mdash;this, in the case of Lee, being in direct
+violation of the terms of surrender. When Grant
+learned of the shameful action of the grand jury he complained
+to Washington and caused the proceedings
+against Lee to be dropped.</p>
+
+<p>In Colonel Taylor's scrap-book I found a letter written
+by Lee before the indictment had been quashed, referring
+to the subject:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Richmond, Va.<br /></span>
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">June 17, 1865.</span></p>
+
+<p>My dear Colonel:</p>
+
+<p>I am very much obliged to you for your letter of the 13th. I
+had heard of the indictment by the grand jury at Norfolk, and
+made up my mind to let the authorities take their course. I have
+no wish to avoid any trial the government may order, and cannot
+flee. I hope others may be unmolested, and that you at least may
+be undisturbed.</p>
+
+<p>I am sorry to hear that our returned soldiers cannot obtain
+employment. Tell them they must all set to work, and if they
+cannot do what they prefer, do what they can. Virginia wants<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>
+all their aid, all their support, and the presence of all her sons
+to sustain and recuperate her. They must therefore put themselves
+in a position to take part in her government, and not be
+deterred by obstacles in their way. There is much to be done
+which they only can do.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Very truly yours,</span><br />
+<span class="smcap" style="margin-left: 4em;">R.&nbsp;E. Lee.</span>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>As time went on, and the more gaping wounds began
+to heal, Colonel Taylor's letters from the general took
+in many cases a lighter and happier tone. After some
+years, when four daughters had been born to Colonel and
+Mrs. Taylor, while yet they had no son, the general
+chaffed them gently on the subject: "Give my congratulations
+to Mrs. Taylor," he wrote. "Tell her I hope
+that when her fancy for girls is satisfied (mine is exorbitant)
+she will begin upon the boys. We must have
+somebody to work for them."</p>
+
+<p>One of the colonel's sons was present when I came
+upon this letter.</p>
+
+<p>"And you see," he smiled, "my father obeyed his old
+commander to the last, for the next baby was a boy, and
+the next, and the next, and the next, until there were
+as many boys as girls in our family."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Colonel Taylor died at his home in Norfolk, March 1,
+1916, and on the subsequent June 15, was followed by
+his wife.</p>
+
+<p>His death leaves but three members of Lee's staff
+surviving, namely, Rev. Giles B. Cooke, of Portsmouth,
+Virginia, Inspector General; Major Henry E. Young,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>
+of Charleston, South Carolina, Judge Advocate General;
+and Colonel T.&nbsp;M.&nbsp;R. Talcott, of Richmond, Virginia,
+Aide-de-Camp. Of these officers only the first
+two surrendered with General Lee, Colonel Talcott having
+left the staff by promotion in 1863.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, two of them surrendered, but if we are to believe
+Charles Francis Adams we cannot say that Lee
+and his forces were actually vanquished, for as the Massachusetts
+soldier-author put it:</p>
+
+<p>"Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia never sustained
+defeat. Finally succumbing to exhaustion, to
+the end they were not overthrown in fight."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span></p><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_HEART_OF_THE_SOUTH" id="THE_HEART_OF_THE_SOUTH"></a>THE HEART OF THE SOUTH</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI<br />
+<br />
+RALEIGH AND JOSEPHUS DANIELS</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Jedge Crutchfield give de No'th Ca'lina nigger frown;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">De mahkets says ouh tehapin am secon'-rate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An' Mistuh Daniels, he call Raleigh his hum town.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;I wondah what kin be de mattuh wid ouh State?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>Just as it is the fashion in the Middle West to
+speak jestingly of Kansas, it is the fashion in the
+South to treat lightly the State of North Carolina.
+And just as my companion and I, long ago, on another
+voyage of discovery, were eager to get into Kansas and
+find out what that fabulous Commonwealth was really
+like, so we became anxious, as we heard the gossip about
+the "Old North State," to enter it and form our own
+conclusions. The great drawback to an attempt to see
+North Carolina, however, lies in the fact that North
+Carolina is, so to speak, spread very thin. It has no
+great solid central city occupying a place in its thoughts
+and its affairs corresponding to that occupied by Richmond,
+in its relation to Virginia. Like Mississippi, it is
+a State of small towns and small cities. Its metropolis,
+Charlotte, had, by the 1910 census, less than 35,000 inhabitants;
+its seaport, Wilmington, a little more than
+25,000; its capital, Raleigh, less than 20,000; its beautiful
+mountain resort, Asheville, fourth city in the State,
+less than 19,000.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I hasten to add that the next census will undoubtedly
+show considerable growth in all these cities. In Raleigh
+I found every one insistent on this point. The town is
+growing; it is a going place; a great deal of new building
+is in progress; and when you ask about the population,
+progressive citizens are prepared to do much better
+by their city than the census takers did, some years ago.
+They talk thirty thousand, instead of twenty, and they
+are ready with astonishing statistics about the number
+of students in the schools and colleges as compared with
+the total population of the city&mdash;statistics showing that
+though Raleigh is not large she is progressive. Which
+is quite true.</p>
+
+<p>I recollect that Judge Francis D. Winston, former
+Lieutenant Governor of the State, United States District
+Attorney, and the most engaging raconteur in the
+Carolinas, contributed a story to a discussion of
+Raleigh's population, which occurred, one evening, at a
+dinner at the Country Club.</p>
+
+<p>"A promoter," he said, "was once trying to borrow
+money on a boom town. He went to a banker and
+showed him a map, not of what the town was, but of
+what he claimed it was going to be. 'Here,' he said,
+'is where the town hall will stand. In this lot will be
+the opera house. Over here we are going to have a
+beautiful park. And on this corner we are going to
+erect a tall granite office building.'</p>
+
+<p>"'But,' said the banker, coldly, 'we lend money only
+on the basis of population.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"'That's all right,' returned the promoter. 'Measured
+by any known standard except an actual <i>count</i>, we
+have a population of two hundred thousand.'"</p>
+
+<p>I shall not attempt to point this tale more than to
+recommend it to the attention of the secretary of the
+Chamber of Commerce in every city in the United
+States.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Raleigh is situated within seven miles of the exact
+center of North Carolina. The land on which the city
+stands was purchased by the State, in 1792, from a man
+named Joel Lane, whose former house still stands. The
+town was then laid out in a one mile square, with the
+site selected for the State Capitol directly at the center
+of it, and lots were sold off by the State to individuals,
+the proceeds of these sales being used to build the Capitol.
+As a result the parks, streets and sidewalks of
+the original old town still belong to the State of North
+Carolina, and the city has jurisdiction over them only by
+courtesy of the State government. Raleigh has, of
+course, much outgrown its original dimensions, and the
+government of the town, outside the original square mile
+at the center, is as in other towns.</p>
+
+<p>While Raleigh has not the look of age which characterizes
+many old southern cities, causing them to delight
+the eye and the imagination, its broad streets have
+here and there a building old enough to remove from
+the town any air of raw newness, and to make it a homelike
+looking place. The sidewalks are wide; when we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>
+were in Raleigh those of the principal streets were
+paved largely with soft-colored old red bricks, which,
+however, were being taken up and replaced with cement.
+Not being a resident of Raleigh, and consequently not
+having been obliged to tread the rough brick pavements
+daily, I was sorry to witness this victory of utility over
+beauty.</p>
+
+<p>One of the pleasant old buildings is the Yarborough
+Hotel, at which my companion and I stayed. The Yarborough
+is an exceedingly good hotel for a city of the
+size of Raleigh, especially, it may be added, when that
+city is in the South. The Capitol, standing among trees
+in a small park, also gathers a fine flavor from age. In
+one of the many simple dignified apartments of this
+building my companion and I were introduced to the
+gentleman who was governor of the State at the time
+of our visit. It seemed to me that he had a look both
+worn and apprehensive, and that, while we talked, he
+was waiting for something. I don't know how I gathered
+this impression, but it came to me definitely. After
+we had departed from the executive chamber I asked
+the gentleman who had taken us there if the governor
+was ill.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he replied. "All our governors look like that
+after they have been in office for a while."</p>
+
+<p>"From overwork?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, from an overworked jest&mdash;the jest about 'what
+the Governor of North Carolina said to the Governor of
+South Carolina.' Every one who meets the governor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>
+thinks of that joke and believes confidently that no one
+has ever before thought of this application of it. So
+they all pull it on him. For the first few months our
+governors stand it pretty well, but after that they begin
+to break down. They feel they ought to smile, but they
+can't. They begin to dread meeting strangers, and to
+show it in their bearing. When in private life our governor
+had a very pleasant expression, but like all the
+others, he has acquired, in office, the expression of an
+iron dog."</p>
+
+<p>Raleigh's most widely-known citizen is Josephus
+Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, and publisher of the
+Raleigh "News and Observer." This paper, published
+in the morning, and the "Times," a rival paper, published
+in the afternoon, are, I believe, the only dailies in
+the city.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Daniels has been so much discussed that I was
+greatly interested in hearing what Raleigh had to say
+of him. Every one knew him personally. The men on
+his paper seemed to be very fond of him; others held
+various opinions.</p>
+
+<p>In 1894 Mr. Daniels came from Washington, D.&nbsp;C.,
+where he had been chief clerk in the Department of the
+Interior, when Hoke Smith was Secretary, and acquired
+the newspaper of which he has since been proprietor.
+In its first years under Mr. Daniels, the paper is said
+to have gone through severe financial struggles, and
+there is an amusing story current, about the way the
+payroll was met upon one occasion. According to this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>
+tale, the business manager of the paper came to Mr.
+Daniels, one day, and informed him that he needed sixty
+dollars more to make the payroll, and didn't know where
+he was going to get it. The only ready asset in sight,
+it is related, was several cases of a patent medicine
+known as "Mrs. Joe Persons' Remedy," which had been
+taken by the "News and Observer" in payment for advertising
+space. Mr. Daniels had a few dollars, and his
+business manager had a railroad pass. With these resources
+the latter went out on the road and sold the
+patent medicine for enough to make up the deficit.</p>
+
+<p>Until Mr. Daniels was appointed Secretary of the
+Navy he seems to have been regarded by many citizens
+of Raleigh, as a good, earnest, hard-working man, possessed
+of considerable personal magnetism and a good
+political nose&mdash;a man who could scent how the pack was
+running, take a short-cut, and presently appear to be
+leading. In other words an opportunist. Though he
+has not much education, and though as a writer he is
+far from polished, it is said that he has written powerful
+editorials. "When his editorials have been good," said
+one gentleman, "it is because he has been stirred up over
+something, and because he manages sometimes to get
+into his writing the intensity of his own personality."
+His office used to be, and still is, when he is in Raleigh,
+a sort of political headquarters, and he used to be able
+to write editorials while half a dozen politicians were
+sitting around his desk, talking.</p>
+
+<p>With his paper he has done much good in the State,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>
+notably by fighting consistently for prohibition and for
+greater public educational advantages. The strong educational
+movement in North Carolina began with a
+group of men chief among whom were the late Governor
+Charles B. Aycock, called "the educational governor";
+Dr. E.&nbsp;A. Alderman, who, though president of the University
+of Virginia, is a North Carolinian and was formerly
+president of the University of that State; Dr.
+Charles D. McKeever who committed the State to the
+principle of higher education for women, and other men
+of similar high purpose. A gentleman who was far
+from an unqualified admirer of Mr. Daniels, told me
+that without his aid the great educational advance which
+the state has certainly made of recent years could hardly
+have been accomplished, and that the same thing applies
+in the case of prohibition&mdash;which has been adopted in
+North Carolina.</p>
+
+<p>"What sort of man is he?" I asked this gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>"He is the old type of Methodist," he said. "He is
+the kind of man who believes that the whale swallowed
+Jonah. He has the same concept of religion that he
+had as a child. I differ with his policies, his politics, his
+mental methods, but I don't think anybody here doubts
+that he is trying, not only to do the moral thing himself,
+but to force others to adopt, as rules for public conduct,
+the exact code in which he personally believes, and which
+he certainly follows. His mental processes are often
+crude, yet he has much native shrewdness and the ability
+to grasp situations as they arise.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He does not come of the aristocratic class, which
+probably accounts for his failure, when he first became
+secretary, to perceive the necessity for discipline in the
+navy, and the benefits of naval tradition.</p>
+
+<p>"He was an ardent follower&mdash;I might say swallower&mdash;of
+Bryan, gobbling whole all of the "Great Commoner's"
+vagaries. It has been said, more or less humorously,
+but doubtless with a foundation of fact, that he
+was "Secretary of War in all of Bryan's cabinets."
+That shows where Bryan placed him. Yet when Bryan
+broke with Wilson and made his exit from the Cabinet,
+Daniels found it perfectly simple, apparently, to drop
+the Bryanism which had, hitherto, been the very essence
+of his life, and become a no less ardent supporter of the
+President.</p>
+
+<p>"When he was first taken into the cabinet he evidently
+regarded the finer social amenities as matters of no consequence,
+or even as effeminacies. He had but little
+sense of the fitness of things, and was, in consequence,
+continually making <i>faux pas</i>; but he is observant; he has
+learned a great deal in the course of his life as a cabinet
+member, both as to his work in the Department, and as
+to the niceties of formal social life."</p>
+
+<p>At the time of our visit to Raleigh I had not met Mr.
+Daniels, nor heard him speak. Since that time I have
+heard him several times and have talked with him.
+Also I have talked of him with a number of men who
+have been thrown more or less closely in contact with
+him. As is well known, naval officers detested him with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>
+peculiar unanimity. This was true up to the time of
+our entering the War. Whether matters have changed
+greatly since then I am unable to say. One officer, well
+known in the navy, said to me quite seriously that he
+believed the navy would be better off without its two
+best dreadnoughts if in losing them it could also lose Mr.
+Daniels. Such sentiments were peculiarly unanimous
+among officers. On the other hand, however, a high
+officer, who has been quite close to the Secretary, informs
+me that it is indeed true that he has improved as
+experience has come to him. This officer stated that
+when Mr. Daniels first took office he seemed to be definitely
+antagonistic to officers of the navy. "He appeared
+to suspect them of pulling political wires and
+working in their own interests. That was in the days
+when he seemed almost to encourage insubordination
+among the enlisted men, by his attitude toward them, in
+contrast to his attitude towards their superiors. Of
+course it was demoralizing to the service. But there
+has been a marked change in the Secretary since Bryan
+left the Cabinet." From several sources I have heard
+the same evidence. I never heard any one say that Mr.
+Daniels was really an able Secretary of the Navy, but I
+have heard many say that he improved.</p>
+
+<p>Personally he is a very likable man. His face is kind
+and gentle; his features are interestingly irregular and
+there are heavy wrinkles about his mouth and eyes&mdash;the
+former adding something to the already humorous
+twinkle of the eyes. His voice has a <i>timbre</i> reminding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>
+me of George M. Cohan's voice. He is hardly an orator
+in the sense that Bryan is, yet he is not without simple
+oratorical tricks&mdash;as for example a tremolo, as of
+emotion, which I have heard him use in uttering
+such a phrase as "the grea-<i>a-a-at</i> Daniel <i>Web</i>-ster!"
+Also, he wears a low turnover collar and a black
+string tie&mdash;a fact which would not be worth noting did
+these not form a part of what amounts almost to a
+uniform worn by politicians of more or less the Bryan
+type. Almost invariably there seems to be something
+of the minister and something of the actor in such
+men.</p>
+
+<p>Once I asked one of the famous Washington correspondents
+what manner of man Mr. Daniels was.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a man," he said, "that you'd like to go with on
+a hunting trip in his native North Carolina. He would
+be a good companion and would have a lot of funny
+stories. He is full of kind intentions. Had you known
+him before the War, and had he liked you, and had you
+wished to take a ride upon a battleship, he would be disposed
+to order up a battleship and send you for a ride,
+even if, by doing so, he muddled up the fleet a little.
+That would be in line with his fixing it for moving picture
+people to act scenes on a battleship's deck&mdash;which
+he permitted. He saw no reason why that was not
+proper, and the kind of people who admire him most are
+those who, likewise, see no reason why it was not proper.
+The great lack in his nature is that of personal dignity&mdash;or
+even the dignity which should be his because of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>
+position. If you are sitting beside him and he is
+amiably disposed toward you, he may throw his arm
+over your shoulder, or massage your knee while talking
+with you.</p>
+
+<p>"But if some friend of his were to go to him and convince
+him that he lacked dignity, he is the kind of man
+who, in my judgment, would become so much the worse.
+That is, if he attempted to attain dignity he would not
+achieve it, but would merely grow arbitrary. That, to
+my mind, shows his great ineradicable weakness, for it
+not only reveals him as a man too little for his job, but
+prevents his comprehending the basic thing upon which
+naval discipline is founded. Nevertheless, as a man
+you like him. It is as Secretary of the Navy, and particularly
+as a War Secretary, that you very definitely
+don't."</p>
+
+<p>Some time after our visit to Raleigh my companion
+and I heard Secretary Daniels speak in Charleston. He
+told a funny story and talked generalities about the navy.
+That was before the United States entered the War. I
+do not know what he meant the speech for, but what it
+actually was, was a speech against preparedness. So
+was the speech made on the same occasion by Lemuel P.
+Padgett, chairman of the House Committee on Naval
+Affairs. It was a disingenuous speech, a speech to lull
+the country into confidence, a speech which, alone, should
+have been sufficient to prove Mr. Padgett's unfitness to
+serve on that committee. Mr. Daniels argued that
+"Germany's preparedness had not kept Germany out of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>
+war"; that seemed enough, but there was one thing he
+said which utterly dumbfounded me. It was this:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>The Southern statesman who serves his section best,
+serves the country best.</i>"</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 386px;">
+<a name="p280jpg" id="p280jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p280.jpg" width="386" height="600" alt="&quot;The Southern Statesman who serves his section best, serves the country best.&quot;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;The Southern Statesman who serves his section best, serves the country best.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Let the reader reflect for a moment upon such an utterance.
+Carried a little farther what would it mean?
+Would it not be equally logical to say that the man who
+serves himself best serves the country best? It is the
+theory of narrow sectionalism, and by implication, at
+least, the theory of individualism as well. And sectionalism
+and individualism are two of the great curses of
+the United States.</p>
+
+<p>Compare with Mr. Daniels' words those of John Hay
+who, veiling fine patriotism beneath a web of delicate
+humor, said:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>In my bewilderment of origin and experience I can
+only put on an aspect of deep humility in any gathering
+of favorite sons, and confess that I am nothing but an
+American.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Or again, compare with them the famous words of
+Patrick Henry:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I am not a Virginian, but an American.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Clearly, one point of view or the other is wrong. Perhaps
+Mr. Daniels has more light on sectional questions
+than had Patrick Henry or John Hay. At all events,
+the Charleston audience applauded.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII<br />
+<br />
+ITEMS FROM "THE OLD NORTH STATE"</h2>
+
+
+<p>Two of the most interesting things we saw in
+Raleigh were the model jail on the top floor of
+the new County Court House, where a lot of very
+honest looking rustics were confined to await trial for
+making "blockade" (otherwise moonshine) whisky, and
+the North Carolina Hall of History, which occupies a
+floor in the fine new State Administration Building, opposite
+the Capitol. At the head of the first stair landing
+in the Administration Building is a memorial tablet to
+William Sidney Porter ("O Henry"), who was born in
+Greensboro, North Carolina, with a bust of the author,
+in relief, by Lorado Taft. Porter, it may be mentioned,
+was a connection of Worth Bagley, the young ensign
+who was the only American naval officer killed in the
+Spanish-American War. Bagley was a brother of Mrs.
+Josephus Daniels. A monument to him stands in the
+park before the Capitol. Aside from Porter, the only
+author well known in our time whom I heard mentioned
+in connection with North Carolina, was the Rev.
+Thomas Dixon, whose name is most familiar, perhaps,
+in connection with the moving-picture called "The Birth
+of a Nation," taken from one of his novels. Mr. Dixon
+was born in the town of Shelby, North Carolina, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>
+was for some years pastor of the Tabernacle Baptist
+Church, Raleigh.</p>
+
+<p>The Hall of History, containing a great variety of
+State relics, is one of the most fascinating museums I
+ever visited. Too much praise cannot be given Colonel
+Fred A. Olds and Mr. Marshall De Lancey Haywood,
+of the North Carolina Historical Society, for making it
+what it is. As with the Confederate Museum in Richmond,
+so, here, it is impossible to give more than a faint
+idea of the interest of the museum's contents. Among
+the exhibits of which I made note, I shall, however, mention
+a few. There was a letter written from Paris in
+the handwriting of John Paul Jones, requesting a copy
+of the Constitution of North Carolina; there was the Ku
+Klux warning issued to one Ben Turner of Northampton
+County; and there was an old newspaper advertisement
+signed by James J. Selby, a tailor, dated at Raleigh,
+June 24, 1824, offering a reward of ten dollars for the
+capture and return of two runaways: "apprentice boys,
+legally bound, named William and Andrew Johnson."
+The last named boy was the same Andrew Johnson who
+later became a distinctly second-rate President of the
+United States. Also there was a peculiarly tragic Civil
+War memento, consisting of a note which was found
+clasped in the dead hand of Colonel Isaac Avery, of the
+6th North Carolina Regiment, who was killed while
+commanding a brigade on the second day at Gettysburg.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Tell my father I died with my face to the enemy.</i></p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>These words were written by the fallen officer with his
+left hand, his right arm having been rendered useless
+by his mortal wound. For ink he used his own life
+blood.</p>
+
+<p>Also in the museum may be seen the chart-book of
+Blackbeard, the pirate, who, one of the curators of the
+museum informed me, was the same person as Edward
+Teach. Blackbeard, who is commemorated in the name
+of Blackbeard's Island, off the coast of South Georgia,
+met his fate when he encountered a cruiser fitted out by
+Governor Spotswood of Virginia and commanded by
+Lieutenant Maynard. Maynard found Blackbeard's
+ship at Okracoke Inlet, on the North Carolina coast.
+Before he and his men could board the pirate vessel the
+pirates came and boarded them. Severe fighting ensued,
+but the pirates were defeated, Maynard himself
+killing Blackbeard in single combat with swords. The
+legend around Okracoke is that Blackbeard's bad fortune
+on this occasion came to him because of the unlucky
+number of his matrimonial adventures, the story being
+that he had thirteen wives. It is said also that his vanquishers
+cut off his head and hung it at the yard-arm
+of their ship, throwing his body into the sea, and that
+as soon as the body struck the water the head began to
+call, "Come on, Edward!" whereupon the headless body
+swam three times around the ship. Personally I think
+there may be some slight doubt about the authenticity
+of this part of the story. For, while from one point of
+view we might say that to swim about in such aimless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>
+fashion would be the very thing a man without a head
+might do, yet from another point of view the question
+arises: Would a man whose head had just been severed
+from his body feel like taking such a long swim?</p>
+
+<p>And what a rich lot of other historic treasures!</p>
+
+<p>Did you know, for instance, that Flora Macdonald,
+the Scottish heroine, who helped Prince Charles Edward
+to escape, dressed as a maidservant, after the Battle of
+Culloden, in 1746, came to America with her husband
+and many relatives just before the Revolutionary War
+and settled at Cross Creek (now Fayetteville), North
+Carolina? When General Donald Macdonald raised
+the Royal standard at the time of the Revolution, her
+husband and many of her kinsmen joined him, and these
+were later captured at the Battle of Moore's Creek
+Bridge, in 1776, and taken as prisoners to Philadelphia.
+Yes; and Flora Macdonald's garter-buckles are now in
+the museum at Raleigh.</p>
+
+<p>A portrait of Captain James J. Waddell, C.&nbsp;S.&nbsp;N., who
+was a member of a famous North Carolina family, recalls
+the story of his post-bellum cruise, in command of
+the <i>Shenandoah</i>, when, not knowing that the War was
+over, he preyed for months on Federal commerce in the
+South Seas.</p>
+
+<p>The museum of course contains many uniforms worn
+by distinguished soldiers of the Confederacy and many
+old flags, among them one said to be the original flag of
+the Confederacy. This flag was designed by Orren R.
+Smith of Louisburg, North Carolina, and was made in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>
+that town. The journals of the Confederate Congress
+show that countless designs for a flag were submitted,
+that the Committee on a Flag reported that all designs
+had been rejected and returned, the committee having
+adopted one of its own; nevertheless Mr. Smith's claim
+to have designed the flag finally adopted is so well supported
+that the Confederate Veterans, at their General
+Reunion held in Richmond in 1915, passed a resolution
+endorsing it.</p>
+
+<p>Also in the museum is the shot-riddled smokestack of
+the Confederate ram <i>Albemarle</i>, which was built on the
+farm of Peter E. Smith, on Roanoke River, and is said
+to have been the first vessel ever launched sidewise.
+The <i>Albemarle</i>, after a glorious career, was sunk by
+Lieutenant Cushing, U.&nbsp;S.&nbsp;N., in his famous exploit with
+a torpedo carried on a pole at the bow of a launch. It
+will be remembered that the launch was sunk by the
+shock and that only Cushing and one member of his
+crew survived, swimming away under fire.</p>
+
+<p>North Carolina also claims&mdash;and not without some
+justice&mdash;that the first English settlement on this continent
+was not that at Jamestown, but the one made by
+Sir Walter Raleigh's expedition, under Amadas and Barlowe,
+which landed at Roanoke Island, August 4, 1584,
+and remained there for some weeks. The Jamestown
+Colony, say the North Carolinians, was merely the first
+to <i>stick</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, across the sound from
+Roanoke Island, is the site of the first flight of a man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>
+in an aeroplane, the Wright brothers having tried out
+their first crude plane there, among the Kill-Devil sand
+dunes. A part of the original plane is preserved in the
+museum. Nor must I leave the museum without mentioning
+the bullet-riddled hat of General W.&nbsp;R. Cox, and
+his gray military coat, with a blood-stained gash in
+front, where a solid shell ripped across. General Cox's
+son, Mr. Albert Cox, was with us in the museum when
+we stopped to look at this grim souvenir. "It tore father
+open in front," he said, "spoiled a coat which had
+cost him $550, Confederate, and damaged his watchchain.
+Nevertheless he lived to take part in the last
+charge at Appomattox, and the watchchain wasn't so
+badly spoiled but what, with the addition of some new
+links, it could be worn." And he showed us where the
+chain, which he himself was wearing at the time, had
+been repaired.</p>
+
+<p>I must say something, also, of the North Carolina College
+of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, an institution
+doing splendid work, and doing it efficiently, both in its
+own buildings and through extension courses. Fifty-two
+per cent. of the students at this college earn their
+way through, either wholly or in part. And better yet,
+eighty-three per cent. of the graduates stick to the practical
+work afterwards&mdash;an unusually high record.</p>
+
+<p>The president of the college, Dr. D.&nbsp;H. Hill, is a son
+of the Confederate general of the same name, who has
+been called "the Ironsides of the South."</p>
+
+<p>There are a number of other important educational<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>
+institutions in and about Raleigh, and there is one
+which, if not important, is at all events, a curio. This is
+"Latta University," consisting of a few flimsy shacks
+in the negro village of Oberlin, on the outskirts of
+Raleigh.</p>
+
+<p>"Professor" Latta is one of the rare negroes who combines
+the habit with white folks of the old fashioned
+southern darky, and the astuteness of the "new issue"
+in high finance. Years ago he conceived the idea of
+establishing a negro school near Raleigh, to which he
+gave the above mentioned name. He had no funds, no
+credit and little or no education. Nevertheless he had
+ideas, the central one of which was that New England
+was the land of plenty. With the "university" in his
+head, and with a miscellaneous collection of photographs,
+he managed to make a tour of northern cities, and came
+back with his pockets lined. As a result he procured a
+little land, put up frame buildings, gathered a few youths
+about him, and was fully launched on his career as a
+university president.</p>
+
+<p>So long as the money held out, Latta was content to
+drift along with his school. When he came to the bottom
+of the bag he invested the last of his savings in another
+ticket north and, armed with his title of "president,"
+made addresses to northern audiences and replenished
+his finances with their contributions.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, as the great act of his career, Latta managed
+to get passage to Europe and was gone for several
+months. When he came back he had added a manu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>script
+to his possessions: "The History of My Life and
+Work," which he published, and which is one of the most
+curious volumes I have ever seen.</p>
+
+<p>It is illustrated&mdash;largely with photographs of the
+author. One of the pictures is entitled, "Rev. M.&nbsp;L.
+Latta when he first commenced to build Latta University."
+This shows Latta with the tips of his fingers resting
+on a small table. Another picture shows him posed
+with one hand raised and the other resting on what is
+unmistakably the same little table. The latter picture,
+however, has the caption, "Rev. M.&nbsp;L. Latta making a
+speech in Pawtucket, R.&nbsp;I., at Y.&nbsp;M.&nbsp;C.&nbsp;A." Both pictures
+were all too clearly taken in a photographer's
+studio. Another page shows us, "Rev. M.&nbsp;L. Latta and
+three of his Admirable Presidents." In this case Latta
+merely takes for himself the upper right-hand corner,
+the other eminent persons pictured being ex-Presidents
+Roosevelt, McKinley and Cleveland. The star illustration,
+however, is a "made up" picture, in which a photograph
+of Latta, looking spick-and-span, has been pasted
+onto what is very obviously a painted picture of a hall
+full of people in evening dress, all of them gazing at
+Latta, who stands upon the stage, dignified, suave, impressive,
+and all dressed-up by the brush of the "re-toucher."
+This picture is called: "In the Auditorium
+at London, in 1894." Similar artfulness is shown in
+pictures of the "university" buildings, where the same
+frame structure, photographed from opposite ends, appears
+in one case as, "Young Ladies' Dormitory," and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>
+in the other as, "Chapel and Young Men's Dormitory."</p>
+
+<p>In his autobiography, Latta tells how, in the course
+of getting his own schooling, he raised money by teaching
+a district school during vacation. He says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>After paying my expenses, I had nearly a hundred dollars to
+return to school with. When I returned I was able to dress very
+neatly indeed, and the young ladies received me very cordially on
+the green during social hour. Before I taught school it was a
+common saying among the young ladies and young men "Latta";
+but after I returned with a hundred dollars it was "Mr. Latta"
+all over the campus. I would hear the young ladies saying among
+themselves, "I bet Mr. Latta will not go with you&mdash;he will correspond
+with me this afternoon." I paid no attention to it. I
+said to myself, "Don't you see what a hundred dollars will do?"</p></div>
+
+<p>In another place the Professor reveals how he came
+to write his book: "Professor King, one of the teachers
+at Latta University said to me, 'If I had done what
+you have done I would have wrote a history of my life
+several years ago.'"</p>
+
+<p>The best part of the book, however, gives us Latta's
+account of his doings in London:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Just before I left the city of London I was invited by a distinguished
+friend, a close relation to Queen Victoria, to make
+a speech. He told me there would be a meeting in one of the
+large halls in that city. I can't just think of the name of the
+hall. He invited me to be present. The distinguished friend
+that I have just mentioned presided over the meeting. There was
+an immense audience present. If memory serves me right, I was
+the only Negro in the hall. The gentleman came to me and
+asked if I would make a speech. I told him I had already deliv<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span>ered
+one address, besides several sermons I had preached, and I
+thought that I would not speak again during my stay. I accepted
+the invitation, however, and spoke.</p></div>
+
+<p>The Professor then tells how he was introduced as
+one whose addresses were "among the ablest ever delivered
+in London." Also he gives his speech in full.
+Great events followed. His distinguished unnamed
+friend, the "close relation of the Queen," came to him
+soon after, he says, and asked him if he had "ever been
+to the palace."</p>
+
+<p>Continues Latta:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>He said to me, "If you will come over before you leave the
+city, and call to see me, I will take you to the palace with me
+and introduce you to the Queen." I told him I would do so,
+that I had heard a good deal about the royal throne, and I would
+be very much interested to see the palace. He said he thought
+I would, because the government was very different from ours.</p>
+
+<p>I called at his residence as I had promised, and he went with
+me to the palace. The Queen knew him, of course. He was received
+very cordially. Everything shined so much like gold in
+the palace that I had to stop and think where I was. He introduced
+me to the Queen, and told her I was from North America.
+He told her that I spoke at a meeting he presided over, and he
+enjoyed my speech very much. He told her we had an immense
+audience, and all the people were well pleased with the speech.
+The Queen said she was more than glad to meet me, and she
+would have liked very much to have been present, and heard the
+speech that her cousin said I made.... She told me she hoped
+that would not be the last visit I would make to their city. I
+shook hands with her and bade her good-bye. The distinguished
+friend carried me and showed me the different departments of
+the palace, and I bade him good-bye.</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In Raleigh, I think, they rather like Latta. It amuses
+them to see him go north and get money, and it is said
+that he appreciates the situation himself. He ought to.
+Not many southern negroes have such comfortable
+homes as "Latta University's" best kept-up building&mdash;the
+residence of the President.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII<br />
+<br />
+UNDER ST. MICHAEL'S CHIMES</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And where St. Michael's chimes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The fragrant hours exquisitely tell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Making the world one loveliness, like a true poet's rhymes.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0 smcap signature">&mdash;Richard Watson Gilder.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>It has been said&mdash;by Mrs. T.&nbsp;P. O'Connor, I think&mdash;that
+whereas twenty-five letters of introduction for
+New York may produce one invitation to dinner,
+one letter of introduction for Charleston will produce
+twenty-five dinner invitations. If this be an
+exaggeration it is, at least, exaggeration in the right
+direction; that is, along the lines of truth. For though
+Charleston's famed "exclusiveness" is very real, making
+letters of introduction very necessary to strangers desiring
+to see something of the city's social life, such
+letters produce, in Charleston, as Mrs. O'Connor suggests,
+results definite and delightful.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately upon our arrival, my companion and I
+sent out several letters we had brought with us, and
+presently calling cards began to arrive for us at the
+hotel. Also there came courteous little notes, delivered
+in most cases by hand, according to the old Charleston
+custom&mdash;a custom surviving pleasantly from times<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>
+when there were no postal arrangements, but plenty of
+slaves to run errands. Even to this day, I am told, invitations
+to Charleston's famous St. Cecilia balls are
+delivered by hand.</p>
+
+<p>One of the notes we received revealed to us a characteristic
+custom of the city. It contained an invitation
+to occupy places in the pew of a distinguished family, at
+St. Michael's Church, on the approaching Sunday morning.
+In order to realize the significance of such an
+invitation one must understand that St. Michael's is
+to Charleston, socially, what St. George's, Hanover
+Square, is to London. A beautiful old building, surrounded
+by a historic burial ground and surmounted by
+a delicate white spire containing fine chimes, it strongly
+suggests the architectural touch of Sir Christopher
+Wren; but it is not by Wren, for he died a number of
+years before 1752, when the cornerstone of St. Michael's
+was laid. When the British left Charleston&mdash;or
+Charles Town, as the name of the place stands in the
+early records&mdash;after occupying it during the Revolutionary
+War, they took with them, to the horror of the
+city, the bells of St. Michael's, and the church books.
+The silver, however, was saved, having been concealed
+on a plantation some miles from Charleston. Later the
+bells were returned.</p>
+
+<p>Pre-Revolutionary Charleston was divided into two
+parishes: St. Michael's below Broad Street, and St.
+Philip's above. Under governmental regulation citizens
+were not allowed to hold pews in both churches<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>
+unless they owned houses in both parishes. St. Michael's,
+being nearer the battery, in which region are the
+finest old houses, had, perhaps, the wealthier congregation,
+but St. Philip's is, to my mind, the more beautiful
+church of the two, largely because of the open space
+before it, and the graceful outward bend of Church
+Street in deference to the projecting portico.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 391px;">
+<a name="p300jpg" id="p300jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p300.jpg" width="391" height="600" alt="St. Philip&#39;s is the more beautiful for the open space before it, and the graceful
+outward bend of Church Street in deference to the projecting portico" title="" />
+<span class="caption">St. Philip&#39;s is the more beautiful for the open space before it, and the graceful
+outward bend of Church Street in deference to the projecting portico</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>When the Civil War broke out St. Philip's bells were
+melted and made into cannon, but those of St. Michael's
+were left in place until cannonballs from the blockading
+fleet struck the church, when they were taken down and
+sent, together with the silver plate, to Columbia, South
+Carolina, for safe-keeping. But Columbia was, as matters
+turned out, the worst place to which they could have
+been sent. The silver was looted by troops under Sherman,
+and the bells were destroyed when the city was
+burned. The fragments were, however, collected and
+sent to England, whence the bells originally came, and
+there they were recast. Their music&mdash;perhaps the most
+characteristic of all the city's characteristic sounds&mdash;has
+been called "the voice of Charleston." Of the silver
+only a few fragments have been returned. One piece
+was found in a pawn shop in New York, and another in
+a small town in Ohio. <i>Mais que voulez-vous? C'est
+la guerre!</i></p>
+
+<p>In mentioning Charleston churches one becomes involved
+in a large matter. In 1801, when St. Mary's, the
+first Roman Catholic church in the city, was erected,
+there were already eighteen churches in existence,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>
+among them the present Huguenot Church, at the corner
+of Church and Queen Streets, which, though a very old
+building, is nevertheless the second Huguenot Church to
+occupy the same site, the first, built in 1687, having been
+destroyed in the great conflagration of 1796, which very
+nearly destroyed St. Philip's, as well. A number of
+the old Huguenot families long ago became Episcopalians,
+and the descendants of many of the early French
+settlers of Charleston, buried in the Huguenot churchyard,
+are now parishioners of St. Michael's and St.
+Philip's. The Huguenot Church in Charleston is the
+only church of this denomination in America; its liturgy
+is translated from the French, and services are held in
+French on the third Sunday of November, January and
+March. A Unitarian Church was established in 1817,
+as an offshoot of the Scotch Presbyterian Church, the
+old White Meeting House of which (built 1685, used by
+the British as a granary, during the Revolution, and
+torn down 1806) gave Meeting Street its name. Early
+in the history of the Unitarian Church, the home of
+which was a former Presbyterian Church building, in
+Archdale Street, Dr. Samuel Gilman, a young minister
+from Gloucester, Massachusetts, became its pastor.
+This was the same Dr. Gilman who wrote "Fair Harvard."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In only one instance did the letters of introduction we
+sent out produce a response of the kind one would not
+be surprised at receiving in some rushing city of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>
+North: a telephone call. A lady, not a native Charlestonian,
+but one who has lived actively about the world,
+rang us up, bade us welcome, and invited us to dinner.</p>
+
+<p>But she was a very modern sort of lady, as witness
+not only her use of the telephone&mdash;an instrument which
+seems in Charleston almost an anachronism; as, for that
+matter, the automobile does, too&mdash;but her dinner hour,
+which was eight o'clock. Very few Charleston families
+dine at night. Dinner invitations are usually for three,
+or perhaps half-past three or four, in the afternoon, and
+there is a light supper in the evening. I judge that this
+custom holds also in some other cities of the region, for
+I remember calling at the office of a large investment
+company in Wilmington, North Carolina, to find it
+wearing, at three in the afternoon, the deserted look of
+a New York office between twelve and one o'clock.
+Every one had gone home to dinner. Mr. W.&nbsp;D. Howells,
+in his charming essay on Charleston, makes mention
+of this matter:</p>
+
+<p>"The place," he says, "has its own laws and usages,
+and does not trouble itself to conform to those of other
+aristocracies. In London the best society dines at eight
+o'clock, and in Madrid at nine, but in Charleston it dines
+at four.... It makes morning calls as well as afternoon
+calls, but as the summer approaches the midday
+heat must invite rather to the airy leisure of the verandas,
+and the cool quiescence of interiors darkened
+against the fly in the morning and the mosquito at night-fall."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The household fly is a year-round resident of Charleston,
+by grace of a climate which permits&mdash;barely permits,
+at its coldest&mdash;the use of the open surrey as a
+public vehicle in all seasons. Sometimes, during a winter
+cold-snap, when a ride in a surrey is not a pleasant
+thing to contemplate, when residents of old mansions
+have shut themselves into a room or two heated by grate
+fires, then the fly seems to have disappeared, but let the
+cold abate a little and out he comes again like some
+rogue who, after brief and spurious penance, resumes
+the evil of his ways.</p>
+
+<p>The stranger going to a humble Charleston house will
+find on the gate a coiled spring at the end of which hangs
+a bell. By touching the spring and causing the bell
+to jingle he makes his presence known. The larger
+houses have upon their gates bell-pulls or buttons which
+cause bells to ring within. This is true of all houses
+which have front gardens. The garden gate constitutes,
+by custom, a barrier comparable in a degree with
+the front door of a Northern house; a usage arising,
+doubtless, out of the fact that almost all important
+Charleston houses have not only gardens, but first and
+second story galleries, and that in hot weather these
+galleries become, as it were, exterior rooms, in which no
+small part of the family life goes on. Many Charleston
+houses have their gardens to the rear, and themselves
+abut upon the sidewalk. Calling at such houses, you
+ring at what seems to be an ordinary front door, but
+when the door is opened you find yourself entering not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>
+upon a hall, but upon an exterior gallery running to the
+full depth of the house, down which you walk to the
+actual house door. In still other houses&mdash;and this is
+true of some of the most notable mansions of the city,
+including the Pringle, Huger, and Rhett houses&mdash;admittance
+is by a street door of the normal sort, opening
+upon a hall, and the galleries and gardens are at the side
+or back, the position of the galleries in relation to the
+house depending upon what point of the compass the
+house faces, the desirable thing being to get the breezes
+which are prevalently from the southwest and the westward.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Charleston is very definitely two things: It is old,
+and it is a city.</p>
+
+<p>There is the story of a young lady who asked a
+stranger if he did not consider it a unique town.</p>
+
+<p>He agreed that it was, and inquired whether she knew
+the derivation of the word "unique."</p>
+
+<p>When she replied negatively he informed her that the
+word came from the Latin <i>unus</i>, meaning "one," and
+<i>equus</i>, meaning "a horse"; otherwise "a one-horse town."</p>
+
+<p>This tale, however, is a libel, for despite the general
+superstition of chambers of commerce to the contrary,
+the estate of cityhood is not necessarily a matter of
+population nor yet of commerce. That is one of the
+things which, if we were unaware of it before, we may
+learn from Charleston. Charleston is not great in
+population; it is not very great, as seaports go, in trade.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>
+Were cities able to talk with one another as men can,
+and as foolishly as men often do, I have no doubt that
+many a hustling middle-western city would patronize
+Charleston, precisely as a parvenue might patronize a
+professor of astronomy; nevertheless, Charleston has a
+stronger, deeper-rooted city entity than all the cities of
+the Middle West rolled into one. This is no exaggeration.
+Where modern American cities strive to be like
+one another, Charleston strives to be like nothing whatsoever.
+She does not have to strive to <i>be</i> something.
+She <i>is</i> something. She understands what most other
+American cities do not understand, and what, in view of
+our almost unrestricted immigration laws, it seems the
+National Government cannot be made to understand:
+namely, that mere numbers do not count for everything;
+that there is the matter of quality of population to
+be considered. Therefore, though Charleston's white
+population is no greater than that of many a place which
+would own itself frankly a small town, Charleston
+knows that by reason of the character of its population
+it is a great city. And that is precisely the case.
+Charleston people are city people <i>par excellence</i>. They
+have the virtues of city people, the vices of city people,
+and the civilization and sophistication of those who reside
+in the most aristocratic capitals. For that is another
+thing that Charleston is; it is unqualifiedly the
+aristocratic capital of the United States; the last stronghold
+of a unified American upper class; the last remaining
+American city in which Madeira and Port and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>
+<i>noblesse oblige</i> are fully and widely understood, and are
+employed according to the best traditions.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p328jpg" id="p328jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p328.jpg" width="600" height="426" alt="Charleston has a stronger, deeper-rooted city entity than all the cities of the middle west rolled into one" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Charleston has a stronger, deeper-rooted city entity than all the cities of the middle west rolled into one</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>I have been told of a lady who remarked that Charleston
+was "the biggest little place" she ever saw. I say
+the same. The littleness of the place, it is sometimes
+pointed out, is expressed by the "vast cousinship" which
+constitutes Charleston society, but it is to my mind expressed
+much better in the way bicyclists leave their
+machines leaning against the curb at the busiest parts of
+main shopping streets. Its bigness, upon the other
+hand, is expressed by the homes from which some of
+those bicyclists come, by the cultivation which exists in
+those homes, and has existed there for generations, by
+the amenities of life as they are comprehended and observed,
+by the wealth of the city's tradition and the
+richness of its background. Nor is that background a
+mere arras of recollection. It exists everywhere in the
+wood and brick and stone of ancient and beautiful buildings,
+in iron grilles and balconies absolutely unrivaled
+in any other American city, and equaled only in European
+cities most famous for their artistry in wrought
+iron. It exists also in venerable institutions&mdash;the first
+orphanage established in the United States; the William
+Enston Home; the Public Library, one of the first and
+now one of the best libraries in the country; the art
+museum, the St. Cecilia Society, and various old clubs.
+More intimately it exists within innumerable old homes,
+which are treasure-houses of fine old English and early
+American furniture and of portraits&mdash;portraits by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>
+Sir Joshua, by Stuart, Copley, Trumbull, and most of
+the other portrait painters who painted from the time
+the Colonies began to become civilized to the time of the
+Civil War&mdash;among them S.&nbsp;F.&nbsp;B. Morse, who, I believe
+it is not generally known, made a considerable reputation
+as a portrait painter, in Charleston, before he made
+himself a world figure by inventing the telegraph.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p320jpg" id="p320jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p320.jpg" width="600" height="417" alt="Nor is the Charleston background a mere arras of recollection. It exists everywhere in the wood and brick and stone
+of ancient and beautiful buildings, in iron grilles and balconies unrivalled in any other American city...." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Nor is the Charleston background a mere arras of recollection. It exists everywhere in the wood and brick and stone
+of ancient and beautiful buildings, in iron grilles and balconies unrivalled in any other American city....</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Even without seeing these private treasures the visitor
+to Charleston will see enough to convince him that
+Charleston is indeed "unique"&mdash;though not in the sense
+implied in the story&mdash;that it is the most intimately beautiful
+city upon the American continent.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="p316jpg" id="p316jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p316.jpg" width="500" height="436" alt="In the doorway and gates of the Smyth house, in Legar&eacute; Street, I was struck
+with a Venetian suggestion" title="" />
+<span class="caption">In the doorway and gates of the Smyth house, in Legar&eacute; Street, I was struck
+with a Venetian suggestion</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>To call Charleston "unique," and immediately thereafter
+to liken it to other places may seem paradoxical.
+These likenesses are, however, evanescent. It is not
+that Charleston is actually like other places, but that
+here in a church building, there in an old tile roof,
+wrought iron gate, or narrow cobbled street, the visitor
+will find himself delicately reminded of Old World towns
+and cities. Mr. Howells, for example, found on the
+East Battery a faint suggestion of Venetian palaces, and
+in the doorway and gates of the Smyth house, in Legar&eacute;
+Street, I was struck, also, with a Venetian suggestion so
+strange and subtle that I could not quite account for it.
+At night some of the old narrow streets, between Meeting
+Street and Bay, made me think of streets in the old
+part of Paris, on the left bank of the Seine; or again I
+would stop before an ancient brick house which was
+Flemish, or which&mdash;in the case of houses diagonally op<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>posite
+St. Philip's Church&mdash;exampled the rude architecture
+of an old French village, stucco walls colored and
+chipped, red tile roof and all. The busy part of King
+Street, on a Saturday night when the fleet was in, made
+me think of Havana, and the bluejackets seemed to me,
+for the moment, to be American sailors in a foreign
+port; and once, on the same evening's walk, when I
+chanced to look to the westward across Marion Square,
+I found myself transported to the central <i>place</i> of a Belgian
+city, with a slope-shouldered church across the way
+masquerading as a <i>h&ocirc;tel de ville</i>, and the sidewalk lights
+at either side figuring in my imagination as those of
+pleasant terrace caf&eacute;s. So it was always. The very
+hotel in which we stayed&mdash;the Charleston&mdash;is like no
+other hotel in the United States, though it has about it
+something which caused me to think of the old Southern,
+in St. Louis. Still, it is not like the Southern. It is
+more like some old hotel in a provincial city of France&mdash;large
+and white, with a pleasing unevenness of floor,
+and, best of all, a great inner court which, in provincial
+France, might be a <i>remise</i>, but is here a garden. If I
+mistake not, carriages and coaches did in earlier times
+drive through the arched entrance, now the main doorway,
+and into this courtyard, where passengers alighted
+and baggage was taken down. The Planter's Hotel,
+now a ruin, opposite the Huguenot Church, antedates all
+others in the city, and used to be the fashionable gathering
+place for wealthy Carolinians and their families who
+came to Charleston annually for the racing season.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p305jpg" id="p305jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p305.jpg" width="600" height="331" alt="Or, opposite St. Philip&#39;s, a perfect example of the rude architecture of an old French village; stucco walls, tinted
+and chipped, red tile roofs and all" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Or, opposite St. Philip&#39;s, a perfect example of the rude architecture of an old French village; stucco walls, tinted
+and chipped, red tile roofs and all</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The fact that Charleston has a rather important art
+museum and that its library is one of the four oldest
+town libraries in the country, no less than the fact that
+the city was, in its day, a great racing center, contribute
+to an understanding of the spirit of the place. The
+present Charleston Library is not the first public library
+started in the city. Not by any means! For it was
+founded as late as 1748, and the original public library
+of Charleston was the first one of the kind in the country,
+having been started about the beginning of the 18th
+century. Old records of this library still exist, showing
+that citizens voted so many skins to its support. Probably
+the most valuable possession of the present library
+are its files of Charleston newspapers, dating from 1732
+to the present time, including three files covering the
+War of 1812, and two covering the Civil War. These
+files are consulted by persons from all over the United
+States, for historical material. The library has recently
+moved into a good modern building. In the old building
+there was a separate entrance at the back for ladies,
+and it is only lately that ladies have been allowed full
+membership in the Library Society, and have entered by
+the front door. The former custom, I suppose, represented
+certain old-school sentiments as to "woman's
+place" such as I find expressed in "Reminiscences of
+Charleston," by Charles Fraser, published in 1854. Declares
+Mr. Fraser:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The ambition for literary distinction is now very prevalent with
+the sex. But without any disposition to undervalue their claims,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>
+whenever I hear of a female traveler clambering the Alps, or describing
+the classic grounds of Greece and Italy, publishing her
+musings in the holy land, or revealing the mysteries of the
+harem, I cannot but think that for every success obtained some
+appropriate duty has been neglected.</p>
+
+<p>I except the poetess, for hers are the effusions of the heart and
+the imagination, prompted by nature and uttered because they are
+irrepressible. Many females travel for the purpose of writing
+and publishing books&mdash;whilst Mrs. Heman's, Mrs. Osgood's, and
+Mrs. Sigourney's volumes may be regarded as grateful offerings
+to the muse in return for her inspiration.</p></div>
+
+<p>It is hard not to be irritated, even now, with the man
+who wrote that, especially in view of the fact that the
+two most interesting books to come out of the Carolinas
+of recent years are both by women: one of them being
+"Charleston&mdash;the Place and the People," by Mrs. St.
+Julien Ravenel, a volume any chapter of which is worth
+the whole of Mr. Fraser's "Reminiscences," and the
+other "A Woman Rice-Planter," by "Patience Pennington,"
+otherwise Mrs. John Julius Pringle (n&eacute;e Alston),
+who lives on her plantation near Georgetown, South
+Carolina.</p>
+
+<p>The Carolina Jockey Club subscribed regularly to the
+support of the library, and now that that club is no more,
+its chief memorial may be said to rest there. This club
+was probably the first racing club in the country, and it
+is interesting to note that the old cement pillars from
+the Washington Race Course at Charleston were taken,
+when that course was abandoned, and set up at the Belmont
+Park course, near New York.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The turf history of Carolina began (according to the
+"South Carolina Gazette," dated February 1, 1734) in
+that same year, on the first Tuesday in February. One
+of the prizes was a saddle and bridle valued at &pound;20.
+The riders were white men and the course was a green
+at Charleston Neck, near where the lower depot of the
+South Carolina Railroad now stands. In a "History of
+the Turf in South Carolina," which I found in the
+library, I learned that Mr. Daniel Ravenel bred fine
+horses on his plantation, Wantoot, in St. John's Parish,
+as early as 1761, that Mr. Frank Huger had imported
+an Arabian horse, and that many other gentlemen were
+importing British running horses, and were engaged in
+breeding. The book refers to the old York Course, later
+called the New Market Course. A long search did not,
+however, enable me to establish the date on which the
+Jockey Club was founded. It was clearly a going institution
+in 1792, for under date of Wednesday, February
+15, in that year, I found the record of a race for the
+Jockey Club Purse&mdash;"four mile-heats&mdash;weight for age&mdash;won
+by Mr. Lynch's <i>Foxhunter</i>, after a well contested
+race of four heats, beating Mr. Sumter's <i>Ugly</i>, who won
+the first heat; Col. Washington's <i>Rosetta</i>, who won the
+second heat; Capt. Alston's <i>Betsy Baker</i>," etc., etc.</p>
+
+<p>The Civil War practically ended the Jockey Club,
+though a feeble effort was, for a time, made to carry it
+on. In 1900 the club properties and the funds remaining
+in the club treasury were transferred as an endowment
+to the Charleston Library Society. The proceeds<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>
+from this endowment add to the library's income by
+about two thousand dollars annually. Other items of
+interest in connection with the Carolina Jockey Club are
+that Episcopal Church conventions used to be held in
+Charleston during the racing season, so that the attending
+parsons might take in the races; that the Jockey Club
+Ball used to be the great ball of the Charleston season,
+as the second St. Cecilia Ball became later and now is;
+that the Charleston Club, a most delightful club, founded
+in 1852, was an outgrowth of the Jockey Club; and that
+the Jockey Club's old Sherries, Ports and Madeiras went
+to New York where they were purchased by Delmonico&mdash;among
+them a Calderon de la Barca Madeira of 1848,
+and a Peter Domecq Sherry of 1818.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. S.&nbsp;A. Nies, one of the old employees of Delmonico's,
+tells me that the Calderon de la Barca of the
+above mentioned year is all gone, but that Delmonico's
+still has a few bottles of the same wine of the vintage
+of 1851.</p>
+
+<p>"This wine," Mr. Nies said, "is listed on our wine
+card at $6.00 per bottle. It is not the best Madeira that
+we have, although it is a very fine one. Recently we
+served a bottle of Thompson's Auction Madeira, of
+which the year is not recognizable on the label, but which
+to my knowledge was an old wine forty years ago.
+This wine brought $25.00 a bottle and was worth it.</p>
+
+<p>"The Peter Domecq Sherry of 1818 does not figure
+on our wine list as we have but a few bottles left. It
+is $20.00 a bottle.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The prices brought to-day by old Madeiras and Sherries
+do not represent their real values. One has but to
+look at the compound interest of savings banks to realize
+that these wines should be selling at four times the price
+they are; but unfortunately, since the advent of Scotch
+whisky in the American market, the American palate
+seems to have deteriorated, and if the wines were listed
+at the price they ought to bring, we could not sell them.
+As it is, the demand for the very rare old wines is irregular
+and infrequent. We keep them principally to preserve
+our reputation; not for the money there is in it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX<br />
+<br />
+HISTORY AND ARISTOCRACY</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The cool shade of aristocracy....<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0 smcap signature">&mdash;Sir W.&nbsp;F.&nbsp;P. Napier.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>Just now, when we are being unpleasantly awakened
+to the fact that our vaunted American melting-pot
+has not been doing its work; when some
+of us are perhaps wondering whether the quality of
+metal produced by the crucible will ever be of the best;
+it is comforting to reflect that a city whose history, traditions
+and great names are so completely involved with
+Americanism in its highest forms, a city we think of as
+ultra-American, is peculiarly a melting-pot product.</p>
+
+<p>The original Charleston colonists were English and
+Irish, sent out under Colonel Sayle, in 1669, by the
+Lords Proprietors, to whom Charles II had granted a
+tract of land in the New World, embracing the present
+States of Georgia and North and South Carolina.
+These colonists touched at Port Royal&mdash;where the
+Marine Barracks now are (and ought not to be)&mdash;but
+settled on the west side of the Ashley River, across from
+where Charleston stands. It was not until 1680 that
+they transferred their settlement to the present site
+of the city, naming the place Charles Town in honor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span>
+of the King. In 1671 the colony contained 263 men
+able to bear arms, 69 women and 59 children. In 1674,
+when New York was taken by the English from the
+Dutch, a number of the latter moved down to the Carolina
+colony. French Protestants had, at that time,
+already begun to arrive, and more came after the revocation
+of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685. In 1680 Germans
+came. By 1684 there were four Huguenot settlements
+in Carolina. In 1696 a Quaker was governor
+for a short time, and in the same year a body of New
+Englanders arrived from Dorchester, Massachusetts,
+establishing a town which they called Dorchester, near
+the present town of Summerville, a few miles from
+Charleston. At that time a number of Scottish immigrants
+had already arrived, though more came in 1715
+and 1745, after the defeat of the Highlanders. From
+1730 to 1750 new colonists came from Switzerland, Holland
+and Germany. As early as 1740 there were
+several Jewish families in Charleston, and some of
+the oldest and most respected Jewish families in the
+United States still reside there. Also, when the English
+drove the Acadians from Canada in 1755, twelve hundred
+of them immigrated to Carolina. By 1790, then,
+the city had a population of a little more than 15,000,
+which was about half the number of inhabitants then
+contained in the city of New York. In the case of
+Charleston, however, more than one half her people, at
+that time, were negroes, slavery having been introduced
+by Sir John Yeamans, an early British governor. By<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>
+1850 the city had about 20,000 white citizens and 23,000
+blacks, and by 1880 some 7,500 more, of which additional
+number two thirds were negroes. The present population
+is estimated at 65,000, which makes Charleston a
+place of about the size of Rockford, Illinois, Sioux City,
+Iowa, or Covington, Kentucky; but as, in the case of
+Charleston, more than half this number is colored,
+Charleston is, if the white population only is considered,
+a place of approximately 30,000 inhabitants, or, roughly
+speaking, about the size of Poughkeepsie, N.&nbsp;Y., or Colorado
+Springs, Colorado.</p>
+
+<p>In area, also, Charleston is small, covering less than
+four square miles. This is due to the position of the
+city on a peninsula formed by the convergence and confluence
+of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers, which meet at
+Charleston's beautiful Battery precisely as the Hudson
+River and the East River meet at the Battery in New
+York. The shape of Charleston, indeed, greatly resembles
+that of Manhattan Island, and though her harbor
+and her rivers are neither so large nor so deep as those
+of the port of New York, they are altogether adequate
+to a considerable maritime activity.</p>
+
+<p>The Charleston Chamber of Commerce (which, like
+everything else in Charleston dates from long ago, having
+been founded in 1748) quotes President Taft as
+calling this port the most convenient one to Panama&mdash;a
+statement which the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce
+is in position to dispute. The fact remains, how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span>ever,
+that Charleston's position on the map justifies the
+Chamber of Commerce's alliterative designation of the
+place as "The Plumb-line Port to Panama." This is so
+true that if Charleston should one day be shaken loose
+from its moorings by an earthquake&mdash;something not unknown
+there&mdash;and should fall due south upon the map,
+it would choke up the mouth of the Canal, were not
+Cuba interposed, to catch the debris.</p>
+
+<p>Before the Civil War, Charleston was the greatest cotton
+shipping port of the country, and it still handles
+large amounts of cotton and rice. Until a few years ago
+South Carolina was the chief rice producing State in
+the Union, and history records that the first rice planted
+in the Carolinas, if not in the country, was secured and
+sown by an early governor of Carolina, Thomas Smith,
+who died in 1694. It may be noted in passing that this
+Thomas Smith bore the title "Landgrave," the Lords
+Proprietors, in their plan of government for the colony&mdash;which,
+by the way, was drawn up by the philosopher
+Locke&mdash;having provided for a colonial nobility with
+titles. The titles "Baron" and "Landgrave" were hereditary
+in several Charleston families, and constitute,
+so far as I know, the only purely American titles of
+nobility that ever existed. Descendants of the old
+Landgraves still reside in Charleston, and in at least one
+instance continue to use the word "Landgrave" in connection
+with the family name.</p>
+
+<p>The prosperity of Charleston since the Civil War has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>
+depended more, perhaps, than on any other single product,
+upon the trade in phosphate, large deposits of which
+underlie this region.</p>
+
+<p>The real wonder of Charleston, the importance of the
+place among American cities, cannot, however, be said
+to have resulted primarily from commerce (though her
+commerce is growing), or from greatness of population
+(though Charleston is the metropolis of the Carolinas),
+but is involved with matters of history, tradition and
+beauty. The mantle of greatness was assumed by this
+city in colonial times, and has never been laid aside.
+Among the most distinguished early Americans were
+many Charlestonians, and in not a few instances the old
+blood still endures there, and even the old names: such
+names as Washington, Pinckney, Bull, Pringle, Rutledge,
+Middleton, Drayton, Alston, Huger, Agassiz,
+Ravenel, Izard, Gadsden, Rhett, Calhoun, Read, De
+Saussure, Lamar and Brawley, to mention but a few.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Charleston's early history is rich in pirate stories of
+the most thrilling moving-picture variety. Blackbeard,
+Stede Bonnet and other disciples of the Jolly Roger
+preyed upon Charleston shipping. Bonnet once held a
+Mr. Samuel Wragg of Charleston prisoner aboard his
+ship threatening to send his head to the city unless the
+unfortunate man should be ransomed&mdash;the demand being
+for medicines of various kinds. Colonel Rhett, of
+Charleston, captured Bonnet and his ship after a savage
+fight, but Bonnet soon after escaped from the city in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>
+woman's clothing. Still later he was retaken, hanged,
+as he deserved to be, and buried along with forty of his
+band at a point now covered by the Battery Garden, that
+exquisite little park at the tip of the city, which is the
+favorite promenade of Charlestonians. In another
+fight which occurred just off Charleston bar, a crew of
+citizens under Governor Robert Johnson defeated the
+pirate Richard Worley, who was killed in the action, and
+captured his ship, which, when the hatches were opened
+proved to be full of prisoners, thirty-six of them women.
+Even as late as the period of the War of 1812&mdash;a war
+which did not affect Charleston save in the way of destroying
+her shipping and causing poverty and distress&mdash;a
+case of brutal piracy is recorded. The daughter of
+Aaron Burr, Theodosia by name, was married to Governor
+Joseph Alston. After her father's trial for high
+treason, when he was disgraced and broken, she tried to
+comfort him, for the two were peculiarly devoted. Intending
+to visit him she set sail from Charleston for
+New York in a ship which was never heard from again.
+Somewhere I have read a description of the distraught
+father's long vigils at New York, where he would stand
+gazing out to sea long after all hope had been abandoned
+by others. Mrs. St. Julien Ravenel tells us in her charming
+book, that thirty years later an old sailor, dying in a
+village of the North Carolina coast, confessed that he
+had been one of a pirate crew which had captured the
+ship and compelled the passengers to walk the plank.
+This story is also given by Charles Gayarr&eacute;, who says<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span>
+the pirate chief was none other than Dominick You,
+who fought under Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans,
+and is buried in that city. The husband and father
+of Mrs. Alston were spared the ghastly tale, Mrs. Ravenel
+says, since both were already in their graves
+when the sailor's deathbed confession solved the mystery.</p>
+
+<p>In the Revolution, Charleston played an important
+part. Men of Charleston were, of course, among the
+signers of the Declaration of Independence. Charles
+Cotesworth Pinckney, who gave us the immortal maxim:
+"Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!"
+who was on Washington's staff, was later Ambassador
+to France and president-general of the Sons of the Cincinnati,
+was a Charlestonian of the Charlestonians, and
+lies buried in St. Michael's. Such Revolutionary names
+as Marion, Laurens, William Washington, Greene,
+Hampton, Moultrie and Sumter are associated with the
+place, and two of these are re&euml;choed in the names of
+those famous forts in Charleston harbor on which attention
+was fixed at the outbreak of the Civil War:
+Moultrie and Sumter&mdash;the latter, target for the first
+shot fired in the conflict.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly thirty years before the Civil War, Charleston
+had distinguished herself in the arts of peace by producing
+the first locomotive tried in the United States, and by
+constructing the first consecutive hundred miles of railroad
+ever built in the world, and now, with the War,
+she distinguished herself by initiating other mechanical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span>
+devices of very different character&mdash;a semi-submersible
+torpedo boat and the first submarine to torpedo a hostile
+war vessel. True, David Bushnell of Connecticut
+did construct a crude sort of submarine during the Revolutionary
+War, and succeeded in getting under a British
+ship with the machine, but he was unable to fasten
+his charge of powder and his effort consequently failed.
+Robert Fulton also experimented with submarines, or
+"plunging boats" as he called them, and was encouraged
+for a time by Napoleon I. The little <i>David</i> of the Confederate
+navy is sometimes referred to as the first submarine
+but the <i>David</i> was not actually an underwater
+boat, but a torpedo boat which could run awash, with her
+funnels and upper works slightly out of water. She
+was a cigar-shaped vessel thirty-three feet long, built of
+wood, propelled by steam, and carrying her torpedo on
+a pole, forward. Dr. St. Julien Ravenel of Charleston
+and Captain Theodore Stoney devised the craft, and she
+was built by funds subscribed by Charleston merchants.
+In command of Lieutenant W.&nbsp;T. Glassell, C.&nbsp;S.&nbsp;N., and
+with three other men aboard, she torpedoed the United
+States ship <i>New Ironsides</i>, flagship of the fleet blockading
+Charleston. The <i>New Ironsides</i> was crippled, but
+not lost. After this United States vessels blockading
+Charleston protected themselves with booms. This resulted
+in the construction of an actual undersea torpedo
+boat, the <i>Hunley</i>. This extraordinary vessel has been
+spoken of as having had the appearance of a huge iron
+coffin, as well as the attributes of one, for she proved a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>
+death-trap for successive crews on three trial trips. As
+there were no electric motors or gasoline engines in those
+days, she was run by hand, eight men crowded together
+turning a crank-shaft which operated her propeller.
+After repeated sinkings, she was raised, manned by new
+men, and sent forth again. Finally, in Charleston harbor
+she succeeded in destroying the United States man-o'-war
+<i>Housatonic</i>, but at the same time went down, herself,
+drowning or suffocating all on board. A memorial
+drinking fountain on the Battery, at the foot of Meeting
+Street, commemorates "the men of the Confederate
+Army and Navy, first in marine warfare to employ torpedo
+boats&mdash;1863-1865." On this memorial are given
+the names of sixteen men who perished in torpedo attacks
+on the blockading fleet, among them Horace L. Hunley,
+set down as inventor of the submarine boat. The
+names of fourteen others who were lost are unknown.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Lord William Campbell, younger son of the Duke of
+Argyll, was British governor at Charleston when the
+Revolution broke out. He had married a Miss Izard, of
+Charleston, who brought him a dowry of fifty thousand
+pounds, a large sum in those times. Their home was in
+a famous old house which stands on Meeting Street, and
+it was from the back yard of this house that Lord William
+fled in a rowboat to a British man-o'-war, when it
+became evident that Charleston was no longer hospitable
+to representatives of the Crown. Later his wife followed
+him to Great Britain, where they remained.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Pringle House, as it is now called, formerly the
+Brewton house, perhaps the most superb old residence in
+the city, was the headquarters of General Sir Henry
+Clinton, after he had captured Charleston, and was the
+residence of Lord Rawdon, the unpleasant British commander
+who succeeded Clinton. Cornwallis lived outside
+the town at Drayton Hall, which still stands, on the
+Ashley River. After his capture Cornwallis was exchanged
+for Henry Laurens, a distinguished Charlestonian,
+who, though he wept over the Declaration of Independence,
+was before long president of the Continental
+Congress, and later went to France, where he was
+associated with Benjamin Franklin, John Jay and John
+Adams in negotiating the treaty of peace and independence
+for America.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ravenel says in her book that Sherman destroyed
+all but one of the superb old houses on the
+Ashley River, and when we consider that Sherman's
+troops invested Charleston just before the end of the
+War, and reflect upon the general's notorious "carelessness
+with fire," we have cause for national rejoicing that
+Charleston, with its unmatched buildings and their
+splendid contents, was not laid in ashes, as were Atlanta
+and Columbia. Had Sherman burned Charleston it
+would be hard for even a Yankee to forgive him.</p>
+
+<p>Even without the aid of the Northern general, the
+city has been able to furnish disastrous conflagrations
+of her own, over a period of two centuries and more,
+and I find in the quaint reminiscences of Charles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span>
+Fraser, already alluded to, a lamentation that, because
+of fires, many of the old landmarks have disappeared,
+and the city is "losing its look of picturesque
+antiquity." To make matters worse, there came, in
+1886, an earthquake, rendering seven eighths of the
+houses uninhabitable until repairs aggregating some millions
+of dollars had been made. Up to the time of the
+earthquake the old mansion from which Lord William
+Campbell fled at the beginning of the Revolution, was
+adorned by a battlemented roof. It is recorded that
+when the shock came, an Englishman was in the house,
+and that in his eagerness to get outdoors he pushed
+others aside. As he reached the front steps, however,
+the battlements came crashing down. He was the one
+person from that house who perished, and his only monument
+is the patch of comparatively new stone where the
+broken steps have been repaired.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>My companion and I achieved entrance to one of the
+famous old Charleston houses which we had been particularly
+anxious to see, through the kindness of a lady
+to whom we had a letter of introduction, who happened
+to be a relative of the owner of the house.</p>
+
+<p>It seems necessary to explain, at this juncture, that in
+Charleston, many proper names of foreign origin have
+been corrupted in pronunciation. A few examples will
+suffice: The Dutch name Vanderhorst, conspicuous in
+the early annals of the city, has come to be pronounced
+"Van-Dross"; Legar&eacute;, the name of another distin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span>guished
+old family, commemorated in the name of Legar&eacute;
+Street, is pronounced "Legree"; De Saussure has
+become "Dess-a-sore," with the accent on the first syllable,
+and Prioleau is called "Pray-low."</p>
+
+<p>I was unaware of these matters when my companion
+and I visited the ancient house I speak of. Though I
+had heard the name of the proprietor of the mansion
+spoken many times, and recognized it as a distinguished
+Charleston name, I had never seen it written; however,
+without having given the matter much thought, I had,
+unfortunately, reached my own conclusions as to how
+it was spelled. Still more unfortunately, while I was
+delighting in the drawing-room of that wonderful old
+house, with the portraits of ladies in powdered hair and
+men in cocked hats and periwigs looking down upon
+me from the walls, I was impelled to reassure myself
+as to the spelling of the name. Let us assume that the
+name sounded like "Bowfee." That was not it but it
+will suffice for illustration.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose," I said to our charming cicerone, "that the
+family name is spelled 'B-o-w-f-e-e'?"</p>
+
+<p>I had no sooner spoken than I realized, with a sudden
+access of horror what I had done. In guessing I
+had sinned, but in guessing wrong I had ruined myself.
+All this came to me instantly and positively, as by a
+psychic message of unparalleled definiteness from the
+dead ancestors whose portraits hung upon the paneling.
+It was as though they had joined in a great ghostly shout
+of execration, which was the more awful because it was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span>
+a silent shout that jarred upon the senses rather than
+the ear drums. Then, before the lady replied, while
+the sound of my own voice saying "B-o-w-f-e-e"
+seemed to reverberate through the apartment, I suddenly
+comprehended the spirit of Charleston: understood
+that, compared with Charleston, Boston is as a
+rough mining camp, while New York hardly exists at
+all, being a mere miasma of vulgarity.</p>
+
+<p>There was a long silence, in which the lady to whom
+I had spoken gazed from the window at the rainy twilight.
+Her silence, I am persuaded, was not intended to
+rebuke me; she was not desirous of crushing me; she
+was merely stunned. Indeed, when at last she spoke,
+there was in her tone something of gentleness.</p>
+
+<p>"The name," she said, "is Beaufoy&mdash;B-e-a-u-f-o-y.
+It is of Huguenot origin."</p>
+
+<p>Passionately I wished for an earthquake&mdash;one that
+might cause the floor to open beneath me, or the roof to
+fall through and blot me from her sight. How to get
+away?&mdash;that was my one thought. To cover my embarrassment,
+I tried to make small-talk about a medallion
+of an Emperor of France, which hung upon the
+paneling. The lady said it had been given to an ancestor
+of the Beaufoys by the Emperor himself. That,
+for some reason, seemed to make things rather worse.
+I wished I had not dragged the Emperor into the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"It is getting dark," I said. "It is time we were going."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This the lady did not dispute.</p>
+
+<p>Of our actual farewells and exit from that house, I
+remember not a detail, save that, as we departed, I knew
+that we should never see this lady again; that for her
+I no longer existed, and that in my downfall I had
+dragged my companion with me. The next thing I
+definitely recollect is walking swiftly up Meeting Street
+beside him, in the rain and darkness of late afternoon.
+All the way back to the hotel we strode side by side in
+pregnant silence; neither did we speak as we ascended
+to our rooms.</p>
+
+<p>Some time later, while I was dressing for dinner, he
+entered my bedchamber. At the moment, as it happened,
+I was putting cuff-links into a dress shirt. With
+this task I busied myself, dreading to look up. In the
+meantime I felt his eyes fixed upon me. When the
+links were in, I delayed meeting his gaze by buttoning
+the little button in one sleeve-vent, above the cuff.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to say you button those idiotic little
+buttons?" he demanded. "I didn't know that anybody
+ever did that!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't always," I answered apologetically.</p>
+
+<p>"I should hope not!" he returned. Then he continued:
+"Do you remember where we are to be taken
+to-morrow?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," I said. "To the Pringle house."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said he, "I just came in to ask you, as a
+favor, not to get off any fanciful ideas that you may
+have thought up, about the way to spell Pringle."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX"></a>CHAPTER XXX<br />
+<br />
+POLITICS, A NEWSPAPER AND ST. CECILIA</h2>
+
+
+<p>Charleston is very definitely a part of South
+Carolina. That is not always the case with a
+State and its chief city. It is not the case with
+the State and the City of New York. New York City
+has about the same relation to New York State as a
+goldpiece has to a large table-top on one corner of which
+it lies. Charleston, on the other hand, harmonizes into
+its state setting, as a beautiful ancient vase harmonizes
+into the setting afforded by some rare old cabinet.
+Moreover, Charleston's individuality amongst cities is
+more or less duplicated in South Carolina's individuality
+amongst States. South Carolina is a State as definitely
+marked&mdash;though in altogether different ways&mdash;as Kansas
+or California. It is a State that does nothing by
+halves. It has rattlesnakes larger and more venomous
+than other rattlesnakes, and it has twice had the disgraceful
+Cole Blease, otherwise "To-hell-with-the-Constitution"
+Blease, as governor. For senator it has the
+old war-horse Tillman, a man so admired for his power
+that, in our easy-going way, we almost forgive his
+dives into the pork-barrel. Tillman has been to South
+Carolina more or less what the late Senator Hale
+was to his section of New England. Hale grabbed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span>
+a navy yard for Kittery, Maine (the Portsmouth
+yard), where there never should have been a navy yard;
+Tillman performed a like service, under like circumstances,
+for Charleston. Both are purely political yards.
+Naval officers opposed them, but were overridden by politicians,
+as so often happens. For in time of peace the
+army and the navy are political footballs, and it is only
+when war comes that the politicians cease kicking them
+about and cry: "Now, football, turn into a cannon-ball,
+and save your country and your country's flag!" For
+obviously, if the flag cannot be saved, the politicians will
+be without a "starry banner" to gesture at and roar
+about.</p>
+
+<p>Now, of course, with war upon us, any navy yard is a
+blessing, and the Charleston yard is being used, as it
+should be, to the utmost. But in time of peace the yard
+comes in for much criticism from the navy, the contention
+being that it is not favorably located from a strategic
+point of view, and that, owing to bars in the Cooper
+River, up which it is situated, it cannot be entered by
+large ships. The point is also made that while labor is
+cheaper at this yard than at any other, skilled metal-workers
+are hard to get. Friends of the yard contend,
+upon the other hand, that it is desirable because of its
+convenience to the Caribbean Sea, where, according to
+naval theory, this country will some day have to fight a
+battle in defense of the Panama Canal. The Pensacola
+yard, it is pointed out, is exposed and can be bombarded,
+whereas the Charleston yard is far enough inland to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span>
+safe from sea attack. As to the channel, it is navigable
+for destroyers and other small craft&mdash;though whether it
+would be so to a large destroyer which had been injured
+and was drawing more water than usual, I do not know.
+The practical situation of the navy, with regard to this
+and some of the other political yards, is like that of some
+man who has been left a lot of heterogeneous houses,
+scattered about town, none of them suited to his purposes,
+and who is obliged to scatter his family amongst
+them as best he can, or else abandon them and build a
+new house. We have been following the former course,
+and are only now preparing to adopt the latter, by establishing
+a naval base at Norfolk, as mentioned in an
+earlier chapter.</p>
+
+<p>Charleston politics have been peculiar. Until a few
+years ago the government of the city had long rested in
+the hands of a few old families, among them the Gadsdens
+and the Rhetts. The overthrow of this ancient and
+aristocratic rule by the election to the mayoralty of John
+P. Grace, an alleged "friend of the people," was
+spoken of by the New York "Sun," as being not a mere
+change in municipal government, but the fall of a
+dynasty which had controlled the city politically, financially
+and socially for a century and a half. Mr. Grace
+may be dismissed with the remark that he supported
+Blease and that he is editor of the recently founded
+Charleston "American," which I have heard called a
+Hearst newspaper, and which certainly wears the Hearst
+look about it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On January 19, 1917, this newspaper printed a full
+account of the ball of the St. Cecilia Society, Charleston's
+most sacred social organization. Never before in
+the history of the St. Cecilia Society, covering a period
+of a century and a half, had an account of one of its
+balls, and the names of those attending, been printed.
+The publication caused a great stir in the city and resulted
+in an editorial, said to have been written by Grace,
+which appeared next day, and which reveals something
+of Charleston tradition and something of Grace, as well.
+It was headed "The Saint Cecilia Ball," and ran as
+follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>We carried on yesterday a full account of the famous Saint
+Cecilia Ball. From the foundation of Charleston until the present
+moment it has been regarded as an unwritten law that the
+annual events of this ancient society shall not be touched upon.</p>
+
+<p>Of course it was permissible for the thirty-five thousand poor
+white people of Charleston to talk about the Saint Cecilia, and
+to indulge in the thrilling sensation that comes to the proverbial
+cat when she looks at a queen. Some of them, moved by curiosity,
+even ventured within half a block of the Hibernian Hall
+to observe from afar the gay festivities.</p>
+
+<p>The press being forbidden to cover Saint Cecilia events, there
+grew up in the vulgar mind weird stories of what went on behind
+the scenes. While the Saint Cecilia has enjoyed the happy
+privilege of journalistic silence, it has, therefore, correspondingly
+suffered on the tongue of gossip. The truth is that we always
+knew that the Saint Cecilia was just about the same as
+every other social collection of human beings&mdash;a little gaiety flavored
+with a little frivolity; nothing more, nothing less.</p>
+
+<p>There was a time when this society was the extreme limit of
+social exclusiveness. It was an anachronism on American soil,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span>
+a matter of pure heredity, the right to membership in which was as
+fixed as Median law, but transcendently above the median line.
+Now, however, since the society, in keeping with the spirit of
+the age, has relaxed its rules to admit from year to year (if, indeed,
+only a few now and then) members whose blood is far
+from indigo, we think it perfectly legitimate for the newspaper,
+which represents <span class="smcap">all</span> classes of people, to invade the quondam
+sanctity of its functions which are now being <span class="smcap">opened</span> to all
+classes.</p></div>
+
+<p>Following this, the editorial quoted from Don Seitz's
+book, telling how the elder James Gordon Bennett was
+in the habit of mocking "events to which he was not invited,"
+and how, in 1840, he managed to get one of his
+reporters into "Henry I Brevoort's fancy dress ball, the
+social event of the period." The quotation from Mr.
+Seitz's book ends with the following: "A far cry from
+this to 1894, when Ward McAlister, arbiter of the '400'
+at Mrs. Astor's famous ball, became a leader on social
+topics for the New York 'World.' It took many years
+for this umbrage at the reporting of social events to wear
+off and make the reporter welcome. Indeed, there is one
+place yet on the map where it is not even now permitted
+to record a social event, though the editors and owners
+of papers may be among those present. That is Charleston,
+South Carolina...."</p>
+
+<p>The Charleston editor then resumes his own reflections
+in this wise:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>We regret to say, and it is the regret of our life, that we were
+not one of the editors present at the Saint Cecilia. This, therefore,
+relieves us of the implied condition to adhere any longer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span>
+to this silly and absurd custom which, in the language of this
+great newspaper man, has made its last stand "on the map" at
+Charleston. We are glad that we have forever nailed, in the
+opinion of one hundred million ordinary people who make the
+American nation, the absurdity that there is any social event so
+sacred, any people so DIFFERENT from the rest of us poor human
+beings, that we dare not speak of them.</p></div>
+
+<p>Just why private social events should be, as Mr. Grace
+seems to assume, particularly the property of the press,
+it is somewhat difficult to explain, unless we do so by
+accepting as fundamental the theory that the press is
+justified in invading personal privacy purely in order to
+pander, on the one hand to the new breed of vulgar rich
+which thrives on "publicity," and on the other, to the
+breed of vulgar poor which enjoys reading that supremest
+of American inanities, the "society page."</p>
+
+<p>What Mr. Seitz said in his book as to the reticence of
+Charleston newspapers, where society is concerned, is,
+however, generally true&mdash;amazingly so to one who has
+become hardened to the attitude of the metropolitan press
+elsewhere. The society columns of Charleston papers
+hardly ever print the names of the city's real aristocrats,
+and in the past they have gone much farther than this,
+for they have been known to suppress important news
+stories in which prominent citizens were unpleasantly
+involved. It may be added that earthquakes are evidently
+classed as members of the aristocracy, since occasional
+tremors felt in the city are pointedly ignored by
+the press. Whether or not the paper edited by the fear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span>less
+Mr. Grace ignores these manifestations I am unable
+to say. One can easily fancy his taking a courageous
+stand on such a subject as well as upon social matters.
+Indeed, with a few slight changes, his editorial upon
+the St. Cecilia ball, might be made to serve equally well
+after an earthquake shock. He might say:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The press being forbidden to cover earthquakes, there grew
+up in the vulgar mind weird stories of what went on behind the
+scenes. While the earthquakes have enjoyed the happy privilege
+of journalistic silence, they have, therefore, correspondingly
+suffered on the tongue of gossip.</p></div>
+
+<p>He could also make the point that since, "in keeping
+with the spirit of the age," the earthquake shakes people
+"(if indeed only a few of them now and then), whose
+blood is far from indigo, we think it perfectly legitimate
+for the newspaper, which represents ALL classes of people,
+to invade the quondam sanctity of its functions
+which are now being OPENED to all classes."</p>
+
+<p>But of course, where the editor of such a paper is
+concerned, there is always the element of natural delicacy
+and nicety of feeling to be considered. Mr. Grace
+felt that because he was not present at the St. Cecilia
+ball, he was free to print things about it. An earthquake
+would not be like the St. Cecilia Society&mdash;it would
+not draw the line at Mr. Grace. At a Charleston earthquake
+he would undoubtedly be present. The question
+therefore arises: Having been PRESENT, might his
+AMOUR PROPRE make him feel that to REPORT
+the event would not be altogether in GOOD TASTE?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The St. Cecilia Society began in 1737 with a concert
+given on St. Cecilia's day, and continued for many years
+to give concerts at which the musicians were both amateurs
+and professionals. Josiah Quincy, in his "Journal,"
+tells of having attended one of these concerts in
+1773, and speaks of the richness of the men's apparel,
+noting that there were "many with swords on."</p>
+
+<p>When, in 1819, difficulty was experienced in obtaining
+performers, it was proposed that a ball be held in place
+of a concert, and by 1822 the society was definitely transformed
+from a musical to a dancing organization, which
+it has remained ever since.</p>
+
+<p>The statement in the "American" editorial that St.
+Cecilia balls have been the subject of scandalous gossip
+is, I believe, quite false, as is also the statement that the
+balls are now "being opened to all classes."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ravenel in her book tells how the organization
+is run. Members are elected, and all are men, though
+the names of the ladies of a member's household are
+placed on the club list. "Only death or removal from
+the city erases them&mdash;change of fortune affects them not
+at all." A man whose progenitors have belonged to the
+society is almost certain of election, though there have
+been cases in which undesirables of good family have
+been blackballed. Two blackballs are sufficient to cause
+the rejection of a candidate. Men who are not of old
+Charleston stock are carefully investigated before they
+can be elected, but of late years not a few such, having
+been considered desirable, have become members. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span>
+members elect officers and a board of managers, and
+these have entire control of the society. Three balls are
+given each year, one in January and two in February.
+Until a few years ago the hall in which the balls are given
+was lighted by innumerable candelabra; only lately has
+electricity been used. The society owns its own plate,
+damask, china and glassware, and used to own a good
+stock of wines. Of late years, I believe, wines have not
+been served, the beverage of the evening consisting of
+coffee, hot and iced. The greatest decorum is observed
+at the balls. Young ladies go invariably with chaperones;
+following each dance there is a brief promenade,
+whereafter the young ladies are returned to their duennas&mdash;who,
+if they be Charleston dowagers in perfection,
+usually carry turkey-feather fans. Cards are filled
+months in advance. As lately as the year 1912 every
+other dance was a square dance; since then, however, I
+believe that square dances have gone the way of candle-light.
+The society has an endowment and membership
+is inexpensive, costing but fifteen dollars a year, including
+the three balls. This enables young men starting
+in life to be members without going into extravagance,
+and is in accord with the best social tradition of Charleston,
+where the difference between an aristocracy and a
+plutocracy is well understood. Most of the rules of the
+organization are unwritten. One is that men shall not
+smoke on the premises during a ball; another is that divorced
+persons shall not be members or guests of the
+society. In this respect the St. Cecilia Society may be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span>
+said, in effect, to be applying, socially, the South Carolina
+law; for South Carolina is the only State in the Union
+in which divorces are not granted for any cause whatsoever.</p>
+
+<p>This reminds me that the State has an anti-tipping
+law. The Pullman porter is required to hang up copies
+of the law in his car when it enters South Carolina, and
+copies of it are displayed on the doors of hotel bedrooms.
+The penalty for giving or receiving a tip is a fine of from
+ten to one hundred dollars, or thirty days in jail. Perhaps
+the law is observed. I know, at least, that no one
+offered me a tip while I was in that State.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The old grandees of Charleston were usually sent to
+Oxford or Cambridge for an education and English tradition
+still remains, I fancy, the foundation for what
+Charleston social life is to-day. I thought at first that
+Charlestonians spoke like the English, but later came to
+the conclusion that there is in the pronunciation of some
+of them a quality resembling a very faint brogue&mdash;a
+brogue such as might be possessed by a cultivated Irishman
+who had moved to England in his boyhood, and had
+been educated there. The "vanishing <i>y</i>" of tidewater
+Virginia is also used by some Charlestonians, I am told,
+though I do not remember hearing it.</p>
+
+<p>Generalizations on the subject of dialectic peculiarities
+are dangerous, as I have good reason to know. Naturally,
+not all Charlestonians speak alike. I should say,
+however, that the first <i>a</i> in the words "Papa" and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span>
+"Mama" is frequently given a short sound, as <i>a</i> in
+"hat"; also that many one-syllable words are strung out
+into two. For instance, "eight" is heard as "ay-et"
+("ay" as in "gray"); "where" as "whey-uh," or
+"way-uh," and "hair" as "hay-uh." "Why?" sometimes
+sounds like "Woi?" Such words as "calm" and "palm"
+are sometimes given the short <i>a</i>: "cam" and "pam"&mdash;which,
+of course, occurs elsewhere, too. The name
+"Ralph" is pronounced as "Rafe" (<i>a</i> as in "rate")&mdash;which
+I believe is Old English; and the names "Saunders"
+and "Sanders" are pronounced exactly alike, both
+being called "Sanders." Tomatoes are sometimes called
+"tomatters." Two dishes I never heard of before are
+"Hopping John," which is rice cooked with peas, and
+"Limping Kate," which is some other rice combination.
+What we, in the North, call an "ice-cream freezer" becomes
+in Charleston an "ice-cream <i>churn</i>." "Good
+morning" is the salutation up to three <span class="smcap">p.m.</span>, whereas in
+other parts of the South "Good evening" is said for the
+Northern "Good afternoon." Charlestonians speak of
+being "parrot-toed"&mdash;not "pigeon-toed." Where, in the
+North, we would ask a friend, "How are things out your
+way?" a Charlestonian may inquire, "How are things
+out your <i>side</i>?" The expression "going out" means to
+go to St. Cecilia Balls, and I have been told that it is
+never used in any other way. That is, if a lady is asked:
+"Are you going out this winter?" it means definitely,
+"Are you going to the St. Cecilia balls?" If you heard
+it said that some one was "<i>on</i> Mount Pleasant," you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span>
+might suppose that Mount Pleasant was an island; but
+it is not; it is a village on the mainland across the Cooper
+River. And what is to me one of the most curious expressions
+I ever heard is "do don't," as when a lady
+called to her daughter, "Martha, <i>do</i> don't slam that door
+again!"</p>
+
+<p>How generally these peculiarities crop out in the
+speech of Charleston I cannot say. It occurs to me,
+however, that, assembled and catalogued in this way,
+they may create the idea that slovenly English is generally
+spoken in the city. If so they give an impression
+which I should not wish to convey, since Charleston has
+no more peculiarities of language than New York or
+Boston, and not nearly so many as a number of other
+cities. Cultivated Charlestonians have, moreover, the
+finest voices I have heard in any American city.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXI" id="CHAPTER_XXXI"></a>CHAPTER XXXI<br />
+<br />
+"GULLA" AND THE BACK COUNTRY</h2>
+
+
+<p>The most extraordinary negro dialect I know of
+is the "gulla" (sometimes spelled "gullah") of
+the rice plantation negroes of South Carolina
+and of the islands off the South Carolina and Georgia
+coast. I believe that the region of Charleston is headquarters
+for "gulla niggers," though I have heard the
+argot spoken as far south as Sepeloe Island, off the town
+of Darien, Georgia, near the Florida line. Gulla is such
+an extreme dialect as to be almost a language by itself.
+Whence it came I do not know, but I judge that it is a
+combination of English with the primitive tongues of
+African tribes, just as the dialect of old Creole negroes,
+in Louisiana, is a combination of African tribal tongues
+with French.</p>
+
+<p>A Charleston lady tells me that negroes on different
+rice plantations&mdash;even on adjoining plantations&mdash;speak
+dialects which differ somewhat, and I know of my own
+knowledge that thick gulla is almost incomprehensible
+to white persons who have not learned, by long practice,
+to understand it.</p>
+
+<p>A lady sent a gulla negro with a message to a friend.
+This is the message as it was delivered:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Missis seh all dem turrah folk done come shum.
+Enty you duh gwine come shum?" (To get the gulla
+effect the sounds should be uttered very rapidly.)</p>
+
+<p>Translated, this means: "Mistress says all them other
+folks have come to see her. Aren't you coming to see
+her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Shum" is a good gulla word. It means all kinds of
+things having to do with seeing&mdash;<i>to see her</i>, <i>to see him</i>,
+<i>to see it</i>. Thus, "You shum, enty?" may mean, <i>You
+see him</i>&mdash;<i>her</i>&mdash;or <i>it</i>? or <i>You see what he</i>&mdash;<i>she</i>&mdash;or <i>it</i>&mdash;<i>is
+doing</i>, or <i>has done</i>? For gulla has no genders and
+no tenses. "Enty" is a general question: <i>Aren't you?
+Didn't you? Isn't it?</i> etc. Another common gulla
+word is "Buckra" which means <i>a white man of the
+upper class</i>, in contradistinction to a poor white. I have
+known a negro to refer to "de frame o' de bud," meaning
+the carcass, or frame, of a fowl. "Ay ain' day"
+means "They aren't (ain't) there."</p>
+
+<p>A friend of mine who resided at Bluffton, South
+Carolina, has told me of an old gulla fisherman who
+spoke in parables.</p>
+
+<p>A lady would ask him: "Have you any fish to-day?"
+To which, if replying affirmatively, he would answer:
+"Missis, de gate open"; meaning, "The door (of the
+'car,' or fish-box) is open to you." If he had no fish he
+would reply: "Missis, ebb-tide done tack (take) crick";
+signifying: "The tide has turned and it is too late to go
+to catch fish." This old man called whisky "muhgundy
+smash," the term evidently derived from some idea of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span>
+the word "burgundy" combined with the word "mash."</p>
+
+<p>Here is a gulla dialect story, with a line-for-line translation.
+A train has killed a cow, and a negro witness
+is being examined by a justice of the peace:</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Justice</span>--Uncle John, did you see what killed Sam's cow?</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Negro</span>--Co'ose Uh shum.</td><td align='left'>(Of) course I saw him.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Justice</span>--What was it, Uncle John?</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Negro</span>--Dat black debble you-all</td><td align='left'>(It was) that black devil you-all</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>runnin' tru we lan'. Nigga duh</td><td align='left'>(are) running through our land.
+(A) nigger (fireman) he</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>stan' deh, duh po' coal in eh stomach.</td><td align='left'>stands there (and) he pours coal
+into its stomach.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Buckra duh sit up on eh seat,</td><td align='left'>(A) white man (engineer)
+he sits up on his seat.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>duh smoke eh cigah, an' ebry tahme</td><td align='left'>(and) he smokes his cigar, and every time</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>eh twis' eh tail eh run fasteh. An'</td><td align='left'>he twists its (engine's) tail it runs
+faster. And</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>eh screams dis lak uh pantuh. Eben</td><td align='left'>it screams just like a panther. Even</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>w'en eh git tuh de station, eh stan'</td><td align='left'>when it gets to the station, it stands</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>tuh de station an' seh: "<i>Kyan</i>-stop!</td><td align='left'>at the station and says: "<i>Can't</i>-stop!</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><i>Kyan</i>-stop! <i>Kyan</i>-stop!"</td><td align='left'><i>Can't</i>-stop! <i>Can't</i>-stop!"</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Sam cow binna browse down deh</td><td align='left'>Sam's cow was browsing down there</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>tuh Bull Head Crick. Eh ram eh</td><td align='left'>to (at) Bull Head Creek. It (engine) rammed its</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>nose innum, an' eh bussum wahde</td><td align='left'>nose into it (the cow), and it
+busted him wide</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>loose. Eh t'row eh intrus on de</td><td align='left'>loose (open). It threw its entrails on the</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>reyel on de cross-tie, an' clean-up</td><td align='left'>rails, on the cross-ties, and clean up</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>on de tele<i>gram</i> pole.</td><td align='left'>on the telegraph pole.</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>Mrs. Leiding (Harriette Kershaw Leiding), of
+Charleston, has done a fine service to lovers of Old
+Charleston, and its ways, in collecting and publishing in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span>
+pamphlet form a number of the cries of the negro street
+vendors. Of these I shall rob Mrs. Leiding's booklet
+of but one example&mdash;the cry of a little negro boy, a peddler
+of shrimp ("swimp"), who stood under a window
+in the early morning and sang:</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="music/dawtry.midi">Listen</a> | <a href="music/dawtry.ly">View/Download Lilypond</a></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 676px;">
+<img src="images/dawtry.png" width="676" height="98" alt="An&#39; a Daw-try Daw! an&#39; a swimp-y raw! an&#39; a Daw-try Daw-try Daw-try Raw Swimp." title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>While on the subject of the Charleston negro I must
+not neglect two of his superstitions. One is his belief
+that a two-dollar bill is unlucky. The curse may be removed
+only by tearing off a corner of the bill. The
+other is that it is unlucky to hand any one a pin. A
+Charleston lady told me that when she was motoring
+and wished to pin her hat or her veil, she could never
+get her negro chauffeur to hand her pins. Instead he
+would stick them in the laprobe, or in the sleeve of his
+coat, whence she could pick them out herself. Another
+lady told me of the case of an old black slave who lived
+years ago on a plantation on the Santee River, owned
+by her family. This slave, who was a very powerful,
+taciturn and high-tempered man, had a curious habit of
+disappearing for about half an hour each day. He
+would go into the swamp, and for many years no one
+ever followed him, the other negroes being afraid to do
+so because of his temper and his strength. At last,
+however, they did spy upon him and discovered that in
+the swamp there stood a cypress tree on which were
+strange rude carvings, before which he prostrated him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span>self.
+No one ever learned the exact significance of
+this, but it was assumed that the man practised some
+barbaric form of worship, brought from Africa.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The country back of Charleston is very lovely and is
+rich in interest, even though most of the houses on the
+old estates have been destroyed. Drayton Hall, however,
+stands, and the old Drayton estate, Magnolia, not
+far distant from the Hall (which was on another estate),
+has one of the most famous gardens in the world.
+Seven persons touching fingertips can barely encircle the
+trunks of some of the live-oaks at Magnolia; there are
+camellias more than twenty feet high, and a rose tree
+nearly as large, but the great glory of the garden is
+its huge azaleas&mdash;ninety-two varieties, it is said&mdash;which,
+when they blossom in the spring, are so wonderful that
+people make long journeys for no other purpose than to
+see them.</p>
+
+<p>In "Harper's Magazine" for December, 1875, I find
+an account of the gardens which were, at that time, far
+from new. The azaleas were then twelve and thirteen
+feet tall; now, I am told, they reach to a height of more
+than twenty feet, with a corresponding spread.</p>
+
+<p>"It is almost impossible," says the anonymous writer
+of the article, "to give a Northerner any idea of the
+affluence of color in this garden when its flowers are in
+bloom. Imagine a long walk with the moss-draped live-oaks
+overhead, a fairy lake and a bridge in the distance,
+and on each side the great fluffy masses of rose and pink<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span>
+and crimson, reaching far above your head, thousands
+upon tens of thousands of blossoms packed close together,
+with no green to mar the intensity of their color,
+rounding out in swelling curves of bloom down to the
+turf below, not pausing a few inches above it and showing
+bare stems or trunk, but spreading over the velvet,
+and trailing out like the rich robes of an empress.
+Stand on one side and look across the lawn; it is like a
+mad artist's dream of hues; it is like the Arabian nights;
+eyes that have never had color enough find here a full
+feast, and go away satisfied at last. And with all their
+gorgeousness, the hues are delicately mingled; the magic
+effect is produced not by unbroken banks of crude reds,
+but by blended shades, like the rich Oriental patterns of
+India shawls, which the European designers, with all
+their efforts, can never imitate."</p>
+
+<p>Another remarkable garden, though not the equal of
+Magnolia, is at Middleton Place, not many miles away,
+and still another is at the pleasant winter resort town of
+Summerville, something more than twenty miles above
+Charleston. The latter, called the Pinehurst Tea Garden,
+is said to be the only tea garden in the United
+States. It is asserted that the teas produced here are
+better than those of China and Japan, and are equal to
+those of India. The Government is co&ouml;perating with
+the owners of this garden with a view to introducing tea
+planting in the country in a large way.</p>
+
+<p>The finest grade of tea raised here is known as "Shelter
+Tea," and is sold only at the gardens, the price being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span>
+five dollars per pound. It is a tea of the Assam species
+grown under shelters of wire mesh and pine straw.
+This type of tea is known in Japan, where it originated,
+as "sugar tea," because, owing to the fact that it is grown
+in the shade, the sap of the bush, which is of starchy
+quality, is turned chemically into sugar, giving the leaf
+an exceedingly delicate flavor.</p>
+
+<p>From the superintendent in charge of the gardens I
+learned something of the bare facts of the tea growing
+industry. I had always been under the impression that
+the name "pekoe" referred to a certain type of tea, but
+he told me that the word is Chinese for "eyelash," and
+came to be used because the tip leaves of tea bushes,
+when rolled and dried, resemble eyelashes. These
+leaves&mdash;"pekoe tips"&mdash;make the most choice tea. The
+second leaves make the tea called "orange pekoe," while
+the third leaves produce a grade of tea called simply
+"pekoe." In China it is customary to send three groups
+of children, successively, to pick the leaves, the first
+group picking only the tips, the second group the second
+leaves, and the third group the plain pekoe leaves. At
+the Pinehurst Tea Gardens the picking is done by colored
+children, ranging from eight to fifteen years of age.
+All the leaves are picked together and are later separated
+by machinery.</p>
+
+<p>Summerville itself seems a lovely lazy town. It is
+the kind of place to which I should like to retire in the
+winter if I had a book to write. One could be very comfortable,
+and there would be no radical distractions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span>&mdash;unless
+one chanced to see the Most Beautiful Girl in the
+World, who has been known to spend winters at that
+place.</p>
+
+<p>On the way from Charleston to Summerville, if you
+go by motor, you pass The Oaks, an estate with a new
+colonial house standing where an ancient mansion used
+to stand. A long avenue bordered by enormous live-oaks,
+leading to this house, gives the place its name, and
+affords a truly noble approach. Here, in Revolutionary
+times, Marion, "the Swamp Fox," used to camp.</p>
+
+<p>Not far distant from the old gate at The Oaks is Goose
+Creek Church&mdash;the most interesting church I have ever
+seen. The Parish of St. James, Goose Creek, was established
+by act of the Assembly, November 30, 1706,
+and the present church, a brick building of crudely simple
+architecture, was built about 1713. The interior of
+the church, though in good condition, is the oldest looking
+thing, I think, in the United States. The memorial
+tablets in the walls, with their foreign names and antique
+lettering, the curious old box pews, the odd little gallery
+at the back, the tall pulpit, with its winding stair, above
+all the Royal Arms of Great Britain done in relief on
+the chancel wall and brilliantly colored&mdash;all these make
+Goose Creek Church more like some little Norman
+church in England, than like anything one might reasonably
+expect to find on this side of the world.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 413px;">
+<a name="p344jpg" id="p344jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p344.jpg" width="413" height="500" alt="The interior is the oldest looking thing in the United States&mdash;Goose Creek Church" title="" />
+<span class="caption">The interior is the oldest looking thing in the United States&mdash;Goose Creek Church</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Countless items of curious interest hang about the
+church and parish. Michaux, the French botanist who
+came to this country in 1786, lived for a time at Goose<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span>
+Creek. He brought with him the first four camellias
+seen in the United States, planting them at Middleton
+Place above Drayton Hall, where, I believe, they still
+stand, having reached a great height. A British officer
+known as Mad Archy Campbell was married at Goose
+Creek Church during the Revolution, under romantic
+circumstances. Miss Paulina Phelps, a young lady of
+the parish, was a great beauty and a great coquette,
+who amused herself alike with American and British
+officers. Campbell met and fell desperately in love with
+her, and it is said that she encouraged him, though without
+serious intent. One day he induced her to go horseback-riding
+with him and on the ride made love to her
+so vehemently that she was "intimidated into accepting
+him." They rode to the rectory, and Campbell, meeting
+the rector, demanded that he should marry them at once.
+The dominie replied that he would do so "with the consent
+of the young lady and her mother," but Campbell
+proposed to await no such formalities. Drawing his
+pistol he gave the minister the choice of performing the
+ceremony then and there, or perishing. This argument
+proved conclusive and the two were promptly wed.</p>
+
+<p>When Goose Creek was within the British lines it is
+said that the minister proceeded, upon one occasion, to
+utter the prayer for the King of England, in the Litany.
+At the end of the prayer there were no "Amens," the
+congregation having been composed almost entirely, as
+the story goes, of believers in American independence.
+Into the awkward pause after the prayer one voice from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span>
+the congregation was at last injected. It was the voice
+of old Ralph Izard, saying heartily, not "Amen," but
+"Good Lord, deliver us!" There is a tablet in the
+church to the memory of this worthy.</p>
+
+<p>The story is told, also, of an old gentleman, a member
+of the congregation in Revolutionary times, who informed
+the minister that if he again read the prayer for
+the King he would throw his prayer-book at his head.
+The minister took this for a jest, but when he began to
+read the prayer on the following Sunday, he found that
+it was not, for sure enough the prayer-book came
+hurtling through the air. Prayer-books were heavier
+then than they are now, and it is said that as a result of
+this episode, the minister refused to hold service thereafter.</p>
+
+<p>The church is not now used regularly, an occasional
+memorial service only being held there.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Charleston is a hard place to leave. Wherever one
+may be going from there, the change is likely to be
+for the worse. Nevertheless, it is impossible to stay
+forever; so at last you muster up your resignation and
+your resources, buy tickets, and reluctantly prepare to
+leave. If you depart as we did, you go by rail, driving
+to the station in the venerable bus of the Charleston
+Transfer Company&mdash;a conveyance which, one judges,
+may be coeval with the city's oldest mansions. Little as
+we wished to leave Charleston we did not wish to defer
+our departure through any such banality as the unneces<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span>sary
+missing of a train. Therefore as we waited for
+the bus, on the night of leaving, and as train time drew
+nearer and nearer, with no sign of the lumbering old
+vehicle, we became somewhat concerned.</p>
+
+<p>When the bus did come at last there was little time
+to spare; nevertheless the conductor, an easygoing man
+of great volubility, consumed some precious minutes in
+gossiping with the hotel porter, and then with arranging
+and rearranging the baggage on the roof of the bus.
+His manner was that of an amateur bus conductor, trying
+a new experiment. After watching his performances
+for a time, looking occasionally at my watch, by
+way of giving him a hint, I broke out into expostulation
+at the unnecessary delay.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?" asked the man in a gentle, almost
+grieved tone.</p>
+
+<p>"There's very little time!" I returned. "We don't
+wish to miss the train."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, all right," said the bus conductor, making more
+haste, as though the information I had given him put a
+different face on matters generally.</p>
+
+<p>Presently we started. After a time he collected our
+fares. I have forgotten whether the amount was twenty-five
+or fifty cents. At all events, as he took the money
+from my hand he said to me reassuringly:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you worry, sir! If I don't get you to the train
+I'll give you this money back. That's fair, ain't it?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXII" id="CHAPTER_XXXII"></a>CHAPTER XXXII<br />
+<br />
+OUT OF THE PAST</h2>
+
+
+<p>By no means all the leading citizens of Atlanta
+were in a frame of mind to welcome General
+Sherman when, ten or a dozen years after the
+Civil War, he revisited the city. Captain Evan P.
+Howell, a former Confederate officer, then publisher of
+the Atlanta "Constitution," was, however, not one of
+the Atlantans who ignored the general's visit. Taking
+his young son, Clark, he called upon the general at the
+old Kimball House (later destroyed by fire), and had
+an interesting talk with him. Clark Howell, who has
+since succeeded his father as publisher of the "Constitution,"
+was born while the latter was fighting at Chickamauga,
+and was consequently old enough, at the time
+of the call on Sherman, to remember much of what was
+said. He heard the general tell Captain Howell why
+he had made such a point of taking Atlanta, and as Sherman's
+military reasons for desiring possession of the
+Georgia city explain, to a large extent, Atlanta's subsequent
+development, I shall quote them as Clark Howell
+gave them to me.</p>
+
+<p>First however, it is perhaps worth while to remind
+the reader of the bare circumstances preceding the fall<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span>
+of Atlanta. After the defeat of the Confederate forces
+at Chattanooga, General Joseph E. Johnston's army fell
+back slowly on Atlanta, much as the French fell back on
+Paris at the beginning of the European War, shortening
+their own lines of communication while those of the advancing
+Germans were being continually attenuated.
+As the Germans kept after the French, Sherman kept
+after Johnston; and as Joffre was beginning to be criticized
+for failing to make a stand against the enemy, so
+was Johnston criticized as he continued to retire without
+giving battle. One of the chief differences between
+Joffre's retirement and Johnston's lies, however, in the
+length of time consumed; for whereas the French retreat
+on Paris covered a few days only, the Confederate retreat
+on Atlanta covered weeks and months, giving the
+Confederate Government time to become impatient with
+Johnston and finally to remove him from command before
+the time arrived when, in his judgment, the stand
+against Sherman should be made. Nor is it inconceivable
+that, had the French retreat lasted as long as Johnston's,
+Joffre would have been removed and would have
+lost the opportunity to justify his Fabian policy, as he
+did so gloriously at the Battle of the Marne.</p>
+
+<p>Though Atlanta was, at the time of the war, a city
+of less than 10,000 inhabitants, it was the chief base of
+supply for men and munitions in the Far South.</p>
+
+<p>"When my father asked him why all his effort and
+power had been centered, after Chickamauga, on the
+capture of Atlanta," said Clark Howell, "I remember<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span>
+that General Sherman extended one hand with the fingers
+spread apart, explaining the strategic situation by
+imagining Atlanta as occupying a position where the
+wrist joins the hand, while the thumb and fingers represented,
+successively, New Orleans, Mobile, Savannah,
+Charleston, and Norfolk. 'If I held Atlanta,' he said,
+'I was only one day's journey from these chief cities of
+the South.'"</p>
+
+<p>In spite, therefore, of the assertion, which I have
+heard made, that the prosperity of Atlanta is "founded
+on insurance premiums, coca-cola, and hot air," it seems
+to me that it is founded on something very much more
+solid. Nor do I refer to the layer of granite which underlies
+the city. The prosperity of Atlanta is based
+upon the very feature which made its capture seem to
+Sherman so desirable: its strategic position as a central
+point in the Far South.</p>
+
+<p>Neither in Atlanta nor in any other part of Georgia
+is General Sherman remembered with a feeling that
+can properly be described as affectionate, though it
+may be added that Atlanta has good reason for remembering
+him warmly. The burning of Atlanta by Sherman
+did not, however, prove an unalloyed disaster, for
+the war came to an end soon after, and the rebuilding
+of the city supplied work for thousands of former Confederate
+soldiers, and also drew to Atlanta many of the
+strong men who played leading parts in the subsequent
+commercial upbuilding of the place: such men as the late
+General Alfred Austell, Captain James W. English, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span>
+the three Inman brothers, Samuel, John, and Hugh&mdash;to
+mention but a few names. The First National Bank,
+established by General Austell, is, I believe, Atlanta's
+largest bank to-day, and was literally the first national
+bank established in Georgia, if not in the whole South,
+after the war.</p>
+
+<p>Woodrow Wilson was admitted to the bar in Atlanta,
+and, if I mistake not, practised law in an office not far
+from that meeting place of highways called Five Points.
+Here, at Five Points, two important trails crossed, long
+before there was any Atlanta: the north-and-south trail
+between Savannah and Ross's Landing, and the east-and-west
+trail, which followed the old Indian trails between
+Charleston and New Orleans. When people from
+this part of the country wished to go to Ohio, Indiana,
+or the Mississippi Valley, they would take the old north-and-south
+trail to Ross's Landing, follow the Tennessee
+River to where it empties into the Ohio, near Paducah,
+Kentucky, and proceed thence to Mississippi.</p>
+
+<p>In the thirties, Atlanta&mdash;or rather the site of Atlanta,
+for the city was not founded until 1840&mdash;was on the border
+of white civilization in northern Georgia, all the
+country to the north of the Chattahoochee River, which
+flows a few miles distant from the city, having belonged
+to the Cherokee Indians, who had been moved there
+from Florida. Even in those times the Cherokees were
+civilized, as Indians go, for they lived in huts and practised
+agriculture. Of course, however, their civilization
+was not comparable with that of the white man. If<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span>
+they had been as civilized as he, they might have driven
+him out of Florida, instead of having been themselves
+driven out, and they might have driven him out of
+Georgia, too, instead of having been pushed on, as they
+were, to the Indian Territory&mdash;eighteen thousand of
+them, under military supervision, on boats from Ross's
+Landing&mdash;leaving the beautiful white Cherokee rose,
+which grows wild and in great profusion, in the spring,
+as almost their sole memorial on Georgia soil.</p>
+
+<p>As Georgia became settled the trails developed into
+wagon and stage routes, and later they were followed,
+approximately, by the railroads. After three railroads
+had reached Atlanta, the State of Georgia engaged in
+what may have been the first adventure, in this country,
+along the lines of government-owned railroads: namely,
+the building of the Western &amp; Atlantic, from Atlanta to
+Chattanooga, to form a link between the lower South
+and the rapidly developing West. This road was built
+in the forties, and it was along its line that Johnston retreated
+before Sherman, from Chattanooga to Atlanta.
+Though it is now leased and operated by the Nashville,
+Chattanooga &amp; St. Louis Railroad Company, it is still
+owned by the State of Georgia. The lease, however, expires
+soon, and (an interesting fact in view of the continued
+agitation in other parts of the country for government
+ownership of corporations) there is a strong sentiment
+in Georgia in favor of selling the railroad; for it is
+estimated that, at a fair price, it would yield a sum sufficient
+not only to wipe out the entire bonded indebtedness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span>
+of the State ($7,000,000), but to leave ten or twelve millions
+clear in the State treasury.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>At Roswell, Georgia, a sleepy little hamlet in the
+hills, not many miles from Atlanta, stands Bulloch Hall,
+where Martha ("Mittie") Bulloch, later Mrs. Theodore
+Roosevelt, mother of the President, was born. Roswell
+was originally settled, long ago, by people from Savannah,
+Darien, and other towns of the flat, hot country
+near the coast, who drove there in their carriages and
+remained during the summer. After a time, however,
+three prosperous families&mdash;the Bullochs, Dunwoodys,
+and Barrington Kings&mdash;made their permanent homes at
+Roswell.</p>
+
+<p>Bulloch Hall is one of those old white southern colonial
+houses the whole front of which consists of a
+great pillared portico, in the Greek style, giving a look
+of dignity and hospitality. Almost all such houses are,
+as they should be, surrounded by fine old trees; those at
+Bulloch Hall are especially fine: tall cedars, ancient
+white oaks, giant osage oranges, and a pair of holly
+trees, one at either side of the walk near the front door.</p>
+
+<p>Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., and Mittie Bulloch met here
+when they were respectively seventeen and fifteen years
+of age. A half sister of Miss Mittie had married a
+relative of the Roosevelts and gone from Roswell to live
+in Philadelphia, and it was while visiting at her home
+that young Roosevelt, hearing a great deal of the South,
+conceived a desire to go there. This resulted in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span>
+first visit to Bulloch Hall, and his meeting with Mittie
+Bulloch. On his return to the North he was sent
+abroad, but two or three years later when he went again
+to visit his relatives in Philadelphia, Miss Mittie was
+also a guest at their house, and this time the two became
+engaged.</p>
+
+<p>Save that the Bulloch furniture is no longer there, the
+interior of the old Georgia residence stands practically
+as it was when Theodore Roosevelt and Mittie Bulloch
+were married in the dining room. Through the center,
+from front to back, runs a wide hall, on either side of
+which is a pair of spacious square rooms, each with a
+fireplace, each with large windows looking out over the
+beautiful hilly country which spreads all about. It
+is a lovely house in a lovely setting, and, though the Bullochs
+reside there no longer, Miss Mittie Bulloch is not
+forgotten in Roswell, for one of her bridesmaids, Miss
+Evelyn King, now Mrs. Baker, still resides in Barrington
+Hall, not far distant from the old Bulloch homestead.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXIII<br />
+<br />
+ALIVE ATLANTA</h2>
+
+
+<p>An army officer, a man of broad sympathies,
+familiar with the whole United States, warned
+me before I went south that I must not judge
+the South by northern standards.</p>
+
+<p>"On the side of picturesqueness and charm," he said,
+"the South can more than hold its own against the rest
+of the country; likewise on the side of office-holding and
+flowery oratory; but you must not expect southern cities
+to have the energy you are accustomed to in the North."</p>
+
+<p>As to the picturesqueness, charm, officeholding, and
+oratory, I found his judgments substantially correct,
+but though I did perceive a certain lack of energy in
+some small cities, I should not call that trait a leading
+one in the larger southern cities to-day. On the contrary,
+I was impressed, in almost every large center that
+I visited, with the fact that, in the South more, perhaps,
+than in any other part of the country, a great awakening
+is in progress. The dormant period of the South is
+past, and all manner of developments are everywhere in
+progress. Nor do I know of any city which better exemplifies
+southern growth and progress than Atlanta.</p>
+
+<p>My Baedeker, dated 1909, opens its description of At<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span>lanta
+with the statement that the German consul there
+is Dr. E. Zoepffel. I doubt it&mdash;but let us pass over that.
+It describes Atlanta as "a prosperous commercial and
+industrial city and an important railroad center, well
+situated, 1030-1175 feet above the sea, enjoying a
+healthy and bracing climate." That is true. Atlanta
+is, if I mistake not, the highest important city east of
+Denver, and I believe her climate is in part responsible
+for her energy, as it is also for the fact that her vegetation
+is more like that of a northern than a southern
+city, elms and maples rather than magnolias, being the
+trees of the Atlanta streets.</p>
+
+<p>Baedeker gave Atlanta about 90,000 inhabitants in
+1909, but the census of 1910 jumped her up to more
+than 150,000, while the estimate of 1917 in the "World
+Almanac" credits her with about 180,000. Moreover,
+in the almanac's list of the largest cities of the earth,
+Atlanta comes twentieth from the top. It is my duty,
+perhaps, to add that the list is arranged alphabetically&mdash;which
+reminds me that some cynic has suggested that
+there may have been an alphabetical arrangement of
+names, also, in the celebrated list in which Abou Ben
+Adhem's "name led all the rest." Nevertheless, it may
+be stated that, according to the almanac's population
+figures, Atlanta is larger than the much more ancient
+city of Athens (I refer to Athens, Greece; not Athens,
+Georgia), as well as such considerable cities as Bari,
+Bochum, Graz, Kokand, and Omsk. Atlanta is, in
+short, a city of about the size of Goteborg, and if she has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span>
+not yet achieved the dimensions of Baku, Belem, Changsha,
+Tashkent, or West Ham, she is growing rapidly,
+and may some day surpass them all; yes, and even that
+thriving metropolis, Yekaterinoslav.</p>
+
+<p>As to the "healthy and bracing climate," I know that
+Atlanta is cool and lovely in the spring, and I am told
+that her prosperous families do not make it a practice
+to absent themselves from home during the summer,
+according to the custom of the corresponding class in
+many other cities, northern as well as southern.</p>
+
+<p>Atlanta is one of the few large inland cities located
+neither upon a river nor a lake. When the city was
+founded, the customs of life in Georgia were such that
+no one ever dreamed that the State might some day go
+dry. Having plenty of other things to drink, the early
+settlers gave no thought to water. But, as time went on,
+and prohibition became a more and more important
+issue, the citizens of Atlanta began to perceive that, in
+emergency, the Chattahoochee River might, after all,
+have its uses. Water was, consequently, piped from the
+river to the city, and is now generally&mdash;albeit in some
+quarters mournfully&mdash;used. Though I am informed by
+an expert in Indian languages that the Cherokee word
+"chattahoochee" is short for "muddy," the water is filtered
+before it reaches the city pipes, and is thoroughly
+palatable, whether taken plain or mixed.</p>
+
+<p>Well-off though Atlanta is, she would esteem herself
+better off, in a material sense at least, had she a navigable
+stream; for her chief industrial drawback consists<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span>
+in railroad freight rates unmodified by water competition.
+She has, to be sure, a number of factories, including
+a Ford automobile plant, but she has not so many
+factories as her strategic position, stated by General
+Sherman, would seem to justify, or as her own industrial
+ambitions cause her to desire. For does not every progressive
+American city yearn to bristle with factory
+chimneys, even as a summer resort folder bristles with
+exclamation points? And is not soot a measure of
+success?</p>
+
+<p>Atlanta's line of business is largely office business;
+many great corporations have their headquarters or
+their general southern branches in the city; one of the
+twelve Federal Reserve Banks is there, and there are
+many strong banks. Indeed, I suppose Atlanta has more
+bankers, in proportion to her population, than any other
+city in the United States. Some of these bankers are
+active citizens and permanent residents of the city;
+others have given up banking for the time being and
+are in temporary residence at the Federal Penitentiary.</p>
+
+<p>The character of commerce carried on, naturally
+brings to Atlanta large numbers of prosperous and able
+men&mdash;corporation officials, branch managers, manufacturers'
+agents, and the like&mdash;who, with their families,
+give Atlanta a somewhat individual social flavor. This
+class of population also accounts for the fact that the
+enterprisingness so characteristic of Atlanta is not the
+mere rough, ebullient spirit of "go to it!" to be found
+in so many hustling cities of the Middle West and West,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span>
+but is, oftentimes, an informed and cultivated kind
+of enterprisingness, which causes Atlanta not only to
+"do things," but to do things showing vision, and, furthermore,
+to do them with an "air."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 440px;">
+<a name="p376jpg" id="p376jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p376.jpg" width="440" height="600" alt="The office buildings are city office buildings, and are sufficiently numerous to
+look very much at home" title="" />
+<span class="caption">The office buildings are city office buildings, and are sufficiently numerous to
+look very much at home</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>This is illustrated in various ways. It is shown, for
+example, in Atlanta's principal hotels, which are not
+small-town hotels, or good-enough hotels, but would do
+credit to any city, however great. The office buildings
+are city office buildings, and in the downtown section
+they are sufficiently numerous to look very much at
+home, instead of appearing a little bit exotic, self-conscious,
+and lonesome, as new skyscrapers do in so many
+cities of Atlanta's size. Even the smoke with which
+the skyscrapers are streaked is city smoke. Chicago
+herself could hardly produce smoke of more metropolitan
+texture&mdash;certainly not on the Lake Front, where the
+Illinois Central trains send up their black clouds; for Atlanta's
+downtown smoke, like Chicago's, comes in large
+part from railroads piercing the heart of the city.
+Where downtown business streets cross the railroad
+tracks, the latter are depressed, the highways passing
+above on steel bridges resembling the bridges over the
+Chicago River. The railroad's right of way is, furthermore,
+just about as wide as the Chicago River, and rows
+of smoke-stained brick buildings turn their backs upon
+it, precisely as similar buildings turn theirs upon Chicago's
+busy, narrow stream. I wonder if all travelers,
+familiar with Chicago, are so persistently reminded of
+that portion of the city which is near the river, as I was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span>
+by that portion of Atlanta abutting on the tracks by
+which the Seaboard Air Line enters the city.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p353jpg" id="p353jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p353.jpg" width="600" height="426" alt="A reminder of the Chicago River&mdash;Atlanta" title="" />
+<span class="caption">A reminder of the Chicago River&mdash;Atlanta</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Generally speaking, railroads in the South have not
+been so prosperous as leading roads in the North, and
+with the exception of the most important through trains,
+their passenger equipment is, therefore, not so good.
+The Seaboard Air Line, however, runs an all-steel train
+between Atlanta and Birmingham which, in point of
+equipment, may be compared with the best limited trains
+anywhere. The last car in this train, instead of being
+part sleeping car and part observation car, is a combination
+dining and observation car&mdash;a very pleasant
+arrangement, for men are allowed to smoke in the observation
+end after dinner. This is, to my mind, an improvement
+over the practice of most railroads, which
+obliges men who wish to smoke to leave the ladies with
+whom they may be traveling. All Seaboard dining cars
+offer, aside from regular &agrave; la carte service, a sixty-cent
+dinner known as the "Blue Plate Special." This
+dinner has many advantages over the usual dining-car
+repast. In the first place, though it does not
+comprise bread and butter, coffee or tea, or dessert, it
+provides an ample supply of meat and vegetables at a
+moderate price. In the second place, though served at
+a fixed price, it bears no resemblance to the old-style
+dining car table d'h&ocirc;te, but, upon the contrary, looks
+and tastes like food. The food, furthermore, instead
+of representing a great variety of viands served in microscopic
+helpings on innumerable platters and "side<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span>
+dishes," comes on one great plate, with recesses for vegetables.
+The "Blue Plate Special" furnishes, in short,
+the chief items in a "good home meal."</p>
+
+<p>This is, perhaps, as convenient a place as any in which
+to speak of certain points concerning various railroads in
+the South. The Central of Georgia Railway, running
+between Atlanta and Savannah, instead of operating
+Pullmans, has its own sleeping cars. This is the only
+railroad I know of in the country on which the tenant
+of a lower berth, below an unoccupied upper, may have
+the upper closed without paying for it. One likes the
+Central of Georgia for this humane dispensation. The
+locomotives of the Western &amp; Atlantic carry as a distinguishing
+mark a red band at the top of the smokestack.
+The Southern Railway assigns engineers to individual
+engines, instead of "pooling power," as is the
+practice, I believe, on many railroads. Because of this,
+engineers on the Southern regard the locomotives to
+which they are regularly assigned, as their personal
+property, and exercise their individual taste in embellishing
+them. Brass bands, brass flagstaffs, brass eagles
+over the headlight, and similar adornments are therefore
+often seen on the engines of this road, giving the most
+elaborate of them a carnival appearance, by contrast
+with the somber black to which most of us are accustomed,
+and hinting that not all the individuality has been
+unionized out of locomotive engineers&mdash;an impression
+heightened by the Southern Railway's further pleasant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span>
+custom of painting the names of its older and more
+expert engineers upon the cabs of their locomotives.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Some cities are like lumbering old farm horses, plugging
+along a dusty country road. When another horse
+overtakes them, if they be not altogether wanting in
+spirit, they may be encouraged to jog a little faster for
+a moment, stimulated by example. If, besides being
+stupid, they are mean, then they want to kick or bite at
+the speedier animal going by. Some cities are like that,
+too. If an energetic city overtakes them, they are not
+spurred on to emulation, but lay back their ears, so to
+speak. Again, there are tough, sturdy little cities like
+buckskin ponies. There are skittish cities which seem to
+have been badly broken. There are old cities with a
+worn-out kind of elegance, like that of superannuated
+horses of good breed, hitched to an old-fashioned
+barouche. There are bad, bucking cities, like Butte,
+Montana. And here and there are cities, like Atlanta,
+reminding one of thoroughbred hunters. There is a
+brave, sporting something in the spirit of Atlanta which
+makes it rush courageously at big jumps, and clear them,
+and land clean on the other side, and be off again.
+Like a thoroughbred, she loves the chase. She goes in
+to win. She doesn't stop to worry about whether
+she can win or not. She knows she will. And as
+the thoroughbred, loving large and astonishing achievement,
+lacks the humbler virtues of the reliable family car<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span>riage
+horse, Atlanta, it cannot be denied, has "<i>les d&eacute;fauts
+de ses qualit&eacute;s</i>." For whereas, on the side of dashing
+performance, Atlanta held a stock fair which, in one
+year, surpassed any other held in the South, and secured
+the grand circuit of races, on the other side she is careless
+about hospitals and charities; and whereas, on the
+one side, she has raised millions for the building of two
+new universities (which, by the way, would be much
+better as one great university, but cannot be, because of
+sectarian domination), on the other, she is deficient as to
+schools; and again, whereas she is the only secondary
+city to have an annual season of Metropolitan grand
+opera (and to make it pay!) she is behind many other
+cities, including her neighbors, New Orleans and Savannah,
+in caring for the public health.</p>
+
+<p>I am by no means sure that the regular spring visit of
+the Metropolitan Grand Opera Company may be taken
+as a sign that Atlanta is peculiarly a music-loving community.
+Indeed, I was told by one Atlanta lady, herself
+a musician, that the city did not contain more than a
+thousand persons of real musical appreciation, that a
+number of these could not afford to attend the operatic
+performances, and that opera week was, consequently,
+in reality more an occasion of great social festivity than
+of devout homage to art.</p>
+
+<p>"Our opera week," she told me, "bears the same relation
+to the life of Atlanta as Mardi Gras does to that of
+New Orleans. It is an advertisement for the city, and
+an excuse for every one to have a good time. Every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span>
+night after the performance there are suppers and
+dances, which the opera stars attend. They always
+seem to enjoy coming here. They act as though they
+were off on a picnic, skylarking about the hotel, snap-shotting
+one another, and playing all manner of pranks.
+And, of course, while they are here they own the town.
+Caruso draws his little caricatures for the Atlanta girls,
+and Atlanta men have been dazzled, in successive seasons,
+by such gorgeous beings as Geraldine Farrar,
+Alma Gluck, and Maria Barrientos&mdash;not only across the
+footlights of the auditorium, mind you, but at close
+range; as, for instance, at dances at the Driving Club,
+with Chinese lanterns strung on the terrace, a full moon
+above, and&mdash;one year&mdash;with the whole Metropolitan
+Orchestra playing dance music all night long!"</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p368jpg" id="p368jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p368.jpg" width="600" height="409" alt="With the whole Metropolitan Orchestra playing dance music all night long" title="" />
+<span class="caption">With the whole Metropolitan Orchestra playing dance music all night long</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Another lady, endeavoring to picture to me the strain
+involved in the week's gaieties, informed me that when
+it was all over she went for a rest to New York, where
+she attended "a house party at the Waldorf"!</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Of all Atlanta's undertakings, planned or accomplished,
+that which most interested my companion and
+me was the one for turning a mountain into a sculptured
+monument to the Confederacy.</p>
+
+<p>Sixteen miles to the east of the city the layer of granite
+which underlies the region stuck its back up, so to speak,
+forming a great smooth granite hump, known as Stone
+Mountain. This mountain is one of America's natural
+wonders. In form it may be compared with a round-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span>backed
+fish, such as a whale or porpoise, lying on its
+belly, partly imbedded in a beach, and some conception
+of its dimensions may be gathered from the fact that
+from nose to tail it measures about two miles, while the
+center of its back is as high as the Woolworth Building
+in New York. Moreover, there is not a fissure in it;
+monoliths a thousand feet long have been quarried from
+it; it is as solid as the Solid South.</p>
+
+<p>The perpendicular streaks of light and dark gray and
+gray-green, made by the elements upon the face of the
+rock, coupled with the waterfall-like curve of that face,
+make one think of a sort of sublimated petrified Niagara&mdash;a
+fancy enhanced, on windy days, by the roar of the
+gale-lashed forest at the mountain's foot.</p>
+
+<p>The idea of turning the mountain into a Confederate
+memorial originated with Mr. William H. Terrell of
+Atlanta. It was taken up with inspired energy by Mrs.
+C. Helen Plane, an Atlanta lady, now eighty-seven years
+of age, who is honorary president of the United Daughters
+of the Confederacy and president of the Stone
+Mountain Memorial Association. Mrs. Plane presented
+the memorial plan to Mr. Samuel H. Venable of Venable
+Brothers, owners of the mountain, and Mr. Venable
+promptly turned over the whole face of the mountain to
+the Memorial Association. The exact form the memorial
+was to take had not at that time been developed.
+Gutzon Borglum was, however, called in, and worked
+out a stupendous idea, which he has since been commissioned
+to execute. On the side of the mountain,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span>
+about four hundred feet above the ground, a roadway is
+to be gouged out of the granite. On this roadway will
+be carved, in gigantic outlines, a Confederate army,
+headed by Lee and Jackson on horseback. Other generals
+will follow, and will, in turn, be followed by infantry,
+cavalry and artillery. The leading groups will
+be in full relief and the equestrian figures will be fifty or
+more feet tall. This means that the faces of the chief
+figures will measure almost the height of a man. The
+figures to the rear of the long column will, according to
+present plans, be in bas-relief, and the whole procession
+will cover a strip perhaps a mile long, all of it carved out
+of the solid mountainside.</p>
+
+<p>A considerable tract of forest land at the foot of the
+great rock has already been dedicated as a park. Here,
+concealed by the trees, at a point below the main group
+of figures, a temple, with thirteen columns representing
+the thirteen Confederate States, is to be hewn out of the
+mountain, to be used as a place for the safe-keeping of
+Confederate relics and archives.</p>
+
+<p>Two million dollars is the sum spoken of to cover the
+total cost, and one of the finest things about the plans
+for raising this money is that contributions from the
+entire country are being accepted, so that not only the
+South, but the whole nation, may have a share in the
+creation of a memorial to that dead government which
+the South so poetically adores, yet which it would not
+willingly resurrect, and in the realization of a work resembling
+nothing so much as Kipling's conception of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span>
+artist in heaven, who paints on "a ten-league canvas,
+with brushes of comet's hair."</p>
+
+<p>Until the Stone Mountain Memorial is completed,
+Atlanta's most celebrated monument will continue to be
+that of Jack Smith. The Jack Smith monument stands
+in Oakland Cemetery, not over the grave of Jack Smith,
+but over the grave that local character intends some day
+to occupy. Mr. Smith is reputed to be rich. He built
+the downtown office building known as "The House that
+Jack Built." As befits the owner of an office building,
+he wears a silk hat, but a certain democratic simplicity
+may be observed in the rest of his attire, especially about
+the region of the neck, for though he apparently believes
+in the convention concerning the wearing of collars, he
+has a prejudice against the concealing of a portion of
+the collar by that useless and snobbish adornment, the
+necktie. Each spring, I am informed, it is his custom
+to visit his cemetery lot and inspect the statue of himself
+which a commendable foresight has caused him to erect
+over his proposed final resting place. It is said that
+upon the occasion of last season's vernal visit he was
+annoyed at finding his effigy cravated by a vine which
+had grown up and encircled the neck. This he caused
+to be removed; and it is to be hoped that when, at
+last, his monument achieves its ultimate purpose, those
+who care for the cemetery will see to it that leafy tendrils
+be not permitted to mount to the marble collar of the
+figure, to form a necktie, or to obscure the nobly sculptured
+collar button.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXXIV<br />
+<br />
+GEORGIA JOURNALISM</h2>
+
+
+<p>In journalism Atlanta is far in advance of many cities
+of her size, North or South. The Atlanta "Constitution,"
+founded nearly half a century ago, is one
+of the country's most distinguished newspapers. The
+"Constitution" came into its greatest fame in the early
+eighties, when Captain Evan P. Howell&mdash;the same Captain
+Howell who commanded a battery at the battle of
+Peachtree Creek, in the defense of Atlanta, and who
+later called, with his son, on General Sherman, as
+already recorded&mdash;became its editor, and Henry W.
+Grady its managing editor. Like William Allen White
+and Walt Mason of the Emporia (Kansas) "Gazette,"
+who work side by side, admire each other, but disagree
+on every subject save that of the infallibility of the
+ground hog as a weather prophet, Howell and Grady
+worked side by side and were devoted friends, while disagreeing
+personally, and in print, on prohibition and
+many other subjects. Grady would speak at prohibition
+rallies and, sometimes on the same night, Howell would
+speak at anti-prohibition rallies. In their speeches they
+would attack each other. The accounts of these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span>
+speeches, as well as conflicting articles written by the
+two, would always appear in the "Constitution."</p>
+
+<p>Of the pair of public monuments to individuals which
+I remember having seen in Atlanta, one was the pleasing
+memorial, in Piedmont Park, to Sidney Lanier (who was
+peculiarly a Georgia poet, having been born in Macon, in
+that State, and having written some of his most beautiful
+lines under the spell of Georgia scenes), and the other the
+statue of Henry W. Grady, which stands downtown in
+Marietta Street.</p>
+
+<p>The Grady monument&mdash;one regrets to say it&mdash;is less
+fortunate as a work of art than as a deserved symbol of
+remembrance. Grady not only ought to have a monument,
+but as one whose writings prove him to have been
+a man of taste, he ought to have a better one than this
+poor mid-Victorian thing, placed in the middle of a wide,
+busy street, with Fords parked all day long about its base.</p>
+
+<p>Says the inscription:</p>
+
+<p class='center'>
+HE NEVER SOUGHT A PUBLIC OFFICE.<br />
+ WHEN HE DIED HE WAS LITERALLY<br />
+  LOVING A NATION INTO PEACE.
+</p>
+
+<p>On another side of the base is chiseled a characteristic
+extract from one of Grady's speeches. This speech was
+made in 1899, in Boston, and one hopes that it may have
+been heard by the late Charles Francis Adams, who
+labored in Massachusetts for the cause of intersectional
+harmony, just as Grady worked for it in Georgia.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This hour [said Grady] little needs the loyalty that is loyal
+to one section and yet holds the other in enduring suspicion and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span>
+estrangement. Give us the broad and perfect loyalty that loves
+and trusts Georgia alike with Massachusetts&mdash;that knows no
+South, no North, no East, no West; but endears with equal and
+patriotic love every foot of our soil, every State in our Union.</p></div>
+
+<p>Grady could not only write and say stirring things; he
+could be witty. He once spoke at a dinner of the New
+England Society, in New York, at which General Sherman
+was also present.</p>
+
+<p>"Down in Georgia," he said, "we think of General
+Sherman as a great general; but it seems to us he was a
+little careless with fire."</p>
+
+<p>Nor was Grady less brilliant as managing editor than
+upon the platform. He had the kind of enterprise which
+made James Gordon Bennett such a dashing figure in
+newspaper life, and the New York "Herald" such a complete
+<i>news</i>paper&mdash;the kind of enterprise that charters
+special trains, and at all hazards gets the story it
+is after. Back in the early eighties Grady was running
+the Atlanta "Constitution" in just that way. If a
+big story "broke" in any of the territory around Atlanta,
+Grady would not wait upon train schedules, but would
+hire an engine and send his men to the scene. Once, following
+a sensational murder, he learned that the Birmingham
+"Age-Herald" had a big story dealing with
+developments in the case. He wired the "Age-Herald"
+offering a large price for the story. When his offer
+was refused Grady knew that if he could not devise a
+way to get the story, Atlanta would be flooded next day
+with "Age-Heralds" containing the "beat" on the "Con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span>stitution."
+He at once chartered a locomotive and
+rushed two reporters and four telegraph operators down
+the line toward Birmingham. At Aniston, Alabama,
+the locomotive met the train which was bringing "Age-Heralds"
+to Atlanta. A copy of the paper was secured.
+The "Constitution" men then broke into a telegraph
+office and wired the whole story in to their paper, with
+the result that the "Constitution" was out with it before
+the Birmingham papers reached Atlanta.</p>
+
+<p>Atlanta was at that time a town of only about 40,000
+inhabitants, but the "Constitution," in the days of
+Howell and Grady, had a circulation four times greater
+than the total population of the city&mdash;a situation almost
+unheard of in journalism. Something of the breadth
+of its influence may be gathered from the fact that in
+several counties in Texas, where the law provided that
+whatever newspaper had the largest circulation in the
+county should be the county organ, the county organ
+was the Atlanta "Constitution."</p>
+
+<p>An Atlanta lady tells of having called upon Grady
+to complain about an article which she did not think the
+"Constitution" should have printed.</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you put that objectionable article in your
+paper?" she asked him.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you read it?" he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I did."</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said Grady, "that's why I put it there."</p>
+
+<p>Grady and Howell always ran a lively sporting de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span>partment.
+Away back in the days of bare-knuckle prize
+fights&mdash;such as those between Sullivan and Ryan, and
+Sullivan and Kilrain&mdash;a "Constitution" reporter was always
+at the ringside, no matter where the fight might
+take place. For a newspaper in a town of forty or fifty
+thousand inhabitants, a large percentage of them colored
+illiterates, this was real enterprise.</p>
+
+<p>A favorite claim of Grady's was that his reporters
+were the greatest "leg artists" in the world. He used
+to organize walking matches for reporters, offering
+large prizes and charging admission. This developed,
+in the middle eighties, a general craze for such matches,
+and resulted in the holding of many inter-city contests,
+in which teams, four men to a side, took part. One of
+the "Constitution's" champion "leg artists" was Sam W.
+Small, now an evangelist and member of the "flying
+squadron" of the Anti-Saloon League of America.</p>
+
+<p>The most widely celebrated individual ever connected
+with the "Constitution" was Joel Chandler Harris, many
+of whose "Uncle Remus" stories&mdash;those negro folk
+tales still supreme in their field&mdash;appeared originally in
+that paper. In view of Mr. Harris's achievement it is
+pleasant to recall that there was paid to him during his
+life one of the finest tributes that an author can receive.
+As with "Mr. Dooley" of our day, he came, himself, to
+be affectionately referred to by the name of the chief
+character in his works. "Uncle Remus" he was, and
+"Uncle Remus" he will always be. Mr. Harris's eldest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span>
+son, Julian, widely known as a journalist, is said to have
+been the little boy to whom "Uncle Remus" told his
+tales.</p>
+
+<p>Though there is, as yet, no public monument in Atlanta
+to Joel Chandler Harris, the "Wren's Nest," his
+former home, at 214 Gordon Street, is fittingly preserved
+as a memorial. Visitors may see the old letter
+box fastened to a tree by the gate&mdash;that box in
+which a wren built her nest, giving the house its name.
+It is a simple old house with the air of a home about
+it, and the intimate possessions of the author lie about
+as he left them. His bed is made up, his umbrella hangs
+upon the mantelshelf, his old felt hat rests upon the
+rack, the photograph of his friend James Whitcomb
+Riley looks down from the bedroom wall, and on the
+table, by the window, stands his typewriter&mdash;the confidant
+first to know his new productions.</p>
+
+<p>The presence of these personal belongings keeps alive
+the illusion that "Uncle Remus" has merely stepped
+out for a little while&mdash;is hiding in the garden, waiting
+for us to go away. It would be like him, for he
+was among the most modest and retiring of men, as
+there are many amusing anecdotes to indicate. Once
+when some one had persuaded him to attend a large
+dinner in New York, they say, he got as far as New
+York, but as the dinner hour approached could not bear
+to face the adulation awaiting him, and incontinently
+fled back to Atlanta.</p>
+
+<p>Frank L. Stanton, poet laureate of Georgia, and of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span>
+the "Constitution," joined the "Constitution" staff
+through the efforts of Mr. Harris, one of whose closest
+intimates he was. Speaking of Mr. Harris's gift for
+negro dialect, Mr. Stanton told me that there was one
+negro exclamation which "Uncle Remus" always wished
+to reproduce, but which he never quite felt could be
+expressed, in writing, to those unfamiliar with the
+negro at first hand: that is the exclamation of amazement,
+which has the sound, "mmm&mdash;<i>mh!</i>"&mdash;the first syllable
+being long and the last sharp and exclamatory.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stanton has for years conducted a column of
+verse and humorous paragraphic comment, under the
+heading "Just from Georgia," on the editorial page of
+the "Constitution." Some idea of the high estimation
+in which he is held in his State is to be gathered from
+the fact that "Frank L. Stanton Day" is annually celebrated
+in the Georgia schools.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stanton began his newspaper career as a country
+editor in the town of Smithville, Georgia. Mr. Harris,
+then a member of the "Constitution's" editorial staff,
+began reprinting in that journal verses and paragraphs
+written by Stanton, with the result that the Smithville
+paper became known all over the country. Later Stanton
+moved to Rome, Georgia, becoming an editorial
+writer on a paper there&mdash;the "Tribune," edited at that
+time by John Temple Graves, if I am not mistaken.
+Still later he removed to Atlanta, joined the staff of the
+"Constitution," and started the department which has
+now continued for more than twenty-five years.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Joel Chandler Harris used to tell a story about Stanton's
+first days in the "Constitution" office. According
+to this story, the paper on which Stanton had worked
+in Rome had not been prosperous, and salaries were
+uncertain. When the business manager went out
+to try to raise money in the town, he never returned
+without first reading the signals placed by his assistant
+in the office window. If a red flag was shown,
+it signified that a collector was waiting in the office. In
+that event the business manager would not come in, but
+would circle about until the collector became tired of
+waiting and departed&mdash;a circumstance indicated by the
+withdrawal of the red flag and the substitution of a
+white one. According to the story, as it was told to
+me, reporters on the paper were seldom paid; if one of
+them made bold to ask for his salary, he was likely to
+be discharged. It was from this uncertain existence
+that Stanton was lured to the "Constitution" by an offer
+of $22.50 per week. When he had been on the "Constitution"
+for three weeks Mr. Harris discovered that he
+had drawn no salary. This surprised him&mdash;as indeed
+it would any man who had had newspaper experience.</p>
+
+<p>"Stanton," he said, "you are the only newspaper man
+I have ever seen who is so rich he doesn't need to draw
+his pay."</p>
+
+<p>But, as it turned out, Stanton was not so prosperous
+as Harris perhaps supposed. He was down to his last
+dime, and had been wondering how he could manage to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span>
+get along; for his training on the Rome paper had taught
+him never to ask for money lest he lose his job.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he said to Harris, "I could use <i>some</i> of my
+salary&mdash;if you're sure it won't be any inconvenience?"</p>
+
+<p>Those familiar with the works of Mr. Stanton, Mr.
+Harris, and James Whitcomb Riley, Indiana's great
+poet, will perceive that certain similar tastes and feelings
+inform their writings, and will not be surprised
+to learn, if not already aware of it, that the three were
+friends. Mr. Stanton's only absence from Atlanta since
+he joined the "Constitution," was on the occasion of a
+visit he paid Mr. Riley at the latter's home in Indianapolis.
+The best of Stanton's work must have appealed
+to Riley, for it contains not a little of the kindly, homely,
+humorous truthfulness, and warmth of sentiment, of
+which Riley was himself such a master. Among the
+most widely familiar verses of the Georgia poet are
+those of his "Mighty Like a Rose," set to music by Ethelbert
+Nevin, and "Just a-Wearying for You," with music
+by Carrie Jacobs Bond. "Money" is a verse in
+hilarious key, which many will remember for the comical
+vigor of the last three lines in its first stanza:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When a fellow has spent<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His last red cent<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The world looks blue, you bet!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But give him a dollar<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And you'll hear him holler:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"There's life in the old land yet!"<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Richly humorous though Stanton is, he can also
+reach the heart. The former Governor of a Western
+State picked up Stanton's book, "Songs of the Soil,"
+and after reading "Hanging Bill Jones," and "A Tragedy,"
+therein, commuted the sentence of a man who was
+to have been executed next day. One hopes the man
+deserved to escape. In another case an individual who
+was about to commit suicide chanced to see in an old
+newspaper Stanton's encouraging verses called "Keep
+a-Goin'," and was stimulated by them to have a fresh
+try at life on earth instead of elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>Joel Chandler Harris wrote the introduction to
+"Songs of the Soil." Other collections of Stanton's
+works are "Songs of Dixie Land," and "Comes One
+With a Song." The danger in starting to quote from
+these books&mdash;which, by the way, are chiefly made up of
+measures that appeared originally in the "Constitution"&mdash;is
+that one does not like to stop. I have, however,
+limited myself to but one more theft, and instead
+of making my own choice, have left the selection to a
+friend of Mr. Stanton's, who has suggested the lines
+entitled "A Poor Unfortunate":</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His hoss went dead, an' his mule went lame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He lost six cows in a poker game;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A harricane come on a summer's day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An' carried the house whar he lived away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then a earthquake come when <i>that</i> wuz gone<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An' swallered the land that the house stood on!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An' the tax collector, he come roun'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An' charged him up fer the hole in the groun'!<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">An' the city marshal he come in view<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An' said he wanted his street tax, too!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Did he moan an' sigh? Did he set an' cry<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An' cuss the harricane sweepin' by?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Did he grieve that his old friends failed to call<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the earthquake come and swallered all?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Never a word o' blame he said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With all them troubles on top his head!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not him! He climbed on top o' the hill<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whar stan'in' room wuz left him still,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An', barrin' his head, here's what he said:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"I reckon it's time to git up an' git,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, Lord, I hain't had the measles yit!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Among those who have been on the staff of the "Constitution"
+and have become widely known, may be mentioned
+the gifted Corra Harris, many of whose stories
+have Georgia backgrounds, and who still keeps as a
+country home in the State where she was born, a log
+cabin, known as "In the Valley," at Pine Log, Georgia;
+also the perhaps equally (though differently) talented
+Robert Adamson, whose administration as fire
+commissioner of the City of New York was so able as
+to result in a reduction of insurance rates.</p>
+
+<p>Atlanta reporters, it would seem, run to the New
+York Fire Department, for Joseph Johnson, who preceded
+Mr. Adamson as commissioner, was once a reporter
+on the Atlanta "Journal." The latter paper used
+to belong to Hoke Smith. It was at one time edited by
+John Temple Graves, who later edited the Atlanta
+"Georgian," and is now a member of the forces of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span>
+William Randolph Hearst, in New York. The late
+Jacques Futrelle, the author, who went down with the
+<i>Titanic</i>, was a Georgian, and worked for years on the
+"Journal." Don Marquis, one of the most brilliant
+American newspaper "columnists," now in charge of
+the department known as "The Sun Dial" on the New
+York "Evening Sun," was also at one time on the "Journal,"
+as was likewise Grantland Rice, America's most
+widely read sporting writer. Lollie Belle Wiley, whose
+poetry has a distinct southern quality, is, I believe, a
+member of the "Journal's" staff. As the eminent Ty
+Cobb once wrote a book, it seems fair to mention him
+also among Georgian authors, though so far as I know
+he never worked on an Atlanta paper. And if Atlanta's
+three celebrated golfers have not written for the papers,
+they have at least supplied the sporting page with much
+material. Miss Alexa Sterling of Atlanta, a young
+lady under twenty, is one of the best women golfers in
+the United States; Perry Adair also figures in national
+golf, and Robert T. ("Bobby") Jones, Jr., who was
+southern champion at the age of fourteen, is, perhaps,
+an unprecedented marvel at the game&mdash;so at least my
+golfing friends inform me.</p>
+
+<p>The continued militancy of the "Constitution," under
+the editorship of Clark Howell, who sits in his father's
+old chair, with a bust of Grady at his elbow, is evidenced
+not only by its frequent editorials against lynching, but
+by its fearless campaign against another Georgia
+specialty&mdash;the "paper colonel." The ranks of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span>
+"paper colonels" in the South are chiefly made up of
+lawyers who "have been colonelized by custom for no
+other reason than that they have led their clients to victory
+in legal battles." Some of the real colonels have
+been objecting to the paper kind, and the "Constitution"
+has bravely backed up the objection.</p>
+
+<p>The liveliness of journalism in Georgia does not begin
+and end in Atlanta. The Savannah "Morning
+News" has an able editorial page, and there are many
+others in the State. Some of the small-town papers are,
+moreover, well worth reading for that kind of breeziness
+which we usually associate with the West rather than
+the South. Consider, for example, the following, in
+which the Dahlonega (Georgia) "Nugget," published up
+in the mountains, in the section where gold is mined,
+discusses the failings of one Billie Adams, the editor's
+own son-in-law:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>On Saturday last, Billie Adams and his wife waylaid the public
+road over on Crown Mountain, where this sorry piece of humanity
+stood and cursed while his wife knocked down and beat her
+sister, Emma. He is a son-in-law of ours, but if the Lord had
+anything to do with him, He must have made a mistake and
+thought He was breathing the breath of life into a dog.</p>
+
+<p>He is too lazy to work and lays around and waits for his wife
+to get what she can procure on credit, until she can get nothing
+more for him and the children to eat. Recently he claimed to be
+gone to Tennessee in search of work. Upon hearing that his
+family had nothing to eat, we had Carl Brooksher send over nearly
+four dollars' worth of provisions. In he came and sat there and
+feasted until every bite was gone. But this ends it with us.</p>
+
+<p>There are a lot of people who have sorry kinfolks, but in this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span>
+instance if there were prizes offered, we would certainly win the
+first.</p>
+
+<p>Last year, thinking he would scare his mother-in-law and sister-in-law
+off from where they live, so he could get the place, he shot
+two holes through their window, turned their mule out of the
+stable, and tried to run it into the bean patch, besides hanging
+up a bunch of switches at the drawbars. Then their fence was
+set afire twice. This is said to be the work of his wife. Then,
+after carrying home meat, flour, lard, and vegetables to eat for
+her mother and sister, he whipped the latter because she refused
+to give him two of the wagon wheels.</p>
+
+<p>The city made a case against both for the whipping, and the
+wife, although coming to town alone frequently during the day,
+brought her baby and everything to the council room, plead
+guilty and was fined one and costs. Billie didn't appear, but if
+he stays in this country Marshal Wimpy will have him, when all
+these things will come to light, both in the council chamber and
+grand jury room.</p></div>
+
+<p>The scandal of newspaperdom in Georgia is, of
+course, Tom Watson, who publishes the "Jeffersonian"&mdash;a
+misnamed paper if there ever was one&mdash;in the town
+of Thomson. Many years ago, when Edward P.
+Thomas, now assistant to the president of the United
+States Steel Corporation, was a little boy in Atlanta,
+complaining about having his ears washed; when Theodore
+D. Rousseau, secretary to Mayor Mitchel of New
+York, was having his early education drilled into him
+at the Ivy Street school; when Ralph Peters, now president
+of the Long Island Railroad, had left Atlanta and
+become a division superintendent on the Panhandle
+Road; when the parents of Ivy Ledbetter Lee were wondering
+to what college they would send him when he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span>
+grew to be a big boy; when Robert Adamson was a
+page in the Georgia Legislature&mdash;as long ago as that,
+Tom Watson was waving his red head and prominent
+Adam's apple as a member of the State House of Representatives.
+In the mad and merry days of Bryanism
+he became a Populist Member of Congress. He
+was nominated for vice-president, to run on the Populist
+ticket with Bryan. Later he ran for president on
+the ticket of some unheard-of party, organized in protest
+against the "conservatism" of the Populists. Watson's
+paper reminds one of Brann and his "Iconoclast."
+Reading it, I have never been able to discover what
+Watson was <i>for</i>. All I could find out was what he was
+violently against&mdash;and that is almost everything. He
+is the wild ass of Georgia journalism; the thistles of
+chaos are sweet in him, and order in any department of
+life is a chestnut burr beneath his tail.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXV" id="CHAPTER_XXXV"></a>CHAPTER XXXV<br />
+<br />
+SOME ATLANTA INSTITUTIONS</h2>
+
+
+<p>There has been great rejoicing in Atlanta over
+the raising of funds for the establishment there
+of two new universities, Emory and Oglethorpe.
+Emory was founded in 1914, as the result of a feud
+which developed in Vanderbilt University, located at
+Nashville, Tennessee, over the question as to whether
+the institution should be controlled by the Board of
+Bishops of the southern Methodist Episcopal Church, or
+by the University trustees, who were not so much interested
+in the development of the sectarian side of the university.
+The fight was taken to the courts where the
+trustees won. As a result, Methodist influence and support
+were withdrawn from Vanderbilt, which thenceforward
+became a non-sectarian college, and Emory was
+started&mdash;Atlanta having been selected as its home because
+nearly a million and a half dollars was raised in
+Atlanta to bring it there.</p>
+
+<p>Oglethorpe is to be a Presbyterian institution, and
+starts off with a million dollars.</p>
+
+<p>This will give Atlanta three rather important colleges,
+since she already has the technical branch of the
+University of Georgia, the main establishment of which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span>
+located at Athens, Georgia, is one of the oldest state
+universities in the country, having been founded in 1801.
+(The University of Tennessee is the oldest state university
+in the South. It was founded in 1794. The
+University of Pennsylvania, dating from 1740, is the
+oldest of all state universities. Harvard, founded in
+1636, was the first college established in the country;
+and the only other American colleges which survive
+from the seventeenth century are William and Mary, at
+Williamsburg, Virginia, established in 1693, and St.
+John's College, at Annapolis, dating from 1696.)</p>
+
+<p>There is a tendency in some parts of the South to use
+the terms "college" and "university" loosely. Some
+schools for white persons, doing little if anything more
+than grammar and high-school work, are called "colleges,"
+and negro institutions doing similar work are
+sometimes grandiloquently termed "universities."</p>
+
+<p>Atlanta has thirteen public schools for negroes, but
+no public high school for them. There are, however,
+six large private educational institutions for negroes in
+the city, doing high-school, college, or graduate work,
+making Atlanta a great colored educational center.
+Of these, Atlanta University, a non-sectarian co-educational
+college with a white president (Mr. Edward
+T. Ware, whose father came from New England
+and founded the institution in 1867), is, I believe, the
+oldest and largest. It is very highly spoken of. Atlanta
+and Clark Universities are the only two colored
+colleges in Atlanta listed in the "World Almanac's" table<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span>
+of American universities and colleges. Clark also has a
+white man as president.</p>
+
+<p>Spelman Seminary, a Baptist institution for colored
+girls, has a white woman president, and is partially supported
+by Rockefeller money. Morehouse College, for
+boys, has a colored president, an able man, is of similar
+denomination and is also partially supported by
+Rockefeller funds. Spelman and Morehouse are run
+separately, excepting in college work, on which they
+combine. Both are said to be excellent. Morris
+Brown University is not a university at all, but does
+grammar and high-school work. It is officered and
+supported by colored people, all churches of the African
+Methodist Episcopal denomination subscribing funds
+for its maintenance. Gammon Theological Seminary
+is, I am informed, the one adequately endowed educational
+establishment for negroes in Atlanta. It would,
+of course, be a splendid thing if the best of these schools
+and colleges could be combined.</p>
+
+<p>Citizens of Atlanta do not, generally, take the interest
+they ought to take in these or other institutions for
+the benefit of negroes. To be sure, most Southerners do
+not believe in higher education for negroes; but, even allowing
+for that viewpoint, it is manifestly unfair that
+white children should have public high schools and that
+negro children should have none, but should be obliged
+to pay for their education above the grammar grades.
+Perhaps there are people in Atlanta who believe that
+even a high-school education is undesirable for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span>
+negro. That, however, seems to me a pretty serious
+thing for one race to attempt to decide for another&mdash;especially
+when the deciding race is not deeply and sincerely
+interested in the uplift of the race over which it
+holds the whip hand. Certainly intelligent people in
+the South believe in industrial training for the negro,
+and equally certainly a negro high school could give industrial
+training.</p>
+
+<p>Negroes are not admitted to Atlanta parks, nor are
+there any parks exclusively for them. Until recently
+there was no contagious-disease hospital to which negroes
+could be taken, and there is not now a reformatory
+for colored girls in the State of Georgia. Neither
+is there any provision whatsoever in the State for the
+care of feeble-minded colored children. And there is
+one thing even worse to be said. Shameful as are
+Georgia's frequent lynchings, shameful as is the State's
+indifference to negro welfare, blacker yet is the law upon
+her statute books making the "age of consent" <i>ten
+years</i>! Various women's organizations, and individual
+women, have, for decades, worked to change this law,
+but without success. The term "southern chivalry"
+must ring mocking and derisive in the ears of Georgia
+legislators until this disgrace is wiped out. Standing
+as it does, it means but one thing: that in order to protect
+some white males in their depravity, the voters of
+Georgia are satisfied to leave little girls, ten, eleven,
+twelve years of age, and upward, white as well as colored,
+utterly unprotected by the law in this regard.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I have heard more than one woman in Georgia intimate
+that she would be well pleased with a little less
+exterior "chivalry" and a little more plain justice.
+Aside from their efforts to change the "age of consent"
+law, leading women in the State have been working
+for compulsory education, for the opening of the
+State University to women, for factory inspection and
+decent child-labor laws. The question of child labor
+has now been taken in hand by the National Government&mdash;as,
+of course, the "age of consent" should also
+be&mdash;but in other respects but little progress has been
+made in Georgia.</p>
+
+<p>From such cheerless items I turn gladly to a happier
+theme.</p>
+
+<p>As I have said elsewhere in this book, many colored
+people in Atlanta are doing well in various ways. At
+Atlanta University I saw several students whose fathers
+and mothers were graduates of the same institution.
+Higher education for the negro has, thus, come
+into its second generation. More prosperous negroes in
+Atlanta are doing social settlement work among less
+fortunate members of their race, and have started a free
+kindergarten for negro children. Many good people in
+Atlanta are unaware of these facts, and I believe their
+judgment on the entire negro question would be modified,
+at least in certain details, were they merely to inform
+themselves upon various creditable negro activities
+in the city. The northern stranger, attempting to ascertain
+the truth about the negro and the negro problem,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span>
+has to this extent the advantage of the average Southerner:
+prejudice and indifference do not prevent his going
+among the negroes to find out what they are doing
+for themselves.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 433px;">
+<a name="p385png" id="p385png"></a>
+<img src="images/p385.jpg" width="433" height="600" alt="The negro roof-garden, Odd Fellows&#39; Building, Atlanta" title="" />
+<span class="caption">The negro roof-garden, Odd Fellows&#39; Building, Atlanta</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>At various times in my life chance has thrown me
+into contact with charities in great variety, and philanthropic
+work of many kinds. I have seen theoretical
+charities, sentimental charities, silly charities, pauperizing
+charities, wild-eyed charities, charities which did
+good, and others which worked damage in the world; I
+have seen organized charities splendidly run under difficult
+circumstances (as in the Department of Charities
+under Commissioner Kingsbury, in New York
+City), and I have seen other organized charities badly
+run at great expense; I have seen charities conducted
+with the primary purpose of ministering to the vanity
+of self-important individuals who like to say: "See all
+the good that I am doing!" and I have seen other personal
+charities operated (as in the case of the Rockefeller
+Foundation) with a perfectly magnificent scope
+and effectiveness.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, of all the charities I have seen, of all
+the efforts I have witnessed to improve the condition
+of humanity, none has taken a firmer hold upon my
+heart than the Leonard Street Orphans' Home, for
+negro girls, in Atlanta.</p>
+
+<p>The home is a humble frame building which was used
+as a barracks by northern troops stationed in Atlanta<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span>
+after the Civil War. In it reside Miss Chadwick, her
+helpers, and about seventy little negro girls; and it is an
+interesting fact that several of the helpers are young
+colored women who, themselves brought up in the home
+and taught to be self-supporting, have been drawn back
+to the place by homesickness. Was ever before an orphan
+homesick for an orphans' home?</p>
+
+<p>Miss Chadwick is an Englishwoman. Coming out to
+America a good many years ago, she somehow found
+Atlanta, and in Atlanta somehow found this orphanage,
+which was then both figuratively and literally dropping
+to pieces. Some one had to take hold of it, so Miss
+Chadwick did. How successful she has been it is hard
+to convey in words. I do not mean that she has succeeded
+in building up a great flourishing plant with a
+big endowment and all sorts of improvements. Far
+from it. The home stands on a tiny lot, the building
+is ramshackle and not nearly large enough for its purpose,
+and sometimes it seems doubtful where the money
+to keep it going will come from. Nevertheless the home
+is a hundred times more successful than I could have believed
+a home for orphans, colored or white, could be
+made, had I not seen it with my own eyes. Its success
+lies not in material possessions or prosperity, not in the
+food and shelter it provides to those who so pitifully
+needed it, but in the fact that it is in the truest and finest
+sense a <i>home</i>, a place endowed with the greatest blessings
+any home can have: contentment and affection.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span>
+What Miss Chadwick has provided is, in short, an institution
+with a heart.</p>
+
+<p>How did she do it? That, like the other mystery
+of how she manages to house those seventy small lively
+people in that little building, is something which only
+Heaven and Miss Chadwick understand.</p>
+
+<p>But then, if you have ever visited the home and met
+Miss Chadwick, and seen her with her children, you
+know that Heaven and Miss Chadwick understand a lot
+of things the rest of us don't know about at all!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXXVI<br />
+<br />
+A BIT OF RURAL GEORGIA</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">To walk with the morning and watch its rose unfold;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To drowse with the noontide lulled in its heart of gold;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To lie with the night-time and dream the dreams of old.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0 smcap signature">&mdash;Madison Cawein.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>A man I know studies as a hobby something which
+he calls "graphics"&mdash;the term denoting the reaction
+of the mind to certain words. One of
+the words he used in an experiment with me was "winter."
+When he said "winter" there instantly came to
+me the picture of a snowstorm in Quebec. I saw the
+front of the Hotel Frontenac at dusk through a mist
+of driving snow. There were lights in the windows.
+A heavy wind was blowing and as I leaned against it
+the front of my overcoat was plastered with sticky white
+flakes. The streets and sidewalks were deep with snow,
+and the only person besides myself in the vision was a
+sentry standing with his gun in the lee of the vestibule
+outside the local militia headquarters.</p>
+
+<p>If my friend were to come now and try me with the
+word "spring," I know what picture it would call to
+mind. I should see the Burge plantation, near Covington,
+Georgia: the simple old white house with its rose-clad
+porch, or "gallery," its grove of tall trees, its carriage-house,
+its well-house, and other minor depend<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span>encies
+clustering nearby like chickens about a white hen,
+its background the rolling cottonfields, their red soil
+glowing salmon-colored in the sun. For, as I was never
+so conscious of the brutality of winter as in that evening
+snowstorm at Quebec, I was never so conscious, as at
+the time of our visit to the Burge plantation, of the
+superlative soft sweetness of the spring.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p396jpg" id="p396jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p396.jpg" width="600" height="403" alt="I was never so conscious, as at the time of our visit to the Burge plantation, of the superlative soft sweetness
+of the spring" title="" />
+<span class="caption">I was never so conscious, as at the time of our visit to the Burge plantation, of the superlative soft sweetness
+of the spring</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In seasons, as in other things, we have our individual
+preferences. Melancholy natures usually love autumn,
+with its colorings so like sweet sad minor chords. But
+what kind of natures they are which rejoice in spring,
+which feel that with each spring the gloomy past is
+blotted out, and life, with all its opportunities, begins
+anew&mdash;what kind of natures they are which recognize
+April instead of January as the beginning of their year
+I shall not attempt to tell, for mine is such a nature, and
+one must not act at once as subject and diagnostician.</p>
+
+<p>So long as I endure, spring can never come again
+without turning my thoughts to northwestern Georgia;
+to the peculiar penetrating warmth which passed
+through the clothing to the body and made one feel that
+one was not surrounded by mere air, but was immersed
+in a dry bath of some infinitely superior vapor, a vapor
+volatile, soothing, tonic, distilled, it seemed, from the
+earth, from pine trees, tulip trees, balm-of-Gilead trees,
+(or "bam" trees, as they call them), blossoming Judas
+trees, Georgia crabapple, dogwood pink and white, peach
+blossom, wistaria, sweet-shrub, dog violets, pansy violets,
+Cherokee roses, wild honeysuckle and azalia, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span>
+evanescent green of new treetops, all carried in solution
+in the sunlight. By day the brilliant cardinal adds his
+fine note of color and sound, but at night he is silent,
+and when the moon comes out one hears the mockingbird
+and, it may be also, two whippoorwills, one in the
+grove near the house, one in the woods across the road,
+calling back and forth. Then one is tempted to step
+down from the porch, and follow the voices of the birds
+into the vague recesses of a night webbed with dark tree
+shadows outlined in blue moonlight.</p>
+
+<p>Small wonder it is, if, as report says, no houseparty
+on a southern plantation is a success unless young
+couples become "sort of engaged," and if in a region so
+provocative in springtime under a full moon, a distinction
+is recognized between being merely "engaged," and
+being engaged <i>to be married</i>.</p>
+
+<p>One Georgia belle we met, a sloe-eyed girl whose reputation
+not only for beauty but for charm reached through
+the entire South, had, at the time of our visit, recently
+become engaged in the more grave and permanent sense.</p>
+
+<p>"How does it seem?" a girl friend asked her.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel," she answered, "like a man who has built up a
+large business and is about to go into the hands of a receiver."</p>
+
+<p>Such ways as those girls have! Such voices! Such
+eyes! And such names, too! Names which would not
+fit at all into a northern setting, relatively so hard and
+unsentimental, but which, when one becomes accustomed
+to them, take their place gracefully and harmoniously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span>
+in the southern picture. The South likes diminutives
+and combinations in its women's names. Its Harriets,
+Franceses, Sarahs, and Marthas, become Hatties, Fannies,
+Sallies and Patsies, and Patsy sometimes undergoes
+a further transition and becomes Passie. Moreover,
+where these diminutives have been passed down
+for several generations in a family, their origin is sometimes
+lost sight of, and the diminutive becomes the actual
+baptismal name. In one family of my acquaintance, for
+example, the name Passie has long been handed down
+from mother to daughter. The original great-grandmother
+Passie was christened Martha but was at first
+called Patsy; then, because her black mammy was also
+named Patsy, the daughter of the house came to be
+known, for purposes of differentiation, as Passie, and
+when she married and had a daughter of her own, the
+child was christened Passie. In this family the name
+May has more recently been adopted as a middle name,
+and it is customary for familiars of the youngest Passie,
+to address her not merely as Passie, but as Passie-May.
+The inclusion of the second name, in this fashion, is another
+custom not uncommon in the South. In Atlanta
+alone I heard of ladies habitually referred to as Anna-Laura,
+Hattie-May, Lollie-Belle, Sally-Maud, Nora-Belle,
+Mattie-Sue, Emma-Belle, Lottie-Belle, Susie-May,
+Lula-Belle, Sallie-Fannie, Hattie-Fannie, Lou-Ellen,
+Allie-Lou, Clara-Belle, Mary-Ella, and Hattie-Belle.
+Another young lady was known to her friends as
+Jennie-D.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The train from Atlanta set us down at Covington,
+Georgia, or rather at the station which lies between the
+towns of Covington and Oxford&mdash;for when this railroad
+was built neither town would allow it a right of
+way, and to this day each is connected with the station
+by a street car line, either line equipped with one diminutive
+car, a pair of disconsolate mules, and a driver.
+Covington is the County seat, a quiet southern town,
+part old, part new, with a look of rural prosperity about
+it. Stopping at the postoffice to inquire for mail we saw
+this peremptory sign displayed:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>When the window is down don't bang around and
+ask for a stamp or two.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;<span class="smcap">J.&nbsp;L. Callaway</span>, Postmaster.</p></div>
+
+<p>As the window was down we tiptoed out and went
+upon our way, driving through Oxford before going to
+the plantation. This town was named for Oxford, England,
+and is, like its namesake, a college town. A small
+and very old Methodist educational institution, with a
+pretty though ragged campus and fine trees, is all there
+is to Oxford, save a row of ante-bellum houses. One
+of them, a pleasant white mansion, half concealed by the
+huge magnolias which stand in its front yard, was
+at one time the residence of General Longstreet. The
+old front gate, hanging on a stone post, was made by the
+general with his own hands&mdash;and well made, for it is to-day
+as good a gate as ever. Corra Harris lived at one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span>
+time in Oxford; her husband, Rev. Lundy H. Harris,
+having been a professor at the college.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Though plantation life has necessarily changed since
+the war, I do not believe that there is in the whole South
+a plantation where it has changed less than on the Burge
+plantation. In appearance the place is not as Sherman's
+men found it, for they tore down the fences and
+ruined the beautiful old-fashioned garden, and neither
+has been replaced; nor, of course, is it run, so far as
+practical affairs are concerned, as it was before the
+War; that is to say, instead of being operated as a
+unit of nine-hundred acres, it is now worked chiefly
+on shares, and is divided up into "one mule farms"
+and "two mule farms," these being tracts of about
+thirty and sixty acres, respectively, thirty acres being
+approximately the area which can be worked by a man
+and a mule.</p>
+
+<p>Practically all the negroes on the place&mdash;perhaps a
+hundred in number&mdash;are either former slaves of the
+Burge family, or the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren
+of slaves who lived on the plantation.
+That is one reason why the plantation is less changed in
+spirit than are many others. The Burges were religious
+people, used their slaves kindly, and brought them up
+well, so that the negroes on the plantation to-day are respectable,
+and in some instances, exemplary people, very
+different from the vagrant negro type which has developed
+since the War, making labor conditions in some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span>
+parts of the South uncertain, and plantation life, in some
+sections, not safe for unprotected women.</p>
+
+<p>The present proprietors of the Burge plantation are
+two ladies, granddaughters of Mrs. Thomas Burge, who
+lived here, a widow, with a little daughter, when General
+Sherman and his hosts came by. These ladies frequently
+spend months at the plantation without male protectors
+save only the good negroes of their own place,
+who look after them with the most affectionate devotion.
+True, the ladies keep an ugly looking but mild mannered
+bulldog, of which the negroes are generally afraid; true
+also they carry a revolver when they drive about the
+country in their motor, and keep revolvers handy in their
+rooms; but these precautions are not taken, they told
+me, because of any doubts about the men on their place,
+their one fear being of tramp negroes, passing by.</p>
+
+<p>Of their own negroes several are remarkable, particularly
+one old couple, perfect examples of the fine
+ante-bellum type so much beloved in the South, and so
+much regretted as it disappears.</p>
+
+<p>During the period of twenty years or more, while the
+owners were absent, growing up and receiving their
+education, the whole place, indoors and out, was in
+charge of Uncle George and Aunt Sidney. The two
+lived, and still do live, in one wing of the house&mdash;over
+which Aunt Sidney presides as housekeeper and
+cook, as her mother, Aunt Liddy, did before her. Aunt
+Liddy died only a short time ago, aged several years
+over a hundred. Uncle George supervises all the busi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span>ness
+of the plantation, as he has done for thirty or forty
+years. He collects all rents, markets the crops and receives
+the payments, makes purchases, pays bills, and
+keeps peace between the tenants&mdash;nor could any human
+being be more honorable or possess a finer, sweeter dignity.
+As for devotion, when the little girls who were
+away returned after all the years as grown women, every
+ribbon, every pin in that house was where it had been
+left, and the place was no less neat than if the "white
+folks" had constantly remained there.</p>
+
+<p>Before Georgia went dry it was customary for negroes
+of the rougher sort to get drunk in town every Saturday
+night. Drunken negroes would consequently be passing
+by, all night, on their way to their homes, yelling and
+(after the manner of their kind when intoxicated) shooting
+their revolvers in the air. Every Saturday night,
+when the ladies were at home, Uncle George would
+quietly take his gun and place himself on the porch,
+remaining there until the last of the obstreperous wayfarers
+had passed.</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Abe and Uncle Wiley are two other worthy and
+venerable men who live in cabins on the place. Both
+were there when Sherman's army passed upon its devastating
+way, and both were carried off, as were thousands
+upon thousands of other negroes out of that wide
+belt across the State of Georgia, which was overrun
+in the course of the March to the Sea.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah was goin' to mill wid de ox-caht," Uncle Abe
+told me, "when de soljas dey kim 'long an' got me. Dey<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span>
+tol' me, 'Heah, nigga! Git out dat caht, an' walk behin'.
+When <i>it</i> moves <i>you</i> move; when <i>it</i> stops <i>you</i>
+stop!' An' like dat Ah walk all de way to Savannah
+[two hundred and fifty miles]. Den, after dat, dey took
+us 'long up No'th&mdash;me an' ma brotha Wiley, ovah deh."</p>
+
+<p>I asked him what regiment he went with. He said it
+was the Twenty-second Indiana, and that Dr. Joe Stilwell,
+of that regiment, who came from a place near Madison,
+Indiana ("Ah reckon de town was name Brownstown"),
+was good to him. An officer whom he knew, he
+said, was Captain John Snodgrass, and another Major
+Tom Shay.</p>
+
+<p>"All Ah was evvuh wo'ied about aftuh dey kim tuck
+me," he declared, "was gittin' somep'n t' eat. Dat kinda
+put me on de wonduh, sometahmes, but dey used us all
+right. Dr. Pegg&mdash;him dat did de practice on de plantation
+befo' de Wah&mdash;he tol' de niggas dat de Yankees
+would put gags in deh moufs an' lead 'em eroun' like dey
+wuz cattle. But deh wa' n't like dat nohow. I b'longed
+to de Secon' Division, Thuhd B'gade, Fou'teenth Co'
+[corps]. Cap'n Snodgrass, he got to be lieutenant-cuhnel.
+He was de highes' man Ah evuh hel' any convuhsation
+wid, but I <i>saw</i> all de gennuls of dat ahmy."</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Wiley is older than Uncle Abe. He was already
+a grown man with three children when taken away
+by some of Sherman's men. He told me he was with the
+Fifty-second Ohio, and mentioned Captain Shepard.</p>
+
+<p>The two brothers got as far as Washington, D.&nbsp;C.</p>
+
+<p>"We got los' togedduh in de U.&nbsp;S. buildin' in dat city,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span>
+said Uncle Wiley. "De President of de U.&nbsp;S. right at
+dat tahme he was daid. He was kill', Ah don' s'pose
+it wuz a week befo' we got to Wash'n, D.&nbsp;C."</p>
+
+<p>"How did you happen to come all the way back?" I
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Well-l," ruminated the old man, "home was always
+a-restin' on mah min'. Ah kep' thinkin' 'bout home.
+So aftuh de Wah ceasted Ah jus' kim 'long back."</p>
+
+<p>Many of the old plantation customs still survive. A
+little before noon the bell is rung to summon the hands
+from the cotton fields. Over the red plowed soil you
+hear a darky cry, a melodious "Oh-<i>oh</i>-oh!" as wild and
+musical as the cries of the south-Italian olive gatherers.
+The planters cease their work, mules stand still, traces
+are unhooked from singletrees, and chain-ends thrown
+over the mules' backs; then the men mount the animals
+and ride in to the midday meal, the women trudging
+after. Those who rent land, or work on shares, go to
+their own cabins, while those employed by the hour or
+by the day (the rate of pay is ten cents an hour or seventy-five
+cents a day) come to the kitchen to be fed.
+Nor is it customary to stop there at feeding negroes.
+As in the old days, any negro who has come upon an
+errand or who has "stopped by" to sell supplies, or for
+whatever purpose, expects to stay for "dinner," and
+makes it a point to arrive about noon. Thus from
+sixteen to twenty negroes are fed daily at the Burge
+plantation house.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p400jpg" id="p400jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p400.jpg" width="600" height="365" alt="The planters cease their work" title="" />
+<span class="caption">The planters cease their work</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The old Christmas traditions are likewise kept up.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span>
+On Christmas day the negroes come flocking up to the
+house for their gifts. Their first concern is to attempt
+to cry "Christmas gift!" to others, before it can be said
+to them&mdash;for according to ancient custom the one who
+says the words first must have a gift from the other.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXXVII<br />
+<br />
+A YOUNG METROPOLIS</h2>
+
+
+<p>An observer approaching a strange city should be
+"neutral even in thought." He may listen to
+what is said of the city, but he must not permit
+his opinions to take form in advance; for, like other
+gossip, gossip about cities is unreliable, and the casual
+stranger's estimate of cities is not always founded upon
+broad appreciations. But though it is unwise to judge
+of cities by what is said of them, it is perhaps worth
+remarking that one may often judge of men by what they
+say of cities.</p>
+
+<p>I remember an American manufacturer, broken down
+by overwork, who, when he looked at Pompeii, could
+think only of the wasted possibilities of Vesuvius as a
+power plant, and I remember two traveling salesmen
+on a southern railroad train who expressed scorn for
+the exquisite city of Charleston because&mdash;they said&mdash;it
+is but a poor market place for suspenders and barbers'
+supplies. There are those who think of Boston only as
+headquarters of the shoe trade, others who think of it
+only in the terms of culture, and still others who regard
+it solely as an abode of negrophiles.</p>
+
+<p>In the case of the chief city of Alabama, however, my
+companion and I noticed, as we journeyed through the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span>
+South, that reports were singularly in accord. Birmingham
+is too young to have any Civil War history.
+Her history is the history of the steel industry in the
+South, and one hears always of that: of the affluence of
+the city when the industry is thriving, and hard times
+when it is not. One is invariably told that Birmingham
+is not a southern city, but a northern city in the
+South, and the chief glories of the place, aside from
+steel, are (if one is to believe rumors current upon railroad
+trains and elsewhere), a twenty-seven story building,
+Senator Oscar Underwood, the distinguished Democratic
+leader, and the Tutwiler Hotel. Even in Atlanta
+it is conceded that the Tutwiler is a good hotel, and when
+Atlanta admits that anything in Birmingham is good it
+may be considered as established that the thing is very,
+very good&mdash;for Birmingham and Atlanta view each
+other with the same degree of cordiality as is exchanged
+between St. Louis and Kansas City, Minneapolis and St.
+Paul, San Francisco and Los Angeles.</p>
+
+<p>Having been, in the course of our southern wanderings,
+in several very bad hotels, and having heard the
+Tutwiler compared with Chicago's Blackstone, my companion
+and I held eager anticipation of this hostelry.
+Nor were our hopes dashed by a first glimpse of the city
+on the night of our arrival. It was a modern-looking
+city&mdash;just the sort of city that would have a fine new
+hotel. The railroad station through which we passed
+after leaving the train was not the usual dingy little
+southern station, but an admirable building, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span>
+streets along which we presently found ourselves gliding
+in an automobile hack, were wide, smooth, and brightly
+illuminated by clustered boulevard lights.</p>
+
+<p>True, we had long since learned not to place
+too much reliance upon the nocturnal aspects of
+cities. A city seen by night is like a woman dressed for
+a ball. Darkness drapes itself about her as a black-velvet
+evening gown, setting off, in place of neck and
+arms, the softly glowing fa&ccedil;ades of marble buildings;
+lights are her diamond ornaments, and her perfume is
+the cool fragrance of night air. Almost all cities, and
+almost all women, look their best at night, and there are
+those which, though beautiful by night, sink, in their
+daylight aspect, to utter mediocrity.</p>
+
+<p>Presently our motor drew up before the entrance of
+the Tutwiler&mdash;a proud entrance, all revolving doors and
+glitter and promise. A brisk bell boy came running for
+our bags. The signs were of the best.</p>
+
+<p>The lobby, though spacious, was crowded; the decorations
+and equipment were of that rich sumptuousness
+attained only in the latest and most magnificent American
+hotels; there was music, and as we made our way
+along we caught a glimpse, in passing, of an attractive
+supper room, with small table-lights casting their soft
+radiance upon white shirt fronts and the faces of pretty
+girls. In all it was a place to make glad the heart of
+the weary traveler, and to cause him to wonder whether
+his dress suit would be wrinkled when he took it from
+his trunk.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Behind the imposing marble "desk" stood several impeccable
+clerks, and to one of these I addressed myself,
+giving our names and mentioning the fact that we had
+telegraphed for rooms. I am not sure that this young
+man wore a braided cutaway and a white carnation; I
+only know that he affected me as hotel clerks in braided
+cutaways and white carnations always do. While I
+spoke he stood a little way back from the counter, his
+chin up, his gaze barely missing the top of my hat, his
+nostrils seeming to contract with that expression of
+dubiousness assumed by delicate noses which sense, long
+before they encounter it, the aroma of unworthiness.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a room in the house," he said. Then, as though
+to forestall further parley, he turned and spoke with
+gracious lightness to one of his own rank and occupation
+who, at the request of my companion, was ascertaining
+whether letters were awaiting us.</p>
+
+<p>"But we telegraphed two days ago!" I protested desperately.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't help it. Hardware Convention. Everything
+taken."</p>
+
+<p>Over my shoulder I heard from my companion a
+sound, half sigh, half groan, which echoed the cry of
+my own heart.</p>
+
+<p>"I felt this coming!" he murmured. "Didn't you notice
+all these people with ribbons on them? There's
+never any room in a hotel where everybody's wearing
+ribbons. It's like a horse show. They get the ribbons
+and we get the gate."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Surely," I faltered, "you can let us have one small
+room?"</p>
+
+<p>"Impossible," he answered brightly. "We've turned
+away dozens of people this evening."</p>
+
+<p>"Then," I said, abandoning hope, "perhaps you will
+suggest some other hotel?"</p>
+
+<p>I once heard a woman, the most perfect parvenu I
+ever met, speak of her poor relations in a tone exactly
+similar to that in which the clerk now spoke the names
+of two hotels. Having spoken, he turned and passed behind
+the partition at one end of the marble counter.</p>
+
+<p>My companion and I stood there for a moment looking
+despondently at each other. Then, without a word, we
+retreated through that gorgeous lobby, feeling like sad
+remnants of a defeated Yankee army.</p>
+
+<p>Again we motored through the bright streets, but only
+to successive disappointments, for both hotels mentioned
+by the austere clerk were "turning 'em away."
+Our chauffeur now came to our aid, mentioning several
+small hotels, and in one of these, the Granada, we were
+at last so fortunate as to find lodgings.</p>
+
+<p>"It begun to look like you'd have to put up at the
+Roden," the chauffeur smiled as we took our bags out of
+the car and settled with him.</p>
+
+<p>"The Roden?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he returned "Best ventilated hotel in the
+United States."</p>
+
+<p>Next day when the Hotel Roden was pointed out to
+us we appreciated the witticism, for the Roden is&mdash;or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span>
+was at the time of our visit&mdash;merely the steel skeleton
+of a building which, we were informed, had for some
+years stood unfinished owing to disagreements among
+those concerned with its construction.</p>
+
+<p>As for the Granada, though a modest place, it was
+new and clean; the clerk was amiable, the beds comfortable,
+and if our rooms were too small to admit our
+trunks, they were, at all events, outside rooms, each with
+a private bath, at a rate of $1 per day apiece. Never
+in any hotel have I felt that I was getting so much for
+my money.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning, after breakfast, we set out to see the
+city. Having repeatedly heard of Birmingham as the
+"Pittsburgh of the South," we expected cold daylight
+to reveal the sooty signs of her industrialism, but in this
+we were agreeably disappointed. By day as well as by
+night the city is pleasing to the eye, and it is a fact
+worth noting that the downtown buildings of Atlanta
+(which is not an industrial city) are streaked and dirty,
+whereas those of Birmingham are clean&mdash;the reason for
+this being that the mills and furnaces of Birmingham
+are far removed from the heart of the town, whereas
+locomotives belch black smoke into the very center of
+Atlanta's business and shopping district.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, the metropolis of Alabama is better laid
+out than that of Georgia. The streets of Birmingham
+are wide, and the business part of the city, lying upon a
+flat terrain, is divided into large, even squares. From
+this district the chief residence section mounts by easy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span>
+graceful grades into the hills to the southward. Because
+of these grades, and the curving drives which follow
+the contours of the hills, and the vistas of the lower
+city, and the good modern houses, and the lawns and
+trees and shrubbery and breezes, this Highlands region
+is reminiscent of a similar residence district in Portland,
+Oregon&mdash;which is to say that it is one of the most agreeable
+districts of the kind in the United States.</p>
+
+<p>Well up on the hillside, Highland Avenue winds a
+charming course between pleasant homes, with here and
+there a little residence park branching off to one side,
+and here and there a small municipal park occupying an
+angle formed by a sharp turn in the driveway; and if
+you follow the street far enough you will presently see
+the house of the Birmingham Country Club, standing
+upon its green hilltop, amidst rolling, partly wooded golf
+links, above the road.</p>
+
+<p>Nor is the Country Club at the summit of this range
+of hills. Back of it rise other roads, the most picturesque
+of them being Altamont Road, which runs to
+the top of Red Mountain, reaching a height about
+equivalent to that of the cornice line of Birmingham's
+tallest building. The houses of this region are built on
+streets which, like some streets of Portland, are terraced
+into the hillside, and the resident of an upper block
+can almost look down the chimneys of his neighbors on
+the block below. The view commanded from these
+mountain perches does not suggest that the lower city
+runs up into the Highlands. It seems to be a separate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span>
+place, down in a distant valley, and the sense of its remoteness
+is heightened by the thin veil of gray smoke
+which wafts from the tall smokestacks of far-off iron
+furnaces, softening the serrated outlines of the city and
+wrapping its tall buildings in the industrial equivalent
+for autumn haze.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p408jpg" id="p408jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p408.jpg" width="600" height="447" alt="Birmingham&mdash;The thin veil of smoke from far-off iron furnaces softens the city&#39;s serrated outlines" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Birmingham&mdash;The thin veil of smoke from far-off iron furnaces softens the city&#39;s serrated outlines</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>At night the scene from the Highlands is even more
+spectacular, for at brief intervals the blowing of a converter
+in some distant steel plant illuminates the heavens
+with a great hot glow, like that which rises and falls
+about the crater of a volcano in eruption. Thus the
+city's vast affairs are kept before it by day in a pillar of
+cloud, and by night in a pillar of fire. Iron and steel
+dominate Birmingham's mind, activities and life. The
+very ground of Red Mountain is red because of the iron
+ore that it contains, and those who reside upon the
+charming slopes of this hill do not own their land in fee
+simple, but subject always to the mineral rights of mining
+companies.</p>
+
+<p>The only other industry of Birmingham which is to
+be compared, in magnitude or efficiency, with the steel
+industry is that of "cutting in" at dances. All through
+the South it is carried on, but whereas in such cities as
+Memphis, New Orleans and Atlanta, men show a little
+mercy to the stranger&mdash;realizing that, as he is presumably
+unacquainted with all the ladies at a dance, he
+cannot retaliate in kind&mdash;Birmingham is merciless and
+prosecutes the pestilential practice unremittingly, even
+going so far as to apply the universal-service principle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span>
+and call out her highschool youths to carry on the work.
+Before I went to certain dances in Birmingham I felt
+that high-school boys ought to be kept at home at night,
+but after attending these dances I realized that such
+restriction was altogether inadequate, and that the only
+way to deal with them effectively would be to pickle them
+in vitriol.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 420px;">
+<a name="p424jpg" id="p424jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p424.jpg" width="420" height="448" alt="Birmingham practices unremittingly the pestilential habit of &quot;cutting in&quot; at
+dances" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Birmingham practices unremittingly the pestilential habit of &quot;cutting in&quot; at
+dances</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Where, in other cities of the South, I have managed
+to dance as much as half a dance without interruption, I
+never danced more than twenty feet with one partner in
+Birmingham. Nor did my companion.</p>
+
+<p>Our host was energetic in presenting us to ladies of
+infinite pulchritude and State-wide terpsichorean reputation,
+but we would start to tread a measure with them,
+only to have them swiftly snatched from us by some
+spindle-necked, long-wristed, big-boned, bowl-eared
+high-school youth, in a dinner suit which used to fit him
+when it was new, six months ago.</p>
+
+<p>As we would start to dance the lady would say:</p>
+
+<p>"You-all ah strangehs, ahn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>We would reply that we were.</p>
+
+<p>"Wheh do you come from?"</p>
+
+<p>"New York."</p>
+
+<p>Then, because the Hardware Convention was being
+held in town at the time, she would continue:</p>
+
+<p>"Ah reckon you-all ah hahdware men?"</p>
+
+<p>But that was as far as the conversation ever got.
+Just about the time that she began to reckon we were
+hardware men a mandatory hand would be laid upon us,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span>
+and before we had time to defend ourselves against the
+hardware charge, the lady would be wafted off in the
+arms of some predatory youth who ought to have been at
+home considering <i>pons asinorum</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Had we indeed been hardware men, and had we had
+our hardware with us, they could have done with fewer
+teachers in the high schools of that city after the night
+of our first dance in Birmingham.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Up in the hills, some miles back of the Country Club,
+on the banks of a large artificial lake, stands the new
+clubhouse of the Birmingham Motor and Country Club,
+and around the lake runs the club's two-and-a-half-mile
+speedway. Elsewhere is the Roebuck Golf Club, the
+links of which are admitted ("even in Atlanta!") to be
+excellent&mdash;the one possible objection to the course of the
+Birmingham Country Club being that it is suited only
+to play with irons.</p>
+
+<p>I mention these golfing matters not because they interest
+me, but because they may interest you. I am not
+a golfer. I played the game for two seasons; then I
+decided to try to lead a better life. The first time I
+played I did quite well, but thence onward my game
+declined until, toward the last, crowds would collect to
+hear me play. When I determined to abandon the game
+I did not burn my clubs or break them up, according to
+the usual custom, but instead gave them to a man upon
+whom I wished to retaliate because his dog had bitten
+a member of my family.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Small wonder that all golf clubs have extensive bars!
+It is not hard to understand why men who realize that
+they have become incurable victims of the insidious habit
+of golf should wish to drown the thought in drink. But
+in Birmingham they can't do it&mdash;not, at least, at bars.
+Alabama has beaten her public bars into soda fountains
+and quick-lunch rooms, and though her club bars
+still look like real ones, the drinks served are so soft that
+no splash occurs when reminiscent tears drop into them.</p>
+
+<p>When we were in Alabama each citizen who so desired
+was allowed by law to import from outside the
+State a small allotment of strong drink for personal use,
+but the red tape involved in this procedure had already
+discouraged all but the most ardent drinkers, and
+those found it next to impossible, even by hoarding their
+"lonesome quarts," and pooling supplies with their convivial
+friends, to provide sufficient alcoholic drink for
+a "real party."</p>
+
+<p>We met in Birmingham but one gentleman whose
+cellars seemed to be well stocked, and the tales of ingenuity
+and exertion by which he managed to secure
+ample supplies of liquor were such as to lead us to believe
+that this matter had become, with him, an occupation
+to which all other business must give second place.</p>
+
+<p>It was this gentleman who told us that, since the State
+went dry, the ancient form, "R.&nbsp;S.&nbsp;V.&nbsp;P.," on social invitations,
+had been revised to "B.&nbsp;W.&nbsp;H.&nbsp;P.," signifying,
+"bring whisky in hip pocket."</p>
+
+<p>To the "B.&nbsp;W.&nbsp;H.&nbsp;P." habit he himself strictly ad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span>hered.
+One night, when we chanced to meet him in a
+downtown club, he drew a flask from a hip pocket, and
+invited us to "have something."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" asked my companion.</p>
+
+<p>"Scotch."</p>
+
+<p>When my companion had helped himself he passed
+the flask to me, but I returned it to the owner, explaining
+that I did not drink Scotch whisky.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you drink?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Bourbon."</p>
+
+<p>"Here it is," he returned, drawing a second flask from
+the other hip pocket.</p>
+
+<p>How well, too, do I remember the long, delightful
+evening upon which my companion and I sat in an Atlanta
+club with a group of the older members, the week
+before Georgia went bone dry. There, as in Alabama
+before 1915, there had been pretended prohibition, but
+now the bars of leading clubs were being closed, and
+convivial men were looking into the future with despair.
+One of the gentlemen was a justice of the Supreme
+Court of the State, and I remember his wistful
+declaration that prohibition would fall hardest upon the
+older men.</p>
+
+<p>"When a man is young," he said, "he can be lively and
+enjoy himself without drinking, because he is full of animal
+spirits. But we older men aren't bubbling over
+with liveliness. We can't dance, or don't want to, and
+we lack the stimulus which comes of falling continually
+in love. My great pleasure is to sit of an evening, here<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span>
+at a table in the caf&eacute; of this club, conversing with my
+friends. That is where prohibition is going to hurt me.
+I shall not see my old friends any more."</p>
+
+<p>The others protested at this somber view, but the
+judge gravely shook his head, saying: "You don't believe
+me, but I know whereof I speak, for I have been
+through something like this, in a minor way, before.
+A good many years ago I was one of a little group of
+congenial men to organize a small club. We had comfortable
+quarters, and we used to drop in at night, much
+as we have been doing of late years here, and have the
+kind of talks that are tonic to the soul. Of course we
+had liquor in the club, but there came a time when, for
+some reason or other&mdash;I think it was some trouble over
+a license&mdash;we closed our bar. We didn't think it was
+going to make a great difference, but it did. The men
+began to stop coming in, and before long the club ceased
+to exist.</p>
+
+<p>"It won't be like that here. This club will go on.
+But we won't come here. We won't want to sit around
+a table, like this, and drink ginger ale and sarsaparilla;
+and even if we do, the talk won't be so good. The thing
+that makes me downcast is not that liquor is going, but
+that we are really parting this week.</p>
+
+<p>"Every one knows that the abuse of drink does harm
+in the world, but these pious prohibitionists are not of the
+temperament to understand how alcohol ministers to the
+esthetic side of certain natures. It gives us better companions
+and makes us better companions for others. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span>
+stimulates our minds, enhances our appreciations, sharpens
+our wit, loosens our tongues, and saves brilliant
+conversation from becoming a lost art."</p>
+
+<p>My sympathies went out to the judge. It has always
+seemed to me a pity that the liquor question has resolved
+itself into a fight between extremists&mdash;for I think the
+wine and beer people might survive if they were not tied
+up with the distillers, and I do not believe that any considerable
+evil comes of drinking wine or beer.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless it must be apparent to every one who
+troubles to investigate, that prohibition invariably works
+great good wherever it is made effective. Take, for
+example, Birmingham.</p>
+
+<p>There was one year&mdash;I believe it was 1912&mdash;when
+there was an average of more than one murder a day,
+for every working day in the year, in the county in
+which Birmingham is located. On one famous Saturday
+night there were nineteen felonious assaults (sixteen
+by negroes and three by whites), from which about
+a dozen deaths resulted, two of those killed having been
+policemen.</p>
+
+<p>All this has changed with prohibition. Killings are
+now comparatively rare, arrests have diminished to less
+than a third of the former average, whether for grave
+or petty offenses, and the receiving jail, which was formerly
+packed like a pigpen every Saturday night, now
+stands almost empty, while the city jail, which used
+continually to house from 120 to 150 offenders, has
+diminished its average population to 30 or 35.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXVIII<br />
+<br />
+BUSY BIRMINGHAM</h2>
+
+
+<p>The fact that a man may shut off his motor and
+coast downhill from his home to his office in
+the lower part of Birmingham, is not without
+symbolism. Birmingham is all business. If I were to
+personify the place, it would be in the likeness of a man
+I know&mdash;a big, powerful fellow with an honest blue
+eye and an expression in which self-confidence, ambition,
+and power are blended. Like Birmingham, this
+man is a little more than forty years of age. Like Birmingham,
+he has built up a large business of his own.
+And, like Birmingham, he is a little bit na&iuml;ve in his pride
+of success. His life is divided between his office and
+his home, and it would be difficult to say for which his
+devotion is the greater. He talks business with his wife
+at breakfast and dinner, and on their Sunday walks.
+He brings his papers home at night and goes over them
+with her, for, though her specialty is bringing up the
+children, she is deeply interested in his business and
+often makes suggestions which he follows. This causes
+him to admire her intensely, which he would not necessarily
+do were she merely a good wife and mother.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He has no hobbies or pastimes. True, he plays golf,
+but with him golf is not a diversion. He plays because
+he finds the exercise increases his efficiency ("efficiency"
+is perhaps his favorite word), and because many of his
+commercial associates are golfers, and he can talk business
+with them on the links.</p>
+
+<p>His house is pleasant and stands upon a good-sized
+city lot. It is filled with very shiny mahogany furniture
+and strong-colored porti&egrave;res and sofa cushions. It is
+rather more of a house than he requires, for his tastes
+are simple, but he has a feeling that he ought to have a
+large house, for the same reason that he and his wife
+ought to dress expensively&mdash;that is, out of respect, as it
+were, to his business.</p>
+
+<p>One of his chief treasures is an automatic piano,
+upon which he rolls off selections from Wagner's operas.
+He likes the music of the great German because, as he
+has often told me, it stirs his imagination, thereby helping
+him to solve business problems and make business
+plans.</p>
+
+<p>The thing he most abhors is general conversation, and
+he is never so amusing&mdash;so pathetically and unconsciously
+amusing&mdash;as when trying to take part in general
+conversation and at the same time to conceal the
+writhings of his tortured spirit. There is but one thing
+which will drive him to attempt the feat, and that is the
+necessity of making himself agreeable to some man, or
+the wife of some man, from whom he wishes to get business.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The census of 1910 gave Birmingham a population of
+132,000, and it is estimated that since that time the population
+has increased by 50,000. Birmingham not only
+knows that it is growing, but believes in trying to make
+ready in advance for future growth. It gives one the
+impression that it is rather ahead of its housing problems
+than behind them. Its area, for instance, is about
+as great as that of Boston or Cleveland, and its hotels
+may be compared with the hotels of those cities. If it
+has not so many clubs as Atlanta, it has, at least, all the
+clubs it needs; and if it has not so many skyscrapers as
+New York, it has several which would fit nicely into the
+Wall Street district. Moreover, the tall buildings of
+Birmingham lose nothing in height by contrast with the
+older buildings, three or four stories high, which surround
+them, giving the business district something of
+that look which hangs about a boy who has outgrown
+his clothing. Nor are the vehicles and street crowds, altogether
+in consonance, as yet, with the fine office buildings
+of the city, for many of the motors standing at the
+curb have about them that gray, rural look which comes
+of much mud and infrequent washing, and the idlers
+who lean against the rich fa&ccedil;ades of granite and marble
+are entirely out of the picture, for they look precisely
+like the idlers who lean against the wooden posts of
+country railroad station platforms.</p>
+
+<p>Such curious contrasts as these may be noted everywhere.
+For instance, Birmingham has been so busy
+paving the streets that it seems quite to have forgotten<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span>
+to put up street signs. Also, not far from the majestic
+Tutwiler Hotel, and the imposing apartment building
+called the Ridgely, the front of which occupies a full
+block, is a park so ill kept that it would be a disgrace
+to the city but for the obvious fact that the city is growing
+and wide-awake, and will, of course, attend to the
+park when it can find the time. Here are, I believe, the
+only public monuments Birmingham contains. One is
+a Confederate monument in the form of an obelisk, and
+the other two are statues erected in memory of Mary
+A. Cahalan, for many years principal of the Powell
+School, and of William Elias B. Davis, a distinguished
+surgeon. Workers in these fields are too seldom honored
+in this way, and the spirit which prompted the
+erection of these monuments is particularly creditable;
+sad to say, however, both effigies are wretchedly placed
+and are in themselves exceedingly poor things. Art is
+something, indeed, about which Birmingham has much
+to learn. So far as I could discover, no such thing as an
+art museum has been contemplated. But here again the
+critic should remember that, whereas art is old, Birmingham
+is young. She is as yet in the stage of development
+at which cities think not of art museums, but of
+municipal auditoriums; and with the latter subject, at
+least, she is now concerning herself.</p>
+
+<p>Even in the city's political life contrasts are not wanting,
+for though the town is Republican in sentiment, it
+proves itself southern by voting the Democratic ticket,
+and it is interesting to note further that the commission<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span>
+by which it is governed had as one of its five members,
+when we were there, a Socialist.</p>
+
+<p>Another curious and individual touch is contributed
+by the soda-fountain lunch rooms which abound in the
+city, and which, I judge, arrived with the disappearance
+of barroom lunch counters. In connection with
+many of the downtown soda fountains there are cooking
+arrangements, and business lunches are served.</p>
+
+<p>The roads leading out of the city in various directions
+have many dangerous grade crossings, and accidents
+must be of common occurrence. At all events, I
+have never known a city in which cemeteries and undertaking
+establishments were so widely advertised. In
+the street cars, for instance, I observed the cheerful
+placards of one Wallace Johns, undertaker, who
+promises "all the attention you would expect from a
+friend," and I was informed that Mr. Johns possesses
+business cards (for restricted use only) bearing the gay
+legend: "I'll get you yet!"</p>
+
+<p>As to schools the city is well off. Dr. J.&nbsp;H.
+Phillips, superintendent of public schools, has occupied
+his post probably as long as any school superintendent in
+the country. He organized the city school system in
+1883, beginning with seven teachers, as against 750 now
+employed. The colored schools are reported to be better
+than in most southern cities.</p>
+
+<p>Of the general status of the negro in Birmingham
+I cannot speak with authority. As in Atlanta, negroes
+are sometimes required to use separate elevators in of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span>fice
+buildings, and, as everywhere south of Washington,
+the Birmingham street cars give one end to whites
+and the other to negroes. But whereas negroes use
+the back of the car in Atlanta, they use the front in
+Birmingham. It was attempted, at one time, to reverse
+this order, for reasons having to do with draft and
+ventilation, but the people of Birmingham had become
+accustomed to the existing arrangement and objected
+to the change. "After all," one gentleman said to me,
+in speaking of this matter, "it is not important which
+end of the car is given to the nigger. The main point is
+that he must sit where he is told."</p>
+
+<p>The means by which the negro vote is eliminated in
+various Southern States are generally similar, though
+Alabama has, perhaps, been more thorough in the matter
+than some other States. The importance of this
+issue to the southern white man is very great, for if all
+negroes were allowed to vote the control of certain
+States would be in negro hands. To the Southerner
+such an idea is intolerable, and it is my confident belief
+that if the State of Alabama were resettled by men
+from Massachusetts, and the same problems were presented
+to those men, they would be just as quick as the
+white Alabamans of to-day to find means to suppress
+the negro vote. With all my heart I wish that such
+an exchange of citizens might temporarily be effected,
+for when the immigrants from Massachusetts moved
+back to their native New England, after an experience
+of the black belt, they would take with them an under<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span>standing
+of certain aspects of the negro problem
+which they have never understood; an understanding
+which, had they possessed it sixty or seventy years ago,
+might have brought about the freeing of slaves by government
+purchase&mdash;a course which Lincoln advocated
+and which would probably have prevented
+the Civil War, and thereby saved millions upon
+millions of money, to say nothing of countless
+lives. Had they even understood the problems of the
+South at the end of the Civil War, the horrors of Reconstruction
+might have been avoided, and I cannot too
+often reiterate that, but for Reconstruction we should
+not be perplexed, to-day, by the unhappy, soggy mass
+of political inertia known as the Solid South.</p>
+
+<p>I asked a former State official how the negro vote
+had been eliminated in Alabama. "At first," he said,
+"we used to kill them to keep them from voting; when
+we got sick of doing that we began to steal their ballots;
+and when stealing their ballots got to troubling our
+consciences we decided to handle the matter legally, fixing
+it so they couldn't vote."</p>
+
+<p>I inquired as to details. He explained.</p>
+
+<p>It seems that in 1901 a constitutional convention
+was held, at which it was enacted that, in order to be
+eligible for life to vote, citizens must register during
+the next two years. There were, however, certain qualifications
+prescribed for registration. A man must be
+of good character, and must have fought in a war, or
+be the descendant of a person who had fought. This<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span>
+enactment, known as the "grandfather clause," went
+far toward the elimination of the negro. As an additional
+safeguard, however, an educational clause was
+added, but the educational requirement did not become
+effective at once, as that would have made illiterate
+whites ineligible as voters. Not until the latter were
+safely registered under the "grandfather clause," was
+the educational clause applied, and as, under this clause,
+the would-be voter must read and write <i>to the satisfaction
+of his examiner</i>, the negro's chance to get suffrage
+was still more reduced.</p>
+
+<p>The United States Supreme Court has, I believe, held
+that the educational clause does not constitute race discrimination.</p>
+
+<p>As though the above measures were not sufficient, it
+is further required that, in order to vote at November
+elections in Alabama, voters must pay a small voluntary
+poll tax. This tax, however, must be paid each
+year before February first&mdash;that is, about nine months
+before elections actually take place. The negro has
+never been distinguished for his foresightedness with a
+dollar, and, to make matters harder for him, this tax is
+cumulative from the year 1901, so that a man who
+wishes to begin to vote this year, and can qualify in
+other respects, must pay a tax amounting to nearly
+twenty dollars.</p>
+
+<p>These measures give Alabama, as my informant put
+it, a "very exclusive electorate." With a population
+of approximately two millions, the greatest number of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span>
+votes ever cast by the State was 125,000. Of this number,
+531 votes were those of negroes, "representing" a
+colored population of 840,000!</p>
+
+<p>The gentleman who explained these matters also told
+me a story illustrative of the old-time Southerner's attitude
+toward the negro in politics.</p>
+
+<p>During Reconstruction, when Alabama's Legislature
+was about one-third white and two-thirds negro, a fine
+old gentleman who had been a slaveholder and was an
+experienced parliamentarian, was attempting to preside
+over the Legislature. In this he experienced much difficulty,
+his greatest <i>b&ecirc;te noir</i> being a negro member,
+full of oratory, who continually interrupted other speakers.</p>
+
+<p>Realizing that this was a part of the new order of
+things, the presiding officer tried not to allow his irritation
+to get the better of him, and to silence the objectionable
+man in parliamentary fashion. "The member
+will kindly come to order!" he repeated over and over,
+rapping with his gavel. "The member will kindly come
+to order!"</p>
+
+<p>After this had gone on for some time without effect,
+the old gentleman's patience became exhausted. He
+laid down his gavel, arose to his feet, glared at the irrepressible
+member, and, shaking his finger savagely,
+shouted: "Sit down, you blankety-blank black blankety-blank!"</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon the negro dropped instantly to his seat
+and was no more heard from.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXXIX<br />
+<br />
+AN ALLEGORY OF ACHIEVEMENT</h2>
+
+
+<p>To visit Birmingham without seeing an iron and
+steel plant would be like visiting Rome without
+seeing the Forum. Consequently my companion
+and I made application for permission to go through
+the Tennessee Coal, Iron, &amp; Railroad Company's
+plant, at Ensley, on the outskirts of the city. When
+the permission was refused us we attacked from another
+angle&mdash;using influence&mdash;and were refused again.
+Next we called upon a high official of the company, and
+(as we had, of course, done in making our previous requests
+for admission to the plant) explained our errand.</p>
+
+<p>Though this gentleman received us with the utmost
+courtesy, he declared that the company desired no publicity,
+and plainly indicated that he was not disposed to
+let us into the plant.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you what the trouble is," said my companion
+to me. "This company is a part of the United
+States Steel Corporation, and in the old muckraking
+days it was thoroughly raked. They think that we have
+come down here full of passionate feeling over the poor,
+downtrodden workingman and the great, greedy octopus."</p>
+
+<p>"What makes you think that?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, we are a writer and an artist. Lots of writers
+and artists have made good livings by teaching magazine
+readers that it is dishonest for a corporation, or a
+corporation official, to prosper; that the way to integrity
+is through insolvency; that the word 'company' is a
+term of reproach, while 'corporation' is a foul epithet,
+and 'trust' blasphemy."</p>
+
+<p>"What shall we do?"</p>
+
+<p>"We must make it clear to these people," he said,
+"that we have no mission. We must satisfy them that
+we are not reformers&mdash;that we didn't come to dig out a
+red-hot story, but to see red-hot rails rolled out."</p>
+
+<p>Pursuing this course, we were successful. All that
+any official of the company required of us was that we
+be open-minded. The position of the company, when
+we came to understand it, was simply that it did not wish
+to facilitate the work of men who came down with pencils,
+paper, and preconceived "views," deliberately to
+play the great American game of "swat the corporation."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Surely there is not in the world an industry which,
+for sheer pictorial magnificence, rivals the modern
+manufacturing of steel. In the first place, the scale of
+everything is inexpressibly stupendous. To speak of a
+row of six blast furnaces, with mouths a hundred feet
+above the ground, and chimneys rising perhaps another
+hundred feet above these mouths, is not, perhaps, impressive,
+but to look at such a row of furnaces, to see<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span>
+their fodder of ore, dolomite, and coke brought in by
+train loads; to see it fed to them by the "skip"; to hear
+them roar continually for more; to feel the savage heat
+generated within their bodies; to be told in shouts, above
+the din, something of what is going on inside these
+vast, voracious, savage monsters, and to see them dripping
+their white-hot blood when they are picked by a
+long steel bar in the hands of an atom of a man&mdash;this
+is to witness an almost terrifying allegory of mankind's
+achievement.</p>
+
+<p>The gas generated by blast furnaces is used in part in
+the hot-blast stoves&mdash;gigantic tanks from which hot air,
+at very high pressure, is admitted to the furnaces themselves,
+and is also used to develop steam for the blowing
+engines and other auxiliaries. In the furnaces the
+molten iron, because of its greater specific gravity, settles
+to the bottom, while the slag floats to the top. The
+slag, by the way, is not, as I had supposed, altogether
+worthless, but is used for railroad ballast and in the
+manufacture of cement.</p>
+
+<p>The molten iron drawn from the blast furnaces runs
+in glittering rivulets (which, at a distance of twenty
+or thirty feet, burn the face and the eyes), into ladle cars
+which are like a string of devils' soup bowls, mounted
+on railroad trucks ready to be hauled away by a locomotive
+and served at a banquet in hell.</p>
+
+<p>That is not what happens to them, however. The
+locomotive takes them to another part of the plant, and
+their contents, still molten, is poured into the mixers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span>
+These are gigantic caldrons as high as houses, which
+stand in rows in an open-sided steel shed, and the chief
+purpose of them is to keep the "soup" hot until it is
+required for the converters&mdash;when it is again poured off
+into ladle cars and drawn away.</p>
+
+<p>The converters are in still another part of the
+grounds. They are huge, pear-shaped retorts, resembling
+in their action those teakettles which hang on
+stands and are poured by being tilted. But a million
+teakettles could be lost in one converter, and the boiling
+water from a million teakettles, poured into a converter,
+would be as one single drop of ice water let fall into a
+red-hot stove.</p>
+
+<p>In the converters the metalloids&mdash;silicon, manganese,
+and carbon&mdash;are burned out of the iron under a flaming
+heat which, by means of high air pressure, is brought
+to a temperature of about 3400 degrees. It is the blowing
+of these converters, and the occasional pouring of
+them, which throws the Vesuvian glow upon the skies
+of Birmingham at night. The heat they give off is beyond
+description. Several hundred feet away you feel
+it smiting viciously upon your face, and the concrete
+flooring of the huge shed in which they stand is so hot as
+to burn your feet through the soles of your shoes.</p>
+
+<p>The most elaborate display of fireworks ever devised
+by Mr. Pain would be but a poor thing compared with
+the spectacle presented when a converter is poured.
+The whole world glows with golden heat, and is filled
+with an explosion of brilliant sparks, and as the molten<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span>
+metal passes out into the sunlight that light is by contrast
+so feeble that it seems almost to cast a shadow
+over the white-hot vats of iron.</p>
+
+<p>Next come the tilting open-hearth furnaces, where the
+iron is subjected to the action of lime at a very high
+temperature. This removes the phosphorus and leaves
+a bath of commercially pure iron which is then "teemed"
+into a hundred-ton ladle, wherein it is treated in such
+a way as to give it the properties required in the finished
+steel. What these properties may be, depends, of
+course, upon the purpose to which the steel is to be put.
+Rails, for example, must, above all, resist abrasion, and
+consequently have a higher carbon content than, say,
+reinforcing bars for concrete work. To obtain various
+qualities in steel are added carbon, ferro-manganese, or
+ferro-silicon in proportions differing according to requirements.</p>
+
+<p>In the next process steel ingots are made. I lost track
+of the exact detail of this, but I remember seeing the
+ingots riding about in their own steel cars, turning to
+an orange color as they cooled, and I remember seeing
+them pounded by a hammer that stood up in the air
+like an elevated railroad station, and I know that pretty
+soon they got into the blooming mill and were rolled
+out into "blooms," after which they were handled by a
+huge contrivance like a thumb and forefinger of steel
+which&mdash;though the blooms weigh five tons apiece&mdash;picked
+them up much as you might pick up a stick of red
+candy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Still orange-hot, the blooms find their way to the rolling
+mill, where they go dashing back and forth upon
+rollers and between rollers&mdash;the latter working in pairs
+like the rollers of large wringers, squeezing the blooms,
+in their successive passages, to greater length and
+greater thinness, until at last they take the form of long,
+red, glowing rails; after which they are sawed off, to the
+accompaniment of a spray of white sparks, into rail
+lengths, and run outside to cool. And I may add that,
+while there is more brilliant heat to be seen in many
+other departments of the plant, there is no department
+in which the color is more beautiful than in the piles
+of rails on the cooling beds&mdash;some of them still red as
+they come from the rollers, others shading off to rose
+and pink, and finally to their normal cold steel-gray.</p>
+
+<p>Presently along comes a great electromagnet; from
+somewhere in the sky it drops down and touches the
+rails; when it rises bunches of them rise with it, and,
+after sailing through the air, are gently deposited upon
+flat cars. Here, even after the current is shut off, some
+of them may try to stick to the magnet, as though fearing
+to go forth into the world. If so, it gives them a little
+shake, whereupon they let go, and it travels back to get
+more rails and load them on the cars.</p>
+
+<p>Iron ore, coal, and limestone, the three chief materials
+used in the making of steel, are all found in the hills
+in the immediate vicinity of Birmingham. I am told
+that there is no other place in the world where the three
+exist so close together. That is an impressive fact, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[Pg 432]</a></span>
+one grows so accustomed to impressive facts, while passing
+through this plant, that one ceases to be impressed,
+becoming merely dazed.</p>
+
+<p>If I were asked to mention one especially striking
+item out of all that welter, I should think of many things&mdash;things
+having to do with vastness, with gigantic movements
+and mutations, with Niagara-like noises, with
+great bursts of flame suggesting fallen fragments from
+the sun itself&mdash;but above all I think that I should speak
+of the apparent absence of men.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p437jpg" id="p437jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p437.jpg" width="600" height="419" alt="Gigantic movements and mutations, Niagara-like noises, great bursts of flame like fallen fragments from the sun" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Gigantic movements and mutations, Niagara-like noises, great bursts of flame like fallen fragments from the sun</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>There were some four thousand men in the plant, I
+believe, at the time we were there, but excepting when
+a shift changed, and a great army passed out through
+the gates, we never saw a crowd; indeed I hardly think
+we saw a group of any size. Here and there two or
+three men would be doing something&mdash;something which,
+probably, we did not understand; in the window of a
+locomotive cab, or that of a traveling crane, we would
+see a man; we kept passing men as we went along; and
+sometimes as we looked from a high perch over the interior
+of one of the great sheds, we would be vaguely
+conscious of men scattered about the place. But they
+were very small and gray and inconspicuous dots upon
+the surface of great things going on&mdash;going on, seemingly
+by themselves, with a sort of mad, mechanical, majestic,
+molten sweep.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>At this time, when the great efficient organization
+started by Bismarck is being devoted entirely to destruc<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[Pg 433]</a></span>tion,
+it is interesting to recall that the idea of industrial
+welfare work originated in Germany during the
+period of Bismarckian reorganization. So, paradoxically,
+the very forces which, on one hand, were building
+towards the new records for the extinction of life established
+in the present war, were, upon the other hand,
+developing plans for the safeguarding of life and for
+making it worth living&mdash;plans which have enormously
+affected the industrial existence of the civilized world.</p>
+
+<p>The broad theory of industrial welfare work was
+brought to this country by engineers, chemists, and
+workmen who had resided in Germany; but, where this
+work developed over there along co&ouml;perative lines, it has
+remained for Great Britain and the United States to
+work it out in a more individualistic way.</p>
+
+<p>In this country welfare work has come as a logical
+part of the general industrial development. The first
+step in this development was the assembling of small,
+weak industrial units into large, powerful, effective units&mdash;that
+is to say, the formation of great corporations
+and trusts. The second step was the co&ouml;rdination of
+these great industrial alliances for "efficiency." The
+third step was the achievement of material success.</p>
+
+<p>When our great corporations were in their formative
+period, effort was concentrated on making them successful,
+but with success came thoughts of other things. It
+began to be seen, for example, that whereas the old
+small employer of labor came into personal contact with
+his handful of workmen, and could himself supervise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[Pg 434]</a></span>
+their welfare, some plan must now be devised for doing
+this work in a large, corporate way.</p>
+
+<p>Thus welfare work developed in the United States,
+and it is interesting to observe, now, that many of our
+great corporations are finding time and funds to expend
+upon purely &aelig;sthetic improvements, and that, in
+the construction of the most modern American industrial
+plants, architects, landscape gardeners, and engineering
+men work in co&ouml;peration, so that, instead of being
+lopsided, the developments are harmonious and
+oftentimes beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>On work calculated to prevent accidents in mines, not
+only the Tennessee Coal, Iron, &amp; Railroad Company,
+but all the leading mining companies in the State join
+for conference. As a result the number of accidents
+steadily decreases. Nine years ago one man was killed,
+on an average, for every 100,000 tons of iron ore raised.
+The record at the time of our visit was one man to 450,000
+tons. In the coal mines, where nine years ago one
+man was killed for every 75,000 tons raised, the recent
+record is one man for 650,000 tons.</p>
+
+<p>In 1914, 126 men were killed in the coal mines of Alabama.
+In 1915, though the tonnage was about the
+same, this number was reduced to 63, which was a
+record. All this is the result of safety work.</p>
+
+<p>"Aside from humane considerations," said an official
+of the Tennessee Company, "this concern realizes that
+the man is the most valuable machine it has."</p>
+
+<p>This gentleman was one of the ablest men we met<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[Pg 435]</a></span>
+in the South. While taking us through the company's
+plant, and explaining to us the various operations, he
+was interesting, but the real enthusiasm of the man did
+not crop out until he took us to the company's villages
+and showed us what was being done for the benefit of
+operatives and their families, and, of course, for the
+benefit of the company as well&mdash;for he was a corporation
+official of the modern school, and he knew that by
+benefiting its men a corporation necessarily benefits itself.</p>
+
+<p>The story of the Tennessee Company's work among
+its employees, which began about five years ago, some
+time after the company was taken over by the United
+States Steel Corporation, is too great to be more than
+touched on here. In the department of health thirty-six
+doctors, sixteen nurses, and a squad of sanitary inspectors
+are employed. The department of social science
+covers education, welfare, and horticulture. To
+me the work of these departments was a revelation.
+Each camp has a first-rate hospital, each has its schools
+and guildhall, and everything is run as only an efficiently
+managed corporation can run things.</p>
+
+<p>The Docena Village is less like one's idea of a coal
+"camp" than of a pretty suburban development, or a
+military post, with officers' houses built around a parade.
+The grounds are well kept; there is a tennis
+court with vine-clad trellises about it, a fine playground
+for children, pretty brick walks, with splendid trees to
+shade them; and there is a brick schoolhouse which is a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[Pg 436]</a></span>
+better building, better equipped, better lighted, and,
+above all, better ventilated than the schools I attended in
+my boyhood.</p>
+
+<p>Near the school is the guildhall, which is used for religious
+services, meetings, and entertainments. And
+best of all, perhaps, the houses are not the rows
+of sad, unpainted cabins one remembers having seen
+in western mining camps, but are pretty cottages,
+touched with a slight architectural variety, and with
+little variations of color, so that each home has individuality.</p>
+
+<p>The schools are financed partly by the company and
+partly by the parents of the three thousand scholars.
+The teachers are, for the most part, graduates of leading
+colleges&mdash;Smith, Wellesley, Vassar, the University
+of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin&mdash;and educational
+work of great variety is carried on, including
+instruction in English for foreign employees, and domestic-science
+classes for women&mdash;separate establishments,
+of course, for whites and blacks, for the color line is
+drawn in southern mining camps as elsewhere. Negroes
+are, however, better provided for by the corporation
+than by most southern municipalities, both in the
+way of living conditions and of education.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole, I believe that a child who grows up in
+the Docena Village, and is educated there, has actually
+a better chance than one who grows up in most Alabama
+towns, or, for the matter of that, in towns in
+any other State which has not compulsory education.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[Pg 437]</a></span>
+Moreover, I doubt that there is in all Alabama another
+kindergarten as truly charming as the one we visited at
+Docena, or that there is, in the State, a schoolhouse of
+the same size which is as perfect as the one we saw in
+that camp.</p>
+
+<p>In another camp old houses have been remodeled, giving
+practical demonstration of what can be done in the
+way of making a hovel into a pretty home by the intelligent
+use of a little lattice-work, a little paint, and a
+few vines and flowers. Old boarding-houses in this
+neighborhood have been converted into community
+houses, with entertainment halls, shower baths, and
+other conveniences for the men and their families.
+Thus tests are being made to discover whether it is possible
+to encourage among certain classes of foreign laborers,
+whose habits of life have not, to put it mildly,
+been of the tidiest, some appreciation of the standard
+of civilization represented by clean, pretty cottages,
+pleasant meeting houses, and shower baths.</p>
+
+<p>I have not told about the billiard tables, bowling alleys,
+and game rooms of the clubs, nor about the model
+rooms fitted up to show housewives how they may make
+their homes attractive at but slight expense, nor about
+the annual medical examination of the children, nor
+about the company dentists who charge their patients
+only for the cost of gold actually used, nor about the
+fine company store at Edgewater Mine, nor about the
+excellent meats supplied by the company butchers, nor
+about the low prices of supplies, nor about the effort to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[Pg 438]</a></span>
+discourage employees from buying cheap furniture at
+high prices on the installment plan, nor, above all, about
+the clean, decent, happy look of the families we chanced
+to see.</p>
+
+<p>Even had I the space in which to tell of these things,
+it is perhaps wiser that I refrain from doing so. For
+I am aware that in speaking anything but ill of a great
+corporation I have scandalously outraged precedent.
+Nor does it argue well for my powers of observation,
+or those of my companion. I feel confident that where
+our limited visions perceived only prosperity and contentment,
+certain of my brother writers, and his brother
+illustrators would, in our places, have rent the thin, vaporish
+veil of apparent corporate kindliness, and found
+such foul shame, such hideous malignity, such grasping,
+grubby greed, such despicable soul-destroying despotism,
+as to shock the simple nature of a chief of the old-time
+Russian Secret Police.</p>
+
+<p>It shames me to think what my friend Lincoln Steffens
+could have done had he but enjoyed my opportunities.
+It shames me to think what John Reed or other
+gifted writers for "The Masses" could have done.
+And I should think that Wallace Morgan would
+writhe with shame. For, where Art Young would have
+seen heavy-jowled, pig-eyed Capital, in a silk hat and
+a checked suit, whirling a cruel knout over the broad
+and noble (but bent and shuddering) back of Labor&mdash;where
+Boardman Robinson would have found a mother,
+her white, drawn face half hidden by the shoddy shawl<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[Pg 439]</a></span>
+of black, to which cling the hands of her emaciated
+brood&mdash;what has Wallace Morgan seen?</p>
+
+<p>A steel-plant in operation. A company steel-plant!
+A <i>corporation</i> steel-plant! A <span class="smcap">trust</span> steel-plant.</p>
+
+<p>Yet never so much as a starving cat or a pile of garbage
+in the foreground!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[Pg 440]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XL" id="CHAPTER_XL"></a>CHAPTER XL<br />
+<br />
+THE ROAD TO ARCADY</h2>
+
+
+<p>Before we saw the train which was to take us
+from Birmingham to Columbus, Mississippi, we
+began to sense its quality. When we attempted
+to purchase parlor car seats of the ticket agent at the
+Union Station and were informed by him that our train
+carried no parlor car, it seemed to us that his manner
+was touched with cynicism, and this impression was confirmed
+by his reply to our further timid inquiry as to a
+dining car:</p>
+
+<p>"Where do you gentlemen reckon you're a-goin' to,
+anyhow?"</p>
+
+<p>Presently we passed through the gate and better
+understood the nature of the ticket agent's thoughts.
+The train consisted of several untidy day coaches, the
+first a Jim Crow car, the others for white people.
+The negro car was already so full that many of its occupants
+had to stand in the aisle, but this did not seem
+to trouble them, for all were gabbling happily, and the
+impression one got, in glancing through the door, was
+of many sets of handsome white teeth displayed in as
+many dark grinning faces. There are innumerable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[Pg 441]</a></span>
+things for which we cannot envy the negro, but neither
+his teeth nor his good nature are among them.</p>
+
+<p>It was Saturday afternoon, and the two or three other
+cars, though not overcrowded, were well filled with
+people from the neighboring mining towns who were
+going home after having spent the morning shopping in
+the city. Almost all our fellow passengers carried
+packages, many had infants with them, and we were
+struck with the fact that the complexions of these people
+suggested a diet of pie&mdash;fried pie, if there be
+such a thing&mdash;that a peculiarly high percentage of
+them suffered from diseases of the eye, and that the pervading
+smell of the car in which we sat was of oranges,
+bananas, babies, and overheated adults.</p>
+
+<p>A young mother in the seat in front of us had with
+her three small children, the youngest an infant in arms.
+She was feeding a banana to the second child, who
+looked about two years old. Behind us a clean, capable-looking
+woman talked in a broad Scottish dialect with
+another housewife whose jargon was that of the mountaineers.</p>
+
+<p>The region through which the train presently began
+to wind its way was green and hilly, and there were
+many stops at villages, all of them mining camps apparently,
+made up of shabby little cabins scattered helter-skelter
+upon the hillsides. In many of the cabin
+doorways mothers lingered with their broods watching
+the train, and on all the station platforms stood crowds
+of idlers&mdash;men, women, and children, negro and white<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[Pg 442]</a></span>&mdash;many
+of the men stamped, by their coal-begrimed
+faces, their stained overalls, and the lamps above the
+visors of their caps, as mine workers.</p>
+
+<p>After a time my companion and I moved to the exceedingly
+dirty smoking room at the end of the car,
+where we sat and listened to the homely conversation
+of a group of men who seemed not only to know one another,
+but to know the same people in towns along the
+line. Between stations they gossiped, smoked, chewed,
+spat, and swore together like so many New England
+crossroad sages, but when the train stopped they gave
+encouraging attention to the droll performances of one
+of their number, a shaggy, unshaven, rawboned man, of
+middle age, gray-haired and collarless, who sat near the
+window and uttered convincing imitations of the sounds
+made by chickens, roosters, pigs, goats, and crows.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p444jpg" id="p444jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p444.jpg" width="600" height="405" alt="A shaggy, unshaven, rawboned man, gray-haired and collarless, sat near the window and uttered convincing imitations
+of the sounds made by chickens, roosters, pigs, goats and crows" title="" />
+<span class="caption">A shaggy, unshaven, rawboned man, gray-haired and collarless, sat near the window and uttered convincing imitations
+of the sounds made by chickens, roosters, pigs, goats and crows</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The platform crowds, the negroes in particular, were
+mystified and lured by this animal chorus coming from
+a passenger coach. On hearing it they would first gaze
+in astonishment at the car, then edge up to the windows
+and doors, and peer in with eyes solemn, round, and
+wondering, only to be more amazed than ever by the
+discovery that the car housed neither bird nor beast.
+This bucolic comedy was repeated at every station until
+we reached Wyatt, Alabama, where our gifted fellow
+traveler arose, pointed his collar button toward the door,
+bade us farewell, and departed, saying that he was going
+to "walk over to Democrat."</p>
+
+<p>Presently the conductor dropped in for a chat, in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[Pg 443]</a></span>
+course of which he informed the assembly that a certain
+old lady in one of the towns along the way had died
+the night before, whereupon our companions of the
+smoking room, all of whom seemed to have known the
+old lady well, held a protracted discussion of her history
+and traits.</p>
+
+<p>After a time my companion and I put in a few questions
+about the State of Mississippi. Boiled down, the
+principal information we gathered was as follows:</p>
+
+<p>By the 1910 census Mississippi had not one city of
+25,000 inhabitants. Meridian, with 23,000, was (and
+probably still is) her metropolis, with Jackson and
+Vicksburg, cities of about 20,000 each, following. The
+entire State has but fifteen cities having a population of
+5000 or more, so that, of a total of about a million and
+three-quarters of people in the State (more than half of
+them colored), only about one-tenth live in towns with a
+population of 5000 or over.</p>
+
+<p>After a little visit the conductor went away. Now
+and then a man would leave us and get off at a station,
+or some new passenger would join our group. Presently
+I found myself thinking about dinner, and asked a
+man wearing an electric-blue cap if he knew what provision
+was made for the evening meal.</p>
+
+<p>Before he could reply the train boy, who had come
+into the smoking room a few minutes before, piped up.
+He was a train boy of a type I had supposed extinct: the
+kind of train boy one might have encountered on almost
+any second-rate train twenty years ago,&mdash;a bold, im<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[Pg 444]</a></span>pudent
+young smartaleck, full of insistent salesmanship
+and obnoxious conversation. He declared that dinner
+was not to be had, and that the only sustenance available
+en route consisted in the uninviting assortment of fruit,
+nuts, candy, and sweet tepid beverages contained in his
+basket.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately for us, the man we had addressed knew
+better.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want to lie like that for, boy?" he demanded.
+"You know as well as I do that the brakeman
+takes on five boxes of lunch at Covin."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said the boy, with a grin, "I gotta sell
+things, ain't I? The brakeman hadn't oughta have
+that graft anyhow. <i>I'd</i> oughta have it. He gets
+them lunches fer two bits and sells 'em for thirty-five
+cents." Far from feeling abashed, he was pleased with
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Folks is funny people," remarked a man with a
+weather-beaten face who sat in the corner seat, and
+seemed to be addressing no one in particular. "I know
+a boy that's going to git hung some day. And when
+they've got the noose rigged nice around his neck, and
+everything ready, and the trap a-waitin' to be sprung,
+why, then that boy is goin' to be so sorry for hisself that
+he won't hardly know what to do. He'll say: 'I ain't
+never had no chance in life, I ain't. The world ain't
+never used me right.' ... Yes, folks is funny people."</p>
+
+<p>After this soliloquy there occurred a brief silence in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">[Pg 445]</a></span>
+the smoking room, and presently the train boy took up
+his basket and went upon his way.</p>
+
+<p>"You say they take on the lunches at Covin now?"
+one of the passengers asked of the man in the electric-blue
+cap.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"What's become of old man Whitney, over to Fayetteville?"</p>
+
+<p>"They used to git lunches off of him," replied the
+other, "but the old man wasn't none too dependable.
+Now and then he'd oversleep, and folks on the 5 <span class="smcap">a.&nbsp;m.</span>
+out of Columbus was like to starve for breakfast."</p>
+
+<p>"Right smart shock-headed boy the old man's got,"
+put in another. "The old man gives 'im anything he
+wants. He wanted a motorcycle, and the old man give
+'im one. Then he wanted one of them hot-candy machines;
+they cost about two hundred and fifty dollars,
+but the old man give it to 'im just the same."</p>
+
+<p>"The kid went to San Francisco with it, didn't he?"
+asked the man with the electric-blue cap.</p>
+
+<p>"He started to go there," replied the former speaker,
+"but he only got as fur as Little Rock; then he come on
+back home, and the old man bought 'im a wireless-telegraph
+plant. Yeaup! That boy gets messages right
+outa the air&mdash;from Washington, D.&nbsp;C., and Berlin, and
+every place. The Govamunt don't allow 'im to tell you
+much of it. He tells a little, though&mdash;just to give you a
+notion."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">[Pg 446]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So, through the five-hour ride the conversation ran.
+Several times the talk drifted to politics and to the European
+War, but the politics discussed were local and lopsided,
+and the war was all too clearly regarded as something
+interesting but vague and remote. On the entire
+journey not one word was spoken indicating that the
+people of this section had the least grasp on any national
+question, or that they were considering national questions,
+or that they realized what the war in Europe is
+about&mdash;that it is a war for freedom and democracy, a
+war against war, a war to prevent a few individuals
+from ever again plunging the world into war. Nor,
+though the day of our entry into the war was close at
+hand, had the idea that we might be forced to take part
+in the conflict so much as occurred to any of them.</p>
+
+<p>They were not stupid people; on the contrary, some
+of them possessed a homely and picturesque philosophy;
+but they were not informed, and the reason they
+were not informed has to do with one of the chief needs
+of our rural population&mdash;especially the rural population
+of the South.</p>
+
+<p>What they need is good newspapers. They need
+more world news and national news in place of county
+news and local briefs. In the whole South, moreover,
+there is need for general political news instead of biased
+news written always from inside the Democratic party,
+and sandwiched in between patent medicine advertisements.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">[Pg 447]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLI" id="CHAPTER_XLI"></a>CHAPTER XLI<br />
+<br />
+A MISSISSIPPI TOWN</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was dark when, after a journey of one hundred
+and twenty miles at the rate of twenty miles an
+hour, we reached Columbus, a city which was never
+intended to be a metropolis and which will never be one.</p>
+
+<p>Columbus is situated upon a bluff on the east bank of
+the Tombigbee River, to the west of which is a very fertile
+lowland region, filled with plantations, the owners
+of which, a century ago, founded the town in order that
+their families might have churches, schools, and the advantages
+of social life. As the town grew, a curious but
+entirely natural community spirit developed; when a gas
+plant, water works, or hotel was needed, prosperous citizens
+got together and financed the enterprise, not so
+much for profit as for mutual comfort.</p>
+
+<p>In these ante bellum times the planters used to make
+annual journeys to Mobile and New Orleans, going by
+boat on the Tombigbee and taking their crops and their
+families with them. After selling their cotton and enjoying
+themselves in the city, they would load supplies
+for the ensuing year upon river boats and return to Columbus,
+where the supplies were transferred to their
+vast attic storerooms.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">[Pg 448]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Though their only water transportation was to the
+southward, they did not journey invariably in that direction,
+but sometimes made excursions to such fashionable
+watering places as the Virginia Springs, or Saratoga,
+to which they drove in their own carriages.</p>
+
+<p>When, in the early days of railroad building, the Mobile
+&amp; Ohio Railroad was being planned, the company
+proposed to include Columbus as one of its main-line
+points and asked for a right of way through the town
+and a cash bonus in consideration of the benefits Columbus
+would derive from railroad service. Both requests
+were refused. The railroad company then waived the
+bonus and attempted to obtain a right of way by purchase.
+But to no purpose. The citizens would not sell.
+They did not want a railroad. They were prosperous
+and healthy, and they contended that a railroad would
+bring poor people and disease among them, besides killing
+farm animals and causing runaways. The company
+was consequently forced to make a new survey,
+and when the line was built it passed at a distance of a
+dozen miles or more from the city.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually dawned the era of speed and impatience.
+People who had hitherto been satisfied to make long
+journeys in horse-drawn vehicles, and had refused the
+railroad a right of way, now began to complain of the
+twelve-mile drive to the nearest station, and to suggest
+that the company build a branch line into the town.
+But this time it was the railroad's turn to say no, and
+Columbus was informed that if it wished a branch<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">[Pg 449]</a></span>
+line it could go ahead and build it at its own expense.
+This was finally done at a cost of fifty thousand
+dollars.</p>
+
+<p>With the construction of the branch line, carriages
+fell into disuse and dilapidation, and many an old
+barouche, landau, and brett passed into the hands of
+the negro hackmen who were former slaves of the old
+families. Among these ex-slaves the traditions of the
+first families of Columbus were upheld long after the
+war, and it thus happened that when, a few years since,
+a young New Yorker, arriving for a visit in the town,
+alighted from his train, he was greeted by an ancient
+negro who, indicating an equally ancient carriage, cried:
+"Hack, suh! Hack, suh! Ain't nevah been rid in by
+none but the Billupses."</p>
+
+<p>Not every young man from the North would have
+understood this reference, but by a coincidence it was at
+the residence of Mrs. Billups that this one had come
+to visit.</p>
+
+<p>Neither as to hack nor habitation were my companion
+and I so fortunate as the earlier visitor. Our conveyance
+was a Ford, and the driver warned us, as we progressed
+through shadowy tree-bordered streets, that the
+Gilmer Hotel was crowded with delegates who had come
+to attend the State convention of the Order of the Eastern
+Star. Nor was his warning without foundation.
+The wide old-fashioned lobby of the Gilmer was hung
+with the colors of the Order and packed with Ladies
+of the Eastern Star and their ecstatic families; we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">[Pg 450]</a></span>
+managed to make our way through the press only to be
+told by the single worn-out clerk on duty that not a room
+was to be had.</p>
+
+<p>Unlike the haughty clerk who had dismissed us from
+the Tutwiler Hotel in Birmingham, the clerk at the
+Gilmer was not without the quality of mercy. Overworked
+though he was, he began at once to telephone
+about the town in an effort to secure us rooms. But if
+this led us to conclude that our problem was thereby in
+effect solved, we discovered, after listening to his brief
+telephonic conversations with a series of unseen ladies,
+that the conclusion was premature. Though there
+were vacant rooms in several private houses, strange
+stray males were not desired as lodgers.</p>
+
+<p>Concerned as we were over our plight, my companion
+and I could not help being aware that a young lady who
+had been standing at the desk when we came in, and
+had since remained there, was taking kindly interest in
+the situation. Nor, for the matter of that, could we
+help being aware, also, that she was very pretty in her
+soft black dress and corsage of narcissus. She did not
+speak to us; indeed, she hardly honored us with a glance;
+but, despite her sweet circumspection, we sensed in some
+subtle way that she was sorry for us, and were cheered
+thereby.</p>
+
+<p>After a time, when the clerk seemed to have reached
+the end of his resources, the young lady hesitantly ventured
+some suggestions as to other houses where rooms
+might possibly be had. These suggestions she ad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">[Pg 451]</a></span>dressed
+entirely to the clerk&mdash;who, upon receiving them,
+did more telephoning.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you tried Mrs. Eichelberger?" the young lady
+asked him, after several more failures.</p>
+
+<p>He had not, but promptly did so. His conversation
+with Mrs. Eichelberger started promisingly, but presently
+we heard him make the damning admission he had
+been compelled repeatedly to make before:</p>
+
+<p>"No, ma'am. It's two men."</p>
+
+<p>Then, just as the last hope seemed to be fading, our
+angel of mercy spoke again.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait!" she put in impulsively. "Tell her&mdash;tell her
+I recommend them."</p>
+
+<p>Thus informed, Mrs. Eichelberger became compliant;
+but when the details were arranged, and we turned to
+thank our benefactor, she had fled.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Eichelberger's house was but a few blocks distant
+from the Gilmer. She installed us in two large,
+comfortable rooms, remarking, as we entered, that we
+had better hurry, as we were already late.</p>
+
+<p>"Late for what?" one of us asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you come for the senior dramatics?"</p>
+
+<p>"Senior dramatics where?"</p>
+
+<p>"At the I.&nbsp;I. and C."</p>
+
+<p>"What is the I.&nbsp;I. and C?"</p>
+
+<p>At this question a look of doubt, if not suspicion,
+crossed the lady's face.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you-all from?" she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>The statement that we came from New York seemed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">[Pg 452]</a></span>
+to explain satisfactorily our ignorance of the I.&nbsp;I. and
+C. Evidently Mrs. Eichelberger expected little of New
+Yorkers. The I.&nbsp;I. and C., she explained, was the
+Mississippi Industrial Institute and College, formerly
+known as the Female College, a State institution for
+young women; and the senior dramatics were even then
+in progress in the college chapel, just up the street.</p>
+
+<p>To the chapel, therefore, my companion and I repaired
+as rapidly as might be, guided thither by frequent
+sounds of applause.</p>
+
+<p>From among the seniors standing guard in cap and
+gown at the chapel door, the quick artistic eye of my
+companion selected a brown-eyed auburn-haired young
+goddess as the one from whom tickets might most appropriately
+be bought. Nor did he display thrift in the
+transaction. Instead of buying modest quarter seats
+he magnificently purchased the fifty-cent kind.</p>
+
+<p>The dazzling ticket seller, transformed to usher, now
+led us into the crowded auditorium and down an aisle.
+A few rows from the stage she stopped, and, fastening a
+frigid gaze upon two hapless young women who were
+seated some distance in from the passageway, bade them
+emerge and yield their place to us.</p>
+
+<p>Of course we instantly protested, albeit in whispers,
+as the play was going on. But the beautiful Olympian
+lightly brushed aside our objections.</p>
+
+<p>"They don't belong here," she declared loftily.
+"They're freshmen&mdash;and they only bought quarter
+seats."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">[Pg 453]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then, as the guilty pair seemed to hesitate, she summoned
+them with a compelling gesture and the command:
+"Come out!"</p>
+
+<p>At this they arose meekly enough, whereupon we redoubled
+our protests. But to no purpose. The Titian-tinted
+creature was relentless. Our pleas figured no
+more in her scheme of things than if they had been babblings
+in an unknown tongue. To add to our discomfiture,
+a large part of the audience seemed to have perceived
+the nature of our dilemma, and was giving us
+amused attention.</p>
+
+<p>It was a crisis; and in a crisis&mdash;especially one in which
+a member of the so-called gentle sex is involved&mdash;I have
+learned to look to my companion. He understands
+women. He has often told me so. And now, by his
+action, he proved it. What he did was to turn and flee,
+and I fled with him; nor did we pause until we were
+safely hidden away in humble twenty-five cent seats at
+the rear of the chapel, in the shadow of the overhanging
+gallery.</p>
+
+<p>It is not my intention to write an extended criticism
+of the performance. For one thing, I witnessed only a
+fragment of it, and for another, though I once acted for
+a brief period as dramatic critic on a New York newspaper,
+I was advised by my managing editor to give up
+dramatic criticism, and I have followed his advice.</p>
+
+<p>The scene evidently represented a room, its walls
+made of red screens behind which rose the lofty pipes of
+the chapel organ. On a pedestal at one side stood a bust<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">[Pg 454]</a></span>
+of the Venus de Milo, while on the other hung an engraving
+of a familiar picture which I believe is called
+"The Fates," and which has the appearance of having
+been painted by some-one-or-other like Leighton or
+Bouguereau or Harold Bell Wright.</p>
+
+<p>After we had given some attention to the play my
+companion remarked that, from the dialect, he judged
+it to be "Uncle Tom's Cabin." I had been told, however,
+that for certain reasons "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is
+never played in the South; I therefore asked the young
+man in front of me what play it was. He replied that
+it was Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson's
+comedy, "The Man From Home," and as he made the
+statement openly, I feel that I am violating no confidence
+in repeating what he said&mdash;especially since his declaration
+was supported by the program which he showed me.</p>
+
+<p>He was a pleasant young man. Perceiving that I
+was a stranger, he volunteered the additional information
+that the masculine r&ocirc;les, as well as the feminine
+ones, were being played by girls; and I trust that I will
+not seem to be boasting of perspicacity when I declare
+that there had already entered my mind a suspicion that
+such was indeed the case.</p>
+
+<p>Behold them! Gaze upon the character called Daniel
+Voorhees Pike! See what long strides he takes, and
+with what pretty tiny feet! Observe the manliness with
+which he thrusts his pink little hands deep in the pockets
+of his&mdash;or somebody's&mdash;pantaloons!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p456jpg" id="p456jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p456.jpg" width="600" height="413" alt="Gaze upon the character called Daniel Voorhees Pike! Observe the manliness with which he thrusts his pink little
+hands deep in the pockets of his&mdash;or somebody&#39;s&mdash;pantaloons!" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Gaze upon the character called Daniel Voorhees Pike! Observe the manliness with which he thrusts his pink little
+hands deep in the pockets of his&mdash;or somebody&#39;s&mdash;pantaloons!</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Look at the Grand Duke Vasili of Russia, his sweet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">[Pg 455]</a></span>
+oval face and rosy mouth partly obscured by mustache
+and goatee of a most strange wooliness.</p>
+
+<p>Observe the ineradicable daintiness of the Honorable
+Almeric St. Aubyn, but more particularly attend to that
+villain of helpless loveliness, the Earl of Hawcastle.
+The frightful life which, it is indicated, the Earl has led,
+leaves no tell-tale marks upon his blooming countenance.
+His only facial disfigurement consists in a mustache
+which, by reason of its grand-ducal lanateness, seems
+to hint at a mysterious relationship between the British
+and Russian noblemen.</p>
+
+<p>Take note, moreover, of the outlines of the players.
+If ever earl was belted it was this one. If ever duke
+in evening dress revealed delectable convexities of figure,
+it was this duke. If ever worthy male from Indiana
+spoke in a soprano voice and was lithe, alluring,
+and recurvous, she was Daniel Voorhees Pike.</p>
+
+<p>A young woman seated near us described to her escort
+the personal characteristics of the various young
+ladies on the stage, and when we heard her call one girl
+who played in a betrousered part, "a perfect darling,"
+we echoed inwardly the sentiment. All were darlings.
+And this especial "perfect darling" appeared as well to
+be a "perfect thirty-six."</p>
+
+<p>The Earl was my undoing. At a critical point in
+the unfolding of the plot there was talk of his having
+been connected with a scandal in St. Petersburg.
+This he attempted to deny, and though I am unable
+to quote the exact words of his denial, the sound of it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">[Pg 456]</a></span>
+lingers sweetly in my memory. Nor would the exact
+words, could I give them, convey, in print, the quality
+of what was said, for the Earl, and all the rest, spoke in
+the soft, melodious tones of Mississippi.</p>
+
+<p>"What you-all fussin' raound heah for, this mownin'?"
+That, perhaps, conveys some sense of a line he
+spoke on entering.</p>
+
+<p>And when, in reply, one of the others mentioned
+the scandal at St. Petersburg, the flavor of the Earl's
+retort, as its cooing tones remain with me, was
+this:</p>
+
+<p>"Wha', honey! What you-all mean hintin' raound
+'baout St. Petuhsbuhg? I reckon you don' know what
+you talkin' 'baout! Ah nevuh was in that taown in all
+ma bo'n days!"</p>
+
+<p>What followed I am unable to relate, for the Earl's
+speech caused me to become emotional, and my companion,
+after informing me severely that I was making
+myself conspicuous, removed me from the chapel.</p>
+
+<p>The auburn goddess was still on duty at the door as
+we went out. Advancing, she placed in each of our
+hands a quarter. I regret to say that, in my shaken
+state, I misinterpreted this action.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no! <i>Please!</i>" I protested, fearing that she
+thought we had not enjoyed the performance, and was
+therefore returning our money. "It really wasn't bad
+at all. We're only going because we have an engagement."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457">[Pg 457]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Be quiet!" interrupted my companion in a savage
+undertone, jerking me along by the arm. "It's only a
+rebate on the seats!" And without allowing me a
+chance to set myself right he dragged me out.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458">[Pg 458]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLII" id="CHAPTER_XLII"></a>CHAPTER XLII<br />
+<br />
+OLD TALES AND A NEW GAME</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mrs. Eichelberger supplied us merely
+with a place to sleep. For meals she referred
+us to a lady who lived a few doors up the street.
+But when in the morning we went, full of hunger and of
+hope, to the house of this lady, we were coldly informed
+that breakfast was over, and were recommended to the
+Bell Caf&eacute;, downtown.</p>
+
+<p>My companion and I are not of that robust breed
+which enjoys a bracing walk before its morning coffee,
+and the fact that the streets of Columbus charmed us,
+as we now saw them for the first time by daylight, is
+proof enough of their quality. There is but little appetite
+for beauty in an empty stomach.</p>
+
+<p>The streets were splendidly wide, and bordered with
+fine old trees, and the houses, each in its own lawn, each
+with its vines and shrubs, were full of the suggestion of
+an easy-going home life and an informal hospitality.
+Most of them were of frame and in their architecture
+illustrated the decadence of the eighties and nineties,
+but here or there was a fine old brick homestead with
+a noble columned portico, or a formal Georgian house,
+disposed among beautiful trees and gardens and shel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459">[Pg 459]</a></span>tered
+from the street by an ancient hedge of box. So,
+though Columbus is, as I have indicated, not too easily
+reached by rail, and though, as I have further indicated,
+walks before breakfast are not to my taste, I am compelled
+to say that for both the journey and the walk I
+felt repaid by the sight of some of the old houses&mdash;the
+Baldwin house, the W.&nbsp;D. Humphries house, the J.&nbsp;O.
+Banks house, the old McLaren house, the Kinnebrew
+house, the Thomas Hardy house, the J.&nbsp;M. Morgan
+house, with its garden of lilies and roses, its giant magnolia
+trees and its huge camellia bushes; and most of all,
+perhaps, for its Georgian beauty, the mellow tone of its
+old brick, its rich tangle of southern growths, and its
+associations, the venerable mansion of the late General
+Stephen D. Lee, C.&nbsp;S.&nbsp;A.&mdash;now the property of the latter's
+only son, Mr. Blewett Lee, general counsel of the
+Illinois Central Railroad, and a resident of Chicago.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p465jpg" id="p465jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p465.jpg" width="600" height="439" alt="The houses were full of the suggestion of an easy-going home life and an informal hospitality. (Back yard of the
+former home of General Stephen D. Lee.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">The houses were full of the suggestion of an easy-going home life and an informal hospitality. (Back yard of the
+former home of General Stephen D. Lee.)</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was apropos of our visit to the Lee house that I was
+told of a dramatic and touching example of the rebirth
+of amity between North and South.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen D. Lee it was who, as a young artillery officer
+attached to the staff of General Beauregard, transmitted
+the actual order to fire on Fort Sumter, the shot
+which began the war. Two years later, having been
+promoted to the rank of lieutenant-general, the same
+Stephen D. Lee participated in the defense of Vicksburg
+against the assaults of Porter's gunboats from the
+river and of Grant's armies, which hemmed in the hilled
+city on landward side, until at last, on the 4th of July,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_460" id="Page_460">[Pg 460]</a></span>
+1863, the place was surrendered, making Grant's fame
+secure.</p>
+
+<p>Years after, when the Government of the United
+States accepted a statue of General Stephen D. Lee, to
+be placed upon the battle ground of Vicksburg&mdash;now a
+national park&mdash;it was the late General Frederick Dent
+Grant, son of the capturer of the city, who journeyed
+thither to unveil the memorial to his father's former
+foe. And by a peculiarly gracious and fitting set of circumstances
+it came about that when, in April last, the
+ninety-fifth anniversary of the birth of U.&nbsp;S. Grant
+was celebrated in his native city, Galena, Illinois, it was
+Blewett Lee, only son of the general taken by Grant at
+Vicksburg, who journeyed to Galena and there in a
+memorial address, returned the earlier compliment paid
+to the memory of his own father by Grant's son.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Columbus may perhaps appreciate the charm of its
+old homes, but there is evidence to show that it did not
+appreciate certain other weatherworn structures of
+great beauty. I have seen photographs of an old Baptist
+Church with a fine (and not at all Baptist-looking)
+portico and fluted columns, which was torn down to
+make room for the present stupidly commonplace Baptist
+church: and I have seen pictures of the beautiful old
+town hall which was recently supplanted by an ignorantly
+ordinary town building of yellow pressed brick.
+The destruction of these two early buildings represents
+an irreparable loss to Columbus, and it is to be hoped<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461">[Pg 461]</a></span>
+that the town will some day be sufficiently enlightened
+to know that this is true and to regret that it did
+not restore and enlarge them instead of tearing them
+down.</p>
+
+<p>Until a decade or two ago Columbus had, so far as I
+can learn, but four streets possessing names: Main
+Street, Market Street, College Street, and Catfish Alley,
+all other streets being known as "the street that Mrs.
+Billups, or Mrs. Sykes, or Mrs. Humphries, or Mrs.
+Some-one-else lives on."</p>
+
+<p>Market and Main are business streets&mdash;at least they
+are so where they cross&mdash;and, like the other streets, are
+wide. They are lined with brick buildings few if any of
+them more than three stories in height, and it was in
+one of these buildings, on Main Street, that we found the
+Bell Caf&eacute;&mdash;advertised as "the most exclusive caf&eacute; in
+the State."</p>
+
+<p>Being in search of breakfast rather than exclusiveness,
+we did not sit at one of the tables, but at the long
+lunch counter, where we were quickly served.</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast we felt strong enough to look at picture
+post cards, and to that end visited first "Cheap
+Joe's" and then the shop of Mr. Divilbis, where newspapers,
+magazines, sporting goods, cameras, and all
+such things, are sold. Having viewed post cards picturing
+such scenes as "Main Street looking north,"
+"The 1st Baptist Church," and "Steamer <i>America</i>,
+Tombigbee River," we were about to depart, when our
+attention was drawn to a telephonic conversation which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462">[Pg 462]</a></span>
+had started between Mr. Divilbis's clerk and a customer
+who was thinking of going in for the game of lawn
+tennis. The half of the conversation which was audible
+to us proved entertaining, and we dallied, eavesdropping.</p>
+
+<p>The clerk began by recommending tennis. "Yes," he
+said, "that would be very nice. Everybody is playing
+tennis now."</p>
+
+<p>But that got him into trouble, for after a pause he
+said: "I'm sorry I can't tell you everything about it.
+I don't play tennis myself. Al could tell you, though.
+He plays."</p>
+
+<p>Then, after a much longer pause: "Well, ma'am,
+you see, in a game of lawn tennis everybody owns their
+own racquet."</p>
+
+<p>At this juncture a tall, thin man in what is known
+(excepting at Palm Beach) as a "Palm Beach suit,"
+entered the shop and the clerk asked his inquisitor to
+hold the wire while he made some inquiries. After a
+long conversation with the new arrival he returned to
+the telephone and resumed his explanation.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you see, they have a net, and one stands on one
+side and one on the other&mdash;yes, ma'am, there <i>can</i> be two
+on each side&mdash;and one serves. What? Yes, he hits
+the ball over the net, and it has to go in the opposite
+court on the other side, and then if that one doesn't
+send it back&mdash;Yes, the court is marked with lines&mdash;why,
+that counts fifteen. The next count is thirty.
+What? No, ma'am, I don't know why they count that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463">[Pg 463]</a></span>
+way. No, it's just the way they do in lawn tennis. If
+your opponent has nothing, why, they call that 'love.'
+Yes, that's it&mdash;l-o-v-e&mdash;just the same as when anybody's
+<i>in</i> love. No, ma'am, I don't know why....
+So that's the way they count.</p>
+
+<p>"No, ma'am, the lines are boundaries. You have to
+stand in a certain place and hit the ball in a certain
+place.... No, I don't mean that way. You've got to
+hit it so it <i>lands</i> in a certain place; and the one that's
+playing against you has to hit it back in a certain place,
+and if it goes in some <i>other</i> place, then you can't play it
+any more. Oh, no! Not all day. I mean that ends
+<i>that</i> part, and you start over. You just keep on doing
+like that."</p>
+
+<p>But though it was apparent that he considered his
+explanation complete, the lady at the other end of the
+wire was evidently not yet satisfied, and as he began to
+struggle with more questions we left the shop and went
+to the Gilmer Hotel to see if any mail had come for us.</p>
+
+<p>The Gilmer was built by slave labor some years before
+the war, and was in its day considered a very
+handsome edifice. Nor is it to-day an unsatisfactory
+hotel for a town of the size of Columbus. Its old brick
+walls are sturdy, and its rooms are of a fine spaciousness.
+Downstairs it has been somewhat remodeled,
+but the large parlor on the second floor is much as it was
+in the beginning, even to the great mirrors and the
+carved furniture imported more than sixty years ago
+from France. Most of the doors still have the old locks,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464">[Pg 464]</a></span>
+and the window cords originally installed were of such
+a quality that they have not had to be renewed.</p>
+
+<p>The Gilmer was still new when the Battle of Shiloh
+was fought, and several thousand of the wounded were
+brought to Columbus. The hotel and various other
+buildings, including that of the former Female Institute,
+were converted into hospitals, as were also many
+private houses in the town.</p>
+
+<p>Though there was never fighting at Columbus, the
+end of the war found some fifteen hundred soldiers'
+graves in Friendship Cemetery, perhaps twoscore of the
+number being those of Federals. The citizens were, at
+this time, too poor and too broken in spirit to erect
+memorials, but several ladies of Columbus made it their
+custom to visit the cemetery and care for the graves of
+the Confederate dead. This movement, started by individuals&mdash;Miss
+Matt Moreton, Mrs. J.&nbsp;T. Fontaine, and
+Mrs. Green T. Hill&mdash;was soon taken up by other ladies
+of the place and resulted in a determination to make the
+decoration of soldiers' graves an annual occurrence.</p>
+
+<p>In an old copy of the "Mississippi Index," published
+at the time, may be found an account of the solemn march
+of the women, young and old, to the cemetery, on April
+25, 1866&mdash;one year after Robert E. Lee's surrender&mdash;and
+of the decoration of the graves not only of Confederate
+but of Federal soldiers. It is the proud boast
+of Columbus that this occasion constituted the first celebration
+of the now national Decoration Day&mdash;or, as it is
+more properly called, Memorial Day.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465">[Pg 465]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It should perhaps be said here that Columbus, Georgia,
+disputes the claim of Columbus, Mississippi, as to
+Memorial Day. In the Georgia city it is contended that
+the idea of decorating soldiers' graves originated with
+Miss Lizzie Rutherford, later Mrs. Roswell Ellis, of
+that place. The inscription of Mrs. Ellis' monument in
+Linwood Cemetery, Columbus, Georgia, states that the
+idea of Memorial Day originated with her.</p>
+
+<p>It seems clear, however, that the same idea occurred
+to women in both cities simultaneously, and that, while
+the actual celebration of the day occurred in Columbus,
+Mississippi, one day earlier than in Columbus, Georgia,
+the ladies of the latter city may have been first in suggesting
+that Memorial Day be not a local celebration,
+but one in which the whole South should take part.</p>
+
+<p>The incident of the first decoration of the graves of
+Union as well as Confederate soldiers appears, however,
+to belong entirely to Columbus, Mississippi, and it is certain
+that this exhibition of magnanimity inspired F.&nbsp;W.
+Finch to write the famous poem, "The Blue and the
+Gray," for when that poem was first published in the
+"Atlantic Monthly" for September, 1867, it carried the
+following headnote:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The women of Columbus, Miss., animated by noble sentiments,
+have shown themselves impartial in their offerings to the memory
+of the dead. They strewed flowers on the graves of the
+Confederate and of the National soldiers.</p></div>
+
+<p>This episode becomes the more touching by reason
+of the fact that the Columbus lady who initiated the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466">[Pg 466]</a></span>
+movement to place flowers on the Union graves, at a
+time when such action was sure to provoke much criticism
+in the South, was Mrs. Augusta Murdock Sykes,
+herself the widow of a Confederate soldier.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So with an equal splendor<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The morning sun rays fall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a touch impartially tender<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On the blossoms blooming for all;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Under the sod and the dew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Waiting the Judgment Day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Broidered with gold the Blue;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mellowed with gold the Gray.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467">[Pg 467]</a></span></div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIII" id="CHAPTER_XLIII"></a>CHAPTER XLIII<br />
+<br />
+OUT OF THE LONG AGO</h2>
+
+
+<p>While local historians attempt to tangle up
+the exploration of De Soto with the early
+history of this region, saying that De Soto
+"entered the State of Mississippi near the site of Columbus,"
+and that "he probably crossed the Tombigbee
+River at this point," their conclusions are largely the
+result of guesswork. But it is not guesswork to say that
+when the Kentucky and Tennessee volunteers, going to
+the aid of Andrew Jackson, at New Orleans, in 1814, cut
+a military road from Tuscumbia, Alabama, to the Gulf,
+they passed over the site of Columbus, for the road they
+cut remains to-day one of the principal highways of the
+district as well as one of the chief streets of the town.</p>
+
+<p>More clearly defined, of course, are memories of the
+Civil War and of Reconstruction, for there are many
+present-day residents of Columbus who remember both.
+Among these is one of those wonderful, sweet, high-spirited,
+and altogether fascinating ladies whom we
+call old only because their hair is white and because a
+number of years have passed over their heads&mdash;one of
+those glorious young old ladies in which the South is, I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468">[Pg 468]</a></span>
+think, richer than any other single section of the world.</p>
+
+<p>It was our good fortune to meet Mrs. John Billups,
+and to see some of her treasured relics&mdash;among them the
+flag carried through the battles of Monterey and Buena
+Vista by the First Mississippi Regiment, of which Jefferson
+Davis was colonel, and in which her husband was
+a lieutenant; and a crutch used by General Nathan Bedford
+Forrest when he was housed at the Billups residence
+in Columbus, recovering from a wound. But better
+yet it was to hear Mrs. Billups herself tell of the
+times when the house in which she lived as a young
+woman, at Holly Springs, Mississippi, was used as
+headquarters by General Grant.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Billups, who was a Miss Govan, was educated in
+Philadelphia and Wilmington, and had many friends
+and relatives in the North. Her mother was Mrs.
+Mary Govan of Holly Springs, and her brother's wife,
+who resided with the Govans during the war, was a Miss
+Hawkes, a daughter of the Rev. Francis L. Hawkes,
+then rector of St. Thomas's Church in New York. All
+were, however, good Confederates.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Govan's house at Holly Springs was being used
+as a hospital when Grant and his army marched, unresisted,
+into the town, and Mrs. Govan, with her daughters
+and daughter-in-law, had already moved to the residence
+of Colonel Harvey Walter, which is to this day
+a show place, and is now the residence of Mr. and Mrs.
+Oscar Johnson of St. Louis&mdash;Mrs. Johnson being Colonel
+Walter's daughter.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469">[Pg 469]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This house was selected by Grant as his headquarters,
+and he resided there for a considerable period. ("It
+seemed a mighty long time," says Mrs. Billups.) With
+the general was Mrs. Grant and their son Jesse, as
+well as Mrs. Grant's negro maid, Julia, who, Mrs.
+Grant told Mrs. Billups, had been given to her, as a
+slave, by her father, Colonel Dent. Mrs. Billups was
+under the impression that Julia was, at that time, still a
+slave. At all events, she was treated as a slave.</p>
+
+<p>"We all liked the Grants," Mrs. Billups said. "He
+had very little to say, but she was very sociable and used
+to come in and sit with us a great deal.</p>
+
+<p>"One day the general took his family and part of his
+army and went to Oxford, Mississippi, leaving Colonel
+Murphy in command at Holly Springs. While Grant
+was away our Confederate General Van Dorn made a
+raid on Holly Springs, capturing the town, tearing up
+the railroad, and destroying the supplies of the Northern
+army. He just dashed in, did his work, and dashed
+out again.</p>
+
+<p>"Some of his men came to the house and, knowing that
+it was Grant's headquarters, wished to make a search.
+My mother was entirely willing they should do so, but
+she knew that there were no papers in the house, and
+assured the soldiers that if they did search they would
+find nothing but Mrs. Grant's personal apparel&mdash;which
+she was sure they would not wish to disturb.</p>
+
+<p>"That satisfied them and they went away.</p>
+
+<p>"Next morning back came Grant with his army. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_470" id="Page_470">[Pg 470]</a></span>
+rode up on horseback, preceded by his bodyguard, and I
+remember that he looked worn and worried.</p>
+
+<p>"As he dismounted he saw my sister-in-law, Mrs.
+Eaton Pugh Govan&mdash;the one who was Miss Hawkes&mdash;standing
+on the gallery above.</p>
+
+<p>"He called up to her and said: 'Mrs. Govan, I suppose
+my sword is gone?'</p>
+
+<p>"'What sword, General?' she asked him.</p>
+
+<p>"'The sword that was presented to me by the army.
+I left it in my wife's closet.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Govan was thunderstruck.</p>
+
+<p>"'I didn't know it was there,' she said. 'Oh! I should
+have been tempted to send it to General Van Dorn if I
+had known that it was there!'</p>
+
+<p>"The next morning, as a reward to us for not having
+known that his sword was there, the general gave us a
+protection paper explicitly forbidding soldiers to enter
+the house."</p>
+
+<p>Of course the Govans, like all other citizens of invaded
+districts in the South, buried their family plate before
+the "Yankees" came.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after this had been accomplished&mdash;as they
+thought, secretly&mdash;the Govans were preparing to entertain
+friends at dinner when a negro boy who helped
+about the dining-room remarked innocently, in the presence
+of Mrs. Govan and several of her servants:</p>
+
+<p>"Missus ain't gwine to have no fine table to-night,
+caze all de silvuh's done buried in de strawbe'y patch."</p>
+
+<p>He had seen the old gardener "planting" the plate.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_471" id="Page_471">[Pg 471]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Thereafter it was quietly decided in the family that
+the negroes had better know nothing about the location
+of buried treasure. That night, therefore, some gentlemen
+went out to the strawberry patch, disinterred the
+silver, carried it to Colonel Walter's place, and there
+buried it under the front walk.</p>
+
+<p>"And after Grant came," said Mrs. Billups, "we used
+to laugh as we watched the Union sentries marching up
+and down that walk, right over our plate."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Among the items not already mentioned, of which
+Columbus is proud, are the facts that she has supplied
+two cabinet members within the past decade&mdash;J.&nbsp;M.
+Dickinson, Taft's Secretary of War, and T.&nbsp;W. Gregory,
+Wilson's Attorney General&mdash;and that J. Gano Johnson,
+breeder of famous American saddle horses, has recently
+come from Kentucky and established his Emerald Chief
+Stock Farm in Lowndes County, a short distance from
+the town.</p>
+
+<p>But items like these, let me be frank to say, do not
+appeal to me as do the picturesque old stories which
+cling about such a town.</p>
+
+<p>There is, for instance, the story of Alexander Keith
+McClung, famous about the middle of the last century as
+a duellist and dandy. McClung was a Virginian by
+birth, but while still a young man took up his residence
+in Columbus. His father studied law under Thomas
+Jefferson and was later conspicuous in Kentucky politics,
+and his mother was a sister of Chief Justice John Mar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_472" id="Page_472">[Pg 472]</a></span>shall.
+In 1828, at the age of seventeen, McClung became
+a midshipman in the navy, and though he remained
+in the service but a year, he managed during that time
+to fight a duel with another midshipman, who wounded
+him in the arm. At eighteen he fought a duel near
+Frankfort, Kentucky, with his cousin James W. Marshall.
+His third duel was with a lawyer named Allen,
+who resided in Jackson, Mississippi. Allen was the
+challenger&mdash;as it is said McClung took pains to see that
+his adversaries usually were, so that he might have the
+choice of weapons, for he was very skillful with the pistol.
+In his duel with Allen he specified that each was
+to be armed with four pistols and a bowie knife, that
+they were to start eighty paces apart, and upon signal
+were to advance, firing at will. At about thirty paces
+he shot Allen through the brain. His fourth duel was
+with John Menifee, of Vicksburg, and was fought in
+1839, on the river bank, near that city, with rifles at
+thirty yards. Some idea of the spirit in which duelling
+was taken in those days may be gathered from
+the fact that the Vicksburg Rifles, of which Menifee was
+an officer, turned out in full uniform to see the fight.
+However they were doubly disappointed, for it was Menifee
+and not McClung who died. It is said that a short
+time after this, one of Menifee's brothers challenged McClung,
+who killed this brother, and so on until he had
+killed all seven male members of the Menifee family.</p>
+
+<p>McClung fought gallantly in the Mexican War, as
+lieutenant-colonel of the First Mississippi Regiment,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_473" id="Page_473">[Pg 473]</a></span>
+of which Jefferson Davis was colonel. Though he remained
+always a bachelor it is said that he had many
+love affairs. He was a hard drinker, a flowery speaker,
+and a writer of sentimental verse. It is said that in his
+later life he was exceedingly unhappy, brooding over the
+lives he had taken in duels&mdash;fourteen in all. His last
+poem was an "Invocation to Death," ending with the
+line:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Oh, Death, come soon! Come soon!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Shortly after writing it he shaved, dressed himself
+with the most scrupulous care, and shot himself. This
+occurred March 23, 1855, in the Eagle Hotel, North Capitol
+Street, Jackson, Mississippi.</p>
+
+<p>"To preserve the neatness and cleanliness of his attire
+after death should have ensued," says Colonel R.&nbsp;W.
+Banks, "it is said he poured a little water upon the floor
+to ascertain the direction the blood would take when it
+flowed from the wound. Then, placing himself in
+proper position, so that the gore would run from and not
+toward his body, he placed the pistol to the right temple,
+pulled the trigger and death quickly followed."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_474" id="Page_474">[Pg 474]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIV" id="CHAPTER_XLIV"></a>CHAPTER XLIV<br />
+<br />
+THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND HIM</h2>
+
+
+<p>On our second evening in Columbus my companion
+and I returned to the house, near our
+domicile, to which we had been sent by Mrs.
+Eichelberger for our meals; but owing to a misunderstanding
+as to the dinner hour we found ourselves
+again too late. The family, and the teachers
+from the I.&nbsp;I. and C. who took meals there, were already
+coming out from dinner to sit and chat on the steps in
+the twilight.</p>
+
+<p>We were disappointed, for we were tired of restaurants,
+and had counted on a home meal that night; nor
+was our disappointment softened by the fact that the
+lady whom we interviewed seemed to have no pity for us,
+but dismissed us in a chilling manner, which hinted that,
+even had we been in time for dinner, we should have
+been none too welcome at her exclusive board.</p>
+
+<p>Crestfallen, we turned away and started once more
+in the direction of the Belle Caf&eacute;. In the half light the
+street held for us a melancholy loveliness. Above, the
+great trees made a dark, soft canopy; the air was balmy
+and sweet with the scent of lilacs and roses; lights were
+beginning to appear in windows along the way. Yet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_475" id="Page_475">[Pg 475]</a></span>
+none of it was for us. We were wanderers, condemned
+forever to walk through strange streets whose homes
+we might not enter, and whose inhabitants we might not
+know.</p>
+
+<p>When we had proceeded in silence for a block or two,
+we perceived a woman strolling toward us on the walk
+ahead. Nor was it yet so dark that we could fail to
+notice, as we neared her, that she was very pretty in her
+soft black dress and her corsage of narcissus&mdash;that, in
+short, she was the young lady whom, though we were indebted
+to her for our rooms at Mrs. Eichelberger's, we
+had not been able to thank.</p>
+
+<p>Now, of course, we stopped and told her of our gratitude.
+First my companion told her of his. Then I told
+her of mine. Then we both told her of our combined
+gratitude. And after each telling she assured us sweetly
+that it was nothing&mdash;nothing at all.</p>
+
+<p>All this made quite a little conversation. She hoped
+that we were comfortable. We assured her that we
+were. Then, because it seemed so pleasant to be talking,
+on a balmy, flower-scented evening, with a pretty
+girl wearing a soft black dress and a corsage of narcissus,
+we branched out, telling her of our successive
+disappointments as to meals in the house up the street.</p>
+
+<p>"Which house?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>We described it.</p>
+
+<p>"That's where I live," said she.</p>
+
+<p>And to think we had twice been late!</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You</i> live there?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_476" id="Page_476">[Pg 476]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes. It was my elder sister whom you saw." Then
+we all smiled, for we had spoken of the chill which had
+accompanied the rebuff.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think your sister will let us come to-morrow
+for breakfast?" ventured my companion.</p>
+
+<p>"If you're there by eight."</p>
+
+<p>"Because," he added, "breakfast is our last meal
+here."</p>
+
+<p>"You're going away?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. About noon."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she said. And we hoped the way she said it
+meant that she was just the least bit sorry we were
+going.</p>
+
+<p>With that she started to move on again.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll see you at breakfast, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," she said in a casual tone, continuing on her
+way.</p>
+
+<p>"Not surely?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not come and see?" The words were wafted
+back to us provocatively upon the evening air.</p>
+
+<p>"We will! Good night."</p>
+
+<p>"Good night."</p>
+
+<p>We walked some little way in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Eight o'clock!" murmured my companion presently
+in a reflective, rueful tone. "We must turn in early."</p>
+
+<p>We did turn in early, and we should have been asleep
+early was it not for the fact that among the chief wonders
+of Columbus must be ranked its roosters&mdash;birds of
+a ghastly habit of nocturnal vocalism.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_477" id="Page_477">[Pg 477]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But though these creatures interfered somewhat with
+our slumbers, and though eight is an early hour for us,
+we reached the neighboring house next morning five
+minutes ahead of time. And though the manner of the
+elder sister was, as before, austere, that made no difference,
+for the younger sister was there.</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast we dallied, chatting with her for a
+time; then a bell began to toll, and my companion reminded
+me that I had an engagement to visit the Industrial
+Institute and College before leaving.</p>
+
+<p>It was quite true. I had made the engagement the
+day before, but it had been my distinct understanding
+that he was to accompany me; for if anything disconcerts
+me it is to go alone to such a place. However
+sweet girls may be as individuals, or in small groups,
+they are in the mass diabolically cruel, and their cruelty
+is directed especially against men. I know. I have
+walked up to a college building to pay a call, while thirty
+girls, seated on the steps, played, sang, and whistled an
+inane marching tune, with the rhythm of which my steps
+could not but keep time. I have been the only man in a
+dining-room full of college girls. A hundred of them
+put down their knives and forks with a clatter as I entered,
+and a hundred pairs of mischievously solemn eyes
+followed my every movement. Voluntarily to go
+through such experiences alone a man must be in love.
+And certainly I was not in love with any girl at the Industrial
+Institute.</p>
+
+<p>"We both have an engagement," I said.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_478" id="Page_478">[Pg 478]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I can't go," he returned.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have two sketches to make before train time."</p>
+
+<p>"You're going to make me go over there <i>alone</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care whether you go or not," he replied mercilessly.
+"You made the engagement. I had nothing to
+do with it. But I am responsible for the pictures."</p>
+
+<p>Perceiving that it was useless to argue with him, I reluctantly
+departed and, not without misgivings, made my
+way to the Industrial Institute.</p>
+
+<p>I am thankful to say that there matters did not turn
+out so badly for me as I had anticipated. I refused to
+visit classrooms, and contented myself with gathering
+information. And since the going to gather this information
+cost me such uneasiness, I do not propose to
+waste entirely the fruits of my effort, but shall here
+record some of the facts that I collected.</p>
+
+<p>The Industrial Institute and College is for girls of sixteen
+years or over who are graduates of high schools.
+There are about 800 students taking either the collegiate,
+normal, industrial, or musical courses, or combination
+courses. This college, I was informed, was the
+first in the country to offer industrial education to
+women.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the students come from families in modest
+circumstances, and attend the college with the definite
+purpose of fitting themselves to become self-supporting.
+The cost is very slight, the only regular charge, aside
+from board and general living expenses, being a nominal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_479" id="Page_479">[Pg 479]</a></span>
+matriculation fee of $5. There is no charge for rooms
+in the large dormitories connected with the college.
+Board, light, fuel, and laundry are paid for co&ouml;peratively,
+the average cost per student, for all these,
+being about ten dollars a month&mdash;which sum also includes
+payment for a lyceum ticket and for two hats per
+annum. Uniforms are worn by all, these being very
+simple navy-blue suits with sailor hats. Seniors and
+juniors wear cap and gown. All uniform requirements
+may be covered at a cost of twenty dollars a year, and
+a girl who practices economy may get through her college
+year at a total cost of about $125, though of course
+some spend considerably more.</p>
+
+<p>Many students work their way, either wholly or in
+part. Thirty or forty of them serve in the dining room,
+for which work they are allowed sixty-five dollars a
+year. Others, who clean classrooms are allowed fifty
+dollars a year, and still others earn various sums by
+assisting in the library or reading room or by doing secretarial
+work.</p>
+
+<p>Unlike the other departments of the college, the
+musical department is not a tax upon the State, but is
+entirely self-sustaining, each girl paying for her own
+lessons. This department is under the direction of Miss
+Weenonah Poindexter, to whose enthusiasm much if not
+all of its success is due. Miss Poindexter began her
+work in 1894, as the college's only piano teacher, giving
+lessons in the dormitories. Now she not only has a
+splendid music hall and a number of assistants, but has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_480" id="Page_480">[Pg 480]</a></span>
+succeeded in making Columbus one of the recognized
+musical centers of the South, by bringing there a series
+of the most distinguished artists: Paderewski, Nordica,
+Schumann-Heinck, Gadski, Sembrich, Bispham,
+Albert Spaulding, Maud Powell, Damrosch's Orchestra,
+and Sousa's Band.</p>
+
+<p>So much I had learned of the I.&nbsp;I. and C. when it came
+time for me to flee to the train. My companion and I
+had already packed our suitcases, and it had been arranged
+between us that, instead of consuming time by
+trying to meet and drive together to the station, we
+should work independently, joining each other at the
+train.</p>
+
+<p>I left the college in an automobile, stopping at Mrs.
+Eichelberger's only long enough to get my suitcase. As
+I drove on past the next corner I chanced to look up the
+intersecting street. There, by a lilac bush, stood my
+companion. He was not alone. With him was a very
+pretty girl wearing a soft black dress and a corsage of
+narcissus. But the corsage was now smaller, by one
+flower, than it had been before, for, as I sighted them,
+she was in the act of placing one of the blooms from her
+bouquet in my companion's buttonhole. Her hands
+looked very white and small against his dark coat, and
+I recall that he was gazing down at them, and that his
+features were distorted by a sentimental smile.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 414px;">
+<a name="p480jpg" id="p480jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p480.jpg" width="414" height="600" alt="Her hands looked very white and small against his dark coat. He was gazing
+down at them, his features distorted by a shockingly sentimental smile" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Her hands looked very white and small against his dark coat. He was gazing
+down at them, his features distorted by a shockingly sentimental smile</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Come on!" I called to him.</p>
+
+<p>He looked up. His expression was vague.</p>
+
+<p>"Go along," he returned.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_481" id="Page_481">[Pg 481]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you come with me now?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be there," he replied. "You buy the tickets and
+check the baggage." And with that he turned his back.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by," I called to the young lady. But she was
+looking up at him and didn't seem to hear me.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>My companion arrived at the station in an old hack,
+with horses at the gallop. He was barely in time.</p>
+
+<p>When we were settled in the car, bowling along over
+the prairies toward the little junction town of Artesia,
+I turned to him and inquired how his work had gone that
+morning. But at that moment he caught sight, through
+the car window, of some negroes sitting at a cabin door,
+and exclaimed over their picturesqueness.</p>
+
+<p>I agreed. Then, as the train left them behind, I repeated
+my question: "How did your work go?"</p>
+
+<p>"This is very fertile-looking country," said he.</p>
+
+<p>This time I did not reply, but asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Did you finish both sketches?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," he answered. "Not both. There wasn't time."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's see the one you did."</p>
+
+<p>"As a matter of fact," he returned, "I didn't do any.
+You know how it is. Sometimes a fellow feels like
+drawing&mdash;sometimes he doesn't. Somehow I didn't
+feel like it this morning."</p>
+
+<p>With that he lifted the lapel of his coat and, bending
+his head downward, sniffed in a romantic manner at the
+sickeningly sweet flower in his buttonhole.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_482" id="Page_482">[Pg 482]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLV" id="CHAPTER_XLV"></a>CHAPTER XLV<br />
+<br />
+VICKSBURG OLD AND NEW</h2>
+
+
+<p>I should advise the traveler who is interested in
+cities not to enter Vicksburg by the Alabama &amp;
+Vicksburg Railroad, which has a dingy little station
+in a sort of gulch, but by the Yazoo &amp; Mississippi
+Valley Railroad&mdash;a branch of the Illinois Central&mdash;which
+skirts the river bank and flashes a large first impression
+of the city before the eyes of alighting passengers.</p>
+
+<p>The station itself is a pretty brick colonial building,
+backed by a neat if tiny park maintained by the railroad
+company, and facing the levee (pronounce "<i>lev</i>-vy"),
+along which the tracks are laid. Beyond the
+tracks untidy landing places are scattered along the
+water front, with here and there a tall, awkward, stern-wheel
+river steamer tied up, looking rather like an old-fashioned
+New Jersey seacoast hotel, covered with
+porches and jimcrack carving, painted white, embellished
+with a cupola and a pair of tall, thin smokestacks,
+and set adrift in its old age to masquerade in maritime
+burlesque.</p>
+
+<p>At other points along the bank are moored a heterogeneous
+assortment of shanty boats of an incredible
+and comic slouchiness. Some are nothing but rafts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_483" id="Page_483">[Pg 483]</a></span>
+made of water-soaked logs, bearing tiny shacks knocked
+together out of driftwood and old patches of tin and
+canvas, but the larger ones have barges, or the hulks
+of old launches, as their foundation. These curious
+craft are moored in long lines to the half-submerged
+willow and cottonwood trees along the bank, or to stakes
+driven into the levee, or to the railroad ties, or to whatever
+objects, ashore, may be made fast an old frayed
+rope or a piece of telephone wire. Long, narrow planks,
+precariously propped, connect them with the river bank,
+so that the men, women, children, dogs, and barnyard
+creatures who inhabit them may pass to and fro. Some
+of the boats are the homes of negro families, some of
+whites. On some, negro fish markets are conducted, advertised
+by large catfish dangling from their posts and
+railings.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p504jpg" id="p504jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p504.jpg" width="600" height="394" alt="In some of the boats negro fish-markets are conducted, advertised by large catfish dangling from posts and railing" title="" />
+<span class="caption">In some of the boats negro fish-markets are conducted, advertised by large catfish dangling from posts and railing</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Whether fishing for market, for personal use, or
+merely for the sake of having an occupation involving
+a minimum of effort, the residents of shanty boats&mdash;particularly
+the negroes&mdash;seem to spend most of their
+days seated in drowsy attitudes, with fish poles in their
+hands. Their eyes fall shut, their heads nod in the sun,
+their lines lag in the muddy water; life is uneventful,
+pleasant, and warm.</p>
+
+<p>When Porter's mortar fleet lay in the river, off Vicksburg,
+bombarding the town, that river was the Mississippi,
+but though it looks the same to-day as it did then,
+it is not the Mississippi now, but the Yazoo River.
+This comes about through one of those freakish changes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_484" id="Page_484">[Pg 484]</a></span>
+of course for which the great stream has always been
+famous.</p>
+
+<p>In the old days Vicksburg was situated upon one of
+the loops of a large letter "S" formed by the Mississippi,
+but in 1876 the river cut through a section of land and
+eliminated the loop upon which the town stood. Fortunately,
+however, the Yazoo emptied into the Mississippi
+above Vicksburg, and it was found possible, by digging
+a canal, to divert the latter river from its course and
+lead its waters into the loop left dry by the whim of
+the greater stream. Thus the river life, out of which
+Vicksburg was born, and without which the place would
+lose its character, was retained, and the wicked old Mississippi,
+which has played rough pranks on men and
+cities since men and cities first appeared upon its banks,
+was for once circumvented. This is but one item from
+the record of grotesque tricks wrought by changes in
+the river's course: a record of farms located at night
+on one side of the stream, and in the morning on the
+other; of large tracts of land transferred from State
+to State by a sudden switch of this treacherous fluid line
+of boundary; of river boats crashing by night into dry
+land where yesterday a deep stream flowed; of towns
+built up on river trade, utterly dependent upon the river,
+yet finding themselves suddenly deserted by it, like wives
+whose husbands disappear, leaving them withering, helpless,
+and in want.</p>
+
+<p>Where the upper Mississippi, above St. Louis, flows
+between tall bluffs it attains a grandeur which one ex<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_485" id="Page_485">[Pg 485]</a></span>pects
+in mighty streams, but that is not the part of the
+river which gets itself talked about in the newspapers
+and in Congress, nor is it the part of the river one involuntarily
+thinks of when the name Mississippi is mentioned.
+The drama, the wonder, the mystery of the
+Mississippi are in the lower river: the river of countless
+wooded islands, now standing high and dry, now
+buried to the tree tops in swirling torrents of muddy
+water; the river of black gnarled snags carried downstream
+to the Gulf with the speed of motor boats; the
+river whose craft sail on a level with the roofs of
+houses; the river of broken levees, of savage inundations.</p>
+
+<p>The upper river has a beauty which is like that of some
+lovely, stately, placid, well-behaved blond wife. She is
+conventional and correct. You always know where to
+find her. The lower river is a temperamental mistress.
+At one moment she is all sweetness, smiles and playfulness;
+at the next vivid and passionate. Even when she
+is at her loveliest there is always the possibility of sudden
+fury: of her rising in a rage, breaking the furniture,
+wrecking the house&mdash;yes, and perhaps winding her
+wicked cold arms about you in a final destroying embrace.</p>
+
+<p>Being the "Gibraltar of the river" (albeit a Gibraltar
+of clay and not of rock), Vicksburg does not suffer
+when floods come. Turn your back upon the river, as
+you stand on the platform of the Yazoo &amp; Mississippi
+railroad station, and you may gather at a glance an im<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_486" id="Page_486">[Pg 486]</a></span>pression
+of the town piling up the hillside to the eastward.</p>
+
+<p>The first buildings, occupying the narrow shelf of
+land at the water's edge, are small warehouses, negro
+eating houses, dilapidated little steamship offices, and
+all manner of shacks in want of paint and repairs.
+From the station Mulberry Street runs obliquely up the
+hillside to the south. This street, which forms the main
+thoroughfare to the station, used to be occupied by
+wholesale houses, but has more lately been given over
+largely to a frankly and prominently exposed district of
+commercialized vice&mdash;negro and white. Not only is it
+at the very door of Vicksburg, but it parallels, and is
+but one block distant from, the city's main street.</p>
+
+<p>Other streets, so steep as hardly to be passable, directly
+assault the face of the hill, mounting abruptly to
+Washington Street, which runs on a flat terrace at about
+the height of the top of the station roof, and exposes
+to the view of the newly arrived traveler the unpainted
+wooden backs of a number of frame buildings which,
+though they are but two or three stories high in front,
+reach in some cases a height of five or six stories at
+the rear, owing to the steepness of the hillside to which
+they cling. The roof lines, side walls, windows, chimneys,
+galleries, posts, and railings of these sad-looking
+structures are all picturesquely out of plumb, and some
+idea of the general dilapidation may be gathered from
+the fact that, one day, while my companion stood on
+the station platform, drawing a picture of this scene, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_487" id="Page_487">[Pg 487]</a></span>
+brick chimney, a portrait of which he had just completed,
+softly collapsed before our eyes, for all the world like
+a sitter who, having held a pose too long, faints from
+exhaustion.</p>
+
+<p>A brief inspection of the life on the galleries of these
+foul old fire traps reveals them as negro tenements; and,
+though they front on the main street of Vicksburg, it
+should be explained that about here begins the "nigger
+end" of Washington Street&mdash;the more prosperous
+portion of the downtown section lying to the southward,
+where substantial brick office buildings may be
+seen.</p>
+
+<p>Between the ragged, bulging tenements above are occasional
+narrow gaps through which are revealed cinematographic
+glimpses of street traffic; and over the tenement
+roofs one catches sight of sundry other buildings,
+these being of brick, and, though old, and in no way
+imposing, yet of a more prosperous and self-respecting
+character than the nearer structures.</p>
+
+<p>Altogether, the scene, though it is one to delight an
+etcher, is not of a character to inspire hope in the heart
+of a humanitarian, or an expert on sanitation or fire
+prevention. Nor, indeed, would it achieve completeness,
+even on the artistic side, were it not for its crowning
+feature. Far off, over the roofs and above them,
+making an apex to the composition, and giving to the
+whole picture a background of beauty and of ancient
+dignity, rises the graceful white-columned cupola of
+Vicksburg's old stone courthouse, partially obscured by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_488" id="Page_488">[Pg 488]</a></span>
+a feathery green tree top, hinting of space and foliage
+upon the summit of the hill.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p492jpg" id="p492jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p492.jpg" width="600" height="353" alt="Over the tenement roofs one catches sight of sundry other buildings of a more self-respecting character, and, far
+off, the cupola of Vicksburg&#39;s old stone court house" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Over the tenement roofs one catches sight of sundry other buildings of a more self-respecting character, and, far
+off, the cupola of Vicksburg&#39;s old stone court house</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Pamphlets on Vicksburg, issued by railroad companies
+for the enticement of tourists, give most of their space
+to the story of the campaign leading to Grant's siege of
+Vicksburg and to descriptions of the various operations
+in the siege&mdash;the battlefield, now a national military
+park, being considered the city's chief object of interest.</p>
+
+<p>Though I am not constitutionally enthusiastic about
+seeing battlefields, I must admit that I found the field
+of Vicksburg engrossing. The siege of a small city presents
+a comparatively simple and compact military problem
+which is, therefore, comprehensible to the civilian
+mind, and in addition to this the Vicksburg battlefield is
+splendidly preserved and marked, so that the visitor may
+easily reconstruct the conflict.</p>
+
+<p>The park, which covers the fighting area, forms a
+loose crescent-shaped strip over the hills which surround
+the city, its points abutting on the river above and below.
+The chief drives of the park parallel each other, the
+inner one, Confederate Avenue, following, as nearly as
+the hills permit, the city's line of defense, while the
+other, Union Avenue, forms an outer semicircle and follows,
+in a similar manner, the trenches of the attacking
+forces.</p>
+
+<p>That the battlefield is so well preserved is due in part
+to man and in part to Nature. Many of the hills of
+Warren County, in which Vicksburg is situated, are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_489" id="Page_489">[Pg 489]</a></span>
+composed of a curious soft limy clay, called marl, which,
+normally, has not the solidity of soft chalk. Marse
+Harris Dickson, who knows more about Vicksburg&mdash;and
+also about negroes, common law, floods, funny
+stories, geology, and rivers&mdash;than any other man in Mississippi,
+tells me that this marl was deposited by the
+river, in the form of silt, centuries ago, and that it was
+later thrown up into hills by volcanic action. He did
+not live in Vicksburg when this took place, but deduces
+his facts from the discovery of the remains of shellfish
+in the soil of the hills.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever its geological origin, this soil has some very
+strange characteristics. In composition it is neither
+stone nor sand, but a cross between the two&mdash;brown and
+brittle. One can easily crush it to dust in one's hand,
+in which form it has about the consistency of talcum
+powder, and it may be added that when this brown powder
+is seized by the winds and whirled about, Vicksburg
+becomes one of the most mercilessly dusty cities on this
+earth.</p>
+
+<p>On exposed slopes the marl washes very badly, forming
+great caving gullies, but, curiously enough, where it
+is exposed perpendicularly it does not wash, but slicks
+over on the outside, and stands almost as well as soft
+sandstone, although you can readily dig into it with your
+fingers.</p>
+
+<p>Many of the highways leading in and out of the city
+pass between tall walls of this peculiar soil, through
+deep cuts which a visitor might naturally take for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_490" id="Page_490">[Pg 490]</a></span>
+result of careful grading by the road builders; but
+Marse Harris Dickson tells me that the cuts are entirely
+the result of erosion wrought by a hundred years of
+wheeled traffic.</p>
+
+<p>So far as I know there is but one man who has witnessed
+this phenomenon without being impressed.
+That man is Samuel Merwin. Merwin went down and
+visited Marse Harris in Vicksburg, and saw all the
+sights. He was polite about the battlefield, and the
+river, and the negro stories, and everything else, until
+Marse Harris showed him how the highways had eroded
+through the hills. That did not seem to impress him
+at all. Moreover, instead of being tactful, he started
+telling about his trip to China. In China, he said, there
+were similar formations, but, as the civilization of China
+was much older than that of Vicksburg (fancy his having
+said a thing like that!) the gorges over there had
+eroded to a much greater extent. He said he had seen
+them three hundred feet deep.</p>
+
+<p>The more Marse Harris tried to get him to say something
+a little bit complimentary about the Vicksburg erosions,
+the more Merwin boasted about China. He declared
+that the Vicksburg erosions didn't amount to a
+hill of beans compared with what he could show Marse
+Harris if Marse Harris would go with him to a certain
+point on the banks of the Wa Choo, in the province of
+Lang Pang Si.</p>
+
+<p>Evidently he harped on this until he touched not only
+his host's local pride, but his pride of discovery. Be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_491" id="Page_491">[Pg 491]</a></span>fore
+that, Marse Harris had been content to stick around
+in Mississippi, with perhaps a little run down to New
+Orleans for Mardi Gras, or up to Dogtail to see a break
+in the levee, but after Merwin's talk about China he
+began to grow restless, and it is generally said in Vicksburg
+that it was purely in order to have something to
+tell Merwin about, the next time he saw him, that he
+made his celebrated trip to the source of the Nile. As
+for Merwin, he has never been invited back to Vicksburg,
+and it is to be observed that, even to this day,
+Marse Harris, by nature of a sunny disposition, shows
+signs of erosion of the spirit when China is mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>It is apropos the battlefield that I mention the peculiarities
+of the soil. Had the bare ground been exposed
+to the rains of a few years, the details of redoubts,
+trenches, gun positions, saps, and all other military
+works would have melted away. Fortunately, however,
+there is a kind of tough, strong-rooted grass, called
+Bermuda grass, indigenous to that part of the country,
+and this grass quickly covered the battlefield, holding
+the soil together so effectually that all outlines are practically
+embalmed. So, although those in charge of the
+park have contributed not a little to its preservation&mdash;putting
+old guns in their former places, perpetuating
+saps with concrete work, and placing white markers on
+the hillsides, to show how far up those hillsides the assaulting
+Union troops made their way in various historic
+charges&mdash;it is due most of all to Nature that the Vicksburg
+battlefield so well explains itself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_492" id="Page_492">[Pg 492]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Could Grant and Pemberton look to-day upon the hills
+and valleys where surged their six weeks' struggle for
+possession of the city, I doubt that they would find any
+important landmark wanting, and it is certain that they
+could not say, as Wellington did when he revisited
+Waterloo: "They have spoiled my battlefield!"</p>
+
+<p>Besides the old guns and the markers, the field is
+dotted over with observation towers and all manner of
+memorials. Of the latter, the marble pantheon erected
+by the State of Illinois, and the beautiful marble and
+bronze memorial structure of the State of Iowa, are
+probably the finest. The marble column erected by Wisconsin
+carries at its summit a great bronze effigy of
+"Old Abe," the famous eagle, mascot of the Wisconsin
+troops. Guides to the battlefield are prone to relate
+to visitors&mdash;especially, I suspect, those whose accents
+betray a Northern origin&mdash;how "Old Abe," the bird of
+battle, went home and disgraced himself, after the war,
+by his ungentlemanly action in laying a setting of eggs.</p>
+
+<p>The handsomest monument to an individual which I
+saw upon the battlefield was the admirable bronze bust
+of Major General Martin L. Smith, C.&nbsp;S.&nbsp;A., and the
+one which appealed most to my imagination was also
+a memorial to a Confederate soldier: Brigadier-General
+States Rights Gist. Is there not something Roman
+in the thought that, thirty or more years before
+the war, a southern father gave his new-born son
+that name, dedicating him, as it were, to the cause of
+States Rights, and that the son so dedicated gave his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_493" id="Page_493">[Pg 493]</a></span>
+life in battle for that cause? The name upon that stone
+made me better understand the depth of feeling that
+existed in the South long years before the War, and
+gave me a clearer comprehension of at least one reason
+why the South made such a gallant fight.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Of more than fourscore national cemeteries in the
+United States, that which stands among the hills and
+trees, overlooking the river, at the northerly end of the
+military park, is one of the most beautiful, and is, with
+the single exception of Arlington, the largest. It contains
+the graves of nearly 17,000 Union soldiers lost in
+this campaign&mdash;three-fourths of them "unknown"!</p>
+
+<p>It is interesting to note that, because the surrender
+of Pemberton to Grant occurred on July 4, that date
+has, in this region, associations less happy than attach
+to it elsewhere, and that the Fourth has not been celebrated
+in Vicksburg since the Civil War, except by the
+negroes, who have taken it for their especial holiday.
+This reminds me, also, of the fact that, throughout the
+South, Christmas, instead of the Fourth of July, is celebrated
+with fireworks.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_494" id="Page_494">[Pg 494]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLVI" id="CHAPTER_XLVI"></a>CHAPTER XLVI<br />
+<br />
+SHREDS AND PATCHES</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was Marse Harris Dickson who showed us the
+battlefield. As we were driving along in the motor
+we overtook an old trudging negro, very picturesque
+in his ragged clothing and battered soft hat. My
+companion said that he would like to take a picture of
+this wayfarer, and asked Marse Harris, who, as author
+of the "Old Reliable" stories, seemed best fitted for the
+task, to arrange the matter. The automobile, having
+passed the negro, was stopped to wait for him to catch
+up. Presently, as he came by, Marse Harris addressed
+him in that friendly way Southerners have with negroes.</p>
+
+<p>"Want your picture taken, old man?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>To which the negro, still shuffling along, replied:</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't got no money."</p>
+
+<p>Marse Harris, knowing the workings of the negro
+mind, got the full import of this reply at once, but I
+must confess that a moment passed before I realized
+that the negro took us for itinerant photographers looking
+for trade.</p>
+
+<p>With the possible exception of Irvin S. Cobb, I suppose
+Marse Harris has the largest collection of negro
+character stories of any individual in this country.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_495" id="Page_495">[Pg 495]</a></span>
+And let me say, in this connection, that I know of no
+better place than Vicksburg for the study of southern
+negro types.</p>
+
+<p>One day Marse Harris was passing by the jail. It
+was hot weather, and the jail windows were open. Behind
+the bars of one window, looking down upon the
+street, stood a negro prisoner. As Marse Harris passed
+this window a negro wearing a large watch chain came
+by in the other direction. His watch chain evidently
+caught the eye of the prisoner, who spoke in a wistful
+tone, demanding:</p>
+
+<p>"What tahme is it, brotha?"</p>
+
+<p>"What foh you want t' know what tahme it is?" returned
+the other sternly, as he continued upon his way.
+"You ain't goin' nowhere."</p>
+
+<p>Through Marse Harris I obtained a copy of a letter
+written by a negro named Walter to Mr. W.&nbsp;H.
+Reeve of Vicksburg. Walter had looked out for Mr.
+Reeve's live stock during a flood, and had certain ideas
+about what should be done for him in consequence. I
+give the letter exactly as it was written, merely inserting,
+parenthetically, a few explanatory words:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Mr. H W Reeve an bos dear sir I like to git me a par [pair]
+second hand pance dont a fail or elce I will be dout [without] a
+pare to go eny where so send me something. Dont a fail an send
+me a par of youre pance [or] i will hafter go to work for somebody
+to git some. I don't think you all is treating me right at all
+I stayed with youre hogs in the water till the last tening [attending]
+to them and I dont think that youre oder [ought to] fail me
+bout a pare old pance</i></p></div>
+<p style="text-align: right;"><span class="smcap">Walter</span></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_496" id="Page_496">[Pg 496]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Though I cannot see just why it should be so, it
+seemed to us that the Vicksburg negroes were happier
+than those of any other place we visited. Whether
+drowsing in the sun, walking the streets, doing a little
+stroke of work, fishing, or sitting gabbling on the curbstone,
+they were upon the whole as cheerful and as comical
+a lot of people as I ever saw.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p497jpg" id="p497jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p497.jpg" width="600" height="310" alt="Vicksburg negroes. Whether drowsing in the sun, doing a little stroke of work, or sitting gabbling on the curbstone,
+they were upon the whole as cheerful and comical a lot of people as I ever saw" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Vicksburg negroes. Whether drowsing in the sun, doing a little stroke of work, or sitting gabbling on the curbstone,
+they were upon the whole as cheerful and comical a lot of people as I ever saw</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Wha' you-all goin' to?" I heard a negro ask a group
+of mulatto women, in clean starched gingham dresses,
+who went flouncing by him on the street one Saturday
+afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," returned one of the women, with the elaborate
+superiority of a member of the class of idle rich, "we're
+just serenadin' 'round."</p>
+
+<p>"Serenading," as she used the word, meant a promenade
+about the town.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the happiness of the negro, here, has to do
+with the lazy life of the river. The succulent catfish is
+easily obtainable for food, and the wages of the roustabout&mdash;or
+"rouster," as he is called for short&mdash;are good.</p>
+
+<p>The rouster, in his red undershirt, with a bale hook
+hung in his belt, is a figure to fascinate the eye. When
+he works&mdash;which is to say, when he is out of funds&mdash;he
+works hard. He will swing a two-hundred-pound
+sack to his back and do fancy steps as he marches with
+it up the springy gangplank to the river steamer's deck,
+uttering now and then a strange, barbaric snatch of
+song. He has no home, no family, no responsibilities.
+An ignorant deck hand can earn from forty to one hun<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_497" id="Page_497">[Pg 497]</a></span>dred
+dollars a month. Pay him off at the end of the
+trip, let him get ashore with his money, and he is gone.
+Without deck hands the steamer cannot move. For
+many years there has been known to river captains a
+simple way out of this difficulty. Pay the rousters off
+a few hours before the end of the trip. Say there are
+twenty of them, and that each is given twenty dollars.
+They clear a space on deck and begin shooting craps.
+No one interferes. By the time the trip ends most of
+the money has passed into the hands of four or five; the
+rest are "broke" and therefore remain at work.
+Yet despite the ingenuity of those who have the negro
+labor problem to contend with, Marse Harris tells me
+that there have been times when the levee was lined
+with steamers, full-loaded, but unable to depart for want
+of a crew. Not that there was any lack of roustabouts
+in town, but that, money being plentiful, they would not
+work. In such times perishable freight rots and is
+thrown overboard.</p>
+
+<p>I am conscious of a tendency, in writing of Vicksburg,
+to dwell continually upon the negro and the river
+for the reason that the two form an enchanting background
+for the whole life of the place. This should not,
+however, be taken to indicate that Vicksburg is not a
+city of agreeable homes and pleasant society, or that its
+only picturesqueness is to be found in the river and
+negro life.</p>
+
+<p>The point is that Vicksburg is a patchwork city.
+The National Park Hotel, its chief hostelry, is an un<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_498" id="Page_498">[Pg 498]</a></span>usually
+good hotel for a city of this size, and Washington
+Street, in the neighborhood of the hotel, has the look
+of a busy city street; yet on the same square with the
+hotel, on the street below, nearer the river, is an unwholesome
+negro settlement. So it is all over the city;
+the "white folks" live on the hills, while the "niggers"
+inhabit the adjacent bottoms. Nor is that the only
+sense in which the town is patched together. Some of
+the most charming of the city's old homes are tucked
+away where the visitor is not likely to see them without
+deliberate search. Such a place, for example, is the old
+Klein house, standing amid lawns and old-fashioned
+gardens, on the bluff overlooking the Mississippi. This
+house was built long before the railroad came to Vicksburg,
+cutting off its grounds from the river. A patch
+in the paneling of the front door shows where a cannon
+ball passed through at the time of the bombardment,
+and the ball itself may still be seen embedded in the
+woodwork of one of the rooms within.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p512jpg" id="p512jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p512.jpg" width="600" height="451" alt="The old Klein house, standing amid lawns and old-fashioned gardens on the bluff overlooking the river" title="" />
+<span class="caption">The old Klein house, standing amid lawns and old-fashioned gardens on the bluff overlooking the river</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>And there are other patches. Near the old courthouse,
+which rears itself so handsomely at the summit
+of a series of terraces leading up from the street, are a
+number of old sand roads which must be to-day almost
+as they were in the heyday of the river's glory, when
+the region in which the courthouse stands was the principal
+part of the city&mdash;the days of heavy drinking and
+gambling, dueling, slave markets, and steamboat races.
+These streets are not the streets of a city, but of a small
+town. So, too, where Adams Street crosses Grove, it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_499" id="Page_499">[Pg 499]</a></span>
+has the appearance of a country lane, the road represented
+by a pair of wheel tracks running through the
+grass; but Cherry Street, only a block distant, is built up
+with city houses and has a good asphalt pavement and
+a trolley line.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_500" id="Page_500">[Pg 500]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLVII" id="CHAPTER_XLVII"></a>CHAPTER XLVII<br />
+<br />
+THE BAFFLING MISSISSIPPI</h2>
+
+
+<p>As inevitably as water flows down the hills of
+Vicksburg to the river, the visitor's thoughts
+flow down always to the great spectacular, historic,
+mischievous, dominating stream.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p485jpg" id="p485jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p485.jpg" width="600" height="410" alt="As water flows down the hills of Vicksburg to the river, so the visitor&#39;s thoughts flow down to the great spectacular,
+mischievous, dominating stream" title="" />
+<span class="caption">As water flows down the hills of Vicksburg to the river, so the visitor&#39;s thoughts flow down to the great spectacular,
+mischievous, dominating stream</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Mark Twain, in that glorious book, "Life on the
+Mississippi," declared, in speaking of the eternal problems
+of the Mississippi, that as there are not enough
+citizens of Louisiana to take care of all the theories
+about the river at the rate of one theory per individual,
+each citizen has two theories. That is the case to-day
+as it was when Mark Twain was a pilot. I have heard
+half a dozen prominent men, some of them engineers,
+state their views as to what should be done. Each view
+seemed sound, yet all were at variance.</p>
+
+<p>Consider, for example, that part of the river lying between
+Vicksburg and the mouth. Here, quite aside
+from the problem as to the hands in which river-control
+work should be vested&mdash;a very great problem in itself&mdash;three
+separate and distinct physical problems are presented.</p>
+
+<p>From Vicksburg to Red River Landing there are
+swift currents which deposit silt only at the edge of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_501" id="Page_501">[Pg 501]</a></span>
+bank, or on sand bars. From Red River Landing to
+New Orleans the problem is different; here the channel
+is much improved, and slow currents at the sides of the
+river, between the natural river bank and the levee, deposit
+silt in the old "borrow pits"&mdash;pits from which the
+earth was dug for the building of the levees&mdash;filling
+them up, whereas, farther up the river, the borrow pits,
+instead of filling up, are likely to scour, undermining
+the levee. From New Orleans to the head of the Passes&mdash;these
+being the three main channels by which the river
+empties into the Gulf&mdash;the banks between the natural
+river bed and the levees build up with silt much more
+rapidly than at any other point on the entire stream;
+here there are no sand bars, and the banks cave very
+little. In this part of the river it is not current, but
+wind, which forms the great problem, for the winds are
+terrific at certain times of year, and when they blow
+violently against the current, waves are formed which
+wash out the levees.</p>
+
+<p>This is the barest outline of three chief physical problems
+with which river engineers must contend. There
+are countless others which have to be met in various
+ways. In some places the water seeps through, under
+the levee, and bubbles up, like a spring, from the ground
+outside. This, if allowed to continue, soon undermines
+the levee and causes a break. The method of fighting
+such a seepage is interesting. When the water begins
+to bubble up, a hollow tower of sand-filled sacks is built
+up about the place where it comes from the ground, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_502" id="Page_502">[Pg 502]</a></span>
+when this tower has raised the level of the water within
+it to that of the river, the pressure is of course removed,
+on the siphon principle.</p>
+
+<p>As river-control work is at present handled, there is
+no centralization of authority, and friction, waste, and
+politics consequently play a large part.</p>
+
+<p>Consider, for example, the situation in the State of
+Louisiana. Here control is, broadly speaking, in the
+hands of three separate bodies: (1) the United States
+army engineer, who disburses the money appropriated
+by Congress for levees and bank revetment, working
+under direction of the Mississippi River Commission;
+(2) the State Board of Engineers, which disburses
+Louisiana State funds wherever it sees fit, and which,
+incidentally, does not use, in its work, the same specifications
+as are used by the Government; and (3) the
+local levee boards, of which there are eight in Louisiana,
+one to each river parish&mdash;a parish being what is elsewhere
+called a county. Each of these eight boards
+has authority as to where parish money shall be spent
+within its district, and it may be added that this last
+group (considering the eight boards as a unit) has the
+largest sum to spend on river work.</p>
+
+<p>The result of this division of authority creates chaos,
+and has built up a situation infinitely worse than was
+faced by General Goethals when Congress attempted to
+divide control in the building of the Panama Canal. It
+will be remembered that, in that case, a commission was
+appointed, but that Roosevelt circumvented Congress by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_503" id="Page_503">[Pg 503]</a></span>
+making General Goethals head of the commission with
+full powers.</p>
+
+<p>While the canal was in course of construction, General
+Goethals appeared before the Senate Committee on
+Commerce. When asked what he knew of levee building
+and work on the Mississippi, he replied:</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know a single, solitary thing about the work
+on the Mississippi except that it is being carried on under
+the annual appropriation system. If we had that
+system to hamper us, the Panama Canal would not be
+completed on time and within the estimate, as it will
+be. That system leaves engineers in uncertainty as to
+how much they may plan to do in the year ahead of
+them. Big works cannot be completed economically,
+either as to time or money, unless the man who is making
+the plan can proceed upon the theory that the money
+will be forthcoming as fast as he can economically spend
+it."</p>
+
+<p>In view of the foregoing, I cannot myself claim to be
+free from river theory. It seems to me clear that the
+Mississippi should be under exclusive Federal control
+from source to mouth; that the various commissions
+should be abolished, and that the whole matter should
+be in the hands of the chief of United States Engineers,
+who would have ample funds with which to carry on
+work of a permanent character.</p>
+
+<p>As one among countless items pointing to the need
+of Federal control, consider the case of the Tensas Levee
+Board, one of the eight local boards in Louisiana. This<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_504" id="Page_504">[Pg 504]</a></span>
+board does not build any levees whatsoever in the
+State of Louisiana, but does all its work with Louisiana
+money, in the State of Arkansas, where it has
+constructed, and maintains, eighty-two miles of levees,
+protecting the northeastern corner of Louisiana from
+floods which would originate in Arkansas. These same
+levees, however, also protect large tracts of land in Arkansas,
+for which protection the inhabitants of Arkansas
+do not pay one cent, knowing that their Louisiana
+neighbors are forced, for their own safety, to do the
+work.</p>
+
+<p>Cairo, Illinois, is the barometer of the river's rise
+and fall, the gage at that point being used as the basis
+for estimates for the entire river below Cairo. These
+estimates are made by computations which are so accurate
+that Vicksburg, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans
+know, days or even weeks in advance, when to expect
+high water, and within a few inches of the precise height
+the floods will reach.</p>
+
+<p>Some years since, the United States engineer in charge
+of a river district embracing a part of Louisiana, notified
+the local levee boards that unusually high water
+might be expected on a certain date and that several
+hundred miles of levees would have to be "capped" in
+order to prevent overflow. The local boards in turn notified
+the planters, in sections where capping was necessary.</p>
+
+<p>One of the planters so notified was an old Cajun&mdash;Cajun
+being a corruption of the word "Acadian," denot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_505" id="Page_505">[Pg 505]</a></span>ing
+those persons of French descent driven from Acadia,
+in Canada, by the British many years ago. This old
+man did not believe that the river would rise as high as
+predicted and was not disposed to cap his levee.</p>
+
+<p>"But," said the member of the local levee board, who
+interviewed him, "the United States engineer says you
+will have to put two twelve-inch planks, one above the
+other, on top of your levee, and back them with earth, or
+else the water will come over."</p>
+
+<p>At last the old fellow consented.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the floods came. The water mounted,
+mounted, mounted. Soon it was halfway up the lower
+plank; then it rose to the upper one. When it reached
+the middle of that plank the Cajun became alarmed and
+called upon the local levee board for help to raise the
+capping higher still.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said the local board member who had given
+him the original warning, "that will not be necessary.
+I have just talked to the United States engineer. He
+says the water will drop to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>The old man was skeptical, however, and was not satisfied
+until the board member agreed that in case the
+flood failed to abate next day, as predicted, the board
+should do the extra capping. This settled, a nail was
+driven into the upper plank to mark the water's height.</p>
+
+<p>Sure enough, on the following morning the river had
+dropped away from the nail, and thereafter it continued
+to fall.</p>
+
+<p>After watching the decline for several days, the Ca<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_506" id="Page_506">[Pg 506]</a></span>jun,
+very much puzzled, called on his friend, the local
+levee board member, to talk the matter over.</p>
+
+<p>"Say," he demanded, "what kinda man dis United
+States engineer is, anyhow? Firs' he tell when de water
+comes. Den he tell jus' how high she comes. Den he
+tell jus' when she's agoin' to fall. What kinda man is
+dat, anyhow? Is he been one Voodoo?"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The spirit of the people of Arkansas, Mississippi, and
+Louisiana, who live, in flood time, in the precarious
+safety afforded by the levees, is characterized by the
+same optimistic fatalism that is to be found among the
+inhabitants of the slopes of Vesuvius in time of eruption.</p>
+
+<p>One night, a good many years ago, I ascended Vesuvius
+at such a time, and I remember well a talk I had
+with a man who gave me wine and sausage in his house,
+far up on the mountain side, at about two o'clock that
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>Seventeen streams of lava were already flowing
+down, and signs of imminent disaster were at hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you afraid to stay here with your family?"
+I asked the man.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he replied. "Three times I have seen it worse
+than this. I have lived here always, and"&mdash;with a good
+Italian smile&mdash;"it is evident, signore, that I am still
+alive."</p>
+
+<p>Less than a week later I read in a newspaper that
+this man's house, which was known as Casa Bianca, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_507" id="Page_507">[Pg 507]</a></span>gether
+with his vineyards and his precious wine cellars,
+tunneled into the mountain side, had been obliterated by
+a stream of lava.</p>
+
+<p>Precisely as he went about his affairs when destruction
+threatened, so do the planters along the Mississippi.
+But there is this difference: against Vesuvius no precaution
+can avail; whereas, in the case of a Mississippi
+flood, foresight may save life and property. For instance,
+many planters build mounds large enough to accommodate
+their barns, and all their live stock. Likewise,
+when floods are coming, they construct false floors
+in their houses, elevating their furniture above high-water
+mark, so that, if the whole house is not carried
+away, they may return to something less than utter
+ruin. It is the custom, also, to place ladders against
+trees, in the branches of which provisions are kept in
+time of danger, and to have skiffs, containing food and
+water, ready on the galleries of the houses.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_508" id="Page_508">[Pg 508]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLVIII" id="CHAPTER_XLVIII"></a>CHAPTER XLVIII<br />
+<br />
+OLD RIVER DAYS</h2>
+
+
+<p>Among the honored citizens of Vicksburg, at the
+time of our visit, were a number of old steamboat
+men who knew the river in its golden days;
+among them, Captain "Mose" Smith, Captain Tom
+Young, Captain W.&nbsp;S. ("Billy") Jones, and Captain S.&nbsp;H.
+Parisot&mdash;the latter probably the oldest surviving
+Mississippi River captain.</p>
+
+<p>We were sent to see Captain Parisot at his house,
+where he received us kindly, entertained us for an hour
+or more with reminiscences, and showed us a most interesting
+collection of souvenirs of the river, including
+photographs of famous boats, famous deck loads of cotton,
+and famous characters: among the latter the celebrated
+rivals, Captain John W. Cannon of the <i>Robert
+E. Lee</i> and Captain Thomas P. Leathers of the <i>Natchez</i>.
+Captain Parisot knew both these men well, and was himself
+aboard the <i>Lee</i> at the time of her famous race with
+the <i>Natchez</i> from New Orleans to St. Louis.</p>
+
+<p>"We left New Orleans 3&frac12; minutes ahead of the
+<i>Natchez</i>," said Captain Parisot, "made the run to Vicksburg
+in 24 hours and 28 minutes, beat her to Cairo by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_509" id="Page_509">[Pg 509]</a></span>
+1 hour and 12 minutes, and to St. Louis by more than 3
+hours."</p>
+
+<p>Captain Parisot's father was a soldier under Napoleon
+I, and moved to Warren County, Mississippi,
+after having been wounded at Moscow. He built, at
+the foot of Main Street, Vicksburg, the first brick house
+that city had.</p>
+
+<p>"There was a law in France," said the captain, "that
+any citizen absent from the country for thirty-five years
+lost all claim to property. My father's people were
+pretty well off, so in '42 he started back, but he was
+taken ill and died in New Orleans."</p>
+
+<p>Captain Parisot was born in 1828, and in 1847 began
+"learning the river." In 1854 he became part owner of
+a boat, and three years later purchased one of his
+own.</p>
+
+<p>"I bought her in Cincinnati," he said. Then, reflectively,
+he added: "There was a good deal of drinking
+in those days. When I brought her down on her first
+trip I had 183 tons of freight, and 500 barrels of whisky,
+from Cincinnati, for one little country store&mdash;Barksdale
+&amp; McFarland's, at Yazoo City."</p>
+
+<p>"There was a good deal of gambling, too, wasn't
+there?" one of us suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"There was indeed," smiled the old captain. "Every
+steamboat was a gambling house, and there used to be
+big games before the war."</p>
+
+<p>"How big?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he returned, "as Captain Leathers once put<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_510" id="Page_510">[Pg 510]</a></span>
+it, it used to be 'nigger ante and plantation limit.' And
+that's no joke about playing for niggers either. Those
+old planters would play for anything. I've known people
+to get on a boat at Yazoo City to come to Vicksburg,
+and get in a game, and never get off at Vicksburg
+at all&mdash;just go back to Yazoo; yes, and come down
+again, to keep the game going.</p>
+
+<p>"There was a saloon called the Exchange near our
+house in Yazoo, and I remember once my father got
+into a game, there, with a gambler named Spence
+Thrift. That was before the war. Thrift was a terrible
+stiff bluffer. When he got ready to clean up,
+he'd shove up his whole pile. Well, he did that to my
+father. Thrift's pile was twenty-two hundred dollars,
+and all my father had in front of him was eight hundred.
+But he owned a young negro named Calvin, so he called
+Calvin, and told him: 'Here, boy! Jump up on the
+table.' That equalled the gambler's pile; and it finished
+him&mdash;he threw down his hand, beaten.</p>
+
+<p>"Business in those times was done largely on friendship.
+It used to be said that I 'owned' the Yazoo River
+when I was running my line. I knew everybody up
+there. They were my friends, and they gave me their
+business for that reason, and also because I brought the
+cotton down here to Vicksburg, and reshipped it from
+here on, down the river. It was considered an advantage
+to reship cotton because moving it from one boat to
+another knocked the mud off the bales.</p>
+
+<p>"There used to be some enormous cargoes of cotton<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_511" id="Page_511">[Pg 511]</a></span>
+carried. The largest boat on the river was the <i>Henry
+Frank</i>, owned by Frank Hicks of Memphis. She ran
+between Memphis and New Orleans, and on one trip
+carried 9226 bales. Those were the old-style bales, of
+course. They weighed 425 to 450 pounds each, as
+against 550 to 600 pounds, which is the weight of a bale
+to-day, now that powerful machinery is used to make
+them. The heavy bale came into use partly to beat
+transportation charges, as rates were not made by
+weight, but at so much per bale.</p>
+
+<p>"The land up the Yazoo belonged to the State, and
+the State sold it for $1.25 per acre. The fellows that
+got up there first weren't any too anxious to see new
+folks coming in and entering land. Used to try all kinds
+of schemes to get them out.</p>
+
+<p>"There were two brothers up there named Parker.
+One of them was a surveyor&mdash;we called him 'Baldy'&mdash;and
+the other was lumbering, getting timber out of the
+cypress breaks and rafting it down. Almost all the
+timber used from Vicksburg to New Orleans came out
+of there.</p>
+
+<p>"One time a man came up the Yazoo to take up land
+and went to stop with Baldy Parker. When they sat
+down to dinner Baldy took some flour and sprinkled it
+all over his meat.</p>
+
+<p>"'What's that?' asked the stranger.</p>
+
+<p>"'Quinine,' says Baldy. 'Haven't you got any?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No,' says the fellow; 'what would I want it for?'</p>
+
+<p>"'You'll find out if you go out there in the swamps,'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_512" id="Page_512">[Pg 512]</a></span>
+Baldy tells him. 'It's full of malaria. We eat quinine
+on everything.'</p>
+
+<p>"The fellow was quiet through the rest of the meal.</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty soon they got up to go out, and Baldy took up
+a pair of stovepipes.</p>
+
+<p>"'What do you do with them pipes?' asks the stranger.</p>
+
+<p>"'Wear 'em, of course,' says Baldy. 'Haven't you
+got any?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No,' says the fellow. 'What for?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why,' says Baldy, 'the rattlesnakes out there will
+bite the legs right off of you.'</p>
+
+<p>"With that the fellow had enough. He didn't go
+any farther, but turned around and took the boat down
+the river."</p>
+
+<p>In all his years as captain and line owner on the river,
+Captain Parisot never lost a vessel. "I never insured
+against sinking," he told us. "Just against fire. But
+I got the best pilots I could hire. In all I built twenty-seven
+steamboats. I had $150,000 worth of boats when
+I sold my line in 1880. After I sold they did lose some
+boats."</p>
+
+<p>Later we saw Captain "Billy" Jones, a much younger
+man than Captain Parisot, yet old enough to have known
+the river in its prime. Captain Jones deserted the river
+years ago, and is now a golfer with a prosperous banking
+business on the side.</p>
+
+<p>"Captain Parisot was right when he said business on
+the river was done largely on friendship," said Captain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_513" id="Page_513">[Pg 513]</a></span>
+Jones. "Also business used to be turned down for the
+opposite reason. There was a historic case of that in
+this town.</p>
+
+<p>"Captain Tom Leathers was in the habit of refusing
+to take freight on the <i>Natchez</i> if he didn't like the
+shipper or the consignee. For some reason or other he
+had it in for the firm of Lamkin &amp; Eggleston, wholesale
+grocers here in Vicksburg, and declined their freight.
+They sued him in the Circuit Court and got judgment.
+Leathers carried the case to the Supreme Court, but the
+verdict was sustained and he had to pay $2500 damages.
+He was furious.</p>
+
+<p>"'What's the use,' he said, 'of being a steamboat captain
+if you can't tell people to go to hell?'"</p>
+
+<p>It is the lamentable fact, and I must face it, and so
+must you if you intend to read on, that the language
+of the river was rough. At least ninety-nine out of
+every hundred river stories are, therefore, not printable
+in full. Either they must be vitiated by deletions, or
+interpreted at certain points by blanks and "blanketys."
+As for me, I prefer the blankety-blanks and I consider
+that this method of avoiding the complete truth relieves
+me of all responsibility. And of course, if that is
+so, it absolves, at the same time, good Captain "Billy"
+Jones, or any one else who may have happened to tell me
+the stories.</p>
+
+<p>Both Leathers and Cannon were large, powerful men,
+and they always hated each other. Leathers was never
+popular, for he was very arrogant, but he had a great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_514" id="Page_514">[Pg 514]</a></span>
+reputation for pushing the <i>Natchez</i> through on time.
+Also, such friends as he did have always stuck by him.</p>
+
+<p>Something of the feeling between the two old river
+characters is revealed in the following story related by
+Captain Jones:</p>
+
+<p>"Ed Snodgrass, who lived in St. Joseph, La., was a
+friend of both Cannon and Leathers. When the <i>Natchez</i>
+would arrive at St. Joseph, he would go and give
+Leathers news about Cannon, and when the <i>Lee</i> came in
+he would see Cannon and tell him about Leathers.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, one time Leathers was laid up with a carbuncle
+on his back, and brought a doctor up on the boat
+with him. So, of course, Ed Snodgrass told Cannon
+about it when he came along.</p>
+
+<p>"'A carbuncle, eh?' said Cannon.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' said Ed.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' said Cannon, 'you tell the old blankety-blank-blank
+that I had a brother&mdash;a bigger, stronger
+man than I am&mdash;and he had one o' them things and died
+in two weeks.'</p>
+
+<p>"Soon after that Cannon made a misstep when backing
+the <i>Natchez</i> out, at Natchez, and fell, breaking his
+collar bone. Of course Ed Snodgrass gave the news to
+Leathers when he came along.</p>
+
+<p>"'Huh!' said Leathers. 'His collar bone, eh? You
+tell the old blankety-blank-blank that I wish it had been
+his blankety-blank neck!'"</p>
+
+<p>I asked Captain Jones for stories about gambling.</p>
+
+<p>"After the war," he said, "there weren't the big<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_515" id="Page_515">[Pg 515]</a></span>
+poker games there used to be. Mostly we had sucker
+games then. There was a gambler named George
+Duval who wrote a book&mdash;or, rather, he had somebody
+write it for him, for he was a very ignorant fellow, and
+began his life calking the seams of boats in a shipyard.
+He had a partner who was known as 'Jew Mose,' who
+used to dress like a rich planter. He wore a broad-brimmed
+hat and a very elegant tail coat, and was a big,
+handsome man.</p>
+
+<p>"After the boat left New Orleans, this 'Jew Mose'
+would disguise himself with whiskers and goggles, go to
+the barber shop and lay out his game. George Duval
+and a fellow called 'Canada Bill' were the cappers.
+They would bring in suckers, get their money, and generally
+get off the boat about Baton Rouge.</p>
+
+<p>"Once when I was a clerk on the <i>Robert E. Lee</i>,
+Duval got a young fellow in tow, and the young fellow
+wanted to bet on the game, but he had a friend with him,
+and his friend kept pulling him away.</p>
+
+<p>"Later, when Duval had given up the idea of getting
+this young fellow's money, and closed up his game, he
+appeared in the social hall of the boat with a small bag
+held up to his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Somebody asked him what was in the bag.</p>
+
+<p>"'It's hot salt,' he said. 'I've got a toothache, and a
+bag of hot salt is the best thing in the world for toothache.'</p>
+
+<p>"Presently, when he went to his stateroom to get
+something, he left the bag of salt on the stove to heat it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_516" id="Page_516">[Pg 516]</a></span>
+up. While he was gone somebody suggested, as a
+joke, that they dump out the salt and fill the bag with
+ashes, instead. So they did it. And when Duval came
+back he held it up to his face again, and seemed perfectly
+satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>"'How does it feel now?' one of the fellows asked.</p>
+
+<p>"'Fine,' said Duval. 'Hot salt is the best thing
+going.'</p>
+
+<p>"At that, the man who had prevented the young fellow
+from betting, down in the barber shop, earlier in the
+day, offered to bet Duval a hundred dollars that the bag
+didn't contain salt.</p>
+
+<p>"Duval took the bet and raised him back another hundred.
+But the man had only fifty dollars left. However,
+another fellow, standing in the crowd, put in the
+extra fifty to make two hundred dollars a side.</p>
+
+<p>"Then Duval opened the bag, and it <i>was</i> salt. He
+had changed the bags, and the fellows who worked up
+the trick were his cappers."</p>
+
+<p>One of the old-time river gamblers was an individual,
+blind in one eye, known as "One-eyed Murphy." Murphy
+was an extremely artful manipulator of cards, and
+made a business of cheating. One day, shortly after
+the <i>Natchez</i> had backed out from New Orleans and got
+under way, Marion Knowles, a picturesque gentleman
+of the period, and one who had the reputation of being
+polite even in the most trying circumstances, and no
+matter how well he had dined, came in and stood for a
+time as a spectator beside a table at which Murphy was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_517" id="Page_517">[Pg 517]</a></span>
+playing poker with some guileless planters. Mr.
+Knowles was not himself guileless, and very shortly he
+perceived that the one-eyed gambler was dealing himself
+cards from the bottom of the pack. Thereupon he drew
+his revolver from his pocket and rapping with it on the
+table addressed the assembly:</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen," he said, speaking in courtly fashion,
+"I regret to say that there is something wrong here. I
+will not call any names, neither will I make any personal
+allusions. <i>But if it doesn't stop, damn me if I don't
+shoot his other eye out!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>I cannot drop the river, and stories of river gambling,
+without referring to one more tale which is a
+classic. It is a long story about a big poker game, and
+to tell it properly one must know the exact words. I do
+not know them, and therefore shall not attempt to tell
+the whole story, but shall give you only the beginning.</p>
+
+<p>It is supposed to be told by a Virginian.</p>
+
+<p>"There was me," he says, "and another very distinguished
+gentleman from Virginia and a gentleman from
+Kentucky, and a man from Ohio, and a fellow from
+New York, and a blankety-blank from Boston&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>That is all I know of the story, but I can guess who
+got the money in that game.</p>
+
+<p>Can't you?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_518" id="Page_518">[Pg 518]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIX" id="CHAPTER_XLIX"></a>CHAPTER XLIX<br />
+<br />
+WHAT MEMPHIS HAS ENDURED</h2>
+
+
+<p>An article on Memphis, published in the year 1855,
+gives the population of the place as about
+13,000 (one quarter of the number slaves), and
+calls Memphis "the most promising town in the Southwest."
+It predicts that a railroad will some day connect
+Memphis with Little Rock, Arkansas, and that a direct
+line between Memphis and Cincinnati may even be constructed.
+This article begins the history of Memphis
+in the year 1820, when the place had 50 inhabitants.
+In 1840 the settlement had grown to 1,700, and fifteen
+years thereafter it was almost eight times that
+size.</p>
+
+<p>Your Memphian, however, is not at all content to
+date from 1820. He begins the history of Memphis
+with the date May 8, 1541&mdash;a time when Henry VIII
+was establishing new matrimonial records in England,
+when Queen Elizabeth was a little girl, and Shakespeare,
+Bacon, Galileo and Cromwell were yet unborn.
+For that was the date when a Spanish gentleman bearing
+some personal resemblance to "Uncle Joe" Cannon&mdash;though
+he was younger, had black hair and beard,
+was differently dressed and did not chew long black<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_519" id="Page_519">[Pg 519]</a></span>
+cigars&mdash;arrived at the lower Chickasaw Bluffs, from
+which the city of Memphis now overlooks the Mississippi
+River. This gentleman was Hernando De Soto,
+and with his soldiers and horses he had marched from
+Tampa Bay, Florida, hunting for El Dorado, but finding
+instead, a lot of poor villages peopled by savages
+whom he killed in large numbers, having been brought
+up to that sort of work by Pizarro, under whom he
+served in the conquest of Peru. It seems to be well
+established, through records left by De Soto's secretary,
+and other men who were with him, and through landmarks
+mentioned by them, that De Soto and his command
+camped where Memphis stands, crossed the Mississippi
+at this point in boats which they built for the
+purpose, and marched on to an Indian village situated
+on the mound, a few miles distant, which now gives
+Mound City, Arkansas, its name. One hundred and
+thirty-two years later Marquette passed by on his way
+down the river, and nine years after him La Salle, but
+so far as is known, neither stopped at the site of Memphis,
+though they must have noticed as they passed,
+that the river is narrower here than at any point within
+hundreds of miles, and that the Chickasaw Bluffs afford
+about as good a place for a settlement as may be found
+along the reaches of the lower river, being high enough
+for safety, and flat on top. The first white man known
+to have visited the actual site of Memphis after De
+Soto, was De Bienville, the French Governor of Louisiana,
+who came in 1739. De Bienville found the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_520" id="Page_520">[Pg 520]</a></span>Chickasaw
+village where De Soto had found it two centuries
+earlier; but whereas De Soto managed to avoid battle
+with the inhabitants of this particular village, De Bienville
+came to attack them. He fought them near their
+village, was defeated, and retired to Mobile.</p>
+
+<p>Thus this part of the United States belonged first to
+Spain, and then to France; but in 1762 France ceded
+it back to Spain, and in the year following, Spain and
+France together ceded their territory in the eastern part
+of the continent to England. The next change came
+with the Revolution, when the United States came into
+being. The Spanish were, however, still in possession of
+the vast territory of Louisiana, to the west of the Mississippi.
+In 1795, Gayoso, Spanish Governor of Louisiana,
+came across and built a fort on the east side of the
+river, but was presently ousted by the United States.
+In 1820, as has been said, the settlement of Memphis had
+begun, one of the early proprietors having been Andrew
+Jackson. Some of the first settlers wished to name the
+place Jackson, in honor of the general, but Jackson himself,
+it is said, decided on the name Memphis, because
+the position of the town suggested that of ancient
+Memphis, on the Nile.</p>
+
+<p>In 1857 Memphis got her first railroad&mdash;the Memphis
+&amp; Charleston&mdash;connecting her with Charleston, South
+Carolina. About the time the road was completed there
+were severe financial panics which held the city back;
+also there was trouble, as in so many other river towns,
+with hordes of gamblers and desperadoes. Judge J.&nbsp;P.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_521" id="Page_521">[Pg 521]</a></span>
+Young, in his "History of Memphis," tells of an interesting
+episode of those times. There were two professional
+gamblers, father and son, of the name of Able.
+The father shot a man in a saloon brawl, and soon after,
+the son committed a similar crime of violence. A great
+mob started to take the younger Able out of jail and
+lynch him, but one firm citizen, addressing them from the
+balcony of a hotel, persuaded them to desist. Next day,
+however, there was a mass meeting to discuss the case
+of Able. At this meeting the hotheads prevailed, and
+Able was taken from the jail by a mob of three thousand
+men. When the noose was around his neck, and
+he and his mother and sister were pleading that his life
+be spared, the same man who had previously prevented
+mob action, stepped boldly up, cut the rope from Abel's
+neck, and assisted him to fly, standing between him and
+the mob, fighting the mob off, and finally getting Able
+back into the jail. When the mob stormed the jail,
+furious at having been circumvented by a single man,
+the same powerful figure appeared at the jail door with
+a pistol, and, incredible though it seems, actually held
+the mob at bay until it finally dispersed. This man was
+Nathan Bedford Forrest, later the brilliant Confederate
+cavalry leader. Forrest and his wife are buried in
+Memphis, in a square called Forrest Park, under a fine
+equestrian monument, by C.&nbsp;H. Niehaus.</p>
+
+<p>Before the war Forrest was a member of the slave-dealing
+firm of Forrest &amp; Maples, of Memphis. Subjoined
+is a photographic reproduction of an advertise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_522" id="Page_522">[Pg 522]</a></span>ment
+of this firm, which appeared in the Memphis City
+Directory for 1855-6.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/534.png" width="400" height="697" alt="CITY DIRECTORY. 251
+--------------------
+
+FORREST &amp; MAPLES,
+SLAVE DEALERS,
+
+87 Adams Street,
+Between Second and Third,
+MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE,
+
+Have constantly on hand the best selected assortment
+of
+
+FIELD HANDS, HOUSE SERVANTS &amp; MECHANICS,
+at their Negro Mart, to be found in the city.
+They are daily receiving from Virginia, Kentucky
+and Missouri, fresh supplies of likely
+Young Negroes.
+
+Negroes Sold on Commission,
+and the highest market price always paid for
+good stock. Their Jail is capable of containing
+Three Hundred, and for comfort, neatness
+and safety, is the best arranged of any in the
+Union. Persons wishing to purchase, are invited
+to examine their stock before purchasing
+elsewhere.
+
+They have on hand at present, Fifty likely
+young Negroes, comprising Field hands, Mechanics,
+House and Body Servants, &amp;c.
+
+" title="" /></div>
+
+<p>When the Civil War loomed close, sentiment in Memphis
+was divided, but at a call for troops for the Union,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_523" id="Page_523">[Pg 523]</a></span>
+the State of Tennessee balked, and soon after it seceded
+from the Union and joined the Confederacy. Many
+people believed, at that time, that if the entire South
+united, the North would not dare fight. When the war
+came, however, Memphis knew where she stood; it is
+said that no city of the same size (22,600) furnished so
+many men to the Confederate armies. In 1862, when
+the Union forces got control of the river to the north
+and the south of the city, it became evident that Memphis
+was likely to be taken. A fleet of Union gunboats
+came down and defeated the Confederate fleet in the
+river before the city, while the populace lined the banks
+and looked on. The city, being without military protection,
+then surrendered, and was occupied by troops
+under Sherman. Nor, with the exception of one period
+of a few hours' duration, did it ever again come under
+Confederate control. That was when Forrest made his
+famous raid in 1864, an event which exhibited not only
+the dash and hardihood of that intrepid leader, but also
+his strategy and his sardonic humor.</p>
+
+<p>General A.&nbsp;J. Smith, with 13,000 Union soldiers was
+marching on the great grain district of central Mississippi,
+and was forcing Forrest, who had but 3,500 men,
+to the southward. Unable to meet Smith's force on
+anything like equal terms, Forrest conceived the idea
+of making a "run around the end" and striking at Memphis,
+which was Smith's base. Taking 1,500 picked
+men and horses, he executed a flanking movement over
+night, and before Smith knew he was gone, came career<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_524" id="Page_524">[Pg 524]</a></span>ing
+into Memphis at dawn at the head of 500 galloping,
+yelling men&mdash;many of them Memphis boys. There
+were some 7,000 Union troops in and about Memphis at
+this time, but they were surprised out of their slumbers,
+and made no effective resistance. The only part of Forrest's
+plan which miscarried was his scheme to capture
+three leading Union officers, who were then stationed
+in Memphis: Generals C.&nbsp;C. Washburn, S.&nbsp;A. Hurlbut
+and R.&nbsp;P. Buckland. General Hurlbut's escape occurred
+by reason of the fact that instead of having
+passed the night at the old Gayoso Hotel, where he made
+his headquarters, he happened to be visiting a brother
+officer, elsewhere. General Washburn was warned by
+a courier and made his escape in his nightclothes and
+bare feet from the residence he occupied as headquarters,
+running down alleys to the river, and thence along
+under the bluff to the Union fortifications. Forrest's
+men found the general's papers, uniform, hat, boots
+and sword in his bedroom, and also found there Mrs.
+Washburn. The only things they failed to find were
+the general's nightshirt and the general himself, who
+was inside it. General Buckland also avoided capture
+by the narrowest margin. The soldiers first went to the
+wrong house to look for him. That gave him time to
+escape.</p>
+
+<p>It is recorded that, later in the day, under a flag of
+truce, Forrest sent General Washburn his sword and
+clothing with a humorous message, informing him, at
+the same time, that he had 600 Federal prisoners with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_525" id="Page_525">[Pg 525]</a></span>out
+shoes or clothing, and that he would like supplies
+for them. The supplies, we are told, were promptly
+forthcoming.</p>
+
+<p>Forrest waited until he was sure that news of the
+raid had been telegraphed to General Smith in the field.
+Then he cut the wires. Smith immediately came back
+toward Memphis with his army, which was what Forrest
+desired him to do. The Confederates then retired
+from the immediate vicinity of the city.</p>
+
+<p>Judge Young, in his history, reports that when General
+Hurlbut heard of the raid he exclaimed, "There it
+goes again! They superseded me with Washburn because
+I could not keep Forrest out of West Tennessee,
+and Washburn cannot keep him out of his own bedroom!"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>After the War there was corruption and carpet-bag
+rule in Memphis, and Forrest was again to the fore,
+becoming "Grand Wizard" of the famous Ku Klux
+Klan, the mysterious secret organization designed to intimidate
+Scalawags, Carpet-baggers and negroes, whose
+arrogance had become intolerable. General George W.
+Gordon prepared the oath and ritual for the Klan, which
+was founded in the town of Pulaski, Giles County, Tennessee.
+General Forrest took the oath in 1866, in Room
+10 of the old Maxwell House, at Nashville.</p>
+
+<p>It is my belief that the Ku Klux Klan has been a good
+deal maligned. Many of its members were men of high
+type. I have been told, for instance, that one southern<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_526" id="Page_526">[Pg 526]</a></span>
+gentleman who has since been in the cabinet of a President
+of the United States, was active in the Ku Klux.
+I withhold his name because the purposes of the Ku
+Klux Klan, and the urgent need which called it into being,
+are not yet fully understood in the North, and for
+the further reason that depredations committed by other
+bodies were frequently charged to the Ku Klux, giving
+it a bad name. So far as I can discover the Ku Klux
+endeavored to avoid violence where it could be avoided.
+Its aim seems to have been to frighten negroes and bad
+whites into behaving themselves or going away; though
+sometimes, of course, bad characters had to be killed.
+It must be remembered that the ballot was denied
+former Confederate soldiers for quite a period after the
+War, that they were not allowed to possess firearms,
+and that, at the same time, negro troops were quartered
+in the South. In many parts of the South the government
+and the courts were in the hands of third-rate
+Northerners (carpet-baggers) who had come down to
+dominate the defeated section, and who used the Scalawags
+(disloyal southern whites) and negroes for their
+own purposes. Obviously this was outrageous, and
+equally obviously, a proud people, even though defeated,
+could not endure it. The service performed by the Ku
+Klux Klan seems to have been comparable with that
+rendered by the Vigilantes of early western days.
+Something had to be done and the Klan did it.</p>
+
+<p>In 1869 General Forrest ordered the Klan to disband,
+which it did; but owing to the fact that it was a secret<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_527" id="Page_527">[Pg 527]</a></span>
+organization, and that disguises had been used, it was an
+easy matter for mobs, not actually associated with the
+Ku Klux, to assume its costume and commit outrages in
+its name.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In writing of Raleigh I referred to the post-bellum
+activities of the Confederate cruiser <i>Shenandoah</i>. Captain
+Dabney M. Scales, a distinguished citizen of Memphis,
+was on the <i>Shenandoah</i>. Born in Orange County,
+Virginia, in 1842, Captain Scales was appointed to the
+Naval Academy by L.&nbsp;Q.&nbsp;C. Lamar. He was a classmate
+of Captain Clark, later of the <i>Oregon</i>. When the
+war broke out, young Scales was in his second year at
+the Academy, but like most of the other southern cadets
+he resigned and offered his services to the South. When
+commissioned he was the youngest naval officer in the
+Confederate service. Eight months after the War was
+over, the <i>Shenandoah</i> was still cruising in the South
+Seas, looking for Federal merchantmen. In January
+1866, somewhere south of Australia, she overhauled the
+British bark <i>Baracouta</i>, taking her for a Yankee man-o'-war
+flying the British flag as a ruse. Young Scales
+was sent in command of a boarding party, and was informed
+by the skipper of the <i>Baracouta</i> that the Civil
+War had terminated months and months ago. The
+<i>Shenandoah</i> then made for Liverpool. In the meantime
+a Federal court had ruled that her officers were
+guilty of piracy&mdash;a hanging offense. Naturally, they
+did not dare return to the United States. Young Scales<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_528" id="Page_528">[Pg 528]</a></span>
+went to Mexico and remained there two years before
+coming home. When the Spanish War came, Captain
+Scales volunteered and was made navigating officer of a
+naval vessel. At the time of our visit he was a practising
+lawyer in Memphis, and was in command of Company
+A of the Uniform Confederate Veterans, a body
+of old heroes who go out every now and then and win
+the first prize for the best drilled organization operating
+Hardee's tactics.</p>
+
+<p>Another distinguished citizen of Memphis who has
+lively recollections of the Civil War, is the Right Reverend
+Thomas F. Gailor, Episcopal Bishop of Tennessee.
+Bishop Gailor, who succeeded the famous Bishop Quintard,
+is my ideal of everything an Episcopal bishop&mdash;or
+I might even say a Church of England bishop&mdash;ought
+to be. The Episcopal Church seems to me to have about
+it more "style" than most other churches, and an Episcopal
+bishop ought not to look the ascetic. He ought to
+be well filled out, well dressed, well fed. He ought to
+have a distinguished appearance, a ruddy complexion,
+a good voice, and a lot of what we call "humanness"&mdash;including
+humor. All these qualities Bishop Gailor has.</p>
+
+<p>In the bishop's study, in Memphis, hangs the sword
+of his father, Major Frank M. Gailor, who commanded
+the 33rd Mississippi Regiment. Major Gailor
+was killed while giving a drink of water to a wounded
+brother officer, and that officer, though dying, directed
+a soldier to take the Major's sword and see that it
+reached Mrs. Gailor, in Memphis, within the Union<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_529" id="Page_529">[Pg 529]</a></span>
+lines. A young woman, a Confederate spy, took the
+sword, and wearing it next her body, brought it through
+to Mrs. Gailor. Somehow or other it became known
+that the widow had her husband's sword, and as the possession
+of arms was prohibited to citizens, a corporal
+and guard were sent to the house to search for it. They
+found it between the mattresses of Mrs. Gailor's bed,
+and confiscated it. Mrs. Gailor then went with another
+lady to see General Washburn. Her friend started a
+long harangue upon the injustice which had been done,
+but Mrs. Gailor, seeing that the General was becoming
+impatient, broke in saying: "General, soldiers came to
+my house and took away my dead husband's sword. I
+can't use it, nor can my little son. I want it back. You
+would want your boy to have your sword, wouldn't
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I would!" cried Washburn. "Thank
+God for a woman who can say what she has to say, and
+be done with it!"</p>
+
+<p>The sword was returned.</p>
+
+<p>In the Spring of 1863, when Bishop Gailor was a
+child of about seven years, he accompanied his mother
+on a journey by wagon from Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi.
+The only other member of the party was a
+lady who had driven in the same wagon from Jackson
+to Kentucky, to get the body of her brother, a Confederate
+soldier who had been killed there. The coffin containing
+the remains was carried in the wagon. When
+it was known in Memphis that Mrs. Gailor was going<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_530" id="Page_530">[Pg 530]</a></span>
+through the lines, a great many people came to her with
+letters which they wished to send to friends. Mrs.
+Gailor sewed many of the letters into the clothing of the
+little boy. ("I remember it well," said the bishop. "I
+felt like a mummy.") Also one of Forrest's spies came
+with important papers, asking if she would undertake
+to deliver them. Only by very clever manipulation did
+Mrs. Gailor get the papers through, for everything was
+carefully searched. After they had passed out of the
+northern lines they met one of Forrest's pickets. Mrs.
+Gailor told him that she had papers for the general, and
+before long Forrest rode up with his staff and received
+them. Then the two women and the little boy, with
+their tragic burden in the wagon, drove along on their
+two-hundred mile journey. And later, when Jackson
+was bombarded, they were there.</p>
+
+<p>Before the war Major Gailor had been editor of the
+Memphis "Avalanche," a paper which was suppressed
+when the Union troops took the town. After the War
+the "Avalanche" was started up again, and had a stormy
+time of it, because it criticized a Carpet-bag judge who
+had come to Memphis. In 1889 the "Avalanche" was
+consolidated with the "Appeal," another famous ante-bellum
+journal, surviving to-day in the "Commercial-Appeal,"
+a strong newspaper, edited by one of the ablest
+journalists in the South, Mr. C.&nbsp;P.&nbsp;J. Mooney.</p>
+
+<p>When Memphis was captured the "Appeal" would
+have been suppressed, as the "Avalanche" was, had it
+been there. But when it became evident that Memphis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_531" id="Page_531">[Pg 531]</a></span>
+would fall, Mr. S.&nbsp;C. Toof (later a well-known book
+publisher) who was then connected with the "Appeal,"
+packed up the press and other equipment and shipped
+them to Grenada, Mississippi, where Mr. B.&nbsp;F. Dill,
+editor of the paper, continued to bring it out. When
+Grenada was threatened, a few months later, Mr. Dill
+moved with his newspaper equipment to Birmingham,
+where for a second time he resumed publication. His
+next move was to Atlanta. There, when he could not
+get news-print, he used wallpaper, or any sort of paper
+he could lay his hands on. When Sherman took Atlanta
+the "Appeal" moved again, this time to Columbus,
+Georgia, where, at last, it was captured, and its press
+destroyed. Wherever it went it remained the "Memphis
+Daily Appeal," with correspondents in all southern
+armies. No wonder a paper with such vitality as that,
+has survived and become great!</p>
+
+<p>Poor Memphis! After the War she had Reconstruction
+to contend with; after Reconstruction, financial difficulties;
+after that, pestilence. In 1873, when the population
+of the city was about 40,000, and there had been
+a long period of hard times, yellow fever broke out.
+The condition of the city was exceedingly unsanitary,
+and after the pestilence had passed, was allowed to remain
+so, though at that time the origin of yellow fever
+was, of course, not known, and it was assumed that the
+disease resulted from lack of proper sanitation.</p>
+
+<p>In 1878 there was another yellow fever epidemic.
+The first case developed August 2, but the news was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_532" id="Page_532">[Pg 532]</a></span>
+suppressed until the middle of the month, by which time
+a number of cases had come down. The day after the
+news became known 22 new cases were reported. Terror
+spread through the town. Hordes of people tried
+to flee at once. Families left their houses with the doors
+wide open and silver standing on the sideboards. People
+flocked to the trains; when they could not get seats they
+stood in the aisles or clambered onto the roofs of the
+cars; if they could not get in at car doors they climbed
+in through the windows, and sometimes, when the father
+of a family was refused admittance to a crowded
+car, he would force a way in for his wife and children
+at the pistol's point.</p>
+
+<p>In the first week of the panic there were 1,500 cases,
+with an average of ten deaths daily; in the next week,
+3,000 cases with fifty deaths daily, and so on into September
+during which month there was an average of
+8,000 to 10,000 cases with about two hundred deaths a
+day.</p>
+
+<p>Not every one fled, however. Leading citizens remained,
+forming a relief committee, and some brave
+helpers came from outside. Thus the sick and needy
+were attended to, though of course many of the volunteers
+contracted the disease and perished.</p>
+
+<p>Added to the epidemic there was, as so often happens
+in such circumstances, an outbreak of thievery and other
+crime, which had to be put down. It is related that in
+the height of the epidemic hardly any one was seen upon
+the streets save an occasional nurse, doctor, or other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_533" id="Page_533">[Pg 533]</a></span>
+member of the relief committee; household pets starved
+to death or fled the city; among the newspapers the
+staffs were so reduced that only two or three men were
+left in each office, and in the case of the "Appeal," but
+one, that one Colonel J.&nbsp;M. Keating, the proprietor, who
+stuck to Memphis and for a time wrote, set up and
+printed the paper without assistance, feeling that refugees
+must have news from the city.</p>
+
+<p>The next year the epidemic came again, but in less
+violent form, there being, this time, but 2,000 cases.
+However the effect was cumulative. Memphis dropped
+from a city of nearly 50,000 to one of 20,000 and the
+reputation of the place was such that a bill was proposed
+in Congress to purchase the ground on which the
+city stood and utterly destroy it as unfit for human
+habitation.</p>
+
+<p>Stricken as she was, however, Memphis "came back."
+A great campaign for sanitation was begun; city sewage-disposal
+was installed, and after a few years, artesian
+wells were bored for a new water supply. And though,
+as we now know, yellow fever does not come from the
+same sources as typhoid, nevertheless the new sanitary
+measures did greatly reduce the city's death rate.</p>
+
+<p>Memphis, like all other cities, has her troubles now
+and then, but since the great pestilence there has never
+been a real disaster. The city has grown and thriven.
+Indeed, she had become so used to growing fast that
+when, in 1910, the Federal census gave her but 131,000,
+she indignantly demanded a recount, for she had been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_534" id="Page_534">[Pg 534]</a></span>
+talking to herself, and had convinced herself that she had
+a great many more than that number of inhabitants.
+However, the census was taken again, and the first count
+proved accurate.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_535" id="Page_535">[Pg 535]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_L" id="CHAPTER_L"></a>CHAPTER L<br />
+<br />
+MODERN MEMPHIS</h2>
+
+
+<p>To be charmed by the social side of a city, yet to
+find little to admire in its physical aspect, is like
+knowing a brilliant and beautiful woman whose
+housekeeping is not of the neatest. If one were compelled
+to discuss such a woman, and wished to do so sympathetically
+but with truth, one might avoid brutal comment
+on the condition of her rooms by likening them to
+other rooms elsewhere: rooms which one knew to be
+untidy, but which the innocent listener might not understand
+to be so. By this device one may even appear to
+pay a compliment, while, in reality, indicating the grim
+truth. In such a case, I, for example, might say that
+this supposititious lady's rooms reminded me of those
+I occupied on the second floor of the famous restaurant
+called Antoine's, in New Orleans; whereupon the
+reader, knowing the high reputation of Antoine's cuisine,
+and never having seen the apartments to which I
+refer, might assume an implication very favorable.</p>
+
+<p>Let me say, then, that Memphis reminds me of St.
+Louis. Like St. Louis, Memphis has charming society.
+Like St. Louis she has pretty girls. Like St. Louis she
+is hospitable. And without particularizing too much, I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_536" id="Page_536">[Pg 536]</a></span>
+may say that her streets remind me of St. Louis streets,
+that many of her houses remind me of St. Louis houses,
+and that her levee, with its cobbled surface sloping
+down to the yellow, muddy Mississippi, the bridges in
+the distance, the strange looking river steamers loading
+and unloading below, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, is
+much like the St. Louis levee. So, if the reader happens
+to be unfamiliar with the physical appearance of
+St. Louis, he may, at all events, perceive that I have
+likened Memphis to a much larger city&mdash;thus, (it seems
+fair to suppose) paying Memphis a handsome tribute.</p>
+
+<p>Memphis has a definite self-given advantage over St.
+Louis in possessing a pretty little park at the heart of
+the city, overlooking the river; also she has the advantage
+of lying to the east of the great stream, instead
+of to the west, so that, in late afternoon, when the
+sun splashes down into the mysterious deserted reaches
+of the Arkansas flats, across the way, sending splatterings
+of furious color across the sky, one may seat oneself
+on a bench in the park and witness a stupendous
+natural masterpiece. A sunset over the sea can be no
+more wonderful than a sunset over this terrible, beautiful,
+inspiring, enigmatic domineering flood. Or one
+may see the sunset from the readingroom of the Cossitt
+Library, with its fine bay window commanding the
+river almost as though it were the window of a pilot-house.</p>
+
+<p>The Cossitt Library is only one of several free libraries
+in the city. There is, for example, a free library<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_537" id="Page_537">[Pg 537]</a></span>
+in connection with the Goodwyn Institute, an establishment
+having an endowment of half a million dollars,
+left to Memphis by the late William A. Goodwyn.
+The Goodwyn Institute provides courses of free lectures,
+by well-known persons, on a great variety of
+subjects. The library is designed to add to the educational
+work. Books are not, however, loaned, as they
+are from the Cossitt Library, an institution to which I
+found myself returning more than once; now for a
+book, now to look at the interesting collection of mound-builder
+relics contained in an upper room, now merely
+because it is a place of such reposeful hospitality that
+I liked to make excuses to go back.</p>
+
+<p>The library, a romanesque building of Michigan red
+sandstone, is by a southern architect, but is in the style
+of Richardson, and is one of the few buildings in that
+style which I have ever liked. It was given to Memphis
+as a memorial to Frederick H. Cossitt, by his three
+daughters, Mrs. A.&nbsp;D. Juilliard, Mrs. Thomas Stokes,
+and Mrs. George E. Dodge, all of New York. Mr.
+Cossitt was born in Granby, Connecticut, but as a young
+man moved South and in 1842 adopted Memphis as
+his home, residing there until 1861. At the outbreak
+of the Civil War he made an amicable division of his
+business with his partner, and removed to New York,
+where he resided until the time of his death. Finding
+among his papers a memorandum indicating that he had
+intended to endow a library in Memphis, his daughters
+carried out his wish.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_538" id="Page_538">[Pg 538]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Having already spoken of a number of Memphis'
+interesting citizens, I find myself left with an ill-assorted
+trio of names yet to be mentioned, because, different
+as they are, each of the three supplies a definite
+part of the character of the city. First, then, Memphis
+has the honor of possessing what not many of our
+cities possess: a man who stands high among the world's
+artist-bookbinders. This gentleman is Mr. Otto Zahn,
+executive head of the publishing house of S.&nbsp;C. Toof &amp;
+Co. Mr. Zahn himself has done some famous bindings,
+and books bound by him are to be found in some
+of the finest private libraries in the land. Until a few
+years ago he conducted an art-bindery in connection with
+the Toof company's business, but it was unprofitable
+and finally had to be given up.</p>
+
+<p>Second, to descend to a more popular form of art,
+but one from which the revenue is far more certain,
+Memphis has, in W.&nbsp;C. Handy, a negro ragtime composer
+whose dance tunes are widely known. Among
+his compositions may be mentioned the "Memphis
+Blues," the "St. Louis Blues," "Mr. Crump," and "Joe
+Turner." "Mr. Crump" is named in honor of a former
+mayor of Memphis who was ousted for refusing to
+enforce the prohibition law; "Joe Turner" is the name
+of a negro pianist who plays for Memphis to dance&mdash;as
+Handy also does. Most of Handy's tunes are negro
+"rags" in fox-trot time, and they are so effective that
+Memphis dances them generally in preference to the one
+step.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_539" id="Page_539">[Pg 539]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>My third celebrity is of a more astounding type.
+While in Memphis I called aboard the river steamer
+<i>Grand</i>, and had a talk with Mrs. Nettie Johnson, who is
+captain of that craft. Some one told me that Mrs.
+Johnson was the only woman steamboat captain in the
+world, but she informed me that at Helena, Arkansas,
+there lives another Mrs. Johnson&mdash;no relative of hers&mdash;who
+follows the same calling.</p>
+
+<p>The steamer <i>Grand</i> is almost entirely a Johnson family
+affair. Mrs. Johnson is captain; her husband, I.&nbsp;S.
+Johnson is pilot (though Mrs. Johnson has, in addition
+to her master's license, a pilot's license, and often takes
+the wheel); her elder son, Emery, is clerk; Emery's wife
+is assistant clerk, while Arthur, the captain's younger
+son, is engineer. Russell Johnson, Mrs. Johnson's
+grandson, is the only member of the family I saw aboard
+the boat who does not take part in running it. Russell
+was five years old when I met him, but that was nearly a
+year ago, and by now he is probably chief steward, boatswain,
+or ship's carpenter.</p>
+
+<p>The regular route of the <i>Grand</i> is from Memphis to
+Mhoon's Landing, on the Arkansas River, a round trip
+of 120 miles, with thirty landings.</p>
+
+<p>I asked Mrs. Johnson if she had ever been shipwrecked.
+Indeed she had! Her former ship, the <i>Nettie Johnson</i>,
+struck thin ice one night in the Arkansas
+River and went down.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you do?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I reached after an iron ring," she replied, "and clumb<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_540" id="Page_540">[Pg 540]</a></span>
+on up into the rigging. She went down about four-thirty
+<span class="smcap">a.&nbsp;m.</span> and we stayed on her till daylight; then
+we all swum ashore. I tell you it was cold! There
+was icicles on my dress; my son Emery put his arms
+around me to keep me warm, and his clothes froze onto
+mine."</p>
+
+<p>"How long a swim was it to shore?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," put in her husband, "it didn't amount to nothing.
+She was only swimming about two minutes."</p>
+
+<p>This statement, however, was repudiated by the captain.
+"Two minutes, my foot!" she flung back at her
+spouse. "It was more than that, all right!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Johnson has done flood rescue work for the Government,
+with the <i>Grand</i>. In the spring previous to
+our visit she rescued sixty families from one plantation,
+besides towing barge-loads of provisions to various
+points on the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers.</p>
+
+<p>Captaining and piloting a river boat are clearly good
+for the health. Mrs. Johnson looks too young to be a
+grandmother. Her skin is clear, her cheeks are rosy,
+her brown eyes flash and twinkle, her voice, somewhat
+hoarse from shouting commands, is deep and strong, and
+her laugh is like the hearty laugh of a big man.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you a suffragist?" I asked her.</p>
+
+<p>"Not on your life!" was her reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, what do you want to talk like that for?" objected
+her husband. "You know women ought to be
+allowed to vote."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think so," she returned firmly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_541" id="Page_541">[Pg 541]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At that her daughter-in-law, the assistant clerk of the
+<i>Grand</i>, took up the cudgels.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course they ought to vote!" she insisted. "You
+know <i>you</i> can do just as good as a man can do!"</p>
+
+<p>"No," asseverated Captain Nettie. "Women ought
+to stay home and tend to their families."</p>
+
+<p>"As you do?" I suggested, mischievously.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right!" she flung back. "I stayed home
+and raised my family until it was big enough to do its
+own navigating. Then I started in steamboating. I
+had to have <i>something</i> to do."</p>
+
+<p>But the daughter-in-law did not intend to let the
+woman suffrage issue drop.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to say," she demanded of Captain
+Nettie, "that you think women haven't got as much
+sense as men?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure I do!" the captain tossed back. "There never
+was a woman on earth that had as much sense as the
+men. Take it from me, that's so. I know what I'm
+talking about&mdash;and that's more than a half of these
+other women do!"</p>
+
+<p>Then, as it was about time for the <i>Grand</i> to cast off,
+Captain Nettie terminated the interview by blowing the
+whistle; whereupon my companion and I went ashore.</p>
+
+<p>One of the best boats on the river is the <i>Kate Adams</i>
+and one of the most delightful two-days' outings I can
+imagine would be to make the round trip with her from
+Memphis to Arkansas City. But if I were seeking rest
+I should not take the trip at the time when it is taken<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_542" id="Page_542">[Pg 542]</a></span>
+by a score or more of Memphis young men and women,
+who, with their chaperones, and with Handy to play
+their dance-music, make the <i>Kate Adams</i> an extremely
+lively craft on one round trip each year.</p>
+
+<p>Apropos of Arkansas, I am reminded that Memphis
+is not only the metropolis of Tennessee, but is the big
+city of Arkansas and Mississippi, as well. The Peabody
+Hotel in Memphis, a somewhat old-fashioned hostelry,
+is a sort of Arkansas political headquarters, and
+is sometimes humorously referred to as "Peabody township,
+Arkansas." It is also used to a considerable extent
+by Mississippi politicians, as well as by the local
+breed. The Peabody grill has a considerable reputation
+for good cookery, and the Peabody bar, though it
+still looks like a bar, serves only soft drinks, which are
+dispensed by female "bartenders." The Gayoso hotel,
+named for the Spanish governor who intruded upon
+Memphis territory for a time, stands where stood the
+old Gayoso, which figured in Forrest's raid. The Gayoso
+made me think a little of the old Victoria, in New
+York, torn down some years ago. The newest hotel
+in town, at the time of our visit, was the Chicsa, an establishment
+having a large and rather flamboyant office,
+and considerably used, we were told, as a place for conventions.
+If I were to go again to Memphis I should
+have a room at the Gayoso and go to the Peabody for
+meals.</p>
+
+<p>The axis of the earth, which Oliver Wendell Holmes
+declared, "sticks out visibly through the center of each<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_543" id="Page_543">[Pg 543]</a></span>
+and every town or city," sticks out in Memphis at Court
+Square, which the good red Baedeker dismisses briefly
+with the remark that it "contains a bust of General Andrew
+Jackson and innumerable squirrels." This is not
+meant to indicate that the squirrels are a part of the
+bust of Jackson. The two are separate and distinct.
+So are the pigeons which alight on friendly hands and
+shoulders as do other confident pigeons on Boston Common,
+and in the Piazza San Marco, in Venice.</p>
+
+<p>I am always disposed to like the people of a city in
+which pigeons and squirrels are tame. Every day, at
+noon, an old policeman, a former Confederate soldier I
+believe he is, comes into the square with a basket of corn.
+When he arrives all the pigeons see him and rush toward
+him in a great flapping cloud, brushing past your
+face if you happen to be walking across the square at
+the time. Nor is he the only one to feed them. Numbers
+of citizens go at midday to the square, where they
+buy popcorn and peanuts for the squirrels and pigeons&mdash;which,
+by the way, are all members of old Memphis
+families, being descendants of other squirrels and pigeons
+which lived in this same place before the Civil War.
+One might suppose that the pigeons, being able to fly up
+to the seventeenth floor windowsills of the Merchants'
+Exchange Building, where men of the grain and hay
+bureau of the exchange are in the habit of leaving corn
+for them, would prosper more than the squirrels, but
+that is not the case for&mdash;and I regret to have to report
+such immorality&mdash;the squirrels are in the habit of add<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_544" id="Page_544">[Pg 544]</a></span>ing
+to the stores of peanuts which are thrown to them,
+by thievery. Like rascally urchins they will watch the
+peanut venders, and when their backs are turned, will
+make swift dashes at the peanut stands, seizing nuts
+and scampering away again. Sometimes the venders
+detect them, and give chase for a few steps, but that is
+dangerous, for the minute the vender goes after one
+squirrel, others rush up and steal more. It is saddening
+to find that even squirrels are corrupted by metropolitan
+life!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 434px;">
+<a name="p526jpg" id="p526jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p526.jpg" width="434" height="600" alt="Citizens go at midday to the square where they buy popcorn for the squirrels
+and pigeons&mdash;Memphis" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Citizens go at midday to the square where they buy popcorn for the squirrels
+and pigeons&mdash;Memphis</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In reviewing my visit to Memphis I find myself, for
+once, kindly disposed toward a Chamber of Commerce
+and Business Men's Club. I like the Business Men's
+Club because, besides issuing pamphlets shrieking the
+glory of the city, it has found time to do things much
+more worth while&mdash;notably to bring to Memphis some of
+the great American orchestras.</p>
+
+<p>A pamphlet issued by these organizations tells me that
+Memphis is the largest cotton market in the country, the
+largest hardwood producing market, the third largest
+grocery and jobbing market.</p>
+
+<p>Cotton is, indeed, much in evidence in the city. The
+streets in some sections are full of strange little two-wheel
+drays, upon which three bales are carried, and
+which display, in combination, those three southern
+things having such perfect artistic affinity: the negro,
+the mule, and the cotton bale. The vast modern cotton
+warehouses on the outskirts of the city cover many acres
+of ground, and with their gravity system of distribution<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_545" id="Page_545">[Pg 545]</a></span>
+for cotton bales, and their hydraulic compresses in which
+the bales are squeezed to minimum size, to the accompaniment
+of negro chants, are exceedingly interesting.</p>
+
+<p>The same pamphlet speaks also of the unusually large
+proportion of the city's area which is given over
+to parks and playgrounds, and it seems worth adding
+that though Memphis follows the general southern custom
+of barring negroes&mdash;excepting, of course, nursemaids
+in charge of children&mdash;from her parks, she has
+been so just as to provide a park for negroes only. In
+this she stands ahead of most other southern cities.</p>
+
+<p>Memphis has the only bridge crossing the Mississippi
+below the mouth of the Ohio. At the time of our visit a
+new bridge was being built very near the old one, and an
+interesting experience of our trip was our visit to this
+bridge, under the guidance of Mr. M.&nbsp;B. Case, a young
+engineer in charge.</p>
+
+<p>On a great undertaking, such as this one, where the
+total cost mounts into millions, the first work done is not
+on the proposed bridge itself, but on the plant and equipment
+to be used in construction&mdash;derricks, barges, concrete-mixers,
+air compressors for the caissons, small
+engines, dump-cars and all manner of like things. This
+preparatory work consumes some months. Caissons are
+then sunk far down beneath the river bed. Caisson
+work is dangerous, and the insurance rate on "sand
+hogs"&mdash;the men who work in the caissons&mdash;is very high.
+The scale of wages, and of time, varies in proportion to
+the risk, which is according to the depth at which work is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_546" id="Page_546">[Pg 546]</a></span>
+being done. On this enterprise, for example, men working
+from mean level to a depth of 50 feet received $3 for
+an eight-hour day. From 50 to 70 feet they worked but
+six hours and received $3.75. From 90 to 105 feet they
+worked in three shifts of one hour each, and received
+$4.25. And while they were placing concrete to seal the
+working chamber there was an additional allowance of
+fifty cents a day.</p>
+
+<p>The chief danger of caisson work is the "bends," or
+"caisson disease." In the caisson a man works under
+high air pressure. When he comes out, the pressure on
+the fluids of the body is reduced, and this sometimes
+causes the formation of a gas bubble in the vascular
+system. If this bubble reaches a nerve-center it causes
+severe pain, similar to neuralgia; if it gets to the brain
+it causes paralysis. Day after day men will go into the
+caisson and come out without trouble, but sooner or later
+from 2 to 8 per cent. of caisson workers are affected.
+Of 320 "sand-hogs" who labored in the caissons of this
+bridge, three died of paralysis, and of course a number
+of others had slight attacks of the "bends," in one form
+or another.</p>
+
+<p>The bridge, when we visited it, was more than half
+completed. On the Memphis side the approaches were
+almost ready, and the steel framework of the bridge
+reached from the shore across the front pier, and was
+being built out far beyond the pier, on the cantilever
+principle, hanging in the air above the middle of the
+stream. By walking out on the old bridge we could sur<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_547" id="Page_547">[Pg 547]</a></span>vey
+the extreme end of the new one, which was being
+extended farther and farther, daily, by the addition of
+new steel sections. There were then about 100 journeymen
+bridgemen on the work&mdash;these being workmen of
+the class that erects steel skyscraper frames&mdash;with some
+fifty apprentices and carpenters, and about twenty common
+laborers. Bridgemen are among the highest paid
+of all workmen. In New York, at that time, their wage
+was $6 for eight hours' work. Here it was $4.50.
+Very few of the men had families with them in Memphis.
+They are the soldiers of fortune among wage-earners,
+a wild, reckless, fine looking lot of fellows, with
+good complexions like those of men in training, and eyes
+like the eyes of aviators. No class of men in the world,
+I suppose, have steadier nerves, think quicker, or react
+more rapidly from stimulus to action, whether through
+sight or sound. They have to be like that. For where
+other workmen pay for a mistake by loss of a job, these
+men pay with life. Yet they will tell you that their
+work is not dangerous. It is "just as safe as any other
+kind of job"&mdash;that, although four of their number had
+already been lost from this bridge alone. One went off
+the end of the structure with a derrick, the boom of
+which he lowered before the anchor-bolts had been
+placed. Two others fell. A fourth was struck by a
+falling timber.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 444px;">
+<a name="p536jpg" id="p536jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p536.jpg" width="444" height="600" alt="Hanging in the air above the middle of the stream" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Hanging in the air above the middle of the stream</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Once, while we were watching the men scrambling
+about upon the steel members of the uncompleted cantilever
+arm, one of them thought something was about to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_548" id="Page_548">[Pg 548]</a></span>
+fall, and ran swiftly in, over a steel beam, toward the
+body of the structure; whereafter, as nothing did fall,
+he was unmercifully twitted by his fellow workers for
+having shown timidity.</p>
+
+<p>Many of the men working on this bridge had worked
+on the older structure paralleling it. This was true not
+only of the laboring men, but of the engineers. Ralph
+Modjeski, the consulting engineer at the head of the
+work (he is, by the way, a son of Madame Modjeska),
+was chief draughtsman when the earlier structure was
+designed; W.&nbsp;E. Angier, assistant chief engineer in the
+present work, was a field engineer on the first bridge, and
+it is interesting to know that, in constructing the approach
+to the old bridge he unearthed a Spanish halbert
+which, it is thought, may date from the time of De Soto.
+These bridge engineers and bridgebuilders move in a
+large orbit. Their last job may have been in Mexico, in
+the far West, or in India; their next may be in France.
+Many of the men here, worked on the Blackwell's Island
+bridge, on the Quebec bridge (which fell), on the
+Thebes bridge over the Mississippi, twenty miles above
+Cairo, on the Vancouver and Portland bridges over the
+Columbia and Willamette rivers, and on the great Oregon
+Trunk Railway bridges.</p>
+
+<p>After standing for a time on the old bridge watching
+work on the new, and shuddering, often enough, at the
+squirrel-like way in which the men scampered about up
+there, so far above the water, we walked in and moved
+out again upon the partially completed floor of the new<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_549" id="Page_549">[Pg 549]</a></span>
+bridge. Here it was necessary to walk on railroad ties,
+with gaps, six or eight inches wide, between them.
+Even had one tried, one could hardly have managed to
+squeeze one's body through these chinks; to fall through
+was impossible; nevertheless it gave me an uncomfortable
+feeling in the region of the stomach to walk out
+there, seeing the river all the time between the interstices.
+When we had progressed for some distance we
+came to a gap where, for perhaps a yard, there were no
+ties&mdash;just open space, with the muddy water shining
+cold and cruel below. The opening was only about as
+wide as the hall of a small New York flat, and heaven
+knows that to step across such a hall is easy enough.
+But this was not so easy. When we came to the gap I
+stopped. Mr. Case, the young engineer, who loved all
+bridges with a sort of holy passion, and loved this bridge
+in particular, was talking as we went along. I liked to
+hear him talk. He had been telling us how a thing that
+is to <i>be</i> strong ought to <i>look</i> strong, too, and from that
+had got somehow to the topic of expansion and contraction
+in bridges, with variations of temperature. "It
+isn't only the steel bridges that do it," he said. "Stone
+arch bridges do it, too. The crown of the arch rises and
+falls. The Greeks and Romans and Egyptians knew
+that expansion and contraction occurred. They&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>While talking he had gone across the gap, stepping
+lightly upon a stringpiece probably a foot wide, and proceeding
+over the ties. Now, however, he ceased speaking
+and looked back, for I was no longer beside him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_550" id="Page_550">[Pg 550]</a></span>
+At the gap I had stopped. I intended to step across, but
+I did not propose to do so without giving the matter the
+attention it seemed to me to deserve.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Case did not laugh at me. He came back and
+stood on the string-piece where it crossed the opening,
+telling me to put my hand on his shoulder. But I did
+not want to do that. I wanted to cross alone&mdash;when I
+got ready. It took me perhaps two minutes to get ready.
+Then I stepped over. It was, of course, absurdly easy.
+I had known it would be. But as we walked along I
+kept thinking to myself: "I shall have to cross that
+beastly place again when we come back," and I marveled
+the more at the amazing steadiness of eye and mind and
+nerve that enables some men to go continually prancing
+about over emptiness infinitely more engulfing than that
+which had troubled and was troubling me.</p>
+
+<p>Returning I stepped across without physical hesitation.
+But after I had crossed I continued to hate that
+gap. I hated it as I drove back to the hotel, that afternoon,
+as I ate dinner that night, as I went to bed, and in
+my dreams I continued to cross it, and to see the river
+waiting for me, seeming to look up and leer and beckon.
+I woke up hating the gap in the bridge as much as ever;
+I hated it down into the State of Mississippi, and over
+into Georgia; and wherever I have gone since, I have
+continued to hate it. Of course there isn't any gap there
+now. It was covered long ago. Yet for me it still exists,
+like some obnoxious person who, though actually
+dead, lives on in the minds of those who knew him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_551" id="Page_551">[Pg 551]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_552" id="Page_552">[Pg 552]</a></span></p><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_553" id="Page_553">[Pg 553]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="FARTHEST_SOUTH" id="FARTHEST_SOUTH"></a>FARTHEST SOUTH</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LI" id="CHAPTER_LI"></a>CHAPTER LI<br />
+<br />
+BEAUTIFUL SAVANNAH</h2>
+
+
+<p>How often it occurs that the great work a man set
+out originally to accomplish, is lost sight of, by
+future generations, in contemplation of other
+achievements of that man, which he himself regarded
+as of secondary importance.</p>
+
+<p>In 1733, the year in which General Oglethorpe started
+his Georgia colony, there were more than a hundred offenses
+for which a person might be hanged in England;
+Oglethorpe's primary idea in founding the colony
+was to provide a means of freeing debtors from prison,
+and giving them a fresh start in life; yet it is as the man
+responsible for the laying out of the beautiful city of
+Savannah, that Oglethorpe is probably most widely remembered
+to-day.</p>
+
+<p>Oglethorpe was a first-rate soldier. He defeated a
+superior Spanish force from Florida, and successfully
+resisted attacks from the Indians. Also, he was a man
+whose ethical sense was in advance of his period. He
+did not permit slavery in Georgia, and it was not adopted
+there until he went back to England. In planning
+Savannah he was assisted by a Charleston engineer
+named Bull, for whom the chief street of Savannah is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_554" id="Page_554">[Pg 554]</a></span>
+named. The place is laid out very simply; it has rectangular
+blocks and wide roads, with small parks, or
+squares, at regular intervals. There are some two
+dozen of these small parks, aside from one or two larger
+parks, a parade ground, and numerous boulevards with
+double roadways and parked centers, and the abundance
+of semi-tropical foliage and of airy spaces, in Savannah,
+gives the city its most distinctive and charming quality&mdash;the
+quality which differentiates it from all other
+American cities. Originally these parks were used as
+market-places and rallying points in case of Indian attack;
+now they serve the equally utilitarian purposes of
+this age, having become charming public gardens and
+playgrounds. One of them&mdash;not the most important
+one&mdash;is named Oglethorpe Square; but the monument
+to Oglethorpe is placed elsewhere.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p556jpg" id="p556jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p556.jpg" width="600" height="436" alt="These small parks give Savannah a quality which differentiates it from all other American cities" title="" />
+<span class="caption">These small parks give Savannah a quality which differentiates it from all other American cities</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Madison Square, Savannah, is relatively about as
+important as Madison Square, New York, and though
+smaller than the latter, is much prettier. It contains
+a monument to Sergeant Jasper, the Revolutionary hero
+who, when the flag was shot down from Fort Moultrie,
+off Charleston, by the British, flung it to the breeze
+again, under fire. Jasper was later killed with the flag
+in his arms, in the French-American attempt to take
+Savannah from the British. Monterey Square has a
+statue of Count Pulaski, who also fell at the siege of
+Savannah. Another Revolutionary hero remembered
+with a monument is General Nathanael Greene who,
+though born in Rhode Island, moved after the war to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_555" id="Page_555">[Pg 555]</a></span>
+Georgia where, in recognition of his services, he was
+given an estate not far from Savannah. "Mad"
+Anthony Wayne, a Pennsylvanian by birth, also accepted
+an estate in Georgia and resided there after the
+Revolution.</p>
+
+<p>An interesting story attaches to Greene's settlement
+in Georgia. The estate given to him was that known
+as Mulberry Grove, above the city, on the Savannah
+River. The property had previously belonged to Lieutenant-governor
+John Graham, but was confiscated because
+Graham was a loyalist. Along with the property,
+Greene apparently took over the Graham vault in Colonial
+Cemetery&mdash;now a city park, and a very interesting
+one because of the old tombs and gravestones&mdash;and there
+he was himself buried. After a while people forgot
+where Greene's remains lay, and later, when it was
+decided to erect a monument to his memory in Johnson
+Square, they couldn't find any Greene to put under it.
+However, they went ahead and made the monument,
+and Lafayette laid the cornerstone, when he visited
+Savannah in March, 1825. Greene's remains were lost
+for 114 years. They did not come to light until 1902,
+when some one thought of opening the Graham vault.
+Thereupon they were removed and reinterred in their
+proper resting place beneath the monument which had so
+long awaited them. That monument, by the way, was
+not erected by Savannah people, or even by Southerners,
+but was paid for by the legislature of the general's native
+Rhode Island. When the remains were discovered,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_556" id="Page_556">[Pg 556]</a></span>
+Rhode Island asked for them, but Savannah, which had
+lost them, also wanted them. The matter was settled by
+a vote of Greene's known descendants, who decided almost
+unanimously to leave his remains in Savannah.</p>
+
+<p>The foundation of the general's former home at Mulberry
+Grove may still be seen. It was in this house that
+Eli Whitney invented the cotton-gin. Whitney was a
+tutor in the Greene family after the general's death,
+and it was at the suggestion of Mrs. Greene that he
+started to try and make "a machine to pick the seed out
+of cotton." It is said that Whitney's first machine
+would do, in five hours, work which, if done by hand,
+would take one man two years. This was, of course, an
+epoch-making invention and caused enormous commercial
+growth in the South, where cotton-gins are as common
+things as restaurants in the city of New York.
+Which reminds me of a story.</p>
+
+<p>A northern man was visiting Mr. W.&nbsp;D. Pender, at
+Tarboro, North Carolina. On the day of the guest's
+arrival Mr. Pender spoke to his cook, a negro woman of
+the old order, telling her to hurry up the dinner, because
+he wished to take his friend down to see the cotton-gin.
+"You know," he explained, "this gentleman has never
+seen a cotton-gin."</p>
+
+<p>The cook looked at him in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"Lor'! Mistuh Penduh," she exclaimed. "An' dat
+man <i>look</i> like he was edjacated!"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Another item in Savannah history is that John Wes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_557" id="Page_557">[Pg 557]</a></span>ley
+came over about the middle of the eighteenth century
+to convert the Indians to Christianity. It was
+not until after this attempt, when he returned to
+England, that he began the great religious movement
+which led to the founding of the Methodist Church.
+George Whitfield also preached in Savannah. Evidently
+Wesley did not get very far with the savages
+who, it may be imagined, were more responsive to the
+kind of "conversion" attempted in South Carolina, by a
+French dancing-master, who went out from Charleston
+in the early days and taught them the steps of the stately
+minuet.</p>
+
+<p>Another great event in Savannah history was the departure
+from that port, in 1819, of the <i>City of Savannah</i>,
+the first steamship to cross the Atlantic. If I may
+make a suggestion to the city, it is that the centennial
+of this event be celebrated, and that a memorial be
+erected. Inspiration for such a memorial might perhaps
+be found in the simple and charming monument,
+crowned by a galleon in bronze, which has been erected
+in San Francisco, in memory of Robert Louis Stevenson.
+A ship in bronze can be a glorious thing&mdash;which
+is more than can be said of a bronze statesman in modern
+pantaloons.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>More lately Savannah initiated another world-improvement:
+she was the first city to abolish horses entirely
+from her fire department, replacing them with
+automobile engines, hook-and-ladders, and hose-carts.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_558" id="Page_558">[Pg 558]</a></span>
+That is in line with what one would expect of Savannah,
+for she is not only a progressive city, but is a great
+automobile city, having several times been the scene of
+important international automobile road races, including
+the Grand Prize and the Vanderbilt Cup.</p>
+
+<p>Nor is there want of other history. The Savannah
+Theater, though gutted by fire and rebuilt, is the same
+theater that Joseph Jefferson owned and managed for
+a time, in the fifties; in the house on Lafayette Square,
+now occupied by Judge W.&nbsp;W. Lambdin, Robert E. Lee
+once stayed, and Thackeray is said to have written there
+a part of "The Virginians."</p>
+
+<p>A sad thing was happening in Savannah when we
+were there. The Habersham house, one of the loveliest
+old mansions of the city, was being torn down to make
+room for a municipal auditorium.</p>
+
+<p>The first Habersham in America was a Royal Governor
+of Georgia. He had three sons one of whom,
+Joseph, had, by the outbreak of the Revolution, become a
+good enough American to join a band of young patriots
+who took prisoner the British governor, Sir James
+Wright. The governor's house was situated where the
+Telfair Academy now is. He was placed under parole,
+but nevertheless fled to Bonaventure, the Tabnall estate,
+not far from the city, where he was protected by friends
+until he could escape to the British fleet, which then lay
+off Tybee Island at the mouth of the Savannah River,
+some eighteen miles below the city. This same Joseph
+Habersham, it is said, led a party which went out in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_559" id="Page_559">[Pg 559]</a></span>
+1775 in skiffs&mdash;called <i>bateaux</i> along this part of the
+coast&mdash;boarded the British ship <i>Hinchenbroke</i>, lying at
+anchor in the river, and captured her in a hand-to-hand
+conflict. Mr. Neyle Colquitt of Savannah, a descendant
+of the Habershams, tells me that the powder taken from
+the <i>Hinchenbroke</i> was used at the Battle of Bunker Hill.
+After the war, in which Joseph Habersham commanded
+a regiment of regulars, he was made Postmaster General
+of the United States. The old house itself was built by
+Archibald Bulloch, a progenitor of that Miss "Mittie"
+Bulloch who later became Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr.,
+mother of the President. It was designed by an English
+architect named Jay, who did a number of the fine
+old houses of Savannah, which are almost without exception
+of the Georgian period. Archibald Bulloch bought
+the lot on which he built the house from Matthew
+McAllister, great-grandfather of Ward McAllister.
+When sold by Bulloch it passed through several hands
+and finally came into the possession of Robert Habersham,
+a son of Joseph.</p>
+
+<p>The old house was spacious and its interiors had a
+fine formality about them. The staircase, fireplace and
+chandeliers were handsome, and there was at the rear
+a charming oval room, the heavy mahogany doors of
+which were curved to conform to the shape of the walls.
+To tear down such a house was sacrilege&mdash;also it was a
+sacrilege hard to commit, for some of the basement walls
+were fifteen feet thick, and of solid brick straight
+through.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_560" id="Page_560">[Pg 560]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Sherman's headquarters were on the Square, just
+south of the De Soto Hotel, in the battlemented brick
+mansion which is the residence of General Peter W.
+Meldrim, ex-president of the American Bar Association,
+and former Mayor of Savannah.</p>
+
+<p>Among other old houses characteristic of Savannah,
+are the Scarborough house, the Mackay house, the
+Thomas house in Franklin Square (also known as
+the Owens house), in which Lafayette was entertained,
+and the Telfair house, now the Telfair Academy.
+The Telfair and Thomas houses were built by the architect
+who built the Habersham house, and it is to be
+hoped that they will never go the way of the latter
+mansion.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p561jpg" id="p561jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p561.jpg" width="600" height="431" alt="The Thomas House in Franklin Square in which Lafayette was entertained" title="" />
+<span class="caption">The Thomas House in Franklin Square in which Lafayette was entertained</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In 1810, about the time these houses were built,
+Savannah had 5,000 inhabitants; by 1850 the population
+had trebled, and 1890 found it a place of more
+than 40,000. Since then the city has grown with
+wholesome rapidity, and attractive suburban districts
+have been developed. The 1910 census gives the population
+as 65,000, but the city talks exuberantly of 90,000.
+Well, perhaps that is not an exaggerated claim. Certainly
+it is a city to attract those who are free to live
+where they please. In fall, winter and spring it leaves
+little to be desired. I have been there three times, and I
+have never walked up Bull Street without looking forward
+to the day when I could go there, rent an old house
+full of beautiful mahogany, and pass a winter. Not
+even New Orleans made me feel like that. I feel about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_561" id="Page_561">[Pg 561]</a></span>
+New Orleans that it is a place to visit rather than to
+settle down in. I want to go back to New Orleans, but
+I do not want to stay more than a few weeks. I want
+to see some people that I know, prowl about the French
+quarter, and have Jules Alciatore turn me out a dinner;
+then I want to go away. So, too, I want to go back to
+Atlanta&mdash;just to see some people. I want to stay there
+a week or two. Also I want to go to St. Augustine
+when cold weather comes, and bask in the warm sun, and
+breathe the soft air full of gold dust, and feel indolent
+and happy as I watch the activities about the excellent
+Ponce de Leon Hotel; but there are two cities in the
+South that I dream of going to for a quiet happy winter
+of domesticity and work, in a rented house&mdash;it must be
+the right house, too&mdash;and those cities are, first Charleston;
+then Savannah.</p>
+
+<p>The Telfair Academy in the old Telfair mansion was
+left, by a member of the family, to the city, to be used
+as a museum. Being somewhat skeptical about museums
+in cities of the size of Savannah, not to say
+much larger cities, especially when they are art museums,
+I very nearly omitted a visit to this one. Had I done
+so I would have missed seeing not only a number of exceedingly
+interesting historic treasures, but what I believe
+to be the best public art collection contained in any
+southern city.</p>
+
+<p>The museum does, to be sure, contain a number of
+old "tight" paintings of the kind with which the country
+was deluged at the time of the Chicago World's Fair,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_562" id="Page_562">[Pg 562]</a></span>
+but upstairs there is a surprise in shape of an exhibition
+of modern American paintings (the best paintings being
+produced in the world to-day) showing brilliant
+selection. I was utterly amazed when I found this collection.
+There were excellent canvases by Childe Hassam,
+Ernest Lawson, George Bellows, and other living
+American painters whose work, while it is becoming
+more and more widely appreciated each year, is still
+beyond all but the most advanced and discriminating
+buyers of paintings. I went into ecstasies over this collection,
+and I said to myself: "Away down here in Savannah
+there is some one buying better paintings for a
+little museum than the heads of many of the big
+museums in the country have had sense enough or
+courage enough to buy. This man ought to be 'discovered'
+and taken to some big museum where his appreciation
+will be put to the greatest use." With that I
+rushed downstairs, sought out the curator, and asked
+who had purchased the modern American pictures.
+And then my bubble was pricked, for who had they had,
+down there, buying their pictures for them, but Gari
+Melchers! Naturally the pictures were good!</p>
+
+<p>In one room of the building, on the ground floor, is
+a collection of fine old furniture, etc., which belonged
+to the Telfair family, including two beautiful mantelpieces
+of black and white marble, some cabinets, and a
+very curious and fascinating extension dining-table,
+built of mahogany. The table is perfectly round, and
+the leaves, instead of being added in the middle, are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_563" id="Page_563">[Pg 563]</a></span>
+curved pieces, fitting around the outer edge in two series,
+so that when extended to its full capacity the
+table is still round. I have never seen another such
+table.</p>
+
+<p>Also I found many interesting old books and papers
+passed down from the Telfairs. One of these was a
+ledger with records of slave sales.</p>
+
+<p>In a sale held Friday, October 14, 1774, Sir James
+Wright, the same British governor who was presently
+put to flight, purchased four men, five women, nine boys,
+and one girl, at a total cost of &pound;820, or about $3,280.
+Sir Patrick Houston bought two women at &pound;90, or $450.
+The whole day's sale disposed of thirty-five men, seventeen
+women, twenty-seven boys and ten girls, at a grand
+total of &pound;3206, or roughly between nine and ten thousand
+dollars.</p>
+
+<p>The Telfairs were great planters. Among the papers
+was one headed "Rules and Directions to be strictly attended
+to by all overseers at Thorn Island Plantation."
+This plantation was on the North Carolina side of the
+river, and was owned by Alexander Telfair, a brother
+of Miss Mary Telfair who gave the Academy to the city.
+Dates which occur in the papers stamp them as having
+been issued some time prior to 1837. Here are some of
+the regulations:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>The allowance for every grown negro, let him or her
+be old and good for nothing, and every young one that
+works in the field, is a peck of corn a week and a pint of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_564" id="Page_564">[Pg 564]</a></span>
+salt and a piece of meat not exceeding fourteen pounds
+per month.</p>
+
+<p>No negro to have more than forty lashes, no matter
+what his crime.</p>
+
+<p>The suckling children and all small ones who do not
+work in the field draw a half allowance of corn and salt.</p>
+
+<p>Any negro can have a ticket to go about the neighborhood,
+but cannot leave it without a pass. No strangers
+allowed to come on the place without a pass.</p>
+
+<p>The negroes to be tasked when the work allows it. I
+require a reasonable day's work well done. The task to
+be regulated by the state of the ground and the strength
+of the negro.</p>
+
+<p>All visiting between the Georgia plantation to be refused.
+[The Telfairs owned another plantation on the
+Georgia side of the river.] No one to get husbands or
+wives across the river. No night meeting or preaching
+allowed on the place except on Saturday or Sunday
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>If there is any fighting on the place whip all engaged
+in it, no matter what may be the cause it may be covered
+with.</p>
+
+<p>In extreme cases of sickness employ a physician.
+After a dose of castor oil is given, a dose of calomel, and
+blister applied, if no relief, then send.</p>
+
+<p>My negroes are not allowed to plant cotton for themselves.
+Everything else they may plant. Give them
+ticket to sell what they make.</p>
+
+<p>I have no Driver (slave-driver). You are to task the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_565" id="Page_565">[Pg 565]</a></span>
+negroes yourself. They are responsible to you alone for
+work.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Certain negroes are mentioned by name:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>Many persons are indebted to Elsey for attending
+upon their negroes. I wish you to see them or send to
+them for the money.</p>
+
+<p>If Dolly is unable to return to cooking she must take
+charge of all the little negroes.</p>
+
+<p>Pay Free Moses two dollars and a half for taking care
+of things left at his landing.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Bull Street, the fashionable street of the city, is a gem
+of a street, despite the incursions made at not infrequent
+intervals, by comparatively new, and often very ugly
+buildings. Every few blocks Bull Street has to turn
+out of its course and make the circuit of one of the small
+parks of which I have spoken, and this gives it charm
+and variety. On this street stands the De Soto Hotel,
+which, when I first went to Savannah, years ago, was by
+all odds the leading hostelry of the city. It is one of
+those great rambling buildings with a big porch out in
+front, an open court in back, and everything about it, including
+the bedchambers, very spacious and rather old
+fashioned. Lately the Savannah Hotel has been erected
+down at the business end of Bull Street. It is a modern
+hotel of the more conventional commercial type. But
+even down there, near the business part of town, it is not
+confronted by congested cobbled streets and clanging
+trolley cars, but looks out upon one of the squares, filled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_566" id="Page_566">[Pg 566]</a></span>
+with magnolias, oaks and palms. But another time I
+think I shall go back to the De Soto.</p>
+
+<p>The building of the Independent Presbyterian Church,
+on Bull Street, is one of the most beautiful of its kind in
+the country, inside and out. It reminds one of the old
+churches in Charleston, and it is gratifying to know that
+though the old church which stood on this site (dedicated
+in 1819) burned in 1889, the congregation did not
+seize the opportunity to replace it with a hideosity in
+lemon-yellow brick, but had the rare good sense to duplicate
+the old church exactly, with the result that, though a
+new building, it has all the dignity and simple beauty of
+an old one.</p>
+
+<p>Broughton Street, the shopping street, crosses Bull
+Street in the downtown section, and looks ashamed of
+itself as it does so, for it is about as commonplace a looking
+street as one may see. There is simply nothing about
+it of distinction save its rather handsome name.</p>
+
+<p>Elsewhere, however, there are several skyscrapers,
+most of them good looking buildings. It seemed to me
+also that I had never seen so many banks as in Savannah,
+and I am told that it is, indeed, a great banking
+city, and that the record of the Savannah banks
+for weathering financial storms is very fine. On a good
+many corners where there are not banks there are clubs,
+and some of these clubs are delightful and thoroughly
+metropolitan in character. I know of no city in the
+North, having a population corresponding to that of
+Charleston or of Savannah, which has clubs comparable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_567" id="Page_567">[Pg 567]</a></span>
+with the best clubs of these cities, or of New Orleans.
+When it is considered that of the population of these
+southern cities approximately one half, representing
+negroes, must be deducted in considering the population
+from which eligibles must be drawn, the excellence of
+southern clubs becomes remarkable in the extreme.
+Savannah, by the way, holds one national record in the
+matter of clubs. It had the first golf club founded in
+America. Exactly when the club was founded I cannot
+say, but Mr. H.&nbsp;H. Bruen, of Savannah, has in his
+possession an invitation to a golf club ball held in the
+old City Hall in the year 1811.</p>
+
+<p>The commercial ascendancy of Savannah over
+Charleston is due largely to natural causes. The port of
+Savannah drains exports from a larger and richer territory
+than is tapped by Charleston, though new railroads
+are greatly improving Charleston's situation in
+this respect. Savannah is a shipping port for cotton
+from a vast part of the lower and central South, and is
+also a great port for lumber, and the greatest port in the
+world for "naval stores." I did not know what naval
+stores were when I went to Savannah. The term conjured
+up in my mind pictures of piles of rope, pulleys
+and anchors. But those are not naval stores. Naval
+stores are gum products, such as resin and turpentine,
+which are obtained from the long-leafed pines of South
+Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Florida. The traveler
+through these States cannot have failed to notice gashes
+on the tree-trunks along the way. From these the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_568" id="Page_568">[Pg 568]</a></span>
+resinous sap exudes and is caught in cups, after which
+it is boiled, there in the woods, and thus separated into
+turpentine, resin and pitch. Vast quantities of these
+materials are stored on the great modern docks of Savannah.
+It is said that owing to wasteful methods, the
+long-leafed pine forests are being rapidly destroyed, and
+that this industry will die out before very long because
+the eager grabbers of to-day's dollars, having no thought
+for the future, fail to practise scientific forestry.</p>
+
+<p>All about Savannah, within easy reach by trolley,
+motor or boat, lie pleasant retreats and interesting things
+to see. The roads of the region, built by convict labor,
+are of the finest, and the convict prison camps are worth
+a visit. In the Brown Farm camp, living conditions are
+certainly more sanitary than in ninety nine out of a hundred
+negro homes. The place fairly shines with cleanliness,
+and there are many cases in which "regulars" at
+this camp are no sooner released than they offend again
+with the deliberate purpose of carrying out what may be
+termed a "back to the farm" movement. The color line
+is drawn in southern jails and convict camps as elsewhere.
+White prisoners occupy one barracks; negroes
+another. The food and accommodations for both is the
+same. The only race discrimination I could discover
+was that when white prisoners are punished by flogging,
+they are flogged with their clothes on, whereas, with
+negroes, the back is exposed. The men in this camp are
+minor offenders and wear khaki overalls in place of the
+stripes in which the worse criminals, quartered in an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_569" id="Page_569">[Pg 569]</a></span>other
+camp, are dressed. Strict discipline is maintained,
+but the life is wholesome. The men are marched to
+work in the morning and back at night escorted by
+guards who carry loaded shotguns, and who always have
+with them a pack of ugly bloodhounds to be used in case
+escape is attempted.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>All the drives in this region are extremely picturesque,
+for the live-oak grows here at its best, and is to be
+seen everywhere, its trunk often twenty or more feet in
+circumference, its wide-spreading branches reaching
+out their tips to meet those of other trees of the same
+species, so that sometimes the whole world seems to have
+a groined ceiling of foliage, a ceiling which inevitably
+suggests a great shadowy cathedral from whose airy
+arches hang long gray pennons of Spanish moss, like
+faded, tattered battle-flags.</p>
+
+<p>On country roads you will come, now and then, upon
+a negro burial ground of very curious character. There
+may be such negro cemeteries in the upper Southern
+States, but if so I have never seen them. In this portion
+of Georgia they are numerous, and their distinguishing
+mark consists in the little piles of household
+effects with which every grave is covered. I do not
+know whether this is done to propitiate ghosts and devils
+(generally believed to "hant" these graveyards), or
+whether it is the idea that the deceased can still find use
+for the assortment of pitchers, bowls, cups, saucers,
+knives, forks, spoons, statuettes, alarm-clocks, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_570" id="Page_570">[Pg 570]</a></span>
+heaven only knows what else, which were his treasured
+earthly possessions.</p>
+
+<p>In Savannah, I have heard Commodore Tatnall, who
+used to live at Bonaventure, credited with having originated
+the saying "Blood is thicker than water," but I am
+inclined to believe that the Commodore merely made apposite
+use of an old formula. The story is told of
+one of the old Tatnalls that in the midst of a large
+dinner-party which he was giving at his mansion
+at Bonaventure plantation, a servant entered and informed
+him that the house was on fire. Whereupon the
+old thoroughbred, instead of turning fireman, persisted
+in his r&ocirc;le of host, ordering the full dining-room equipment
+to be moved out upon the lawn, where the company
+remained at dinner while the house burned down.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the old houses of the plantations on the river
+have long since been destroyed. That at Whitehall
+was burned by the negroes when Sherman's army came
+by, but the old trees and gardens still endure, including a
+tall hedge of holly which is remarkable even in this
+florescent region. The old plantation house at the
+Hermitage, approached by a handsome avenue of live-oaks,
+is, I believe, the only one of those ancient mansions
+which still stands, and it does not stand very strongly,
+for, beautiful though it is in its abandonment and decay,
+it is like some noble old gentleman dying alone in an
+attic, of age, poverty and starvation&mdash;dying proudly
+as poor Charles Gayarr&eacute; did in New Orleans.</p>
+
+<p>The Hermitage has, I believe, no great history save<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_571" id="Page_571">[Pg 571]</a></span>
+what is written in its old chipped walls of stucco-covered
+brick, and the slave-cabins which still form a background
+for it. It is a story of baronial decay, resulting, doubtless,
+from the termination of slavery. Hordes of negroes
+of the "new issue" infest the old slave-cabins and
+on sight of visitors rush out with almost violent demands
+for money, in return for which they wish to sing. Their
+singing is, however, the poorest negro singing I have
+ever heard. All the spontaneity, all the relish, all the
+vividness which makes negro singing wonderful, has
+been removed, here, by the fixed idea that singing is not
+a form of expression but a mere noise to be given vent
+to for the purpose of extracting backsheesh. It is
+saddening to witness the degradation, through what may
+be called professionalism, of any great racial quality.
+These negroes, half mendicant, half traders on the reputation
+of their race, express professionalism in its lowest
+form. They are more pitiful than the professional
+tarantella dancers who await the arrival of tourists, in
+certain parts of southern Italy, as spiders await flies.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_572" id="Page_572">[Pg 572]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LII" id="CHAPTER_LII"></a>CHAPTER LII<br />
+<br />
+MISS "JAX" AND SOME FLORIDA GOSSIP</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Or mebbe you 're intendin' of<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Investments? Orange-plantin'? Pine?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hotel? or Sanitarium? What above<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">This yea'th <i>can</i> be your line?..."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0 smcap signature">Sidney Lanier ("A Florida Ghost.")<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>It is the boast of Jacksonville (known locally by the
+convenient abbreviation "Jax") that it stands as the
+"Gate to Florida." But the fact that a gate is something
+through which people pass&mdash;usually without stopping&mdash;causes
+some anguish to an active Chamber of
+Commerce, which has been known to send bands to the
+railway station to serenade tourists in the hope of enticing
+them to alight.</p>
+
+<p>If I were to personify Jacksonville, it would be, I
+think, as an amiable young woman, member of a domestic
+family, whose papa and mama had moved to
+Florida from somewhere else&mdash;for it is as hard to find a
+native of Jacksonville in that city as to find a native New
+Yorker in New York. Miss Jacksonville's papa, as I
+conceive it, has prospered while daughter has been
+growing up, and has bought for her a fine large house on
+a main corner, where many people pass. Having
+reached maturity Miss Jacksonville wishes to be in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_573" id="Page_573">[Pg 573]</a></span>
+Florida society&mdash;to give, as it were, house parties, like
+those of her neighbors, the other winter resorts. She
+sees people passing her doors all winter long, and she
+says to herself: "I must get some of these people to
+come in."</p>
+
+<p>To this end she brushes off the walk, lays a carpet on
+the steps, puts flowers in the vases, orders up a lot of
+fancy food and drink (from the very admirable Hotel
+Mason), turns on the lights and the Victor, leaves the
+front door invitingly open, and hopes for the best.
+Soon people begin to come in, but as she meets them she
+discovers that most of them have come to see papa on
+business; only a few have come on her account. They
+help themselves to sandwiches, look about the room, and
+listen to what Miss Jacksonville has to say.</p>
+
+<p>Time passes. Nothing happens. She asks how they
+like the chairs.</p>
+
+<p>"Very comfortable," they assure her.</p>
+
+<p>"Do have some more to eat and drink," says she.</p>
+
+<p>"What is your history?" a guest asks her presently.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't much history to speak of," she replies.
+"They tell me Andrew Jackson had his territorial government
+about where my house stands, but I don't
+know much about it. We don't care much about history
+in our family."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you do with yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I keep house, and go occasionally to the Woman's
+Club, and in the evenings father tells me about his business."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_574" id="Page_574">[Pg 574]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Very nice," says one guest, whom we shall picture as
+a desirable and wealthy young man from the North.
+"Now let's do something. Do you play or sing? Are
+you athletic? Do you go boating on the St. John's
+River? Do you gamble? Can you make love?"</p>
+
+<p>"I dance a little and play a little golf out at the
+Florida Country Club," she says, with but small signs of
+enthusiasm. "The thing I'm really most interested in,
+though, is father's business. He lost a lot of money in
+the fire of 1901, but he's made it all back and a lot more
+besides."</p>
+
+<p>"What about surf-bathing?" asks the pleasure-seeking
+visitor, stifling a yawn.</p>
+
+<p>"There's Atlantic Beach only eighteen miles from
+here. It's a wonderful beach. Father's putting a million
+in improvements out there, but there's no time to
+go there just now. However, if you'd like to, I can
+take you down and show you the new docks he has
+built."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, thanks," says the guest. "I don't care for
+docks&mdash;not, that is, unless we can go boating."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid we can't do that," says Miss Jacksonville.
+"We don't use the river much for pleasure. I
+can't say just why, unless it is that every one is
+too busy.... But please eat something more, and
+do have something to drink. There's plenty for every
+one."</p>
+
+<p>"I must be running along," says the visitor. "I've
+been invited to call at some other houses down the block.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_575" id="Page_575">[Pg 575]</a></span>
+By the way, what is the name of your neighbor next
+door?"</p>
+
+<p>"St. Augustine," says Jacksonville, with a little reluctance.
+"She is of Spanish descent and sets great
+store by it. If you call there she'll show you a lot of
+interesting old relics she has, but I assure you that when
+it comes to commercial success her family isn't one-two-three
+with papa."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks," says the visitor, "but just at the moment
+commerce doesn't appeal to me. Who lives beyond
+her?"</p>
+
+<p>Miss Jacksonville sighs. "There are some pleasant,
+rather attractive people named Ormonde, beyond," she
+says, "and a lively family named Daytona next door to
+them. Neither family is in business, like papa. They
+just play all the time. Then come a number of modest
+places, and after them, in the big yellow and white
+house with the palm trees all around it&mdash;but I'd advise
+you to keep away from there! Yes, you'd better go
+by that house. On the other side of it, in another lovely
+house, live some nicer, simpler people named Miami.
+Or if you like fishing, you might drop in on Mrs. Long-Key&mdash;she's
+wholesome and sweet, and goes out every
+day to catch tarpon. Or, again, you might&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with the people in the big yellow
+and white house surrounded by palm trees? Why
+shouldn't I go there?" asks the guest.</p>
+
+<p>"A young widow lives there," says Miss Jacksonville
+primly. "I don't know much about her history, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_576" id="Page_576">[Pg 576]</a></span>
+she looks to me as though she had been on the stage.
+She's frightfully frivolous&mdash;not at all one of our representative
+people."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" says the visitor. "Is she pretty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," admits Miss Jacksonville, "I suppose she <i>is</i>&mdash;in
+a fast way. But she's all rouged and she overdresses.
+Her bathing suits are too short at the bottom
+and her evening gowns are too short at the top. Yes,
+and even at that, she has a trick of letting the shoulder
+straps slip off and pretending she doesn't know it has
+happened."</p>
+
+<p>"What's her name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Palm-Beach."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," says the visitor. "I've heard of her. She's
+always getting into the papers. Tell me more."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Jacksonville purses her lips and raises her eyebrows.
+"Really," she says, "I don't like to talk
+scandal."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, come on! Do!" pleads the visitor. "Is she bad&mdash;bad
+and beautiful and alluring?"</p>
+
+<p>"Judge for yourself," says Miss Jacksonville sharply.
+"She keeps that enormous place of hers shut up except
+for about two months or so in the winter, when she
+comes down gorgeously dressed, with more jewelry than
+is worn by the rest of the neighborhood put together.
+Few Southerners go to her house. It's full of rich
+people from all over the North."</p>
+
+<p>"Is she rich?"</p>
+
+<p>"You'd think so to look at her&mdash;especially if you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_577" id="Page_577">[Pg 577]</a></span>
+didn't know where she got her money. But she really
+hasn't much of her own. She's a grafter."</p>
+
+<p>"How does she manage it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Men give her money."</p>
+
+<p>"But why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because she knows how to please the rich. She understands
+them. She makes herself beautiful for them.
+She plays, and drinks, and gambles, and dances with
+them, and goes riding with them in wheel chairs by
+moonlight, and sits with them by the sea, and holds their
+hands, and gets them sentimental. There's some scent
+she uses that is very seductive&mdash;none of the rest of us
+have been able to find out exactly what it is."</p>
+
+<p>"But how does she get their money?"</p>
+
+<p>"She never tells a hard-luck story&mdash;you can't get
+money out of the kind she goes with, that way. She
+takes the other tack. She whispers to them, and laughs
+with them, and fondles them, and makes them love her,
+and when they love her she says: 'But dearie, be reasonable!
+Think how many people love me! I like to
+have you here, you fat old darling with the gold jingling
+in your pockets! but I can't let you sit with me
+unless you pay. Yes, I'm expensive, I admit. But
+don't you love this scent I wear? Don't you adore my
+tropical winter sea, my gardens, my palm trees, my
+moonlight, and my music? They are all for you, dearie&mdash;so
+why shouldn't you pay? Don't I take you from
+the northern cold and slush? Haven't I built a siding
+for your private car, and made an anchorage for your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_578" id="Page_578">[Pg 578]</a></span>
+yacht? Don't I let you do as you please? Don't I keep
+you amused? Don't you love to look at me? Don't I
+put my warm red lips to yours? Well, then, dearie,
+what is all your money for?' ... That is her way of
+talking to them! That is the sort of creature that she
+is!"</p>
+
+<p>"Shocking!" says the visitor, rising and looking for
+his hat "You say hers is the third large house from
+here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Remember, she's as mercenary as can be!"</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks. I can take care of myself. If she's amusing
+that suits me. Good-by."</p>
+
+<p>In the vestibule he pauses to count his money.</p>
+
+<p>"Jacksonville seems to be a nice girl," he says to himself
+as he hastens down the block. "I imagine she might
+make a good wife and mother, and that she'd help her
+husband on in business. However, I'm not thinking of
+getting married and settling down in Florida. I'm
+out for some fun. I think I'll run in and call upon
+Mrs. Palm-Beach."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_579" id="Page_579">[Pg 579]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LIII" id="CHAPTER_LIII"></a>CHAPTER LIII<br />
+<br />
+PASSIONATE PALM BEACH</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A very merry, dancing, drinking,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Laughing, quaffing and unthinking time.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0 smcap signature">&mdash;Dryden.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>Like all places in which idlers try to avoid finding
+out that they are idle, Palm Beach has very definite
+customs as to where to go, and at what time
+to go there. Excepting in its hours for going to bed
+and getting up, it runs on schedule. The official day begins
+with the bathing hour&mdash;half past eleven to half
+past twelve&mdash;when the two or three thousand people
+from the pair of vast hotels assemble before the casino
+on the beach. Golfers will, of course, be upon the links
+before this hour; fishermen will be casting from the pier
+or will be out in boats searching the sail fish&mdash;that being
+the "fashionable" fish at the present time; ladies of excessive
+circumference will be panting rapidly along the
+walks, their eyes holding that look of dreamy determination
+which painters put into the eyes of martyrs, and
+which a fixed intention to lose twenty pounds puts into
+the eyes of banting women. So, too, certain gentlemen
+of swarthy skin make their way to the casino sun parlor,
+where they disrobe and bake until the bathing hour.
+The object of this practice is to acquire, as nearly as a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_580" id="Page_580">[Pg 580]</a></span>
+white man may, the complexion of a mulatto, and it is
+surprising to see how closely the skins of some more
+ardent members of the "Browning Club," as this group
+is called, match those of their chair boys. The underlying
+theory of the "Browning Club" is that a triple-plated
+coat of tan, taken north in March, advertises the
+wearer as having been at Palm Beach during the entire
+winter, thus establishing him as a man not merely of
+means, but of great endurance.</p>
+
+<p>The women of Palm Beach seem to be divided into
+two distinct schools of thought on the subject of tanning.
+While none of them compete with the radicals of the
+"Browning Club," one may nevertheless observe that, in
+evening dress, many young ladies reveal upon their
+necks, shoulders, and arms, stenciled outlines of the
+upper margins of their bathing suits. Ladies of the
+opposing school, upon the contrary, guard the whiteness
+of their skins as jealously as the men of the "Browning
+Club" guard their blackness. Rather than be touched
+with tan, many ladies of the latter group deny themselves
+the pleasures of the surf. The parasols beneath
+which they arrive upon the sands are not lowered until
+they are safely seated beneath the green and blue striped
+canvas tops of their beach chairs, and it may be observed
+that even then they are additionally fortified
+against the light, by wide black hats and thick dark veils
+draped to mask their faces up to the eyes; "harem"
+veils, they call them&mdash;the name, however, signifying
+nothing polygamous.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_581" id="Page_581">[Pg 581]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A pleasant diversion at the beginning of the bathing
+hour occurs when some mere one-horse millionaire from
+a Middle-Western town appears on the beach with his
+family. He is newly arrived and is under the fond delusion
+that he is as good as anybody else and that his
+money is as good as any other person's money. Seeing
+the inviting rows of beach chairs, he and his family
+plump into several of them. They are hardly settled,
+however, when the man who attends to the beach chairs
+comes and asks them to get out, saying that the chairs
+are reserved.</p>
+
+<p>The other thinks the man is lying like a head waiter,
+and demands to know for whom the chairs are reserved.</p>
+
+<p>In reply the beach-chair man mentions, with suitable
+deference, the name of Mrs. Hopkinson Skipkinson
+Jumpkinson-Jones.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," cries the Middle-Westerner, "Mrs. Jones
+isn't here yet, is she? She can't use the chairs <i>now</i>, can
+she, if she isn't here?"</p>
+
+<p>Even without this evidence that he does not grasp at
+all, the seriousness of the beach-chair situation, the fact
+that the uncouth stranger has referred to Mrs. H.&nbsp;S.
+Jumpkinson-Jones merely as "Mrs. Jones," brands him
+among the Palm Beach "regulars" who have overheard
+him, as a barbarian of the barbarians. People in neighboring
+chairs at once turn their backs upon him and
+glance at each other knowingly with raised eyebrows.
+At this juncture, let us hope, the daughter of the in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_582" id="Page_582">[Pg 582]</a></span>truder
+manages to pry him loose; let us hope also that
+she takes him aside and tells him what everybody ought
+to know: namely, that Mrs. H.&nbsp;S. Jumpkinson-Jones has
+been a society leader ever since the "Journal" published
+the full-page Sunday story about her having gold fillings
+put in her Boston terrier's teeth. That was away
+back in 1913, just before she was allowed to get her
+divorce from Royal Tewksbury Johnson III of Paris,
+Newport, and New York. The day after the divorce
+she married her present husband, and up to last year,
+when the respective wives of a munitions millionaire
+and a moving-picture millionaire began to cut in on her,
+no one thought of denying her claim to be the most
+wasteful woman in Palm Beach.</p>
+
+<p>True, she may not come down to the beach to-day, but
+in that case it is obviously proper that her chairs&mdash;including
+those of her dog and her husband&mdash;remain magnificently
+vacant throughout the bathing hour.</p>
+
+<p>The lady is, however, likely to appear. She will be
+wearing one of the seventy hats which, we have learned
+by the papers, she brought with her, and a pint or so of
+her lesser pearls. Her dog&mdash;which is sometimes served
+beside her at table at the Beach Club, and whose diet
+is the same as her own, even to strawberries and cream
+followed by a demi tasse&mdash;will be in attendance; and her
+husband, whose diet is even richer, may also appear if
+he has recovered from his matutinal headache. Here
+she will sit through the hour, gossiping with her friends,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_583" id="Page_583">[Pg 583]</a></span>
+watching the antics of several beautiful, dubious women,
+camp followers of the rich, who add undoubted interest
+to the place; calling languidly to her dog: "<i>Viens, Tou-tou!
+Viens vite!</i>" above all waiting patiently, with
+crossed knees, for news-service photographers to come
+and take her picture&mdash;a picture which, when we see it
+presently in "Vogue," "Vanity Fair," or a Sunday newspaper,
+will present indisputable proof that Mrs. H.&nbsp;S.
+Jumpkinson-Jones and the ladies sitting near her (also
+with legs crossed) refrained from wearing bathing suits
+neither through excessive modesty nor for fear of revealing
+deformity of limb.</p>
+
+<p>Many a Mrs. H.&nbsp;S. Jumpkinson-Jones has beaten her
+way to glory by the Palm Beach route. Many of the
+names which sound vaguely familiar when you read
+them in connection with the story of a jewel robbery, in
+lists of "those present," or in an insinuating paragraph
+in the tattered copy of "Town Topics" which you pick
+up, in lieu of reading matter, from the table in your dentist's
+waiting room, first broke into the paradise of the
+society column by way of this resort. For a woman
+with money and the press-agent type of mind it is not a
+difficult thing to accomplish. One must think of sensational
+things to do&mdash;invent a new fad in dress, or send
+one's dog riding each day in a special wheel chair, or
+bring down one's own private dancing instructor or golf
+instructor at $5,000 for the season. Above all, one must
+be nice to the correspondents of newspapers. Never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_584" id="Page_584">[Pg 584]</a></span>
+must one forget to do that. Never must one imagine
+oneself so securely placed in society columns that one
+may forget the reporters who gave one that place.</p>
+
+<p>One lady who, for several seasons, figured extensively
+in the news from Palm Beach, fell into this error. She
+thought herself safe, and altered her manner toward
+newspaper folk. But, alas! thereupon they altered their
+manner toward her. The press clippings sent by the
+bureau to which she subscribed became fewer and fewer.
+Her sensational feats went unnoticed. At last came a
+ball&mdash;one of the three big balls of the season; a New
+York paper printed a list of names of persons who went
+to the ball; a column of names in very small type. Lying
+in bed a few mornings later she read through the names
+and came to the end without finding her own. Thinking
+that she must have skipped it, she read the names over
+again with great care. Then she sent for her husband,
+and he read them. When it was clear to them both that
+her name was actually not there, it is said she went into
+hysterics. At all events, her husband came down in a
+rage and complained to the hotel management. But
+what could the management do? What can they do?
+The woman is doomed. The Palm Beach correspondents
+who "made" her have been snubbed by her and have
+unanimously declared "thumbs down." It is theirs to
+give, but let no climber be unmindful of the fact that it
+is also theirs to take away!</p>
+
+<p>As Mrs. H.&nbsp;S. Jumpkinson-Jones looks over the top
+of her harem veil she may see a great glistening steam<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_585" id="Page_585">[Pg 585]</a></span>
+yacht, with rakish masts and funnel, lying off the pier-head;
+and down on the sand she may see the young master
+and mistress of that yacht: a modest, attractive pair,
+possessors of one of the world's great fortunes, yet not
+nearly so elaborately dressed, nor so insistent upon their
+"position," as the Jumpkinson-Joneses. By raising the
+brim of her hat a trifle Mrs. H.&nbsp;S. Jumpkinson-Jones
+may see, sweeping in glorious circles above the yacht,
+the hydroplane which, when it left the edge of the beach
+a few minutes since, blew back with its propeller a stinging
+storm of sand, and caused skirts to snap like flags
+in a hundred-mile-an-hour hurricane; and in that hydroplane
+she knows there is another multimillionaire.</p>
+
+<p>Near by, sitting disconsolately upon the sand, are the
+one-horse Middle-Western millionaire with his wife and
+daughter&mdash;the three who were ousted from her seats
+by the beach-chair man. Mrs. H.&nbsp;S. Jumpkinson-Jones,
+like every one who has spent a season, let alone half a
+dozen seasons, at Palm Beach, immediately recognizes
+the type.</p>
+
+<p>Father is the leading merchant of his town; mother
+the social arbiter; daughter the regnant belle. Father
+definitely didn't wish to come here, nor was mother
+anxious to, but daughter made them. Often she has
+read the lists of prominent arrivals at Palm Beach and
+seen alluring pictures of them taken on the sand. She
+has dreamed of the place, and in her dreams has seemed
+to hear the call of Destiny. Who knows? may it not be
+at Palm Beach that she will meet <i>him</i>?&mdash;the beautiful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_586" id="Page_586">[Pg 586]</a></span>
+and wealthy scion of a noble house who (so the fortune
+teller at the Elks' Club bazaar told her) will rescue
+her from the narrow life at home, and transport her, as
+his bride, into a world of wonder and delight, and footmen
+in knee-breeches. Daughter insisted on Palm
+Beach. So mother got a lot of pretty clothes for daughter,
+and father purchased several yards of green and
+yellow railroad tickets, and off they went. They arrived
+at Palm Beach. They walked the miles of green
+carpeted corridor. They were dazed&mdash;as every one
+must be who sees them for the first time&mdash;at the stunning
+size of the hotels. They looked upon the endless
+promenade of other visitors. They went to the beach
+at bathing hour, to the cocoanut grove at the time for
+tea and dancing, in wheel chairs through the jungle
+trail and <i>Reve d'Et&eacute;</i>, to the waiters' cake walk in the
+Poinciana dining room, to the concert at the Breakers,
+to the palm room, and to the sea by moonlight; everywhere
+they went they saw people, people, people: richly
+dressed people, gay people, people who knew quantities
+of other people; yet among them all was not one single
+being that they had ever seen before. After several
+days of this, father met a man he knew&mdash;a business
+friend from Akron. A precious lot of good that did!
+Why didn't father know the two young men who sat
+last night at the next table in the dining room? Even
+those two would have done just now. Clearly they had
+been mad to know her too, for they were likewise feeling
+desolate. Perhaps mother can get father to scrape<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_587" id="Page_587">[Pg 587]</a></span>
+up an acquaintance with them. But alas, before this
+plan can be set in motion, the two young men have
+formed their own conclusions as to what Palm Beach
+is like when you do not know anybody in the place.
+They have departed. Next day, when mother enters
+daughter's room to say good night, she finds her weeping;
+and next day, to father's infinite relief, they start
+for home. So it has gone with many a bush-league
+belle.</p>
+
+<p>Even the Mrs. Jumpkinson-Joneses, satiated though
+they be with private cars, press notices, and Palm
+Beach, can hardly fail to be sensible to the almost delirious
+beauty of the scene at bathing hour.</p>
+
+<p>Nowhere is the sand more like a deep, warm dust of
+yellow gold; nowhere is there a margin of the earth so
+splashed with spots of brilliant color: sweaters, parasols,
+bathing suits, canvas shelters&mdash;blue, green, purple, pink,
+yellow, orange, scarlet&mdash;vibrating together in the sharp
+sunlight like brush marks on a high-keyed canvas by
+Sorolla; nowhere has flesh such living, glittering beauty
+as the flesh of long, white, lovely arms which flash out,
+cold and dripping, from the sea; nowhere does water appear
+less like water, more like a flowing waste of liquid
+emeralds and sapphires, held perpetually in cool solution
+and edged with a thousand gleaming, flouncing strings
+of pearls.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p588jpg" id="p588jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p588.jpg" width="600" height="333" alt="Nowhere is the sand more like a deep warm dust of yellow gold; nowhere is there a margin of the earth so splashed
+with spots of brilliant color; nowhere is water less like water, more like a flowing waste of liquid emeralds
+and sapphires edged with a thousand gleaming flouncing strings of pearls" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Nowhere is the sand more like a deep warm dust of yellow gold; nowhere is there a margin of the earth so splashed
+with spots of brilliant color; nowhere is water less like water, more like a flowing waste of liquid emeralds
+and sapphires edged with a thousand gleaming flouncing strings of pearls</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Over the beach lies a layer of people, formed in
+groups, some of them costumed for the water, some for
+the shore; some of them known to the great lady, many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_588" id="Page_588">[Pg 588]</a></span>
+of them unknown to her. The groups are forever shifting
+as their members rise and run down to the sea, or
+come back shiny and dripping, to fling themselves again
+upon the warm sand, roll in it, or stretch out in lazy comfort
+while their friends shovel it over them with their
+hands. Now one group, or another, will rise and form a
+grinning row while a snap-shot is taken; now they recline
+again; now they scamper down to see the hydroplane
+come in; now they return, drop to the sand, and
+idly watch women bathers tripping past them toward the
+water. Here comes a girl in silken knickerbockers, with
+cuffs buttoning over her stockings like the cuffs of riding
+breeches. Heads turn simultaneously as she goes by.
+Here is a tomboy in a jockey cap; here two women
+wearing over their bathing suits brilliant colored satin
+wraps which flutter revealingly in the warm, fresh fragrant
+breeze. And now comes the slender, aristocratic,
+foreign-looking beauty who wears high-heeled slippers
+with her bathing costume, and steps gracefully to the
+water's edge under the shade of a bright colored Japanese
+parasol. It seems that every one must now be on
+the beach. But no! Here come the three most wonderful
+of all: the three most watched, most talked about,
+most spoiled, most coveted young women at Palm Beach.
+Their bathing suits are charming: very short, high
+waisted, and cut at the top like Empire evening gowns,
+showing lovely arms and shoulders. Hovering about
+them, like flies about a box of sweets, yet also with something
+of the jealous guardianship of watchdogs, is their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_589" id="Page_589">[Pg 589]</a></span>
+usual escort of young men&mdash;for though they know none
+of the fashionable women, their beauty gives them a
+power of wide selection as to masculine society.</p>
+
+<p>One is a show girl, famous in the way such girls become
+famous in a New York season, vastly prosperous
+(if one may judge by appearances), yet with a prosperity
+founded upon the capitalization of youth and
+amazing loveliness of person. The other two, less advertised,
+but hardly less striking in appearance, have
+been nicknamed, for the convenience of the gossips,
+"The Queen of Sheba," and "The Queen of the May."
+They too suggest, somehow, association with the trivial
+stage, but it is said that one of them&mdash;the slender wonderfully
+rounded one&mdash;has never had the footlights in
+her face, but has been (in some respects, at least), a
+model.</p>
+
+<p>Like the climbers, like the bush league belle, these
+girls, we judge, brought definite ambitions with them to
+Palm Beach. Partly, no doubt, they came for pleasure,
+but also one hears stories of successful ventures made
+by men, on their behalf, at Beach Club tables, and of
+costly rings and brooches which they now possess, although
+they did not bring them with them. But after
+all, the sources from which come their jeweled trinkets
+may only be surmised, whereas, to the success of their
+desire for fun, the eyes and ears of the entire smiling
+beach bear witness. Watch them as they clasp hands
+and run down to the water's edge; see them prancing
+playfully where the waves die on the sand, while devoted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_590" id="Page_590">[Pg 590]</a></span>
+swains launch the floating mattress upon which it is their
+custom to bask so picturesquely; see them now as they
+rush into the green waves and mount the softly rocking
+thing; observe the gleam of their white arms as, idly,
+they splash and paddle; note the languid grace of their
+recumbence: chins on hands, heels waving lazily in
+air; hear them squeal in inharmonious unison, as a young
+member of the "Browning Club," makes as though to
+splatter them, or mischievously threatens to overturn
+their unwieldy couchlike craft. Free from the restriction
+of ideas about "society," about the "tradition" of
+Palm Beach, about "convention," they seem to detect
+no difference between this resort and certain summer
+beaches, more familiar to them, and at the same time
+more used to boisterousness and cachinnation. They go
+everywhere, these girls. You will see them having big
+cocktails, in a little while, on the porch of the Breakers;
+you will see them having tea, and dancing under the dry
+rustling palm fronds of the cocoanut grove, when the
+colored electric lights begin to glow in the luminous semi-tropical
+twilight; and you will see them, resplendent,
+at the Beach Club, dining, or playing at the green-topped
+tables.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p576jpg" id="p576jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p576.jpg" width="600" height="396" alt="You will see them having tea, and dancing under the palm fronds of the cocoanut grove, when the electric lights begin
+to glow in the luminous semi-tropical twilight" title="" />
+<span class="caption">You will see them having tea, and dancing under the palm fronds of the cocoanut grove, when the electric lights begin
+to glow in the luminous semi-tropical twilight</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Beach Club has been for some time, I suppose, the
+last redoubt held in this country by the forces of open,
+or semi-open gambling. Every now and then one hears
+a rumor that it is to be stormed and taken by the hosts of
+legislative piety, yet on it goes, upon its gilded way&mdash;a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_591" id="Page_591">[Pg 591]</a></span>
+place, it should be said, of orderly, spectacular distinction.
+The Beach Club occupies a plain white house,
+low-spreading and unpretentious, but fitted most agreeably
+within, and boasting a superb cuisine. Not every
+one is admitted. Members have cards, and must be
+vouched for, formally, by persons known to those who
+operate the place. Many of the quiet pleasant people
+who, leading their own lives regardless of the splurging
+going on about them, form the background of Palm
+Beach life&mdash;much as "walking ladies and gentlemen"
+form the crowd in a spectacular theatrical production&mdash;have
+never seen the inside of the Beach Club; and I have
+little doubt that many visitors who drop in at Palm
+Beach for a few days never so much as hear of it. It is
+not run for them, nor for the "piker," nor for the needy
+clerk, but for the furious spenders.</p>
+
+<p>Let us therefore view the Beach Club only as an interesting
+adjunct to Palm Beach life, and let us admit
+that, as such, it is altogether in the picture. Let us,
+in short, seek, upon this brief excursion, not only to
+recover from our case of grippe, but to recover also
+that sense of the purely esthetic, without regard to moral
+issues, which we used to enjoy some years ago, before
+our legislatures legislated virtue into us. Let us soar,
+upon the wings of our checkbook, in one final flight
+to the realms of unalloyed beauty. Let us, in considering
+this most extravagantly passionate and passionately
+extravagant of American resorts, be great artists, who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_592" id="Page_592">[Pg 592]</a></span>
+are above morals. Let us refuse pointblank to consider
+morals at all. For by so doing we may avoid giving
+ourselves away.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The season wanes. Crowds on the beach grow thinner.
+Millionaires begin to move their private cars from
+Palm Beach sidings, and depart for other fashionable
+places farther north. Croupiers at the Beach Club
+stand idle for an hour at a time, though ready to spin the
+wheel, invitingly, for any one who saunters in. The
+shops hold cut-price sales. And we, regarding somewhat
+sadly our white trousers, perceive that there does
+not remain a single spotless pair. The girl in Mr. Foster's
+fruit store has more leisure, now, and smiles agreeably
+as we pass upon our way to the hotel dining-room.
+The waiter, likewise, is not pressed for time.</p>
+
+<p>"They was seven-hunduhd an' twe've folks heah yestahday,"
+he says. "On'y six-fohty-three to-day. Ah
+reckon they a-goin' t' close the Breakuhs day aftuh t'-mo'w."</p>
+
+<p>Still the flowers bloom; still the place is beautiful; still
+the weather is not uncomfortably warm. Nevertheless
+the season dies. And so it comes about that we depart.</p>
+
+<p>The ride through Florida is tedious. The miles of
+palmettoes, with leaves glittering like racks of bared cutlasses
+in the sun, the miles of dark swamp, in which the
+cypresses seem to wade like dismal club-footed men, the
+miles of live-oak strung with their sad tattered curtains
+of Spanish moss, the miles of sandy waste, of pineapple<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_593" id="Page_593">[Pg 593]</a></span>
+and orange groves, of pines with feathery palm-like tops,
+above all the sifting of fine Florida dust, which covers
+everything inside the car as with a coat of flour&mdash;these
+make you wish that you were North again.</p>
+
+<p>The train stops at a station. You get off to walk
+upon the platform. The row of hackmen and hotel porters
+stand there, in gloomy silent defiance of the rapidly
+approaching end of things, each holding a sign bearing
+the name of some hotel. In another week the railway
+company may, if it wishes, lift the ban on shouting hotel
+runners. Let them shout. There will be nobody to
+hear.</p>
+
+<p>You buy a newspaper.</p>
+
+<p>Ah! What is this? "Great Blizzard in New York&mdash;Trains
+Late&mdash;Wires Down."</p>
+
+<p>You know what New York blizzards are. You picture
+the scenes being enacted there to-day. You see the
+icy streets with horses falling down. You see cyclonic
+clouds of snow whirl savagely around the corners of
+high buildings, pelting the homegoing hoards, whirling
+them about, throwing women down upon street crossings.
+You have a vision of the muddy, slushy subway
+steps, and slimy platforms, packed with people, their
+clothing caked with wet white spangles. You see them
+wedged, cross and damp, into the trains, and hear them
+coughing into one another's necks. You see emaciated
+tramps, pausing to gaze wanly into bakery windows:
+men without overcoats, their collars turned up, their
+hands deep in the pockets of their trousers, their heads<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_594" id="Page_594">[Pg 594]</a></span>
+bent against the storm; you see them walk on to
+keep from freezing. You remember Roscoe Conkling.
+That sort of thing can happen in a New York blizzard!
+Little tattered newsboys, thinly clad, will die to-night
+upon cold corners. Poor widows, lacking money to buy
+coal, are shuddering even now in squalid tenements, and
+covering their wailing little ones with shoddy blankets.</p>
+
+<p>"Horrible!" you say, sighing upon the balmy air.
+Then, with the sweetly resigned philosophy of Palm
+Beach, you add:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well, what does it matter? <i>I'm</i> in Florida anyhow.
+After all it is a pretty good old world!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_595" id="Page_595">[Pg 595]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LIV" id="CHAPTER_LIV"></a>CHAPTER LIV<br />
+<br />
+ASSORTED AND RESORTED FLORIDA</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Some year or more ago, I s'pose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I roamed from Maine to Floridy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And,&mdash;see where them Palmettoes grows?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I bought that little key...."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0 smcap signature">&mdash;Sidney Lanier ("A Florida Ghost.")<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>Florida in winter comes near to being all things
+to all men. To all she offers amusement plus
+her climate, and in no one section is the contrast
+in what amusement constitutes, and costs, set forth
+more sharply than where, on the west coast of the State,
+Belleair and St. Petersburg are situated, side by side.</p>
+
+<p>The Hotel Belleview at Belleair compares favorably
+with any in the State, and is peopled, during the cold
+months, with affluent golf maniacs, for whom two fine
+courses have been laid out.</p>
+
+<p>When the pipes supplying water for the greens of
+his home course, at Brook, Indiana, freeze, annually,
+George Ade, for instance, knows that, instead of hibernating,
+it is time for him to take his white flannel suits,
+hang them on the clothesline in the back yard until the
+fragrance of the moth-ball has departed, pack them in
+his wardrobe trunk, and take his winter flight to the
+Belleview. He knows that, at the Belleview, he will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_596" id="Page_596">[Pg 596]</a></span>
+meet hundreds of men and women who are suffering
+from the malady with which he is afflicted.</p>
+
+<p>The conversation at Belleair is, so far as my companion
+and I could learn, confined entirely to comparisons
+between different courses, different kinds of clubs
+and balls, and different scores. Belleair turns up its
+nose at Palm Beach. It considers the game of golf as
+played at Palm Beach a trifling game, and it feels that
+the winter population of Palm Beach wastes a lot of
+time talking about clothes and the stock market when it
+might be discussing cleeks, midirons, and mashies.
+The woman who thinks it essential to be blond whether
+she is blond or not, and who regards Forty-second
+Street as the axle upon which the universe turns, would
+be likely to die of ennui in a week at Belleair, whereas,
+in Palm Beach, if she died in that time, it would probably
+be of delight&mdash;with a possibility of alcoholism as a
+contributing cause. And likewise, though Belleair has
+plutocrats in abundance, they are not starred for their
+wealth, as are the Palm Beach millionaires, nor yet for
+their social position, but are rated strictly according to
+their club handicap. Hence it happens that if, speaking
+of a Palm Beach millionaire, you ask: "How did
+he make it?" you will be told the story of some combine
+of trusts, some political grafting, or some widely advertised
+patent medicine; but if you ask in Belleair: "How
+did he make it?" the answer is likely to be: "He made
+it in 4, with a cleek."</p>
+
+<p>Consider on the other hand, St. Petersburg, with its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_597" id="Page_597">[Pg 597]</a></span>
+cheap hotels, its boarding houses, its lunch rooms and
+cafeterias, and its winter population of farmers and
+their wives from the North. The people you see in St.
+Petersburg are identical with those you might see on
+market day in a county town of Ohio or Indiana. Several
+thousands of them come annually from several
+dozen States, and many a family of them lives through
+the winter comfortably on less than some other families
+spend at Belleair in a week, or at Palm Beach in a day.</p>
+
+<p>If I am any judge of the signs of happiness, there
+is plenty of it in the hearts of those who winter
+at St. Petersburg. The city park is full of contented
+people, most of them middle-aged or old. The women
+listen to the band, and the men play checkers under the
+palmetto-thatched shelter, or toss horseshoes on the
+greensward, at the sign of the Sunshine Pleasure Club&mdash;an
+occupation which is St. Petersburg's equivalent
+for Palm Beach's game of tossing chips on the green-topped
+tables of a gambling house. And yet&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Is it always pleasant to be virtuous? Is it always delightful
+to be where pious people, na&iuml;ve people, people
+who love simple pastimes, are enjoying themselves? I
+am reminded of a talk I had with a negro whose strong
+legs turned the pedals of a wheel chair in which my companion
+and I rode one day through the Palm Beach
+jungle trail. It is a wonderful place, that jungle, with
+its tangled trunks and vines and its green foliage swimming
+in sifted sunlight; with its palms, palmettoes, ferns,
+and climbing morning-glories, its banana trees, gnarled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_598" id="Page_598">[Pg 598]</a></span>
+rubber banyans, and wild mangoes&mdash;which are like
+trees growing upside down, digging their spreading
+branches into the ground. For a time we forgot the
+pedaling negro behind us, but a faint puffing sound on a
+slight up-grade reminded us, presently, that our party
+was not of two, but three. When the chair was running
+free again, one of us inquired of the chairman:</p>
+
+<p>"What would you do if you had a million dollars?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, boss," replied the negro seriously, "Ah knows
+one thing Ah'd do. No mattuh how much o' dis worl's
+goods Ah haid, Ah'd allus get mah exuhcize."</p>
+
+<p>"That's wise," my companion replied. "What kind
+of exercise would you take?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah ain't nevvuh jest stedied dat out, boss," returned
+the man. "But it sho' would be some kind o'
+exuhcize besides pushin' one o' dese-heah chaihs."</p>
+
+<p>"When you weren't exercising would you go and
+have a good time?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, boss."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, boss, y' see Ah's a 'ligious man, Ah is."</p>
+
+<p>"But can't people who are religious have a good
+time?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," said the negro, "dey might have deh little
+pleasuhs now an' den, but dey cain't hev no sich good
+times like othah folks kin. A man 't 's a 'ligious man,
+he cain't hev no sich good times like Mistuh Wahtuhbe'y's
+an' dem folks 'at was heah up to laist week. Ah
+was Mistuh Wahtuhbe'y's chaih boy. He gimme ninety-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_599" id="Page_599">[Pg 599]</a></span>two
+dollahs an' fifty cents tips one week! Yassuh!
+Dat might be <i>cha'ity</i> but 't ain't 'ligion. Mistuh Dodge,
+his chaih boy's been a-wohkin' foh 'im six weeks.
+I 'spec' Mistuh Dodge give dat boy fahve hund'ud dollahs
+if he give 'im a cent! Mistuh Wahtuhbe'y's pahty,
+dey haid nineteen chaihs waitin' on 'em all de time, jest
+foh t' drive 'em f'om de <i>ho-</i>tel to de club, an' de casino.
+Dat cos' 'em nineteen hund'ud dollahs a week, and de
+boys, dey ain't one o'em 'at git less'n hund'ud dolluhs
+fo' hisself. Dat's de kin' o' gen'men Mistuh Wahtuhbe'y
+an' his pahty is. Ah's haid sev'ul gen'men dis
+season dat ain't what you'd jes' say, 'ligious, but dey
+was, as folks calls it, p'ofuse. Dey was one ol' gen'man
+heah two weeks, an' deh was a young lady what he haid
+a attachment on, an' evvy evenin' 'e use' t' take huh foh
+a wheel-chaih ride in de moonlight. Fuhst night Ah
+took 'em out he tuhn to me, an' he says: 'Look-a-heah,
+boy! You sho you knows youah duties?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yassuh, boss,' Ah tell 'im. 'Deed Ah does!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Den what is youah duties den?' sez 'e.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah say: 'Boss, de chaih boy's duties, dey's to be
+dumb, an' deef, an' blin', an' dey cain't see nothin', an'
+dey cain't say nothin', an' dey cain't heah nothin', and
+dey cain't&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'Dass 'nuff,' he say. 'Ah sees you knows youah
+business. Heah's fiffy dollahs.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," one of us asked presently, "what happened?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah took 'em ridin' through de jungle trail, boss," he
+returned, innocently.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_600" id="Page_600">[Pg 600]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What did they do?"</p>
+
+<p>"How does Ah know, boss? Di'n' Ah have ma eyes
+covuhed wi' dat fiffy dollahs? Di'n' Ah have ma eahs
+stuff' wid it? Yassuh! An' Ah got ma <i>mouf</i> full o'
+it <i>yit</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>The chair boys, bell boys, waiters, barbers, porters,
+bartenders, waitresses, chambermaids, manicures, and
+shop attendants one finds in Palm Beach, Belleair, Miami,
+and many other winter resorts, are, numerically,
+a not inconsiderable part of the season's population, and
+the lives of these people who form a background of service,
+of which many an affluent visitor is hardly conscious,
+parallel the lives of the rich in a manner that is
+not without a note of caricature.</p>
+
+<p>When the rich go South so do the hordes that serve
+them; when the Florida season begins to close and the
+rich move northward, the serving population likewise
+begins to melt away; if you are in Palm Beach near the
+season's end, and move up to St. Augustine, or Jacksonville,
+or Augusta, or any one of a dozen other places,
+you are likely to recognize, here and there, a waiter, a
+bell-boy, or a chambermaid whom you tipped, some
+weeks earlier, preparatory to leaving a latitude several
+degrees nearer the Equator. When you leave the Poinciana
+or the Breakers at the season's close, your waiter
+may, for all you know, be in the Jim Crow car, ahead,
+and when you go in to dinner at the Ponce de Leon at
+St. Augustine, or the Mason at Jacksonville, you may
+discover that he too has stopped off there for a few<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_601" id="Page_601">[Pg 601]</a></span>
+days, to gather in the final tips. Nor must you fancy,
+when you depart for the North, that you have seen the
+last of him. Next summer when you take a boat up the
+Hudson, or go to Boston by the Fall River Line, or drop
+in at a hotel at Saratoga, there he will be, like an old
+friend. The bartender who mixes you a pick-me-up on
+the morning that you leave the Breakers, will be ready
+to start you on the downward path, at the beginning of
+the summer, at some Northern country club; the barber
+who cuts your hair at the Royal Palm in Miami will be
+ready to perform a like service, later on, at some
+hotel in the Adirondacks or the White Mountains;
+the neat waitress who serves you at the Belleview at
+Belleair will appear before you three or four months
+hence at the Griswold near New London; the adept
+waiter from the Beach Club at Palm Beach will
+seem to you to look like some one you have seen before
+when, presently, he places viands before you at
+Sherry's, or the Ritz, or some fashionable restaurant in
+London or Paris. Likewise, when you enter the barber
+shop of a large hostelry just off the board walk in Atlantic
+City, next July, you will find there, in the same
+generously ventilated shirt waist, the manicurist who
+caused your nails to glisten so superbly in the Florida
+sunlight; and if she has the memory for faces which is
+no small part of a successful manicurist's stock in trade,
+she will remember you, and where she saw you last, and
+will tell you just which of the young women from "The
+Follies" and the Century Theater are to be seen upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_602" id="Page_602">[Pg 602]</a></span>
+the beach that day, and whether they are wearing, here
+on the Jersey coast, those same surprising bathing suits
+which, last February, caused blas&eacute; gentlemen basking
+upon the Florida sands to sit up, arise, say it was time
+for one last dip before luncheon, and then, without seeming
+too deliberate about it, follow the amazing nymphs
+in the direction of a matchless sea&mdash;that sea which, as a
+background for these Broadway girls in their long silken
+hosiery, takes on a tone of spectacular unreality, like
+some fantastic marine back drop devised by Mr. Dillingham
+or Mr. Ziegfeld.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 457px;">
+<a name="p581jpg" id="p581jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p581.jpg" width="457" height="600" alt="Cocktail hour at The Breakers" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Cocktail hour at The Breakers</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_603" id="Page_603">[Pg 603]</a></span></p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LV" id="CHAPTER_LV"></a>CHAPTER LV<br />
+<br />
+A DAY IN MONTGOMERY</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I have walk'd in Alabama<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My morning walk....<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0 smcap signature">&mdash;Walt Whitman.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>As I have remarked before, it is a long haul from
+the peninsula of Florida to New Orleans.
+There are two ways to go. The route by way
+of Pensacola, following the Gulf Coast, looks shorter on
+the map but is, I believe, in point of time consumed, the
+longer way. My companion and I were advised to go
+by way of Montgomery, Alabama&mdash;a long way around
+it looked&mdash;where we were to change trains, catching a
+New Orleans-bound express from the North.</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly midnight when, after a long tiresome
+journey, we arrived in Alabama's capital, and after
+midnight when we reached the comfortable if curiously
+called Hotel Gay-Teague, which is not named for an
+Indian chief or a kissing game, but for two men who
+had to do with building it.</p>
+
+<p>We had heard that Montgomery was a quiet, sleepy
+old town, and had expected to go immediately to bed on
+our arrival. What then was our amazement at hearing,
+echoing through the wide street in front of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_604" id="Page_604">[Pg 604]</a></span>
+hotel, the sound of strident ragtime. Investigation disclosed
+a gaudily striped tent of considerable size set up
+in the street and illuminated by those flaring naphtha
+lamps they use in circuses. Going over to the tent, we
+learned that there was dancing within, whereupon we
+paid our fifteen cents apiece and entered. I have forgotten
+what produced the music&mdash;it may have been a
+mechanical piano or a hurdy-gurdy&mdash;but there was
+music, and it was loud, and there was a platform laid
+over the cobble-stones of the street, and on that platform
+ten or more couples were "ragging," their shoulders
+working like the walking beams of side-wheelers.
+The men were of that nondescript type one would expect
+to see in a fifteen-cent dancing place, but the women
+were of curious appearance, for all were dressed alike,
+the costume being a fringed khaki suit with knee-length
+skirt, a bandana at the neck, and a sombrero. On inquiry
+I learned that this was called a "cowgirl" costume.
+The dances were very brief, and in the intervals
+between them most of the dancers went to
+a "bar" at the end of the tent where (Alabama
+being a dry State) the beverage called "coca-cola"&mdash;a
+habit as much as a drink&mdash;was being served in whisky
+glasses.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p600jpg" id="p600jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p600.jpg" width="600" height="460" alt="The couples on the platform were &quot;ragging,&quot; their shoulders working like the walking-beams of side-wheelers" title="" />
+<span class="caption">The couples on the platform were &quot;ragging,&quot; their shoulders working like the walking-beams of side-wheelers</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Unable to understand why this pageant of supposed
+western mining-camp life should confront us in the
+streets of Alabama's capital, I made inquiry of an amiable
+policeman who was on duty in the tent, and learned
+that this was not a regular Montgomery institution, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_605" id="Page_605">[Pg 605]</a></span>
+one of the attractions of a street fair which had invaded
+the city&mdash;the main body of the fair being a block or two
+distant.</p>
+
+<p>These fairs, he said, travel about the country much
+as circuses do, making arrangements in advance with
+various organizations in different places to stand sponsor
+for them.</p>
+
+<p>Long after we were in our beds that night we were
+kept awake by the sound of ragtime from the tent across
+the way. I arose next morning with the feeling of one
+who has had insufficient sleep, and a glance at my companion,
+who was already at table when I reached the
+hotel dining room, informed me that he was suffering
+from a like complaint. I took my seat opposite him in
+silence, and he acknowledged my presence with a nod
+which he accomplished without looking up from his
+newspaper.</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast there arrived a pleasant gentleman
+who announced himself as secretary of one of the city's
+commercial organizations.</p>
+
+<p>"We have a motor here," said the secretary, "and will
+show you points of interest. Is there anything in particular
+you wish to see?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think," said my companion, "that it would be a
+good thing to see the street fair."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no," said the secretary earnestly. "You don't
+want to see that. There is nothing about it that is representative
+of Montgomery. It is just a traveling show
+such as you might run into anywhere."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_606" id="Page_606">[Pg 606]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes," I said, "but we never <i>have</i> run into one before,
+and here it is."</p>
+
+<p>"I have said right along," declared the secretary,
+somberly, "that it was a great mistake to bring this fair
+here at all. I don't think you ought to pay any attention
+to it in your book. It will give people a wrong impression
+of our city."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think it will, if I explain that it is just a
+traveling fair?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Wait until you see what we have to show you.
+We want you to understand that Montgomery is a thriving
+metropolis, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>"What is there to see?"</p>
+
+<p>"Montgomery," he replied, "is known as 'The City of
+Sunshine.' It is rich in history. It has superior hotels,
+picturesque highways, good fishing and hunting, two
+golf courses, seven theaters, a number of tennis courts,
+and unsurpassed artesian water. It has free factory
+sites, the cheapest electric power rates in the United
+States, and is the best-lighted city in the country."</p>
+
+<p>"We have some pretty fair street lighting in New
+York," interjected my companion, who takes much pride
+in his home town.</p>
+
+<p>"I said '<i>one</i> of the best lighted,'" replied the secretary.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the population?"</p>
+
+<p>"Montgomery," the other returned, "is typical of
+both the Old and the New South. Though it may be
+called a modern model city, its wealth of history and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_607" id="Page_607">[Pg 607]</a></span>
+tradition are preserved with loving care by its myriad
+inhabitants."</p>
+
+<p>"How many inhabitants?"</p>
+
+<p>"Roses and other flowers are in bloom here throughout
+the year," said he. "Also there are six hundred
+miles of macadamized and picturesque highways in
+Montgomery County. Indeed, this region is a motorist's
+paradise."</p>
+
+<p>"How many people did you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Montgomery," he answered, "is the trading center
+for a million prosperous souls."</p>
+
+<p>At this my companion, who had been reading up
+Montgomery in a guidebook, began to bristle with hidden
+knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>"You say there are a million people here?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Not right <i>here</i>," admitted the secretary.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, how many do you claim?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fifty-five thousand four hundred and ten."</p>
+
+<p>"Right <i>in</i> the city?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, in the trolley-car territory."</p>
+
+<p>"But in the city itself?" my companion insisted.</p>
+
+<p>The secretary was fairly cornered. "The 1910 census,"
+he said, with a smile, "gave us about forty thousand."</p>
+
+<p>"Thirty-eight thousand one hundred and thirty-six,"
+corrected my companion. He had not spent hours with
+the guidebook for nothing.</p>
+
+<p>When, presently, we got into the automobile, I gave<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_608" id="Page_608">[Pg 608]</a></span>
+another feeble chirp about the fair, but the secretary
+was adamant, so we yielded temporarily, and were
+whirled about the city.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Montgomery is a charming old town, not only by
+reason of the definite things it has to show, but also because
+of a general rich suggestion of old southern
+life.</p>
+
+<p>The day, by a fortunate chance, was Saturday, and
+everywhere we went we encountered negroes driving in
+from the country to market, in their rickety old wagons.
+On some wagons there would be four or five men and
+women, and here and there one would be playing a
+musical instrument and they would all be singing, while
+the creaking of the wagon came in with an orchestral
+quality which seemed grotesquely suitable. The
+mules, too, looked as though they ought to creak, and an
+inspection of the harness suggested that it was held together,
+not so much by the string and wire with which
+it was mended, as by the fingers of that especial Providence
+which watches over all kinds of absurd repairs
+made by negroes, and makes them hold for negroes,
+where they would not hold for white men.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 411px;">
+<a name="p613jpg" id="p613jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p613.jpg" width="411" height="500" alt="Harness held together by that especial Providence which watches over negro
+mendings" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Harness held together by that especial Providence which watches over negro
+mendings</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In an old buff-painted brick building standing on the
+corner of Commerce and Bibb Streets, the Confederate
+Government had its first offices, and from this building,
+if I mistake not, was sent the telegraphic order to fire
+on Fort Sumter. Another historical building is the
+dilapidated frame residence at the corner of Bibb and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_609" id="Page_609">[Pg 609]</a></span>
+Lee Streets, which was the first "White House of the
+Confederacy." This building is now a boarding house,
+and is in a pathetic state of decay. But perhaps when
+Montgomery gets up the energy to build a fine tourist
+hotel, or when outside capital comes in and builds one,
+the old house will be furbished up to provide a "sight"
+for visitors.</p>
+
+<p>There are several reasons why Montgomery would
+be a good place for a large winter-resort hotel, and if I
+were a Montgomery "booster" I should give less thought
+to free factory sites than to building up the town as a
+winter stopping place for tourists. The town itself is
+picturesque and attractive; as to railroads it is well situated
+(albeit the claim that Montgomery is the "Gateway
+to Florida" strikes me as a little bit exaggerated); the
+climate is delightful, and the surrounding country is not
+only beautiful but fertile. Furthermore, there are already
+two golf clubs&mdash;one for Jews and one for Gentiles&mdash;and
+the links are reputed to be good.</p>
+
+<p>Unlike many southern cities of moderate size, Montgomery
+has well-paved streets, and the better residence
+streets, being wide, and lined with trees and pleasant
+houses, each in its own lawn, give a suggestion of an
+agreeable home and social life&mdash;a suggestion which, by
+implication at least, report substantiates: for it has been
+said that the chief industry of Montgomery is that of
+raising beautiful young women to make wives for the
+rich men of Birmingham.</p>
+
+<p>On such pleasant thoroughfares as South Perry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_610" id="Page_610">[Pg 610]</a></span>
+Street, it may be noticed that many of the newer houses
+have taken their architectural inspiration from old ones,
+with the result that, though "originality" does not jump
+out at the passer-by, as it does on so many streets, North
+and South, which are lined with the heterogeneous
+homes of prosperous families, there is an agreeable
+architectural harmony over the town.</p>
+
+<p>This is not, of course, invariably true, but it is truer,
+I think, in Montgomery than in most other cities, and
+if Montgomery is defaced by the funny little settlement
+called Bungalow City, that settlement is, at least, upon
+the outskirts of the town. Bungalow City is without
+exception the queerest real-estate development I ever
+saw. It consists of several blocks of tiny houses, standing
+on tiny lots, the scale of everything being so small
+as to suggest a play village for children. The houses
+are, however, homes, and I was told that in some of
+them all sorts of curious space-saving devices are installed&mdash;as,
+for instance, tables and beds which can be
+folded into the walls. Not far from this little settlement
+is an old house which used to be the home of Tweed,
+New York's notorious political boss, who, it is said,
+used to spend much time here.</p>
+
+<p>The chief lion of the city is the old State House, which
+stands on a graceful eminence in a small well-kept park.
+Just as the New York State Capitol is probably the most
+shamefully expensive structure of the kind in the entire
+country, that of Alabama is, I fancy, the most creditably
+inexpensive. Building and grounds cost $335,000.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_611" id="Page_611">[Pg 611]</a></span>
+Moreover, the Capitol of Alabama is a better-looking
+building than that of New York, for it is without gingerbread
+trimmings, and has about it the air of honest simplicity
+that an American State House ought to have. Of
+course it has a dome, and of course it has a columned
+portico, but both are plain, and there is a large clock, in
+a quaint box-like tower, over the peak of the portico,
+which contributes to the building a curious touch of individuality.
+At the center of the portico floor, under
+this clock, a brass plate marks the spot where Jefferson
+Davis stood when he delivered his inaugural address,
+February 18, 1861, and in the State Senate Chamber,
+within&mdash;a fine simple room with a gallery of peculiar
+grace&mdash;the Provisional Government of the Confederacy
+was organized. The flag of the Confederacy was, I believe,
+adopted in this room, and was first flung to the
+breeze from the Capitol building.</p>
+
+<p>It was past three in the afternoon when we left the
+State House, and we had had no luncheon.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," said my companion as we returned to the
+automobile, "I think we had better have something to
+eat, and then go to the fair."</p>
+
+<p>"But you were going to give up the fair," put in the
+secretary.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no," we said in chorus.</p>
+
+<p>"I have arranged about luncheon," he returned.
+"We will have it served at the hotel in a short time.
+But first there are some important sights I wish you to
+see."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_612" id="Page_612">[Pg 612]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Man shall not live by sights alone," objected my companion.
+"What are you going to show us?"</p>
+
+<p>"We have a beautiful woman's college."</p>
+
+<p>"That," said my companion, "is the one thing that
+could tempt me. How many beautiful women are
+there?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's not the women&mdash;it's the building," the secretary
+explained.</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said my companion firmly, "I think we'd better
+go and have our lunch."</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to me time to back him up in this demand.
+By dint of considerable insistence we persuaded our enthusiastic
+cicerone to drive to the hotel, where we found
+a table already set for us.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to tell you," said the secretary as we sat
+down, "about the agricultural progress this section has
+been making. Until recently our farmers raised nothing
+but cotton; they didn't even feed themselves, but
+lived largely on canned goods. But the boll weevil and
+the European War, affecting the cotton crop and the
+cotton market as they did, forced the farmers to wake
+up."</p>
+
+<p>The secretary talked interestingly on this subject for
+perhaps a quarter of an hour, during which time we
+waited for luncheon to be served.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," he said, "our climate is such that it is possible
+to rotate crops more than in most parts of the
+country. Cotton is now a surplus crop with us, and our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_613" id="Page_613">[Pg 613]</a></span>
+farmers are raising cattle, vegetables, and food products."</p>
+
+<p>"Speaking of food products," said my companion, "I
+wonder if we could hurry up the lunch?"</p>
+
+<p>"It will be along in a little while," soothed the secretary.
+Then he returned to agriculture.</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes more passed. I saw that my companion
+was becoming nervous.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry to trouble you," he said at last, "but if we
+can't speed up this luncheon, I don't see how I can wait.
+You see, we are leaving town this evening, and I have
+an awful lot to do."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll step back and investigate," the secretary said,
+rising and moving toward the kitchen door.</p>
+
+<p>When he was out of hearing, my companion leaned
+toward me.</p>
+
+<p>"I suspect this fellow!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"What of?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think he's delaying us on purpose. He's a nice
+chap, but it's his business to boost this town, and he's
+artful. He doesn't want us to see the street fair.
+That's why he's stalling like this!"</p>
+
+<p>Now, however, the secretary returned, followed by a
+waiter bearing soup.</p>
+
+<p>The soup was fine, but it was succeeded by another
+long interval, during which the secretary said some
+very, very beautiful things about the charm of Montgomery
+life. However, it was clear to me that my com<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_614" id="Page_614">[Pg 614]</a></span>panion
+was not interested. After he had looked at his
+watch several times, and drummed a long tattoo upon
+the table, he arose, declaring:</p>
+
+<p>"I can't wait another minute."</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, my dear fellow," said the secretary in his
+most genial tone. "I am having some special southern
+dishes prepared for you."</p>
+
+<p>"You're very kind," said my companion, "but I must
+get to work. It's half-past four now; we are leaving
+in a few hours. It will take me an hour to make my
+sketches, and the light will be failing pretty soon."</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to sketch?" It seemed to me
+that there was suppressed emotion in the secretary's
+voice as he asked the question.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, the street fair."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely, you're not going to <i>draw</i> it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's not representative of Montgomery. You ought
+to do something representative! What pictures have
+you made here?"</p>
+
+<p>"I made one of those negroes driving in to market,"
+said my companion, "and one of the dancing cowgirls
+in the tent across the way&mdash;the ones who kept us awake
+last night."</p>
+
+<p>"My God!" cried the secretary, turning to me. "You
+intend to print such pictures and say that they represent
+the normal life of this city?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I won't say anything about it."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;" the secretary arose and looked wanly at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_615" id="Page_615">[Pg 615]</a></span>
+illustrator&mdash;"but you haven't drawn any of our pretty
+homes! You didn't draw the golf clubs&mdash;not either one
+of them! You didn't draw the State House, or the
+Confederate Monument, or the Insane Asylum, or
+anything!"</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't had time."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you have time now! I tell you what: We'll
+let this luncheon go. I'll take you to the top of our
+tallest building, and you can draw a panoramic bird's-eye
+view of the entire city. That will be worth while."</p>
+
+<p>My companion reached out, helped himself to a French
+roll, and put it in his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said. "I will not go to the top of a high
+building with you."</p>
+
+<p>"But why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because," he replied, "I am afraid you would try to
+push me off the roof to prevent my drawing the street
+fair."</p>
+
+<p>I do not remember that the secretary denied having
+harbored such a plan. At all events, he countermanded
+the remainder of the luncheon order and departed with
+us.</p>
+
+<p>At the entrance of an office building he made one final
+desperate appeal: "Just come up to the top floor and
+see the view!"</p>
+
+<p>But we stood firm, and he continued with us on our
+way.</p>
+
+<p>The fair was strung along both sides of a wide,
+cobbled street. It was really a very jolly fair, with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_616" id="Page_616">[Pg 616]</a></span>
+usual lot of barkers and the usual gaping crowd, plus
+many negroes, who stood fascinated before the highly
+colored canvas signs outside the tents, with their bizarre
+pictures of wild animals, snake charmers, "Nemo, the
+Malay Prince," and "The Cigarette Fiend," pictured
+as a ghastly emaciated object with a blue complexion,
+and billed as "Endorsed by the Anti-Cigarette League
+of America." I wished to inquire why an anti-cigarette
+league should indorse a cigarette fiend, but lack of time
+compelled us to press on, leaving the apparent paradox
+unsolved.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 404px;">
+<a name="p616jpg" id="p616jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p616.jpg" width="404" height="600" alt="It was a very jolly fair, with the usual lot of barkers and the usual gaping crowd" title="" />
+<span class="caption">It was a very jolly fair, with the usual lot of barkers and the usual gaping crowd</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>As we progressed between the tents and the booths
+with their catchpenny "wheels of fortune," and ring-tossing
+enticements, the secretary maintained a protesting
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>Near the end of the block we stopped to listen to a
+particularly vociferous barker. I saw my companion
+take his pad from his pocket and place it under his
+arm, while he sharpened a pencil.</p>
+
+<p>"Come!" cried the secretary. "Come across the
+square and let me show you our beautiful bronze fountain.
+Draw that!"</p>
+
+<p>But my companion was already beginning to sketch.
+He was drawing the barker and the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile an expression of horror came into the
+secretary's face. Looking at him, I became conscience-stricken.</p>
+
+<p>"Come away," I said gently, taking him by the arm.
+"Don't watch him draw. He draws wonderfully, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_617" id="Page_617">[Pg 617]</a></span>
+Art for Art's sake doesn't appeal to you just now. The
+better he draws the worse it will make you feel. Let me
+get your mind off all this. Let me take you over to the
+autodrome, where we can see Mr. O.&nbsp;K. Hager and his
+beautiful sister, Miss Olive Hager, the 'Two Daredevil
+Motorcyclists, in the Thrilling Race against Death.'
+That will make you forget."</p>
+
+<p>"No," said the secretary, shaking his head with a despondency
+the very sight of which made me sad; "I have
+letters to sign at the office."</p>
+
+<p>"And we have taken up your whole day!"</p>
+
+<p>"It has been a pleasure," he said kindly. "There is
+only one thing that worries me. Those drawings are
+not going to represent what is typical of Montgomery
+life. Not in the least!"</p>
+
+<p>There arose in me a sudden desire to comfort him.</p>
+
+<p>"How would it be," I suggested, "if I were to print
+that statement in my book?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"But you couldn't very well do that, could you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," I replied.</p>
+
+<p>His face brightened. It was delightful to see the
+change come over him.</p>
+
+<p>"For that matter," I went on, "I might say even more.
+I could say that, while I admire my companion as a man,
+and as an artist, he lacks ingenuity in ordering breakfast.
+He always reads over the menu and then orders
+a baked apple and scrambled eggs and bacon. Would
+you like me to attack him on that line also?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_618" id="Page_618">[Pg 618]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no," said the secretary. "Nothing of that kind.
+It's just about these pictures. They aren't representative.
+If you'll say that, I'll be more than satisfied."</p>
+
+<p>Presently we parted.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't forget!" he said as we shook hands in farewell.</p>
+
+<p>And I have not forgotten. Moreover, to give full
+measure, I am going to ask the printer to set the statement
+in italics:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>The drawings accompanying this chapter are not representative
+of what is typical of Montgomery life.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>With this statement my companion is in full accord.
+He admits that he would have drawn the State House
+had there been no fair, to interfere. But, as with certain
+items on the breakfast bill, street fairs are a passion
+with him. And so they are with me.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_619" id="Page_619">[Pg 619]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LVI" id="CHAPTER_LVI"></a>CHAPTER LVI<br />
+<br />
+THE CITY OF THE CREOLE</h2>
+
+
+<p>When a poet, a painter, or a sculptor wishes
+to personify a city, why does he invariably
+give it the feminine gender? Why is this
+so, even though the city be named for a man, or for a
+masculine saint? And why is it so in the case of commonplace
+cities, commercial cities, and ugly, sordid
+cities? It is not difficult to understand why a beautiful,
+sparkling city, like Washington or Paris, suggests
+a handsome woman, richly gowned and bedecked with
+jewels, but it is hard to understand why some other
+cities, far less pleasing, seem somehow to be stamped
+with the qualities of woman-nature rather than man-nature.
+Is it perhaps because the nature of all cities is
+so complicated? Is it because they are volatile, changeful,
+baffling? Or is it only that they are the mothers
+of great families of men?</p>
+
+<p>When I arrive in a strange city I feel as though I
+were making the acquaintance of a woman of whom I
+have often heard. I am curious about her. I am alert.
+I gaze at her eagerly, wondering if she is as I have imagined
+her. I try to read her expression while listening
+to her voice. I consider her raiment, noticing whether
+it is fine, whether it is good only in spots, and whether<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_620" id="Page_620">[Pg 620]</a></span>
+it is well put together. I inspect the important buildings,
+boulevards, parks, and monuments with which she
+is jeweled, and judge by them not only of her prosperity,
+but of her sense of beauty. Before long I have
+a distinct impression of her. Sometimes, as with a
+woman, this first impression has to be revised; sometimes
+not. Sometimes, on acquaintance, a single feature,
+or trait, becomes so important in my eyes that all
+else seems inconsequential. A noble spirit may cover
+physical defects; beauty may seem to compensate for
+weaknesses of character. The spell of a beautiful city
+which is bad resembles the spell of such a city's prototype
+among women.</p>
+
+<p>Some young growing cities are like young growing
+women of whom we think: "She is as yet unformed,
+but she will fill out and become more charming as she
+grows older." Or again we think: "She is somewhat
+dowdy and run down at the heels but she is ambitious,
+and is replenishing her wardrobe as she can afford it."
+One expects such failings in young cities, and readily
+forgives them where there is wholesome promise for
+the future. But where old cities become slovenly, the
+affair is different, for then it means physical decay, and
+physical decay should never come to a city&mdash;for a
+city is not only feminine, but should be immortal. The
+symbol for every city should be a goddess, forever in
+her prime.</p>
+
+<p>Among southern cities Richmond is the <i>grande dame</i>;
+she is gray and distinguished, and wears handsome old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_621" id="Page_621">[Pg 621]</a></span>
+brocades and brooches. Richmond is aquiline and crisp
+and has much "manner." But though Charleston is
+actually the older, the wonderful beauty of the place, the
+softness of the ancient architectural lines, the sweet
+scents wafting from walled gardens, the warmth of
+color everywhere, gives the place that very quality of
+immortal youth and loveliness which is so rare in cities,
+and is so much to be desired. Charleston I might allegorize
+in the person of a young woman I met there. I
+was in the drawing-room of a fine old house; a beautifully
+proportioned room, paneled to the ceiling, hung
+with family portraits and other old paintings, and furnished
+with mahogany masterpieces a century and a
+half old. The girl lived in this house. She was not
+exactly pretty, nor was her figure beautiful in the usual
+sense; yet it was beautiful, all the same, with a sort of
+long-limbed, supple, aristocratic aliveness. Most of all
+there was about her a great fineness&mdash;the kind of fineness
+which seems to be the expression of generations of
+fineness. She was the granddaughter of a general in
+the Civil War, the great-granddaughter of an ambassador,
+the great-great-granddaughter of a Revolutionary
+hero, and though one could not but be thankful that
+she failed of striking resemblance to the portraits of
+these admirable ancestors, nevertheless it seemed to me
+that, had I not known definitely of their place in her
+family history, I might almost have sensed them hovering
+behind her: a background, nebulous and shadowy,
+out of which she had emerged.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_622" id="Page_622">[Pg 622]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Memphis, upon the other hand, will always be to me a
+lively modern d&eacute;butante. I vision her as dancing&mdash;dancing
+to Handy's ragtime music&mdash;all shoulders, neck,
+and arms, and tulle, and twenty-dollar satin slippers.
+Atlanta, too, is young, vivid, affluent, altogether modern;
+while as for Birmingham, she is pretty, but a little
+strident, a little overdressed; touched a little with the
+amiability, and the other qualities, of the <i>nouveau riche</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The beauty of New Orleans is of a different kind.
+She is a full-blown, black-eyed, dreamy, drawly creature,
+opulent of figure, white of skin, and red of lip.
+Like San Francisco she has Latin blood which makes
+her love and preserve the carnival spirit; but she is more
+voluptuous than San Francisco, for not only is she
+touched with the languor and the fire of her climate,
+but she is without the virile blood of the forty-niner, or
+the invigorating contact of the fresh Pacific wind. In
+my imaginary picture I see her yawning at eleven in the
+morning, when her negro maid brings black coffee to
+her bedside&mdash;such wonderful black coffee!&mdash;whereas,
+at that hour, I conceive San Francisco as having long
+been up and about her affairs. Even in the afternoon
+I fancy my New Orleans beauty as a little bit relaxed.
+But at dinner she becomes alive, and after dinner more
+alive, and by midnight she is like a flame.</p>
+
+<p>I must admit, however, that of late years New
+Orleans has developed a perfect case of dual personality,
+and that, as often happens where there is dual personality,
+one side of her nature seems altogether incom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_623" id="Page_623">[Pg 623]</a></span>patible
+with the other. The very new New Orleans has
+no resemblance to the picture I have drawn; moreover,
+my picture is not her favorite likeness of herself. She
+prefers more recent ones&mdash;pictures showing the lines
+of determination which, within the last ten years have
+stamped themselves upon her features, as she has fought
+and overcome the defects of character which logically
+accompanied her peculiar, temperamental type of
+charm. I, upon the other hand, am like some lover who
+values most an older picture of the woman he adores.
+I admire her for building character, but it is by her
+languorous beauty that I am infatuated, and the portrait
+which most effectively displays that beauty is the
+one for which I care.</p>
+
+<p>Her very failings were so much a part of her that
+they made us the more sympathetic; she was too lovely
+to be greatly blamed for anything; gazing into her eyes,
+we hardly noticed that there was dust under the piano
+and in the corners; dining at her sumptuous table, we
+gave but little thought to the fact that the cellar was
+damp, the house none too healthy, and that there were
+mosquitoes and rats about the place; nor did it seem to
+matter, in face of her allurements, that she was shiftless,
+extravagant, improvident in the management of
+her affairs. If these things were brought to our attention,
+we excused them on the grounds of Latin blood
+and enervating climate.</p>
+
+<p>But if we excused her, she did not excuse herself.
+Without being shaken awake by an earthquake, or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_624" id="Page_624">[Pg 624]</a></span>
+forced to action by a devastating fire or flood, she set
+to work, calmly and of her own volition, to reform her
+character.</p>
+
+<p>First she cleaned house, providing good surface drainage,
+an excellent filtered water supply from the river
+in place of her old mosquito-breeding cisterns, and modern
+sewers in place of cesspools. She killed rats by the
+hundreds of thousands, rat-proofed her buildings, and
+thus, at one stroke, eliminated all fear of bubonic plague.
+She began to take interest in the public schools, and
+soon trebled their advantages. She concerned herself
+with the revision of repressive tax laws. She secured
+one of the best street railway systems in the country.
+But, perhaps most striking of all, she set to work to
+build scientifically toward the realization of a gigantic
+dream. This dream embodies the resumption by New
+Orleans of her old place as second seaport city. To
+this end she is doing more than any other city to revive
+the commerce of the Mississippi River, and is at the
+same time making a strong bid for trade by way of the
+Panama Canal, as well as other sea traffic. She has
+restored her forty miles of water front to the people,
+has built municipal docks and warehouses at a cost of
+millions, and has so perfectly co&ouml;rdinated her river-rail-sea
+traffic-handling agencies that rates have been
+greatly reduced. Upon these, and related enterprises,
+upward of a hundred millions are being spent, and the
+vast plan is working out with such promise that one
+almost begins to fear lest New Orleans become too much<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_625" id="Page_625">[Pg 625]</a></span>
+enamored of her new-found materialism&mdash;lest the easy-going,
+pleasure-loving, fascinating Creole belle be transformed
+into the much-less-rare and much-less-desirable
+business type of woman: a woman whose letters, instead
+of being written in a fine French hand and scented with
+the faint fragrance of vertivert, are typewritten upon
+commercial paper; whose lips, instead of causing one
+to think of kisses, are laden with the deadly cant of
+commerce; whose skin, instead of seeming to be made
+of milk and rose leaves, is dappled with industrial soot.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Chesterfield in one of his letters to his son, intimated
+that beautiful women desire to be flattered upon
+their intelligence, while intelligent women who are not
+altogether ugly like to be told that they are beautiful.
+So with New Orleans. Speak of her individuality, her
+picturesqueness, her gift of laughter, and she will listen
+with polite ennui; but admire her commercial progress
+and she will hang upon your words. Gaiety and charm
+are so much a part of her that she not only takes them
+as a matter of course, but seems to doubt, sometimes,
+that they are virtues. She is like some unusual and
+fascinating woman who, instead of rejoicing because
+she is not like all other women, begins to wonder if she
+ought not to be like them. Perhaps she is wrong to be
+gay? Perhaps her carnival proves her frivolous? Perhaps
+she ought not to continue to hold a carnival each
+year?</p>
+
+<p>Far to the north of New Orleans the city of St. Paul
+was afflicted, some years since, by a similar agitation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_626" id="Page_626">[Pg 626]</a></span>
+It will be remembered that St. Paul used to build an ice
+palace each year. People used to go to see it as they
+go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Then came some
+believer in the standardization of cities, advancing the
+idea that ice palaces advertised St. Paul as a cold place.
+As a result they ceased to be built. St. Paul threw
+away something which drew attention to her and which
+gave her character. Moreover, I am told this mania
+went so far that when folders were issued for the purpose
+of advertising the region, they were designed to
+suggest the warmth and brilliance of the tropics. Had
+St. Paul a bad climate, instead of a peculiarly fine one,
+we might feel sympathetic tolerance for these performances,
+but a city which enjoys cool summers and dry,
+bracing winters has no apologies to make upon the score
+of climate, and only need apologize if she tries to make
+us think that bananas and cocoanuts grow on sugar-maple
+trees. However, in the last year or two, St. Paul
+has perceived the folly of her course, and has resumed
+her annual carnival.</p>
+
+<p>In the case of New Orleans I cannot believe there is
+real danger that the carnival will be given up. Instead,
+I believe that the business enthusiasts will be appeased&mdash;as
+they were a year or two ago, for the first time in
+carnival history&mdash;by the inclusion of an industrial
+pageant glorifying the city's commercial renaissance.
+Also the New Orleans newspapers soothe the spirit of
+the Association of Commerce, at carnival time, by publishing
+items presumably furnished by that capable or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_627" id="Page_627">[Pg 627]</a></span>ganization,
+showing that business is going on as usual,
+that bank clearings have not diminished during the festivities,
+and that, despite the air of happiness that pervades
+the town, New Orleans is not really beginning to
+have such a good time as a stranger might suppose from
+superficial signs. With such concessions made to solemn
+visaged commerce, is the carnival continued.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>There are at least six cities on this continent which
+every one should see. Every one should see New York
+because it is the largest city in the world, and because
+it combines the magnificence, the wonder, the beauty,
+the sordidness, and the shame of a great metropolis;
+every one should see San Francisco because it is so
+vivid, so alive, so golden; every one should see Washington,
+the clean, white splendor of which is like the
+embodiment of a national dream; every one should see
+the old gray granite city of Quebec, piled on its hill above
+the river like some fortified town in France; every one
+should see the sweet and aristocratic city of Charleston,
+which suggests a museum of tradition and early American
+elegance; and of course every one should see New
+Orleans.</p>
+
+<p>As to whether it is best to see the city in everyday
+attire, or masked for the revels, that is a matter of
+taste, and perhaps of age as well. To any one who
+loves cities, New Orleans is always good to see, while
+to the lover of spectacles and f&ecirc;tes the carnival is also
+worth seeing&mdash;once. The two are, however, hardly to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_628" id="Page_628">[Pg 628]</a></span>
+be seen to advantage simultaneously. To visit New
+Orleans in carnival time is like visiting some fine old
+historic mansion when it is all in a flurry over a fancy-dress
+ball. The furniture is moved, master, mistress
+and servants are excited, the cook is overworked and
+is perhaps complaining a little, and the brilliant costumes
+of the masquerade divert the eye of the visitor
+so that he hardly knows what sort of house he is in.
+Attend the ball if you like, but do not fail to revisit
+the house when normal conditions have been restored;
+see the festivities of Mardi Gras if you will, but do not
+fail to browse about old New Orleans and sit down at
+her famous tables when her chefs have time to do their
+best.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_629" id="Page_629">[Pg 629]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LVII" id="CHAPTER_LVII"></a>CHAPTER LVII<br />
+<br />
+HISTORY, THE CREOLE, AND HIS DUELS</h2>
+
+
+<p>Canal Street is to New Orleans much more
+than Main Street is to Buffalo, much more than
+Broad Street is to Philadelphia, much more
+than Broadway and Fifth Avenue are to New York, for
+Canal Street divides New Orleans as no other street
+divides an American city. It divides New Orleans as
+the Seine divides Paris, and there is not more difference
+between the right bank of the Seine and the Latin
+Quarter than between American New Orleans and
+Creole New Orleans: between the newer part of the city
+and the <i>vieux carr&eacute;</i>. The sixty squares ("islets" according
+to the Creole idiom, because each block was
+literally an islet in time of flood) which comprise the old
+French town established in 1718 by the Sieur de Bienville,
+are unlike the rest of the city not merely in architecture,
+but in all respects. The street names change
+at Canal Street, the highways become narrower as you
+enter the French quarter, and the pavements are made
+of huge stone blocks brought over long ago as ballast in
+sailing ships. Nor is the difference purely physical.
+For though they will tell you that this part of the city
+is not so French and Spanish as it used to be, that it has
+run down, that large parts of it have been given over to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_630" id="Page_630">[Pg 630]</a></span>
+Italians of the lower class, and to negroes, it remains
+not only in appearance, but in custom, thought and
+character, the most perfectly foreign little tract of land
+in the whole United States. Long ago, under the
+French flag, it was a part of the Roman Catholic bishopric
+of Quebec; later under the Spanish flag, a part of
+that of Havana; and it is charming to trace in old
+buildings, names, and customs the signs of this blended
+French and Spanish ancestry.</p>
+
+<p>La Salle, searching out a supposed route to China
+by way of the Mississippi River, seems to have perceived
+what the New Orleans Association of Commerce
+perceives to-day: that the control of the mouth of the
+river ought to mean also the control of a vast part of
+the continent. At all events, he took possession in 1682
+in the name of the French King, calling the river St.
+Louis and the country Louisiana. The latter name
+persisted, but La Salle himself later rechristened the
+river, giving it the name Colbert, thereby showing that
+in two attempts he could not find a name one tenth as
+good as that already provided by the savages. The "St.
+Louis River" might, from its name, be a fair-sized
+stream, but "Colbert" sounds like the name of a river
+about twenty miles long, forty feet wide at the mouth,
+and five feet deep at the very middle.</p>
+
+<p>La Salle intended to build a fort at a point sixty
+leagues above the mouth of the river, but his expedition
+met with disaster upon disaster, until at last he was assassinated
+in Texas, when setting out on foot to seek<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_631" id="Page_631">[Pg 631]</a></span>
+help from Canada. In 1699 came Iberville, the Canadian,
+exploring the river and fixing on the site for the
+future city. Iberville established settlements at old
+Biloxi (now Ocean Springs) and Mobile, but before he
+had time to make a town at New Orleans he caught
+yellow fever at Havana, and died there. It therefore
+remained for his brother, Bienville, actually to establish
+the town, and New Orleans is Bienville's city, just
+as Detroit is Cadillac's, and Cleveland General Moses
+Cleveland's.</p>
+
+<p>Bienville's settlers were hardy pioneers from Canada,
+and presently we find him writing to France:
+"Send me wives for my Canadians. They are running
+in the woods after Indian girls." The priests also
+urged that unless white wives could be sent out for the
+settlers, marriages with Indians be sanctioned.</p>
+
+<p>Having now a considerable investment in Louisiana,
+France felt that a request for wives for the colony was
+practical and legitimate. Louisiana must have population.
+A bonus of so much per head was offered for
+colonists, and hideous things ensued: servants, children,
+and helpless women were kidnapped, and the occupants
+of hospitals, asylums, and houses of correction were
+assembled and deported. Incidentally it will be remembered
+that out of these black deeds flowered "the first
+masterpiece of French literature which can properly be
+called a novel," the Abb&eacute; Pr&eacute;vost's "Manon Lescaut,"
+which has been dramatized and redramatized, and
+which is the theme of operas by both Massenet and Puc<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_632" id="Page_632">[Pg 632]</a></span>cini.
+Though a grave alleged to be that of Manon
+used to be shown on the outskirts of the city, there is
+doubt that such a person actually existed, although those
+who wish to believe in a flesh-and-blood Manon may perhaps
+take encouragement from the fact that the arrival
+in the colony of a Chevalier des Grieux, in the year
+1719, fourteen years before the book appeared, has been
+established, and, further, that the name of the Chevalier
+des Grieux may be seen upon a crumbling tomb in
+one of the river parishes.</p>
+
+<p>When the girls arrived they were on inspection in the
+daytime, but at night were carefully guarded by soldiers,
+in the house where they were quartered together.
+Miss Grace King, in her delightful book, "New Orleans,
+the Place and the People," tells us that in these times
+there were never enough girls to fill the demand for
+wives, and that in one instance two young bachelors proposed
+to fight over a very plain girl&mdash;the last one left
+out of a shipload&mdash;but that the commandant obliged
+them to settle their dispute by the more pacific means of
+drawing lots. As the place became settled Ursuline
+sisters arrived and established schools. And at last, a
+quarter of a century after the landing of the first shipment
+of girls, the curious history of female importations
+ended with the arrival of that famous band of sixty
+demoiselles of respectable family and "authenticated
+spotless reputation," who came to be taken as wives by
+only the more prosperous young colonists of the better
+class. The earlier, less reputable girls have come down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_633" id="Page_633">[Pg 633]</a></span>
+to us by the name of "correction girls," but these later
+arrivals&mdash;each furnished by the Company of the West
+with a casket containing a trousseau&mdash;are known to this
+day as <i>les filles &agrave; la cassette</i>, or "casket girls."</p>
+
+<p>A curious feature of this bit of history, as it applies
+to present-day New Orleans, is that though one hears
+of many families that claim descent from some nice,
+well-behaved "casket girl," one never by any chance
+hears of a family claiming to be descended from a lady
+of the other stock. When it is considered that the "correction
+girls" far outnumbered their virtuous sisters of
+the casket, and ought, therefore, by the law of averages,
+to have left a greater progeny, the matter becomes
+stranger still, taking on a scientific interest. The explanation
+must, however, be left to some mind more astute
+than mine&mdash;some mind capable, perhaps, of unraveling
+also those other riddles of New Orleans namely:
+Who was the mysterious chevalier who many years ago
+invented that most delectable of <i>sucreries</i>, the praline,
+and whither did he vanish? And how, although the refugee
+Duc d'Orleans (later Louis Philippe of France)
+stayed but a short time in New Orleans, did he manage
+to sleep in so many hundred beds, and in houses which
+were not built until long after his departure? And why
+are so many of the signs, over bars, restaurants, and
+shops, of that blue and white enamel one associates with
+the signs of the Western Union Telegraph Company?
+And why is the nickel as characteristic of New Orleans
+as is the silver dollar of the farther Middle West, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_634" id="Page_634">[Pg 634]</a></span>
+gold coin of the Pacific Slope&mdash;why, when one pays for
+a ten-cent purchase with a half-dollar, does one receive
+eight nickels in change? Ah, but New Orleans is a
+mysterious city!</p>
+
+<p>Once, when the French and English were fighting for
+the possession of Canada and New Orleans was depending
+for protection on Swiss mercenaries, the French officer
+in command of these troops disciplined them by
+stripping them and tying them to trees, where they were
+a prey to the terrible mosquitoes of the Gulf. One day
+they killed him and fled, but some of them were captured.
+These were taken back to New Orleans, court-martialed,
+and punished according to the regulations:
+they were nailed alive to their coffins and sawed in two.</p>
+
+<p>Ceded to Spain by a secret clause in the Treaty of
+Paris, of which she did not know until 1764, Louisiana
+could not believe the news. Even when the Acadians,
+appeared, after having been so cruelly ejected from their
+lands in what is now New Brunswick, Louisiana could
+not believe that Louis XV would coldly cast off his loyal
+colony. The fact that he had done so was not credited
+until a Spanish governor arrived. For three years
+after, there was confusion. Then a strong force was
+sent from Spain under Count O'Reilly, a man of Irish
+birth, but Spanish allegiance, and the flag of Spain was
+raised. O'Reilly maintained viceregal splendor; he invited
+leading citizens to a levee; here in his own house
+he caused his soldiers to seize the group of prominent
+men who had attempted to prevent the accomplishment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_635" id="Page_635">[Pg 635]</a></span>
+of Spanish rule, and five of these he presently caused to
+be shot as rebels.</p>
+
+<p>Spanish governors came and went. The people
+settled down. At one time Padre Antonio de Sedella,
+a Spanish Capuchin, arrived with a commission to establish
+in the city the Holy office of the Inquisition, but
+he was discouraged and shipped back to Cadiz. Miss
+King tells us that when, half a century later, the calaboose
+was demolished, secret dungeons containing instruments
+of torture were discovered.</p>
+
+<p>On Good Friday, 1788, fire broke out, and as the
+priests refused to let the bells be rung in warning, saying
+that all bells must be dumb on Good Friday, the conflagration
+gained such headway that it could not be checked,
+and a large part of the old French town was reduced to
+ashes. Six years later another fire equally destructive,
+completed the work of blotting out the French town, and
+the old New Orleans we now know is the Spanish city
+which arose in its place: a city not of wood but of adobe
+or brick, stuccoed and tinted, of arcaded walks, galleries,
+jalousies, ponderous doors, and inner courts with carriage
+entrances from the street, and, behind, the most
+charming and secluded gardens. Also, owing to premiums
+offered by Baron Carondelet, the governor, tile
+roofs came into vogue, so that the city became comparatively
+fireproof. Much of the present-day charm of
+the old city is due also to the noble Andalusian, Don
+Andreas Almonaster y Roxas, who having immigrated
+and made a great fortune in the city, became its bene<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_636" id="Page_636">[Pg 636]</a></span>factor,
+building schools and other public institutions, the
+picturesque old Cabildo, or town hall, which is now a
+most fascinating museum, the cathedral, which adjoins
+the Cabildo, and which, like it, faces Jackson Square,
+formerly the Place d'Armes. In front of the altar of
+his cathedral Don Andreas is buried, and masses are
+said, in perpetuity, for his soul. When the Don's young
+widow remarried, she and her husband were pursued
+by a charivari lasting three days and three nights&mdash;the
+most famous charivari in the history of a city widely
+noted for these detestable functions. The Don's
+daughter, a great heiress, became the Baronne Po&ntilde;talba
+and resided in magnificence in Paris, where she
+died, a very old woman, in 1874.</p>
+
+<p>In the Place d'Armes much of the early history of
+New Orleans, and indeed, of Louisiana, was written.
+Here, and in the Cabildo, the transfers from flag to flag
+took place, ending with the ceding of Louisiana by Spain
+to France, and by France to the United States. At this
+time New Orleans had about ten thousand inhabitants,
+most of the whites being Creoles.</p>
+
+<p>Harris Dickson, who knows a great deal about New
+Orleans, declared in an article published some years ago,
+that outside lower Louisiana the word "Creole" is still
+misunderstood, and added this definition of the term:
+"A person of mixed French and Spanish blood, born in
+Louisiana." As I understand it, however, the blood
+need not necessarily be mixed, but may be pure Spanish
+or pure French, or again, there may be some admixture<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_637" id="Page_637">[Pg 637]</a></span>
+of English blood. The word itself was, I am informed,
+originally Spanish, and signified an American descended
+from Spaniards; later it got into the language of the
+French West Indies, whence it was imported, to Louisiana,
+about the end of the eighteenth century, by refugees
+who arrived in considerable numbers from San Domingo,
+after the revolution of the blacks there. Thus,
+the early French settlers did not use the word.</p>
+
+<p>If any misapprehension as to whether a Creole is a
+white person does still exist, that misunderstanding is,
+I believe, to be traced to the doors of an old-time cheap
+burlesque theater in Chicago, where the late impresario,
+Sam T. Jack, put on a show in which mulatto women
+were billed as "a galaxy of Creole beauties." This
+show traveled about the country libeling the Creoles and
+doubtless causing many persons of that class which attended
+Sam T. Jack's shows, to believe that "Creole"
+means something like "quadroon." But when the show
+got to Baton Rouge the manager was waited upon by a
+committee of citizens who said certain things to him
+which caused him to give up his engagement there and
+cancel any other engagements he had in the Creole
+country.</p>
+
+<p>True, one frequently hears references in New Orleans
+to "Creole mammies," and "Creole negroes," but the
+word used in that sense merely indicates a negro who
+has been the servant of Creoles, and who speaks French&mdash;"gombo
+French" the curious dialect is called. Similarly
+one hears of "Creole ponies"&mdash;these being ponies<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_638" id="Page_638">[Pg 638]</a></span>
+of the small, strong type used by the Cajan farmers.
+According to the Louisiana dialect Longfellow's "Evangeline"
+was a Cajan, the word being a corruption of
+"Acadian." About a thousand of these unfortunate
+expatriates arrived in New Orleans between 1765 and
+1768. Within a century they had multiplied to forty
+times that number, spreading over the entire western
+part of the State.</p>
+
+<p>Much of the temperament, the gaiety, the sensitiveness
+of New Orleans comes from the Creole. He was
+Latin enough to be a good deal of a gambler, to love
+beautiful women, and on slight provocation to draw his
+sword.</p>
+
+<p>The street names of New Orleans&mdash;not only those of
+the French Quarter, but of the whole city&mdash;reflect his
+various tastes. Many of the streets bear the names of
+historic figures of the French and Spanish r&eacute;gimes;
+Rampart Street, formerly the rue des Ramparts marks,
+like the outer boulevards of Paris, the line of the old city
+wall. Other streets were given pretty feminine names
+by the old Creole gallants: Suzette, Celeste, Estelle,
+Angelie, and the like. The devout doubtless had their
+share in the naming of Religious Street, Nuns Street,
+Piety Street, Assumption Street, and Amen Street.
+The taste for Greek and Roman classicism which developed
+in France at the time of the Revolution, found
+its way to Louisiana, and is reflected in New Orleans by
+streets bearing the names of gods, demi gods, the muses
+and the graces. The pronunciation given to some of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_639" id="Page_639">[Pg 639]</a></span>
+these names is curious: Melpomene, instead of being
+given four syllables is called Melpomeen; Calliope is
+similarly Callioap; Euterpe, Euterp, and so on. This,
+however, is the result not of ignorance, but of a slight
+corruption of the correct French pronunciations, the
+Americans having taken their way of pronouncing the
+names from the French. The Napoleonic wars are
+commemorated in the names of Napoleon Avenue, and
+Austerlitz and Jena Streets, and the visit of Lafayette in
+the naming for him of both a street and an avenue. But
+perhaps the most striking names of all the old ones were
+Mystery Street, Madman's Street, Love Street (Rue de
+l'Amour), Goodchildren Street (Rue des Bons Enfants),
+and above all those two streets in the Faubourg Marigny
+which old Bernard Marigny amused himself by naming
+for two games of chance at which, it is said, he had
+lost a fortune&mdash;namely Bagatelle and Craps&mdash;the latter
+not the game played with dice, but an old-time game of
+cards.</p>
+
+<p>The French spoken by cultivated Creoles bears to the
+French of modern France about the same relation as the
+current English of Virginia does to that of England.
+Creole French is founded largely upon the French of
+the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, just as
+many of the so-called "Americanisms" of older parts of
+the country, including Virginia and New England, are
+Elizabethan. The early English and French colonists,
+coming to this country with the language of their times,
+dropped, over here, into a linguistic backwater. In the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_640" id="Page_640">[Pg 640]</a></span>
+mother countries language continued to renew itself as
+it flowed along, by elisions, by the adoption and legitimatizing
+of slang words (as for instance the word
+"cab," to which Dean Swift objected on the ground that
+it was slang for "cabriolet"), and by all the other means
+through which our vocabularies are forever changing.
+But to the colonies these changes were not carried, and
+such changes as occurred in the French and English of
+America were, for the most part, separate and distinct
+(as exampled by such Creole words as "banquette" for
+"sidewalk," in place of the French word <i>trottoir</i>, and
+the word "baire," whence comes the American term
+"mosquito bar.") The influence of colloquial French
+from Canada may also be traced in New Orleans, and
+the language there was further affected by the strange
+jargon spoken by the Creole negro&mdash;precisely as the
+English dialect of negroes in other parts of the South
+may be said to have affected the speech of all the
+Southern States.</p>
+
+<p>Between the dialect of the Louisiana Cajan and that
+of the French Canadian of Quebec and northern New
+York there is a strong resemblance; but the Creole negro
+language is a thing entirely apart, being made up, it is
+said, partly from French and partly from African word
+sounds, just as the "gulla" of the South Carolina coast
+is made up from African and English. The one is no
+more intelligible to a Frenchman than the other to a
+Londoner. The ignorant Creole negro wishing to say
+"I do not understand," would not say "moi je ne com<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_641" id="Page_641">[Pg 641]</a></span>prends
+pas," but "mo pas connais"; similarly for "I am
+going away," he does not say, "je m'en vais," but "ma
+pe couri"; while for "I have a horse," instead of "j'ai
+un cheval," he will put the statement, "me gany&eacute; choue."
+It is a dialect lacking mood, tense, and grammar.</p>
+
+<p>To this day one may occasionally see in New Orleans
+and in other lower river towns an old "mammy" wearing
+the bandanna headdress called a <i>tignon</i>, which, toward
+the end of the eighteenth century, was made compulsory
+for colored women in Louisiana. The need for
+some such distinguishing racial badge was, it is said,
+twofold. Yellow sirens from the French West Indies,
+flocking to New Orleans, were becoming exceedingly
+conspicuous in dress and adornment; furthermore one
+hears stories of wealthy white men, fathers of octoroon
+or quadroon girls, who sent these illegitimate daughters
+abroad to be educated. The latter, one learns from
+many sources, were very often beautiful in the extreme,
+as were also the Domingan girls, and history is full of
+the tales of the curious, wild, fashionably caparisoned,
+declass&eacute; circle of society, which came to exist in New
+Orleans through the presence there of so many alluring
+women of light color and equally light character. Some
+of these women, it is said, could hardly be distinguished
+from brunette whites, and it was largely for this reason
+that the <i>tignon</i> was placed by law upon the heads of
+all women having negro blood.</p>
+
+<p>No morsels from the history of old New Orleans are
+more suggestive to the imagination than the hints we get<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_642" id="Page_642">[Pg 642]</a></span>
+from many sources of wildly dissipated life centering
+around the notorious quadroon balls&mdash;or as they were
+called in their day, <i>cordon bleu</i> balls. An old guide book
+informs me that the women who were the great attraction
+at these functions were "probably the handsomest
+race of women in the world, and were, besides, splendid
+dancers and finished dressers." Authorities seem to
+agree that these balls were exceedingly popular among
+the young Creole gentlemen, as well as with men visiting
+the city, and that duels, resulting from quarrels over
+the women, were of common occurrence. If a Creole
+had the choice of weapons slender swords called <i>colichemardes</i>
+were used, whereas pistols were almost invariably
+selected by Americans. Duels with swords were
+often fought indoors, but when firearms were to be employed
+the combatants repaired to one of the customary
+dueling grounds. Under the fine old live oaks of the
+City Park&mdash;then out in the country&mdash;it is said that as
+many as ten duels have been fought in a single day.
+Duels having their beginnings at the quadroon balls
+were, however, often fought in St. Anthony's Garden,
+for the ballroom was in a building (now occupied by a
+sisterhood of colored nuns) which stands on Orleans
+Street, near where it abuts against the Garden. This
+garden, bearing the name of the saint whose temptations
+have been of such conspicuous interest to painters of the
+nude, is not named for him so much in his own right, as
+because he was the patron of that same Padre Antonio
+de Sedella, already mentioned, who came to New Or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_643" id="Page_643">[Pg 643]</a></span>leans
+to institute the Inquisition, but who, after having
+been sent away by Governor Miro, returned as a secular
+priest and became much beloved for his good works.
+Padre Antonio lived in a hut near the garden, and it is
+he who figures in Thomas Bailey Aldrich's story "P&egrave;re
+Antoine's Date Palm."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p632jpg" id="p632jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p632.jpg" width="600" height="317" alt="St. Anthony&#39;s Garden, where duels originating at the quadroon balls were fought" title="" />
+<span class="caption">St. Anthony&#39;s Garden, where duels originating at the quadroon balls were fought</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>To the Creole, more than to any other source, may be
+traced the origin of dueling in the United States, and no
+city in the country has such a dueling history as New
+Orleans. The American took the practice from the
+Latin and by the adoption of pistols made the duel a
+much more serious thing than it had previously been,
+when swords were employed and first blood usually constituted
+"satisfaction." Up to the time of the Civil
+War the man who refused a challenge became a sort of
+outcast, and I have been told that even to this day a
+duel is occasionally fought. Governor Claiborne, first
+American governor of Louisiana, was a duelist, and his
+monument&mdash;a family monument in the annex of the old
+Basin Street division of St. Louis cemetery&mdash;bears upon
+one side an inscription in memory of his brother-in-law,
+Micajah Lewis, "who fell in a duel, January 14, 1804."</p>
+
+<p>Gayarr&eacute;, in his history of Louisiana, tells a story of
+six young French noblemen who, one night, paired off
+and fought for no reason whatever save out of bravado.
+Two of them were killed.</p>
+
+<p>Two famous characters of New Orleans, about the
+middle of the last century, were Major Joe Howell, a
+brother-in-law of Jefferson Davis, and Major Henry, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_644" id="Page_644">[Pg 644]</a></span>
+dare-devil soldier of fortune who had filibustered in
+Nicaragua and fought in the Mexican War. One day
+while drinking together they quarreled, and as a result
+a duel was arranged to take place the same afternoon.
+Henry kept on drinking, but Howell went to sleep and
+slept until it was time to go to the dueling ground, when
+he took one cocktail, and departed.</p>
+
+<p>Feeling that a duel over a disagreement the occasion
+for which neither contestant could remember, was the
+height of folly, friends intervened, and finally succeeded
+in getting Major Henry to say that the fight could be
+called off if Howell would apologize.</p>
+
+<p>"For what?" he was asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know and don't care," returned the old warrior.</p>
+
+<p>As Howell would not apologize, navy revolvers were
+produced and the two faced each other, the understanding
+being that they should begin at ten paces with six
+barrels loaded, firing at will and advancing. At the
+word "Fire!" both shot and missed, but Howell cocked
+his revolver with his right thumb and fired again immediately,
+wounding Henry in the arm. Henry then
+fired and missed a second time, while Howell's third shot
+struck his antagonist in the abdomen. Wounded as he
+was, Henry managed to fire again, narrowly missing the
+other, who was not only a giant in size, but was a conspicuous
+mark, owing to the white clothing which he
+wore. At this Howell advanced a step and took steady
+aim, and he would almost certainly have killed his op<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_645" id="Page_645">[Pg 645]</a></span>ponent
+had not his own second reached out and thrown
+his pistol up, sending the shot wild. This occurred
+after the other side has cried "Stop!"&mdash;as it had been
+agreed should be done in case either man was badly
+wounded. A foul was consequently claimed, the seconds
+drew their pistols, and a general battle was narrowly
+averted. After many weeks Henry recovered.</p>
+
+<p>A great number of historic duels were over politics.
+Such a one was the fight which took place in 1843, between
+Mr. Hueston, editor of the Baton Rouge "Gazette"
+and Mr. Alcee La Branche, a Creole gentleman
+who had been speaker of the Louisiana House of Representatives,
+and was running for Congress. Mr. La
+Branche was one of the few public men in the State
+who had never fought a duel, and in the course of a violent
+political campaign, Hueston twitted him on this subject
+in the columns of the "Gazette," trying to make him
+out a coward. Soon after the insulting article appeared,
+the two men met in the billiard room of the old
+St. Charles Hotel, and when La Branche demanded an
+apology, and was refused, he struck Hueston with a
+cane, or a cue, and knocked him down. A duel was, of
+course, arranged, the weapons selected being double-barreled
+shotguns loaded with ball. At the first discharge
+Hueston's hat and coat were punctured by bullets.
+He demanded a second exchange of shots, which
+resulted about as before&mdash;his own shots going wild,
+while those of his opponent narrowly missed him.
+Hueston, however, obstinately insisted that the duel be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_646" id="Page_646">[Pg 646]</a></span>
+continued, and the guns were loaded for the third time.
+In the next discharge the editor received a scalp wound.
+It was now agreed by all present that matters had gone
+far enough, but Hueston remained obdurate in his intention
+to kill or be killed, and in the face of violent protests,
+demanded that the guns again be loaded. The
+next exchange of shots proved to be the last. Hueston
+let both barrels go without effect, and fell to the ground
+shot through the lungs. Taken to the Maison de Sant&eacute;,
+he was in such agony that he begged a friend to finish
+the work by shooting him through the head. Within
+a few hours he was dead.</p>
+
+<p>The old guide book from which I gather these items
+cites, also, cases in which duels were fought over trivial
+matters, such, for instance, as a mildly hostile newspaper
+criticism of an operatic performance, and an argument
+between a Creole and a Frenchman over the
+greatness of the Mississippi River.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Brander Matthews tells me of an episode in
+which the wit exhibited by a Creole lawyer, in the course
+of a case in a New Orleans court, caused him to be challenged.
+The opposing counsel, likewise a Creole, was
+a great dandy. He appeared in an immaculate white
+suit and boiled shirt, but the weather was warm, and
+after he had spoken for perhaps half an hour his shirt
+was wilted, and he asked an adjournment. The adjournment
+over, he reappeared in a fresh shirt, but this
+too wilted presently, whereupon another adjournment
+was taken. At the end of this he again reappeared<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_647" id="Page_647">[Pg 647]</a></span>
+wearing a third fresh shirt, and in it managed to complete
+his plea.</p>
+
+<p>It now became the other lawyer's turn. He arose
+and, speaking with the utmost gravity, addressed the
+jury.</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen," he said (Professor Matthews tells it in
+French), "I shall divide my speech into three shirts."
+He then announced: "First shirt"&mdash;and made his first
+point. This accomplished, he paused briefly, then proclaimed:
+"Second shirt," and followed with his second
+point. Then: "Third and last shirt," and after completing
+his argument sat down. The delighted jury
+gave him the verdict, but his witticism involved him in
+a duel with the worsted advocate. The result of this
+duel Professor Matthews does not tell, but if the wag's
+<i>colichemarde</i> was as swift and penetrating as his wit,
+we may surmise that his opponent of the Code Napol&eacute;on
+and the code duello had a fourth shirt spoiled.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_648" id="Page_648">[Pg 648]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LVIII" id="CHAPTER_LVIII"></a>CHAPTER LVIII<br />
+<br />
+FROM ANTIQUES TO PIRATES</h2>
+
+
+<p>The numerous antique shops of the French quarter,
+with their gray, undulating floors and their
+piled-up, dusty litter of old furniture, plate,
+glass, and china, and the equally numerous old book
+stores, with their piles of French publications, their
+shadowy corners, their pleasant ancient bindings and
+their stale smell, are peculiarly reminiscent of similar
+establishments in Paris.</p>
+
+<p>That Eugene Field knew these shops well we have reason
+to know by at least two of his poems. In one, "The
+Discreet Collector," he tells us that:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Down south there is a curio shop<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unknown to many men;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thereat do I intend to stop<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When I am South again;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The narrow street through which to go&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Aha! I know it well!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And maybe you would like to know&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But no&mdash;I will not tell!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But later, when filled with remorse over his extravagance
+in "blowing twenty dollars in by nine o'clock <span class="smcap">a.&nbsp;m.</span>,"
+he reveals the location of his favorite establishment,
+saying:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_649" id="Page_649">[Pg 649]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In Royal Street (near Conti) there's a lovely curio shop,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And there, one balmy fateful morn, it was my chance to stop&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>So that, at least, is the neighborhood in which he
+learned that:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The curio collector is so blindly lost in sin<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That he doesn't spend his money&mdash;he simply blows it in!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In his verses called "Doctor Sam," Field touched on
+another fascinating side of Creole negro life: the mysterious
+beliefs and rites of voodooism&mdash;or, as it is more
+often spelled, voudouism.</p>
+
+<p>Until a few years ago it used to be possible for a visitor
+with a "pull" in New Orleans to see some of the
+voudou performances and to have "a work made" for
+him, but the police have dealt so severely with those who
+believe in this barbarous nonsense, that it is practised in
+these times only with the utmost secrecy.</p>
+
+<p>Voudouism was brought by the early slaves from the
+Congo, but in Louisiana the negroes&mdash;probably desiring
+to imitate the religion of their white masters&mdash;appropriated
+some of the Roman Catholic saints and made
+them subject to the Great Serpent, or <i>Grand Zombi</i>, who
+is the voudou god. These saints, however, are given
+voudou names, St. Michael, for example, being <i>Blanc
+Dani</i>, and St. Peter, <i>Papa Liba</i>. This situation is the
+antithesis of that to be found in Brittany, where Druidical
+beliefs, handed down for generations among the
+peasants, may now be faintly traced running like on odd
+alien threads through the strong fabric of Roman Catholicism.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_650" id="Page_650">[Pg 650]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Voudouism is not, however, to be dignified by the
+name "religion." It is superstition founded upon
+charms and hoodoos. It is witchcraft of the maddest
+kind, involving the most hideous performances. Moreover,
+it is said that a hoodoo is something of which a
+French negro is very much afraid, and that his fear is
+justifiable, for the reason that the throwing of a <i>wanga</i>,
+or curse, may also involve the administering of subtle
+poisons made from herbs.</p>
+
+<p>Legend is rich with stories of Marie Le Veau, the
+voudou queen, who lived long ago in New Orleans, and
+of love and death accomplished by means of voudou
+charms. Charms are brought about in various ways.
+Among these the burning of black candles, accompanied
+by certain performances, brings evil upon those against
+whom a "work" is made, while blue candles have to do
+with love charms. It may also be noted that "love
+powders" can be purchased now-a-days in drug stores
+in New Orleans.</p>
+
+<p>In the days of long ago the great negro gathering
+place used to be Congo Square&mdash;now Beauregard
+Square&mdash;and here, on Sunday nights, wild dances used
+to occur&mdash;the "bamboula" and "calinda"&mdash;and sinister
+spells were cast. Later the voudous went to more secluded
+spots on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, and
+on St. John's Eve, which is their great occasion, many
+of the whites of the city used to go to the lake in hopes
+of discovering a voudou s&eacute;ance, and being allowed to
+see it. A friend of mine, who has seen several of these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_651" id="Page_651">[Pg 651]</a></span>
+s&eacute;ances, says that they are unbelievably weird and horrible.
+They will make a gombo, put a snake in it, and
+then devour it, and they will wring a cat's neck and drink
+its blood. And of course, along with these loathsome
+ceremonies, go incantations, chants, dances, and frenzies,
+sometimes ending in catalepsis.</p>
+
+<p>There are weird stories of white women of good family
+who have believed in voudou, and have taken part in
+the rites; and there are other tales of evil spells, such as
+that of the Creole bride of long ago, whose affianced had
+been the lover of a quadroon girl, a hairdresser. The
+hairdresser when she came to do the bride's hair for the
+wedding, gave her a bouquet of flowers. The bride
+smelled the bouquet&mdash;and died at the church door.</p>
+
+<p>It was, I think, in an old book store on Royal Street&mdash;or
+else on Chartres&mdash;that I found the tattered guide
+book to which I referred in an earlier chapter. It was
+"edited and compiled by several leading writers of the
+New Orleans Press," and published in 1885, and it contains
+an introductory recommendation by George W.
+Cable&mdash;which is about the finest guarantee that a book
+on New Orleans can have.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Cable, of course, more than all the rest of the people
+who have written of New Orleans put together,
+placed the city definitely in literature. And it is interesting,
+if somewhat saddening, to recall that for lifting
+the city into the world of belles lettres, for adorning it
+and preserving it in such volumes as "Old Creole Days,"
+"The Grandissimes," "Madame Delphine," and other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_652" id="Page_652">[Pg 652]</a></span>
+valuable, truthful, and charming works, he was roundly
+abused by his own fellow-townsmen. Far from attacking
+Mr. Cable, New Orleans ought to build him a monument,
+and I am glad to say that, though the monument is
+not there yet, the city does seem to have come to its
+senses, and that the prophet is no longer without honor
+in his own country.</p>
+
+<p>Some further leaves are added to the literary laurels
+of the city by what Thomas Bailey Aldrich has written
+of it, and the wreath is made the greater by the fact that
+in New Orleans was born "the only literary man in New
+York," Professor Brander Matthews.</p>
+
+<p>Another distinguished name in letters, connected with
+the place, is that of Lafcadio Hearn, who was at one
+time a reporter on a New Orleans newspaper, and who
+not only wrote about the French quarter, but collected
+many proverbs of the Creoles in a book which he called
+"Gombo Zebes." In his little volume, "Chita," Hearn
+described the land of lakes, bayous, and <i>ch&ecirc;ni&egrave;res</i>, which
+forms a strip between the city and the Gulf, and which,
+with its wild birds, wild scenery, and wild storms, and its
+extraordinary population of hunters and fishermen&mdash;Cajuns,
+Italians, Japanese, Spanish, Kanakas, Filipinos,
+French, and half-breed Indians, all intermarrying&mdash;is
+the strangest, most outlandish section of this country
+I have ever visited. The Filipinos, who introduced
+shrimp fishing in this region, building villages on stilts,
+like those of their own islands, were not there when
+Hearn wrote "Chita," nor was Ludwig raising <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_653" id="Page_653">[Pg 653]</a></span>diamond-back
+terrapin on Grand Isle, but the live-oaks, draped
+with sad Spanish moss, lined the bayous as they do to-day,
+and the alligators, turtles and snakes were there,
+and the tall marsh grass, so like bamboo, fringed the
+banks as it does now, and water hyacinth carpeted the
+pools, and the savage tropical storms came sweeping in,
+now and then, from the Gulf, flooding the entire country,
+tearing everything up by the roots, then receding,
+carrying the floating debris back with them to the salt
+sea. One has to see what they call a "slight" storm, in
+that country, to know what a great storm there must be.
+Hearn surely saw storms there, for in "Chita" he
+describes with terrifying vividness that historic tempest
+which, in 1856, obliterated, at one stroke, Last Island,
+with its fashionable hotel and all the guests of that hotel.
+I have seen a "little" thunderstorm in Barataria Bay
+and I do not want to see a big one. I have seen brown
+men who, in the storm of 1915 (which did a million dollars'
+worth of damage in New Orleans), floated about
+the Baratarias for days, upon the roofs of houses, and I
+have seen little children, half Italian, half Filipino, who
+were saved by being carried by their parents into the
+branches of an old live-oak, where they waited until good
+Horace Harvey, "the little father of the Baratarias,"
+came down there in his motor yacht, the <i>Destrehan</i>,
+rescued them, warmed them, fed them, and gave them
+back to life. I was told in New Orleans that there were
+ten seconds in that storm when the wind reached a velocity
+of 140 miles per hour at the mouth of the Missis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_654" id="Page_654">[Pg 654]</a></span>sippi,
+that it blew for four hours at the rate of 90 miles,
+and that the lowest barometrical reading ever recorded
+in the United States (28.11) was recorded in New Orleans
+during this hurricane.</p>
+
+<p>Of the summer climate of New Orleans I know nothing
+at first hand, and judging from what people have
+told me, that is all I want to know. The winter climate
+suited me very well while I was there, although the boast
+that grass is green and roses bloom all the year round,
+does not imply such intense heat as some people may
+suppose. Furthermore, I believe that the thermometer
+has once or twice in the history of the city dropped low
+enough to kill any ordinary rose, for a friend of mine
+told me a story about some water pipes that froze and
+burst during an unprecedented cold snap which occurred
+some years ago. He said that an English colonel, whom
+he knew, was visiting the city at the time and that, finding
+himself unable to get water in his bathtub, he sent out
+for several cases of Apollinaris, and with true British
+phlegm proceeded to empty them into the tub and get
+in among the bubbles.</p>
+
+<p>Still another figure having to do with literature, and
+also with the history of New Orleans, is Jean Lafitte,
+known as a pirate, whose life is said to have inspired
+Byron's poem, "The Corsair." There was a time, long
+ago, when Lafitte, together with his brother, his
+doughty lieutenant, Dominique You, and his rabble of
+Baratarians, caused New Orleans a great deal of annoyance,
+but like many other doubtful characters, they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_655" id="Page_655">[Pg 655]</a></span>
+have, since their death, become entirely picturesque, and
+the very idea that Lafitte was not a first-class blood-and-thunder
+pirate is as distasteful to the people of New Orleans
+to-day, as his being any kind of a near-pirate at
+all, used to be to their ancestors. Nevertheless Frank
+R. Stockton, who made a great specialty of pirates, says
+of Lafitte: "He never committed an act of piracy in
+his life; he was [before he went to Barataria] a blacksmith,
+and knew no more about sailing a ship or even
+the smallest kind of a boat than he knew about the
+proper construction of a sonnet.... It is said of him
+that he was never at sea but twice in his life: once when
+he came from France, and once when he left this country,
+and on neither occasion did he sail under the Jolly
+Roger." According to Stockton, Lafitte, when he gave
+up his blacksmith shop (in which he is said to have made
+some of the fine wrought iron balcony railings which
+still adorn the old town), and went to Barataria, became
+nothing more nor less than a "fence" for pirates
+and privateers, taking their booty, smuggling it up to
+New Orleans, and selling it there on commission.</p>
+
+<p>But if the fact that he was not a gory-handed freebooter
+is against Lafitte, there is one great thing in
+his favor. When the British were making ready to
+attack New Orleans in 1814, they tried both to bribe and
+to browbeat Lafitte into joining forces with them. As
+the American government was planning, at this very
+time, a punitive expedition against him, it would perhaps
+have seemed good policy for the pseudo-pirate to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_656" id="Page_656">[Pg 656]</a></span>
+have accepted the British offer, but what Lafitte did was
+to go up and report the matter at New Orleans, giving
+the city the first authentic information of the contemplated
+attack, and offering to join with his men in the
+defense, in exchange for amnesty.</p>
+
+<p>A good many people, however, did not believe his
+story, and a good many others thought it beneath the
+dignity of the government to treat with a man of his
+dubious occupation. Therefore poor Lafitte was not
+listened to, but, upon the contrary, only succeeded in
+stirring up trouble for himself, for an expedition was
+immediately sent against him; his settlement at Barataria&mdash;on
+the gulf, about forty miles below the city&mdash;was
+demolished and the inhabitants driven to the woods
+and swamps.</p>
+
+<p>But in spite of this discouraging experience, Lafitte
+would not join the British, and it came about that when
+the Battle of New Orleans was about to be fought,
+Andrew Jackson, who had a short time before referred
+to Lafitte and his men as a band of "hellish banditti,"
+was glad to accept their aid. Dominique You&mdash;with
+his fine pirate name&mdash;commanded a gun, and the others
+fought according to the best piratical tradition. After
+the battle was won, the Baratarians were pardoned by
+President Madison. Incidentally it may be remarked
+here that the American line of defense on the plains of
+Chalmette, below the city, had been indicated some years
+before by the French General Moreau, hero of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_657" id="Page_657">[Pg 657]</a></span>Hohenlinden,
+as the proper strategic position for safeguarding
+New Orleans on the south.</p>
+
+<p>Even after he had been pardoned, Lafitte felt, not
+without some justice, that he had been ill-used by the
+Americans, and because of this he determined to leave
+the country. He set sail with a band of his followers
+for other climes, but what became of them is not known.
+Some think their ship went down in a storm which
+crossed the Gulf soon after their departure; others believe
+that they reached Yucatan, and that Lafitte died
+there. Whatever his fate, he did not improve it by
+departing from New Orleans, for had he not done so
+he would, at the end, have been given a handsome burial
+and a nice monument like that of Dominique You&mdash;which
+may be seen to this day in the old cemetery on
+Claiborne Avenue, between Iberville and St. Louis
+Streets.</p>
+
+<p>Having disposed of literary men and pirates, we now
+come in logical sequence to composers and actors. Be
+it known, then, that E.&nbsp;H. Sothern first raised, in the
+house at 79 Bienville Street, the voice which has
+charmed us in the theater, and that Louis Gottschalk,
+composer of the almost too well-known "Last Hope," was
+also born in New Orleans.</p>
+
+<p>The records of the opera and the theater might, in
+themselves, make a chapter. As early as 1791 a French
+theatrical company played in New Orleans, using halls,
+and in 1808 a theater was built in St. Philip Street. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_658" id="Page_658">[Pg 658]</a></span>
+is said that the first play given in the city in English was
+performed December 24, 1817, the play being "The
+Honey Moon," and the manager Noah M. Ludlow; but
+it was not until some years later that the English drama
+became a feature of the city's life, with the establishment
+of a stock company under the management of
+James H. Caldwell. Edwin Forrest appeared, in 1824,
+with Mr. Caldwell's company at the Camp Street Theater,
+which he built on leaving the Orleans Theater. The
+former was, when opened, out in the swamp, and people
+had to walk to it from Canal Street on a narrow path
+of planks. It was the first building in the city to be
+lighted by gas.</p>
+
+<p>The annals of the old St. Charles theater, called "old
+Drury," are rich with history. Practically all our
+great players from 1835 until long after the Civil War,
+appeared in this theater, and an old prompter's book
+which, I believe, is still in existence, records, among
+many other things, certain details of the appearance
+there, in 1852, of Junius Brutus Booth, father of Edwin
+Booth, and mentions also that Joseph Jefferson (Sr.)
+then a young man, was reprimanded for being noisy in
+his dressing-room.</p>
+
+<p>New Orleans was, I believe, the first American city
+regularly to support grand opera and to give it a home.
+For a great many years before 1859 (in which year
+the present French Opera House on Bourbon Street was
+built) there was a regular annual season of opera at
+the Orleans Theater, long since destroyed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_659" id="Page_659">[Pg 659]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the days of the city's operatic grandeur great singers
+used to visit New Orleans before visiting New York,
+as witness, for example, the d&eacute;but at the French Opera
+House of Adelina Patti. Since the time of the Civil
+War, however, the city has suffered a decline in this
+department of art. Opera seasons have not been regular,
+and in spite of occasional attempts to revive the
+old-time spirit, the ancient Opera House, with its brave
+columned front, its cracking veneer of stucco, and its
+surrounding of little vari-colored one story caf&eacute;s and
+shops (which are themselves like bits of operatic scenery),
+does not so much suggest to the imagination a
+home of modern opera, as a mournful mortuary chapel
+haunted by the ghosts of old half-forgotten composers:
+Herold, Spontini, Mehul, Varney; old conductors, long
+since gone to dust: Prevost, John, Calabresi; old arias
+of Meyerbeer, Auber, and Donizetti; and above all, by
+the ghosts of pretty pirouetting ballerinas, and of great
+singers whose voices have, these many years, been still.</p>
+
+<p>An old lady who knew Louisiana in the forties and
+fifties, has left record of the fact that plantation negroes
+used to know and sing the French operatic airs, just as
+the Italian peasants of to-day know and sing the music
+of Puccini and Leoncavallo. But if opera no longer
+reaches the negro, it cannot be said that it has failed to
+leave its stamp on the French quarter. From open windows
+and doors, from little shops and half-hidden courtyards,
+from shuttered second story galleries, there comes
+floating to the ears of the wayfarer the sound of music.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_660" id="Page_660">[Pg 660]</a></span>
+In one house a piano is being played with dash; in another
+a child is practising her scales; from still another
+comes a soprano voice, the sad whistling of a flute, the
+tinkle of a guitar, or the anguished squeal of a tortured
+violin. Never except in Naples have I heard, on one
+block, so many musical instruments independently at
+work, as in some single blocks of the <i>vieux carr&eacute;</i>; and
+never anywhere have I seen a sign which struck as more
+expressive of the industries of a locality, than that one
+which I saw near the house of Mme. Lalurie, which
+read: "Odd Jobs Done, and Music."</p>
+
+<p>The reason for this musical congestion is twofold.
+Not only is the Creole a great lover of good light music,
+but the whole region for blocks about the Opera House
+is populated by old musicians from the opera's orchestra,
+and women, some middle aged, some old, who used
+to be in the ballet or the chorus, and who not only keep
+alive the musical tradition of the district, but pass it on
+to the younger generation. Indeed there are almost as
+many places in the French quarter where music may be
+heard, as where stories are told.</p>
+
+<p>In one street may be seen a house where the troubles
+with the Mafia began. On a corner&mdash;the southeast
+corner of Royal and St. Peter&mdash;is shown the house in
+which Cable's "'Sieur George" resided. This house is,
+I believe, the same one which, when erected, caused people
+to move away from its immediate neighborhood, for
+fear that its height would cause it to fall down. It
+is a four story house&mdash;the first built in the city. At the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_661" id="Page_661">[Pg 661]</a></span>
+southeast corner of Royal and Hospital Streets stands
+that "haunted" house of Mme. Lalaurie, who fled the
+town when indignation was aroused because of devilish
+tortures she inflicted on her slaves. This house is
+now an Italian tenement, but even in its decay it will be
+recognized as a mansion which, in its day, was fit to
+house such guests as Louis Philippe, Lafayette, and Ney.
+A guest even more distinguished than these, was to have
+been housed in the mansion at the northeast corner of
+St. Louis and Chartres Streets, for the Creoles had a
+plan to rescue Napoleon from St. Helena and bring him
+here, and had this house prepared to receive him.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p641jpg" id="p641jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p641.jpg" width="600" height="452" alt="Courtyard of the old Orleans Hotel" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Courtyard of the old Orleans Hotel</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>And are we to forget where Andrew Jackson was entertained
+before and after the Battle of New Orleans&mdash;where
+General Beauregard, military idol of the Creoles,
+resided&mdash;where Paul Morphy the "chess king" lived&mdash;where
+General Butler took up his quarters when, in
+1862, under the guns of Farragut's fleet, the city surrendered&mdash;?
+Shall we fail to visit the curious old tenements
+and stables surrounding the barnyard which once
+was the <i>remise</i> of the old Orleans Hotel? Shall we
+neglect old Metaire cemetery, with its graves built above
+ground in the days when drainage was less perfect?
+Shall we fail to go to the levee (pronounced "levvy")
+and see the savage flood of the muddy Mississippi coursing
+toward the gulf behind the embankment which alone
+saves the city from inundation? Shall we ignore the
+French Market with its clean stalls piled with fresh
+vegetables, sea food, and all manner of comestibles, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_662" id="Page_662">[Pg 662]</a></span>cluding
+<i>fil&eacute;</i> for the glorious Creole gombo. Shall we
+not view the picturesque if sinister old Absinthe House,
+dating from 1799, with its court and stairway so full
+of mysterious suggestion, and its misty paregoric-flavored
+beverage, containing opalescent dreams? Shall
+we not go to Sazerac's for a cocktail, or to Ramos' for
+one of those delectable gin-fizzes suggesting an Olympian
+soda-fountain drink? Are we to ignore all these
+wonders of the city?</p>
+
+<p>Yes, for it is time to go to luncheon at Antoine's!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 403px;">
+<a name="p620jpg" id="p620jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p620.jpg" width="403" height="500" alt="The mysterious old Absinthe House, founded 1799" title="" />
+<span class="caption">The mysterious old Absinthe House, founded 1799</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_663" id="Page_663">[Pg 663]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LIX" id="CHAPTER_LIX"></a>CHAPTER LIX<br />
+<br />
+ANTOINE'S AND MARDI GRAS</h2>
+
+
+<p>Antoine's is to me one of the four or five most
+satisfactory restaurants in the United States,&mdash;two
+of the others being the Louisiane and Galatoire's.
+But one has one's slight preferences in these
+things; and just as I have a feeling that the cuisine of the
+Hotel St. Regis in New York surpasses, just a little bit,
+that of any other eating place in the city, I have a feeling
+about Antoine's in New Orleans. This is not, perhaps,
+with me, altogether a culinary matter, for whereas I
+remember delightful meals at the Louisiane and Galatoire's&mdash;meals
+which, indeed, could hardly be surpassed&mdash;I
+lived for a week at Antoine's, and felt at home there,
+and became peculiarly attached to the quaint, rambling
+old restaurant, up stairs and down.</p>
+
+<p>Antoine's has never been "fixed up." The caf&eacute; makes
+one think of such old Parisian restaurants as the Boeuf
+&agrave; la Mode, or the Tour d'Argent. Far from being a
+showy place, it is utterly simple in its decorations and
+equipment, but if there is in this country a restaurant
+more French than Antoine's, I do not know where that
+restaurant is.</p>
+
+<p>Antoine Alciatore, founder of the establishment, de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_664" id="Page_664">[Pg 664]</a></span>parted
+nearly forty years ago to the realms to which
+great chefs are ultimately taken. Coming from France
+as a young man he established himself in a small caf&eacute;
+opposite the slave market, where he proceeded to cook
+and let his cooking speak for him. His dinde &agrave; la Talleyrand
+soon made him famous, and he prospered, moving
+before long to the present building. His sons, Jules and
+Fernand, were sent to Paris to learn at headquarters the
+best traditions of the haute cuisine, doing service as
+apprentices in such establishments as the Maison d'Or
+and Brabant's. Jules is now proprietor of Antoine's,
+while Fernand is master of the Louisiane.</p>
+
+<p>The two brothers are of somewhat different type.
+Fernand is, above all, a chef; I have never seen him outside
+his own kitchen. His son, Fernand Jr., superintends
+the front part of the Louisiane, which he has
+transformed into a place having the appearance of a
+New York restaurant. The young man has made a
+successful bid for the fashionable patronage of New
+Orleans, and there is dancing in the Louisiane in the
+evening. Jules, upon the other hand, is perhaps more
+the director than his brother Fernand&mdash;more the suave
+delightful host, less the man of cap and apron. Jules
+loves to give parties&mdash;to astonish his guests with a brilliant
+dinner and with his unrivaled grace as g&eacute;rant.
+That he is able to do these things no one is better aware
+than my companion and I, for it was our good fortune
+to be accepted by Jules as friends and fellow artists.</p>
+
+<p>Never while my companion and I lived at Antoine's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_665" id="Page_665">[Pg 665]</a></span>
+did we escape the feeling that we were not in the United
+States, but in some foreign land. To go to his rooms
+he went upstairs, around a corner, down a few steps,
+past a pantry, and a back stairway by which savory
+smells ascended from the kitchen, along a latticed gallery
+overlooking a courtyard like that of some inn in
+Segovia, along another gallery running at right angles
+to the first and overlooking the same court, including
+the kitchen door and the laundry, and finally to a chamber
+with French doors, a canopied bed, and French windows
+opening upon a balcony that overlooked the side
+street. His room was called "The Creole Yacht," while
+mine was the "Maison Vert."</p>
+
+<p>I remember a room in that curious little hotel opposite
+the Caf&eacute; du D&ocirc;me, in Paris (the hotel in which it is said
+Whistler stayed when he was a student), which almost
+exactly resembled my room at Antoine's, even to the
+dust which was under the bed&mdash;until 'G&eacute;nie got to work
+with broom and brush. Moreover, connected with my
+room there was a bath which actually had a <i>chaufbain</i>
+to heat the water: one of those weird French machines
+resembling the engine of a steam launch, which pops
+savagely when you light the gas beneath it, and which,
+as you are always expecting it to blow up and destroy
+you, converts the morning ablutions from a perfunctory
+duty into a great adventure.</p>
+
+<p>Then too, there was Marie who has attended to the
+<i>linge</i> at Antoine's for the last fifty years, and who helped
+the gray-haired genial Eug&eacute;nie to "make proper the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_666" id="Page_666">[Pg 666]</a></span>
+rooms." Ever since 'G&eacute;nie&mdash;as she is called, for short&mdash;came
+from her native Midi, she has been at Antoine's;
+and like Fran&ccedil;ois&mdash;the gentle, kindly, white-mustached
+old waiter who, when we were there, had just moved up
+to Antoine's after thirty-five years' service at the Louisiane&mdash;'G&eacute;nie
+is always ready with a smile; yes, even in
+the rush of Mardi Gras!</p>
+
+<p>Antoine's does not set up to be a regular hotel, and we
+stopped there because, during the carnival, all rooms in
+the large modern hotels across Canal Street were taken.
+The carnival rush made room-service at Antoine's a little
+slow, now and then; sometimes the bell would not be
+answered when we rang for breakfast; or again, our
+morning coffee and <i>croissants</i> would be forty minutes
+on the way; sometimes we became a little bit impatient&mdash;though
+we could never bring ourselves to say so to
+such amiable servitors. As a result, when we were leaving
+the city for a little trip, we determined to stay, on
+our return, at the Grunewald, a hotel like any one of a
+hundred others in the United States&mdash;marble lobbies,
+gold ceilings, rathskellers, cabaret shows, dancing, and
+page boys wandering through the corridors and dining-rooms,
+calling in nasal, sing-song voices: "<i>Mis</i>-ter
+<i>Shoss</i>-futt! <i>Mis</i>-ter <i>Ahm</i>-kaplopps! <i>Mis</i>-ter <i>Praggle</i>-fiss!
+<i>Mis</i>-ter Blahms!"</p>
+
+<p>We did return and go to the Grunewald. But comfortable
+as we were made there, we had to own to each
+other that we missed Antoine's. We missed our curious
+old rooms. I even missed my <i>chaufbain</i>, and was bored<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_667" id="Page_667">[Pg 667]</a></span>
+at the commonplace matutinal performance of turning
+on hot water without preliminary experiments in marine
+engineering. We thought wistfully of 'G&eacute;nie's patient
+smile, and of her daily assurance to us, when we went
+out, that "when she had made the apartments she
+would render the key to the bureau, <i>alors</i>,"&mdash;which is to
+say, leave the key at the office. We yearned for the
+caf&eacute;, for good Fran&ccedil;ois, for the deliciously flavored oysters
+cooked on the half-shell and served on a pan of hot
+rock-salt which kept them warm; for the cold tomatoes
+<i>&agrave; la Jules C&eacute;sar</i>; for the bisque of crayfish <i>&agrave; la Cardinal</i>;
+for the bouillibasse (which Thackeray admitted was as
+good in New Orleans as in Marseilles, and which Otis
+Skinner says is better); for the unrivaled gombo <i>&agrave; la
+Cr&eacute;ole</i>, and pompano <i>en Papillotte</i>, and pressed duck <i>&agrave;
+la Tour d'Argent</i>, and orange Brul&ocirc;t, and the wonderful
+Caf&eacute; Brul&ocirc;t Diabolique&mdash;that spiced coffee made in a
+silver bowl from which emerge the blue flames of burning
+cognac, and in honor of which the lights of the caf&eacute;
+are always temporarily dimmed.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p664jpg" id="p664jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p664.jpg" width="600" height="439" alt="The lights are always lowered at Antoine&#39;s when the spectacular Caf&eacute; Boulot Diabolique is served" title="" />
+<span class="caption">The lights are always lowered at Antoine&#39;s when the spectacular Caf&eacute; Boulot Diabolique is served</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Nor least of all was it that we wished to see again the
+mother of Jules, who sits back of the <i>caisse</i> and takes in
+the money, like many another good French wife and
+mother&mdash;a tiny little old lady more than ninety-five
+years old, who came to New Orleans in 1840 as the bride
+of the then young Antoine Alciatore.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p656jpg" id="p656jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p656.jpg" width="600" height="452" alt="The little lady who sits behind the desk is more than ninety-five years old, and came to New Orleans as the
+bride of Antoine" title="" />
+<span class="caption">The little lady who sits behind the desk is more than ninety-five years old, and came to New Orleans as the
+bride of Antoine</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>So we put on our hats and coats when evening came,
+and went back to Antoine's for dinner, and as long as
+we were in New Orleans we kept on going back.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_668" id="Page_668">[Pg 668]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>That is not to say, of course, that we did not go also
+to the Louisiane and Galatoire's, or that we did not drop
+in for luncheon, sometimes, at Brasco's, in Gravier
+Street, or at Kolb's, a more or less conventional German
+restaurant in St. Charles Street; or that we failed to go
+out to Tranchina's at Spanish Fort, on Lake Pontchartrain,
+or to the quainter little place called Noy's where, we
+learned, Ernest Peixotto had been but a short time before,
+gathering material for indigestion and an article
+in "Scribner's Magazine." But when all is said and
+done there remain the three restaurants of the old quarter.</p>
+
+<p>I should like to give some history of Galatoire's as
+well as of the other two, but when I asked the <i>patron</i> for
+the story of his restaurant, he smiled, and with a shrug
+replied: "But Monsieur, the story is in the food!"</p>
+
+<p>Do not expect any of these places to present the brilliant
+appearance of distinguished New York restaurants.
+They are comparatively simple, all of them, and
+are engaged not with soft carpets and gilt ceilings, but
+with the art of cookery.</p>
+
+<p>I have been told that some of them have what may be
+termed "tourist cooking," which is not their best, but if
+you know good food, and let them know you know it, and
+if you visit them at any time except during the carnival,
+then you have a right to expect in any one of these establishments,
+a superb dinner. For as I once heard my
+friend Col. Beverly Myles, one of the city's most distinguished
+<i>gourmets</i>, remark: "To talk of 'tolerably<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_669" id="Page_669">[Pg 669]</a></span>
+good food' in a French restaurant is like talking of 'a
+tolerably honest man.'"</p>
+
+<p>The carnival of Mardi Gras and the several days preceding,
+is one of those things about which I feel as I do
+concerning Niagara Falls, and gambling houses, and
+the red light district of Butte, Montana, and the underground
+levels of a mine, and the world as seen from an
+a&euml;roplane, and the Quatres Arts ball, and a bull fight&mdash;I
+am glad to have seen it once, but I have no desire to
+see it again. During the carnival my companion and
+I enjoyed a period of sleepless gaiety. To be sure, we
+went to bed every morning, but what is the use in doing
+that if you also get up every morning? We went to the
+street pageants, we went to the balls at the French
+Opera House, we saw the masking on the streets,
+and when the carnival was finished we were finished,
+too.</p>
+
+<p>The great thing about the carnival, it seems to me, is
+that it bears the relation to the life of the city, that a
+well-developed hobby does to the life of an individual.
+It keeps the city young. It keeps it from becoming
+pompous, from taking itself too seriously, from getting
+into a rut. It stimulates not alone the young, but the
+grave and reverend seigniors also, to give themselves
+up for a little while each year to play, and moreover to
+use their imaginations in annually devising new pageants
+and costumes. From this point of view such a carnival
+would be a good thing for any city.</p>
+
+<p>But that is where the Latin spirit of New Orleans<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_670" id="Page_670">[Pg 670]</a></span>
+comes in, with its pleasing combination of gaiety and
+restraint. You could not hold such a carnival in every
+city. You could not do it in New York. For more important
+even than the pageants and the balls, is the carnival
+frame of mind. To hold a carnival such as New
+Orleans holds, a city must know how to be lively and
+playful without becoming drunk, without breaking barroom
+mirrors, upsetting tables, annoying women, thrusting
+"ticklers" into people's faces, jostling, fighting, committing
+the thousand rough vulgar excesses in which
+New York indulges every New Year's Eve, and in which
+it would indulge to an even more disgusting extent under
+the additional license of the mask.</p>
+
+<p>The carnival&mdash;<i>carne vale</i>, farewell flesh&mdash;which terminates
+with Mardi Gras&mdash;"Fat Tuesday," or Shrove
+Tuesday, the day before the beginning of Lent&mdash;comes
+down to us from pagan times by way of the Latin countries.
+The "Cowbellions," a secret organization of Mobile,
+in 1831 elaborated the idea of historical and legendary
+processions, and as early as 1837 New Orleans held
+grotesque street parades. Twenty years later the
+"Mystic Krewe," now known as "Comus," appeared
+from nowhere and disappeared again. The success of
+Comus encouraged the formation of other secret societies,
+each having its own parade and ball, and in 1872,
+Rex, King of the Carnival, entered his royal capital of
+New Orleans in honor of the visit of the Grand Duke
+Alexis&mdash;who, by the way, is one of countless notables
+who have feasted at Antoine's.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_671" id="Page_671">[Pg 671]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The three leading carnival societies, Comus, Momus,
+and Proteus, are understood to be connected with three
+of the city's four leading clubs, all of which stand within
+easy range of one another on the uptown side of Canal
+Street: the Boston Club (taking its name from an old
+card game); the Pickwick (named for Dickens' genial
+gentleman, a statue of whom stands in the lobby); the
+Louisiana, a young men's club; and the Chess, Checkers
+and Whist Club. The latter association is, I believe, the
+one that takes no part in the carnival.</p>
+
+<p>Each of the carnival organizations has its own King
+and Queen, and the connection between certain clubs
+and certain carnival societies may be guessed from
+the fact that the Comus Queen and Proteus Queen
+always appear on the stand in front of the Pickwick
+Club, to witness their respective parades, and that
+the Queen of the entire Carnival appears with her
+maids of honor on the stand before the Boston Club
+upon the day of Mardi Gras, to witness the triumphal
+entry and parade of Rex. As Rex passes the club he
+sends her a bouquet&mdash;the official indication of her queenship.
+That night she appears for the first time in the
+glory of her royal robes at the Rex Ball, which is held
+in a large hall; and the great event of the carnival, from
+a social standpoint, is the official visit, on the same night,
+of Rex and his Queen, attended by their court, to
+the King and Queen of Comus, at the Comus Ball, held
+in the Opera House.</p>
+
+<p>Passing between the brilliantly illuminated flag-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_672" id="Page_672">[Pg 672]</a></span>draped
+buildings, under festoons of colored electric
+lights, the street parades, with their spectacular colored
+floats, their bands, their negro torch-bearers, their
+strangely costumed masked figures, throwing favors
+into the dense crowds, are glorious sights for children
+ranging anywhere from eight to eighty years of age.
+Public masking on the streets, on the day of Mardi Gras,
+is also an amusing feature of the carnival.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<a name="p672jpg" id="p672jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/p672.jpg" width="600" height="393" alt="Passing between the brilliantly illuminated buildings, under festoons of electric lights the Mardi Gras parades, with
+their floats, their bands, their torch-bearers, their masked figures, are glorious sights for children from eight
+to eighty years of age" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Passing between the brilliantly illuminated buildings, under festoons of electric lights the Mardi Gras parades, with
+their floats, their bands, their torch-bearers, their masked figures, are glorious sights for children from eight
+to eighty years of age</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The balls, upon the other hand, are social events of
+great importance in the city, and as spectacles they are
+peculiarly fine. Invitations to these balls are greatly
+coveted, and the visitor to the city who would attend
+them, must exert his "pull" some time in advance.
+The invitations, by the way, are not sent by individuals,
+but by the separate organizations, and even those
+young ladies who are so fortunate as to have "call-outs"&mdash;cards
+inclosed with their invitations, indicating that
+they are to be asked to dance, and may therefore have
+seats on the ground floor&mdash;are not supposed to know
+from what man these cards come. Ladies who have not
+received call-outs, and gentlemen who are not members
+of the societies, are packed into the boxes and seats above
+the parquet floor, and do not go upon the dancing floor
+until very late in the evening. Throughout each ball
+the members of the society giving the ball continue to
+wear their costumes and their masks, so that ladies,
+called from their seats to dance, often find themselves
+treading a measure with some gallant who speaks
+in a strange assumed voice, striving to maintain the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_673" id="Page_673">[Pg 673]</a></span>
+mystery of his identity. The ladies, upon the other
+hand, are not in costume and are not masked; about
+them, there is no more mystery than women always
+have about them. After each dance the masker produces
+a present for his partner&mdash;usually a pretty bit
+of jewelry. Etiquette not only allows, but insists, that
+a woman accept any gift offered to her at a carnival
+ball, and it is said that by this means many a young
+gentleman has succeeded in bestowing upon the lady of
+his heart a piece of jewelry the value of which would
+make acceptance of the gift impossible under other than
+carnival conditions.</p>
+
+<p>After the balls many of the younger couples go to the
+Louisiane and Antoine's, to continue the dance, and as
+my room at Antoine's was directly over one of the dancing
+rooms of the establishment, I might make a shrewd
+guess as to how long they stayed up, after my companion
+and I retired.</p>
+
+<p>Let it not be supposed that we retired early. I remember
+well the look of the pale blue dawn of Ash
+Wednesday morning, and no less do I remember a conversation
+with a gentleman I met at the Louisiane, just
+before the dawn broke. I never saw him before and I
+have never seen him since; nor do I know his name, or
+where he came from. I only know that he was an
+agreeable, friendly person who did not wish to go to
+bed.</p>
+
+<p>When I said that I was going home he protested.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't do that!" he urged. "There's a nice French<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_674" id="Page_674">[Pg 674]</a></span>
+restaurant in this town. I can't think of the name of
+it. Let's go there."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, how can we go if you don't know what place
+it is?" I asked, intending to be discouraging.</p>
+
+<p>The young man looked dazed at this. Then his face
+brightened suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes!" he cried. "I remember the name now!
+It's the Louisiane! Come on! Let's get our coats an'
+go there!"</p>
+
+<p>"But," I said, "this is the Louisiane right here."</p>
+
+<p>The thought seemed to stagger him, for he swayed
+ever so slightly.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said, regarding me with great solemnity.
+"Let's go there!"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I have wondered since if this same young man may
+not have been the one who, returning to the St. Charles
+Hotel in the early hours of that sad Ash Wednesday
+morning, was asked by the clerk, who gave him his key,
+whether he wished to leave a call.</p>
+
+<p>"What day's this?" he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Wednesday," said the clerk.</p>
+
+<p>"All ri'," replied the other, moving toward the elevator.
+"Call me Saturday."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_675" id="Page_675">[Pg 675]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LX" id="CHAPTER_LX"></a>CHAPTER LX<br />
+<br />
+FINALE</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yonder the long horizon lies, and there by night and day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The old ships draw to home again, the young ships sail away;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And come I may, but go I must, and if men ask you why,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You may put the blame on the stars and the sun and the white road and the sky!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0 smcap signature">&mdash;Gerald Gould.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>It is good to look about the world; but always there
+comes a time when the restless creature, man, having
+yielded to the call of the seas and the stars and
+the sky, and gone a-journeying, begins to think of home
+again. Even were home a less satisfactory, a less happy
+place than it is, he would be bound to think of it after
+so long a journey as that upon which my companion and
+I had spent so many months. For, just as it is necessary
+for a locomotive to go every so often for an overhauling,
+so it is necessary for the traveler to return to
+headquarters. The fastenings of his wardrobe trunk
+are getting loose, and the side of it has been stove in;
+his heels are running down in back, his watch needs
+regulating, his umbrella-handle is coming loose, he is
+running out of notebooks and pencils and has broken a
+blade of his knife in trying to open a bottle with it
+(because he left his corkscrew in a hotel somewhere<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_676" id="Page_676">[Pg 676]</a></span>
+along the way). His fountain pen has sprung a leak
+and spoiled a waistcoat, his razors are dull, his strop
+is nicked, and he has run out of the kind of cigarettes
+and cigars he likes. One lens of his spectacles has
+gotten scratched, his mail has ceased to reach him, his
+light suits are spotted, baggy and worn, and his winter
+suits are becoming too heavy for comfort as the spring
+advances. His neckties are getting stringy, he has
+hangnails and a cough; he never could fix his own hangnails,
+and he cannot cure his cough because the bottle
+of glycerine and wild cherry provided for just such an
+emergency by the loved ones at home, got broken on the
+trip from Jacksonville to Montgomery, and went dribbling
+down through the trunk, ruining his reference
+books, three of his best shirts, and the only decent pair
+of russet shoes he had left. The other shoes have been
+ruined in various ways; one pair was spoiled in a possum
+hunt at Clinton, North Carolina&mdash;and it was worth it,
+and worth the overcoat that was ruined at the same
+time; two pairs of black shoes have been caked up with
+layers and layers of sticky blacking, and one pair of
+russets was ruined by a well intentioned negro lad in
+Memphis, who thought they would look better painted
+red. His traveler's checks are running low and he is
+continually afraid that, amid his constantly increasing
+piles of notes and papers, he will lose the three books in
+each of which remains a few feet of "yellow scrip"&mdash;the
+mileage of the South&mdash;which will take him on his return
+journey as far as Washington.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_677" id="Page_677">[Pg 677]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Nor is that all. The determining factor in his decision
+to go home lies in the havoc wrought by a long
+succession of hotel laundries&mdash;laundries which starch
+the bosoms of soft silk shirts, which mark the owner's
+name in ink upon the hems of sheer linen handkerchiefs
+which already have embroidered monograms, which rip
+holes in those handkerchiefs and then fold them so that
+the holes are concealed until, some night, he whips one
+confidently from the pocket of his dress suit, and reveals
+it looking like a tattered battle-flag; laundries which
+leave long trails of iron rust on shirt-bosoms, which rip
+out seams, tear off buttons, squeeze out new standing
+collars to a saw-tooth edge, iron little pieces of red and
+brown string into collars, cuffs, and especially into the
+bosoms of dress shirts, and "finish" dress shirts and
+collars, not only in the sense of ending their days of usefulness
+as fast as possible, but also by making them shine
+like the interiors of glazed porcelain bathtubs. But the
+greatest cruelty of the hotel laundry is to socks. It is
+not that they do more damage to socks, than to other
+garments, but that the laundry devil has been able to
+think of a greater variety of means for the destruction
+of socks than for the destruction of any other kind of
+garment. He begins by fastening to each sock a cloth-covered
+tin tag, attached by means of prongs. On this
+tag he puts certain marks which will mean nothing to
+the next laundry. The next laundry therefore attaches
+other tin tags, either ripping off the old ones (leaving
+holes where the prongs went through) or else letting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_678" id="Page_678">[Pg 678]</a></span>
+them remain in place, so that, after a while, the whole
+top of the sock is covered with tin, making it an extraordinarily
+uncomfortable thing to wear, and a strange
+thing to look at. There is still another way in which
+the laundry devil tortures the sock-owner. He can find
+ways to shrink any sock that is not made of solid heavy
+silk; and of course he can rip silk socks all to pieces.
+He will take silk-and-wool socks of normal length, and
+in one washing will so reduce them that you can hardly
+get your foot into them, and that the upper margins
+of them come only about an inch above your shoe-tops.
+People who have no business to do so, are thus enabled,
+when you are seated, to see the tops of your socks and to
+amuse themselves by counting the tin tags with which
+they are adorned. Also, the socks, being so short, become
+better pullers than the garters, so that instead of
+the garters holding the socks up, the socks pull the
+garters down. This usually occurs as you are walking
+up the aisle in church, or in the middle of a dance, and
+of course your garter manages to come unclasped, into
+the bargain, and goes trailing after you, like a convict's
+ball and chain.</p>
+
+<p>For a time you can stand this sort of thing, but presently
+you begin to pine for the delicate washtub artistry
+of Amanda, at home; for vestments which, when sent to
+the wash, do not come back riddled with holes, or smelling
+as though they had been washed in carbolic acid, or
+in the tub with a large fish.</p>
+
+<p>So, presently, you fold up your rags like the Arabs,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_679" id="Page_679">[Pg 679]</a></span>
+fasten your battered baggage shut as best you can, put
+it on a taxi, and head for the railway station. No train
+ever looks so handsome as the home-bound train you find
+there. No engineer ever looks so sturdy and capable,
+leaning from the window of his cab, as the one who is to
+take you home.</p>
+
+<p>Up through the South you fly, past many places you
+have seen before, past towns where you have friends
+whom you would like to see again&mdash;only not now! Now
+nothing will do but home! Out of the region of magnolias,
+palmettoes and live-oaks you pass into the region
+of pines, and out of the region of pines into that of
+maples and elms. At last you come to Washington....
+Only a few hours longer! How satisfyingly
+the train slips along! You are not conscious of curves,
+or even of turning wheels beneath you. Your progress
+is like the swift glide of a flying sled. Baltimore, Wilmington,
+Philadelphia, Trenton. Nothing to do but
+look from the car windows and rejoice. Not that you
+love the South less, but that you love home more.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder if we will ever go on such a trip as this
+again?" you say to your companion.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe so," he replies.</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't seem now as though we should," you return.
+"But do you remember?&mdash;we talked the same
+way when we were coming home before. What will it
+be two years hence?"</p>
+
+<p>"True," he says. "And of course there's Conan
+Doyle. He always thinks he's never going to do it any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_680" id="Page_680">[Pg 680]</a></span>
+more. But in a year or so Sherlock Holmes pops out
+again, drawn by Freddy Steele, all over the cover of
+'Collier's.' Not that your stuff is as good as Doyle's,
+but that the general case is somewhat parallel."</p>
+
+<p>"Doyle has killed Holmes," you put in.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he agrees, "and several times you've almost
+killed me."</p>
+
+<p>Then as the train speeds scornfully through Newark,
+without stopping, he catches sight of a vast concrete
+building&mdash;a warehouse of some kind, apparently.</p>
+
+<p>"Look!" he cries. "Isn't it wonderful?"</p>
+
+<p>"That building?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not the building itself. The thought that we don't
+have to get off here and go through it. Think what it
+would be like if we were on our travels! There would
+be a lot of citizens in frock coats. Probably the mayor
+would be there, too. They would drive us to that building,
+and take us in, and then they would cry if we refused
+to go to the fourteenth floor, where they keep the
+dried prunes."</p>
+
+<p>The train slips across the Jersey meadows and darts
+into the tunnel.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," he remarks hopefully, "we are really going
+to get home&mdash;if this tunnel doesn't drop in on us."</p>
+
+<p>And when the train has emerged from the tunnel, and
+you have emerged from the train, he says: "Now
+there's no doubt that we are going to get home&mdash;unless
+we are smashed up in a taxi, on the way."</p>
+
+<p>And when the taxi stops at your front door, and you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_681" id="Page_681">[Pg 681]</a></span>
+bid him farewell before he continues on his way to his
+own front door, he says: "Now you're going to get
+home for sure&mdash;unless the elevator drops."</p>
+
+<p>And when the elevator has not dropped, but has transported
+you in safety to the door of your apartment, and
+you have searched out the old key, and have unlocked the
+door, and entered, and found happiness within, then you
+wonder to yourself as I once heard a little boy wonder,
+when he had gone out of his own yard, and had found a
+number of large cans of paint, and had upset them on
+himself:</p>
+
+<p>"I have a very happy home," he said, reflectively. "I
+wonder why I don't seem to stay around it more?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> From "Historic Towns of the Southern States."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See chapter on Colonel Taylor and General Lee.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> The <i>Merrimac</i>, originally a Federal vessel of wooden construction,
+was sunk by the Union forces when they abandoned Norfolk. A Confederate
+captain, John M. Brooke, raised her, equipped her with a ram,
+and covered her with boiler plate and railroad rails. She is called the
+first ironclad. While she was being reconstructed John Ericsson was
+building his <i>Monitor</i> in New York. The turret was first used on this
+vessel. It is worth noting that at the time of the engagement between
+these two ships the <i>Monitor</i> was not the property of the Federal Government,
+but belonged to C.&nbsp;S. Bushnell, of New Haven, who built her at
+his own expense, in spite of the opposition of the Navy Department of
+that day. The Government paid for her long after the fight. It should also
+be noted that the <i>Merrimac</i> did not fight under that name, but as a Confederate
+ship had been rechristened <i>Virginia</i>. The patriotic action of Mr.
+Bushnell is recalled by the fact that, only recently, Mr. Godfrey L. Cabot,
+of Boston, has agreed to furnish funds to build the torpedoplane designed
+by Admiral Fiske as a weapon wherewith to attack the German fleet
+within its defenses at Kiel.</p></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<h3>Transcriber's Notes</h3>
+
+<p>Page 82: changed "Ridgleys" to "Ridgelys" (of present Ridgelys)</p>
+
+<p>Page 83: changed "her serious, eyes" to "her serious eyes"</p>
+
+<p>Page 138: Added missing word "we" (said as we were about to leave)</p>
+
+<p>Page 161: removed hyphen from "one-course" (prescribed one course)</p>
+
+<p>Page 169: changed "not" to "now" (now know that I did)</p>
+
+<p>Page 172: added missing quotation mark (such a long telegram.")</p>
+
+<p>Page 209: changed "Virgina" to "Virginia" (in Virginia, save,)</p>
+
+<p>Page 217: changed "it" to "in" (harm in it)</p>
+
+<p>Page 217: added missing quotation mark (raised with niggers around him."")</p>
+
+<p>Page 245: removed superfluous quotation marks from end of two lines<br />
+                <span style="margin-left: 6em;">(Yass, Jedge, drunk. <i>Always</i> drunk.)</span><br />
+		<span style="margin-left: 6em;">(he come so fast he untook the do' off'n de hinges; den 'e begins--")</span></p>
+
+<p>Page 283: added missing quotation mark (you very definitely don't.")</p>
+
+<p>Page 287: changed "Okrakoke" to "Ocracoke" (legend around Okracoke)</p>
+
+<p>Page 295: changed "seem" to "see" (them to see him)</p>
+
+<p>Page 328: changed "new York" to "New York" (New York "Sun,")</p>
+
+<p>Page 334: changed "coffe" to "coffee" (coffee, hot and iced.)</p>
+
+<p>Page 355: changed "maried" to "married" (were married in the dining room)</p>
+
+<p>Page 438: changed "corporaton" to "corporation" (corporation I have scandalously)</p>
+
+<p>Page 449: changed "constructon" to "construction" (With the construction)</p>
+
+<p>Page 450: changed "conversatons" to "conversations" and "wth" to "with" (telephonic conversations with a)</p>
+
+<p>Page 453: changed "objectons" to "objections" (brushed aside our objections.)</p>
+
+<p>Page 514: changed " to ' ("'Yes,' said Ed.)</p>
+
+<p>Page 518: added missing quotation mark (town in the Southwest.")</p>
+
+<p>Page 521: changed "repreduction" to "reproduction" (is a photographic reproduction)</p>
+
+<p>Page 527: changed "crusing" to "cruising" (was still cruising in the South)</p>
+
+<p>Page 528: added missing word "a" (officer of a naval vessel.)</p>
+
+<p>Page 532: changed "stading" to "standing" (and silver standing on the)</p>
+
+<p>Page 538: added missing word "ago" (years ago he conducted)</p>
+
+<p>Page 542: added missing quotation mark (innumerable squirrels.")</p>
+
+<p>Page 590: changed "redout" to "redoubt" (last redoubt held)</p>
+
+<p>Page 631: changed "hardly" to "hardy" (hardy pioneers from Canada,)</p>
+
+<p>Page 640: added missing ) ("mosquito bar.") The)</p>
+
+<p>Page 649: changed "This, situation is" to "This situation is" (This situation is)</p>
+
+<p>Page 649: changed "may" to "my" (it was my chance)</p>
+
+<p>Page 655: added missing quotation mark (the Jolly Roger.")</p>
+
+<p>Page 657: changed "well-know" to "well-known" (too well-known "Last)</p>
+
+<p>Page 669: changed "is" to "it" (that it bears the relation)</p>
+
+<p>Page 670: changed "that" to "than" (even than the pageants)</p>
+
+<p>Page 734: changed "coconut" to "cocoanut" in image caption (palm fronds of the cocoanut grove,)</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of American Adventures, by Julian Street
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+</body>
+</html>
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+\version "2.6.5"
+\include "english.ly"
+
+melody = \relative c' {
+\key g \major
+\autoBeamOff
+d2 d2 | g4 b4 a4 fs8 fs8 | g4 b4 a4. r8 | d8. d16 e4 b2 | d4 g,4 b4 d,4 | g1\fermata | e1~ | e1 \bar "||"
+}
+
+\addlyrics {
+An' a Daw -- try Daw! an' a swimp -- y raw! an' a Daw -- try Daw -- try Daw -- try Raw Swimp.
+}
+
+\score {
+  \new Staff \melody
+  \midi { \tempo 4 = 180 }
+  \layout {
+    indent = 0.0\cm
+    \context {
+      \Score
+       \remove Bar_number_engraver
+    }
+  }
+}
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of American Adventures, by Julian Street
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: American Adventures
+       A Second Trip 'Abroad at home'
+
+Author: Julian Street
+
+Illustrator: Wallace Morgan
+
+Release Date: May 3, 2006 [EBook #18304]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMERICAN ADVENTURES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Charleston is the last stronghold of a unified American
+upper class; the last remaining American city in which Madeira and Port
+and _noblesse oblige_ are fully and widely understood, and are employed
+according to the best traditions]
+
+
+
+
+AMERICAN ADVENTURES
+
+A SECOND TRIP "ABROAD AT HOME" BY
+
+JULIAN STREET
+
+
+WITH PICTORIAL SIDELIGHTS
+BY
+WALLACE MORGAN
+
+
+
+
+NEW YORK
+THE CENTURY CO.
+1917
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1917, by
+THE CENTURY CO.
+
+Copyright, 1916, 1917, by
+P.F. COLLIER & SON, INC.
+
+_Published, November, 1917_
+
+
+
+
+TO MY AUNT
+AND SECOND MOTHER
+
+JULIA ROSS LOW
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+Though much has been written of the South, it seems to me that this part
+of our country is less understood than any other part. Certainly the
+South, itself, feels that this is true. Its relationship to the North
+makes me think of nothing so much as that of a pretty, sensitive wife,
+to a big, strong, amiable, if somewhat thick-skinned husband. These two
+had one great quarrel which nearly resulted in divorce. He thought her
+headstrong; she thought him overbearing. The quarrel made her ill; she
+has been for some time recovering. But though they have settled their
+difficulties and are living again in amity together, and though he,
+man-like, has half forgotten that they ever quarreled at all, now that
+peace reigns in the house again, _she_ has _not_ forgotten. There still
+lingers in her mind the feeling that he never really understood her,
+that he never understood her problems and her struggles, and that he
+never will. And it seems to me further that, as is usually the case with
+wives who consider themselves misunderstood, the fault is partly, but by
+no means altogether, hers. He, upon one hand, is inclined to pass the
+matter off with a: "There, there! It's all over now. Just be good and
+forget it!" while she, in the depths of her heart, retains a little bit
+of wistfulness, a little wounded feeling, which causes her to say to
+herself: "Thank God our home was not broken up, but--I wish that he
+could be a little more considerate, sometimes, in view of all that I
+have suffered."
+
+For my part, I am the humble but devoted friend of the family. Having
+known him first, having been from boyhood his companion, I may perhaps
+have sympathized with him in the beginning. But since I have come to
+know her, too, that is no longer so. And I do think I know her--proud,
+sensitive, high-strung, generous, captivating beauty that she is!
+Moreover, after the fashion of many another "friend of the family," I
+have fallen in love with her. Loving her from afar, I send her as a
+nosegay these chapters gathered in her own gardens. If some of the
+flowers are of a kind for which she does not care, if some have thorns,
+even if some are only weeds, I pray her to remember that from what was
+growing in her gardens I was forced to make my choice, and to believe
+that, whatever the defects of my bouquet, it is meant to be a bunch of
+roses.
+
+        J.S.
+_October 1, 1917._
+
+     The Author makes his grateful acknowledgments to the old friends
+     and the new ones who assisted him upon this journey. And once more
+     he desires to express his gratitude to the friend and
+     fellow-traveler whose illustrations are far from being his only
+     contribution to this volume.
+
+        --J.S.
+New York, October, 1917.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE BORDERLAND
+
+CHAPTER                                                             PAGE
+
+      I ON JOURNEYS THROUGH THE STATES                                 3
+
+     II A BALTIMORE EVENING                                           13
+
+    III WHERE THE CLIMATES MEET                                       27
+
+     IV TRIUMPHANT DEFEAT                                             38
+
+      V TERRAPIN AND THINGS                                           44
+
+     VI DOUGHOREGAN MANOR AND THE CARROLLS                            53
+
+    VII A RARE OLD TOWN                                               69
+
+   VIII WE MEET THE HAMPTON GHOST                                     80
+
+     IX ARE WE STANDARDIZED?                                          89
+
+      X HARPER'S FERRY AND JOHN BROWN                                 97
+
+     XI THE VIRGINIAS AND THE WASHINGTONS                            105
+
+    XII I RIDE A HORSE                                               117
+
+   XIII INTO THE OLD DOMINION                                        136
+
+    XIV CHARLOTTESVILLE AND MONTICELLO                               150
+
+     XV THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA                                   159
+
+    XVI FOX-HUNTING IN VIRGINIA                                      169
+
+   XVII "A CERTAIN PARTY"                                            186
+
+  XVIII THE LEGACY OF HATE                                           193
+
+    XIX "YOU-ALL" AND OTHER SECTIONAL MISUNDERSTANDINGS              203
+
+     XX IDIOMS AND ARISTOCRACY                                       214
+
+    XXI THE CONFEDERATE CAPITAL                                      222
+
+   XXII RANDOM RICHMOND NOTES                                        233
+
+  XXIII JEDGE CRUTCHFIELD'S COT                                      242
+
+   XXIV NORFOLK AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD                                 248
+
+    XXV COLONEL TAYLOR AND GENERAL LEE                               258
+
+
+THE HEART OF THE SOUTH
+
+   XXVI RALEIGH AND JOSEPHUS DANIELS                                 273
+
+  XXVII ITEMS FROM "THE OLD NORTH STATE"                             285
+
+ XXVIII UNDER ST. MICHAEL'S CHIMES                                   296
+
+   XXIX HISTORY AND ARISTOCRACY                                      312
+
+    XXX POLITICS, A NEWSPAPER AND ST. CECILIA                        326
+
+   XXXI "GULLA" AND THE BACK COUNTRY                                 338
+
+  XXXII OUT OF THE PAST                                              349
+
+ XXXIII ALIVE ATLANTA                                                356
+
+  XXXIV GEORGIA JOURNALISM                                           369
+
+   XXXV SOME ATLANTA INSTITUTIONS                                    384
+
+  XXXVI A BIT OF RURAL GEORGIA                                       392
+
+ XXXVII A YOUNG METROPOLIS                                           403
+
+XXXVIII BUSY BIRMINGHAM                                              417
+
+  XXXIX AN ALLEGORY OF ACHIEVEMENT                                   426
+
+     XL THE ROAD TO ARCADY                                           440
+
+    XLI A MISSISSIPPI TOWN                                           447
+
+   XLII OLD TALES AND A NEW GAME                                     458
+
+  XLIII OUT OF THE LONG AGO                                          467
+
+   XLIV THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND HIM                                  474
+
+    XLV VICKSBURG OLD AND NEW                                        482
+
+   XLVI SHREDS AND PATCHES                                           494
+
+  XLVII THE BAFFLING MISSISSIPPI                                     500
+
+ XLVIII OLD RIVER DAYS                                               508
+
+   XLIX WHAT MEMPHIS HAS ENDURED                                     518
+
+      L MODERN MEMPHIS                                               535
+
+
+FARTHEST SOUTH
+
+     LI BEAUTIFUL SAVANNAH                                           553
+
+    LII MISS "JAX" AND SOME FLORIDA GOSSIP                           572
+
+   LIII PASSIONATE PALM BEACH                                        579
+
+    LIV ASSORTED AND RESORTED FLORIDA                                595
+
+     LV A DAY IN MONTGOMERY                                          603
+
+    LVI THE CITY OF THE CREOLE                                       619
+
+   LVII HISTORY, THE CREOLE, AND HIS DUELS                           629
+
+  LVIII FROM ANTIQUES TO PIRATES                                     648
+
+    LIX ANTOINE'S AND MARDI GRAS                                     663
+
+     LX FINALE                                                       675
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+                                                             FACING PAGE
+Charleston is the last stronghold of a unified American upper class;
+the last remaining American city in which Madeira and Port and
+_noblesse oblige_ are fully and widely understood, and are employed
+according to the best traditions                          _Frontispiece_
+
+"Railroad tickets!" said the baggageman with exaggerated patience      8
+
+Can most travellers, I wonder, enjoy as I do a solitary walk, by
+night, through the mysterious streets of a strange city?              17
+
+Coming out of my slumber with the curious and unpleasant sense of
+being stared at, I found his eyes fixed upon me                       24
+
+Mount Vernon Place is the centre of Baltimore                         32
+
+If she is shopping for a dinner party, she may order the costly and
+aristocratic diamond-back terrapin, sacred in Baltimore as is the
+Sacred Cod in Boston                                                  48
+
+Doughoregan Manor--the house was a buff-colored brick                 65
+
+I began to realize that there was no one coming                       80
+
+Harper's Ferry is an entrancing old town; a drowsy place piled up
+beautifully yet carelessly upon terraced roads clinging to steep
+hillsides                                                            100
+
+"What's the matter with him?" I asked, stopping                      117
+
+When I came down, dressed for riding, my companion was making a
+drawing; the four young ladies were with him, none of them in riding
+habits                                                               124
+
+Claymont Court is one of the old Washington houses                   132
+
+Chatham, the old Fitzhugh house, now the residence of Mark Sullivan  148
+
+Monticello stands on a lofty hilltop, with vistas, between trees of
+neighboring valleys, hills, and mountains                            157
+
+Like Venice, the University of Virginia should first be seen by
+moonlight                                                            168
+
+One party was stationed on the top of an old-time mail-coach,
+bearing the significant initials "F.F.V."                            180
+
+The Piedmont Hunt Race Meet                                          189
+
+The Southern negro is the world's peasant supreme                    200
+
+The Country Club of Virginia, out to the west of Richmond            216
+
+Judge Crutchfield                                                    228
+
+Negro women squatting upon boxes in old shadowy lofts stem the
+tobacco leaves                                                       237
+
+The Judge: "What did he do, Mandy?"                                  244
+
+Some genuine old-time New York ferryboats help to complete the
+illusion that Norfolk is New York                                    253
+
+"The Southern statesman who serves his section best, serves his
+country best"                                                        280
+
+St. Philip's is the more beautiful for the open space before it      300
+
+Opposite St. Philip's, a perfect example of the rude architecture of
+an old French village                                                305
+
+In the doorway and gates of the Smyth house, in Legare Street, I was
+struck with a Venetian suggestion                                    316
+
+Nor is the Charleston background a mere arras of recollection        320
+
+Charleston has a stronger, deeper-rooted city entity than all the
+cities of the Middle West rolled into one                            328
+
+The interior is the oldest looking thing in the United States--Goose
+Creek Church                                                         344
+
+A reminder of the Chicago River--Atlanta                             353
+
+With the whole Metropolitan Orchestra playing dance music all night
+long                                                                 368
+
+The office buildings are city office buildings, and are sufficiently
+numerous to look very much at home                                   376
+
+The negro roof-garden, Odd Fellows' Building, Atlanta                385
+
+I was never so conscious, as at the time of our visit to the Burge
+Plantation, of the superlative soft sweetness of the spring          396
+
+The planters cease their work                                        400
+
+Birmingham--the thin veil of smoke from far-off iron furnaces
+softens the city's serrated outlines                                 408
+
+Birmingham practices unremittingly the pestilential habit of
+"cutting in" at dances                                               424
+
+Gigantic movements and mutations, Niagara-like noises, great bursts
+of flame like falling fragments from the sun                         437
+
+A shaggy, unshaven, rawboned man, gray-haired and collarless, sat
+near the window                                                      444
+
+Gaze upon the character called Daniel Voorhees Pike!                 456
+
+The houses were full of the suggestion of an easy-going home life
+and an informal hospitality                                          465
+
+Her hands looked very white and small against his dark coat          480
+
+As water flows down the hills of Vicksburg to the river, so the
+visitor's thoughts flow down to the great spectacular, mischievous,
+dominating stream                                                    485
+
+Over the tenement roofs one catches sight of sundry other buildings
+of a more self-respecting character                                  492
+
+Vicksburg negroes                                                    497
+
+On some of the boats negro fish-markets are conducted                504
+
+The old Klein house                                                  512
+
+Citizens go at midday to the square                                  520
+
+Hanging in the air above the middle of the stream                    536
+
+These small parks give Savannah the quality which differentiates it
+from all other American cities                                       556
+
+The Thomas house, in Franklin Square                                 561
+
+You will see them having tea, and dancing under the palm fronds of
+the cocoanut grove                                                   576
+
+Cocktail hour at The Breakers                                        581
+
+Nowhere is the sand more like a deep warm dust of yellow gold        588
+
+The couples on the platform were "ragging"                           600
+
+Harness held together by that especial Providence which watches over
+negro mending                                                        613
+
+It was a very jolly fair                                             616
+
+The mysterious old Absinthe House, founded 1799                      620
+
+St. Anthony's Garden                                                 632
+
+Courtyard of the old Orleans Hotel                                   641
+
+The little lady who sits behind the desk                             656
+
+The lights are always lowered at Antoine's when the spectacular Cafe
+Boulot Diabolique is served                                          664
+
+Passing between the brilliantly illuminated buildings, the Mardi
+Gras parades are glorious sights for children from eight to eighty
+years of age                                                         672
+
+
+
+
+THE BORDERLAND
+
+    O magnet-South! O glistening, perfumed South!
+    O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and love! good and evil!
+       O all dear to me!
+
+    WALT WHITMAN.
+
+
+
+
+AMERICAN ADVENTURES
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+ON JOURNEYS THROUGH THE STATES
+
+    On journeys through the States we start,
+    ... We willing learners of all, teachers of all, lovers of all.
+
+    We dwell a while in every city and town ...
+
+    --WALT WHITMAN.
+
+
+
+Had my companion and I never crossed the continent together, had we
+never gone "abroad at home," I might have curbed my impatience at the
+beginning of our second voyage. But from the time we returned from our
+first journey, after having spent some months in trying, as some one put
+it, to "discover America," I felt the gnawings of excited appetite. The
+vast sweep of the country continually suggested to me some great
+delectable repast: a banquet spread for a hundred million guests; and
+having discovered myself unable, in the time first allotted, to devour
+more than part of it--a strip across the table, as it were, stretching
+from New York on one side to San Francisco on the other--I have hungered
+impatiently for more. Indeed, to be quite honest, I should like to try
+to eat it all.
+
+Months before our actual departure for the South the day for leaving was
+appointed; days before we fixed upon our train; hours before I bought my
+ticket. And then, when my trunks had left the house, when my taxicab was
+ordered and my faithful battered suitcase stood packed to bulging in the
+hall, my companion, the Illustrator, telephoned to say that certain
+drawings he must finish before leaving were not done, that he would be
+unable to go with me that afternoon, as planned, but must wait until the
+midnight train.
+
+Had the first leap been a long one I should have waited for him, but the
+distance from New York to the other side of Mason and Dixon's Line is
+short, and I knew that he would join me on the threshold of the South
+next morning. Therefore I told him I would leave that afternoon as
+originally proposed, and gave him, in excuse, every reason I could think
+of, save the real one: namely, my impatience. I told him that I wished
+to make the initial trip by day to avoid the discomforts of the sleeping
+car, that I had engaged hotel accommodations for the night by wire, that
+friends were coming down to see me off.
+
+Nor were these arguments without truth. I believe in telling the truth.
+The truth is good enough for any one at any time--except, perhaps, when
+there is a point to be carried, and even then some vestige of it should,
+if convenient, be preserved. Thus, for example, it is quite true that I
+prefer the conversation of my fellow travelers, dull though it may be,
+to the stertorous sounds they make by night; so, too, if I had not
+telegraphed for rooms, it was merely because I had forgotten to--and
+that I remedied immediately; while as to the statement that friends were
+to see me off, that was absolutely and literally accurate. Friends had,
+indeed, signified their purpose to meet me at the station for last
+farewells, and had, furthermore, remarked upon the very slight show of
+enthusiasm with which I heard the news.
+
+The fact is, I do not like to be seen off. Least of all, do I like to be
+seen off by those who are dear to me. If the thing must be done, I
+prefer it to be done by strangers--committees from chambers of commerce
+and the like, who have no interest in me save the hope that I will live
+to write agreeably of their city--of the civic center, the fertilizer
+works, and the charming new abattoir. Seeing me off for the most
+practical of reasons, such gentlemen are invariably efficient. They
+provide an equipage, and there have even been times when, in the final
+hurried moments, they have helped me to jam the last things into my
+trunks and bags. One of them politely takes my suitcase, another kindly
+checks my baggage, and all in order that a third, who is usually the
+secretary of the chamber of commerce, may regale me with inspiring
+statistics concerning the population of "our city," the seating capacity
+of the auditorium, the number of banks, the amount of their clearings,
+and the quantity of belt buckles annually manufactured. When the train
+is ready we exchange polite expressions of regret at parting:
+expressions reminiscent of those little speeches which the King of
+England and the Emperor of Germany used to make at parting in the old
+days before they found each other out and began dropping high explosives
+on each other's roofs.
+
+Such a committee, feeling no emotion (except perhaps relief) at seeing
+me depart, may be useful. Not so with friends and loved ones. Useful as
+they may be in the great crises of life, they are but disturbing
+elements in the small ones. Those who would die for us seldom check our
+trunks.
+
+By this I do not mean to imply that either of the two delightful
+creatures who came to the Pennsylvania Terminal to bid me good-by would
+die for me. That one has lived for me and that both attempt to regulate
+my conduct is more than enough. Hardly had I alighted from my taxicab,
+hardly had the redcap seized my suitcase, when, with sweet smiles and a
+twinkling of daintily shod feet, they came. Fancy their having arrived
+ahead of me! Fancy their having come like a pair of angels through the
+rain to see me off! Enough to turn a man's head! It did turn mine; and I
+noticed that, as they approached, the heads of other men were turning
+too.
+
+Flattered to befuddlement, I greeted them and started with them
+automatically in the direction of the concourse, forgetting entirely the
+driver of my taxicab, who, however, took in the situation and set up a
+great shout--whereat I returned hastily and overpaid him.
+
+This accomplished, I rejoined my companions and, with a radiant
+dark-haired girl at one elbow and a blonde, equally delectable, at the
+other, moved across the concourse.
+
+How gay they were as we strolled along! How amusing were their
+prophecies of adventures destined to befall me in the South. Small
+wonder that I took no thought of whither I was going.
+
+Presently, having reached the wall at the other side of the great
+vaulted chamber, we stopped.
+
+"Which train, boss?" asked the porter who had meekly followed.
+
+Train? I had forgotten about trains. The mention of the subject
+distracted my attention for the moment from the _Loreleien_, stirred my
+drugged sense of duty, and reminded me that I had trunks to check.
+
+My suggestion that I leave them briefly for this purpose was lightly
+brushed aside.
+
+"Oh, no!" they cried. "We shall go with you."
+
+I gave in at once--one always does with them--and inquired of the porter
+the location of the baggage room. He looked somewhat fatigued as he
+replied:
+
+"It's away back there where we come from, boss."
+
+It was a long walk; in a garden, with no train to catch, it would have
+been delightful.
+
+"Got your tickets?" suggested the porter as we passed the row of grilled
+windows. He had evidently concluded that I was irresponsible.
+
+As I had them, we continued on our way, and presently achieved the
+baggage room, where they stood talking and laughing, telling me of the
+morning's shopping expedition--hat-hunting, they called it--in the
+rain. I fancy that we might have been there yet had not a baggageman,
+perhaps divining that I had become a little bit distrait and that I had
+business to transact, rapped smartly on the iron counter with his punch
+and demanded:
+
+"Baggage checked?"
+
+Turning, not without reluctance, from a pair of violet eyes and a pair
+of the most mysterious gray, I began to fumble in my pockets for the
+claim checks.
+
+"How long shall you stay in Baltimore?" asked the girl with the gray
+eyes.
+
+"Yes, indeed!" I answered, still searching for the checks.
+
+"That doesn't make sense," remarked the blue-eyed girl as I found the
+checks and handed them to the baggageman. "She asked how long you'd stay
+in Baltimore, and you said: 'Yes, indeed.'"
+
+"About a week I meant to say."
+
+"Oh, I don't believe a week will be enough," said Gray-eyes.
+
+"We can't stay longer," I declared. "We must keep pushing on. There are
+so many places in the South to see."
+
+"My sister has just been there, and she--"
+
+"Where to?" demanded the insistent baggageman.
+
+"Why, Baltimore, of course," I said. Had he paid attention to our
+conversation he might have known.
+
+"You were saying," reminded Violet-eyes, "that your sister--?"
+
+"She just came home from there, and says that--"
+
+"Railroad ticket!" said the baggageman with exaggerated patience.
+
+I began again to feel in various pockets.
+
+"She says," continued Gray-eyes, "that she never met more charming
+people or had better things to eat. She loves the southern accent too."
+
+I don't know how the tickets got into my upper right vest pocket; I
+never carry tickets there; but that is where I found them.
+
+"Do you like it?" asked the other girl of me.
+
+"Like what?"
+
+"Why, the southern accent."
+
+"Any valuation?" the baggageman demanded.
+
+"Yes," I answered them both at once.
+
+"Oh, you _do_?" cried Violet-eyes, incredulously.
+
+"Why, yes; I think--"
+
+"Put down the amount and sign here," the baggageman directed, pushing a
+slip toward me and placing a pencil in my hand.
+
+I obeyed. The baggageman took the slip and went off to a little desk. I
+judged that he had finished with me for the moment.
+
+"But don't you think," my fair inquisitor continued, "that the southern
+girls pile on the accent awfully, because they know it pleases men?"
+
+"Perhaps," I said. "But then, what better reason could they have for
+doing so?"
+
+"Listen to that!" she cried to her companion. "Did you ever hear such
+egotism?"
+
+"He's nothing but a man," said Gray-eyes scornfully. "I wouldn't be a
+man for--"
+
+"A dollar and eighty-five cents," declared the baggageman.
+
+I paid him.
+
+"I wouldn't be a man for anything!" my fair friend finished as we
+started to move off.
+
+"I wouldn't have you one," I told her, opening the concourse door.
+
+"_Hay!_" shouted the baggageman. "Here's your ticket and your checks!"
+
+I returned, took them, and put them in my pocket. Again we proceeded
+upon our way. I was glad to leave the baggageman.
+
+This time the porter meant to take no chances.
+
+"What train, boss?" he asked.
+
+"The Congressional Limited."
+
+"You got jus' four minutes."
+
+"Goodness!" cried Gray-eyes.
+
+"I thought," said Violet-eyes as we accelerated our pace, "that you
+prided yourself on always having time to spare?"
+
+"Usually I do," I answered, "but in this case--"
+
+"What car?" the porter interrupted tactfully.
+
+Again I felt for my tickets. This time they were in my change pocket. I
+can't imagine how I came to put them there.
+
+"But in this case--_what_?" The violet eyes looked threatening as their
+owner put the question.
+
+"Seat seven, car three," I told the porter firmly as we approached the
+gate. Then, turning to my dangerous and lovely cross-examiner: "In this
+case I am unfortunate, for there is barely time to say good-by."
+
+There are several reasons why I don't believe in railway station kisses.
+Kisses given in public are at best but skimpy little things, suggesting
+the swift peck of a robin at a peach, whereas it is truer of kissing
+than of many other forms of industry that what is worth doing at all is
+worth doing well. Yet I knew that one of these enchantresses expected to
+be kissed, and that the other very definitely didn't. Therefore I kissed
+them both.
+
+Then I bolted toward the gate.
+
+"Tickets!" demanded the gateman, stopping me.
+
+At last I found them in the inside pocket of my overcoat. I don't know
+how they got there. I never carry tickets in that pocket.
+
+As the train began to move I looked at my watch and, discovering it to
+be three minutes fast, set it right. That is the sort of train the
+Congressional Limited is. A moment later we were roaring through the
+blackness of the Hudson River tunnel.
+
+There is something fine in the abruptness of the escape from New York
+City by the Pennsylvania Railroad. From the time you enter the station
+you are as good as gone. There is no progress between the city's
+tenements, with untidy bedding airing in some windows and fat old
+slatterns leaning out from others to survey the sordidness and squalor
+of the streets below. A swift plunge into darkness, some thundering
+moments, and your train glides out upon the wide wastes of the New
+Jersey meadows. The city is gone. You are even in another State. Far,
+far behind, bathed in glimmering haze which gives them the appearance of
+palaces in a mirage, you may see the tops of New York's towering
+sky-scrapers, dwarfed yet beautified by distance. Outside the wide car
+window the advertising sign-boards pass to the rear in steady parade,
+shrieking in strong color of whiskies, tobaccos, pills, chewing gums,
+cough drops, flours, hams, hotels, soaps, socks, and shows.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A BALTIMORE EVENING
+
+    I felt her presence by its spell of might,
+      Stoop o'er me from above;
+    The calm, majestic presence of the night,
+      As of the one I love.
+
+    --LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+Before I went to Baltimore I had but two definite impressions connected
+with the place: the first was of a tunnel, filled with coal gas, through
+which trains pass beneath the city; the second was that when a
+southbound train left Baltimore the time had come to think of cleaning
+up, preparatory to reaching Washington.
+
+Arriving at Baltimore after dark, one gathers an impression of an
+adequate though not impressive Union Station from which one emerges to a
+district of good asphalted streets, the main ones wide and well lighted.
+The Baltimore street lamps are large and very brilliant single globes,
+mounted upon the tops of substantial metal columns. I do not remember
+having seen lamps of the same pattern in any other city. It is a good
+pattern, but there is one thing about it which is not good at all, and
+that is the way the street names are lettered upon the sides of the
+globes. Though the lettering is not large, it is large enough to be
+read easily in the daytime against the globe's white surface, but to try
+to read it at night is like trying to read some little legend printed
+upon a blinding noon-day sun. I noticed this particularly because I
+spent my first evening in wandering alone about the streets of
+Baltimore, and wished to keep track of my route in order that I might
+the more readily find my way back to the hotel.
+
+Can most travelers, I wonder, enjoy as I do a solitary walk, by night,
+through the mysterious streets of a strange city? Do they feel the same
+detached yet keen interest in unfamiliar highways, homes, and human
+beings, the same sense of being a wanderer from another world, a
+"messenger from Mars," a Harun-al-Rashid, or, if not one of these, an
+imaginative adventurer like Tartarin? Do they thrill at the sight of an
+ill-lighted street leading into a no-man's-land of menacing dark
+shadows; at the promise of a glowing window puncturing the blackness
+here or there; at the invitation of some open doorway behind which
+unilluminated blackness hangs, threatening and tempting? Do they rejoice
+in streets the names of which they have not heard before? Do they--as I
+do--delight in irregularity: in the curious forms of roofs and spires
+against the sky; in streets which run up hill or down; or which, instead
+of being straight, have jogs in them, or curves, or interesting
+intersections, at which other streets dart off from them obliquely, as
+though in a great hurry to get somewhere? Do they love to emerge from a
+street which is narrow, dim, and deserted, upon one which is wide,
+bright, and crowded; and do they also like to leave a brilliant street
+and dive into the darkness of some somber byway? Does a long row of
+lights lure them, block by block, toward distances unknown? Are they
+tempted by the unfamiliar signs on passing street cars? Do they yearn to
+board those cars and be transported by them into the mystic caverns of
+the night? And when they see strangers who are evidently going somewhere
+with some special purpose, do they wish to follow; to find out where
+these beings are going, and why? Do they wish to trail them, let the
+trail lead to a prize fight, to a church sociable, to a fire, to a
+fashionable ball, or to the ends of the world?
+
+For the traveler who does not know such sensations and such impulses as
+these--who has not at times indulged in the joy of yielding to an
+inclination of at least mildly fantastic character--I am profoundly
+sorry. The blind themselves are not so blind as those who, seeing with
+the physical eye, lack the eye of imagination.
+
+Residence streets like Chase and Biddle, in the blocks near where they
+cross Charles Street, midway on its course between the Union Station and
+Mount Vernon Place, are at night, even more than by day, full of the
+suggestion of comfortable and settled domesticity. Their brick houses,
+standing wall to wall and close to the sidewalk, speak of honorable age,
+and, in some cases of a fine and ancient dignity. One fancies that in
+many of these houses the best of old mahogany may be found, or, if not
+that, then at least the fairly old and quite creditable furniture of the
+period of the sleigh-back bed, the haircloth-covered rosewood sofa, and
+the tall, narrow mirror between the two front windows of the drawing
+room.
+
+Through the glass panels of street doors and beneath half-drawn window
+shades the early-evening wayfarer may perceive a feeble glow as of
+illuminating gas turned low; but by ten o'clock these lights have begun
+to disappear, indicating--or so, at all events, I chose to believe--that
+certain old ladies wearing caps and black silk gowns with old lace
+fichus held in place by ancient cameos, have proceeded slowly,
+rustlingly, upstairs to bed, accompanied by their cats.
+
+At Cathedral Street, a block or two from Charles, Biddle Street performs
+a jog, dashing off at a tangent from its former course, while Chase
+Street not only jogs and turns at the corresponding intersection, but
+does so again, where, at the next corner, it meets at once with Park
+Avenue and Berkeley Street. After this it runs but a short way and dies,
+as though exhausted by its own contortions.
+
+Here, in a region of malformed city blocks--some of them pentagonal,
+some irregularly quadrangular, some wedge-shaped--Howard Street sets
+forth upon its way, running first southwest as far as Richmond Street,
+then turning south and becoming, by degrees, an important thoroughfare.
+
+Somewhere near the beginning of Howard Street my attention was arrested
+by shadowy forms in a dark window: furniture, andirons, chinaware, and
+weapons of obsolete design: unmistakable signs of a shop in which
+antiquities were for sale. After making mental note of the location of
+this shop, I proceeded on my way, keeping a sharp lookout for other like
+establishments. Nor was I to be disappointed. These birds of a feather
+bear out the truth of the proverb by flocking together in Howard Street,
+as window displays, faintly visible, informed me.
+
+Since we have come naturally to the subject of antiques, let us pause
+here, under a convenient lamp-post, and discuss the matter further.
+
+Baltimore--as I found out later--is probably the headquarters for the
+South in this trade. It has at least one dealer of Fifth Avenue rank,
+located on Charles Street, and a number of humbler dealers in and near
+Howard Street. Among the latter, two in particular interested me. One of
+these--his name is John A. Williar--I have learned to trust. Not only
+did I make some purchases of him while I was in Baltimore, but I have
+even gone so far, since leaving there, as to buy from him by mail,
+accepting his assurance that some article which I have not seen is,
+nevertheless, what I want, and that it is "worth the price."
+
+At the other antique shop which interested me I made no purchases. The
+stock on hand was very large, and if those who exhibited it to me made
+no mistakes in differentiating between genuine antiques and copies, the
+assortment of ancient furniture on sale in that establishment, when I
+was there, would rank among the great collections of the world.
+
+However, human judgment is not infallible, and antique dealers sometimes
+make mistakes, offering, so to speak, "new lamps for old." The eyesight
+of some dealers may not be so good as that of others; or perhaps one
+dealer does not know so well as another the difference between, say, an
+old English Chippendale chair and a New York reproduction; or again,
+perhaps, some dealers may be innocently unaware that there exist, in
+this land of ours, certain large establishments wherein are manufactured
+most extraordinary modern copies of the furniture of long ago. I have
+been in one of these manufactories, and have there seen chairs of
+Chippendale and Sheraton design which, though fresh from the workman's
+hands, looked older than the originals from which they had been
+plagiarized; also I recall a Jacobean refectory table, the legs of which
+appeared to have been eaten half away by time, but which had, in
+reality, been "antiqued" with a stiff wire brush. I mention this
+because, in my opinion, antique dealers have a right to know that such
+factories exist.
+
+What curious differences there are between the customs of one trade and
+those of another. Compare, for instance, the dealer in old furniture
+with the dealer in old automobiles. The latter, far from pronouncing a
+machine of which he wishes to dispose "a genuine antique," will assure
+you--and not always with a strict regard for truth--that it is
+"practically as good as new." Or compare the seller of antiques with the
+horse dealer. Can you imagine the latter's taking you up to some
+venerable quadruped--let alone a three-year-old--and discoursing upon
+its merits in some such manner as the following:
+
+"This is the oldest and most historic horse that has ever come into my
+possession. Just look at it, sir! The farmer of whom I bought it assured
+me that it was brought over by his ancestors in the _Mayflower_. The
+place where I found it was used as Washington's headquarters during the
+Revolutionary War, and it is known that Washington himself frequently
+sat on this very horse. It was a favorite of his. For he was a large man
+and he liked a big, comfortable, deep-seated horse, well braced
+underneath, and having strong arms, so that he could tilt it back
+comfortably against the wall, with its front legs off the floor, and--"
+
+But no! That won't do. It appears I have gotten mixed. However, you know
+what I meant to indicate. I merely meant to show that a horse dealer
+wouldn't talk about a horse as an antique dealer would talk about a
+chair. Even if the horse was once actually ridden by the Father of his
+Country, the dealer won't stress the point. You can't get him to admit
+that a horse has reached years of discretion, let alone that it is one
+hundred and forty-five years old, or so. It is this difference between
+the horse dealer and the dealer in antiques which keeps us in the dark
+to-day as to exactly which horses Washington rode and which he didn't
+ride; although we know every chair he ever sat in, and every bed he ever
+slept in, and every house he ever stopped in, and how he is said to have
+caught his death of cold.
+
+Having thus wandered afield, let me now resume my nocturnal walk.
+
+Proceeding down Howard Street to Franklin, I judged by the signs I saw
+about me--the conglomerate assortment of theaters, hotels, rathskellers,
+bars, and brilliantly lighted drug stores--that here was the center of
+the city's nighttime life.
+
+Not far from this corner is the Academy, a very spacious and somewhat
+ancient theater, and although the hour was late, into the Academy I went
+with a ticket for standing room.
+
+Arriving during an intermission, I had a good view of the auditorium. It
+is reminiscent, in its interior "decoration," of the recently torn-down
+Wallack's Theater in New York. The balcony is supported, after the old
+fashion, by posts, and there are boxes the tops of which are draped with
+tasseled curtains. It is the kind of theater which suggests traditions,
+dust, and the possibility of fire and panic.
+
+After looking about me for a time, I drew from my pocket a pamphlet
+which I had picked up in the hotel, and began to gather information
+about the "Monumental City," as Baltimore sometimes calls
+itself--thereby misusing the word, since "monumental" means, in one
+sense, "enduring," and in another "pertaining to or serving as a
+monument": neither of which ideas it is intended, in this instance, to
+convey. What Baltimore intends to indicate is, not that it pertains to
+monuments, but that monuments pertain to it: that it is a city in which
+many monuments have been erected--as is indeed the pleasing fact. My
+pamphlet informed me that the first monument to Columbus and the first
+to George Washington were here put up, and that among the city's other
+monuments was one to Francis Scott Key. I had quite forgotten that it
+was at Baltimore that Key wrote the words of "The Star-Spangled Banner,"
+and, as others may have done the same, it may be well here to recall the
+details.
+
+In 1814, after the British had burned a number of Government buildings
+in Washington, including "the President's palace" (as one of their
+officers expressed it), they moved on Baltimore, making an attack by
+land at North Point and a naval attack at Fort McHenry on Whetstone
+Point in the estuary of the Patapsco River--here practically an arm of
+Chesapeake Bay. Both attacks were repulsed. Having gone on the United
+States cartel ship _Minden_ (used by the government in negotiating
+exchanges of prisoners) to intercede for his friend, Dr. William Beanes,
+of Upper Marlborough, Maryland, who was held captive on a British
+vessel, Key witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry from the deck of
+the _Minden_, and when he perceived "by the dawn's early light" that the
+flag still flew over the fort, he was moved to write his famous poem.
+Later it was printed and set to music; it was first sung in a restaurant
+near the old Holliday Street Theater, but neither the restaurant nor the
+theater exists to-day. It is sometimes stated that Key was himself a
+prisoner, during the bombardment, on a British warship. That is a
+mistake.
+
+By a curious coincidence, only a few minutes after my pamphlet had
+reminded me of the origin of "The Star-Spangled Banner" here in
+Baltimore, I heard the air played under circumstances very different
+from any which could have been anticipated by the author of the poem, or
+the composer who set it to music.
+
+The entertainment at the Academy that night was supplied by an elaborate
+"show" of the burlesque variety known as "The Follies," and it so
+happened that in the course of this hodgepodge of color, comedy,
+scenery, song, and female anatomy, there was presented a "number" in
+which actors, garbed and frescoed with intent to resemble rulers of
+various lands, marched successively to the front of the stage, preceded
+in each instance by a small but carefully selected guard wearing the
+full-dress-uniform of Broadway Amazons. This uniform consists
+principally of tights and high-heeled slippers, the different nations
+being indicated, usually, by means of color combinations and various
+types of soldiers' hats. No arms are presented save those provided by
+nature.
+
+The King of Italy, the Emperor of Austria, the Czar, the Mikado, the
+British Monarch, the President of France, the King of the Belgians, the
+Kaiser (for the United States had not then entered the war), and, I
+think, some others, put in an appearance, each accompanied by his
+Paphian escort, his standard, and the appropriate national air.
+Apprehending that this symbolic travesty must, almost inevitably, end in
+a grand orgy of Yankee-Doodleism, I was impelled to flee the place
+before the thing should happen. Yet a horrid fascination held me there
+to watch the working up of "patriotic" sentiment by the old, cheap,
+stage tricks.
+
+Presently, of course, the supreme moment came. When all the potentates
+had taken their positions, right and left, with their silk-limbed
+soldiery in double ranks behind them, there came into view upstage a
+squad of little white-clad female naval officers, each, according to my
+recollection, carrying the Stars and Stripes. As these marched forward
+and deployed as skirmishers before the footlights, the orchestra struck
+up "The Star-Spangled Banner," fortissimo, and with a liberal sounding
+of the brasses. Upon this appeared at the back a counterfeit President
+of the United States, guarded on either side by a female militia--or
+were they perhaps secret-service agents?--in striking uniforms
+consisting of pink fleshings partially draped with thin black lace.
+
+As this incongruous parade proceeded to the footlights, American flags
+came into evidence, and, though I forget whether or not Columbia
+appeared, I recollect that a beautiful young woman, habited in what
+appeared to be a light pink union suit of unexceptionable cut and
+material, appeared above the head of the pseudo-chief executive,
+suspended at the end of a wire. Never having heard that it was White
+House etiquette to hang young ladies on wires above the presidential
+head, I consulted my program and thereby learned that this young lady
+represented that species of poultry so popular always with the late
+Secretary of State, Mr. Bryan, and so popular also at one time with the
+President himself: namely, the Dove of Peace.
+
+The applause was thunderous. At the sound of "The Star-Spangled Banner"
+a few members of the audience arose to their feet; others soon
+followed--some of them apparently with reluctance--until at last the
+entire house had risen. Meanwhile the members of the company lined up
+before the footlights: the mock president smirking at the center, the
+half-clad girls posing, the pink young lady dangling above, the band
+blaring, the Stars and Stripes awave. It was a scene, in all, about as
+conducive to genuine or creditable national pride as would be the scene
+of a debauch in some fabulous harem.
+
+The difference between stupidity and satire lies, not infrequently, in
+the intent with which a thing is done. Presented without essential
+change upon the stage of a music hall in some foreign land, the scene
+just described would, at that time, when we were playing a timid part
+amongst the nations, have been accepted, not as a glorification of the
+United States, but as having a precisely opposite significance. It would
+have been taken for burlesque; burlesque upon our country, our
+President, our national spirit, our peace policy, our army, and perhaps
+also upon our women--and insulting burlesque at that.
+
+Some years since, it was found necessary to pass a law prohibiting the
+use of the flag for advertising purposes. This law should be amended to
+protect it also from the even more sordid and vulgarizing associations
+to which it is not infrequently submitted on the American musical-comedy
+stage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the morning, before I was awake, my companion arrived at the hotel,
+and, going to his room, opened the door connecting it with mine. Coming
+out of my slumber with that curious and not altogether pleasant sense of
+being stared at, I found his eyes fixed upon me, and noticed immediately
+about him the air of virtuous superiority which is assumed by all who
+have risen early, whether they have done so by choice or have been
+shaken awake.
+
+"Hello," I said. "Had breakfast?"
+
+"No. I thought we could breakfast together if you felt like getting up."
+
+Though the phraseology of this remark was unexceptionable, I knew what
+it meant. What it really meant was: "Shame on you, lying there so lazy
+after sunup! Look at _me_, all dressed and ready to begin!"
+
+I arose at once.
+
+For all that I don't like to get up early, it recalled old times, and
+was very pleasant, to be away with him again upon our travels; to be in
+a strange city and a strange hotel, preparing to set forth on
+explorations. For he is the best, the most charming, the most observant
+of companions, and also one of the most patient.
+
+That is one of his greatest qualities--his patience. Throughout our
+other trip he always kept on being patient with me, no matter what I
+did. Many a time instead of pushing me down an elevator shaft, drowning
+me in my bath, or coming in at night and smothering me with a pillow, he
+has merely sighed, dropped into a chair, and sat there shaking his head
+and staring at me with a melancholy, ruminative, hopeless
+expression--such an expression as may come into the face of a dumb man
+when he looks at a waiter who has spilled an oyster cocktail on him.
+
+All this is good for me. It has a chastening effect.
+
+Therefore in a spirit happy yet not exuberant, eager yet controlled,
+hopeful yet a little bit afraid, I dressed myself hurriedly, breakfasted
+with him (eating ham and eggs because he approves of ham and eggs), and
+after breakfast set out in his society to obtain what--despite my walk
+of the night before--I felt was not alone my first real view of
+Baltimore, but my first glimpse over the threshold of the South: into
+the land of aristocracy and hospitality, of mules and mammies, of
+plantations, porticos, and proud, flirtatious belles, of colonels,
+cotton, chivalry, and colored cooking.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+WHERE THE CLIMATES MEET
+
+    Here, where the climates meet,
+    That each may make the other's lack complete--
+
+    --SIDNEY LANIER.
+
+
+Because Baltimore was built, like Rome, on seven hills, and because
+trains run under it instead of through, the passing traveler sees but
+little of the city, his view from the train window being restricted
+first to a suburban district, then to a black tunnel, then to a glimpse
+upward from the railway cut, in which the station stands. These facts, I
+think, combine to leave upon his mind an impression which, if not
+actually unfavorable, is at least negative; for certainly he has
+obtained no just idea of the metropolis of Maryland.
+
+Let it be declared at the outset, then, that Baltimore is not in any
+sense to be regarded as a suburb of Washington. Indeed, considering the
+two merely as cities situated side by side, and eliminating the highly
+specialized features of Washington, Baltimore becomes, according to the
+standards by which American cities are usually compared, the more
+important city of the two, being greater both in population and in
+commerce. In this aspect Baltimore may, perhaps, be pictured as the
+commercial half of Washington. And while Washington, as capital of the
+United States, has certain physical and cosmopolitan advantages, not
+only over Baltimore, but over every other city on this continent, it
+must not be forgotten that, upon the other hand, every other city has
+one vast advantage over Washington, namely, a comparative freedom from
+politicians. To be sure, Congress did once move over to Baltimore and
+sit there for several weeks, but that was in 1776, when the British
+approached the Delaware in the days before the pork barrel was invented.
+
+As a city Baltimore has marked characteristics. Though south of Mason
+and Dixon's Line, and though sometimes referred to as the "metropolis of
+the South" (as is New Orleans also), it is in character neither a city
+entirely northern nor entirely southern, but one which partakes of the
+qualities of both; where, in the words of Sidney Lanier, "the climates
+meet," and where northern and southern thought and custom meet, as well.
+This has long been the case. Thus, although slaves were held in
+Baltimore before the Civil War, a strong abolitionist society was formed
+there during Washington's first Administration, and the sentiment of the
+city was thereafter divided on the slavery question. Thus also, while
+the two candidates of the divided Democratic party who ran against
+Lincoln for the presidency in 1860 were nominated at Baltimore, Lincoln
+himself was nominated there by the Union-Republican party in 1864.
+
+Speaking of the blending of North and South in Baltimore, you will, of
+course, remember that the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment was attacked by a
+mob as it passed through the city on the way to the Civil War. The
+regiment arrived in Baltimore at the old President Street Station, which
+was then the main station of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and which, now
+used as a freight station, looks like an old war-time woodcut out of
+_Harper's Weekly_. It was the custom in those days to hitch horses to
+passenger coaches which were going through and draw them across town to
+the Baltimore & Ohio Station; but when it was attempted thus to
+transport the northern troops a mob gathered and blocked the Pratt
+Street bridge over Jones's Falls, forcing the soldiers to leave the cars
+and march through Pratt Street, along the water front, where they were
+attacked. It is, however, a noteworthy fact that Mayor Brown of
+Baltimore bravely preceded the troops and attempted to stop the rioting.
+A few days later the city was occupied by northern troops, and the
+warship _Harriet Lane_ anchored at a point off Calvert Street, whence
+her guns commanded the business part of town. After this there was no
+more serious trouble. Moreover, it will be remembered that though
+Maryland was represented by regiments in both armies, the State, torn as
+it was by conflicting feeling, nevertheless held to the Union.
+
+A pretty sequel to the historic attack on the Sixth Massachusetts
+occurred when the same regiment passed through Baltimore in 1898, on its
+way to the Spanish War. On this occasion it was "attacked" again in the
+streets of the city, but the missiles thrown, instead of paving-stones
+and bricks, were flowers.
+
+Continuing the category of contrasts, one may observe that while the
+general appearance of Baltimore suggests a northern city rather than a
+southern one--Philadelphia, for instance, rather than
+Richmond--Baltimore society is strongly flavored with the tradition and
+the soft pronunciation of the South; particularly of Virginia and the
+"Eastern Shore."
+
+So, too, the city's position on the border line is reflected in its
+handling of the negro. Of American cities, Washington has the largest
+negro population, 94,446, New York and New Orleans follow with almost as
+many, and Baltimore comes fourth with 84,749, according to the last
+census. New York has one negro to every fifty-one whites, Philadelphia
+one to every seventeen whites, Baltimore one to every six, Washington a
+negro to every two and a half whites, and Richmond not quite two whites
+to every negro. But, although Baltimore follows southern practice in
+maintaining separate schools for negro children, and in segregating
+negro residences to certain blocks, she follows northern practice in
+casting a considerable negro vote at elections, and also in not
+providing separate seats for negroes in her street cars.
+
+Have you ever noticed how cities sometimes seem to have their own
+especial colors? Paris is white and green--even more so, I think, than
+Washington. Chicago is gray; so is London usually, though I have seen
+it buff at the beginning of a heavy fog. New York used to be a brown
+sandstone city, but is now turning to one of cream-colored brick and
+tile; Naples is brilliant with pink and blue and green and white and
+yellow; while as for Baltimore, her old houses and her new are, as
+Baedeker puts it, of "cheerful red brick"--not always, of course, but
+often enough to establish the color of red brick as the city's
+predominating hue. And with the red-brick houses--particularly the older
+ones--go clean white marble steps, on the bottom one of which, at the
+side, may usually be found an old-fashioned iron "scraper," doubtless
+left over from the time (not very long ago) when the city pavements had
+not reached their present excellence.
+
+The color of red brick is not confined to the center of the city, but
+spreads to the suburbs, fashionable and unfashionable. At one margin of
+the town I was shown solid blocks of pleasant red-brick houses which, I
+was told, were occupied by workmen and their families, and were to be
+had at a rental of from ten to twenty dollars a month. For though
+Baltimore has a lower East Side which, like the lower East Side of New
+York, encompasses the Ghetto and Italian quarter, she has not tenements
+in the New York sense; one sees no tall, cheap flat houses draped with
+fire escapes and built to make herding places for the poor. Many of the
+houses in this section are instead the former homes of fashionables who
+have moved to other quarters of the city--handsome old homesteads with
+here and there a lovely, though battered, doorway sadly reminiscent of
+an earlier elegance. So, also, red brick permeates the prosperous
+suburbs, such as Roland Park and Guilford, where, in a sweetly rolling
+country which lends itself to the arrangement of graceful winding roads
+and softly contoured plantings, stand quantities of pleasing homes,
+lately built, many of them colonial houses of red brick. Indeed, it
+struck us that the only parts of Baltimore in which red brick was not
+the dominant note were the downtown business section and Mount Vernon
+Place.
+
+Mount Vernon Place is the center of Baltimore. Everything begins there,
+including Baedeker, who, in his little red book, gives it the asterisk
+of his approval, says that it "suggests Paris in its tasteful monuments
+and surrounding buildings," and recommends the view from the top of the
+Washington Monument.
+
+This monument, standing upon an eminence at the point where Charles and
+Monument Streets would cross each other were not their courses
+interrupted by the pleasing parked space of Mount Vernon Place, is a
+gray stone column, surmounted by a figure of Washington--or, rather, by
+the point of a lightning rod under which the figure stands. Other
+monuments are known as this monument or that, but when "the monument" is
+spoken of, the Washington Monument is inevitably meant. This is quite
+natural, for it is not only the most simple and picturesque old monument
+in Baltimore, but also the largest, the oldest, and the most
+conspicuous: its proud head, rising high in air, having for nearly a
+century dominated the city. One catches glimpses of it down this street
+or that, or sees it from afar over the housetops; and sometimes, when
+the column is concealed from view by intervening buildings, and only the
+surmounting statue shows above them, one is struck by a sudden
+apparition of the Father of his Country strolling fantastically upon
+some distant roof.
+
+Though it may be true that Mount Vernon Place, with its symmetrical
+parked center and its admirable bronzes (several of them by Barye),
+suggests Paris, and though it is certainly true that it is more like a
+Parisian square than a London square, nevertheless it is in reality an
+American square--perhaps the finest of its kind in the United States. If
+it were Parisian, it would have more trees and the surrounding buildings
+would be uniform in color and in cornice height. It is perhaps as much
+like Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia as any other, and that
+resemblance is of the slightest, for Mount Vernon Place has a quality
+altogether its own. It has no skyscrapers or semi-skyscrapers to throw
+it out of balance; and though the structures which surround it are of
+white stone, brown stone, and red brick, and of anything but homogeneous
+architecture, nevertheless a comparative uniformity of height, a
+universal solidity of construction, and a general grace about them,
+combine to give the Place an air of equilibrium and dignity and
+elegance.
+
+Including the Washington Monument, Baltimore has three lofty landmarks,
+likely to be particularly noticed by the roving visitor. Of the
+remaining two, one is the old brick shot-tower in the lower part of
+town, which legend tells us was put up without the use of scaffolding
+nearly a hundred years ago; while the other, a more modern, if less
+modest structure, proudly surmounts a large commercial building and is
+itself capped by the gigantic effigy of a bottle. This bottle is very
+conspicuous because of its emplacement, because it revolves, and because
+it is illuminated at night. You can never get away from it.
+
+One evening I asked a man what the bottle meant up there.
+
+"It's a memorial to Emerson," he told me.
+
+"Are they so fond of Emerson down here?"
+
+"I don't know as they are so all-fired fond of him," he answered.
+
+"But they _must_ be fond of him to put up such a big memorial. Why, even
+in Boston, where he was born, they have no such memorial as that."
+
+"He put it up himself," said the man.
+
+That struck me as strange. It seemed somehow out of character with the
+great philosopher. Also, I could not see why, if he did wish to raise a
+memorial to himself, he had elected to fashion it in the form of a
+bottle and put it on top of an office building.
+
+"I suppose there is some sort of symbolism about it?" I suggested.
+
+"Now you got it," approved the man.
+
+I gazed at the tower for a while in thought. Then I said:
+
+"Do you suppose that Emerson meant something like this: that human life
+or, indeed, the soul, may be likened to the contents of a bottle; that
+day by day we use up some portion of the contents--call it, if you like,
+the nectar of existence--until the fluid of life runs low, and at last
+is gone entirely, leaving only the husk, as it were--or, to make the
+metaphor more perfect, the shell, or empty bottle: the container of what
+Emerson himself called, if I recollect correctly, 'the soul that maketh
+all'--do you suppose he meant to teach us some such thing as that?"
+
+The man looked a little confused by this deep and beautiful thought.
+
+"He _might_ of meant that," he said, somewhat dubiously. "But they tell
+me Captain Emerson's a practical man, and I reckon what he _mainly_
+meant was that he made his money out of this-here Bromo Seltzer, and he
+was darn glad of it, so he thought he'd put him up a big Bromo Seltzer
+bottle as a kind of cross between a monument and an ad."
+
+If the bottle tower represents certain modern concepts of what is
+suitable in architecture, it is nevertheless pleasant to record the fact
+that many honorable old buildings--most of them residences--survive in
+Baltimore, and that, because of their survival, the city looks older
+than New York and fully as old as either Philadelphia or Boston. But in
+this, appearances are misleading, for New York and Boston were a
+century old, and Philadelphia half a century, when Baltimore was first
+laid out as a town. Efforts to start a settlement near the city's
+present site were, it is true, being made before William Penn and his
+Quakers established Philadelphia, but a letter written in 1687 by
+Charles Calvert, third Baron Baltimore, explains that: "The people there
+[are] not affecting to build nere each other but soe as to have their
+houses nere the watters for conveniencye of trade and their lands on
+each side of and behynde their houses, by which it happens that in most
+places there are not fifty houses in the space of thirty myles."[1]
+
+[1] From "Historic Towns of the Southern States."
+
+The difficulty experienced by the Barons Baltimore, Lords Proprietary of
+Maryland, in building up communities in their demesne was not a local
+problem, but one which confronted those interested in the development of
+the entire portion of this continent now occupied by the Southern
+States. Generally speaking, towns came into being more slowly in the
+South than in the North, and it seems probable that one of the principal
+reasons for this may be found in the fact that settlers throughout the
+South lived generally at peace with the Indians, whereas the northern
+settlers were obliged to congregate in towns for mutual protection.
+Thus, in colonial days, while the many cities of New York and New
+England were coming into being, the South was developing its vast and
+isolated plantations. Farms on the St. Lawrence River and on the
+Detroit River, where the French were settling, were very narrow and very
+deep, the idea being to range the houses close together on the river
+front; but on such rivers as the Potomac, the Rappahannock and the
+James, no element of early fear is to be traced in the form of the broad
+baronial plantations.
+
+Nevertheless, when Baltimore began at last to grow, she became a
+prodigy, not only among American cities, but among the cities of the
+world. Her first town directory was published in 1796, and she began the
+next year as an incorporated city, with a mayor, a population of about
+twenty thousand, and a curiously assorted early history containing such
+odd items as that the first umbrella carried in the United States was
+brought from India and unfurled in Baltimore in 1772; that the town had
+for some time possessed such other useful articles as a fire engine, a
+brick theater, a newspaper, and policemen; that the streets were lighted
+with oil lamps; that such proud signs of metropolitanism as riot and
+epidemic were not unknown; that before the Revolution bachelors were
+taxed for the benefit of his Britannic Majesty; and that at fair time
+the "lid was off," and the citizen or visitor who wished to get himself
+arrested must needs be diligent indeed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+TRIUMPHANT DEFEAT
+
+    There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.
+
+    --MONTAIGNE.
+
+
+Following the incorporation of the city, Baltimore grew much as Chicago
+was destined to grow more than a century later; within less than thirty
+years, when Chicago was a tiny village, Baltimore had become the third
+city in the United States: a city of wealthy merchants engaged in an
+extensive foreign trade; for in those days there was an American
+merchant marine, and the swift, rakish Baltimore clippers were known the
+seven seas over.
+
+The story of modern Baltimore is entirely unrelated to the city's early
+history. It consists in a simple but inspiring record of regeneration
+springing from disaster. It is the story of Chicago, of San Francisco,
+of Galveston, of Dayton, and of many a smaller town: a cataclysm, a few
+days of despair, a return of courage, and another beginning.
+
+Imagine yourself being tucked into bed one night by your valet or your
+maid, as the case may be, calm in the feeling that all was secure: that
+your business was returning a handsome income, that your stocks and
+bonds were safe in the strong box, that the prosperity of your
+descendants was assured. Then imagine ruin coming like lightning in the
+night. In the morning you are poor. Your business, your investments,
+your very hopes, are gone. Everything is wiped out. The labor of a
+lifetime must be begun again.
+
+Such an experience was that of Baltimore in the fire of 1904.
+
+On the sickening morning following the conflagration two Baltimore men,
+friends of mine, walked down Charles Street to a point as near the
+ruined region as it was possible to go.
+
+"Well," said one, surveying the smoking crater, "what do you think of
+it?"
+
+"Baltimore is gone," was the response. "We are off the map."
+
+How many citizens of Chicago, of San Francisco, of Galveston, of Dayton
+have known the anguish of that first aftermath of hopelessness! How many
+citizens of Baltimore knew it that day! And yet how bravely and with
+what magic swiftness have these cities risen from their ruins! Was not
+Rome burned? Was not London? And is it not, then, time for men to learn
+from the history of other men and other cities that disaster does not
+spell the end, but is oftentimes another name for opportunity?
+
+Always, after disaster to a city, come improvements, but because
+disaster not only cleans the slate but simultaneously stuns the mind, a
+portion of the opportunity is invariably lost. The task of rebuilding,
+of widening a few streets, looks large enough to him who stands amidst
+destruction--and there, consequently, improvement usually stops. That is
+why the downtown boulevard system of Chicago has yet to be completed, in
+spite of the fact that it might with little difficulty have been
+completed after the Chicago fire (although it is only just to add that
+city planning was almost an unknown art in America at that time); and
+that also is why the hills of San Francisco are not terraced, as it was
+suggested they should be after the fire, but remain to-day inaccessible
+to frontal attack by even the maddest mountain goat of a taxi driver.
+
+These matters are not mentioned in the way of criticism: I have only
+admiration for the devastated cities and for those who built them up
+again. I call attention to lost opportunities with something like
+reluctance, and only in the wish to emphasize the fact that our crippled
+or destroyed cities do invariably rise again, and that if the next
+American city to sustain disaster shall but have this simple lesson
+learned in advance, it may thereby register a new high mark in municipal
+intelligence and a new record among the rebuilt cities, by making more
+sweet than any other city ever made them, the uses of adversity.
+
+The fire of 1904 found Baltimore a town of narrow highways, old
+buildings, bad pavements, and open gutter drains. The streets were laid
+in what is known as "southern cobble," which is the next thing to no
+pavement at all, being made of irregular stones, large and small, laid
+in the dirt and tamped down. For bumps and ruts there is no pavement in
+the world to be compared with it. There were no city sewers. Outside a
+few affluent neighborhoods, the citizens of which clubbed together to
+build private sewers, the cesspool was in general use, while domestic
+drainage emptied into the roadside gutters. These were made passable, at
+crossings, by stepping stones, about the bases of which passed
+interesting armadas of potato peelings, floating, upon wash days, in
+water having the fine Mediterranean hue which comes from diluted
+blueing. Everybody seemed to find the entire system adequate; for, it
+was argued, the hilly contours of the city caused the drainage quickly
+to be carried off, while as for typhoid and mosquitoes--well, there had
+always been typhoid and mosquitoes, just as there had always been these
+open gutters. It was all quite good enough.
+
+Then the fire.
+
+And then the upbuilding of the city--not only of the acres and acres
+comprising the burned section, in which streets were widened and
+skyscrapers arose where fire-traps had been--but outside the fire zone,
+where sewers were put down and pavements laid. Nor was the change merely
+physical. With the old buildings, the old spirit of _laissez faire_ went
+up in smoke, and in the embers a municipal conscience was born. Almost
+as though by the light of the flames which engulfed it, the city began
+to see itself as it had never seen itself before: to take account of
+stock, to plan broadly for the future.
+
+Nor has the new-born spirit died. Only last year an extensive red-light
+district was closed effectively and once for all. Baltimore is to-day
+free from flagrant commercialized vice. And if not quite all the old
+cobble pavements and open-gutter drains have been eliminated, there are
+but few of them left--left almost as though for purposes of
+contrast--and the Baltimorean who takes you to the Ghetto and shows you
+these ancient remnants may immediately thereafter escort you to the
+Fallsway, where the other side of the picture is presented.
+
+The Fallsway is a brand-new boulevard of pleasing aspect, the peculiar
+feature of which is that it is nothing more or less than a cover over
+the top of Jones's Falls, which figured in the early history of
+Baltimore as a water course, but which later came to figure as a great,
+open, trunk sewer.
+
+Every one in Baltimore is proud of the Fallsway, but particularly so are
+the city engineers who carried the work through. While in Baltimore I
+had the pleasure of meeting one of these gentlemen, and I can assure you
+that no young head of a family was ever more delighted with his new
+cottage in a suburb, his wife, his children, his garden, and his collie
+puppy, than was this engineer with his boulevard sewer. Like a lover, he
+carried pictures of it in his pocket, and like a lover he would assure
+you that it was "not like other sewers." Nor could he speak of it
+without beginning to wish to take you out to see it--not merely for a
+motor ride along the top of it, either. No, his hospitality did not
+stop there. When _he_ invited you to a sewer he invited you _in_. And if
+you went in with him, no one could make you come out until you wanted
+to.
+
+As he told my companion and me of the three great tubes, the walks
+beside them, the conduits for gas and electricity, and all the other
+wonders of the place, I began to wish that we might go with him, for,
+though we have been to a good many places together, this was something
+new: it was the first time we had ever been invited to drop into a sewer
+and make ourselves as much at home as though we lived there.
+
+My companion, however, seemed unsympathetic to the project.
+
+"Sewers, you know," he said, when I taxed him with indifference, "have
+come to have a very definite place in both the literary and the graphic
+arts. How do you propose to treat it?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"When you write about it: Are you going to write about it as a realist,
+a mystic, or a romanticist?"
+
+I said I didn't know.
+
+"Well, a man who is going to write of a sewer _ought_ to know," he told
+me severely. "You're not up to sewers yet. They're too big for you. If
+you take my advice you'll keep out of the sewers for the present and
+stick to the gutters."
+
+So I did.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+TERRAPIN AND THINGS
+
+
+Baltimore society has a Maryland and Virginia base, but is seasoned with
+families of Acadian descent, and with others descended from the
+Pennsylvania Dutch--those "Dutch" who, by the way, are not Dutch at all,
+being of Saxon and Bavarian extraction. Many Virginians settled in
+Baltimore after the war, and it may be in part owing to this fact, that
+fox-hunting with horse and hound, as practised for three centuries past
+in England, and for nearly two centuries by Virginia's country
+gentlemen, is carried on extensively in the neighborhood of Baltimore,
+by the Green Spring Valley Hunt Club, the Elkridge Fox-Hunting Club and
+some others--which brings me to the subject of clubs in general.
+
+The Baltimore Country Club, at Roland Park, just beyond the city limits,
+has a large, well-set clubhouse, an active membership, and charming
+rolling golf links, one peculiarity of the course being that a part of
+the city's water-supply system has been utilized for hazards.
+
+The two characteristic clubs of the city itself, the Maryland Club and
+the Baltimore Club, are known the country over. The former occupies a
+position in Baltimore comparable with that of the Union Club in New
+York, the Chicago Club in Chicago, or the Pacific Union in San
+Francisco, and has to its credit at least one famous dish: Terrapin,
+Maryland Club Style.
+
+The Baltimore Club is used by a younger group of men and has a
+particularly pleasant home in a large mansion, formerly the residence of
+the Abell family, long known in connection with that noteworthy old
+sheet, the Baltimore "Sun," which, it may be remarked in passing, is
+curiously referred to by many Baltimoreans, not as the "Sun," but as the
+"Sun-paper."
+
+This odd item reminds me of another: In the Balti-telephone book I
+chanced to notice under the letter "F" the entry:
+
+Fisher, Frank, of J.
+
+Upon inquiry I learned that the significance of this was that, there
+being more than one gentleman of the name of Frank Fisher in the city,
+this Mr. Frank Fisher added "of J" to his name (meaning "son of John")
+for purposes of differentiation. I was informed further that this custom
+is not uncommon in Baltimore, in cases where a name is duplicated, and I
+was shown another example: that of Mr. John Fyfe Symington of S.
+
+A typically southern institution of long standing, and highly
+characteristic of the social life of Baltimore, is the Bachelors'
+Cotillion, one of the oldest dancing clubs in the country. During the
+season this organization gives a series of some half-dozen balls which
+are the events of the fashionable year.
+
+The organization and general character of the Bachelors' Cotillion is
+not unlike that of the celebrated St. Cecilia Society of Charleston. The
+cost of membership is so slight that almost any eligible young man can
+easily afford it. There is, however, a long waiting-list. The club is
+controlled by a board of governors, the members of which hold office for
+life, and who, instead of being elected by the organization are selected
+_in camera_ by the board itself, when vacancies occur.
+
+The balls given by this society are known as the Monday Germans, and at
+these balls, which are held in the Lyric Theater, the city's debutantes
+are presented to society. As in all southern cities, much is made of
+debutantes in Baltimore. On the occasion of their first Monday German
+all their friends send them flowers, and they appear flower-laden at the
+ball, followed by their relatives who are freighted down with their
+darlings' superfluous bouquets. The modern steps are danced at these
+balls, but there are usually a few cotillion figures, albeit without
+"favors." And perhaps the best part of it all is that the first ball of
+the season, and the Christmas ball, end at one o'clock, and that all the
+others end at midnight. That seems to me a humane arrangement, although
+the opinion may only signify that I am growing old.
+
+Another very characteristic phase of Baltimore life, and of southern
+life--at least in many cities--is that, instead of dealing with the
+baker, and the grocer, and the fish-market man around the corner, all
+Baltimore women go to the great market-sheds and do their own selecting
+under what amounts to one great roof.
+
+The Lexington Market, to which my companion and I had the good fortune
+to be taken by a Baltimore lady, is comparable, in its picturesqueness
+with _Les Halles_ of Paris, or the fascinating market in Seattle, where
+the Japanese pile up their fresh vegetables with such charming show of
+taste. The great sheds cover three long blocks, and in the countless
+stall-like shops which they contain may be found everything for the
+table, including flowers to trim it and after-dinner sweets. I doubt
+that any northern housewife knows such a market or such a profusion of
+comestibles. In one stall may be purchased meat, in the next vegetables,
+in the next fish, in the next bread and cake, in the next butter and
+buttermilk, in the next fruit, or game, or flowers, or--at Christmas
+time--tree trimmings. These stalls, with their contents, are duplicated
+over and over again; and if your fair guide be shopping for a dinner
+party, at which two men from out of town are to be initiated into the
+delights of the Baltimore cuisine, she may order up the costly and
+aristocratic _Malacoclemmys_, the diamond-back terrapin, sacred in
+Baltimore as is the Sacred Cod himself in Boston.
+
+The admirable encyclopedia of Messrs. Funk & Wagnall's informs me that
+"the diamond-back salt-water terrapin ... is caught in salt marshes
+along the coast from New England to Texas, _the finest being those of
+the Massachusetts and the northern coasts_." The italics are mine; and
+upon the italicized passage I expect the mayor and town council of
+Baltimore, or even the Government of the State of Maryland, to proceed
+against Messrs. Funk & Wagnalls, whose valuable volumes should forthwith
+be placed upon the State's _index expurgatorius_.
+
+Of a marketman I obtained the following lore concerning the tortoise of
+the terrapin species:
+
+In the Baltimore markets four kinds of terrapin are sold--not counting
+muskrat, which is sometimes disguised with sauce and sherry and served
+as a substitute. The cheapest and toughest terrapin is known as the
+"slider." Slightly superior to the "slider" is the "fat-back,"
+measuring, usually, about nine or ten inches in length, and costing, at
+retail, fifty cents to a dollar, according to season and demand.
+Somewhat better than the "fat-back," but of about the same size and
+cost, is the "golden-stripe" terrapin; but all these are the merest poor
+relations of the diamond-back. Some diamond-back terrapin are supplied
+for the Baltimore market from North Carolina, but these, my marketman
+assured me, are inferior to those of Chesapeake Bay. (Everything in, or
+from, North Carolina seems to be inferior, according to the people of
+the other Southern States.)
+
+Although there is a closed season for terrapin, the value of the
+diamond-back causes him to be relentlessly hunted during the open
+season, with the result that, like the delectable lobster, he is
+passing. As the foolish lobster-fishermen of northern New England are
+killing the goose--or, rather, the crustacean--that lays the golden
+eggs, so are the terrapin hunters of the Chesapeake. Two or three
+decades ago, lobster and terrapin alike were eaten in the regions of
+their abundance as cheap food. One Baltimore lady told me that her
+father's slaves, on an Eastern Shore plantation, used to eat terrapin.
+Yet behold the cost of the precious diamond-back to-day! In his smaller
+sizes, according to my marketman, he is worth about a dollar an inch,
+while when grown to fair proportions he costs as much as a railroad
+ticket from Baltimore to Chicago. And for my part I would about as soon
+eat the ticket as the terrapin.
+
+Of a number of other odd items which help to give Baltimore distinct
+flavor I find the following in my notebooks:
+
+There are good street railways; also 'bus lines operated by the United
+Railways Company. Under the terms of its charter this company was
+originally obliged to turn over to the city thirteen per cent. of its
+gross income, to be expended upon the upkeep of parks. Of late years the
+amount has been reduced to nine per cent. The parks are admirable.
+
+Freight rates from the west to Baltimore are, I am informed, enough
+lower than freight rates to New York, Boston, or Philadelphia, to give
+Baltimore a decided advantage as a point of export. Also she is
+admirably situated as to sources of coal supply. (I do not care much
+for the last two items, myself, but put them in to please the Chamber of
+Commerce.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is the habit of my companion and myself, when visiting strange
+cities, to ask for interesting eating-places of one sort or another. In
+Baltimore there seems to be no choice but to take meals in
+hotels--unless one may wish to go to the Dutch Tea room or the Woman's
+Exchange for a shoppers' lunch, and to see (in the latter establishment)
+great numbers of ladies sitting upon tall stools and eating at a
+lunch-counter--a somewhat curious spectacle, perhaps, but neither
+pleasing to the eye nor thrilling to the senses.
+
+The nearest thing to "character" which I found in a Baltimore
+eating-place was at an establishment known as Kelly's Oyster House, a
+place in a dark quarter of the town. It had the all-night look about it,
+and the negro waiters showed themselves not unacquainted with certain of
+the city's gilded youth. Kelly's is a sort of southern version of
+"Jack's"--if you know Jack's. But I don't think Jack's has any flight of
+stairs to fall down, such as Kelly's has.
+
+The dining rooms of the various hotels are considerably used, one
+judges, by the citizens of Baltimore. The Kernan Hotel, which we visited
+one night after the theater, looked like Broadway. Tables were crowded
+together and there was dancing between them--and between mouthfuls. So,
+too, at the Belvedere, which is used considerably by Baltimore's gay
+and fashionable people.
+
+My companion and I stayed at the Belvedere and found it a good hotel,
+albeit one which has, I think, become a shade too well accustomed to
+being called good. Perhaps because of a city ordinance, perhaps because
+the waiters want to go to bed, they have a trick, in the Belvedere
+dining-room, during the cold weather, of opening the windows and
+freezing out such dilatory supper-guests as would fain sit up and talk.
+This is a system even more effective than the ancient one of mopping up
+the floors, piling chairs upon the tables, and turning out enough lights
+to make the room dull. A good post-midnight conversationalist--and
+Baltimore is not without them--can stand mops, buckets, and dim lights,
+but turn cold drafts upon his back and he gives up, sends for his coat,
+buttons it about his paunch and goes sadly home.
+
+It is fitting that last of all should be mentioned the man who views you
+with keen eye as you arrive in Baltimore, and who watches you depart. If
+you are in Baltimore he knows it. And when you go away he knows that,
+too. Also, during racing season, he knows whether you bet, and whether
+you won or lost. He is always at the station and always at the race
+track, and if you don't belong in Baltimore he is aware of it the
+instant he sets eyes upon you, because he knows every man, woman, child,
+and dog in Baltimore, and they all know him. If you are a Baltimorean
+you are already aware that I refer to the sapient McNeal, policeman at
+the Union Station.
+
+McNeal and Cardinal Gibbons are, I take it, the two preeminent figures
+of the city. Their duties, I admit, are not alike, but each performs his
+duties with discretion, with devotion, with distinction. The latter has
+already celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of his nomination as
+cardinal, but the former is well on the way toward his fortieth
+anniversary as officer at the Union Station.
+
+McNeal is an artist. He loves his work. And when his day off comes and
+he puts on citizen's clothing and goes out for a good time, where do you
+suppose he goes?
+
+Why down to the station, of course, to talk things over with the man who
+is relieving him!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+DOUGHOREGAN MANOR AND THE CARROLLS
+
+
+If I am to be honest about the South, and about myself--and I propose to
+be--I must admit that, though I approached the fabled land in a most
+friendly spirit, I had nevertheless become a little tired of the
+southern family tree, the southern ancestral hall, and the old southern
+negro servant of stage and story, and just a little skeptical about
+them. Almost unconsciously, at first, I had begun to wonder whether,
+instead of being things of actuality, they were not, rather, a mere set
+of romantic trade-marks, so to speak; symbols signifying the South as
+the butler with side whiskers signifies English comedy; as "Her" visit
+to "His" rooms, in the third act, signifies English drama; or as double
+doorways in a paneled "set" signify French farce.
+
+Furthermore, it had occurred to me that of persons of southern accent,
+or merely southern extraction, whom I had encountered in the North, a
+strangely high percentage were not only of "fine old southern family,"
+but of peculiarly tenacious purpose in respect to having the matter
+understood.
+
+I cannot pretend to say when the "professional Southerner," as we know
+him in New York, began to operate, nor shall I attempt to place the
+literary blame for his existence--as Mark Twain attempted to place upon
+Sir Walter Scott the blame for southern "chivalry," and almost for the
+Civil War itself. Let me merely say, then, that I should not be
+surprised to learn that "Colonel Carter of Cartersville"--that lovable
+old fraud who did not mean to be a fraud at all, but whose naivete
+passed the bounds of human credulity--was not far removed from the
+bottom of the matter.
+
+In the tenor of these sentiments my companion shared--though I should
+add that he complained bitterly about agreeing with me, saying that with
+hats alike, and overcoats alike, and trunks alike, and suitcases alike,
+we already resembled two members of a minstrel troupe, and that now
+since we were beginning to think alike, through traveling so much
+together, our friends would not be able to tell us apart when we got
+home again--in spite of this he admitted to the same suspicion of the
+South as I expressed. Wherefore we entered the region like a pair of
+agnostics entering the great beyond: skeptical, but ready to be "shown."
+
+It was with the generous purpose of "showing" us that a Baltimore friend
+of ours called for us one day with his motor car and was presently
+wafting us over the good oiled roads of Maryland, through sweet, rolling
+country, which seemed to have been made to be ridden over upon
+horseback.
+
+It was autumn, but though the chill of northern autumn was in the air,
+the coloring was not so high in key as in New York or New England, the
+foliage being less brilliant, but rich with subtle harmonies of brown
+and green, blending softly together as in a faded tapestry, and giving
+the landscape an expression of brooding tenderness.
+
+After passing through Ellicott City, an old, shambling town quite out of
+character with its new-sounding name, which has such a western ring to
+it, we traversed for several miles the old Frederick Turnpike--formerly
+a national highway between East and West--swooping up and down over a
+series of little hills and vales, and at length turned off into a
+private road winding through a venerable forest, which was like an old
+Gothic cathedral with its pavement of brown leaves and its tree-trunk
+columns, tall, gray, and slender.
+
+When we had progressed for perhaps a mile, we emerged upon a slight
+eminence commanding a broad view of meadow and of woodland, and in turn
+commanded by a great house.
+
+The house was of buff-colored brick. It was low and very long, with
+wings extending from its central structure like beautiful arms flung
+wide in welcome, and at the end of each a building like an ornament
+balanced in an outstretched hand. The graceful central portico, rising
+by several easy steps from the driveway level, the long line of cornice,
+the window sashes, the delicate wooden railing surmounting the roof, the
+charming little tower which so gracefully held its place above the
+geometrical center of the house, the bell tower crowning one wing at its
+extremity--all these were white.
+
+No combination of colors can be lovelier, in such a house, than
+yellow-buff and white, provided they be brightened by some notes of
+green; and these notes were not lacking, for several aged elms,
+occupying symmetrical positions with regard to the house, seemed to gaze
+down upon it with the adoration of a group of mothers, aunts, and
+grandmothers, as they held their soft draperies protectively above it.
+The green of the low terrace--called a "haha," supposedly with reference
+to the mirth-provoking possibilities of an accidental step over the
+edge--did not reach the base of the buff walls, but was lost in a fringe
+of clustering shrubbery, from which patches of lustrous English ivy
+clambered upward over the brick, to lay strong, mischievous fingers upon
+the blinds of certain second-story windows. The blinds were of course
+green; green blinds being as necessary to an American window as
+eyelashes to an eye.
+
+Immediately before the portico and centering upon it the drive swung in
+a spacious circle, from which there broke, at a point directly opposite
+the portico, an avenue, straight and long as a rifle range, and lovely
+as the loveliest of New England village greens. Down the middle of this
+broad way, between grass borders each as wide as a great boulevard, and
+double rows of patriarchal trees, ran a road which, in the old days,
+continued straight to Annapolis, thirty or more miles away, where was
+the town house of the builder of this manor. As it stands to-day the
+avenue is less than half a mile long, but whatever its length, and
+whether one look down it from the house, or up the gentle grade from the
+far end, to where the converging lines of grass and foliage and sky melt
+into the house, it has about it something of unreality, something of
+enchantment, something of that quality one finds in the rhapsodic
+landscapes of those poet painters who dream of distant shimmering
+palaces and supernal vistas peopled by fauns and nymphs dancing amid the
+trunks of giant trees whose luxuriant dark tops are contoured like the
+cumulus white clouds floating above them.
+
+There is nothing "baronial," nothing arrogant, about Doughoregan Manor,
+for though the house is noble, its nobility, consisting in spaciousness,
+simplicity, and grace combined with age, fits well into what, it seems
+to me, should be the architectural ideals of a republic. No house could
+be freer of unessential embellishment; in detail it is plain almost to
+severity; yet the full impression that it gives, far from being austere,
+is of friendliness and hospitality. An approachable sort of house, a
+"homelike" house, it is perhaps less "imposing" than some other
+mansions, coeval with it, in Virginia, in Annapolis, and in Charleston;
+and yet it is as impressive, in its own way, as Warwick Castle, or
+Hurstmonceaux, or Loches, or Chinon, or Chenonceaux, or Heidelberg--not
+that it is so vast, that it has glowering battlements, or that it stuns
+the eye, but for precisely opposite reasons: because it is a consummate
+expression of republican cultivation, of a fine old American home, and
+of the fine old American gentleman who built it, and whose descendants
+inhabit it to-day: Charles Carroll of Carrollton, last to survive of
+those who signed the Declaration of Independence.
+
+The first Charles Carroll, known in the family as "the Settler," came
+from Ireland in 1688, and became a great landowner in Maryland. He was a
+highly educated gentleman and a Roman Catholic, as have also been his
+descendants. He acted as agent for Lord Baltimore.
+
+His son, Charles Carroll of Annapolis, or "Breakneck Carroll" (so called
+because he was killed by a fall from the steps of his house), built the
+Carroll mansion at Annapolis, now the property of the Redemptionist
+Order.
+
+The third and most famous member of the family was Charles Carroll of
+Carrollton, "the Signer," builder of the manor house at
+Doughoregan--which, by the way, derives its name from a combination of
+the old Irish words _dough_, meaning "house" or "court," and _O'Ragan_,
+meaning "of the King"; the whole being pronounced, as with a slight
+brogue, "Doo-ray-gan," the accent falling on the middle syllable--this
+Charles Carroll, "the Signer," most famous of his line, was
+"Breakneck's" only son. When eight years old he was sent to France to be
+educated by the Jesuits. He spent six years at Saint-Omer, one at
+Rheims, two at the College of Louis le Grand, one at Bourges, where he
+studied civil law, and after some further time in college in Paris went
+to London, entered the Middle Temple and there worked at the common law
+until his return to Maryland in 1765.
+
+Although Maryland was founded by the Roman Catholic Baron Baltimore on a
+basis of religious toleration, the Church of England had later come to
+be the established church in the British colonies in America, and Roman
+Catholics were unjustly used, being disfranchised, taxed for the support
+of the English Church, and denied the right to establish schools or
+churches of their own, to celebrate the Mass, or to bear arms--the
+bearing of arms having been "at that time the insignia of social
+position and gentle breeding."
+
+Finding this situation well-nigh intolerable, Carroll of Carrollton,
+already a man of great wealth, joined with his cousin, Father John
+Carroll, who later became first Archbishop of Baltimore (for many years
+the only Roman Catholic diocese in the United States, embracing all
+States and Territories), in an appeal to the King of France for a grant
+of land in what is now Arkansas, but was then a part of Louisiana, this
+land to be used as a refuge for Roman Catholics and Jesuits, whom the
+Carrolls proposed to lead thither precisely as Cecilius Calvert, Lord
+Baltimore, had led them to Maryland to escape persecution.
+
+The Roman Catholics were not, however, by this time the only American
+colonists who felt themselves abused; the whole country was chafing, and
+the seeds of revolution were beginning to show their red sprouts.
+
+It might have been expected that Mr. Carroll, being the richest man in
+the country, would hesitate at rebellion, but he did not. Unlike some of
+our present-day citizens of foreign extraction, and in circumstances
+involving not merely sentiment, but property and perhaps life, he showed
+no tendency to split his Americanism, but boldly threw his noble old
+cocked hat into the ring. Nor did he require a Roosevelt to make his
+duty clear to him.
+
+In 1775 Mr. Carroll was a delegate to the Revolutionary Convention of
+Maryland; in 1776 he went with three other commissioners (Benjamin
+Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Father John Carroll) to try to induce the
+Canadian colonies to join in the revolt; and soon after his return from
+this unsuccessful journey he signed the Declaration of Independence. Of
+the circumstances of the signing the late Robert C. Winthrop of Boston
+gave the following description:
+
+     "Will you sign?" said Hancock to Charles Carroll.
+
+     "Most willingly," was the reply.
+
+     "There goes two millions with the dash of a pen," says one of those
+     standing by; while another remarks: "Oh, Carroll, you will get off,
+     there are so many Charles Carrolls."
+
+     And then we may see him stepping back to the desk and putting that
+     addition "of Carrollton" to his name, which will designate him
+     forever, and be a prouder title of nobility than those in the
+     peerage of Great Britain, which were afterward adorned by his
+     accomplished and fascinating granddaughters.
+
+Some doubt has been cast upon this tale by the fact that papers in
+possession of the Carroll family prove that Mr. Carroll was wont to sign
+as "of Carrollton" long before the Declaration. Further, it is recorded
+that John H.B. Latrobe, Mr. Carroll's contemporaneous biographer, never
+heard the story from the subject of his writings.
+
+Nevertheless, I believe that it is true, for it seems to me likely that
+though Mr. Carroll used the subscription "of Carrollton" in conducting
+his affairs at home, where there was chance for confusion between his
+son Charles, his cousin Charles, and himself, he might well have been
+inclined to omit it from a public document, as to the signers of which
+there could be no confusion. Further, the fact that he never told the
+story to Latrobe does not invalidate it, for as every man (and every
+man's wife) knows, men do not remember to tell everything to their
+wives, and it is still less likely that they tell everything to their
+biographers. Further still, Mr. Winthrop visited Mr. Carroll just before
+the latter's death, and as he certainly did not invent the story it
+seems probable that he got it from "the Signer" himself. Last, I like
+the story and intend to believe it anyway--which, it occurs to me, is
+the best reason of all, and the one most resembling my reason for being
+more or less Episcopalian and Republican.
+
+Latrobe tells us that Mr. Carroll was, in his old age, "a small,
+attenuated old man, with a prominent nose and somewhat receding chin,
+and small eyes that sparkled when he was interested in conversation. His
+head was small and his hair white, rather long and silky, while his face
+and forehead were seamed with wrinkles."
+
+From the same source, and others, we glean the information that he was a
+charming and courteous gentleman, that he practised early rising and
+early retiring, was regular at meals, and at morning and evening prayer
+in the chapel, that he took cold baths and rode horseback, and that for
+several hours each day he read the Greek, Latin, English, or French
+classics.
+
+At the age of eighty-three he rode a horse in a procession in Baltimore,
+carrying in one hand a copy of the Declaration of Independence; and six
+years later, when by that strange freak of chance ex-Presidents Adams
+and Jefferson died simultaneously on July 4, leaving Mr. Carroll the
+last surviving signer of the Declaration, he took part in a memorial
+parade and service in their memory. In 1826, at the age of eighty-nine,
+he was elected a director of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company, and
+at the age of ninety he laid the foundation stone marking the
+commencement of that railroad--the first important one in the United
+States. We are told that at this time Mr. Carroll was erect in carriage
+and that he could see and hear as well as most men. In 1832, having
+lived to within five years of a full century, having been active in the
+Revolution, having seen the War of 1812, he died less than thirty years
+before the outbreak of the Civil War, and was buried in the chapel of
+the manor house.
+
+This chapel, the like of which does not, so far as I know, exist in any
+other American house, is the burial place of a number of the Carrolls.
+It is used to-day, regular Sunday services being held for the people of
+the neighborhood. An alcove to the south of the chancel contains seats
+for members of the family, and has access to the main portion of the
+house by a passageway which passes the bedroom known as the Cardinal's
+room, a large chamber furnished with massive old pieces of mahogany and
+decorated in red. This room has been occupied by Lafayette, by John
+Carroll, cousin of "the Signer" and first archbishop of Baltimore, and
+by Cardinal Gibbons. It is on the ground floor and its windows command
+the series of terraces, with their plantings of old box, which slope
+away to gardens more than a century old.
+
+Viewed in one light Doughoregan Manor is a monument, in another it is a
+treasure house of ancient portraits and furniture and silver, but above
+all it is a home. The beautifully proportioned dining-room, the wide
+hall which passes through the house from the front portico to another
+overlooking the terraces and gardens at the back, the old shadowy
+library with its tree-calf bindings, the sunny breakfast room, the
+spacious bedchambers with their four-posters and their cheerful
+chintzes, the big bright shiny pantries and kitchens, all have that
+pleasant, easy air which comes of being lived in, and which is never
+attained in a "show place" which is merely a "show place" and nothing
+more. No dining table at which great personages have dined in the past
+has the charm of one the use of which has been steadily continued; no
+old chair but is better for being sat in; no ancient Sheffield tea
+service but gains immeasurably in charm from being used for tea to-day;
+no old Venetian mirror but what is lovelier for reflecting the beauties
+of the present as it reflected those of the past; no little old-time
+crib but what is better for a modern baby in it. It is pleasant,
+therefore, to report that, like all other things the house contains, the
+crib at Doughoregan Manor was being used when we were there, for in it
+rested the baby son of the house; by name Charles, and of his line the
+ninth. Further, it may be observed that from his youthful parents, Mr.
+and Mrs. Charles Bancroft Carroll, present master and mistress of the
+place, Master Charles seemed to have inherited certain amiable traits.
+Indeed, in some respects, he outdoes his parents. For example, where the
+father and mother were cordial, the son chewed ruminatively upon his
+fingers and fastened upon my companion a gaze not merely interested, but
+expressive of enraptured astonishment. Likewise, though his parents
+received us kindly, they did not crow and gurgle with delight; and
+though, on our departure, they said that we might come again, they
+neither waved their hands nor yet blew bubbles.
+
+Though the house has been "done over" four times, and though the
+paneling was torn out of one room to make way for wall paper when wall
+paper came into style, everything has now been restored, and the place
+stands to-day to all intents and purposes exactly as it was. That so few
+changes were ever made in it, that it weathered successfully, with its
+contents, the disastrous period of Eastlake furniture and the American
+mansard roof, is a great credit to the Carroll family, and it is
+delightful to see such a house in the possession of those who can love
+it as it deserves to be loved, and preserve it as it deserves to be
+preserved.
+
+Mr. Charles Bancroft Carroll, who is a graduate of Annapolis and a
+grandson of the late Governor John Lee Carroll of Maryland, now farms
+some twenty-four hundred acres of the five or six thousand which
+surround the manor house. He raises blooded cattle and horses, and,
+though he rides with the Elkridge Hunt, also keeps his own pack and is
+starting the Howard County Hounds, an organization that will hunt the
+country around the manor, which is full of foxes.
+
+Of the innumerable family portraits contained in the house not a few are
+valuable and almost all are pleasing. When I remarked upon the high
+average of good looks among his progenitors, Mr. Carroll smiled in
+agreement, saying: "Yes, I'm proud of these pictures of my ancestors;
+most people's ancestors seem to have looked like the dickens."
+
+Among these noteworthy family portraits I recollect one of "the Signer"
+as a boy, standing on the shore and watching a ship sail out to sea; one
+of the three beautiful Caton sisters, his granddaughters, who lived at
+Brooklandwood, in the Green Spring Valley, now the home of Mr. Isaac
+Emerson; one of Charles Carroll of Homewood, son of "the Signer"; and
+one of Governor John Lee Carroll, who was born at Homewood.
+
+The Caton sisters and Charles Carroll of Homewood supply to the Carroll
+family archives that picturesqueness which the history of every old
+family should possess; the former contributing beauty, the latter dash
+and extravagance, those qualities so annoying in a living relative, but
+so delightfully suggestive in an ancestor long defunct. If anything more
+be needed to round out the composition, it is furnished by the ghosts of
+Doughoregan Manor: an old housekeeper with jingling keys, and an
+invisible coach, the wheels of which are heard upon the driveway before
+the death of any member of the family.
+
+Of the Caton sisters there were four, but because one of them, Mrs.
+McTavish, stayed at home and made the life of her grandfather happy, we
+do not hear so much of her as of the other three, who were
+internationally famous for their pulchritude, and were known in England
+as "the Three American Graces." All three married British peers, one
+becoming Marchioness of Wellesley, another Duchess of Leeds, while the
+third became the wife of Lord Stafford, one of the noblemen embalmed in
+verse by Fitz-Greene Halleck:
+
+    Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt,
+    The Duke of Norfolk deals in malt,
+    The Douglas in red herrings.
+
+As for Charles Carroll of Homewood, he was handsome, charming, and
+athletic, and, as indicated in letters written to him by his father,
+caused that old gentleman a good deal of anxiety. It is said that at
+one time--perhaps during some period of estrangment from his wealthy
+parent--he acted as a fencing master in Baltimore.
+
+At the age of twenty-five he settled down--or let us hope he did--for he
+married Harriet Chew, whose sister "Peggy," Mrs. John Eager Howard of
+Baltimore, was a celebrated belle, and of whose own charm we may judge
+by the fact that General Washington asked her to remain in the room
+while he sat to Gilbert Stuart, declaring that her presence there would
+cause his countenance to "wear its most agreeable expression." The
+famous portrait painted under these felicitous conditions hung in the
+White House when, in 1814, the British marched on Washington; but when
+they took the city and burned the White House, the portrait did not
+perish with it, for history records that Dolly Madison carried it to
+safety, and along with it the original draft of the Declaration of
+Independence.
+
+Charles Carroll of Homewood died before his father, "the Signer," but
+the house, Homewood, which the latter built for his son and
+daughter-in-law in 1809, stands to-day near the Baltimore city limits,
+at the side of Charles Street Boulevard, amid pleasant modern houses,
+many of which are of a design not out of harmony with the old mansion.
+Though not comparable in size with the manor house at Doughoregan,
+Homewood is an even more perfect house, being one of the finest examples
+of Georgian architecture to be found in the entire country. The fate of
+this house is hardly less fortunate than that of the paternal manor,
+for, with its surrounding lands, it has come into the possession of
+Johns Hopkins University. The fields of Homewood now form the campus and
+grounds of that excellent seat of learning, and the trustees of the
+university have not merely preserved the residence, using it as a
+faculty club, but have had the inspiration to find in it the
+architectural motif for the entire group of new college buildings, so
+that the campus may be likened to a bracelet wrought as a setting for
+this jewel of a house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A RARE OLD TOWN
+
+
+The drive from Baltimore to the sweet, slumbering city of Annapolis is
+over a good road, but through barren country. Taken in the crisp days of
+autumn, by a northern visitor sufficiently misguided to have supposed
+that beyond Mason and Dixon's Line the winters are tropical it may prove
+an uncomfortable drive--unless he be able to borrow a fur overcoat. It
+was on this drive that my disillusionment concerning the fall and winter
+climate of the South began, for, wearing two cloth overcoats, one over
+the other, I yet suffered agonies from cold. The sun shone down upon the
+open automobile in which we tore along, but its rays were no competitors
+for the biting wind. Through lap robes, cloth caps, and successive
+layers of clothing, and around the edges of goggles, fine little frozen
+fangs found their way, like the pliable beaks of a race of gigantic,
+fabulous mosquitoes from the Arctic regions. I have driven an open car
+over the New England snows for miles in zero weather, and been warm by
+comparison, because I was prepared.
+
+My former erroneous ideas as to the southern climate may be shared by
+others, and it is therefore well, perhaps, to enlarge a little bit upon
+the subject. Never, except during a winter passed in a stone
+tile-floored villa on the island of Capri, whither I went to escape the
+cold, have I been so conscious of it, as during fall, winter, and spring
+in the South.
+
+In the hotels of the South one may keep warm in cold weather, but in
+private homes it is not always possible to do so, for the popular
+illusion that the "sunny South" is of a uniformly temperate climate in
+the winter persists nowhere more violently than in the South itself.
+Many a house in Virginia, let alone the other States farther down the
+map, is without a furnace, and winter life in such houses, with their
+ineffectual wood fires, is like life in a refrigerator tempered by the
+glow of a safety match. As in Italy and Spain, so in the South it is
+often warmer outdoors than in; more than once during my southern voyage
+I was tempted to resume the habit, acquired in Capri, of wearing an
+overcoat in the house and taking it off on going out into the sunshine.
+True, in Capri we had roses blooming in the garden on Christmas Day, but
+that circumstance, far from proving warmth, merely proved the hardiness
+of roses. So, in the far South--excepting Florida and perhaps a strip of
+the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama--the blooming of
+flowers in the winter does not prove that "Palm Beach suits" and panama
+hats invariably make a desirable uniform.
+
+Furthermore, I am inclined to believe that because some southern winter
+days are warm and others cold, a Northerner feels cold in the South
+more than he feels the corresponding temperature at home--on somewhat
+the principle which caused the Italians who went with the Duke of the
+Abruzzi on his polar expedition to withstand cold more successfully than
+did the Scandinavians.
+
+Of the southern summer I have no experience, but I have been repeatedly
+assured that certain of the southern beaches are nearly, if not quite,
+as comfortable in hot weather as are those of New Jersey or Long Island,
+while in numerous southern mountain retreats one may be fairly cool
+through the hot months--a fact which spells fortune for the hotel
+keepers of such high-perched resorts as Asheville, White Sulphur
+Springs, and the Hot Springs of Virginia, who have their houses full of
+Northerners in winter and Southerners in summer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The experience of arrival in Annapolis, delightful in any weather and at
+any time of year, gives one a satisfaction almost ecstatic after a cold,
+windy automobile ride such as we had suffered. To ache for the shelter
+of almost any town, or any sort of building, and, with such yearnings,
+to arrive in this dreamy city, whose mild air seems to be compounded
+from fresh winds off a glittering blue sea, arrested by the barricade of
+ancient hospitable-looking houses, warmed by the glow of their sun-baked
+red brick, and freighted with a ghostly fragrance, as from the phantoms
+of the rose gardens of a century or two ago--to arrive, frigid and
+forlorn in such a haven, to drink a cup of tea in the old Paca house
+(now a hotel), is to experience heaven after purgatory. For there is no
+town that I know whose very house fronts hold out to the stranger that
+warm, old-fashioned welcome that Annapolis seems to give.
+
+The Paca house, which as a hotel has acquired the name Carvel Hall, is
+the house that Winston Churchill had in mind as the Manners house, of
+his novel "Richard Carvel." A good idea of the house, as it was, may be
+obtained by visiting the Brice house, next door, for the two are almost
+twins. When Mr. Churchill was a cadet at Annapolis, before the modern
+part of the Carvel Hall hotel was built, there were the remains of
+terraced gardens back of the old mansion, stepping down to an old spring
+house, and a rivulet which flowed through the grounds was full of
+watercress. The book describes a party at the house and in these
+gardens. The Chase house on Maryland Avenue was the one Mr. Churchill
+thought of as the home of Lionel Carvel, and he described the view from
+upper windows of this house, over the Harwood house, across the way, to
+the Severn.
+
+Annapolis, Baedeker tells me, was the first chartered city in the United
+States, having been granted its charter by Queen Anne considerably more
+than two centuries ago. It is, as every little boy and girl should know,
+the capital of Maryland, and is built around a little hill upon the top
+of which stands the old State House in which Washington surrendered his
+commission and in which met the first Constitutional Convention.
+
+In its prime Annapolis was nearly as large a city as it is to-day, but
+that is not saying a great deal, for at the present time it has not so
+many inhabitants as Amarillo, Texas, or Brazil, Indiana.
+
+Nevertheless, the life of Annapolis in colonial days, and in the days
+which followed them, was very brilliant, and we learn from the diary of
+General Washington and from the writings of amazed Englishmen and
+Frenchmen who visited the city in its period of glory that there were
+dinners and balls night after night, that the theater was encouraged in
+Annapolis more than in any other city, that the race meets compared with
+English race meets both as to the quality of the horses and of the
+fashionable attendance, that there were sixteen clubs, that the women of
+the city were beautiful, charming, and superbly dressed, that slaves in
+sumptuous liveries were to be seen about the streets, that certain
+gentlemen paid calls in barges which were rowed by half a dozen or more
+blacks, in uniform, and that the perpetual hospitality of the great
+houses was gorgeous and extravagant.
+
+The houses hint of these things. If you have seen the best old brick
+mansions of New England, and will imagine them more beautifully
+proportioned, set off by balancing wings and having infinitely finer
+details as to doorways, windows, porticos, and also as to wood carvings
+and fixtures within--as, for instance, the beautiful silver latches and
+hinges of the Chase house at Annapolis--you will gather something of the
+flavor of these old Southern homes. For though such venerable mansions
+as the Chase, Paca, Brice, Hammond, Ridout, and Bordley houses, in
+Annapolis, are not without family resemblance to the best New England
+colonial houses, the resemblance is of a kind to emphasize the
+differences, not only between the mansions of the North and South, but
+between the builders of them. The contrast is subtle, but marked.
+
+Your New England house, beautiful as it is, is stamped with austere
+simplicity. The man who built it was probably a scholar but he was
+almost certainly a Calvinist. He habited himself in black and was served
+by serving maids, instead of slaves in livery. If a woman was not
+flat-chested and forlorn, he was prone to regard her as the devil
+masquerading for the downfall of man--and no doubt with some justice,
+too. Night and morning he presided at family prayers, the purpose of
+which was to impress upon his family and servants that to have a good
+time was wicked, and that to be gay in this life meant hell-fire and
+damnation in the next.
+
+Upon this pious person his cousin of Annapolis looked with something not
+unlike contempt; for the latter, though he too was a scholar, possessed
+the sort of scholarliness which takes into account beauty and the lore
+of cosmopolitanism. He may have been religious or he may not have been,
+but if religious he demanded something handsome, something stylish, in
+his religion, as he did also in his residence, in his wife, his sons,
+his daughters, his horses, coaches, dinners, wines, and slaves. He did
+things with a flourish, and was not beset by a perpetual consciousness
+and fear of hell. He approved of pretty women; he made love to them; he
+married them; he was the father of them. His pretty daughters married
+men who also admired pretty women, and became the mothers of other
+pretty women, who became, in turn, the mothers and grandmothers of the
+pretty women of the South to-day.
+
+Your old-time Annapolis gentleman's ideas of a republic were far indeed
+from those now current, for he understood perfectly the difference
+between a republic and a democracy--a difference which is not now so
+well understood. He believed that the people should elect the heads of
+the government, but he also believed that these heads should be elected
+from his own class, and that, having voted, the people should go about
+their business, trusting their betters to run the country as it should
+be run.
+
+This, at least, is my picture of the old aristocrats of Maryland,
+Virginia, and South Carolina, as conveyed to me by what I have seen of
+their houses and possessions and what I have read of their mode of life.
+They were the early princes of the Republic and by all odds its most
+picturesque figures.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Very different from the spirit of appreciation and emulation shown by
+the trustees of Johns Hopkins University with regard to the old house,
+Homewood, in Baltimore, is that manifested in the architecture of the
+Naval Academy at Annapolis, where, in a city fairly flooded with
+examples of buildings, both beautiful and typically American,
+architectural hints were ignored, and there were erected great stone
+structures whose chief characteristics are size, solidity, and the look
+of being "government property." The main buildings of the Academy, with
+the exception of the chapel, suggest the sort of sublimated penitentiary
+that Mr. Thomas Mott Osborne might, one fancies, construct under a
+carte-blanche authorization, while the chapel, the huge dome of which is
+visible to all the country round, makes one think of a monstrous wedding
+cake fashioned in the form of a building and covered with white and
+yellow frosting in ornamental patterns.
+
+This chapel, one imagines, may have been inspired by the Invalides in
+Paris, but of the Invalides it falls far short. I know nothing of the
+history of the building, but it is easy to believe that the original
+intention may have been to place at the center of it, under the dome, a
+great well, over the parapet of which might have been seen the
+sarcophagus of John Paul Jones, in the crypt. One prefers to think that
+the architect had some such plan; for the crypt, as at present arranged,
+is hardly more than a dark cellar, approached by what seems to be a
+flight of humble back stairs. To descend into it, and find there the
+great marble coffin with its bronze dolphins, is not unlike going down
+into the cellar of a residence and there discovering the family silver
+reposing in the coal-bin.
+
+In this connection it is interesting to recall the fact that our
+sometimes piratical and always brilliant Revolutionary naval hero died
+in Paris, and that until a few years ago his resting place was unknown.
+The reader will remember that while General Horace Porter was American
+ambassador to France a search was instituted for the remains of John
+Paul Jones, the greater part of the work having been conducted by
+Colonel H. Baily Blanchard, then first secretary of the Embassy,
+assisted by the ambassador and Mr. Henry Vignaud, dean of secretaries of
+embassy. The resting place of Jones was finally discovered in an
+abandoned cemetery in the city of Paris, over which houses had been
+built. The body was contained in a leaden casket and was preserved in
+alcohol so that identification was easily accomplished by means of a
+contemporaneous likeness of Jones, and also by means of measurements
+taken from Houdin's bust. The remains were accorded military honors in
+Paris, and were brought to this country on a war vessel.
+
+Why the crypt at Annapolis is as it is, I do not know, but in my own
+purely imaginary picture of what happened, I see the architect's plans
+for a heroic display of Jones's tomb knocked on the head by some
+"practical man," some worthy dunce in the Navy Department, whom I can
+imagine as protesting: "But no! We can't take up space at the center of
+the chapel for any such purpose. It must be floored over to make room
+for pews. Otherwise where will the cadets sit?"
+
+So, although the grounds of the academy, with their lawns, and aged
+trees, and squirrels, and cadets, are charming, and although the solemn
+and industrious Baedeker assures me that the academy is the "chief lion"
+of Annapolis, and although I know that it is a great school, and that we
+need another like it in order properly to officer our navy, I prefer the
+old town with its old houses, and old streets bearing such reminiscent
+names as Hanover, Prince George, and Duke of Gloucester.
+
+For certain slang expressions used by cadets I am indebted to a member
+of the corps. From this admiral-to-be I learn that a "bird" or "wazzo"
+is a man or boy; that a "pap sheet" is a report covering delinquencies,
+and that to "hit the pap" is to be reported for delinquency; that
+"steam" is marine engineering, and to be "bilged for juice" is to fail
+in examinations in electrical engineering--to get an "unsat," or
+unsatisfactory mark, or even a "zip" or "swabo," which is a zero. Cadets
+do not escort girls to dances, but "drag" them; a girl is a "drag," and
+a "heavy drag" or "brick" is an unattractive girl who must be taken to a
+dance. A "sleuth" or "jimmylegs" is a night watchman, and to be "ragged"
+is to be caught. Mess-hall waiters are sometimes called "mokes," while
+at other times the names of certain exalted dignitaries of the Navy
+Department, or of the academy, are applied to them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I shall never cease to regret that dread of the cold kept us from seeing
+ancient Whitehall, a few miles from Annapolis, which was the residence
+of Governor Horatio Sharpe, and is one of the finest of historic
+American homes; nor shall I, on the other hand, ever cease to rejoice
+that, in spite of cold we did, upon another day, visit Hampton, the rare
+old mansion of the Ridgelys, of Maryland, which stands amid its own five
+thousand acres some dozen miles or so to the north of Baltimore. The
+Ridgelys were, it appears, the great Protestant land barons of this
+region as the Carrolls were the great Catholics, and, like the Carrolls,
+they remain to-day the proprietors of a vast estate and an incomparable
+house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+WE MEET THE HAMPTON GHOST
+
+    There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple;
+    If the ill spirit have so fair a house,
+    Good things will strive to dwell with 't.
+
+    --THE TEMPEST.
+
+
+Hampton is probably the largest of Maryland's old mansions, and the
+beauty of it is more theatrical than the beauty of Doughoregan Manor;
+for although the latter is the older of the two, the former is not only
+spectacular by reason of its spaciousness, the delicacy of its
+architectural details, and the splendor of its dreamlike terraced
+gardens, but also for a look of beautiful, dignified, yet somehow tragic
+age--a look which makes one think of a wonderful old lady; a belle of
+the days of minuets and powdered wigs and patches; a woman no less
+wonderful in her declining years than in her youth, but wonderful in
+another way; a proud old aristocrat, erect and spirited to the last; her
+bedchamber a storehouse of ivory lace and ancient jewelry, her memory a
+storehouse of recollections, like chapters from romantic novels of the
+days when all men were gallant, and all women beautiful: recollections
+of journeys made in the old coach, which is still in the stable, though
+its outriders have been buried in the slaves' burying ground these many
+years; recollections of the opening of Hampton, when, as the story
+goes, gay Captain Charles Ridgely, builder of the house, held a card
+party in the attic to celebrate the event, while his wife, Rebecca
+Dorsey Ridgely, a lady of religious turn, marked the occasion
+simultaneously with a prayer-meeting in the drawing room; of the ball
+given by the Ridgelys in honor of Charles Carroll's granddaughters, the
+exquisite Caton sisters; of hunt meets here, long, long ago, and hunt
+balls which succeeded them; of breakneck rides; of love-making in that
+garden peopled with the ghosts of more than a century of lovers; of
+duels fought at dawn. Of such vague, thrilling tales the old house seems
+to whisper.
+
+Never, from the moment we turned into the tree-lined avenue, leading to
+Hampton, from the moment when I saw the fox hounds rise resentfully out
+of beds which they had dug in drifts of oak leaves in the drive, from
+the moment when I stood beneath the stately portico and heard the bars
+of the shuttered doors being flung back for our admittance--never, from
+my first glimpse of the place, have I been able to dispel the sense of
+unreality I felt while there, and which makes me feel, now, that Hampton
+is not a house that I have seen, but one built by my imagination in the
+course of a particularly charming and convincing dream.
+
+Stained glass windows bearing the Ridgely coat of arms flank the front
+doorway, and likewise the opposing doorway at the end of the enormous
+hall upon which one enters, and the light from these windows gives the
+hall a subdued yet glowing illumination, so that there is something
+spectral about the old chairs and the old portraits with which the walls
+are solidly covered. There are portraits here by Gilbert Stuart and
+other distinguished painters of times gone by, and I particularly
+remember one large canvas showing a beautiful young woman in evening
+dress, her hair hanging in curls beside her cheeks, her tapering fingers
+touching the strings of a harp. She was young then; yet the portrait is
+that of the great-grandmother, or great-great-grandmother, of present
+Ridgelys, and she has lain long in the brick-walled family burying
+ground below the garden. But there beneath the portrait stands the harp
+on which she played.
+
+One might tell endlessly of paneling, of the delicate carving of mantels
+and overmantels, of chairs, tables, desks, and sofas of Chippendale,
+Hepplewhite, Phyfe and Sheraton, yet giving such an inventory one might
+fail utterly to suggest the feeling of that great house, with its sense
+of homelike emptiness, its wealth of old furniture and portraits,
+blending together, in the dim light of a late October afternoon, to form
+shadowy backgrounds for autumnal reverie, or for silent, solitary
+listening--listening to the tales told by the soughing wind outside, to
+the whisper of embers in the fireplace, the slow somber tick of the tall
+clock telling of ages past and passing, the ghostly murmur of the old
+house talking softly to itself.
+
+From the windows of the great dining-room one looks away toward Hampton
+Gate, a favorite meeting place for the Elkridge Hunt, or, at another
+angle, toward the stables where the hunters are kept, the old slave
+cabins, and the overseer's house, with its bell tower--a house nearly
+two hundred years old. But the library is perhaps the more natural
+resting place for the guest, and it looks out over the garden, with its
+enormous descending terraces, its geometrical walks and steps, its
+beautiful old trees, and arbors of ancient box. Such terraces as these
+were never built by paid labor.
+
+We were given tea in the library, our hostess at this function being a
+young lady of five or six years--a granddaughter of Captain John
+Ridgely, present master of Hampton--who, with her pink cheeks, her
+serious eyes and demeanor, looked like a canvas by Sir Joshua come to
+life, as she sat in a large chair and ate a large red apple.
+
+Nor did Bryan, Captain Ridgely's negro butler, fit less admirably into
+the pervasive atmosphere of fiction which enveloped the place. In the
+absence of his master, Bryan did the honors of the old house with a
+style which was not "put on," because it did not have to be put
+on--nature and a good bringing-up having supplied all needs in this
+respect. There was about him none of that affectation of being a graven
+image, which one so often notices in white butlers and footmen imported
+from Europe by rich Americans, and which, of all shams, is one of the
+most false and absurd, as carried out on both sides--for we pretend to
+think these functionaries the deft mechanisms, incapable of thought,
+that they pretend to be; yet all the time we know--and they know we
+know--that they see and hear and think as we do, and that, moreover,
+they are often enough observant cynics whose elaborate gentility is
+assumed for hire, like the signboard of a sandwich man.
+
+Bryan was without these artificial graces. His manner, in showing us the
+house, in telling us about the various portraits, indicated some true
+appreciation of the place and of its contents; and the air he wore of
+natural dignity and courtesy--of being at once acting-host and
+servitor--constituted as graceful a performance in a not altogether easy
+role as I have ever seen, and satisfied me, once for all, as to the
+verity of legends concerning the admirable qualities of old-time negro
+servants in the South.
+
+After tea, when fading twilight had deepened the shadows in the house,
+we went up the stairway, past the landing with its window containing the
+armorial bearings of the family in stained glass, and, achieving the
+upper hall, crossed to a great bedchamber, the principal guest room, and
+paused just inside the door.
+
+And now, because of what I am about to relate, I shall give the names of
+those who were present. We were: Dr. Murray P. Brush, A.B., Ph.D.,
+acting Dean of Johns Hopkins University; Dr. John McF. Bergland of
+Baltimore; my companion, Wallace Morgan, illustrator; and myself.
+
+The light had, by this time, melted to a mere faint grayness sifting
+like mist through the many oblong panes of several large windows.
+Nevertheless I could discern that it was a spacious room, and from the
+color of it and certain shadowy lines upon the walls, I judged that it
+was paneled to the ceiling in white-painted wood. I am under the
+impression that it contained a fireplace, and that the great four-post
+bed, standing to the right of the doorway, was placed upon a low
+platform, a step or two above the floor--though of this I am not quite
+certain, the bulk of the bed and the dim light having, perhaps, deceived
+me. The rest of the furniture in the room was dark in color, and massed
+in heavy vague spots against the lighter background of the walls.
+
+Directly before the door, at about the center of the wall against which
+it was backed, stood something which loomed tall and dark, and which I
+took to be either a gigantic clothespress or a closet built into the
+room. Looking past the front of this obstruction, I saw one of the
+windows; the piece of furniture was therefore exhibited sidewise, in
+silhouette.
+
+I do not think that I had definitely thought of ghost stories before,
+and I know that ghosts had not been spoken of, but as I looked into this
+room, and reflected on the long series of persons who had occupied it,
+and on where they were now, and on all the stories that the room must
+have heard, there entered my mind thoughts of the supernatural.
+
+Having taken a step or two into the room, I was a little in advance of
+my three friends, and as these fancies came strongly to me, I spoke over
+my shoulder to one of them, who was at my right and a little behind me,
+saying, half playfully:
+
+"There ought to be ghosts in a room like this."
+
+Hardly had I spoken when without a sound, and swinging very slowly, the
+door of the large piece of furniture before me gently opened. My first
+idea was that the thing must be a closet, built against the wall, with a
+door at the back opening on a passageway, or into the next room, and
+that the little girl whom we had met downstairs had opened it from the
+other side and was coming in.
+
+I fully expected to see her enter. But she did not enter, for, as I
+learned presently, she was in the nursery at the time.
+
+After waiting for an instant to see who was coming, I began to realize
+that there was no one coming; that no one had opened the door; that,
+like an actor picking up a cue, the door had begun to swing immediately
+upon my saying the word "ghosts."
+
+The appropriateness of the coincidence was striking. I turned quickly to
+my friends, who were in conversation behind me, and asked:
+
+"Speaking of ghosts--did you see that door open?"
+
+It is my recollection that none of them had seen it. Certainly not more
+than one of them had, for I remember my feeling of disappointment that
+any one present should have missed so strange a circumstance. Some one
+may have asked what I had seen; at all events I was full of the idea,
+and, indicating the open door, I began to tell what I had seen,
+when--exactly as though the thing were done deliberately to
+circumstantiate my story--with the slow, steady movement of a heavy door
+pushed by a feeble hand, the other portal of the huge cabinet swung
+open.
+
+This time all four of us were looking.
+
+Presently, as we moved across the wide hall to go downstairs again,
+Bryan came from one of the other chambers, whither, I think, he had
+carried the young lady's supper on a tray.
+
+"Are there supposed to be any ghosts in this house?" I asked him.
+
+Bryan showed his white teeth in the semi-darkness. Whether he believed
+in ghosts or not, evidently he did not fear them.
+
+"Yes, sir," he said. "We're supposed to have a ghost here."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"In that room over there," he answered, indicating the bedroom from
+which we had come.
+
+We listened attentively to Bryan while he told how the daughter of
+Governor Swan had come to attend a ball at Hampton, and how she had died
+in the four-post bed in that old shadowy guest room, and of how, since
+then, she had been seen from time to time.
+
+"They's several people say they saw her," he finished. "She comes out
+and combs her hair in front of the long mirror."
+
+However, as we drove back to Baltimore that evening, we repeatedly
+assured one another that we did not believe in ghosts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+ARE WE STANDARDIZED?
+
+
+Almost all modern European critics of the United States agree in
+complaining that our telephones and sleeping cars are objectionable, and
+that we are "standardized" in everything. Their criticism of the
+telephone seems to be that the state of perfection to which it has been
+brought in this country causes it to be widely used, while their
+disapproval of our sleeping cars is invariably based on the assumption
+that they have no compartments--which is not the fact, since most of the
+great transcontinental railroads do run compartment cars, and much
+better ones than the best _wagons lits_, and since, also, all our
+sleeping cars have drawing-rooms which are incomparably better than the
+most comfortable European compartments.
+
+The charge of standardization will, however, bear a little thought. It
+is true that most American cities have a general family
+resemblance--that a business street in Atlanta or Memphis looks much
+like a business street in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo, Milwaukee, St.
+Paul, Kansas City, or St. Louis--and that much the same thing may be
+said of residence streets. Houses and office buildings in one city are
+likely to resemble those of corresponding grade in another; the men who
+live in the houses and go daily to the offices are also similar; so are
+the trolley cars in which they journey to and fro; still more so the
+Fords which many of them use; the clothing of one man is like that of
+another, and all have similar conventions concerning the date at
+which--without regard to temperature--straw hats should be discarded.
+Their womenfolk, also, are more or less alike, as are the department
+stores in which they shop and the dresses they buy. And the same is true
+of their children, the costumes of those children, and the schools they
+attend.
+
+Every American city has social groups corresponding to similar groups in
+other cities. There is always the small, affluent group, made up of
+people who keep butlers and several automobiles, and who travel
+extensively. In this group there are always some snobs: ladies who give
+much time to societies founded on ancestry, and have a Junkerish feeling
+about "social leadership."
+
+Every city has also its "fast" group: people who consider themselves
+"unconventional," who drink more than is good for them, and make much
+noise. Some members of this group may belong to the first group, as
+well, but in the fast group they have a following of well-dressed
+hangers-on: unmarried men and women, youngish rather than young, who,
+with little money, yet manage to dress well and to be seen eating and
+drinking and dancing in public places. There is usually to be found in
+this group a hectic widow or two--be it grass or sod--and a few pretty
+girls who, having been given too much freedom at eighteen, begin to
+wonder at twenty-eight, why, though they have always been "good
+fellows," none of the dozens of men who take them about have married
+them. To this aggregation drift also those restless husbands and wives
+whose glances rove hopefully away from their mates, a few well-bred
+drunkards, and a few men and women who are trying to forget things they
+cannot forget.
+
+Then there is always the young married group--a nice group for the most
+part--living in comfortable new houses or apartments, and keeping,
+usually, both a small automobile and a baby carriage. They also go to
+the Country Club on Saturday nights, leave their motors standing in the
+drive, eat a lukewarm supper that tastes like papier-mache, and dance
+themselves to wiltedness.
+
+Another group is entirely masculine, being made up of husbands of
+various ages, their mutual bond being the downtown club to which they go
+daily, and in which the subjects discussed are politics, golf, and the
+evils of prohibition. To this group always belong the black-sheep
+husbands who, after taking their wives to the Country Club, disappear
+and remain away until they are sent for because it is time to go home,
+when they come back shamefaced and scented with Scotch.
+
+Every American city has also what Don Marquis calls its "little group of
+serious thinkers"--women, most of them--possessed of an ardent desire to
+"keep abreast of the times." These women belong to clubs and literary
+societies which are more serious than war. They are always reading
+papers or attending lectures, and at these lectures they get a strange
+assortment of "cultural" information and misinformation, delivered with
+ghastly assurance by heterogeneous gentlemen in cutaway coats, who go
+about and spout for pay. If you meet these ladies, and they suspect you
+of being infested by the germs of "culture," they will open fire on you
+with a "thought," about which you may detect a curious ghostly
+fragrance, as of Alfred Noyes's lecture, last week, or of "the New
+Republic" or the "Literary Digest." The most "liberal" of them may even
+take "The Masses," precisely as people rather like them used to take
+"The Philistine," a generation or two ago. Among the members of this
+group are the women who work violently for suffrage--something in which
+I personally believe, but which, merely because I believe in it, I do
+not necessarily like to take in my coffee as a substitute for sugar, on
+my bread as a substitute for butter, and in my ear as a substitute for
+pleasant general conversation.
+
+I do not wish to seem to speak disparagingly of women of this type, for
+they are doing good, and they will do more good when they have become
+more accustomed to possessing minds. Having but recently discovered
+their minds, they are playing with them enthusiastically, like children
+who have just discovered their new toys on Christmas morning. It is
+delightful to watch them. It is diverting to have them pop ideas at you
+with that bright-eyed, efficient, assertive look which seems to say:
+"See! I am a liberal woman--a woman of the new type. I meet men on their
+own ground. Do you wish to talk of birth control, social hygiene, and
+sex attraction? Or shall we reverse the order? Or shall I show you how
+much I know about Brieux, and household economics, and Ellen Key, and
+eugenics, and George Meredith, and post-impressionism, and "Roberts'
+Rules of Order," and theosophy, and conditions in the Sixteenth Ward?"
+
+When one thinks of these city groups, and of mail-order houses, and
+Fords, one may begin to fear it is indeed true that we are becoming
+standardized, but when one lets one's mind drift over the country as the
+eye drifts over a map; when one thinks of the quantities of modest,
+thoughtful, gentle, generous, intelligent, sound American families which
+are to be found in every city and every town, and thinks again, in a
+twinkling, of sheriffs and mining-camp policemen in the Far West, of
+boys going to Harvard, and other boys going to the University of Kansas,
+others to the old Southern universities, so rich in tradition, and still
+others to Annapolis or West Point; when one thinks of the snow
+glittering on the Rocky Mountain wall, back of Denver; of sleepy little
+towns drowsing in the sun beside the Mississippi; of Charles W. Eliot of
+Cambridge, and Hy Gill of Seattle; of Dr. Lyman Abbott of New York and
+Tom Watson of Georgia; of General Leonard Wood and Colonel William
+Jennings Bryan; of ex-slaves living in their cabins behind Virginia
+manor houses, and Filipino and Kanaka fishermen living in villages
+built on stilts beside the bayous below New Orleans; of the dry salt
+desert of Utah, and two great rivers meeting between green rocky hills,
+at Harper's Ferry; of men working in offices at the top of the Woolworth
+Building in New York, and other men working thousands of feet below the
+ground, in the copper mines of Butte and the iron and coal mines of
+Birmingham--when one thinks of these things one quickly ceases to fear
+that the United States is standardized, and instead begins to fear that
+few Americans will ever know the varied wonder of their country, and the
+varied character of its inhabitants, their problems, hopes, and views.
+
+If I lived somewhere in the region of Boston, New York, or Philadelphia
+and wished quickly to learn whether the country were really standardized
+or not, I should get into my automobile--or into some one else's--and
+take an autumn tour through Baltimore, past Doughoregan Manor, some
+miles to the west of Baltimore, on to Frederick, Maryland (where they
+dispute, quite justly, I believe, the truth of the Barbara Frietchie
+legend), and thence "over the mountain wall" and down into the
+northeastern corner of the most irregularly shaped State in the Union,
+West Virginia. I should strike for Harper's Ferry, and from there run to
+Charles Town, a few miles distant (where John Brown was tried and
+executed for the Harper's Ferry raid), and after circulating about that
+corner of the State, I should go down into Virginia by the good highway
+which leads from Charles Town to Berryville--"Bur'v'l," they pronounce
+it--and to "Winchester twenty miles away" (where they say that
+Sheridan's Ride was nothing to make such a lot of talk about!), and then
+back, by way of Berryville, and over the Blue Ridge Mountains into the
+great fox-hunting counties of Virginia: Clark, Loudon, and Fauquier.
+Here I should see a hunt meet or a race meet. There are many other
+places to which I might go after that, but as I meant only to suggest an
+easy little tour, I shall stop at this point, contenting myself with
+saying that not far to the south is Charlottesville, where Jefferson
+built that most beautiful of all universities, the University of
+Virginia, and his wonderful house Monticello; that Staunton (pronounced
+as without the "u"), where Woodrow Wilson was born, lies west of
+Charlottesville, while Fredericksburg, where Washington's mother lived,
+lies to the northeast.
+
+Some such trip as this I should take instead of a conventional New
+England tour. And before starting I should buy a copy of Louise Closser
+Hale's delightful book, "Into the Old Dominion."
+
+One beauty of the trip that I suggest is that it isn't all the same. In
+one place you get a fair country hotel, in another an inn, and somewhere
+along the way you may have to spend a night in a private house. Also,
+though the roads through Maryland, and the part of West Virginia I speak
+of, are generally good, my experience of Virginia roads, especially
+through the mountains, leads me to conclude that in respect to highways
+Virginia remains a backward State. But who wants to ride always over
+oiled roads, always to hotels with marble lobbies, or big white porches
+full of hungry-eyed young women, and old ladies, knitting? Only the
+standardized tourist. And I am not addressing him.
+
+I am talking to the motorist who is not ossified in habit, who has a
+love of strangeness and the picturesque--not only in scenery but in
+houses and people and the kind of life those people lead. For it is
+quite true that, as Professor Roland C. Usher said in his "Pan
+Americanism," "the information in New York about Buenos Aires is more
+extended, accurate, and contemporaneous than the notions in Maine about
+Alabama.... Isolation is more a matter of time than of space, and common
+interests are due to the ease of transportation and communication more
+often than geographical location."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+HARPER'S FERRY AND JOHN BROWN
+
+            Mad Old Brown,
+            Osawatomie Brown,
+    With his eighteen other crazy men, went in and took the town.
+
+    --EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.
+
+
+Three States meet at Harper's Ferry, and the line dividing two of them
+is indicated where it crosses the station platform. If you alight at the
+rear end of the train, you are in Maryland; at the front, you are in
+West Virginia. This I like. I have always liked important but invisible
+boundaries--boundaries of states or, better yet, of countries. When I
+cross them I am disposed to step high, as though not to trip upon them,
+and then to pause with one foot in one land and one in another, trying
+to imagine that I feel the division running through my body.
+
+Harper's Ferry is an entrancing old town; a drowsy place, piled up
+beautifully, yet carelessly, upon terraced roads clinging to steep
+hills, which slope on one side to the Potomac, on the other to the
+Shenandoah, and come to a point, like the prow of a great ship, at the
+confluence of the two.
+
+There is something foreign in the appearance of the place. Many times,
+as I looked at old stone houses, a story or two high on one side, three
+or four stories on the other, seeming to set their claws into the cliffs
+and cling there for dear life, I thought of houses in Capri and Amalfi,
+and in some towns in France; and again there were low cottages built of
+blocks of shale covered with a thin veneer of white plaster showing the
+outlines of the stones beneath, which, squatting down amid their trees
+and flowers, resembled peasant cottages in Normandy or Brittany, or in
+Ireland.
+
+It is a town in which to ramble for an hour, uphill, down and around;
+stopping now to delight in a crumbling stone wall, tied together with
+Kenilworth ivy; now to watch a woman making apple butter in a great iron
+pot; now to see an old negro clamber slowly into his rickety wagon, take
+up the rope reins, and start his skinny horse with the surprising words:
+"Come hither!"; now to look at an old tangled garden, terraced rudely up
+a hillside; now to read the sign, on a telegraph pole in the village,
+bearing the frank threat: "If you Hitch your Horses Here they will be
+Turned Loose." Now you will come upon a terraced road, at one side of
+which stands an old house draped over the rocks in such a way as to
+provide entrance from the ground level, on any one of three stories; or
+an unexpected view down a steep roadway, or over ancient moss-grown
+housetops to where, as an old book I found there puts it, "between two
+ramparts, in a gorge of savage grandeur, the lordly Potomac takes to his
+embrace the beautiful Shenandoah."
+
+The liaison between the rivers, described in this Rabelaisian manner by
+the author of "The Annals of Harper's Ferry," has been going on for a
+long time with all the brazen publicity of a love scene on a park bench.
+I recommend the matter to the attention of the Society for the
+Suppression of Vice, which once took action to prohibit a novel by Mr.
+Theodore Dreiser. A great many people wish to read Mr. Dreiser's books
+yet no one has to read them if he does not want to. But it is a
+different matter with these rivers. Sensitive citizens of Harper's Ferry
+and pure-minded passengers on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad are obliged
+daily to witness what is going on.
+
+Before the days of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, and of the
+late Anthony Comstock, when we had no one to make it clear to us exactly
+what was shocking, little was thought of the public scandal between the
+Potomac and the Shenandoah. Thomas Jefferson seems to have rather liked
+it; there is a point above the town, known as Jefferson's Rock, at
+which, it is said, the author of the Declaration of Independence stood
+and uttered a sentiment about the spectacle. Everybody in Harper's Ferry
+agrees that Jefferson stood at Jefferson's Rock and said something
+appropriate, and any one of them will try to tell you what he said, but
+each version will be different.
+
+A young lady told me that he said: "This view is worth a trip across the
+Atlantic Ocean."
+
+A young man in a blue felt hat of the fried-egg variety said that
+Jefferson declared, with his well-known simplicity: "This is the
+grandest view I ever seen."
+
+An old man who had to go through the tobacco chewer's pre-conversational
+rite before replying to my question gave it as: "Pfst!--They ain't
+nothin' in Europe ner Switzerland ner nowheres else, I reckon', to beat
+this-here scenery."
+
+The man at the drug store quoted differently alleging the saying to have
+been: "Europe has nothing on this": whereas the livery stable man's
+version was: "This has that famous German river--the Rhine River don't
+they call it?--skinned to death."
+
+Whatever Jefferson's remark was, there has been added to the spectacle
+at Harper's Ferry, since his day, a new feature, which, could he have
+but seen it, must have struck him forcibly, and might perhaps have
+caused him to say more.
+
+At a lofty point upon the steep wall of Maryland Heights, across the
+Potomac from the town, far, far up upon the side of the cliff,
+commanding a view not only of both rivers, but of their meeting place
+and their joint course below, and of the lovely contours of the Blue
+Ridge Mountains, fading to smoky coloring in the remote distance, there
+has, of late years, appeared the outline of a gigantic face, which looks
+out from its emplacement like some Teutonic god in vast effigy, its huge
+luxuriant mustaches pointing East and West as though in symbolism of the
+conquest of a continent. A blue and yellow background, tempered somewhat
+by the elements, serves to attract attention to the face and to the
+legend which accompanies it, but the thing one sees above all else, the
+thing one recognizes, is the face itself, with its look half tragic,
+half resigned, yet always so inscrutable: for it is none other than the
+beautiful brooding countenance of Gerhard Mennen, the talcum-powder
+gentleman.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The great story of Harper's Ferry is of course the John Brown story.
+Joseph I.C. Clarke, writing in the New York "Sun" of Sir Roger
+Casement's execution for treason in connection with the Irish rebellion,
+compared him with John Brown and also with Don Quixote. The spiritual
+likeness between these three bearded figures is striking enough. All
+were idealists; all were fanatics. Brown's ideal was a noble one--that
+of freedom--but his manner of attempting to translate it into actuality
+was that of a madman. He believed not only that the slaves should be
+freed, but that the blood of slaveholders should be shed in atonement.
+In "bleeding Kansas" he led the Ossawatomie massacre, and committed
+cold-blooded murders under the delusion that the sword of the Lord was
+in his hand.
+
+In October, 1859, Brown, who had for some time been living under an
+assumed name in the neighborhood of Harper's Ferry, led a score of his
+followers, some of them negroes, in a surprise attack upon the
+Government arsenal at this place, capturing the watchmen and taking
+possession of the buildings. It was his idea to get the weapons the
+arsenal contained and give them to the slaves that they might rise and
+free themselves. Before this plan could be executed, however, Brown and
+his men were besieged in the armory, and here, after a day or two of
+bloody fighting, with a number of deaths on both sides, he was captured
+with his few surviving men, by Colonel (later General) Robert E. Lee,
+whose aide, upon this occasion, was J.E.B. Stuart, later the Confederate
+cavalry leader. Stuart had been in Kansas, and it was he who recognized
+the leader of the raid as Brown of Ossawatomie.
+
+It is said that Brown's violent anti-slavery feeling was engendered by
+his having seen, in his youth, a colored boy of about his own age
+cruelly misused. He brooded over the wrongs of the blacks until, as some
+students of his life believe, he became insane on this subject. His
+utterances show that he was willing to give up his life and those of his
+sons and other followers, if by such action he could merely draw
+attention to the cause which had taken possession of his soul. In the
+course of the fighting he saw his two sons mortally wounded, and was
+himself stabbed and cut. Throughout the fight and his subsequent trial
+at Charles Town he remained imperturbable; when taken to the gallows he
+sat upon his coffin, in a wagon, and he not only mounted the scaffold
+without a tremor, but actually stood there, apparently unmoved, for ten
+or fifteen minutes, with the noose around his neck, while the troops
+which had formed his escort were marched to their positions.
+
+A large number of troops were present at the execution, for it was then
+believed in the South that the Brown raid was not the mere suicidal
+stroke of an individual fanatic, but an organized movement on the part
+of the Republican party; an effort to rescue Brown was therefore
+apprehended. This idea was later shown to be a fallacy, Brown having
+made his own plans, and been financed by a few northern friends, headed
+by Gerrit Smith of New York.
+
+There has been a tendency in the North to make a saint of John Brown,
+and in the South to make a devil of him. As a matter of fact he was a
+poor, misguided zealot, with a wild light in his eye, who had set out to
+do a frightful thing; for, bad though slavery was, its evils were not
+comparable with the horrors which would have resulted from a slave
+rebellion.
+
+It must be conceded, however, that those who would canonize John Brown
+have upon their side a strange and impressive piece of evidence. The
+jail where he was lodged in Charles Town and the courthouse where he was
+tried, still stand, and it is the actual fact that, when the snow falls,
+it always miraculously melts in a path which leads diagonally across the
+street from the one to the other. That this is true I have unimpeachable
+testimony. _Snow will not stand on the path by which John Brown crossed
+back and forth from the jail to the court-house._ There will be snow
+over all the rest of the street, but not on that path; there you can see
+it melting.
+
+But, as with certain other "miracles," this one is not so difficult to
+understand if you know how it is brought about. The courthouse is heated
+from the jail, and the hot pipes run under the pavement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE VIRGINIAS AND THE WASHINGTONS
+
+
+In colonial times, and long thereafter, the present State of West
+Virginia was a part of Virginia. Virginia, in the old days, used to have
+no western borders to her most westerly counties, which, in theory, ran
+out to infinity. As the western part of the State became settled, county
+lines were drawn, and new counties were started farther back from the
+coast. For this reason, towns which are now in Jefferson County, West
+Virginia, used to be in that county of Virginia which lies to the east
+of Jefferson County, and some towns have been in several different
+counties in the course of their history.
+
+The people in the eastern part of West Virginia are, so far as I am
+capable of judging, precisely like Virginians. The old houses, when
+built, were in Virginia, the names of the people are Virginian names,
+and customs and points of view are Virginian. Until I went there I was
+not aware how very much this means.
+
+I do not know who wrote the school history I studied as a boy, but I do
+know now that it was written by a lopsided historian, and that his
+"lop," like that of many another of his kind, led him to enlarge upon
+American naval and military victories, to minimize American defeats, to
+give an impression that the all-important early colonies were those of
+New England, and that the all-important one of them was Massachusetts.
+From this bias I judge that the historian was a Boston man. It takes a
+Bostonian to think in that way. They do it still.
+
+From my school history I gathered the idea that although Sir Walter
+Raleigh and Captain John Smith were so foolish as to dally more or less
+in the remote fastnesses of Virginia, and although there was a little
+ineffectual settlement at Jamestown, all the important colonizing of
+this country occurred in New England. I read about Peregrine White, but
+not about Virginia Dare; I read much of Miles Standish, but nothing of
+Christopher Newport; I read a great deal of the _Mayflower_, but not a
+word of the _Susan Constant_.
+
+Yet Virginia Dare, if she lived, must have been nearing young ladyhood
+when Peregrine White was born; Captain Christopher Newport passed the
+Virginia capes when Miles Standish was hardly more than a youth, in
+Lancashire; and the _Susan Constant_ landed the Jamestown settlers more
+than a dozen years before the _Mayflower_ landed her shipload of eminent
+furniture owners at Plymouth. Even Plymouth itself had been visited
+years before by John Smith, and it was he, not the Pilgrims, who named
+the place.
+
+I find that some boys, to-day, know these things. But though that fact
+is encouraging, I am not writing for boys, but for their comparatively
+ignorant parents.
+
+Not only did the first English colony establish itself in Virginia, and
+the first known tobacco come from there--a point the importance of which
+cannot be overstated--but the history of the Old Dominion is in every
+way more romantic and heroic than that of any other State. The first
+popular government existed there long before the Revolution, and at the
+time of the break with the mother country Virginia was the most wealthy
+and populous of the Colonies. Some historians say that slavery was first
+introduced there when some Dutchmen sold to the colonists a shipload of
+negroes, but I believe this point is disputed. The Declaration of
+Independence was, of course, written by a Virginian, and made good by
+the sword of one. The first President of the United States was a
+Virginian, and so is the present Chief Executive. The whole of New
+England has produced but four presidents; Ohio has produced six; but
+Virginia has given us eight. The first British army to land on this
+continent (Braddock's) landed in Virginia, and in that State our two
+greatest wars were terminated by the surrenders of Cornwallis and of
+Lee. And, last, the gallant Lee himself was a Virginian of the
+Virginians--a son of the distinguished Henry Lee who said of Washington
+that he was "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of
+his countrymen."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the pleasant drive of perhaps a dozen miles, from Harper's Ferry to
+Charles Town, I noticed here and there, at the roadside, pyramidal
+stones, suggesting monuments, but bearing no inscription save that each
+had a number. On inquiry I learned that these were indeed Confederate
+monuments, but that to find out what they marked it was necessary to go
+to the county courthouse at Charles Town and look up the numbers in a
+book, of which there is but one copy. These monuments were set out three
+or four years ago. They appeared suddenly, almost as though they had
+grown overnight, and many people wondered, as I had, what they meant.
+
+"Eloise," one Charles Town young lady asked another, "what's that
+monument out in front of your house with the number twenty-one on it?"
+
+"Oh," replied Eloise, "that's where all my suitors are buried."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One of the things which gives Jefferson County, West Virginia, its
+Virginian flavor is the collection of fine old houses which adorn it.
+Many of these houses are the homes of families bearing the name of
+Washington, or having in their veins the blood of the Washingtons. It is
+said that there is more Washington blood in Charles Town (which, by the
+way, should not be confused with Charleston, capital of the same State),
+than in any other place, if not in all the rest of the world together.
+The nearest competitors to Charles Town in this respect are Westmoreland
+County, Virginia, and the town of Kankakee, Illinois, where resides the
+Spottswood Augustine Washington family, said to be the only Washington
+group to have taken the Union side in the Civil War. It is rumored also
+that all the Washingtons are Democrats, although that fact is hard to
+reconcile, at the present time, with the statement that, among the five
+thousand of them, there is but a single Federal officeholder.
+
+The settling of the Washingtons in Jefferson County, West Virginia, came
+about through the fact that George Washington, when a youth of sixteen
+or seventeen, became acquainted with that part of what was then
+Virginia, through having gone to survey for Lord Fairfax, who had
+acquired an enormous tract of land in the neighboring county of Clarke,
+which is still in the mother State. To this estate, called Greenaway
+Court, his lordship, it is recorded, came from England to isolate
+himself because a woman with whom he was in love refused to marry him.
+
+In this general neighborhood George Washington lived for three years,
+and local enthusiasts affirm that to his having drunk the
+lime-impregnated waters of this valley was due his great stature. The
+man who informed me of this theory had lived there aways. He was about
+five feet three inches tall, and had drunk the waters all his
+life--plain and otherwise.
+
+Washington's accounts of the region so interested his brothers that they
+finally moved there, acquired large tracts of land, and built homes.
+Charles Town, indeed, was laid out on the land of Charles Washington,
+and was named for him, and there is evidence that George Washington,
+who certainly gave the lines for the roads about the place, also laid
+out the town.
+
+Another brother, John Augustine, left a large family, while Samuel, the
+oldest, described as "a rollicking country squire," was several years
+short of fifty when he died, but for all that had managed to marry five
+times and to find, nevertheless, spare moments in which to lay out the
+historic estate of Harewood, not far from Charles Town. It is said that
+George Washington was his brother's partner in this enterprise, but
+excepting in its interior, which is very beautiful, there is no sign,
+about the building, of his graceful architectural touch.
+
+George Washington spent much time at Harewood, Lafayette and his son
+visited there, and there the sprightly widow, Dolly Todd, married James
+Madison. This wedding was attended by President Washington and his wife
+and by many other national figures; the bride made the journey to
+Harewood in Jefferson's coach, escorted by Madison and a group of his
+friends on horseback, and history makes mention of a very large and very
+gay company.
+
+This is all very well until you see Harewood; for, substantial though
+the house is, with its two-foot stone walls, it has but five rooms: two
+downstairs and three up.
+
+Where did they all sleep?
+
+The question was put by the practical young lady whom I accompanied to
+Harewood, but the wife of the farmer to whom the place is rented could
+only smile and shake her head.
+
+The bedroom now occupied by this farmer and his wife has doubtless been
+occupied also by the first President of the United States and his wife,
+the fourth President and his wife, by Lafayette, and by a King of
+France--for Louis-Philippe, and his brothers, the Duc de Montpensier and
+the Comte de Beaujolais, spent some time at Harewood during their period
+of exile.
+
+Having read in an extract from the Baltimore "Sun" that Harewood, which
+is still owned in the Washington family, was a place in which all
+Washingtons took great and proper pride, that it was "the lodestone
+which draws the wandering Washingtons back to the old haunts," I was
+greatly shocked on visiting the house to see the shameful state of
+dilapidation into which it has been allowed to pass. The porches and
+steps have fallen down, the garden is a disreputable tangle, and the
+graves in the yard are heaped with tumble-down stones about which the
+cattle graze. The only parts of the building in good repair are those
+parts which time has not yet succeeded in destroying. The drawing-room,
+containing a mantelpiece given to Washington by Lafayette, and the
+finest wood paneling I have seen in any American house, has held its own
+fairly well, as has also the old stairway, imported by Washington from
+England. But that these things are not in ruins, like the porches, is no
+credit to the Washingtons who own the property to-day, and who, having
+rented the place, actually leave family portraits hanging on the walls
+to crack and rot through the cold winter.
+
+If there are indeed five thousand Washingtons, and if they are proud of
+their descent, a good way for them to show it would be to contribute
+twenty-five cents each to be expended on putting Harewood in respectable
+condition.
+
+The last member of the Washington family to own Mount Vernon was John
+Augustine Washington, of Charles Town, who sold the former home of his
+distinguished collateral ancestor. This Mr. Washington was a Confederate
+officer in the Civil War. He had a son named George, whose widow, if I
+mistake not, is the Mrs. George Washington of Charles Town, of whom I
+heard an amusing story.
+
+With another Charles Town lady this Mrs. Washington went to the
+Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and the two attended the Fair together
+on Washington Day. On this occasion Mrs. Washington made a purchase in
+one of the buildings, and ordered it sent to her home in Charles Town.
+
+"What name?" asked the clerk.
+
+"Mrs. George Washington."
+
+The clerk concluded that she was joking.
+
+"I want your _real_ name," he insisted with a smile.
+
+"But," plaintively protested the gentle Mrs. Washington, "that is the
+only name I _have_!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One of the most charming of the old houses in the neighborhood of
+Charles Town, and one of the few which is still occupied by the
+descendants of its builder, is Piedmont, the residence of the Briscoe
+family. It is a brick house, nearly a century and a half old, with a
+lovely old portico, and it contains two of the most interesting relics I
+saw on my entire journey in the South. The first of these is the wall
+paper of the drawing-room, upon which is depicted, not in pattern, but
+in a series of pictures with landscape backgrounds, various scenes
+representing the adventures of Telemachus on his search for his father.
+I remember having seen on the walls of the parlor of an old hotel at
+South Berwick, Maine, some early wall paper of this character, but the
+pictures on that paper were done in various shades of gray, whereas the
+Piedmont wall paper is in many colors. The other relic is a letter which
+Mrs. Briscoe drew from her desk quite as though it had been a note
+received that morning from a friend. It was written on tough
+buff-colored paper, and, though the ink was brown with age, the
+handwriting was clear and legible and the paper was not broken at the
+folds. It was dated "Odiham, Sept. 1st, 1633," and ran as follows:
+
+     To Dr. John Briscoe, _Greetings_.
+
+     Dear Sir: As the Privy Council have decided that I shall not be
+     disturbed or dispossessed of the charter granted by his
+     Majesty--the _Ark_ and Pinnace _Dove_ will sail from Gravesend
+     about the 1st of October, and if you are of the same mind as when I
+     conversed with you, I would be glad to have you join the colony.
+
+    With high esteem,    Your most obedient servant,
+        Cecilius Baltimore.
+
+This letter from the second Lord Baltimore refers to the historic voyage
+which resulted in the first settlement of Maryland, thirteen years after
+the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. As for Dr. Briscoe, to whom the
+letter was written, he was one of the three hundred original colonists,
+but after settling in St. Mary's, near the mouth of the Potomac, removed
+to the place where his descendants still reside.
+
+Farther out in Jefferson County the motorist may pass through two
+curious hamlets which, though not many miles from Charles Town, have the
+air of being completely removed from the world. One of these was known,
+many years ago, as Middleway, and later as Smithfield, but is now called
+Clip--and for a curious reason.
+
+When the stagecoaches were running, the town was quite a place, as its
+several good old houses indicate; but the railroads, when they were
+built, ignored the town, but killed the stage lines, with the result
+that the little settlement dried up. Even before this an old
+plaster-covered house, still standing, became haunted. The witches who
+resided in it developed the unpleasant custom of flying out at night and
+cutting pieces from the clothing of passers-by. And that is how the town
+came to be called Clip.
+
+A century or so ago, when the rudeness of the witches had long annoyed
+the inhabitants of Clip, and had proved very detrimental to their
+clothing, a Roman Catholic priest came along and told them that if they
+would give him a certain field, he would rid them of the evil spirits.
+This struck the worthy citizens of Clip as a good bargain; they gave the
+priest his field (it is still known as the Priest's Field, and is now
+used as a place for basket picnics) and forthwith the operations of the
+witches ceased. So, at least, the story goes.
+
+Not far beyond Clip lies the hamlet of Leetown, taking its name from
+that General Charles Lee who commanded an American army in the
+Revolutionary War, but who was suspected by Washington of being a
+traitor, and was finally court-martialed and cashiered from the army.
+The old stone house which Lee built at Leetown, and in which he lived
+after his disgrace, still remains. Instead of having partitions in his
+house the old general lived in one large room, upon the floor of which
+he made chalk marks to indicate different chambers. Here he dwelt
+surrounded by innumerable dogs, and here he was frequently visited by
+Generals Horatio Gates and Adam Stephen, who were neighbors and cronies
+of his, and met at his house to drink wine and exchange stories.
+
+It is said that upon one of these occasions Lee got up and declared:
+
+"The county of Berkeley is to be congratulated upon having as citizens
+three noted generals of the Revolution, each of whom was ignominiously
+cashiered. You, Stephen, for getting drunk when you should have been
+sober; you, Gates, for advancing when you should have retreated; and
+your humble servant for retreating when he should have advanced."
+
+Lee was a turbulent, insubordinate, hard-drinking rascal, and nothing
+could be more characteristic than the will, written in his own
+handwriting, filed by the old reprobate with the clerk of the Berkeley
+County Court, and expressing the following sentiments:
+
+     I desire most earnestly that I may not be buried in any church or
+     churchyard, or within a mile of any Presbyterian or Anabaptist
+     meeting house, for since I have resided in this county I have kept
+     so much bad company when living that I do not desire to continue it
+     when dead.
+
+During Lee's life there, Leetown was probably a livelier place than it
+is to-day. Something of its present state may be gathered from the fact
+that when a lady of my acquaintance stopped her motor there recently,
+and asked some men what time it was, they stared blankly at her for a
+moment, after which one of them said seriously:
+
+"We don't know. We don't have time here."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+I RIDE A HORSE
+
+    And vaulted with such ease into his seat
+    As if an angel dropp'd down from the clouds,
+    To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus
+    And witch the world with noble horsemanship.
+
+    --KING HENRY IV.
+
+
+Claymont Court, near Charles Town, the house in which my companion and I
+were so fortunate as to be guests during our visit to this part of the
+country, is one of the old Washington houses, having been built by
+Bushrod Corbin Washington, a nephew of the first President. It is a
+beautiful brick building, with courts at either end, the brick walls of
+which, connecting with the house, extend its lines with peculiar grace,
+and tie to the main structure the twin buildings which balance it,
+according to the delightful fashion of early Virginia architecture. The
+hexagonal brick tile of the front walk at Claymont Court, and the square
+stone pavement of the portico, resemble exactly those at Mount Vernon,
+and are said to have been imported at the same time; and it is believed
+also that the Claymont box trees were brought over with those growing at
+Mount Vernon.
+
+The estate was sold out of the Washington family in 1870, when it was
+acquired by a Colonel March, who later sold it to a gentleman whose wild
+performances at Claymont are not only remembered, but are commemorated
+in the house. In the cellar, for instance, bricked up in a room barely
+large enough to hold it, whence it cannot be removed except by tearing
+down a heavy wall, stands a huge carved sideboard to which the young man
+took a dislike, and which he therefore caused to be carried to the
+cellar and immured, despite the protests of his family. It is said that
+upon another occasion he conceived the picturesque idea of riding his
+horse upstairs and hitching it to his bedpost; and that he did so is
+witnessed by definite marks of horseshoes on the oak treads of the
+stair. Later Frank R. Stockton purchased the place, and there he wrote
+his story "The Captain of the Toll-Gate," which was published
+posthumously.
+
+But in all its history this glorious old house has never been a happier
+home, or a more interesting one, than it is to-day. For now it is the
+residence of four young ladies, sisters, who, because of their divergent
+tastes and their complete congeniality, continually suggest the fancy
+that they have stepped out of a novel. One of them is the Efficient
+Sister, who runs the automobile and the farm of two or three hundred
+acres, sells the produce, keeps the accounts, and pays off the men;
+another is the Domestic Sister, who conducts the admirable menage;
+another is the Sociological and Artistic Sister, who draws and plays and
+thinks about the masses; while the fourth is the Sprightly Sister Who
+Likes to Dance.
+
+Never had my companion or I seen a more charming, a more varied
+household, an establishment more self-contained, more complete in all
+things from vegetables to brains. No need to leave the place for
+anything. Yet if one wished to look about the country, there was the
+motor, and there were the saddle horses in the stable--all of them
+members of old Virginian families--and there were four equestrian young
+ladies.
+
+"Would you-all like to ride to-day?" one of the sisters asked us at
+breakfast.
+
+To my companion, horseback riding is comparatively a new thing. He had
+taken it up a year before--partly because of appeals from me, partly
+because of changes which he had begun to notice in his topography.
+Compared with him I was a veteran horseman, for it was then a year and
+three months since I had begun my riding lessons.
+
+I said that I would like to ride, but he declared that he must stay
+behind and make a drawing.
+
+Sometimes, in the past, I had thought I would prefer to make my living
+as a painter or an illustrator than as a writer, but at this juncture it
+occurred to me that, though the writer's medium of expression is a less
+agreeable one than that of the graphic artist, it is much pleasanter to
+ride about with pretty girls than to sit alone and draw a picture of
+their house. I began to feel sorry for my companion: the thought of our
+riding gaily off, and leaving him at work, made him seem pathetic. My
+appeals, however, made no impression upon his inflexible sense of duty,
+and I soon ceased trying to persuade him to join us, and began to
+speculate, instead, as to whether all four sisters would accompany me,
+or whether only two or three of them would go--and if so, which.
+
+"What kind of horse do you like?" asked one.
+
+Such a question always troubles me. It is embarrassing. Imagine saying
+to a young lady who likes to ride thoroughbred hunters across fields and
+over ditches and fences: "I should like a handsome horse, one that will
+cause me to appear to advantage, one that looks spirited but is in
+reality tame."
+
+Such an admission would be out of character with the whole idea of
+riding. One could hardly make it to one's most intimate male friend, let
+alone to a girl who knows all about withers and hocks and pastern
+joints, and talks about "paneled country," and takes the "Racing
+Calendar."
+
+To such a young lady it is impossible to say: "I have ridden for a
+little more than a year; the horses with which I am acquainted are
+benevolent creatures from a riding school near Central Park; they go
+around the reservoir twice, and return automatically, and they sigh
+deeply when one mounts and again when one gets off."
+
+No; that sort of thing will not do at all; for the horse--besides having
+been placed in a position more aristocratic than ever, through the
+philanthropies of Henry Ford--is essentially "sporty." You must be a
+"sport" or you must keep away from him. You must approach him with dash
+or you must not approach him at all. And when a young lady inquires what
+kind of horse you like, there is but one way to reply.
+
+"It doesn't matter at all," I answered. "Any horse will do for me."
+Then, after a little pause, I added, as though it were merely an amusing
+afterthought: "I suppose I shall be stiff after my ride. I haven't been
+on a horse in nearly two months."
+
+"Then," said the sympathetic young lady, "you'll want an easy ride."
+
+"I suppose it _might_ be more sensible," I conceded.
+
+"Better give him the black mare," put in the Efficient Sister.
+
+"She hasn't been out lately," said the other. "You know how she acts
+when she hasn't been ridden enough. He might not know just how to take
+her. I was thinking of giving him 'Dr. Bell.'"
+
+"Dr. Bell's too gentle," said the Efficient Sister.
+
+"Which horse do you think you'd like?" the other asked me. "Dr. Bell has
+plenty of life, but he's gentle. The black mare's a little bit flighty
+at first, but if you can ride her she soon finds it out and settles
+down."
+
+I want to ask: "What happens if she finds out that you _can't_ ride her?
+What does she do then?" But I refrained.
+
+"She's never thrown anybody but a stable boy and a man who came up here
+to visit--and neither one of them could ride worth a cent," said the
+Efficient Sister.
+
+Meanwhile I had been thinking hard.
+
+"What color is Dr. Bell?" I asked.
+
+"He's a sorrel."
+
+"Then," I said, "I believe I'd rather ride Dr. Bell. I don't like black
+horses. It is simply one of those peculiar aversions one gets."
+
+They seemed to accept this statement, and so the matter was agreeably
+settled.
+
+When, at ten o'clock, I came down dressed for riding, my companion was
+out in front of the house, making a drawing; the four young ladies were
+with him, all seemingly enchanted with his work, and none of them in
+riding habits.
+
+"Who's going with me?" I asked as I strolled toward them.
+
+They looked at one another inquiringly. Then the Efficient Sister said:
+"I'd like to go, but this is pay day and I can't leave the place."
+
+"I have to go to town for some supplies," said the Domestic Sister.
+
+"I want to stay and watch this," said the Sociological and Artistic
+Sister. (She made a gesture toward my companion, but I think she
+referred to his drawing.)
+
+"I'm going away to a house party," said the Sprightly Sister who Likes
+to Dance. "I must pack."
+
+"You can't get lost," said the Domestic Sister.
+
+"Even if you should," put in the Efficient Sister, "Dr. Bell would bring
+you home."
+
+During this conversation my companion did not look up from his work,
+neither did he speak; yet upon his back there was an expression of
+derisive glee which made me hope, vindictively, that he would smudge his
+drawing. However inscrutable his face, I have never known a man with a
+back so expressive.
+
+"Here comes Dr. Bell," remarked the Sociological and Artistic Sister, as
+a negro groom appeared leading the sorrel steed.
+
+"Well," I said, trying to speak debonairely as I started toward the
+drive, "I'll be going."
+
+I wished to leave them where they were and go around to the other side
+of the house to mount. I had noticed a stone block there and meant to
+use it if no one but the groom were present; also I intended to tip the
+groom and ask him a few casual questions about the ways of Dr. Bell.
+
+I might have managed this but for a sudden manifestation of interest on
+the part of my companion.
+
+"Come on," he said to the young ladies, "let's go and see him off." It
+seemed to me that he emphasized the word "off" unpleasantly. However I
+tried to seem calm as we moved toward the drive.
+
+Dr. Bell had a bright brown eye; there was something alert in the gaze
+with which he watched us moving toward him. However, to my great relief
+he stood quite still while two of the sisters who preceded me by a few
+steps, went up and patted him. Evidently he liked to be patted. I
+decided that I would pat him also.
+
+I had approached him from the left and in order to mount I now found it
+necessary to circle around, in front of him. I was determined that if
+the horse would but remain stationary I should step up to him, speak to
+him, give him a quick pat on the neck, gather the reins in my hand,
+place my foot swiftly in the stirrup, take a good hop, and be on his
+back before any one had time to notice.
+
+Dr. Bell, however, caused me to alter these plans; for though he had
+stood docile as a dog while the sisters patted him, his manner underwent
+a change on sight of me. I do not think this change was caused by any
+personal dislike for me. I believe he would have done the same had any
+stranger appeared before him in riding boots. The trouble was, probably,
+that he had expected to be ridden by one of the young ladies, and was
+shocked by the abrupt discovery that a total stranger was to ride him.
+This is merely my surmise. I do not claim deep understanding of the
+mental workings of any horse, for there is no logic about them or their
+performances. They are like crafty lunatics, reasoning, if they reason
+at all, in a manner too treacherous and devious for human comprehension.
+Their very usefulness, the service they render man, is founded on their
+own folly; were it not for that, man could not even catch them, let
+alone force them to submit, like weak-minded giants, to his will.
+
+The fact is that, excepting barnyard fowls, the horse is the most
+idiotic of all animals, and, pound for pound, even the miserable hen is
+his intellectual superior. Indeed, if horses had brains no better than
+those of hens, but proportionately larger, they would not be drawing
+wagons, and carrying men upon their backs, but would be lecturing to
+women's clubs, and holding chairs in universities, and writing essays on
+the Development of the Short Story in America.
+
+Horse lovers, who are among the most prejudiced of all prejudiced
+people, and who regard horses with an amiable but fatuous admiration
+such as young parents have for their babies, will try to tell you that
+these great creatures which they love are not mentally deficient. Ask
+them why the horse, with his superior strength, submits to man, and they
+will tell you that the horse's eye magnifies, and that, to the horse,
+man consequently appears to be two or three times his actual size.
+
+Nonsense! There is but one reason for the yielding of the horse: he is
+an utter fool.
+
+Everything proves him a fool. He will charge into battle, he will walk
+cheerfully beside a precipice, he will break his back pulling a heavy
+wagon, or break his leg or his neck in jumping a hurdle; yet he will go
+into a frenzy of fright at the sight of a running child, a roadside
+rock, or the shadow of a branch across the path, and not even a German
+chancellor could shy as he will at a scrap of paper.
+
+As I passed in front of Dr. Bell he rolled his eyes at me horribly, and
+rose upon his hind legs, almost upsetting the groom as he went up and
+barely missing him with his fore feet as he brought them to earth again.
+
+"What's the matter with him?" I asked, stopping.
+
+"I guess he just feels good," said the Efficient Sister.
+
+"Yassuh, tha 's all," said the groom cheerfully. "_He's_ aw' right.
+Gentle ath a lamb."
+
+As he made this statement, I took another step in the direction of the
+horse, whereat he reared again.
+
+"_Well_, now!" said the groom, patting Dr. Bell upon the neck. "Feelin'
+pretty good 's mawnin', is you? There, there!"
+
+Dr. Bell, however, paid little attention to his attendant, but gazed
+steadily at me with an evil look.
+
+"Does he always do like that?" I asked the Domestic Sister.
+
+"I never saw him do it before," she said.
+
+"Maybe he doesn't admire the cut of your riding breeches," suggested my
+companion.
+
+"Oh, no, suh," protested the groom. "It 's jes' his li'l way tryin' t'
+tell you he likes de ladies t' ride him better 'n he likes de gemmen."
+
+"He means he doesn't want me to ride him?"
+
+"Yassuh, da 's jes' his li'l idee 't he 's got _now_. He be all right
+once you in de saddle."
+
+"But how am I to get in the saddle if he keeps doing that?"
+
+"I hold 'im all right," said the groom. "You jes' get on 'im, suh. He
+soon find out who 's boss."
+
+"I think he will," said my heartless companion.
+
+"Nevvah you feah, suh," the man said to me. "Ah knowed the minute Ah saw
+yo' laigs 't you was a _horse_man. Yassuh! Ah says t' ole Gawge, Ah
+says, 'Dat gemman's certain'y been 'n de cava'ry, he has, wid dem fine
+crooked laigs o' hisn.'"
+
+"You should have told that to Dr. Bell, instead," suggested my
+companion.
+
+At this every one laughed. Even the groom laughed a wheezy, cackling
+negro laugh. The situation was becoming unbearable. Clearly I must try
+to mount. Perhaps I should not succeed, but I must try. As I was
+endeavoring to adjust my mind to this unpleasant fact the Efficient
+Sister spoke.
+
+"That horse is going to be ridden," she said firmly, "if I have to go
+upstairs and dress and ride him myself."
+
+That settled it.
+
+"Now you hold him down," I said to the groom, and stepped forward.
+
+As I did so Dr. Bell reared again, simultaneously drawing back sidewise
+and turning his flank away from me, but this time the Efficient Sister
+hit him with a crop she had found somewhere, and he came down hastily,
+and began to dance a sort of double clog with all four feet.
+
+After several efforts I managed to get beside him. Gathering the reins
+in my left hand I put my foot up swiftly, found the stirrup, and with a
+hop, managed to board the beast.
+
+As I did so, the groom let him go. Both stirrups were short, but it was
+too late to discuss that, for by the time I was adjusted to my seat we
+had traveled, at a run, over a considerable part of the lawn and through
+most of the flowerbeds. The shortness of the stirrups made me bounce,
+and I had a feeling that I might do better to remove my feet from them
+entirely, but as I had never ridden without stirrups I hesitated to try
+it now. Therefore I merely dug my knees desperately into the saddle
+flaps and awaited what should come, while endeavoring to check the
+animal. He, however, kept his head down, which not only made it
+difficult to stop him, but also gave me an unpleasant sense as of riding
+on the cowcatcher of a locomotive with nothing but space in front of me.
+Once, with a jerk, I managed to get his head up, but when I did that he
+reared. I do not care for rearing.
+
+To add to my delight, one of the dogs now ran out and began to bark and
+circle around us, jumping up at the horse's nose and nipping at his
+heels. This brought on new activities, for now Dr. Bell not only reared
+but elevated himself suddenly behind, to kick at the dog. However, there
+was one good result. We stopped running and began to trot rapidly about
+in circles, dodging the dog, and this finally brought us back toward the
+house.
+
+"My stirrups are too short!" I shouted to the groom.
+
+"Ride oveh heah, suh," he called back.
+
+I tried to do it, but Dr. Bell continued to move in circles. At last,
+however, the man managed to catch us by advancing with his hand
+extended, as though offering a lump of sugar, at the same time talking
+gently to my steed. Then, while my companion held the bit the negro
+adjusted the stirrup leathers. I was glad of the breathing spell. I
+wished that it took longer to adjust stirrups.
+
+"You'd better go out by the drive this time," said the Efficient Sister.
+
+"I intended to before," I told her, "but he didn't seem to understand
+the signals."
+
+"You've got spurs on. Give him the spur."
+
+As a matter of fact, I had hesitated to give him the spur. It seemed to
+me that he was annoyed with me anyway, and that the spur would only
+serve to increase his prejudice. I wanted to rule him not by brute force
+but by kindness. I wished that I could somehow make him know that I was
+a regular subscriber to the S.P.C.A., that I loved children and animals
+and all helpless creatures, both great and small, that I used the dumb
+brutes gently and only asked in return that they do the same by me. But
+how is one to communicate such humanitarian ideas to a big, stupid,
+wilful, perverse, diabolical creature like a horse?
+
+I was determined that when we started again we should not run over the
+lawn if I could possibly prevent it. Therefore I had the groom head the
+horse down the drive, and the moment he released him, I touched Dr. Bell
+with the spurs. The result was magical. He started on a run but kept in
+the road where I wanted him to be, giving me, for the moment, a sense of
+having something almost like control over him. At the foot of the drive
+was a gate which I knew could be opened without dismounting, by pulling
+a rope, and as no horse, unless quite out of his mind, will deliberately
+run into a gate, I had reason to hope that Dr. Bell would stop when he
+got there. Imagine my feelings, then, when on sight of the gate he not
+only failed to slacken his pace, but actually dashed at it faster than
+ever. Within a few feet of the barrier he seemed to pause momentarily,
+hunching himself in a peculiar and alarming manner: then he arose,
+sailed through the air like a swallow, came down beyond like a load of
+trunks falling off from a truck, and galloped down the highway,
+seemingly quite indifferent to the fact that the stirrups were flapping
+at his sides and that I had moved from the saddle to a point near the
+base of his neck.
+
+My position at the moment was one of considerable insecurity. By holding
+on to his mane and wriggling backward I hoped to stay on, provided he
+did not put down his head. If he did that, I was lost. Fortunately for
+me, however, Dr. Bell did not realize with what ease he could have
+dropped me at that moment, and by dint of cautious but eager gymnastics,
+I managed to regain the saddle and the stirrups, although in doing so I
+pricked him several times with the spurs, with the result that, though
+he ran faster than ever for a time, he must have presently concluded
+that I didn't care how fast he went; at all events, he slackened his
+pace to a canter, from which, shortly, I managed to draw him down to a
+trot and then to a walk.
+
+I am glad to say that not until now had we met any vehicle. Even while
+he was running, even while I was engaged in maintaining a precarious
+seat upon his neck, I had found time to hope fervently that we should
+not encounter an automobile. I was afraid that he would jump it if we
+did.
+
+Now, however, I saw a motor approaching. Dr. Bell saw it, too, and
+pricked up his ears. Seizing the reins firmly in one hand, I waved with
+the other, signalling to the motorist to stop, which he did, pulling out
+into the ditch. Meanwhile I talked to Dr. Bell, patting him on the neck
+and telling him to go on and not to be afraid, because it was all right.
+Dr. Bell did go on. He went up to the front of the motor, past the side
+of it, and on behind it, without showing the least sign of alarm. He did
+not mind it at all. But the man in the motor minded. Annoyed with me for
+having stopped him unnecessarily, he shouted something after me. But I
+paid no attention to him. Under the circumstances, it seemed the only
+thing to do. I might have gotten off; I might conceivably have beaten
+him; but I never could have held the horse while doing it, or have
+gotten on again.
+
+Presently, when I was changing the position of the reins, which were
+hurting my fingers because I had gripped them so tight, I accidentally
+shifted the gears in some way, so to speak, sending Dr. Bell off at a
+pace which was neither a trot nor a canter, but which carried us along
+at a sort of smooth, rapid glide. At first I took this gait to be a
+swift trot, and attempted to post to it; then, as that did not work, I
+sat still in the saddle and, finding the posture comfortable, concluded
+that Dr. Bell must be single-footing. I had never single-footed before.
+Just as I was beginning to like it, however, he changed to a trot, then
+back to single-footing again, and so on, in a curious puzzling manner.
+
+Except for the changes of gait, we were now going on rather well, and I
+had begun, for the first time, to feel a little security, when all of a
+sudden he swerved off and galloped with me up a driveway leading toward
+a white house which stood on a hill two or three hundred yards from the
+road. Again I tried to stop him, but when I pulled on the reins he shook
+his head savagely from side to side and snorted in a loud and
+threatening manner.
+
+As we neared the house I saw that two ladies were sitting on the porch
+regarding our approach with interest. I hoped that Dr. Bell would find
+some way of keeping on past the house and into the fields, but he had no
+such intention. Instead of going by, he swung around the circle before
+the porch, and stopped at the steps, upon which the two ladies were
+sitting.
+
+One of them was a white-haired woman of gentle mien; the other was a
+girl of eighteen or twenty with pretty, mischievous eyes.
+
+Both the ladies looked up inquiringly as Dr. Bell and I stopped.
+
+I lifted my hat. It was the only thing I could think of to do at the
+moment. At this they both nodded gravely. Then we sat and stared at one
+another.
+
+"Well?" said the old lady, when the silence had become embarrassing.
+
+I felt that I must say something, so I remarked: "This is a very pretty
+place you have here."
+
+At this, though the statement was quite true, they looked perplexed.
+
+"Is there any message?" asked the young woman, after another pause.
+
+"Oh, no," I answered lightly. "I was riding by and thought I'd take the
+liberty of coming up and telling you--telling you that although I am a
+Northerner and a stranger here, I love the South, the quaint old
+Southern customs, the lovely old houses, the delicious waffles, the--"
+
+"That is very gratifying," said she "I am sorry to say we are all out of
+waffles at present."
+
+"Oh, I don't want any now," I replied politely.
+
+"Well, if you don't mind my asking, what _do_ you want?"
+
+"I want," I said, desperately, "to see your groom for a moment, if
+possible."
+
+"He's gone to town," she replied. "Is there anything I can do? I see
+that your stirrup leather is twisted." With that she arose, came down,
+removed my foot from the stirrup, in a businesslike manner, reversed the
+iron, and put my foot back for me.
+
+I thanked her.
+
+"Anything else?" she asked, her wicked eye twinkling.
+
+"Perhaps," I ventured, "perhaps you know how to make a horse
+single-foot?"
+
+"There are different ways," she said. "With Dr. Bell you might try using
+the curb gently, working it from side to side."
+
+"I will," I said. "Thank you very much."
+
+"And," said the girl, "if he ever takes a notion to bolt with you, or to
+go up to some house where you don't want him to go, just touch him with
+the curb. That will fix him. He's very soft-bitted."
+
+"But I tried that," I protested.
+
+She looked at my reins, then shook her head.
+
+"No," she said, "you've got your curb rein and your snaffle rein mixed."
+
+"I am very much indebted to you," I said, as I changed the position of
+the reins between my fingers.
+
+"Not at all," said she. "I hope you'll get safely back to the Claymont.
+If you want to jump him, give him his head. He'll take off all right."
+
+"Thanks," I returned. "I don't want to jump him."
+
+Then lifting my hat and thanking her again, I wiggled the curb gently
+from side to side, as directed, and departed, singlefooting comfortably.
+
+Dr. Bell and I got home very nicely. He wanted to jump the gate again,
+but I checked him with the curb. After pulling the rope to open the gate
+I must have got the reins mixed once more, for as I was nearing the
+house, calm in the feeling that I had mastered the animal, and intent
+upon cantering up to the porch in fine style, Dr. Bell swerved suddenly
+off to the stable, went into the door, and, before I could stop him,
+entered his stall.
+
+There I dismounted in absolute privacy. It was quite easy. I had only to
+climb on to the partition and drop down into the next stall, which, by
+good fortune, was vacant.
+
+With a single exception, this was the only riding I did in the South,
+and on the one other occasion of which I speak I did not ride alone, but
+had, surrounding me, the entire Eleventh United States Cavalry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+INTO THE OLD DOMINION
+
+
+When two men are traveling together on an equal footing, and it becomes
+necessary to decide between two rooms in a hotel, how is the decision to
+be made? Which man is to take the big, bright corner room, and which the
+little room that faces on the court and is fragrant of the bakery below?
+Or again, which man shall occupy the lower berth in a Pullman
+drawing-room, and which shall try to sleep upon the shelf-like couch? Or
+when there is but one lower left, which shall take the upper? If an
+extra kit bag be required for the use of both, who shall pay for it and
+own it at the journey's end? Who shall pay for this meal and who for
+that? Or yet again, if there be but one cheap heavy overcoat in a shop,
+and both desire to own that coat, which one shall have the right of
+purchase? Who shall tip the bell boy for bringing up the bags, or the
+porter for taking down the trunks? Who shall take home from a dance the
+girl both want to take, and who shall escort the unattractive one who
+resides in a remote suburb?
+
+Between two able-bodied men there is no uncomfortable complication of
+politeness in such matters. On a brief journey there might be, but on a
+long journey the thin veil of factitious courtesy is cast aside; each
+wants his fair share of what is best and makes no pretense to the
+contrary.
+
+Upon our first long journey together, some years ago, my companion and I
+established a custom of settling all such questions by matching coins,
+and we have maintained this habit ever since. Upon the whole it has
+worked well. We have matched for everything except railroad fares and
+hotel bills, and though fortune has sometimes favored one or the other
+for a time, I believe that, had we kept accounts, we should find
+ourselves to-day practically even.
+
+Our system of matching has some correlated customs. Now and then, for
+instance, when one of us is unlucky and has been "stuck" for a series of
+meals, the other, in partial reparation, will declare a "party."
+Birthdays and holidays also call for parties, and sometimes there will
+be a party for no particular reason other than that we feel like having
+one.
+
+Two of our parties on this journey have been given in the basement cafe
+of the Shoreham Hotel in Washington. Both were supper parties. The first
+I gave in honor of my companion, for the reason that we both like the
+Shoreham cafe, and that a party seemed to be about due. That party
+brought on the other, which occurred a few nights later and was given by
+us jointly in honor of a very beautiful and talented young actress. And
+this one, we agree, was, in a way, the most amusing of all the parties
+we have had together.
+
+It was early in the morning, when we were leaving the cafe after the
+first party, that we encountered the lady who caused the second one. I
+had never met her, but I was aware that my companion knew her, for he
+talked about her in his sleep. She was having supper with a gentleman at
+a table near the door, and had you seen her it would be unnecessary for
+me to tell you that my companion stopped to speak to her, and that I
+hung around until he introduced me.
+
+After we had stood beside her, for a time, talking and gazing down into
+her beautiful world-wise eyes, the gentleman with whom she was supping
+took pity upon us, and upon the waiters, whose passageway we blocked,
+and invited us to sit down.
+
+It was doubly delightful to meet her there in Washington, for besides
+being beautiful and celebrated, she had just come from New York and was
+able to give us news of mutual friends, bringing us up to date on suits
+for separation, alimony, and alienation of affections, on divorces and
+remarriages, and all the little items one loses track of when one has
+been away for a fortnight.
+
+"I shall be playing in Washington all this week," she said as we were
+about to leave. "I hope that we may see each other again."
+
+Whom did she mean by "we"? True, she looked at my companion as she
+spoke, but he was seated at one side of her and I at the other, and even
+with such eyes as hers, she could not have looked at both of us at
+once. Certainly the hope she had expressed was shared by me. _I_ hoped
+that "we" might meet again, and it seemed to me desirable at the moment
+that she should understand (and that my companion should be reminded)
+that he and I were as Damon and Pythias, as Castor and Pollux, as
+Pylades and Orestes, and all that sort of thing. Therefore I leaped
+quickly at the word "we," and, before my companion had time to answer,
+replied:
+
+"I hope so too."
+
+This brought her eyes to me. She looked surprised, I thought, but what
+of that? Don't women like to be surprised? Don't they like men to be
+strong, resolute, determined, like heroes in the moving pictures? Don't
+they like to see a man handle matters with dash? I was determined to be
+dashing.
+
+"We are off to Virginia to-morrow morning," I continued. "We are going
+to Fredericksburg and Charlottesville, and into the fox-hunting country.
+If we can get back here Saturday night let's have a party."
+
+I spoke of the hunting country debonairely. I did not care what she
+thought my companion was going to the hunting country for, but I did not
+wish her to think that I was going only to look on. On the contrary, I
+desired her to suppose that I should presently be wearing a pair of
+beautiful, slim-legged riding boots and a pink coat, and leaping a
+thoroughbred mount over fences and gates. I wished her to believe me a
+wild, reckless, devil of a fellow, and to worry throughout the week
+lest I be killed in a fall from my horse, and she never see me
+more--poor girl!
+
+That she felt such emotions I have since had reason to doubt. However,
+the idea of a party after the play on Saturday night seemed to appeal to
+her, and it was arranged that my companion and I should endeavor to get
+back to Washington after the Piedmont Hunt races, which we were to
+attend on Saturday afternoon, and that if we could get back we should
+telegraph to her.
+
+We kept our agreement--but I shall come to that later.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Next morning we took train for Fredericksburg.
+
+The city manager who runs the town is a good housekeeper; his streets
+are wide, pretty, and clean; and though there are many historic
+buildings--including the home of Washington's mother and the house in
+which Washington became a Mason--there are enough good new ones to give
+the place a progressive look.
+
+In the days of the State's magnificence Fredericksburg was the center
+for all this part of northeastern Virginia, and particularly for the
+Rappahannock Valley; and from pre-Revolutionary times, when tobacco was
+legal tender and ministers got roaring drunk, down to the Civil War,
+there came rolling into the town the coaches of the great plantation
+owners of the region, who used Fredericksburg as a headquarters for
+drinking, gambling, and business. Among these probably the most famous
+was "King" Carter, who not only owned miles upon miles of land and a
+thousand slaves, but was the husband of five (successive) Mrs. Carters.
+
+Falmouth, a river town a mile above Fredericksburg, where a few
+scattered houses stand to-day, was in early times a busy place. It is
+said that the first flour mill in America stood there, and that one
+Gordon, who made his money by shipping flour and tobacco direct from his
+wharf to England, and bringing back bricks as ballast for his ships, was
+the first American millionaire.
+
+Besides having known intimately such historic figures as Washington,
+Monroe, and Robert E. Lee, and having been the scene of sanguinary
+fighting in the Civil War, the neighborhood of Fredericksburg boasts the
+birth-place of a man of whom I wish to speak briefly here, for the
+reason that he was a great man, that he has been partially overlooked by
+history, and that it is said in the South that the fame which should
+justly be his has been deliberately withheld by historians and
+politicians for the sole reason that as a naval officer he espoused the
+southern cause in the Civil War.
+
+Every one who has heard of Robert Fulton, certainly every one who has
+heard of S.F.B. Morse or Cyrus W. Field, ought also to have heard of
+Matthew Fontaine Maury. But that is not the case. For myself, I must
+confess that, until I visited Virginia, I was ignorant of the fact that
+such a person had existed; nor have northern schoolboys, to whom I have
+spoken of Maury, so much as heard his name. Yet there is no one living
+in the United States, or in any civilized country, whose daily life is
+not affected through the scientific researches and attainments of this
+man.
+
+Maury's claim to fame rests on his eminent services to navigation and
+meteorology. If Humboldt's work, published in 1817, was the first great
+contribution to meteorological science, it remained for Maury to make
+that science exact.
+
+While it is perhaps an exaggeration to say that Maury alone laid the
+foundation for our present Weather Bureau, he certainly shares with
+Professors Redfield, Espy, Loomis, Joseph Henry, Dr. Increase Lapham,
+and others, the honor of having been one of the first to suggest the
+feasibility of our present systematic storm warnings.
+
+Maury was born in 1806. When nineteen years of age he secured a
+midshipman's warrant, and, as there was no naval academy at Annapolis
+then, was immediately assigned to a man-of-war. Within six years he was
+master of an American war vessel. Before starting on a voyage to the
+Pacific he sought information on the winds and currents, and finding
+that it was not available, determined himself to gather it for general
+publication. This he did, issuing a book upon the subject.
+
+When a broken leg, the result of a stage-coach accident, caused his
+retirement from active service at sea, he continued his studies, and, in
+recognition of his services to navigation, was given charge of the Depot
+of Charts and Instruments at Washington. There he found stored away the
+log books of American naval vessels, and from the vast number of
+observations they contained, began the compilation of the Wind and
+Currents Charts known to all mariners.
+
+A monograph on Maury, issued by N.W. Ayer & Son, of Philadelphia, says
+of these charts:
+
+"They were, at first, received with indifference and incredulity.
+Finally, a Captain Jackson determined to trust the new chart absolutely.
+As a result he made a round trip to Rio de Janeiro in the time often
+required for the outward passage alone. Later, four clipper ships
+started from New York for San Francisco, via Cape Horn. These vessels
+arrived at their destination in the order determined by the degree of
+fidelity with which they had followed the directions of Maury's charts.
+The arrival of these ships in San Francisco marked, likewise, the
+arrival of Maury's Wind and Currents Charts in the lasting favor of the
+mariners of the world. The average voyage to San Francisco was reduced,
+by use of the charts, from one hundred and eighty-three to one hundred
+and thirty-five days, a saving of forty-eight days.
+
+"Soon after this, the ship _San Francisco_, with hundreds of United
+States troops on board, foundered in an Atlantic hurricane. The rumor
+reached port that there was need of help. Maury was called upon to
+indicate her probable location. He set to work to show where the wind
+and currents would combine to place a helpless wreck, and marked the
+place with a blue pencil. There the relief was sent, and there the
+survivors of the wreck were found. From that day to this, Maury's word
+has been accepted without challenge by the matter-of-fact men of the
+sea.
+
+"These charts, only a few in number, are among the most wonderful and
+useful productions of the human mind. One of them combined the result of
+1,159,353 separate observations on the force and direction of the wind,
+and upward of 100,000 observations on the height of the barometer, at
+sea. As the value of such observations was recognized, more of them were
+made. Through the genius and devotion of one man, Commander Maury, every
+ship became a floating observatory, keeping careful records of winds,
+currents, limits of fogs, icebergs, rain areas, temperature, soundings,
+etc., while every maritime nation of the world cooeperated in a work that
+was to redound to the benefit of commerce and navigation, the increase
+of knowledge, the good of all.
+
+"In 1853, at the instance of Commander Maury, the United States called
+the celebrated Brussels Conference for the cooeperation of nations in
+matters pertaining to maritime affairs. At this conference, Maury
+advocated the extension of the system of meteorological observation to
+the land, thus forming a weather bureau helpful to agriculture. This he
+urged in papers and addresses to the close of his life. Our present
+Weather Bureau and Signal Service are largely the outcome of his
+perception and advocacy."
+
+Maury's "Physical Geography of the Sea," the work by which he is best
+known, was published in 1855. He discovered, among other things, the
+causes of the Gulf Stream, and the existence of the still-water plateau
+of the North Atlantic which made possible the laying of the first cable.
+Cyrus W. Field said, with reference to Maury's work in this connection:
+"Maury furnished the brains, England gave the money, and I did the
+work."
+
+Maury was decorated by many foreign governments but not by his own.
+Owing, it is said, to his having taken up the Confederate cause,
+national honors were withheld from him, not only during the remainder of
+his life, but until 1916, when one of the large buildings at the Naval
+Academy--the establishment of which, by the way, Maury was one of the
+first to advocate--was named for him, and Congress passed a bill
+appropriating funds for the erection of a monument to the "Pathfinder of
+the Sea," in Washington.
+
+Maury died in 1873, one of the most loved and honored men in the State
+of Virginia.
+
+It is recorded that, near the end, he asked his son: "Am I dragging my
+anchors?"
+
+And when the latter replied in the affirmative, the father gave a brave
+sailor's answer:
+
+"All's well," he said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Across the river from Fredericksburg stands Chatham, the old Fitzhugh
+house, one of the most charming of early Virginian mansions. Chatham was
+built in 1728, and it is thought that the plans for it were drawn by
+Sir Christopher Wren at the order of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, and
+sent by the latter to William Fitzhugh, who had been his classmate at
+Eton and Oxford. Not only does the name of the house lend color to the
+tale, but so do its proportions, which are very beautiful, reminding one
+somewhat of those of Doughoregan Manor. Chatham, however, has the
+advantage of being (as the Hon. Charles Augustus Murray wrote of it in
+his quaint "Travels in North America," published in 1839) "situated on
+an eminence commanding a view of the town, and of the bold, sweeping
+course of the Rappahannoc." Murray also tells of the beautiful garden,
+with its great box trees and its huge slave-built terraces, stepping
+down to the water like a giant's stairway.
+
+In this house my companion and I were guests, and as I won the toss for
+the choice of rooms, mine was the privilege of sleeping in the historic
+west bedchamber, the principal guest room, and of opening my eyes, in
+the morning, upon a lovely wall all paneled in white-painted wood.
+
+I shall always remember the delightful experience of awakening in that
+room, so vast, dignified, and beautiful, and of lying there a little
+drowsy, and thinking of those who had been there before me. This was the
+room occupied by George and Martha Washington when they stopped for a
+few days at Chatham on their wedding journey; this was the room occupied
+by Madison, by Monroe, by Washington Irving, and by Robert E. Lee when
+he visited Chatham and courted Mary Custis, who became his wife. And,
+most wonderful of all to me, this was the room occupied by Lincoln when
+he came to Fredericksburg to review the army, while Chatham was Union
+headquarters, and the embattled Lee had headquarters in the old house
+known as Brompton, still standing on Marye's Heights back of the river
+and the town. It is said that Lee during the siege of Fredericksburg
+never trained his guns on Chatham, because of his sentiment for the
+place. As I lay there in the morning I wondered if Lee had been aware,
+at the time, that Lincoln was under the roof of Chatham, and whether
+Lincoln knew, when he slept in "my" room, that Washington and Lee had
+both been there before him.
+
+War, I thought, not only makes strange bedfellows, but strange
+combinations in the histories of bedrooms.
+
+Then the maid rapped for the second time upon my door, and though this
+time I got up at once, my ruminations made me scandalously late for
+breakfast.
+
+After breakfast came the motor, which was to take us to the
+battlefields, its driver a thin dry-looking, dry-talking man, with the
+air of one a little tired of the story he told to tourists day in and
+day out, yet conscientiously resolved to go through with it. Before the
+huge cemetery which overlooks the site of the most violent fighting that
+occurred in the bloody and useless Battle of Fredericksburg, he paused
+briefly; then drove us to the field of Chancellorsville, to that of the
+Battles of the Wilderness, and finally to the region of Spottsylvania
+Courthouse; and at each important spot he stopped and told us what had
+happened there. He knew all about the Civil War, that man, and he had a
+way of passing out his information with a calm assumption that his
+hearers knew nothing about it whatever. This irritated my companion, who
+also knows all about the War, having once passed three days in the
+neighborhood of a Soldiers' Home. Consequently he kept cutting in,
+supplying additional details--such, for instance, as that Stonewall
+Jackson, who died in a house which the driver pointed out, was shot by
+some of his own men, who took him for a Yankee as he was returning from
+a reconnaissance.
+
+Either one of these competitive historians alone, I could have stood,
+but the way they picked each other up, fighting the old-time battles
+over again, got on my nerves. Besides, it was cold, and as I have taken
+occasion to remark before, I do not like cold motor rides. Indeed, as I
+think it over, it seems to me I do not like battlefields, either. At all
+events, I became more and more morose as we traversed that bleak
+Virginia landscape, and I am afraid that before the day was over I was
+downright sulky.
+
+As we drove back to Fredericksburg and to the train which was to take us
+to Charlottesville, my companion made remarks of a general character
+about people who were trivial minded, and who didn't take a proper
+interest in the scenes of great historical occurrences. When he had
+continued for some time in this vein, I remarked feebly that I loved to
+read about battles; but that, far from mitigating his severity, only
+caused him to change his theme. He said that physical laziness was a
+terrible thing because it not only made the body soft but by degrees
+softened the brain, as well. He said that when people didn't want to see
+battlefields, preferring to lie in bed and read about them, that was a
+sign of the beginning of the end.
+
+On various occasions throughout the week he brought this subject up
+again, and I was glad indeed when, as the time for our party with the
+beautiful young actress, in Washington, drew near, he began to forget
+about my shortcomings and think of more agreeable things.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+CHARLOTTESVILLE AND MONTICELLO
+
+
+When Virginians speak of "the university," they do not mean Harvard,
+Princeton, Yale, or even Washington and Lee, but always the University
+of Virginia, which is at Charlottesville.
+
+The city of Charlottesville, in its downtown parts, is no more and no
+less dingy and dismal than many another town of six or seven thousand
+inhabitants, be it North or South. It has a long main street, lined with
+little shops and moving-picture shows, and the theatrical posters which
+thrill one at first sight with hopes of evening entertainment, prove, on
+inspection, to have survived long after the "show" they advertise has
+come and gone, or else to presage the "show" that is coming for one
+night, week after next.
+
+Nor is this scarcity of theatrical entertainment confined alone to small
+towns of the South. Not all important stars and important theatrical
+productions visit even the largest cities, for the South is not regarded
+by theatrical managers as particularly profitable territory. It would be
+interesting to know whether anaemia of the theater in the South, as well
+as the falling off generally of theatergoing in lesser American
+cities--usually attributed to the popularity and cheapness of the
+"movies"--is not due in large measure to the folly of managers
+themselves in sending out inferior companies. Any one who has seen a
+theatrical entertainment in New York and seen it later "on the road" is
+likely to be struck by the fact that even the larger American cities do
+not always get the full New York cast, while smaller cities seldom if
+ever get any part of it. The South suffers particularly in this respect.
+The little "river shows," which arrive now and then in river towns, and
+which are more or less characteristic of the South, have the excuse of
+real picturesqueness, however bad the entertainment given, for the
+players live and have their theater on flatboats, which tie up at the
+wharf. But the plain fact about the ordinary little southern "road show"
+is that it does not deserve to make money.
+
+The life of a poor player touring the South must be very wretched, for
+generally, excepting in large cities, hotels are poor. Before we had
+gone far upon our way, my companion and I learned to inquire carefully
+in advance as to the best hotels, and when we found in any small city
+one which was not a fire trap, and which was clean, we were surprised,
+while if the service was fairly good, and the meals were not very bad,
+we considered it a matter for rejoicing.
+
+We were advised to stop, in Charlottesville, at the New Gleason, and
+when we alighted at the dingy old brick railroad station--a station
+quite as unprepossessing as that at New Haven, Connecticut--we began to
+feel that all was not for the best. A large gray horse hitched to the
+hack in which we rode to the Gleason evidently felt the same, for at
+first he balked, and later tried to run away.
+
+The hotel lobby was a perfect example of its kind. There were several
+drummers writing at the little desks, and several more sitting idly in
+chairs adjacent to brass cuspidors. All of them looked despondent with a
+despondency suggesting pie for breakfast. Behind the desk was a
+sleepy-looking old clerk who, as we arrived, was very busy over a
+financial transaction involving change of ownership in a two-cent stamp.
+This enterprise concluded, he assigned us rooms.
+
+Never have I wished to win the toss for rooms as I wished it when I saw
+the two allotted to us, for though the larger one could not by a flight
+of fancy be termed cheerful, the sight of the lesser chamber filled me
+with thoughts of madness.
+
+Of course I lost.
+
+Never shall I forget that room. It was too small to accommodate my
+trunks with any comfort, so I left them downstairs with the porter,
+descending, now and then, to get such articles as I required. The
+furniture, what there was of it, was of yellow pine; the top of the
+dresser was scarred with the marks of many glasses and many bottles; the
+lace window curtains were long, hard and of a wiry stiffness, and the
+wall-paper was of a scrambled pattern all in bilious brown. During the
+evening I persuaded my companion to walk with me through the town, and
+once I got him out I kept him going on and on through shadowy streets
+unknown to us, until, exhausted, he insisted upon returning to our
+hostelry. I fancy that there are picturesque old houses on the outskirts
+of the town, but with that wall paper and a terrible nostalgia occupying
+my mind, I was in no state to judge of what was there.
+
+On reaching the hotel my companion went to bed, but I remained until
+late in the office, writing letters, doing anything rather than go up to
+my room. When at last I did ascend I planned to read, but the
+arrangement of the light was bad, so presently I put it out and lay
+there sleepless and miserable, thinking of foolish things that I have
+said and done during a life rich with such items, and having chills and
+fever over each separate recollection. How I drifted off to sleep at
+last I do not know; all I remember is waking up next morning, leaping
+out of bed and dressing in frantic haste to get out of my room. There
+was but one thing in it which did not utterly offend the eye: that was
+the steam pipe which ascended from floor to ceiling at one corner, and
+which, being a simple, honest metal tube, was not objectionable.
+
+As we passed through the office on our way to breakfast, the bus man
+entered, and in a loud, retarded chant proclaimed: "Train for the
+South!"
+
+The impressive tones in which this announcement was delivered seemed to
+call for a sudden stir, a rush for bags and coats, a general exodus,
+but no one in the office moved, and I remember feeling sorry for the bus
+man as he turned and went out in the midst of a crushing anti-climax.
+
+"I wonder," I said to my companion, "if anybody ever gets up and goes
+when that man calls out the trains."
+
+"I don't believe so," he replied. "I don't think he calls trains for any
+such purpose. He only warns people so they will expect to hear the
+train, and not be frightened when it goes through."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thomas Jefferson is most widely remembered, I suppose, as the author of
+the Declaration of Independence, the third President, the purchaser of
+Louisiana, and the unfortunate individual upon whom the Democratic party
+casts the blame for its existence, precisely as the Republican party
+blames itself on Washington and Lincoln--although the lamentable state
+into which both parties have fallen is actually the fault of living men.
+
+It is significant, however, that of this trio of Jeffersonian items,
+Jefferson himself selected but one to be included in the inscription
+which he wrote for his tombstone--a modest obelisk on the grounds at
+Monticello. The inscription mentions but three of his achievements: the
+authorship of the Declaration, that of the Virginia statute for
+religious freedom, and the fact that he was "Father of the University of
+Virginia."
+
+Regardless of other accomplishments, the man who built the university
+and the house at Monticello was great. It is more true of these
+buildings than of any others I have seen that they are the
+autobiography, in brick and stone, of their architect. To see them, to
+see some of the exquisitely margined manuscript in Jefferson's clean
+handwriting, preserved in the university library, and to read the
+Declaration, is to gain a grasp of certain sides of Jefferson's nature
+which can be achieved in no other way.
+
+Monticello stands on a lofty hilltop, with vistas, between trees, of
+neighboring valleys, hills, and mountains. It is a supremely lovely
+house, unlike any other, and, while it is too much to say that one would
+recognize it as the house of the writer of the Declaration, it is not
+too much to say that, once one does know it, one can trace a clear
+affinity resulting from a common origin--an affinity much more apparent,
+by the way, than may be traced between the work of Michelangelo on St.
+Peter's at Rome, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and in his
+"David."
+
+The introductory paragraph to the Declaration ascends into the body of
+the document as gracefully and as certainly as the wide flights of easy
+steps ascend to the doors of Monticello; the long and beautifully
+balanced paragraph which follows, building word upon word and sentence
+upon sentence into a central statement, has a form as definite and
+graceful as that of the finely proportioned house; the numbered
+paragraphs which follow, setting forth separate details, are like rooms
+within the house, and--I have just come upon the coincidence with a
+pleasant start such as might be felt by the discoverer of some complex
+and important cipher--as there are twenty-seven of the numbered
+paragraphs in the Declaration, so there are twenty-seven rooms in
+Monticello. Last of all there are two little phrases in the Declaration
+(the phrases stating that we shall hold our British brethren in future
+as we hold the rest of mankind--"enemies in war; in peace, friends"),
+which I would liken to the small twin buildings, one of them Jefferson's
+office, the other that of the overseer, which stand on either side of
+the lawn at Monticello, at some distance from the house. These office
+buildings face, and balance upon each other, and upon the mansion, but
+they are so much smaller that to put them there required daring, while
+to make them "compose" (as painters say) with the great house, required
+the almost superhuman sense of symmetry which Jefferson assuredly
+possessed.
+
+The present owner of Monticello is Mr. Jefferson Monroe Levy, former
+United States congressman from New York. Mr. Levy is a Democrat and a
+bachelor, according to the Congressional Directory, which states further
+that he inherited Monticello from an uncle, Commodore Uriah P. Levy,
+U.S.N., and that the latter purchased the place in 1830 "at the
+suggestion of President Jackson."
+
+Dorothy Dix, writing in "Good Housekeeping," tells a tale which I have
+heard repeatedly of the acquisition of Monticello by Uriah Levy. Says
+Miss Dix:
+
+"Monticello was sold to a stranger, and Jefferson's only daughter, Mrs.
+Randolph, widowed and with eleven children, was left homeless.... A
+subscription of three thousand dollars was raised ... to buy back the
+house ... and this money was intrusted to a young relative of the
+Jeffersons' to convey to Charlottesville. Traveling in the stagecoach
+with the young man was Captain Uriah P. Levy, to whom he confided his
+mission. The young man became intoxicated and dallied, but Captain Levy
+hastened on to Charlottesville, and purchased Monticello for two
+thousand five hundred dollars. The next day the repentant and sober
+young man arrived and besought Captain Levy to take the three thousand
+dollars ... and let Monticello go back to the Jefferson family. Captain
+Levy refused to part with his bargain, but at his death he willed
+Monticello to 'the people of the United States to be held as a memorial
+of Thomas Jefferson'.... The Levy heirs contested the will, and it was
+finally decided upon a technicality that 'the people of the United
+States' was too indefinite a term to make the bequest binding, and the
+estate passed into the hands of the Levys, and so to its present
+owner...."
+
+In a biographical note upon the latter, the Congressional Directory
+states that the house is "kept open to the public all the year." My
+companion and I were admitted to the grounds, but were informed that,
+though the building was unoccupied, no one was permitted to enter. While
+we were in the vicinity of the house we were attended by one of the men
+employed on the place, who told us that when people were allowed to
+roam about at will, there had been much vandalism; ivy had been pulled
+from the walls, shrubbery broken, pieces of brick chipped out of the
+steps, and teeth knocked from the heads of the marble lions which flank
+them.
+
+Of recent years there has been on foot a movement, launched, I believe,
+by Mrs. Martin W. Littleton, of New York, to influence the Government to
+purchase Monticello from its present owner. It is difficult to see
+precisely how Mr. Levy could be forced to part with his property, if he
+did not wish to. Nevertheless public sentiment on this subject has
+become so strong that he has agreed to let the Government have
+Monticello "at a price"--so, at least, I was informed in
+Charlottesville.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
+
+     The opening of the University of Virginia was an event of prime
+     importance for the higher education in the whole country, and
+     really marks a new era.
+
+     --CHARLES FORSTER SMITH.
+
+
+Like Monticello, the buildings of the University of Virginia are those
+of an intellectual, a classicist, a purist, and, like it, they might
+have been austere but for the warmth of their red brick and the glow of
+their white-columned porticos. But they are cheerful buildings, which,
+individually and as a group, attain a geometrical yet soft perfection, a
+supreme harmony of form and color.
+
+The principal buildings are grouped about a large campus, called the
+Lawn, which is dominated by the rotunda, suggesting in its outlines the
+Pantheon at Rome. From the rotunda, at either side, starts a
+white-columned arcade connecting the various houses which are
+distributed at graceful intervals along the margins of the rectangular
+lawn, above which loom the tops of even rows of beautiful old trees.
+Flanking the buildings of the lawn, and reached by brick walks which
+pass between the famous serpentine walls (walls but one brick thick
+which support themselves on the snake-fence principle, by progressing in
+a series of reverse curves), are the "ranges": solid rows of one-story
+student dormitories built of brick and fronted by colonnades which
+command other lawns and other trees.
+
+With a single exception, restorations and additions to the university
+have been made with reverence and taste, and the Brooks Museum, the one
+architectural horror of the place, fortunately does not stand upon the
+lawn. Since it is said that beauty could not exist were there not
+ugliness for contrast, this building may have its uses; certainly, after
+a glance at it, one looks back with renewed delight at the structures of
+the central group.
+
+Most superb of all, always there hangs at night, above the buildings and
+the tree-tops, a glorious full moon. At least I suppose it always hangs
+there, for though it seemed to us very wonderful, every one else seemed
+used to it.
+
+Like Venice, the University of Virginia should first be seen by
+moonlight. There could not have been a finer moonlit night, I thought,
+than that cold, crisp one upon which my companion stood for two hours
+beside the rotunda, gazing at the lawn and drawing it, its frosty grass
+and trees decked with diamonds, its white columns standing out softly
+from their shadow backgrounds like phosphorescent ghosts in the luminous
+blue darkness. Until I was nearly frozen I stayed there with him. That
+drawing cost him one of the worst colds he ever had.
+
+The university ought to have, and has, many traditions, and life there
+ought to be, and is, different from life in any other college. Jefferson
+brought from Italy the men who carved the capitals of the columns (the
+descendants of some of these Italian workmen live in Charlottesville
+to-day), and when the columns were in place he brought from Europe the
+professors to form the faculty, creating what was practically a small
+English university in the United States. Never until, a dozen years ago,
+Dr. E.A. Alderman became president, had there been such an office;
+before that time the university had a rector, and the duties of
+president were performed by a chairman of the faculty, elected by the
+faculty from among its members. This was the first university to adopt
+the elective system, permitting the students, as Jefferson wrote,
+"uncontrolled choice in the lectures they shall attend," instead of
+prescribing one course of reading for all. No less important, the
+University of Virginia was the first college to introduce (1842) the
+honor system, and still has the most complete honor system to be found
+among American colleges. This system is an outgrowth of the Jeffersonian
+idea of student self-government; under it each student signs, with
+examination papers, a pledge that he has neither given nor received
+assistance. That is found sufficient; students are not watched, nor need
+they be. With time this system has been extended, so that it now covers
+not only examinations, but many departments of college life, eliminating
+professionalism in athletics and plagiarism in literary work, and
+resulting in a delightful mutual confidence between the student body and
+the faculty.
+
+Madison and Monroe were active members of the university's first board
+of visitors; the first college Y.M.C.A. was started there; and among
+many famous men who have attended the university may be mentioned Edgar
+Allan Poe, Thomas Nelson Page, and Thomas Woodrow Wilson, whose name
+appears thus upon the "University Magazine" for 1879-80, as one of its
+three editors. The ill-starred Poe attended the university for only one
+year, at the end of which time his adopted father, Mr. Allan, of
+Richmond, withdrew him because of debts he had contracted while
+acquiring his education in gambling and drinking champagne. Poe's former
+room, No. 13 West Range, is now the office of the magazine.
+
+The clean, lovely manuscript in Jefferson's handwriting, of the first
+Anglo-Saxon grammar written in the United States, is to be seen in the
+university library; Jefferson was Vice-President of the United States
+when he wrote it; he put Anglo-Saxon in the first curriculum of the
+university, and it has been taught there ever since. In a note which is
+a part of the manuscript, he advocates the study of Anglo-Saxon as an
+introduction to modern English on the ground that though about half the
+words in our present language are derived from Latin and Greek, these
+being the scholarly words, the other half, the words we use most often,
+are Anglo-Saxon.
+
+Before the war it was not uncommon for students at the university to
+have their negro body servants with them, and it has occasionally
+happened since that some young sprig of southern aristocracy has come
+to college thus attended.
+
+Perhaps the most striking and characteristic feature of student life
+to-day, from the point of view of the stray visitor, is the formal
+attitude of students toward one another. There is no easy-going
+casualness between them, no calling back and forth, no "hello," by way
+of greeting. They pass each other on the walks either without speaking
+(men have been punished at the university by being ignored by the entire
+student body), or if they do greet each other the customary salutation
+is "How are you, sir?" or "How are you, gentlemen?" First-year men are
+expected to wear hats, and not to speak to upper classmen until they
+have been spoken to; and, though there is no hazing at the university,
+woe betide them if they do not heed these rules.
+
+In the early days of the university there was an effort to exercise
+restraint over students, to make them account for their goings and
+comings, and to prevent their going to taverns or betting upon horse
+races. Also they were obliged to wear a uniform. The severity was so
+great that they appealed to Jefferson, who sided with them. He, however,
+died in the same year, and friction prevailed for perhaps a decade
+longer, with many student disorders, culminating in the shooting of a
+professor by a student. In 1840 the students were at last granted full
+freedom, and two years later the honor system was adopted.
+
+During the university's first years young men from the far South, where
+dueling was especially prevalent, did not come in large numbers to the
+University of Virginia, but went, as a rule, to the northern colleges,
+but about the middle of the century, as feeling between North and South
+over taxation, States' Rights and slavery became more acute, these men
+began to flock to the college at Charlottesville. Between 1850 and 1860
+the university almost doubled in size, and at about the same time there
+developed a good deal of dueling between students.
+
+When the War ended many men who had gone into the Confederate army at
+sixteen or seventeen years of age came to Charlottesville to complete
+their education. The hard life of the army had made some of these into a
+wild lot, and there was a great deal of gambling and drinking during
+their time, and also after it, for several succeeding generations of
+students looked up to the ex-soldiers as heroes, and carried on the
+unfortunate traditions left by them at the university. In the nineties,
+however, a change came, and though there is still some drinking and
+gambling, it is doubtful whether such vices are now more prevalent at
+the University of Virginia than at many other colleges. The honor system
+has never been extended to cover these points.
+
+It is related that, in Poe's time, gambling became such a serious
+obstacle to discipline and work that the university authorities set the
+town marshal after a score or so of gambling students, Poe among them,
+whereupon these students fled to the Ragged Mountains, near by, and
+remained for two weeks, during which time Poe is said to have mightily
+entertained them with stories and prophecies, including a forecast of
+the Civil War, in which, he declared, two of the youths present would
+fight on opposite sides.
+
+The Poe tradition is kept vigorously alive at the university. Not long
+ago a member of the Raven Society, one of the rather too numerous
+student organizations, discovered the burial place of Poe's mother, who
+was an actress, and who died penniless in Richmond at the age of
+twenty-four and was buried with the destitute. By a happy inspiration a
+fund was raised among the students for the erection of a monument to
+her--an example of fine and chivalrous sentiment on the part of these
+young men, which, one feels, is somehow delicately intertwined with the
+traditions of the honor system.
+
+The Poe professor of English at the university, when we were there, was
+Dr. C. Alphonso Smith, who has since taken the professorship of English
+at the United States Naval Academy. By a coincidence which has proved a
+happy one for those who love the stories of the late Sidney Porter (O.
+Henry), Dr. Smith grew up as a boy with Porter, in Greensboro, North
+Carolina. Because of this, and also because of Dr. Smith's own gifts as
+a writer and an analyst, it is peculiarly fitting that he should have
+undertaken the work which has occupied him for several years past, the
+result of which has recently been given to us in the form "The O. Henry
+Biography."
+
+Dr. Smith was Roosevelt exchange professor at the University of Berlin
+in 1910-11, holding the chair of American History and Institutions.
+While occupying that professorship he met the Kaiser.
+
+"I talked with him twice," he said, "and upon the second occasion under
+very delightful circumstances, for I was invited to dinner at the Palace
+at Potsdam, and was the only guest, the Kaiser, Kaiserin, and Princess
+Victoria Luise being present.
+
+"The Kaiser is, of course, a very magnetic man. His eyes are his most
+remarkable feature. They are very large, brilliant, and sparkling, and
+he rolls them in a manner most unusual. While he is always the king and
+the soldier, he can be genial and charming. One might expect a man in
+his position to be blase, but that, most of all, is what he is not. He
+is like a boy in his vitality and vividness, and he has a great and
+persistent intellectual curiosity. It is this, I think, which used to
+cause him to be compared with Colonel Roosevelt. Both would like to know
+all things, and both have had, and have exercised more, perhaps, than
+any other two living men, the power to bring to themselves the central
+figures in all manner of world events, and thus learn at first hand,
+from acknowledged authorities, about the subjects that interest
+them--which is to say, everything.
+
+"He frankly admired America. I don't mean that he said so for the sake
+of courtesy to me, but that he has--or did have, then--an immense and
+rather romantic interest in this country. A great many Germans used to
+resent this trait in him. America held in his mind the same romantic
+position that the idea of monarchy did in the minds of some of us. I
+mean that the average American went for romance to stories of monarchy,
+but that the Kaiser, being used to the monarchial idea, found his
+romance over here. (I am, of course, speaking of him as he was five or
+six years ago.) He wished to come to America, but was never able to do
+so, since German law forbids it. And, perhaps because he could not come,
+America was the more a sort of dream to him.
+
+"He asked me about some of the things in Berlin which I had noticed as
+being different from things at home, and when I mentioned the way that
+history was kept alive in the very streets of Berlin, his eyes danced,
+and he said that was one of the things he had tried to accomplish by the
+erection of the numerous monuments which have been placed in Berlin
+during his reign. He told me of other means by which history was kept
+alive in Germany: among them that every officer has to know in detail
+the history of his regiment, and that German regiments always celebrate
+the anniversaries of their great days.
+
+"He speaks English without an accent, though we might say that he spoke
+it with an English accent. He told me that he had learned English before
+he learned German, and had also caused his children to learn it first.
+He reads Mark Twain, or had read him, and he enjoyed him, but he said
+that when he met Mark Twain the latter had little or nothing to say, and
+that it was only with the greatest difficulty that he got him to talk at
+all. He subscribed, he told me, to 'Harper's Magazine,' and he was in
+the habit of reading short stories aloud to his family, in English. He
+admired the American short story, and I remember that he declared: 'The
+Americans know how to plunge into a short story. We Germans are too
+long-winded.'"
+
+When Professor Smith talks about the Kaiser, you say to yourself: "I
+know that it is growing late, but I cannot bear to leave until I have
+heard the rest of this"; when he drifts presently to O. Henry, you say
+the same; and so it is always, no matter what his subject. At last,
+however, the grandfather's clock in the hall below his study sends up a
+stern message which is not to be mistaken, whereupon you arise
+reluctantly from your comfortable chair, spill the cigar ashes out of
+your lap onto the rug, dust off your clothing, and take your leave. Nor
+is your regret at departing lessened by the fact that you must go to
+your bilious-colored bedroom in the New Gleason, and that you will not
+see the university, or Professor C. Alphonso Smith, or Mrs. Smith again,
+because you are leaving upon the morrow.
+
+So it must always be with the itinerant illustrator and writer. They are
+forever finding new and lovely scenes only to leave them; forever making
+new and charming friends only to part with them, faring forth again into
+the unknown.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+FOX-HUNTING IN VIRGINIA
+
+    Better to hunt in fields for health unbought
+    Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught.
+    The wise for cure on exercise depend;
+    God never made his work for man to mend.
+
+    --DRYDEN.
+
+
+It is my impression that the dining-car conductor on the Chesapeake &
+Ohio train by which we left Charlottesville was puzzled when I asked his
+name; but if he sees this and remembers the incident he will now know
+that I did so because I wished here to mention him as a humane citizen.
+His name is C.G. Mitchell, and he was so accommodating as to serve a
+light meal, after hours, when he did not have to, to two hungry men who
+needed it. If travel has taught my companion and me anything, it has
+taught us that not all dining-car conductors are like that. Nor, I
+judge, can all dining-car conductors play the violin, pleasantly, in off
+hours, as does Mr. Mitchell. Better one merciful dining-car conductor
+than twenty who wear white carnations at their left lapels, but wear no
+hearts below them!
+
+The road by which we drove from the railroad into the fastnesses of
+Loudon County, where, near the little settlement of Upperville, the race
+meet of the Piedmont Hunt was to be held, suggested other times and
+other manners, for though we rode in a motor car, and though we passed
+another now and then, machines were far outnumbered by the horses which,
+under saddle, or hitched to buggies, surreys, and carts of all
+descriptions, were heading toward the meeting place.
+
+On these roads, one felt, the motor was an outsider; this was the
+kingdom of the horse that we were visiting; soft dirt roads were there
+for him to trot and gallop on, and fences of wood or stone, free from
+barbed wire, were everywhere, for him to jump.
+
+Throughout the week we had looked forward to this day, and even more,
+perhaps, to the party which, if we could get back to Washington that
+night, was to follow it; wherefore the first thing we did on reaching a
+place where information was obtainable was to inquire about facilities
+for leaving. Herein my companion had the advantage of me, for there was
+nothing to prevent his departing immediately after the races, whereas I
+must remain behind for an hour or two, to learn something of fox-hunting
+as practised in this region.
+
+By motoring immediately after the races to a neighboring town--Bluemont
+if I remember rightly--and there taking an interurban trolley to some
+other place, and changing cars, and going without his dinner, my
+companion found that he could get to Washington by nine o'clock. My case
+was different. Should I be delayed more than two hours I could not get
+away at all that night, but must miss the much anticipated party
+altogether; and, though my companion seemed to view this possibility
+with perfect equanimity, my memories of the charming lady whom we were
+to meet at the stage door, after the performance, were too clear to
+permit of indifference in me. The trolley my companion meant to catch
+was, however, the last one; my only hope, therefore, was to motor a
+distance of perhaps a dozen miles, over roads which I was frankly told
+were "middling to bad," and try to catch a train at The Plains station.
+If I missed this train, I was lost, and must spend a solitary night in
+such a room as I might be able to find in a strange village. That
+possibility did not appeal to me. I began to wish that there was no such
+thing as fox-hunting, or that, there being such a thing, I had chosen to
+ignore it.
+
+"Now," said my companion cheerfully, "we'll telegraph her."
+
+At a telegraph office he seized the pencil and wrote the following
+message:
+
+     _Will call for you to-night after performance._
+
+To this he signed his own name.
+
+"What about me?" I suggested, after glancing over his shoulder at the
+message.
+
+"Oh, well," said he, "there's no use in going into all that in a
+telegram. It's sufficient to let her know that one of us is coming."
+
+"But I proposed this party."
+
+"Well," he gave in, with an air of pained patience, "what shall I say,
+then? Shall I add that you are unavoidably detained?"
+
+"Not by a jugful!" I returned. "Add that I hope to get there too, and
+will make every effort to do so."
+
+He wrote it out, sighing as he did so. Then, by careful cutting, he got
+it down to fourteen words. By that time the operator couldn't read it,
+so he wrote it out again--gloomily.
+
+This accomplished, we matched coins to see who should pay for the
+message. He lost.
+
+"All right!" he said. "I'll pay for it, but it's all foolishness to send
+such a long telegram."
+
+"No," I returned, as we left the office and got into the machine, "it is
+not foolishness. If I can make life a little brighter for a beautiful
+woman, by adding a few words to a telegram, and sticking you for it, I
+shall do it every time."
+
+He looked away over the fields and did not answer me. So we drove on in
+silence to where stands the beautiful manor house called Huntland, which
+is the residence of Mr. Joseph B. Thomas, M.F.H. of the Piedmont Hunt.
+
+There is, I have been told, no important hunt in the United States in
+which the master of foxhounds is not the chief financial supporter, the
+sport being a very costly one. Of American hunts, the Middlesex, in
+Massachusetts, of which Mr. A. Henry Higginson is M.F.H., has the
+reputation of being the best appointed. The Piedmont Hunt is, however,
+one of the half dozen leading organizations of the kind, and it is
+difficult indeed to imagine a finer.
+
+In a well-kept park near Mr. Thomas's house stand extensive
+English-looking buildings of brick and stucco, which, viewed from a
+distance, suggest a beautiful country house, and which, visited, teach
+one that certain favored hounds and horses in this world live much
+better than certain human beings. One building is given over to the
+kennels, the other the stables; each has a large sunlit court, and each
+is as beautiful and as clean as a fine house--a house full of trophies,
+hunting equipment, and the pleasant smell of well-cared-for saddlery. In
+a rolling meadow, not far distant, is the race course, all green turf,
+and here, soon after luncheon, gathered an extraordinary diversified
+crowd.
+
+For the most part the crowd was a fashionable one: men and women of the
+type whose photographs appear in "Vogue" and "Vanity Fair," and whose
+costumes were like fashion suggestions for "sport clothes" in those
+publications. One party was stationed on the top of an old-time mail
+coach, the boot of which bore the significant initials
+"F.F.V."--standing, as even benighted Northerners must be aware, for
+"First Families of Virginia"; others were in a line of motors and
+heterogeneous horse-drawn vehicles, parked beside the course; and
+scattered through the gathering, like brushmarks on an impressionist
+canvas, one saw the brilliant color of pink coats. Handsome hunters
+were being ridden or led about by negro grooms, and others kept
+arriving, ridden in by farmers and breeders, while here and there one
+saw a woman rider, her hair tightly drawn back under a mannish derby
+hat, her figure slender and graceful in a severely-cut habit coat.
+Jumbled together in a great green meadow under a sweet autumnal sun,
+these things made a picture of what, I am persuaded, is the ultimate in
+extravagant American country life. There was something, too, about this
+blending of fashionables and farmers, which made me think of the
+theater; for there is, in truth, a distinct note of histrionism about
+many of the rich Americans who "go in for" elaborate ruralness, and
+there is a touch of it very often, also, about "horsey" people. They
+like to "look the part," and they dress it with no less care than they
+exercise, at other seasons, in dressing the parts of opera-going
+cosmopolites, or wealthy loungers at the beaches. In other words, these
+fashionables had the overtrained New York look all over them, and the
+local rustics set them off as effectively as the villainous young squire
+of the Drury Lane melodrama is set off by contrast with honest old
+Jasper, the miller, who wears a smock, and comes to the Great House to
+beg the Young Master to "make an honest woman" of poor Rose, the fairest
+lass in all Hampshire.
+
+About the races themselves there was something fascinatingly
+nonprofessional. They bore the same relation to great races on great
+tracks that a very fine performance of a play by amateurs might bear to
+a professional performance.
+
+First came a two-mile steeplechase, with brush hurdles. Then, after a
+couple of minor events, a four-mile point-to-point race for hunters
+ridden by gentlemen in hunt uniform. This was as stiff a race for both
+horses and riders as I have ever seen, and it was very picturesque to
+watch the pink coats careering up hill and down dale, now over a tall
+stone wall, now over a brook or a snake fence; and when a rider went
+head over heels, and lay still upon the ground where he fell, while his
+horse cantered along after the field, in that aimless and pathetic way
+that riderless horses have, one had a real sensation--which was the
+pleasanter for knowing, a few minutes later, that the horseman had only
+broken an arm.
+
+Next was run a rollicking race for horses owned by farmers, and others,
+whose land is hunted over by the Piedmont and Middleburg foxhounds; and
+last occurred a great comedy event--a mule race, free for all, in which
+one of the hunting men, in uniform, made such a handsome showing against
+a rabble of white and colored boys, all of them yelling, all of them
+beating their long-eared animals with sticks, that he would have won,
+had he not deliberately pulled his mount and "thrown" the race.
+
+The last event was not yet finished when my companion, who had become
+nervous about his interurban trolley, got into a machine to drive to
+Bluemont.
+
+"Of course," he said as we parted, "we'll miss you to-night."
+
+"Oh," I said, "I hope not. I expect to get there."
+
+"I don't see how you can make it," said he. "You have a lot of material
+to gather."
+
+"I shall work fast."
+
+"Well," said he, trying to speak like the voice of Conscience, "I hope
+you won't forget your _duty_--that's all."
+
+"I proposed this party to-night. It is my duty to be there."
+
+"You didn't make any definite engagement," said he, "and, besides, your
+first duty is to your editors and your readers."
+
+Having tossed me this disgusting thought, he departed in a cloud of
+dust, leaving me sad and alone, but not yet altogether in despair.
+
+The last race over, I hastened to Mr. Thomas's house, which, by this
+time, looked like an old English hunting print come to life, for it was
+now crowded with pink coats. For most of the technical information
+contained in this chapter I am indebted to various gentlemen whom I
+encountered there.
+
+In Virginia--which is the oldest fox-hunting State in the Union, the
+sport having been practised there for nearly two centuries--the words
+"hunt" or "hunting" never by any chance apply to shooting, but always
+refer to hunting the fox with horse and hounds. A "hunter" is not a man
+but a horse; a huntsman is not a member of the hunt but a hunt-servant;
+the "field" may be the terrain ridden over by the hunt, or it may be
+the group of riders following the hounds--"hunt followers," "hunting
+men," and "hunting women."
+
+The following items, from "Baily's Hunting Directory," a British annual,
+give some idea of certain primary formalities and practicalities of
+hunting:
+
+     HINTS TO BEGINNERS
+
+     Buy the best horses you can afford; but remember that a workably
+     sound horse, though blemished or a bit gone in the wind, will give
+     you plenty of fun, if you do not knock him about.
+
+     Obey the Master's orders without argument; in the field he is
+     supreme.
+
+     Hold up your hat if you view the fox away; do not halloa. If none
+     of the hunt servants see your uplifted hat, go and tell the nearest
+     of them.
+
+     Ride fast at water; if hounds clear a brook a horse has a good
+     chance of doing so. Steady your horse and let him take his own pace
+     at big timber.
+
+     Keep well away from hounds, and down wind of them at a check. The
+     steam from heated horses adds a fresh difficulty to recovery of
+     lost scent. Look out for signs that may indicate the whereabouts or
+     passing of the fox. Huddling sheep, staring cattle, chattering
+     magpies, circling rooks, may mean that they see, or have just seen,
+     the fox.
+
+     Never lark over fences; it tires your horse needlessly and may
+     cause damage and annoy the farmer.
+
+     Never take a short cut through a covert that is likely to be drawn
+     during the day; and keep well away from a covert that hounds are
+     drawing if you start for home before the day's sport is over, lest
+     you head the fox.
+
+     Always await your turn at a gate or gap; do not try and push
+     forward in a crowd.
+
+     If you follow a pilot, do not "ride in his pocket"; give him plenty
+     of room, say fifteen lengths, at fences, or if he falls you might
+     jump on him.
+
+     If your horse kicks, tie a knot of red ribbon in his tail. N.B.--Do
+     not be guilty of using this "rogue's badge" for the sake of getting
+     room in a crowd, as some men have been known to do.
+
+     If a man is down and in danger of being kicked, put your own saddle
+     over his head.
+
+
+     HINTS CONCERNING THE HUNTER
+
+     It should be remembered that in the ordinary routine the horse is
+     fed three or four times a day. On a hunting day he gets one good
+     feed early in the morning and loses one or two feeds. Moreover, he
+     is doing hard work for hours together, with a weight on his back.
+     Carry a couple of forage biscuits in your pocket to give him during
+     the day. Also get off and relieve him of your weight when you can
+     do so.
+
+     When he is brought home, put him in his stall or box, slack the
+     girths, take off the bridle and give him his gruel at once. Throw a
+     rug over his loins and pull his ears for a minute or two.
+
+     An old horse needs more clothing than a young one.
+
+     Condition is a matter of seasons, not of months; a horse in hard
+     condition can take without injury a fall that would disable a soft
+     one for weeks.
+
+In old times many of Virginia's country gentlemen kept their own packs,
+but though some followed the hounds according to the English tradition,
+there developed a less sportsmanlike style of hunting called
+"hilltopping," under which the hunting men rode to an elevated point and
+watched the hounds run the fox, without themselves attempting to follow
+across country and be in at the kill. As a result, the fox was, if
+caught, torn to pieces by the hounds, and the brush and head were
+infrequently saved.
+
+Under the traditions of English fox-hunting--traditions the strictness
+of which can hardly be exaggerated--"hilltopping" is a more than
+doubtful sport, and, since organized fox-hunting in the United States is
+taken entirely from the English idea, the practice is tabooed on
+first-class hunting regions.
+
+The origin of hilltopping is, however, easily understood. The old
+fox-hunters simply did not, as a rule, have horses adequate to negotiate
+the country, hunters not having been developed to any great extent in
+America in early times.
+
+The perfect type of hunter is of thoroughbred stock. By the term
+"thoroughbred" horsemen do not mean highly bred horses of any kind, as
+is sometimes supposed, but only running horses. All such horses come
+originally of British stock, for it is in Great Britain that the breed
+has been developed, although it traces back, through a number of
+centuries, to a foundation of Arabian blood. I am informed that climatic
+and other conditions in a certain part of Ireland are for some reason
+peculiarly favorable to the development of hunters and that these
+conditions are duplicated in the Piedmont section of Virginia, and
+nowhere else in the whole world. Only the stanchest, bravest, fastest
+type of horse is suited for hunting in Virginia, and for this reason the
+more experienced riders to hounds prefer the thoroughbred, though
+half-bred and three-quarter-bred horses are also used to some extent,
+the thoroughbred often being too mettlesome, when he becomes excited,
+for any but the best riders. The finest qualities of a horse are brought
+out in hunting in the Piedmont section, for the pace here is very
+fast--much faster than in England, though it should be added that in the
+English hunting country there are more hedges than over here, and that
+the jumps are, upon the whole, stiffer.
+
+The speed of the Piedmont Hunt and other hunts in Virginia is doubtless
+due to the use of southern hounds, these being American hounds, smaller
+and faster than English hounds, from which, however, they were
+originally bred. The desirable qualities in a pack of hounds are
+uniformity of type, substance, speed, and color. These points have to do
+not only with the style of a pack, but also with its hunting quality.
+Thus in the Piedmont pack they breed for a red hound with white
+markings, so that the pack may have an individual appearance, but in all
+packs a great effort is made to secure even speed, for a slow hound
+lags, while a fast one becomes an individual hunter. The unusual hound
+is therefore likely to be "drafted" from the pack.
+
+There has been a long controversy as to whether the English or American
+type of hound is best suited for hunting in this country, and the matter
+seems still to remain one of opinion. Probably the best English pack in
+the United States is that of Mr. A. Henry Higginson. Some years since,
+Mr. Higginson and Mr. Harry Worcester Smith, of Worcester,
+Massachusetts, master of the Grafton pack, made a bet of $5000 a side,
+each backing his own hounds, the question being that of the general
+suitability of the American versus the English hound for American
+country. The trials were made in the Piedmont region of Virginia, and
+Mr. Smith's American hounds won the wager for him.
+
+In the last ten or twenty years hunting in the United States has been
+organized under the Hunts Committee of the National Steeplechase
+Association. Practically all the important hunting organizations are
+members of this association, there being forty of these: eleven in
+Virginia, nine in Pennsylvania, six in New York, four in Massachusetts,
+three each in Maryland and New Jersey, and one each in Connecticut,
+Vermont, Ohio, and Michigan--the Grosse Pointe Hounds, near Detroit,
+being the most westerly of recognized hunts, although there is some
+unrecognized hunting near Chicago.
+
+An idea of the comparative importance of hunting in the United States
+and in England may be gathered from the fact that in England and Wales
+alone there are more than 180 packs of foxhounds, 88 packs of beagles,
+and 16 packs of staghounds, while Ireland and Scotland have many also.
+The war, however, has struck hard at hunting in the British Isles.
+Baily's Hunting Directory for 1915-16, says:
+
+"Hunting has given her best, for of those who have gone from the hunting
+field to join the colors, the masters lead, as they have led in more
+happy days, with a tale of over 80 per cent. of their number, the hunt
+secretaries following with over 50 per cent., while the hunt servants
+show over 30 per cent. No exact data are available to tell of the
+multitude from the rank and file that has followed this magnificent
+lead, excepting that from all the hunts there comes the same report,
+that practically every man fit for service has responded to the call."
+
+It is estimated that 17,000 horses were drafted from hunting for the
+cavalry in England at the beginning of the war; and it is to be noticed
+that so soon after the outbreak as July, 1915, the "Directory" published
+a list of names of well-known hunting men killed in action, which
+occupied more than seven large pages printed in small type.
+
+Under the heading "Incidents of the 1914-15 Season" are to be found many
+items of curious early war-time interest, a few of which I quote:
+
+     Lady Stalbridge announces willingness to act as field master of the
+     South and West Wilts Hounds during her husband's absence in France.
+
+     Lieutenant Charles Romer Williams took out to the front a pack of
+     beagles, with which the officers of the Second Cavalry Brigade
+     hoped to hunt Belgian hares.
+
+     Capt. E.K. Bradbury, a member of the Cahir Harriers, earned the
+     V.C. at Nery, but died from wounds.
+
+     The Grafton Hounds have seventy-six followers with the colors.
+
+     Admiral Sir David Beatty, of North Sea fame, has a hunting box at
+     Brooksby Hall, in the Melton Mowbray country.
+
+     Five members of the Crawley and Horsham Hounds have been killed,
+     three wounded, and two are missing.
+
+     Quorn fields down to about 30, instead of 300 last season.
+
+     Captain the Honorable R.B.F. Robertson (Twenty-first Lancers) a
+     prisoner of war. He took over the North Tipperary Hounds in May,
+     and, of course, did not get a chance to have any sport.
+
+     We now learn that the French authorities have discouraged
+     fox-hunting behind the fighting lines. So did the Germans. One day
+     British hounds took up the scent on their own initiative. The usual
+     followers had bigger game afoot, and were in the thick of an
+     engagement. The Germans gained ground and occupied the kennels.
+     When the hounds returned from their chase and challenged the
+     intruders they were shot down one by one.
+
+Such is the lore I had acquired when the motor came for me; whereupon,
+taking a few sandwiches to sustain me until supper time, I set forth
+through the night by Ford, for the station at The Plains.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The publication of the larger part of the foregoing chapter on fox
+hunting, in "Collier's Weekly," brought me a number of letters
+containing hunting anecdotes.
+
+Mr. J.R. Smith of Martinsville, Virginia, calls my attention to marked
+difference in character between the red fox and the gray. The red fox,
+he says, depends upon his legs to elude the hounds, and will sometimes
+lead the hunt twenty-five miles from the place where he gets up, but the
+gray fox depends on cunning, and is more prone to run a few miles and
+"tack."
+
+Mr. Smith tells the following story illustrative of the gray fox's
+amazing artfulness:
+
+"We had started a fox on three different occasions," he writes, "running
+him a warm chase for about four miles and losing him every time in a
+sheep pasture. Finally we stationed a servant in that pasture to see
+what became of the fox. We started him again and he took the same route
+to the pasture. There the mystery was solved. The fox jumped on the back
+of a large ram, which, in fright, ran off about half a mile. The fox
+then jumped off and continued his run. When the hounds came up we urged
+them on to the point where the fox dismounted, and soon had his brush."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another correspondent calls my attention to the fact that, in Virginia,
+hunting is not merely the sport of the rich, but that the farmers are
+enthusiastic members of the field--sometimes at the expense of their
+cattle and crops. He relates the following story illustrative of the
+point of view of the sporting Virginia farmer:
+
+"A man from the Department of Agriculture came down into our section to
+look over farms and give advice to farmers. He went to see one farmer
+in my county and found that he had absolutely nothing growing, and that
+his livestock consisted of three hunters and thirty-two couples of
+hounds. The agricultural expert was scandalized. He told the farmer he
+ought to begin at once to raise hogs. 'You can feed them what you feed
+the dogs,' he said, 'and have good meat for your family aside from what
+you sell.'
+
+"After hearing his visitor out, the farmer looked off across the country
+and spat ruminatively.
+
+"'I ain't never seen no hawg that could catch a fox,' he said, and with
+that turned and went into the barn, evidently regarding the matter as
+closed. Clearly he did not share the view of the Irishman who dismissed
+fox hunting with the remark that a fox was 'damned hard to catch and no
+good when you got him.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+"A CERTAIN PARTY"
+
+    Kind are her answers,
+    But her performance keeps no day;
+    Breaks time, as dancers
+    From their own music when they stray.
+
+    Lost is our freedom
+    When we submit to women so:
+    Why do we need 'em
+    When, in their best, they work our woe?
+
+    --THOMAS CAMPION.
+
+
+The motor ride to The Plains was a cold and rough one. I remember that
+we had to ford a stream or two, and that once, where the mud had been
+churned up and made deep by the wheels of many vehicles, we almost
+stuck. Excepting at the fords, the road was dusty, and the dust was kept
+in circulation by the feet of countless saddle horses, on which men from
+the country to the south of Upperville were riding home from the races.
+All the way to The Plains our lights kept picking up these riders,
+sometimes alone, sometimes in groups, all of them going our way, we
+taking their dust until we overhauled them, then giving them ours.
+
+Dust was over me like a close-fitting gray veil when I reached the
+railroad station only to find that the train was late. I had a magazine
+in my bag, but the light in the waiting-room was poor, so I took a place
+near the stove and gave myself up to anticipations of a bath, a
+comfortable room, clean clothing, and a good supper with my
+companion--and another companion much more beautiful.
+
+I tried to picture her as she would look. She would be in evening dress,
+of course. After thinking over different colors, and trying them upon
+her in my mind, I decided that her gown should be of a delicate pink,
+and should be made of some frail, beautiful material which would float
+about her like gossamer when she moved, and shimmer like the light of
+dawn upon the dew. You know the sort of gown I mean: one of those gowns
+upon which a man is afraid to lay his finger-tips lest the material melt
+away beneath them; a gown which, he feels, was never touched by
+seamstress of the human species, but was made by fairies out of woven
+moonlight, star dust, afterglow, and the fragrance of flowers. Such a
+gown upon a lovely woman is man's proof that woman is indeed the thing
+which so often he believes her--that she is more goddess than earthly
+being; for man knows well that he himself is earthly, and that a costume
+made from such dream stuffs and placed on him, would not last out the
+hour. He has but to look up at the stars to realize the infinity of
+space, and, similarly, but to look at her in her evening gown to realize
+the divinity of woman.
+
+And that is where she has him. For it isn't so!
+
+At last came the train--just the dingy train to stop at such a station.
+I boarded it, found a seat, and continued to dream dreams as we rattled
+on toward Washington.
+
+Even when I found myself walking through that great terminal by which
+all railroads enter the capital, I hardly believed that I was there, nor
+did I feel entirely myself until I had reached my room in the New
+Willard.
+
+Having started my bath, I went and knocked upon the door of the near-by
+room where the clerk had told me I should find my fellow traveler.
+
+"Oh," he said, without enthusiasm as he discovered me. "You're here, are
+you?"
+
+He looked imposing and severe in his evening dress. I felt
+correspondingly dirty and humble.
+
+"Yes," I replied meekly. "Any news?"
+
+"None," he replied. "I've reserved a table at Harvey's. They dance
+there. At first they said there was not a table to be had--Saturday
+night, you know--but I told them who was to be with us, and they changed
+their minds."
+
+"Good. I'll be dressed in a little while. Silk hats?"
+
+He nodded. I returned to my own room.
+
+Less than an hour later, my toilet completed, I rejoined him, and
+together we descended, in full regalia, to the lobby.
+
+"Shall we take a taxi?" he suggested, as we passed out of the side
+entrance.
+
+"How far away is the theater?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+We asked the carriage starter. He said it was only two or three blocks.
+
+"Let's walk," I said.
+
+"I don't feel like walking," he returned.
+
+We rode.
+
+The theater was just emptying when we arrived.
+
+"I suppose we'd better let the cab go?" I said. "There'll be quite a
+while to wait while she's changing."
+
+"Better keep it," he disagreed. "Might not find another."
+
+We kept it.
+
+At the stage door there was confusion. Having completed its week in
+Washington, the play was about to move elsewhere, and furniture was
+already coming out into the narrow passage, and being piled up to be
+taken on wagons to the train. It took us some time to find the doorman,
+and it took the doorman--as it always does take doormen--a long, long
+time to depart into the unknown region of dressing rooms, with the cards
+we gave him, and a still longer time to return.
+
+"Says to wait," he grunted when he came back.
+
+Meanwhile more and more furniture had come out, menacing our shins and
+our beautifully polished hats in passing, and leaving us less room in
+which to stand.
+
+We waited.
+
+After ten minutes had passed, I remarked:
+
+"I wish we had let the taxi go."
+
+After twenty minutes I remarked:
+
+"I always feel like an idiot when I have to wait at a stage door."
+
+"I don't see why you do it, then," said he.
+
+"And I hate it worse when I'm in evening dress. I hate the way the
+actors look at us, when they come out. They think we're a couple of
+Johnnies."
+
+"And supposing they do?"
+
+I do not know how long this unsatisfactory dialogue might have continued
+had not some one come to the inside of the stage door and spoken to the
+doorman, whereat he indicated us with a gesture and said:
+
+"There they are."
+
+At this a woman emerged. The light was dim, but I saw that she wore no
+hat and had on an apron. As she came toward us we advanced.
+
+"You wait for madame?" she asked, with the accent of a Frenchwoman.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Madame receive your telegram only this afternoon," she said. "All week,
+she say, she wait to hear. This morning she have receive a telegram from
+Mr. Woods that say she mus' come to New York. She think you not coming,
+so she say 'Yes.' Then she receive your message. She don't know where to
+reach you. She can do nossing. She is desolated! She mus' fly to the
+train. She is ver' sorry. She hope that maybe the gentlemans will be in
+Baltimore nex' week? Yes?"
+
+"You mean she can't come to-night?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur. She cannot. She are fill with regret. She--"
+
+"Perhaps," said my companion, recovering, "we can drive her to the
+train?"
+
+The maid, however, did not seem to wish to discuss this point. She shook
+her head and said:
+
+"Madame ver' sorry she cannot come."
+
+"But I say," repeated my companion, "that we shall be delighted to drive
+her to the train if she wishes."
+
+"She ver' sorry," persisted the maid negatively.
+
+"Oh, I see," he said. "Very well. Please say to her that we are sorry,
+too."
+
+"Yes, monsieur." The maid retired.
+
+"I want something to eat," I remarked as we passed down the long
+furniture-piled passage leading to the street.
+
+"So do I. We have that table at Harvey's."
+
+"I know; but--"
+
+"That's a fact," he put in. "I mentioned her name. We can't very well go
+there without her."
+
+"And all dressed up like a pair of goats."
+
+"No."
+
+"There's always the hotel."
+
+"I don't want to go back there--not now."
+
+"Neither do I. Let's make it the Shoreham," I suggested as we emerged
+upon the street.
+
+"All right." Then, looking across the sidewalk, he added: "There's that
+damned taxi!"
+
+"Yes. We'll drive around there in it."
+
+"No," said he, "send it away. I don't feel like riding."
+
+We walked to the Shoreham. The cafe looked cheerful, as it always does.
+We ordered an extensive supper. It was good. There were pretty women in
+the room, but we looked at them with the austere eyes of disillusioned
+men, and talked cynically of life. I cannot recall any of the things we
+said, though I remember thinking at the time that both of us were being
+rather brilliant, in an icy way. I suppose it was mainly about women.
+That was to be expected. Women, indeed! What were women to us? Nothing!
+And pretty women, least of all. Ah, pretty women! Pretty women!... Yes,
+yes!
+
+I had ordered fruit to finish off the meal, and I remember that as the
+dish was set upon the table, it occurred to me that we had made a very
+pleasant party of it after all.
+
+"Do you know," I said, as I helped myself to some hothouse grapes, "I've
+had a bully evening. It has been fine to sit here and have a party all
+to ourselves. I'm not so sorry that she did not come!"
+
+Then I ate a grape or two.
+
+They were very handsome grapes, but they were sour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE LEGACY OF HATE
+
+    ... Immortal hate,
+    And courage never to submit or yield.
+
+    --PARADISE LOST.
+
+
+The last time I went abroad, a Briton on the boat told me a story about
+an American tourist who asked an old English gardener how they made such
+splendid lawns over there.
+
+"First we cut the grass," said the gardener, "and then we roll it. Then
+we cut it, and then we roll it."
+
+"That's just what we do," said the American.
+
+"Ah," returned the gardener, "but over here we've been doing it five
+hundred years!"
+
+In Liverpool another Englishman told me the same story. Three or four
+others told it to me in London. In Kent I heard it twice, and in Sussex
+five or six times. After going to Oxford and the Thames I lost count.
+
+In the South my companion and I had a similar experience with the story
+about that daughter of the Confederacy who declared she had always
+thought "damn Yankee" one word. In Maryland that story amused us, in
+Virginia it seemed to lose a little of its edge, and we are proud to
+this day because, in the far southern States, we managed to grin and
+bear it.
+
+Doubtless the young lady likewise thought that "you-all" was one word.
+However I refrained from suggesting that, lest it be taken for an
+attempt at retaliation. And really there was no occasion to retaliate,
+for the story was always told with good-humored appreciation not only of
+the dig at "Yankees"--collectively all Northerners are "Yankees" in the
+South--but also of the sweet absurdity of the "unreconstructed" point of
+view.
+
+Speaking broadly of the South, I believe that there survives little real
+bitterness over the Civil War and the destructive and grotesquely named
+period of "reconstruction." When a southern belle of to-day damns
+Yankees, she means by it, I judge, about as much, and about as little,
+as she does by the kisses she gives young men who bear to her the
+felicitous southern relationship of "kissing cousins."
+
+Even from old Confederate soldiers I heard no expressions of violent
+feeling. They spoke gently, handsomely and often humorously of the war,
+but never harshly. Real hate, I think, remains chiefly in one quarter:
+in the hearts of some old ladies, the wives and widows of Confederate
+soldiers--for there are but few mothers of the soldiers left. The wonder
+is that more of the old ladies of the South have not held to their
+resentment, for, as I have heard many a soldier say, women are the
+greatest sufferers from war. One veteran said to me: "My arm was
+shattered and had to be amputated at the shoulder. There was no
+anesthetic. Of course I suffered, but I never suffered as my mother did
+when she learned what I had endured."
+
+Be they haters of the North or not, the old ladies of the South are
+among its chief glories, and it should be added that another of those
+glories is the appreciation that the South has for the white-haired
+heroines who are its mothers, grandmothers, and great grandmothers, and
+the unfailing natural homage that it pays them. I do not mean by this
+merely that children and grandchildren have been taught to treat their
+elders with respect. I do not mean merely that they love them. The thing
+of which I speak is beyond family feeling, beyond the respect of youth
+for age. It is a strong, superb sentiment, something as great as it is
+subtle, which floods the South, causing it to love and reverence its old
+ladies collectively, and with a kind of national spirit, like the love
+and reverence of a proud people for its flag.
+
+Among young men, I met many who told me, with suitable pride, of the
+parts played by their fathers and uncles in the war. Of these only one
+spoke with heat. He was a Georgian, and when I mentioned to him that, in
+all my inquiries, I had heard of no cases of atrocious attacks upon
+women by soldiers--such attacks as we heard of at the time of the German
+invasion of Belgium and France--he replied with a great show of feeling
+that I had been misinformed, and that many women had been outraged by
+northern soldiers in the course of Sherman's march to the sea. At this
+my heart sank, for I had treasured the belief that, despite the
+roughness of war, unprotected women had generally been safe from the
+soldiers of North and South alike. What was my relief, then, on later
+receiving from this same young man a letter in which he declared that he
+had been mistaken, and that after many inquiries in Georgia he had been
+unable to learn of a single case of such crime. If it is indeed true
+that such things did not occur in the Civil War--and I believe
+confidently that it is true--then we have occasion, in the light of the
+European War, to revise the popular belief that of all wars civil war is
+the most horrible.
+
+The attitude of the modern South (the "New South" which, by the way, one
+Southerner described to me as meaning "northern capital and smoke")
+toward its own "unreconstructed" citizens, for all its sympathy and
+tenderness, is not without a glint of gentle humor. More than once, when
+my companion and I were received in southern homes with a cordiality
+that precluded any thought of sectional feeling, we were nevertheless
+warned by members of the younger generation--and their eyes would
+twinkle as they said it--to "look out for mother; she's
+unreconstructed." And you may be sure that when we were so warned we did
+"look out." It was well to do so! For though the mother might be a frail
+old lady, past seventy, with the face of an angel and the normal
+demeanor of a saint, we could see her bridle, as we were presented to
+her, over the thought there here were two Yankees in her
+home--Yankees!--we could see the light come flashing up into her eyes
+as they encountered ours, and could feel beneath the veil of her austere
+civility the dagger points of an eternal enmity. By dint of self-control
+on her part, and the utmost effort upon ours to be tactful, the
+presentation ceremony was got over with, and after some formal speeches,
+resembling those which, one fancies, may be exchanged by opposing
+generals under a flag of truce, we would be rescued from her, removed
+from the room, before her forbearance should be strained, by our
+presence, to the point of breaking. A baleful look would follow us as we
+withdrew, and we would retire with a better understanding of the flaming
+spirit which, through that long, bloody conflict against overwhelming
+odds in wealth, supplies, and men, sustained the South, and which at
+last enabled it to accept defeat as nobly as it had accepted earlier
+victories.... How one loves a gentle old lady who can hate like that!
+
+In this chapter, when it appeared originally, in "Collier's Weekly," I
+made the statement that I had seldom spent an hour in conversation with
+a Southerner without hearing some mention of the Civil War, and that I
+had heard other Northerners remark upon this matter, and express
+surprise at the tenacity with which the war holds its place in the
+foreground of the southern mind.
+
+This, like many another of my southern observations, brought me letters
+from readers of "Collier's," residing in the South. A great number of
+the letters thus elicited, as well as comments made upon these chapters
+by the southern press, have been of no small interest to me. On at
+least one subject (the question discussed in the next chapter, as to
+whether the expression "you-all" is ever used in the singular) my
+correspondents have convinced me that my earlier statement was an error,
+while on other subjects they have modified my views, and on still others
+made my convictions more profound. Where it has been possible, and where
+it has seemed, for one reason or another, to be worth while, I have
+endeavored, while revising the story of my southern wanderings for this
+book, to make note of the other fellow's point of view, especially in
+cases where he disagrees with me.
+
+The following, then, is from a letter written on the stationery of
+Washington and Lee University, and applies to certain statements
+contained in this chapter:
+
+     In 1813, Thomas Jefferson wrote to a newspaper publisher: "Were I
+     the publisher of a paper, instead of the usual division into
+     Foreign, Domestic, etc., I think I should distribute everything
+     under the following heads: 1. True. 2. Probable. 3. Wanting
+     confirmation. 4. Lies, and be careful in subsequent papers to
+     correct all errors in preceding ones."
+
+     Allow me to suggest that your story might, under Mr. Jefferson's
+     category, be placed under "2." Perhaps you went to see "The Birth
+     of a Nation" before you wrote it. It has been my experience that my
+     acquaintances among the F.F.V.'s have been far more interested in
+     whether Boston or Brooklyn would win the pennant than in discussing
+     the Civil War. By the young men of the South the War was forgotten
+     long ago.
+
+This letter has caused me to wonder whether the frequency with which my
+companion and I heard the Civil War discussed, may not, perhaps, have
+been due, at least in part, to our own inquiries, resulting from the
+consuming interest that we had in hearing of the War from those who
+lived where it was fought.
+
+Yet, after all, it seems to me most natural that the South should
+remember, while the North forgets. Not all Northerners were in the war.
+But all Southerners were; if a boy was big enough to carry a gun, he
+went. The North almost completely escaped invasion, and upon one
+occasion when a southern army did march through northern territory, the
+conduct of the invading troops toward the civilian population (the false
+Barbara Frietchie legend to the contrary notwithstanding) was so
+exemplary as to set a record which is probably unequaled in history.[2]
+The South, upon the other hand, was constantly under invasion, and the
+record of destruction wrought by northern armies in the valley of the
+Shenandoah, on the March to the Sea, and in some other instances, is
+writ in poverty and mourning unto this day.
+
+[2] See chapter on Colonel Taylor and General Lee.
+
+Thus, except politically, the North now feels not the least effect from
+the war. But the South knew the terrors of invasion and the pangs of
+conquest, and is only growing strong again after having been ruined--as
+instanced by the fact, which I came across the other day, that the tax
+returns from one of the southern States have, for the first time since
+the Civil War, reached the point at which they stood when it began.
+
+So, very naturally, while the War has begun to take its place in the
+northern mind along with the Revolutionary War, as something to be
+studied in school under the heading "United States History," it has not,
+in southern eyes, become altogether "book history," but is history that
+lives--in swords hanging upon the walls of many homes, in old faded
+letters, in sacks of worthless Confederate bills, in the ruins of great
+houses, in lovingly preserved gray uniforms, in southern battle fields,
+and in southern burial grounds where rows upon rows of tombstones, drawn
+up in company front, stand like gray armies forever on parade.
+
+Small wonder if, amid its countless tragic memorials, the South does not
+forget. The strange thing is that bitterness has gone so soon; that
+remembering the agonies of war and the abuses of reconstruction, the
+South does not to-day hate the North as violently as ever. If to err is
+human, the North has, in its treatment of the South, richly proved its
+humanness; and if forgiveness is divine, the South has, by the same
+token, attained something like divinity.
+
+Had the numbskull North understood these things as it should have
+understood them, there would not now be a solid Democratic South.
+
+Such rancor as remains is, I believe, strongest in the smaller towns in
+those States which suffered the greatest hardships. I know, for
+instance, of one lady, from a little city in Virginia, who refused to
+enter the Massachusetts Building at the Chicago World's Fair, and there
+are still to be found, in Virginia, ladies who do not leave their houses
+on the Fourth of July because they prefer not to look upon the Stars and
+Stripes. The Confederate flag is still, in a sense, the flag of the
+South. Southerners love it as one loves a pressed flower from a mother's
+bridal wreath. When the Eleventh Cavalry rode from Fort Oglethorpe,
+Georgia, to Winchester, Virginia, a few years since, they saw many
+Confederate flags, but only one Union flag, and that in the hands of a
+negro child. However, war had not then broken out in Europe. It would be
+different now.
+
+A Virginia lady told me of having gone to a dentist in Winchester,
+Virginia, and having taken her little niece with her. The child watched
+the dentist put a rubber dam in her aunt's mouth, and then, childlike,
+began to ask questions. She was a northern child, and she had evidently
+heard some one in the town speak of Sheridan's ride.
+
+"Auntie," she said, "was Sheridan a Northerner or a Southerner?"
+
+Owing to the rubber dam the aunt was unable to reply, but the dentist
+answered for her. "He was a drunken Yankee!" he declared vehemently.
+
+When, later, the rubber dam was removed, the aunt protested.
+
+"Doctor," she reproved, "you should not have said such a thing to my
+niece. She is from New York."
+
+"Then," returned the unrepentant dentist, "she has heard the truth for
+once!"
+
+Doubtless this man was an inheritor of hate, like the descendants of one
+uncompromisingly bitter old Southerner whose will, to be seen among the
+records of the Hanover County courthouse, in Virginia, bequeaths to his
+"children and grandchildren and their descendants throughout all future
+generations, the bitter hatred and everlasting malignity of my heart and
+soul against the Yankees, including all people north of Mason and
+Dixon's line."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+"YOU-ALL" AND OTHER SECTIONAL MISUNDERSTANDINGS
+
+    Let us make an honorable retreat.
+
+    --AS YOU LIKE IT.
+
+
+Those who write school histories and wish them adopted by southern
+schools have to handle the Civil War with gloves. Such words as "rebel"
+and "rebellion" are resented in the South, and the historian must go
+softly in discussing slavery, though he may put on the loud pedal in
+speaking of State Rights, the fact being that the South not only knows
+now, but, as evidenced by the utterances of her leading men, from
+Jefferson to Lee, knew long before the war that slavery was a great
+curse; whereas, on the question of State Rights, including the
+theoretical right to secede from the Union--this being the actual
+question over which the South took up arms--there is much to be said on
+the southern side. Colonel Robert Bingham, superintendent of the Bingham
+School, Asheville, North Carolina, has made an exhaustive study of the
+question of secession, and has set forth his findings in several
+scholarly and temperately written booklets.
+
+Colonel Bingham proves absolutely, by quotation of their own words,
+that the framers of the Constitution regarded that document as a
+_compact_ between the several States. He shows that three of the States
+(Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island) joined in this compact
+_conditionally_, with the clear purpose of resuming their independent
+sovereignty as States, should the general government use its power for
+the oppression of the States; that up to the time of the Mexican War the
+New England States contended for, not against, the right to secede; that
+John Quincy Adams went so far as to negotiate with England with a view
+to the secession of the New England States, because of Jefferson's
+Embargo Act, and moreover that up to 1840 the United States Government
+used as a textbook for cadets at West Point, Rawle's "View of the
+Constitution," a book which teaches that the Union is dissoluble. Robert
+E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, were, therefore, in all probability, given
+this book as students at West Point, and consequently, if we would have
+honest history, we must face the astonishing fact that there is evidence
+to show _that they learned the doctrine of secession at the United
+States Military Academy_.
+
+Colonel Bingham, who, it may be remarked, served with distinction in the
+Confederate Army, has very kindly supplemented, in a letter to me, his
+published statements. He writes:
+
+     Secession was legal _theoretically_, but practically the conditions
+     on which the thirteen Independent Republics, covering a little
+     strip on the Atlantic coast, came to an agreement, could not
+     possibly be applied to the great inter-Oceanic Empire into which
+     these thirteen Independent Republics had developed.
+
+     "Theory is a good horse in the stable, but may make an arrant jade
+     on the journey"--to paraphrase Goldsmith--and the only way in which
+     these irreconcilable differences could be settled was by bullet and
+     bayonet, which settled them right and finally.
+
+Once such matters as these are fully understood in the North, there will
+be left but one grave issue between North and South, that issue being
+over the question of whether or not Southerners, under any
+circumstances, use the phrase "you-all" in the singular.
+
+"Whatever you write of the South," said our hostess at a dinner party in
+Virginia, "don't make the mistake of representing any one from this paht
+of the country, white oh black, educated oh ignorant, as saying
+'you-all' meaning one person only."
+
+When I remarked mildly that it seemed to me I had often seen the phrase
+so used in books, and heard it in plays, eight or ten southern ladies
+and gentlemen at the table pounced upon me, all at once. "Yes!" they
+agreed, with a kind of polite violence, "books and plays by Yankees!"
+
+"If," one of the gentlemen explained, "you write to a friend who has a
+family, and say, according to the northern practice, 'I hope to see you
+when you come to my town,' you write something which is really
+ambiguous, since the word 'you' may refer only to your friend, or may
+refer also to his family. Our southern 'you-all' makes it explicit."
+
+I told him that in the North we also used the word "all" in connection
+with "you," though we accented the two evenly, and did not compound
+them, but he seemed to believe that "you" followed by "all" belonged
+exclusively to the South.
+
+The argument continued almost constantly throughout the meal. Not until
+coffee was served did the subject seem to be exhausted. But it was not,
+for after pouring a demi-tasse our hostess lifted a lump of sugar in the
+tongs, and looking me directly in the eye inquired: "Do you-all take
+sugah?"
+
+Undoubtedly it would have been wiser, and politer, to let this pass, but
+the discussion had filled me with curiosity, not only because of my
+interest in the localism, but also because of the amazing intensity with
+which it had been discussed.
+
+"But," I exclaimed, "you just said 'you-all,' apparently addressing me.
+Didn't you use it in the singular?"
+
+No sooner had I spoken than I was sorry. Every one looked disconcerted.
+There was silence for a moment. I was very much ashamed.
+
+"Oh, no," she said at last. "When I said 'you-all' I meant you and Mr.
+Morgan." (She pronounced it "Moh-gan," with a lovely drawl.) As she made
+this statement, she blushed, poor lady!
+
+Being to blame for her discomfiture, I could not bear to see her blush,
+and looked away, but only to catch the eye of my companion, and to read
+in its evil gleam the thought: "Of course they use it in the singular.
+But aren't you ashamed of having tripped up such a pretty creature on a
+point of dialect?"
+
+Though my interest in the southern idiom had caused me to forget about
+the sugar, my hostess had not forgotten.
+
+"Well," she said, still balancing the lump above the cup, and continuing
+gamely to put the question in the same form, and to me: "Do you-all take
+sugah, oh not?"
+
+I had no idea how my companion took his coffee, but it seemed to me that
+tardy politeness now demanded that I tacitly--or at least
+demi-tacitly--accede to the alleged plural intent of the question.
+Therefore, I replied: "Mr. Morgan takes two lumps. I don't take any,
+thanks."
+
+Late that night as we were returning to our hotel, my companion said to
+me somewhat tartly: "In case such a thing comes up again, I wish you
+would remember that sugar in my coffee makes me ill."
+
+"Well, why didn't you say so?"
+
+"Because," he returned, "I thought that you-all ought to do the
+answering. It seemed best for me-all to keep quiet and try to look
+plural under the singular conditions."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No single thing I ever wrote has brought to me so many letters, nor
+letters so uniform in sentiment (albeit widely different in expression),
+as the foregoing, seemingly unimportant tale, printed originally in
+"Collier's Weekly."
+
+Some one has pointed out that various communities have "fighting words,"
+and as the letters poured in I began to realize that in discussing
+"you-all" I had inadvertently hit upon a term which aroused the ire of
+the South--or rather, that I had aroused ire by implying that the
+expression is sometimes used in the singular--the Solid South to the
+contrary notwithstanding.
+
+Never, upon any subject, have I known people to agree as my southern
+correspondents did on this. The unanimity of their dissent was an
+impressive thing. So was the violence some of them displayed.
+
+For a time, indeed, the heat with which they wrote, obscured the issue.
+That is to say, most of them instead of explaining merely denied, and
+added comments, more or less unflattering, concerning me.
+
+Wrote a lady from Lexington, Kentucky:
+
+     I have lived in Kentucky all of my life, and have never yet heard
+     "you-all" used in the singular, not even among the negroes. My
+     grandparents and friends say they have never heard it, either.
+
+     It was needless for you to tell your Virginia hostess that
+     "you-all" (meaning you and your friend) were Yankees. The fact that
+     you criticized her language proved it. Southern people pride
+     themselves on their tact, and no doubt, at the time, she was
+     struggling to conceal a smile because of some of your own
+     localisms.
+
+Many of the letters were more severe than this one, and most of them
+made the point that I had been impolite to my hostess, and that, in all
+probability, when she looked at me and asked, "Do you-all take sugah?"
+she was playing a joke upon me, apropos the discussion which had
+preceded the question. For example, this, from a gentleman of Pell City,
+Alabama:
+
+     My wife is the residuary legatee of Virginia's language, inherited,
+     acquired and affected varieties, including the vanishing _y_;
+     annihilated _g_; long-distance _a_, and irresistible drawl.
+
+     To quell the unfortunate tumult that has arisen in our household as
+     a result of your last article in "Collier's" I am commanded to
+     advise you that the use of "you-all" in the singular is
+     absodamnlutely _non est factum_ in Virginia, save, perhaps, among
+     the hill people of the Blue Ridge.
+
+     Also, take notice that when your hostess, with apparent
+     inadvertence, used the expression in connection with sugar in your
+     demi-tasse, the subsequent blush was due to your failure to catch
+     her witticism, ignorantly mistaking it for a lapse of hers.
+
+     My wife was going to write to you herself, but I managed to divert
+     this cruel determination by promising to uphold the honor of the
+     Old Dominion. There is already too much blood being shed in the
+     world without spilling that of non-combatants as would have been
+     "you-all's" fate had she gone after you with a weapon more mighty
+     than the sword when in the hands of Mr. Wilson or an outraged
+     woman.
+
+In face of all this and much more, however, my conviction was unshaken.
+I talked it over with my companion. He remembered the episode of the
+dinner table exactly as I did. Moreover, I still had my notes, made in
+the hotel that night. The lady looked at me. My companion was several
+places removed from her at the other side of the table. How could she
+have meant to include him? And how could she have expected me to say how
+he took his after-dinner coffee?
+
+At last, to reassure myself, I wrote to the wisest, cleverest, most
+trustworthy lady in the South, and asked her what it all meant.
+
+"Well," she wrote back from Atlanta, "I will tell you, but I am not sure
+that you will understand me. The answer is: _She did, but she didn't_.
+She looked at and spoke to you and, of course, by all rules of logic she
+could not have been intending to make you Morg's keeper in the matter of
+coffee dressing. _But_ she never would have said 'you-all' if Morg had
+not been in her mind as joined with you. The response, according to her
+thought-connotation, would have been from you _and_ from him."
+
+This was disconcerting. So was a letter, received in the same mail, from
+a gentleman in Charleston:
+
+     It is as plain as the nose on your face that you are not yet
+     convinced that we in the South _never_ use "you-all" with reference
+     to one person. The case you mentioned proves nothing at all. The
+     very fact that there were _two_ strangers present justified the use
+     of the expression; we continually use the expression in that way,
+     and in such cases we expect an answer from _both_ persons so
+     addressed. To illustrate: just a few days ago I "carried" two girls
+     into an "ice-cream parlor." After we were seated, I looked at the
+     one nearest me, and said: "Well, what will you-all have?"
+
+     Physically we are so constructed that unless a person is cross-eyed
+     it is impossible to look at two persons at once; the mere fact that
+     I looked at the one nearest me did not mean that I was not
+     addressing both. I expected an answer from both, and I got it, too
+     (as is generally the case where ice-cream is concerned).
+
+     The subject is one to which I have devoted the most careful
+     attention for many years. I have been so interested in it that
+     almost unconsciously, whenever I myself use the expression
+     "you-all," or hear any one else use it, I note whether it is
+     intended to refer to one or to more than one person. I have heard
+     thousands of persons, white, black and indifferent, use the
+     expression, and the only ones I have ever heard use it incorrectly
+     are what we might call "professional Southerners." For instance,
+     last week I went to a vaudeville show, and part of the performance
+     was given by two "black-face" comedians, calling themselves "The
+     Georgia Blossoms." Their dialect was excellent, with the single
+     exception that one of them _twice_ used the expression "you-all"
+     where it could not _possibly_ have meant more than one person. And
+     I no sooner heard it than I said to myself: "There is _one_ blossom
+     that never bloomed in Georgia!"
+
+     Another instance is the following: I was once approached by a
+     beggar in Atlanta, who saluted me thus: "Say, mister, can't you-all
+     give me a nickel?" Had I been accompanied it would have been all
+     right, but I was alone, and there was no other person near me
+     except the hobo. Did I give him the nickel? I should say not! I
+     said to myself: "He is a damned Yankee trying to pass himself off
+     for a Southerner."
+
+Horrid glimmerings began to filter dimly through. And yet--
+
+Next day came a letter calling my attention to an article, written years
+ago by Joel Chandler Harris and Thomas Nelson Page, jointly, in which
+they plead with northern writers not to misuse the disputed expression
+by applying it in the singular.
+
+That was another shock. I felt conviction tottering.... But she _did_
+look at me.... She _didn't_ expect an answer from my companion....
+
+And then behold! a missive from Mr. H.E. Jones, a member--and a worthy
+one--of the Tallapoosa County Board of Education, and a resident of
+Dadeville, Alabama. Mr. Jones' educational activities reach far beyond
+Tallapoosa County, and far beyond the confines of his State, for he has
+educated me. He has made me see the light.
+
+"I want to straighten you out," he wrote, kindly. "We never use
+'you-all' in the singular. Not even the most ignorant do so. But, as you
+know," (Ah, that was mercifully said!) "there are some peculiar, almost
+unexplainable, shades of meaning in local idioms of speech, which are
+not easy for a stranger to understand. I have a friend who was reared in
+Milwaukee and is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, who tells me
+he would have argued the 'you-all' point with all comers for some years
+following his taking up his residence here, but he is at this time as
+ready as I to deny the allegation and 'chaw the alligator.'
+
+"When your young lady, in Virginia, asked, 'Do you-all take sugar?' she
+mentally included Mr. Morgan, and perhaps all other Yankees. I would ask
+my local grocer, 'Will you-all sell me some sugar this morning?' meaning
+his establishment, collectively, although I addressed him personally;
+but I would _not_ ask my only servant, 'Have you-all milked the cow?'"
+
+And that is the exact truth.
+
+I was absolutely wrong. And though, having printed the ghastly falsehood
+in my original article, I can hardly hope now for absolution from the
+outraged South, I can at least retract, as I hereby do, and can,
+moreover, thank Mr. H.E. Jones, of Tallapoosa County, Alabama, for
+having saved me from a double sin; for had he not given me the simple
+illustration of the grocery store, I might have repeated, now, my
+earlier misstatement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+IDIOMS AND ARISTOCRACY
+
+
+Southerners have told me that they can tell from what part of the South
+a person comes, by his speech, just as an Easterner can distinguish, by
+the same means a New Englander, a New Yorker, a Middle-Westerner, and a
+Brooklynite. I cannot pretend to have become an authority upon southern
+dialect, but it is obvious to me that the speech of New Orleans is
+unlike that of Charleston, and that of Charleston unlike that of
+Virginia.
+
+The chief characteristic of the Virginian dialect is the famous and
+fascinating localism which Professor C. Alphonso Smith has called the
+"vanishing _y_"--a _y_ sound which causes words like "car" and "garden"
+to be pronounced "cyar" and "gyarden"--or, as Professor Smith prefers to
+indicate it: "C^{y}ar" and "g^{y}arden." I am told that in years gone by
+the "vanishing _y_" was common to all Virginians, but though it is still
+common enough among members of the old generation, and is used also by
+some young people--particularly, I fancy, young ladies, who realize its
+fetching quality--there can be no doubt that it is, in both senses,
+vanishing, and that not half the Virginians of the present day
+pronounce "cigar" as "segyar," "carpet" as "cya'pet," and "Carter," as
+"Cyahtah."
+
+In Virginia and many other parts of the South one hears such words as
+"aunt" correctly pronounced with the broad _a_, and such words as "tube"
+and "new" properly given the full _u_ sound (instead of "toobe," and
+"noo," as in some parts of the North); but, on the other hand, while the
+South gives the short _o_ sound in such words as "log" and "fog," it
+invariably calls a dog a "dawg." "Your" is often pronounced "yore,"
+"sure" as "shore," and, not infrequently, "to" as "toe."
+
+The South also uses the word "carry" in a way that strikes Northerners
+as strange. If a Southerner offers to "carry" you to the station, or
+over his plantation, he does not signify that he intends to transport
+you by means of physical strength, but that he will escort you. If he
+"carries you to the run" you will find that the "run" is what
+Northerners call a creek; if to the "branch," or "dreen," that is what
+we call a brook.
+
+This use of the word "carry," far from being a corruption, is pure old
+English, and is used in the Bible, and by Smollett, though it is amusing
+to note that the "Georgia Gazetteer" for 1837, mentions as a lamentable
+provincialism such an application of the word as "to _carry_ (instead of
+_lead_) a horse to water." If the "Gazetteer" were indeed correct in
+this, then the Book of Genesis contains an American provincialism.
+
+The customary use of the word in the North, as "to _carry_ a cane, or a
+bag," is equally but no more correct than the southern usage. I am
+informed by Mr. W.T. Hall, Editor of the Dothan (Alabama) "Eagle," that
+the word used in his part of the country, as signifying "to bear on the
+back, or shoulder," is "tote." "Tote" is a word not altogether unknown
+in the North, and it has recently found its way into some dictionaries,
+though the old "Georgia Gazetteer" disapproved of it. Even this word has
+some excuse for being, in that it is a deformed member of a good family,
+having come from the Latin, _tollit_, been transformed into the early
+English "tolt," and thus into what I believe to be a purely American
+word.
+
+Other expressions which struck me as being characteristic of the South
+are "stop by," as for instance, "I will stop by for you," meaning, "I
+will call for you in passing"; "don't guess," as "I don't guess I'll
+come"; and "Yes indeedy!" which seems to be a kind of emphatic "Yes
+indeed."
+
+"As I look back over the old South," said one white-haired Virginian,
+"there were two things it was above. One was accounts and the other was
+grammar. Tradesmen in prosperous neighborhoods were always in distress
+because of the long credits, though gambling debts were, of course,
+always punctiliously paid. As to the English spoken in old Virginia--and
+indeed in the whole South--there is absolutely no doubt that its
+softness and its peculiarities in pronunciation are due to the influence
+of the negro voice and speech on the white race. Some of the young
+people seem to wish to dispute this, but we older ones used to take the
+view--half humorously, of course--that if a Southerner spoke perfect
+English, it showed he wasn't a gentleman; "that he hadn't been raised
+with niggers around him.""
+
+"Oh, you shouldn't tell him that!" broke in a lady who was present.
+
+"Why not?" demanded the old gentleman.
+
+"He'll print it!" she said.
+
+"Well," he answered, "ain't it true? What's the harm in it?"
+
+"There!" she exclaimed. "You said '_ain't_.' He'll print that Virginians
+say 'ain't'!"
+
+"Well," he answered, "I reckon we do, don't we?"
+
+She laughed and gave up. "I remember," she told me, "the very spot on
+the turnpike going out to Ripon, where I made up my mind to break myself
+of saying 'ain't.' But I want to tell you that we are talking much
+better English than we used to. Even the negroes are. You don't hear
+many white people saying 'gwine' for 'going' any more, for instance, and
+the young people don't say 'set' for 'sit' and 'git' for 'get,' as their
+fathers did."
+
+"I've heard folks say, though," put in the old gentleman, "that they'd
+ruther speak like a Virginian than speak correctly. The old talk was
+pretty nice, after all. I don't hold to all these new improvements.
+They've been going too far in this Commonwealth."
+
+"What have they been doing?" I asked.
+
+"Doing!" he returned, "Why, they're gradually taking the cuspidors out
+of the church pews!"
+
+Before the question of dialect is dropped, it should be said that those
+who do not believe the soft southern pronunciation is derived from
+negroes, can make out an interesting case. If, they ask, the negro has
+corrupted the English of the South, why is it that he has not also
+corrupted the language of the West Indies--British and French? French
+negroes speak like French persons of white blood, and British West
+Indian negroes often speak the cockney dialect, without a trace of
+"nigger." Moreover, it is pointed out that in southern countries, the
+world over, there is a tendency to soften the harsh sounds of language,
+to elide, and drop out consonants. The Andalusians speak a Spanish
+comparable in many of its peculiarities with the English of our own
+South, and the south-Italians exhibit similar dialectic traits. Nor do
+the parallels between the north and south of Spain and Italy, and of the
+United States, end there. The north-Italians and north-Spaniards are the
+"Yankees" of their respective countries--the shrewd, cold business
+people--whereas the south-Italians and south-Spaniards are more poetic,
+more dashing, more temperamental. The merchants are of the north of
+Spain, but the dancers and bull-fighters are Andalusians. And just as
+our Americans of the North admire the lazy dialect of the South, so the
+north-Spaniards admire the dialect of Andalusia, and even imitate it
+because they think it has a fashionable sound--quite as British
+fashionables cultivate the habit of dropping final _g_'s, as in
+"huntin'" for "hunting."
+
+Virginia, more than any other State I know of, feels its entity as a
+State. If you meet a Virginian traveling outside his State, and ask
+where he is from, he will not mention the name of the city in which he
+resides, but will reply: "I'm from Va'ginia." If, on the other hand, you
+are in Virginia, and ask him the same question, he will proudly reply:
+"I'm from Fauquier," or "I'm from Westmoreland," or whatever the name of
+his county may be. The chances are, also, that his trunks and traveling
+bags will be marked with his initials, followed not by the name of his
+town, but by the abbreviation, "Va."
+
+I was told of one old unreconstructed Virginian who had to go to Boston
+on business. The gentleman he went to see there was exceedingly polite
+to him, asking him to his house, putting him up at his club, and showing
+him innumerable courtesies. The old Confederate, writing to his wife,
+indicated his amazement: "Although he is not a Virginian," he declared,
+"I must confess that he lives like a gentleman."
+
+The name of his Bostonian acquaintance was John Quincy Adams.
+
+I heard this story from a northern lady who has a country place near a
+small town in Virginia. In the North this lady's family is far from
+being unknown, but in Virginia, she assured me, all persons originating
+outside the State are looked upon as vague beings without "family."
+
+"They seem to think," she said, "that Northerners have no parents--that
+they are made chemically."
+
+This does not imply, however, that well-bred Northerners are excluded
+from society. Even if they are well off they may get into society; for
+though money does not count in one's favor in such a town, it does not
+count against one. The social requirement of the place is simple. If
+people are "nice people," that is enough.
+
+Of course, however, it is one thing to be admitted to Virginia society
+and another to belong to it by right. A case in point is that of a lady
+visiting in a Virginia city who, while calling at the house of some
+"F.F.V's," was asked by a little girl, the daughter of the house, where
+she had been born.
+
+"Mawtha," said the little girl's mother, after the caller had departed,
+"you must not ask people where they were bo'n. If they were bo'n in
+Va'ginia they will tell you so without asking, and if they weren't bo'n
+in Va'ginia it's very embarrassing."
+
+Some of the old families of the inner circle are in a tragic state of
+decay, owing to inbreeding; others, in a more wholesome physical and
+mental condition, are perpetually wrestling with the heritage of poverty
+left over from the War--"too proud to whitewash and too poor to
+paint"--clinging desperately to the old acres, and to the old houses
+which are like beautiful, tired ancestral ghosts.
+
+Until a few years ago the one resource of Virginian gentlewomen in need
+of funds was to take boarders, but more lately the daughters of
+distinguished but poverty-stricken families have found that they may
+work in offices. Thus, in the town of which I speak, several ladies who
+are very much "in society," support themselves by entertaining "paying
+guests," while others are stenographers. The former, I was told, by the
+way, make it a practice to avoid first-hand business contacts with their
+guests by sending them their bills through the mail, and requiring that
+response be made by means of the same impersonal channel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE CONFEDERATE CAPITAL
+
+     The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each
+     and every town or city.
+
+     --OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
+
+
+Richmond is the Boston of Virginia; Norfolk its New York. The comparison
+does not, of course, hold in all particulars, Richmond being, for
+instance, larger than Norfolk, and not a seaport. Yet, on the other
+hand, Boston manages, more than any seaport that I know of, to conceal
+from the visitor the signs of its maritime life; wherefore Richmond
+looks about as much like a port as does the familiar part of Boston.
+
+The houses on the principal residence streets of Richmond are not built
+in such close ranks as Boston houses; they have more elbow-room; numbers
+of them have yards and gardens; and there is not about Richmond houses
+the Bostonian insistence upon red brick; nevertheless many houses of
+both cities give off the same suggestion of having long been lived in by
+the descendants of their builders. So, too, though the Capitol at
+Richmond has little architectural resemblance to Boston's gold-domed
+State House--the former having been copied by Thomas Jefferson from the
+Maison Carree at Nimes, and being a better building than the
+Massachusetts State House, and better placed--the two do, nevertheless,
+suggest each other in their gray granite solidity.
+
+It is perhaps in the quality of solidity--architectural, commercial,
+social, even spiritual--that Richmond and Boston are most alike.
+Substantialness, conservatism, tradition, and prosperity rest like gray
+mantles over both.
+
+Broad Street in Richmond is two or three times as wide as Granby Street,
+Norfolk's chief shopping street, and for this reason, doubtless, its
+traffic seems less, though I believe it is in fact greater. A fine
+street to look upon at night, with its long, even rows of clustered
+boulevard lights, and its bright windows, Broad Street in the daytime is
+a disappointment, because, for all its fine spaciousness, it lacks good
+buildings. I must confess, too, that I was disappointed in the
+appearance of the women in the shopping crowds on Broad Street; for, as
+every one knows, Richmond has been famous for its beauties. In vain I
+looked for young women fitted to inherit the debutante mantles of such
+nationally celebrated beauties as Miss Irene Langhorne (Mrs. Charles
+Dana Gibson), Miss May Handy (Mrs. James Brown Potter), Miss Lizzie
+Bridges (Mrs. Hobson), and Miss Sally Bruce (Mrs. Arthur B. Kinsolving).
+
+In the ten years between 1900 and 1910 the population of Richmond
+increased 50 per cent. Her population by the last census was about
+130,000, of which a third is colored. Norfolk's population is about
+70,000, with approximately the same percentage of negroes. In both
+cities there is much new building--offices downtown, and pretty new
+brick homes in outlying suburban tracts. Likewise, in both, the charming
+signs of other days are here and there to be seen.
+
+Richmond is again like its ancient enemy, Boston, in the wealth of its
+historical associations, and I know of no city which gives the
+respectful heed to its own history that Richmond does, and no State
+which in this matter equals the State of Virginia. If Richmond was the
+center of the South during the Civil War, Capitol Square was, as it is
+to-day, the center of that center. In this square, in the shadow of
+Jefferson's beautiful classic capitol building, which has the glowing
+gray tone of one of those water colors done on tinted paper by Jules
+Guerin, Confederate soldiers were mustered into service under Lee and
+Jackson. Within the old building the Confederate Congress met, Aaron
+Burr was tried for treason, and George Washington saw, in its present
+position, his own statue by Houdon. Across the way from the square,
+where the post office now stands, was the Treasury Building of the
+Confederate States, and there Jefferson Davis appeared seven times, to
+be tried for treason, only to have his case postponed by the Federal
+Government, and finally dismissed. East of the square is the State
+Library, containing a remarkable collection of portraits and documents,
+including likenesses of all governors of Virginia from John Smith to
+Tyler, a portrait of Pocahontas, and the bail bond of Jefferson Davis,
+signed by Horace Greeley, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Gerrit Smith, and
+seventeen other distinguished men of the day. To the west of the square
+is old St. Paul's Church, with the pews of Lee and Davis. It was while
+attending service in this church, on Sunday, April 2, 1865, that Davis
+received Lee's telegram from Petersburg, saying that Richmond must be
+evacuated. A block or two west of the church, in East Franklin Street,
+is a former residence of Lee. It was given by the late Mrs. Joseph Bryan
+and her sisters to the Virginia Historical Society, and is now,
+appropriately enough, the home of that organization.
+
+In the old drawing room, now the office of the Historical Society, I
+found Mr. William G. Stanard, the corresponding secretary, and from him
+heard something of Lee's life there immediately after the War.
+
+By the Northerners in Richmond at that time, including the Federal
+troops stationed in the city, Lee was of course respected and admired,
+while by the whole South he was, and is to-day, adored. As for his own
+ex-soldiers, they could not see him without emotion, and because of the
+demonstrations which invariably attended his appearance on the Richmond
+streets, he went out but little, passing much time upon the back porch
+of the house. Here most of the familiar Brady photographs of him were
+taken. Brady sent a young photographer to Richmond to get the
+photographs. Lee was at first disposed to refuse to be taken, but his
+family persuaded him to submit, on the ground that if there were any
+impertinence in the request it was not the fault of the young man, and
+that the latter might lose his position if he failed to obtain the
+desired pictures.
+
+Finding the continued attention of the crowds too much for him, the
+general left Richmond after two months, removing to a small house in
+Cumberland County, on the James, and it was there that he was residing
+when called to the presidency of Washington College--now Washington and
+Lee University--at Lexington, Virginia. As is well known, he accepted
+this offer, built up the institution, remained its president until the
+time of his death, and now lies buried in the university chapel.
+
+To Mr. Stanard I am also indebted for the following information
+regarding John Smith and Pocahontas:
+
+About a mile below Richmond, in what is now the brickyard region, there
+used to stand the residence of the Mayo family, a place known as
+Powhatan. This place has long been pointed out as the scene of the
+saving of Smith by the Indian girl, but late research indicates that,
+though Smith did come up the James to the present site of Richmond, his
+capture by the Indians did not occur here, but in the vicinity of
+Jamestown. Then Indians took him first to one of their villages on York
+River, near the present site of West Point, Virginia, and thence to a
+place, on the same stream, in the county of Gloucester, where the tribal
+chief resided. I was under the impression that this worthy's name was
+Powhatan, but Mr. Stanard declared "powhatan" was not a proper name,
+but an Indian word meaning "chief."
+
+The Virginia Historical Society is satisfied that Smith was rescued by
+Pocahontas at a point about nine miles from Williamsburg on the west
+side of York River, but there are historians who contend that the whole
+story of the rescue is a fiction. One of these is Dr. Albert Bushnell
+Hart, of Harvard, who lists Smith among "Historical Liars." Virginians,
+who regard Smith as one of their proudest historical possessions, are
+somewhat disposed to resent this view, but it appears to me that there
+is at least some ground for it. Matthew Page Andrews, another historian,
+himself a Virginian, points out that many of our ideas of the Jamestown
+colony have been obtained from Smith's history of the settlement, which
+he wrote in England, some years after leaving Virginia.
+
+"From these accounts," says Mr. Andrews, "we get an unfavorable
+impression of Smith's associates in the colony and of the management of
+the men composing the popular or people's party in the London Company.
+As we now know that this party in the London Company was composed of
+very able and patriotic Englishmen, we are inclined to think that
+Captain Smith not only overrated his achievement, but was very unjust to
+his fellow-colonists and the Company."
+
+The story of the rescue of Smith by Pocahontas, with the strong
+implication that the Indian girl was in love with him, comes to us from
+Smith himself. We know that when Pocahontas was nineteen years of age
+(seven years after the Smith rescue is said to have occurred), she
+married John Rolfe--the first Englishman to begin the cultivation of the
+tobacco plant. We know that she was taken to England, that she was
+welcomed at court as a princess, that she had a son born in England, and
+that she herself died there in 1617. We know also that her son, Thomas
+Rolfe, settled in Virginia, and that through him a number of Virginians
+trace descent from Pocahontas. (Mr. Andrews points out that in 1915 one
+of these descendants became the wife of the President of the United
+States.)
+
+But we know also that John Smith, brave and daring though he was, was
+not above twisting and embroidering a tale to his own glorification.
+While, therefore, it is too much to affirm that his rescue story is
+false, it is well to remember that Pocahontas was but twelve years old
+when the rescue is said to have occurred, and that Smith waited until
+after she had become famous, and had died, to promulgate his romantic
+story.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Immediately to the north of Capitol Square stands the City Hall, an ugly
+building, in the cellar of which is the Police Court presided over by
+the celebrated and highly entertaining Judge Crutchfield, otherwise
+known as "One John" and "the Cadi"--of whom more presently. A few blocks
+beyond the City Hall, in the old mansion at the corner of East Clay and
+Twelfth Streets, which was the "White House of the Confederacy," the
+official residence of Jefferson Davis during the war, is the
+Confederate Museum--one of the most fascinating museums I ever visited.
+
+Not the least part of the charm of this museum is the fact that it is
+not of great size, and that one may consequently visit it without
+fatigue; but the chief fascination of the place is the dramatic
+personalness of its exhibits. To me there is always something peculiarly
+engaging about intimate relics of historic figures, and it is of such
+relics that the greater part of the collection of the Confederate Museum
+consists. In one show case, for example, are the saddle and bridle of
+General Lee, and the uniform he wore when he surrendered. The effects of
+General Joseph E. Johnston are shown in another case, and in still
+another those of the picturesque J.E.B. Stuart, who, as here one may
+see, loved the little touch of individuality and dash which came of
+wearing a feather in a campaign hat. So also one learns something of
+Stonewall Jackson when one sees in the cabinet, along with his old blue
+hat and other possessions, the gold spurs which were given to him by the
+ladies of Baltimore, beside the steel spurs that he _wore_. All
+Jackson's personal effects were very simple.
+
+One of the most striking relics in the museum is the Great Seal of the
+Confederacy, which was only returned to Richmond within the last few
+years, after having been lost track of for nearly half a century--a
+strange chapter in the annals of the Civil War.
+
+Records in the Library of Congress, including the Confederate state
+papers purchased by the United States Government in 1872, of William J.
+Bromwell, formerly a clerk in the Confederate State Department, brought
+to light, a few years ago, the fact that the seal was in the possession
+of Rear Admiral Thomas O. Selfridge, U.S.N., retired.
+
+At the time of the evacuation of Richmond, Bromwell carried off a number
+of the Confederate state papers, and Mrs. Bromwell took charge of the
+seal, transporting it through the lines in her bustle. When later,
+through Colonel John T. Pickett, Bromwell sold the papers to the
+Government, Rear Admiral Selfridge--then a captain--was the officer
+assigned to go to Hamilton, Ontario, to inventory and receive them. It
+is said that Pickett gave the seal to Selfridge at about this time,
+first, however, having a duplicate made. This duplicate, or a copy of
+it, was later offered for sale as the original, but was found to be
+spurious. When examination of the Pickett papers by Gaillard Hunt, of
+the Library of Congress, finally traced the original seal to Rear
+Admiral Selfridge, an effort was made to buy it back. In 1912 three
+Richmond gentlemen, Messrs. Eppa Hunton, Jr., William H. White and
+Thomas P. Bryan, purchased the Seal of the admiral for three thousand
+dollars, subject to proof of its authenticity. Mr. St. George Bryan and
+Mr. William Gray, of Richmond, then took the seal to London, where the
+makers are still well-known engravers. Here, by means of hall marks, the
+identification was made complete.
+
+No less appealing than the relics of the deceased government and great
+generals who are gone, are some of the humbler items connected with the
+deaths of privates in the ranks of North and South alike. One of the
+most pathetic was a small daguerreotype of a beautiful young girl. On a
+card, beside the picture, is the story of it, so far as that story is
+ever likely to be known:
+
+     Picture found on the dead body of an unidentified Federal soldier.
+
+     Presented by C.C. Calvert, Upperville, Va.
+
+"We have always hoped," said Miss Susan B. Harrison, house regent of the
+museum, "that some day some one would come in and recognize this little
+picture, and that it would find its way back to those who ought to have
+it, and who might by this means at last discover what became of the
+soldier who was dear to them."
+
+An even more tragic souvenir is a letter addressed to A.V. Montgomery,
+Camden, Madison County, Mississippi, in which a mortally wounded soldier
+of Confederacy bids a last good-by to his father. The letter was
+originally inclosed with one from Lieutenant Ethelbert Fairfax, C.S.A.,
+informing the father that his son passed away soon after he had written.
+The text, pitiful and heroic as it is, can give but the faintest idea of
+the original, with its feeble, laborious writing, and the dark-brown
+spots dappling the three sheets of paper where blood from the boy's
+mangled shoulder dripped upon them while he wrote:
+
+            Spotsylvania County, Va.
+                       May 10, 1864.
+
+     Dear Father:
+
+     This is my last letter to you. I went into battle this evening as
+     courier for Gen'l Heth. I have been struck by a piece of shell and
+     my right shoulder is horribly mangled & I know death is inevitable.
+     I am very weak but I write to you because I know you would be
+     delighted to read a word from your dying son. I know death is near,
+     that I will die far from home and friends of my early youth, but I
+     have friends here, too, who are kind to me. My Friend Fairfax will
+     write you at my request and give you the particulars of my death.
+     My grave will be marked so that you may visit it if you desire to
+     do so, but it is optionary with you whether you let my remains rest
+     here or in Mississippi. I would like to rest in the graveyard with
+     my dear mother and brothers, but it is a matter of minor
+     importance. Let us all try to reunite in heaven. I pray my God to
+     forgive my sins & I feel that his promises are true, that he will
+     forgive me and save me. Give my love to all my friends. My strength
+     fails me. My horse & my equipments will be left for you. Again a
+     long farewell to you. May we meet in heaven.
+
+       Your Dying Son,
+            J.R. Montgomery.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+RANDOM RICHMOND NOTES
+
+
+Richmond may again be likened to Boston as a literary center. In an
+article published some years ago in "Book News" Alice M. Tyler refers to
+Colonel William Byrd, who founded Richmond in 1733, as the sprightliest
+and most genial native American writer before Franklin. In the time of
+Chief Justice Marshall, Richmond had a considerable group of novelists,
+historians and essayists, but the great literary name connected with the
+place is that of Edgar Allan Poe, who spent much of his boyhood in the
+city and later edited the "Southern Literary Messenger." Matthew
+Fontaine Maury, the great scientist, mentioned in an earlier chapter,
+was, at another time, editor of the same periodical, as was also John
+Reuben Thompson, "Poet of the Confederacy," who wrote, among other
+poems, "Music in Camp," and who translated Gustave Nadaud's familiar
+poem, "Carcassonne."
+
+Thomas Nelson Page made his home in Richmond for thirty years; Amelie
+Rives was born there and still maintains her residence in Albemarle
+County, Virginia, while among other writers of the present time
+connected with the city either by birth or long association are, Henry
+Sydnor Harrison, Mary Johnston, Ellen Glasgow, Marion Harland, Kate
+Langley Bosher, James Branch Cabell, Edward Peple, dramatist, J.H.
+Whitty, biographer of Poe, and Colonel W. Gordon McCabe, soldier,
+historian, essayist, and local character--a gentleman upon whose
+shoulders such imported expressions as _litterateur_, _bon viveur_, and
+_raconteur_ alight as naturally as doves on friendly shoulders.
+
+Colonel McCabe is a link between present-day Richmond and the traditions
+and associations of England. He was the friend of Lord Roberts, he
+introduced Lord Tennyson to Bull Durham tobacco, and, as is fitting
+under the circumstances, he speaks and writes of a hotel as "_an_
+hotel."
+
+Henry Sydnor Harrison did his first writing as book reviewer on the
+Richmond "Times-Dispatch," of which paper he later became paragrapher
+and daily poet, and still later editor in chief. It is commonly reported
+in Richmond that the characters in his novel "Queed," the scenes of
+which are laid in Richmond, were "drawn from life." I asked Mr. Harrison
+about this.
+
+"When the book appeared," he said, "I was much embarrassed by the
+disposition of Richmond people--human and natural, I suppose, when you
+'know the author'--to identify all the imaginary persons with various
+local characters. Some characteristics of the political boss in my story
+were in a degree suggested by a local celebrity; Stewart Bryan is
+indicated, in passing, as Stewart Byrd; and the bare bones of a historic
+case, altered at will, were employed in another connection. But I think
+I am stating the literal truth when I say that no figure in the book is
+borrowed from life."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The recent residential development in Richmond has been to the west of
+the city in the neighborhood of Monument Avenue, a fine double drive,
+with a parked center, lined with substantial new homes, and having at
+intervals monuments to southern heroes: Lee, Davis, and J.E.B. Stuart.
+
+The parks are on the outskirts of the city and, as in most other cities,
+it is in these outlying regions that new homes are springing up, thanks
+in no small degree to the automobile. The Country Club of Virginia is
+out to the west of the town, in what is known as Westhampton, and is one
+of the most charming clubs of its kind in the South or, indeed, in the
+country.
+
+Richmond has one of the most beautiful and several of the most curious
+cemeteries I have ever seen. Hollywood Cemetery stands upon rolling
+bluffs overlooking the James, and under its majestic trees are the tombs
+of many famous men, including James Monroe, John Tyler, Jefferson Davis
+and Fitzhugh Lee. An inscription on the Davis monument, which was
+erected by the widow and daughter of the President of the Confederacy,
+describes him as "an American soldier and defender of the Constitution."
+At the back of the pedestal is another inscription:
+
+  PRESIDENT OF THE CONFEDERATE
+  STATES OF AMERICA 1861-1865.
+FAITHFUL TO ALL TRUSTS, A MARTYR
+         TO PRINCIPLE.
+   HE LIVED AND DIED THE MOST
+CONSISTENT OF AMERICAN SOLDIERS
+         AND STATESMEN.
+
+It occasionally happens that, instead of having monuments because in
+life they were famous, men are made famous after death, by the
+inscriptions placed upon their tombstones. Such is the case with James
+E. Valentine, a locomotive engineer killed in a collision many years
+ago. The Valentine monument in Hollywood Cemetery is almost as well
+known as the monuments erected in memory of the great, the reason for
+this being embodied in the following verse adorning the stone:
+
+    Until the brakes are turned on Time,
+    Life's throttle valve shut down,
+    He wakes to pilot in the crew
+    That wear the martyr's crown.
+
+    On schedule time on upper grade
+    Along the homeward section,
+    He lands his train at God's roundhouse
+    The morn of resurrection.
+
+    His time all full, no wages docked;
+    His name on God's pay roll.
+    And transportation through to Heaven,
+    A free pass for his soul.
+
+In the burial ground of old St. John's Church--the building in which
+Patrick Henry delivered his "Give me Liberty or give me Death"
+oration--are a number of old gravestones bearing strange inscriptions
+which appeal to the imagination, and also, alas! elicit sad thoughts
+concerning those who wrote the old-time gravestone doggerel.
+
+The custodian of the church is glad to indicate the interesting stones,
+but is much more taken up with his own gift of oratory, as displayed
+when, on getting visitors inside the church, he takes his place on the
+spot where Patrick Henry stood, and delivers the famous oration. Having
+done this to us--or perhaps it would seem more generous to say _for_
+us--the caretaker told us that many persons who had heard him had
+declared that Patrick Henry himself would have had a hard time doing it
+better. But when he threatened, for contrast, to deliver the oration as
+a less gifted elocutionist might speak it, my companion, in whom I had
+already observed signs of restlessness, interrupted with the statement
+that we were late for an engagement, and fled from the place, followed
+by me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In certain parts of the city, often at a considerable distance from the
+warehouse and factory sections, one may occasionally catch upon the
+breeze the faint, spicy fragrance of tobacco; and should one trace these
+pleasant scents to their sources, one would come to a region of
+factories in which rich brown leaves are transformed into pipe tobacco,
+plug tobacco, or cigarettes. In the simpler processes of this work,
+negro men and women are employed, and these with their natural
+picturesqueness of pose and costume, and their singing, in the setting
+of an old shadowy loft, make a tobacco factory a fascinating place. In
+one loft you will see negro men and boys handling the tobacco leaves
+with pitchforks, much as farm hands handle hay; in another, negro women
+squatting upon boxes, stemming the leaves, or "pulling up ends," their
+black faces blending mysteriously with the dark shadows of beams and
+rafters. Here the air is laden not only with the sweet tobacco smell,
+mixed with a faint scent of licorice and of fruit, but is freighted also
+with a fine brown dust which is revealed where bars of sunlight strike
+in through the windows, and which seems, as it shifts and sparkles, to
+be a visible expression of the smell.
+
+In the busy season "street niggers" are generally used for stemming,
+which is, perhaps, the leading part of the tobacco industry in Richmond,
+and these "street niggers," a wild yet childlike lot, who lead a
+hand-to-mouth existence all year round, bring to the tobacco trade a
+wealth of semi-barbaric color. To give us an idea of the character of a
+Richmond "street nigger" the gentleman who took my companion and me
+through the factory told us of having wanted a piece of light work done,
+and having asked one of these negroes: "Want to earn a quarter?"
+
+To which the latter replied without moving from his comfortable place
+beside a sun-baked brick wall: "No, boss, Ah _got_ a quahtah."
+
+The singing of the negroes is a great feature of the stemming department
+in a tobacco factory. Some of the singers become locally famous; also, I
+was told by the superintendent, they become independent, and for that
+reason have frequently to be dismissed. The wonderful part of this
+singing, aside from the fascinating harmonies made by the sweet,
+untrained negro voices, is the utter lack of prearrangement that there
+is about it. Now there will be silence in the loft; then there will come
+a strange, half-savage cry from some dark corner, musical, yet seemingly
+meaningless; soon a faint humming will begin, and will be taken up by
+men and women all over the loft; the humming will swell into a chant to
+which the workers rock as their black hands travel swiftly among the
+brown leaves; then, presently, it will die away, and there will be
+silence until they are again moved to song.
+
+From shadowy room to shadowy room, past great dark bins filled with the
+leaves, past big black steaming vats, oozing sweet-smelling substances,
+past moist fragrant barrels, always among the almost spectral forms of
+negroes, treading out leaves with bare feet, working over great wicker
+baskets stained to tobacco color, piling up wooden frames, or operating
+the powerful hydraulic presses which convert the soft tobacco into plugs
+of concrete hardness--so one goes on through the factory. The browns and
+blacks of these interiors are the browns and blacks of etchings; the
+color of the leaves, the old dark timbers, the black faces and hands,
+and the ragged clothing, combined with the humming of negro voices, the
+tobacco fragrance, and the golden dust upon the air, make an
+indescribably complete harmony of shade, sound, and scent.
+
+The department in which the pipe tobacco is packed in tins is a very
+different sort of place; here white labor is employed: a great many
+girls seated side by side at benches working with great digital
+dexterity: measuring out the tobacco, folding wax paper cartons, filling
+them, and slipping them into the narrow tins, all at a rate of speed so
+great as to defy the sight, giving a sense of fingers flickering above
+the bench with a strange, almost supernatural sureness, like the fingers
+of a magician who makes things disappear before your eyes; or like the
+pictures in which post-impressionist and cubist painters attempt to
+express motion.
+
+"May I speak to one of them?" I asked the superintendent.
+
+"Sure," said he.
+
+I went up to a young woman who was working, if anything, more rapidly
+than the other girls at the same bench.
+
+"Can you think, while you are doing this?" I asked.
+
+"Yes," she replied, without looking up, while her fingers flashed on
+ceaselessly.
+
+"About other things?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"How many cans do you fill in a day?"
+
+"About thirty-four to thirty-five hundred on the average."
+
+"May I ask your name?" She gave it.
+
+I took up one of the small identification slips which she put into each
+package, and wrote her name upon the back of it. The number on the
+slip--for the purpose of identifying the girl who packed the tin--was
+220. Let the reader, therefore, be informed that if he smokes Edgeworth
+Ready Rubbed, and finds in a tin a slip bearing that number, he has been
+served by no less a person than Miss Katie Wise, of the astonishingly
+speedy fingers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+JEDGE CRUTCHFIELD'S CO'T
+
+    Dar's a pow'ful rassle 'twix de Good en de Bad,
+      En de Bad's got de all-under holt;
+    En w'en de wuss come, she come i'on-clad,
+      En you hatter holt yo' bref fer de jolt.
+
+    --UNCLE REMUS.
+
+
+My companion and I had not traveled far into the South before we
+discovered that our comfort was likely to be considerably enhanced if,
+in hotels, we singled out an intelligent bell boy and, as far as
+possible, let this one boy serve us. Our mainstay in the Jefferson Hotel
+was Charles Jackson, No. 144, or, when Charles was "off," his "side
+partner," whom we knew as Bob.
+
+Having one day noticed a negro in convict's stripes, but without a
+guard, raking up leaves in Capitol Square, I asked Charles about the
+matter.
+
+"Do they let the convicts go around unguarded?" I inquired.
+
+"They 's some of 'em can," said he. "Those is trustees."
+
+This talk of "trustees" led to other things and finally to a strong
+recommendation, by Charles, of the Richmond Police Court, as a place of
+entertainment.
+
+"Is it interesting?" I asked.
+
+"Inter-_resting_? Yes, _suh_! Judge Crutchfield he suttinly _is_. He
+done chahge me twenty-six dollahs and fo'ty cents. My brothah, he got in
+fight down street, heah. Some niggers set on him. I went to he'p him an'
+p'leeceman got me. He say I was resistin' p'leece. I ain't resisted no
+p'leece! No, _suh_! Not _me_! But Judge Crutchfield, you can't tell him
+nothin'. 'Tain't no use to have a lawyer, nuther. Judge Crutchfield
+don't want no lawyers in his co't. Like 's not he cha'ge you _mo'_ fo'
+_havin'_ lawyer. Then you got pay lawyer, too.
+
+"Friend mine name Billy. One night Billy he wake up and heah some one
+come pushin' in his house. He hollah: 'Who thar?'
+
+"Othah nigger he kep' pushin' on in. He say: 'This Gawge.'
+
+"Billy, he say: 'Git on out heah, niggah! Ain't no Gawge live heah!'
+
+"Othah niggah, he say: 'Don't make no diff'unce Gawge live heah o' not.
+He sure comin' right in! Ain't nobody heah kin stop ol' Gawge! He eat
+'em alive, Gawge do! He de boss of Jackson Ward. Bettah say yo' prayehs,
+niggah, fo' yo' time--has--come!'
+
+"Billy he don't want hit nobody, but this-heah Gawge he drunk, an' Billy
+_have_ t' hit 'im. Well, suh, what you think this Gawge done? He go have
+Billy 'rested. _Yes_, suh! But you can't tell Judge Crutchfield nothin'.
+Next mo'nin' in p'leece co't he say to Billy: 'I fine you twenty-five
+dollahs, fo' hittin' this old gray-haihed man.' Yes, _suh_! 'at 's a way
+Judge Crutchfield is. Can't tell _him_ nothin'. He jes' set up theh on
+de bench, an' he chaw tobacco, an' he heah de cases, an' he spit, an'
+evvy time he spit he spit a fine. Yes, _suh_! He spit like dis: 'Pfst!
+Five dollahs!'--'Pfst! Ten dollahs!'--'Pfst! Fifteen dollahs!'--just how
+he feel. He suttinly is some judge, 'at man."
+
+Encouraged by this account of police court justice as meted out to the
+Richmond negro, my companion and I did visit Justice Crutchfield's
+court.
+
+The room in the basement of the City Hall was crowded. All the benches
+were occupied and many persons, white and black, were standing up. Among
+the members of the audience--for the performance is more like a
+vaudeville show with the judge as headliner than like a serious
+tribunal--I noticed several actors and actresses from a company which
+was playing in Richmond at the time--these doubtless drawn to the place
+by the fact that Walter C. Kelly, billed in vaudeville as "The Virginia
+Judge," is commonly reported to have taken Judge Crutchfield as a model
+for his exceedingly amusing monologue. Mr. Kelly himself has, however,
+told me that his inspiration came from hearing the late Judge J.D.G.
+Brown, of Newport News, hold court.
+
+At the back of the room, in what appeared to be a sort of steel cage,
+were assembled the prisoners, all of them, on this occasion, negroes;
+while at the head of the chamber behind the usual police-court bulwark,
+sat the judge--a white-haired, hook-nosed man of more than seventy,
+peering over the top of his eyeglasses with a look of shrewd, merciless
+divination.
+
+"William Taylor!" calls a court officer.
+
+A negro is brought from the cage to the bar of justice. He is a sad
+spectacle, his face adorned with a long strip of surgeon's plaster. The
+judge looks at him over his glasses. The hearing proceeds as follows:
+
+COURT OFFICER (to prisoner)--Get over there! (Prisoner obeys.)
+
+JUDGE CRUTCHFIELD--Sunday drunk--Five dollars.
+
+It is over.
+
+The next prisoner is already on his way to the bar. He is a short, wide
+negro, very black and tattered. A large black negress, evidently his
+consort, arises as witness against him. The case goes as follows:
+
+JUDGE CRUTCHFIELD--Drunk?
+
+THE WIFE (looking contemptuously at her spouse)--Drunk? Yass, Jedge,
+drunk. _Always_ drunk.
+
+THE PRISONER (meekly)--I ain't been drunk, Jedge.
+
+THE JUDGE--Yes, you have. I can see you've got your sign up this
+morning. (Looking toward cage at back of room): Make them niggers stop
+talkin' back there! (To the wife): What did he do, Mandy?
+
+THE WIFE (angrily)--Jedge, he come bustin' in, and he come so fast he
+untook the do' off'n de hinges; den 'e begins--
+
+THE JUDGE (to the prisoner, sarcastically)--You wasn't drunk, eh?
+
+THE PRISONER (weakly)--I might of had a drink oh two.
+
+THE JUDGE (severely)--Was--you--_drunk_?
+
+THE PRISONER--No, suh, Jedge. Ah wasn't drunk. Ah don't think no man's
+drunk s' long 's he can navigate, Jedge. I don't--
+
+THE JUDGE--Oh, yes, he can be! He can navigate and navigate mighty
+mean!--Ten dollars.
+
+(At this point an officer speaks in a low tone to the judge, evidently
+interceding for the prisoner.)
+
+THE JUDGE (loudly)--No. That fine's very small. If it ain't worth ten
+dollars to get drunk, it ain't worth nothing at all. Next case!
+
+(While the next prisoner is being brought up, the judge entertains his
+audience with one of the humorous monologues for which he is famous, and
+which, together with the summary "justice" he metes out, keeps ripples
+of laughter running through the room): I'm going to get drunk myself,
+some day, and see what it does to me. [Laughter.] Mebbe I'll take a
+little cocaine, too.
+
+A NEGRO VOICE (from back of room, deep bass, and very fervent)--Oh,
+_no-o-o_! Don't do dat, Jedge! [More laughter.]
+
+THE JUDGE--Where's that prisoner? If he was a Baptist, he wouldn't be so
+slow.
+
+(The prisoner, a yellow negro, is brought to the bar. His trousers are
+mended with a large safety pin and his other equipment is to match.)
+
+THE JUDGE (inspecting the prisoner sharply)--You ain't a Richmond
+nigger. I can tell that to look at you.
+
+THE PRISONER--No, suh, Jedge. That's right.
+
+THE JUDGE--Where you from? You're from No'th Ca'lina, ain't you?
+
+THE PRISONER--Yas, suh, Jedge.
+
+THE JUDGE--Six months!
+
+(A great laugh rises from the courtroom at this. On inquiry we learn
+that the "joke" depends upon the judge's well-known aversion for negroes
+from North Carolina.)
+
+Only recently I have heard Walter C. Kelly as "The Virginia Judge." Save
+for a certain gentle side which Mr. Kelly indicates, and of which I saw
+no signs in Judge Crutchfield, I should say that, even though Judge
+Crutchfield is not his model, the suggestion of him is strongly there.
+Two of Mr. Kelly's "cases" are particularly reminiscent of the Richmond
+Police Court. One is as follows:
+
+THE JUDGE--First case--Sadie Anderson.
+
+THE PRISONER--Yassir! That's me!
+
+THE JUDGE--Thirty days in jail. That's me! Next case.
+
+The other:
+
+THE JUDGE--What's your name?
+
+THE PRISONER--Sam Williams.
+
+THE JUDGE--How old are you, Sam?
+
+THE PRISONER--Just twenty-four.
+
+THE JUDGE--You'll be just twenty-five when you get out. Next case!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+NORFOLK AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD
+
+
+Just as New York looks newer than Boston, but is actually older, Norfolk
+looks newer than Richmond. Business and population grow in Richmond, but
+you do not feel them growing as you do in Norfolk. You feel that
+Richmond business men already have money, whereas in Norfolk there is
+less old wealth and a great deal more scrambling for new dollars. Also
+you feel that law and order count for more in Richmond than in Norfolk,
+and that the strict prohibition law which not long ago became effective
+in Virginia will be more easily enforced in the capital than in the
+seaport. Norfolk, in short, likes the things New York likes. It likes
+tall office buildings, and it dotes on the signs of commercial activity
+by day and social activity by night. Furthermore, from the tops of some
+of the high buildings the place actually looks like a miniature New
+York: the Elizabeth River masquerading as the East River; Portsmouth,
+with its navy yard, pretending to be Brooklyn, while some old-time New
+York ferryboats, running between the two cities, assist in completing
+the illusion. In the neighboring city of Newport News, Norfolk has its
+equivalent for Jersey City and Hoboken, while Willoughby Spit protrudes
+into Hampton Roads like Sandy Hook reduced to miniature.
+
+The principal shopping streets of Norfolk and Richmond are as unlike as
+possible. Broad Street, Richmond, is very wide, and is never
+overcrowded, whereas Granby Street, Norfolk (advertised by local
+enthusiasts as "the livest street in Virginia," and appropriately
+spanned, at close intervals, by arches of incandescent lights), is none
+too wide for the traffic it carries, with the result that, during the
+afternoon and evening, it is truly very much alive. To look upon it at
+the crowded hours is to get a suggestion of a much larger city than
+Norfolk actually is--a suggestion which is in part accounted for by the
+fact that Norfolk's spending population, drawn from surrounding towns
+and cities, is much greater than the number of its inhabitants.
+
+Norfolk's extraordinary growth in the last two or three decades may be
+traced to several causes: to the fertility of the soil of the
+surrounding region, which, intensively cultivated, produces rich
+market-garden crops, making Norfolk a great shipping point for "truck";
+to the development of the trade in peanuts, which are grown in large
+quantities in this corner of Virginia; to a great trade in oysters and
+other sea-food, and to the continually increasing importance of the
+Norfolk navy yard.
+
+In connection with the navy Norfolk has always figured prominently,
+Hampton Roads having been a favorite naval rendezvous since the early
+days of the American fleet. Now, however, it is announced that the cry
+of our navy for a real naval base--something we have never had, though
+all other important navies have them, Britain alone having three--has
+been heard in Washington, and that Norfolk has been selected as the site
+for a base. This is an important event not only for the Virginia
+seaport, but for the United States.
+
+Farmers who think they are in a poor business will do well to
+investigate Norfolk's recent history. The "trucking" industry of Norfolk
+is said to amount in the aggregate to twelve or fourteen million dollars
+annually, and many fortunes have been made from it. The pioneer
+"trucker" of the region was Mr. Richard Cox. A good many years ago Mr.
+Cox employed a German boy, a blacksmith by trade, named Henry Kern. Kern
+finally branched out for himself. When, in 1915, he died, his real
+estate holdings in Norfolk and Portsmouth were valued at two million
+dollars, all of which had been made from garden truck. He was but one of
+a considerable class of wealthy men whose fortunes have sprung from the
+same source.
+
+Many of the truck farms have access to the water. The farmers bring
+their produce to the city in their own boats, giving the port a
+picturesque note. At Norfolk it is transferred to steamers which carry
+it to New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Providence, Baltimore and
+Washington. Lately a considerable amount of truck has been shipped west
+by rail, as well.
+
+Hundreds of acres of ground in the vicinity of the city are under glass
+and large crops of winter vegetables are raised. Kale and spinach are
+being grown and harvested throughout the cold months; strawberries,
+potatoes, beans, peas, cucumbers, cabbage, lettuce and other vegetables
+follow through the spring and summer, running on into the fall, when the
+corn crop becomes important. Corn is raised chiefly by the peanut
+farmer, whose peanuts grow between his corn-rows.
+
+While the banks are "carrying" the peanut farmers, pending their fall
+harvest, the activities of the "truckers" are at their height, so that
+the money loaned to one class of agriculturist is replaced by the
+deposits of the other class; and by the same token, of course, the
+peanut farmers are depositing money in the banks when the "truckers"
+want to borrow. This situation, one judges, is not found objectionable
+by Norfolk and Portsmouth bankers, and I have been told that, as a
+corollary, these banks have never been forced, even in times of dire
+panic, to issue clearing house certificates, but have always paid cash.
+
+Norfolk has grown so fast and has so rapidly replaced the old with the
+new, that the visitor must keep his eyes open if he would not miss
+entirely such lovely souvenirs of an earlier and easier life, as still
+remain. Who would imagine, seeing it to-day, that busy Granby Street had
+ever been a street of fine residences? Yet a very few years have passed
+since the old Newton, Tazwell, Dickson and Taylor residences surrendered
+to advancing commerce and gave place to stores and office
+buildings--the two last mentioned having been replaced by the Dickson
+Building and the Taylor Building, erected less than fifteen years ago.
+
+Freemason Street is the highway which, more than any other, tells of
+olden times. For though the downtown end of this lovely old thoroughfare
+has lapsed into decay, many beautiful mansions, dating from long ago,
+are to be seen a few blocks out from the busier portion of the city.
+Among these should be mentioned the Whittle house, the H.N. Castle
+house, and particularly the exquisite ivy-covered residence of Mr.
+Barton Myers, at the corner of Bank Street. The city of Norfolk ought, I
+think, to attempt to acquire this house and preserve it (using it
+perhaps as a memorial museum to contain historical relics) to show what
+has been, in Norfolk, as against what is, and to preach a silent sermon
+on the high estate of beauty from which a fine old city may fall, in the
+name of progress and commercial growth.
+
+To the credit of Norfolk be it said that old St. Paul's Church, with its
+picturesque churchyard and tombs, is excellently cared for and properly
+valued as a pre-Revolutionary relic. The church was built in 1730, and
+was struck by a British cannon-ball when Lord Dunmore bombarded the
+place in 1776. Baedeker tells me, however, that the cannon-ball now
+resting in the indentation in the wall of the church is "not the
+original."
+
+When I say that St. Paul's is properly valued I mean that many citizens
+told my companion and me to be sure to visit. I observe, however--and I
+take it as a sign of the times in Norfolk--that an extensive,
+well-printed and much illustrated book on Norfolk, issued by the Chamber
+of Commerce, contains pictures of banks, docks, breweries, mills, office
+buildings, truck farms, peanut farms, battleships, clubhouses, hotels,
+hospitals, factories, and innumerable new residences, but no picture of
+the church, or of the lovely old homes of Freemason Street. Nor do I
+find in the booklet any mention of the history of the city or the
+surrounding region--although that region includes places of the greatest
+beauty and interest: among them the glorious old manor houses of the
+James River; the ancient and charming town of Williamsburg, second
+capital of the Virginia colony, and seat of William and Mary College,
+the oldest college in the United States excepting Harvard; Yorktown,
+"Waterloo of the Revolution"; many important battlefields of the Civil
+War; Hampton Institute, the famous negro industrial school at Hampton,
+nearby; the lovely stretch of water on which the _Monitor_ met the
+_Merrimac_[3]; the site of the first English settlement in America at
+Jamestown, and, for mystery and desolation, the Dismal Swamp with Lake
+Drummond at its heart. But then, I suppose it is natural that the
+Chamber of Commerce mind should thrust aside such things in favor of the
+mighty "goober," which is a thing of to-day, a thing for which Norfolk
+is said to be the greatest of all markets. For is not history dead, and
+is not the man who made a fortune out of a device for shelling peanuts
+without causing the nuts to drop in two, still living?
+
+[3] The _Merrimac_, originally a Federal vessel of wooden construction,
+was sunk by the Union forces when they abandoned Norfolk. A Confederate
+captain, John M. Brooke, raised her, equipped her with a ram, and
+covered her with boiler plate and railroad rails. She is called the
+first ironclad. While she was being reconstructed John Ericsson was
+building his _Monitor_ in New York. The turret was first used on this
+vessel. It is worth noting that at the time of the engagement between
+these two ships the _Monitor_ was not the property of the Federal
+Government, but belonged to C.S. Bushnell, of New Haven, who built her
+at his own expense, in spite of the opposition of the Navy Department of
+that day. The Government paid for her long after the fight. It should
+also be noted that the _Merrimac_ did not fight under that name, but as
+a Confederate ship had been rechristened _Virginia_. The patriotic
+action of Mr. Bushnell is recalled by the fact that, only recently, Mr.
+Godfrey L. Cabot, of Boston, has agreed to furnish funds to build the
+torpedoplane designed by Admiral Fiske as a weapon wherewith to attack
+the German fleet within its defenses at Kiel.
+
+And yet the modernness on which Norfolk so evidently prides herself is
+not something to be lightly valued. Fine schools, fine churches and
+miles of pleasant, recently built homes are things for any American city
+to rejoice in. Therefore Norfolk rejoices in Ghent, her chief modern
+residence district, which is penetrated by arms of the Elizabeth River,
+so that many of the houses in this part of the city look out upon pretty
+lagoons, dotted over with all manner of pleasure craft. Less than twenty
+years ago, the whole of what is now Ghent was a farm, and there are
+other suburban settlements, such as Edgewater, Larchmont, Winona and
+Lochhaven, out in the direction of Hampton Roads, which have grown up in
+the last six or eight years. The Country Club of Norfolk, with a very
+pleasing club-house on the water, and an eighteen-hole golf course, is
+at Lochhaven, and the new naval base is, I believe, to be located
+somewhat farther out, on the site of the Jamestown Exposition.
+
+Norfolk is well provided with nearby seaside recreation places, of which
+probably the most attractive is Virginia Beach, facing the ocean. Ocean
+View, so called, is on Chesapeake Bay, and there are summer cottage
+colonies at Willoughby Spit and Cape Henry. On the bay side of Cape
+Henry is Lynnhaven Inlet connecting Lynnhaven Bay and River with
+Chesapeake Bay. From Lynnhaven Bay come the famous oysters of that name,
+now to be had in most of the large cities of the East, but which seemed
+to me to taste a little better at the Virginia Club, in Norfolk, than
+oysters ever tasted anywhere. Perhaps that was because they were real
+Lynnhavens, just as the Virginia Club's Smithfield ham is real
+Smithfield ham from the little town of Smithfield, Virginia, a few miles
+distant. On the bank of the Lynnhaven River is situated the Old Donation
+farm with a ruined church, and an ancient dwelling house which was used
+as the first courthouse in Princess Anne County; and not far distant
+from this place is Witch Duck Point, where Grace Sherwood, after having
+been three times tried, and finally convicted as a witch, was thrown
+into the river.
+
+The several waterside places I have mentioned are more or less local in
+character, but there is nothing local about Fortress Monroe, on Old
+Point Comfort, just across Hampton Roads, which has for many years been
+one of the most beautiful and highly individualized idling places on the
+Atlantic Coast.
+
+The old moated fortress, the interior of which is more like some lovely
+garden of the last century than a military post, remains an important
+coast artillery station, and is a no less lovely spot now than when our
+grandparents went there on their wedding journeys, stopping at the old
+Hygiea Hotel, long since gone the way of old hotels.
+
+The huge Chamberlin Hotel, however, remains apparently unchanged, and is
+to-day as spacious, comfortable and homelike as when our fathers and
+mothers, or perhaps we ourselves, stopped there years ago. The
+Chamberlin, indeed, seems to have the gift of perennial youth. I
+remember a ball which was given there in honor of Admiral Sampson and
+the officers of his fleet, after the Spanish War. The ballroom was so
+full of naval and military uniforms that I, in my somber civilian
+clothing, felt wan and lonely. Most of the evening I passed in modest
+retirement, looking out upon the brilliant scene from behind a potted
+palm. And yet, when my companion and I, now in our dotage, recently
+visited the Chamberlin, there stood the same potted palm in the same
+place. Or if it was not the same, it was one exactly like it.
+
+The Chamberlin is of course a great headquarters for army and navy
+people, and we observed, moreover, that honeymooning couples continue to
+infest it--for Fortress Monroe has long ranked with Washington and
+Niagara Falls as a scene to be visited upon the wedding journey.
+
+There they all were, as of old: the young husband scowling behind his
+newspaper and pretending to read and not to be thinking of his pretty
+little wife across the breakfast table; the fat blonde bride being
+continually photographed by her adoring mate--now leaning against a pile
+on the pier, now seated on a wall, with her feet crossed, now standing
+under a live-oak within the fortress; also there was the inevitable
+young pair who simply couldn't keep their hands off from each other; we
+came upon them constantly--in the sun-parlor, where she would be seated
+on the arm of his chair, running her hand through his hair; wandering in
+the eventide along the shore, with arms about each other, or going in to
+meals, she leading him down the long corridor by his "ickle finger".
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I recall that it was as we were going back to Norfolk from Old Point
+Comfort, having dinner on a most excellent large steamer, running to
+Norfolk and Cape Charles, that my companion remarked to me, out of a
+clear sky, that he had made up his mind, once for all, that, come what
+might, he would never, never, never get married. No, never!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+COLONEL TAYLOR AND GENERAL LEE
+
+    Forth from its scabbard all in vain
+      Bright flashed the sword of Lee;
+    'Tis shrouded now in its sheath again,
+    It sleeps the sleep of our noble slain,
+    Defeated, yet without a stain,
+      Proudly and peacefully.
+
+    --ABRAM J. RYAN.
+
+
+Though I had often heard, before going into the South, of the devotion
+of that section to the memory of General Robert E. Lee, I never fully
+realized the extent of that devotion until I began to become a little
+bit acquainted with Virginia. I remember being struck, while in Norfolk,
+with the fact that portraits of General Lee were to be seen in many
+offices and homes, much as one might expect, at the present time, to
+find portraits of Joffre and Nivelle in the homes of France, or of Haig
+in the homes of Britain. It is not enough to say that the memory of Lee
+is to the South like that of Napoleon I to France, for it is more. The
+feeling of France for Napoleon is one of admiration, of delight in a
+national military genius, of hero-worship, but there is not intermingled
+with it the quality of pure affection which fully justifies the use of
+the word _love_, in characterizing the feeling of the South for its
+great military leader--the man of whom Lord Wolseley said: "He was a
+being apart and superior to all others in every way; a man with whom
+none I ever knew, and very few of whom I ever read are worthy to be
+compared; a man who was cast in a grander mould and made of finer metal
+than all other men."
+
+Nor is this love surprising, for whereas Napoleon was a self-seeking
+man, and one whose personal character was not altogether admirable in
+other respects, and whereas he could hardly be said to typify France's
+ideal of everything a gentleman should be, Lee sought nothing for
+himself, was a man of great nobility of character, and was in perfection
+a Virginia gentleman. At the end, moreover, where Napoleon's defeat was
+that of an aspirant to conquest, glory and empire, Lee's defeat was that
+of a cause, and the cause was regarded in the entire South as almost
+holy, so that, in defeat, the South felt itself martyred, and came to
+look upon its great general with a love and veneration unequaled in
+history, and much more resembling the feeling of France for the
+canonized Joan of Arc, than for the ambitious Corsican.
+
+When, therefore, my companion and I heard, while in Norfolk, that
+Colonel Walter H. Taylor, president of the Marine Bank of that city, had
+served through the Civil War on General Lee's staff, we naturally became
+very anxious to meet him; and I am glad to say that Colonel Taylor,
+though at the time indisposed and confined to his home, was so kind as
+to receive us.
+
+He was seated in a large chair in his library, on the second floor of
+his residence, a pleasant old-fashioned brick house at the corner of
+York and Yarmouth Streets--a slender man, not very tall, I judged
+(though I did not see him standing), not very strong at the moment, but
+with nothing of the decrepitude of old age about him, for all his
+seventy-seven years. Upon the contrary he was, in appearance and manner,
+delightfully alert, with the sort of alertness which lends to some men
+and women, regardless of their years, a suggestion of perpetual
+youthfulness. Such alertness, in those who have lived a long time, is
+most often the result of persistent intellectual activity, and the sign
+of it is usually to be read in the eyes. Colonel Taylor's keen, dark,
+observant, yet kindly eyes, were perhaps his finest feature, though,
+indeed, all his features were fine, and his head, with its well-trimmed
+white hair and mustache, was one of great distinction.
+
+Mrs. Taylor (of whom we had previously been warned to beware, because
+she had not yet forgiven the "Yankees" for their sins) was also present:
+a beautiful old lady of unquenchable spirit, in whose manner, though she
+received us with politeness, we detected lurking danger.
+
+And why not? Do not women remember some things longer than men remember
+them? Do not the sweethearts who stayed at home remember the continual
+dull dread they suffered while the men they loved faced danger, whereas
+the absent lovers were at least in part compensated for the risks they
+ran, by the continual sense of high adventure and achievement?
+
+Mrs. Taylor was Miss Elizabeth Selden Saunders, daughter of Captain John
+L. Saunders of Virginia, who died in 1860, in the service of his
+country, a commander in the United States Navy. When the war broke out
+Miss Saunders, wishing to serve the Confederate Government, became a
+clerk in the Surgeon General's office, at Richmond, and there she
+remained while Colonel Taylor, whose training at the Virginia Military
+Institute, coupled with his native ability, made him valuable as an
+officer, followed the fortunes of General Lee, part of the time as the
+general's aide-de-camp, and the rest of the time as adjutant-general and
+chief of staff of the Army of Northern Virginia, in which capacities he
+was present at all general engagements of the army, under Lee.
+
+On April 2, 1865, when Lee's gallant but fast dwindling army, short of
+supplies, and so reduced in numbers as to be no longer able to stand
+against the powerful forces of Grant, was evacuating its lines at
+Petersburg, when it was evident that the capital of the Confederacy was
+about to fall, and the orders for retreat had been despatched by Colonel
+Taylor, in his capacity as adjutant--then the colonel went to his
+commander and asked for leave of absence over night, for the purpose of
+going to Richmond and being married. He tells the story in his
+exceedingly interesting and valuable book, "General Lee--His Campaigns
+in Virginia":
+
+     At the close of the day's work, when all was in readiness for the
+     evacuation of our lines under cover of the darkness of night, I
+     asked permission of General Lee to ride over to Richmond and to
+     rejoin him early the next morning, telling him that my mother and
+     sisters were in Richmond and that I would like to say good-by to
+     them, and that my sweetheart was there, and we had arranged, if
+     practicable, to be married that night. He expressed some surprise
+     at my entertaining such a purpose at that time, but when I
+     explained to him that the home of my bride-elect was in the enemy's
+     lines, that she was alone in Richmond and employed in one of the
+     departments of the government, and wished to follow the fortunes of
+     the Confederacy should our lines be reestablished farther South, he
+     promptly gave his assent to my plans. I galloped to the railroad
+     station, then at Dunlops, on the north side of the river, where I
+     found a locomotive and several cars, constituting the "ambulance
+     train," designed to carry to Richmond the last of the wounded of
+     our army requiring hospital treatment. I asked the agent if he had
+     another engine, when, pointing to one rapidly receding in the
+     direction of Richmond, he replied, "Yonder goes the only locomotive
+     we have besides the one attached to this train." Turning my horse
+     over to the courier who accompanied me, with directions to join me
+     in Richmond as soon as he could, I mounted the locomotive in
+     waiting, directed the engineer to detach it from the cars and to
+     proceed to overtake the engine ahead of us. It was what the sailors
+     call a stern chase and a long one. We did not overtake the other
+     locomotive until it had reached Falling Creek, about three-fourths
+     of the distance, when I transferred to it and sent the other back
+     to Petersburg. I reached Richmond without further incident, and
+     soon after midnight I was married to Elizabeth Selden Saunders....
+     As will be readily understood, the occasion was not one of great
+     hilarity, though I was very happy; my eyes were the only dry ones
+     in the company....
+
+     The people of Richmond were greatly excited and in despair in the
+     contemplation of the abandonment of their beautiful city by our
+     troops. General Lee had for so long a time thwarted the designs of
+     his powerful adversaries for the capture of the city, and seemed so
+     unfailing and resourceful in his efforts to hold them at bay, that
+     the good people found it difficult to realize that he was compelled
+     at last to give way. There was universal gloom and despair at the
+     thought that at the next rising of the sun the detested Federal
+     soldiers would take possession of the city and occupy its streets.
+     The transportation companies were busily engaged in arranging for
+     the removal of the public stores and of the archives of the
+     government. A fire in the lower part of the city was fiercely
+     raging, and added greatly to the excitement.
+
+     Somewhere near four o'clock on the morning of the 3d of April I
+     bade farewell to all my dear ones, and in company with my
+     brother-in-law, Colonel John S. Saunders, proceeded toward Mayo's
+     Bridge, which we crossed to the south side of the James, in the
+     lurid glare of the fire, and within the sound of several heavy
+     explosions that we took to be the final scene in the career of the
+     Confederate navy, then disappearing in smoke on the James River,
+     near Rockets.
+
+Before we departed from the colonel's library, which we felt obliged to
+do much sooner than we wished to, owing to the condition of his health,
+he called our attention to an oil portrait of his old commander, which
+occupied the place of honor above the mantelpiece, and asked his
+daughters to let us see his scrap-book, containing personal letters from
+General Lee, Jefferson Davis, and other distinguished men, as well as
+various war documents of unusual interest.
+
+We felt it a great privilege to handle these old letters and to read
+them, and the charm of them was the greater for the affection in which
+the general held Colonel Taylor, as evidenced by the tone in which he
+wrote. To us it was a wonderful evening.... And it still seems to me
+wonderful to think that I have met and talked with a man who issued
+Lee's orders, who rode forth with Lee when he went to meet Grant in
+conference at Appomattox, just before the surrender, who once slept
+under the same blanket with Lee, who knew Lee as well perhaps as one man
+can know another, and under conditions calculated to try men to the
+utmost.
+
+As adjutant, Colonel Taylor took an active part in arranging details of
+surrender and parole. He says:
+
+     Each officer and soldier was furnished for his protection from
+     arrest or annoyance with a slip of paper containing his parole,
+     signed by his commander and countersigned by an officer of the
+     Federal army.
+
+     I signed these paroles for all members of the staff, and when my
+     own case was reached I requested General Lee to sign mine, which I
+     have retained to the present time.
+
+This document, with Colonel Taylor's name and title in his own
+handwriting, and the signature of General Lee, I am able to reproduce
+here through the courtesy of the colonel's daughters, Mrs. William B.
+Baldwin and Miss Taylor, of Norfolk. It is the only parole which was
+signed personally by General Lee.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+On the back of the little slip, which is of about the size of a bank
+check, is the countersignature of George H. Sharpe, Assistant Provost
+Marshal general:
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Following his parole Colonel Taylor rode with General Lee to Richmond.
+The general seemed to be in a philosophical frame of mind, but thought
+much of the future. The subject of the surrender and its consequences
+was about exhausted. The Colonel tells of one incident:
+
+     On the route General Lee stopped for the night near the residence
+     of his brother, Mr. Carter Lee, in Powhatan County; and although
+     importuned by his brother to pass the night under his roof, the
+     general persisted in pitching his tent by the side of the road and
+     going into camp as usual. This continued self-denial can only be
+     explained upon the hypothesis that he desired to have his men know
+     that he shared their privations to the very last.
+
+This was perfectly in character with Lee. Throughout the War, we learn
+from Colonel Taylor's book, the general used the army ration, and lived
+the army life. He would not take up his quarters in a house, because he
+wished to share the lot of his men, and also because he feared that, in
+the event of the house falling into the hands of the enemy, the very
+fact of its having been occupied by him might possibly cause its
+destruction. It was only during the last year of the War, when his
+health was somewhat impaired, that he consented sometimes to vary this
+rule.
+
+Lee's chivalrous nature is well shown forth in his famous General
+Orders, No. 73, issued at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, a few days before
+Gettysburg.
+
+After congratulating the troops on their good conduct the general
+continued as follows:
+
+     There have, however, been instances of forgetfulness on the part of
+     some that they have in keeping the yet unsullied reputation of the
+     army, and that the duties exacted of us by civilization and
+     Christianity are not less obligatory in the country of the enemy
+     than in our own.
+
+     The commanding general considers that no greater disgrace could
+     befall the army, and through it our whole people, than the
+     perpetration of the barbarous outrages upon the unarmed and
+     defenseless, and the wanton destruction of private property, that
+     have marked the course of the enemy in our own country.
+
+     Such proceedings not only degrade the perpetrators and all
+     connected with them, but are subversive to the discipline and
+     efficiency of the army, and destructive of the ends of our present
+     movement. It must be remembered that we make war only upon armed
+     men, and that we cannot take vengeance for the wrongs our people
+     have suffered without lowering ourselves in the eyes of all whose
+     abhorrence has been excited by the atrocities of our enemies, and
+     offending against Him to whom vengeance belongeth, without whose
+     favor and support our efforts must all prove in vain. The
+     commanding general, therefore, earnestly exhorts the troops to
+     abstain with most scrupulous care from unnecessary or wanton injury
+     to private property, and he enjoins upon all officers to arrest and
+     bring to summary punishment all who shall in any way offend against
+     the orders on this subject.
+
+        R.E. Lee,
+            General.
+
+Truly, a document to serve as a model for warriors of all future
+generations, albeit one showing an utter lack of "Kultur"!
+
+Said Charles Francis Adams, of Massachusetts: "I doubt if a hostile
+force ever advanced into an enemy's country, or fell back from it in
+retreat, leaving behind it less cause of hate and bitterness than did
+the Army of Northern Virginia in that memorable campaign."
+
+After the war, Colonel Taylor and his wife settled in Norfolk, where,
+within a very short time, a United States grand jury indicted Jefferson
+Davis and General Lee for treason--this, in the case of Lee, being in
+direct violation of the terms of surrender. When Grant learned of the
+shameful action of the grand jury he complained to Washington and caused
+the proceedings against Lee to be dropped.
+
+In Colonel Taylor's scrap-book I found a letter written by Lee before
+the indictment had been quashed, referring to the subject:
+
+            Richmond, Va.
+                June 17, 1865.
+
+     My dear Colonel:
+
+     I am very much obliged to you for your letter of the 13th. I had
+     heard of the indictment by the grand jury at Norfolk, and made up
+     my mind to let the authorities take their course. I have no wish to
+     avoid any trial the government may order, and cannot flee. I hope
+     others may be unmolested, and that you at least may be undisturbed.
+
+     I am sorry to hear that our returned soldiers cannot obtain
+     employment. Tell them they must all set to work, and if they cannot
+     do what they prefer, do what they can. Virginia wants all their
+     aid, all their support, and the presence of all her sons to sustain
+     and recuperate her. They must therefore put themselves in a
+     position to take part in her government, and not be deterred by
+     obstacles in their way. There is much to be done which they only
+     can do.
+
+        Very truly yours,
+            R.E. Lee.
+
+As time went on, and the more gaping wounds began to heal, Colonel
+Taylor's letters from the general took in many cases a lighter and
+happier tone. After some years, when four daughters had been born to
+Colonel and Mrs. Taylor, while yet they had no son, the general chaffed
+them gently on the subject: "Give my congratulations to Mrs. Taylor," he
+wrote. "Tell her I hope that when her fancy for girls is satisfied (mine
+is exorbitant) she will begin upon the boys. We must have somebody to
+work for them."
+
+One of the colonel's sons was present when I came upon this letter.
+
+"And you see," he smiled, "my father obeyed his old commander to the
+last, for the next baby was a boy, and the next, and the next, and the
+next, until there were as many boys as girls in our family."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Colonel Taylor died at his home in Norfolk, March 1, 1916, and on the
+subsequent June 15, was followed by his wife.
+
+His death leaves but three members of Lee's staff surviving, namely,
+Rev. Giles B. Cooke, of Portsmouth, Virginia, Inspector General; Major
+Henry E. Young, of Charleston, South Carolina, Judge Advocate General;
+and Colonel T.M.R. Talcott, of Richmond, Virginia, Aide-de-Camp. Of
+these officers only the first two surrendered with General Lee, Colonel
+Talcott having left the staff by promotion in 1863.
+
+Yes, two of them surrendered, but if we are to believe Charles Francis
+Adams we cannot say that Lee and his forces were actually vanquished,
+for as the Massachusetts soldier-author put it:
+
+"Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia never sustained defeat. Finally
+succumbing to exhaustion, to the end they were not overthrown in
+fight."
+
+
+
+
+THE HEART OF THE SOUTH
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+RALEIGH AND JOSEPHUS DANIELS
+
+    Jedge Crutchfield give de No'th Ca'lina nigger frown;
+    De mahkets says ouh tehapin am secon'-rate,
+    An' Mistuh Daniels, he call Raleigh his hum town.
+    --I wondah what kin be de mattuh wid ouh State?
+
+
+Just as it is the fashion in the Middle West to speak jestingly of
+Kansas, it is the fashion in the South to treat lightly the State of
+North Carolina. And just as my companion and I, long ago, on another
+voyage of discovery, were eager to get into Kansas and find out what
+that fabulous Commonwealth was really like, so we became anxious, as we
+heard the gossip about the "Old North State," to enter it and form our
+own conclusions. The great drawback to an attempt to see North Carolina,
+however, lies in the fact that North Carolina is, so to speak, spread
+very thin. It has no great solid central city occupying a place in its
+thoughts and its affairs corresponding to that occupied by Richmond, in
+its relation to Virginia. Like Mississippi, it is a State of small towns
+and small cities. Its metropolis, Charlotte, had, by the 1910 census,
+less than 35,000 inhabitants; its seaport, Wilmington, a little more
+than 25,000; its capital, Raleigh, less than 20,000; its beautiful
+mountain resort, Asheville, fourth city in the State, less than 19,000.
+
+I hasten to add that the next census will undoubtedly show considerable
+growth in all these cities. In Raleigh I found every one insistent on
+this point. The town is growing; it is a going place; a great deal of
+new building is in progress; and when you ask about the population,
+progressive citizens are prepared to do much better by their city than
+the census takers did, some years ago. They talk thirty thousand,
+instead of twenty, and they are ready with astonishing statistics about
+the number of students in the schools and colleges as compared with the
+total population of the city--statistics showing that though Raleigh is
+not large she is progressive. Which is quite true.
+
+I recollect that Judge Francis D. Winston, former Lieutenant Governor of
+the State, United States District Attorney, and the most engaging
+raconteur in the Carolinas, contributed a story to a discussion of
+Raleigh's population, which occurred, one evening, at a dinner at the
+Country Club.
+
+"A promoter," he said, "was once trying to borrow money on a boom town.
+He went to a banker and showed him a map, not of what the town was, but
+of what he claimed it was going to be. 'Here,' he said, 'is where the
+town hall will stand. In this lot will be the opera house. Over here we
+are going to have a beautiful park. And on this corner we are going to
+erect a tall granite office building.'
+
+"'But,' said the banker, coldly, 'we lend money only on the basis of
+population.'
+
+"'That's all right,' returned the promoter. 'Measured by any known
+standard except an actual _count_, we have a population of two hundred
+thousand.'"
+
+I shall not attempt to point this tale more than to recommend it to the
+attention of the secretary of the Chamber of Commerce in every city in
+the United States.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Raleigh is situated within seven miles of the exact center of North
+Carolina. The land on which the city stands was purchased by the State,
+in 1792, from a man named Joel Lane, whose former house still stands.
+The town was then laid out in a one mile square, with the site selected
+for the State Capitol directly at the center of it, and lots were sold
+off by the State to individuals, the proceeds of these sales being used
+to build the Capitol. As a result the parks, streets and sidewalks of
+the original old town still belong to the State of North Carolina, and
+the city has jurisdiction over them only by courtesy of the State
+government. Raleigh has, of course, much outgrown its original
+dimensions, and the government of the town, outside the original square
+mile at the center, is as in other towns.
+
+While Raleigh has not the look of age which characterizes many old
+southern cities, causing them to delight the eye and the imagination,
+its broad streets have here and there a building old enough to remove
+from the town any air of raw newness, and to make it a homelike looking
+place. The sidewalks are wide; when we were in Raleigh those of the
+principal streets were paved largely with soft-colored old red bricks,
+which, however, were being taken up and replaced with cement. Not being
+a resident of Raleigh, and consequently not having been obliged to tread
+the rough brick pavements daily, I was sorry to witness this victory of
+utility over beauty.
+
+One of the pleasant old buildings is the Yarborough Hotel, at which my
+companion and I stayed. The Yarborough is an exceedingly good hotel for
+a city of the size of Raleigh, especially, it may be added, when that
+city is in the South. The Capitol, standing among trees in a small park,
+also gathers a fine flavor from age. In one of the many simple dignified
+apartments of this building my companion and I were introduced to the
+gentleman who was governor of the State at the time of our visit. It
+seemed to me that he had a look both worn and apprehensive, and that,
+while we talked, he was waiting for something. I don't know how I
+gathered this impression, but it came to me definitely. After we had
+departed from the executive chamber I asked the gentleman who had taken
+us there if the governor was ill.
+
+"No," he replied. "All our governors look like that after they have been
+in office for a while."
+
+"From overwork?"
+
+"No, from an overworked jest--the jest about 'what the Governor of North
+Carolina said to the Governor of South Carolina.' Every one who meets
+the governor thinks of that joke and believes confidently that no one
+has ever before thought of this application of it. So they all pull it
+on him. For the first few months our governors stand it pretty well, but
+after that they begin to break down. They feel they ought to smile, but
+they can't. They begin to dread meeting strangers, and to show it in
+their bearing. When in private life our governor had a very pleasant
+expression, but like all the others, he has acquired, in office, the
+expression of an iron dog."
+
+Raleigh's most widely-known citizen is Josephus Daniels, Secretary of
+the Navy, and publisher of the Raleigh "News and Observer." This paper,
+published in the morning, and the "Times," a rival paper, published in
+the afternoon, are, I believe, the only dailies in the city.
+
+Mr. Daniels has been so much discussed that I was greatly interested in
+hearing what Raleigh had to say of him. Every one knew him personally.
+The men on his paper seemed to be very fond of him; others held various
+opinions.
+
+In 1894 Mr. Daniels came from Washington, D.C., where he had been chief
+clerk in the Department of the Interior, when Hoke Smith was Secretary,
+and acquired the newspaper of which he has since been proprietor. In its
+first years under Mr. Daniels, the paper is said to have gone through
+severe financial struggles, and there is an amusing story current, about
+the way the payroll was met upon one occasion. According to this tale,
+the business manager of the paper came to Mr. Daniels, one day, and
+informed him that he needed sixty dollars more to make the payroll, and
+didn't know where he was going to get it. The only ready asset in sight,
+it is related, was several cases of a patent medicine known as "Mrs. Joe
+Persons' Remedy," which had been taken by the "News and Observer" in
+payment for advertising space. Mr. Daniels had a few dollars, and his
+business manager had a railroad pass. With these resources the latter
+went out on the road and sold the patent medicine for enough to make up
+the deficit.
+
+Until Mr. Daniels was appointed Secretary of the Navy he seems to have
+been regarded by many citizens of Raleigh, as a good, earnest,
+hard-working man, possessed of considerable personal magnetism and a
+good political nose--a man who could scent how the pack was running,
+take a short-cut, and presently appear to be leading. In other words an
+opportunist. Though he has not much education, and though as a writer he
+is far from polished, it is said that he has written powerful
+editorials. "When his editorials have been good," said one gentleman,
+"it is because he has been stirred up over something, and because he
+manages sometimes to get into his writing the intensity of his own
+personality." His office used to be, and still is, when he is in
+Raleigh, a sort of political headquarters, and he used to be able to
+write editorials while half a dozen politicians were sitting around his
+desk, talking.
+
+With his paper he has done much good in the State, notably by fighting
+consistently for prohibition and for greater public educational
+advantages. The strong educational movement in North Carolina began with
+a group of men chief among whom were the late Governor Charles B.
+Aycock, called "the educational governor"; Dr. E.A. Alderman, who,
+though president of the University of Virginia, is a North Carolinian
+and was formerly president of the University of that State; Dr. Charles
+D. McKeever who committed the State to the principle of higher education
+for women, and other men of similar high purpose. A gentleman who was
+far from an unqualified admirer of Mr. Daniels, told me that without his
+aid the great educational advance which the state has certainly made of
+recent years could hardly have been accomplished, and that the same
+thing applies in the case of prohibition--which has been adopted in
+North Carolina.
+
+"What sort of man is he?" I asked this gentleman.
+
+"He is the old type of Methodist," he said. "He is the kind of man who
+believes that the whale swallowed Jonah. He has the same concept of
+religion that he had as a child. I differ with his policies, his
+politics, his mental methods, but I don't think anybody here doubts that
+he is trying, not only to do the moral thing himself, but to force
+others to adopt, as rules for public conduct, the exact code in which he
+personally believes, and which he certainly follows. His mental
+processes are often crude, yet he has much native shrewdness and the
+ability to grasp situations as they arise.
+
+"He does not come of the aristocratic class, which probably accounts for
+his failure, when he first became secretary, to perceive the necessity
+for discipline in the navy, and the benefits of naval tradition.
+
+"He was an ardent follower--I might say swallower--of Bryan, gobbling
+whole all of the "Great Commoner's" vagaries. It has been said, more or
+less humorously, but doubtless with a foundation of fact, that he was
+"Secretary of War in all of Bryan's cabinets." That shows where Bryan
+placed him. Yet when Bryan broke with Wilson and made his exit from the
+Cabinet, Daniels found it perfectly simple, apparently, to drop the
+Bryanism which had, hitherto, been the very essence of his life, and
+become a no less ardent supporter of the President.
+
+"When he was first taken into the cabinet he evidently regarded the
+finer social amenities as matters of no consequence, or even as
+effeminacies. He had but little sense of the fitness of things, and was,
+in consequence, continually making _faux pas_; but he is observant; he
+has learned a great deal in the course of his life as a cabinet member,
+both as to his work in the Department, and as to the niceties of formal
+social life."
+
+At the time of our visit to Raleigh I had not met Mr. Daniels, nor heard
+him speak. Since that time I have heard him several times and have
+talked with him. Also I have talked of him with a number of men who have
+been thrown more or less closely in contact with him. As is well known,
+naval officers detested him with peculiar unanimity. This was true up
+to the time of our entering the War. Whether matters have changed
+greatly since then I am unable to say. One officer, well known in the
+navy, said to me quite seriously that he believed the navy would be
+better off without its two best dreadnoughts if in losing them it could
+also lose Mr. Daniels. Such sentiments were peculiarly unanimous among
+officers. On the other hand, however, a high officer, who has been quite
+close to the Secretary, informs me that it is indeed true that he has
+improved as experience has come to him. This officer stated that when
+Mr. Daniels first took office he seemed to be definitely antagonistic to
+officers of the navy. "He appeared to suspect them of pulling political
+wires and working in their own interests. That was in the days when he
+seemed almost to encourage insubordination among the enlisted men, by
+his attitude toward them, in contrast to his attitude towards their
+superiors. Of course it was demoralizing to the service. But there has
+been a marked change in the Secretary since Bryan left the Cabinet."
+From several sources I have heard the same evidence. I never heard any
+one say that Mr. Daniels was really an able Secretary of the Navy, but I
+have heard many say that he improved.
+
+Personally he is a very likable man. His face is kind and gentle; his
+features are interestingly irregular and there are heavy wrinkles about
+his mouth and eyes--the former adding something to the already humorous
+twinkle of the eyes. His voice has a _timbre_ reminding me of George M.
+Cohan's voice. He is hardly an orator in the sense that Bryan is, yet he
+is not without simple oratorical tricks--as for example a tremolo, as of
+emotion, which I have heard him use in uttering such a phrase as "the
+grea-_a-a-at_ Daniel _Web_-ster!" Also, he wears a low turnover collar
+and a black string tie--a fact which would not be worth noting did these
+not form a part of what amounts almost to a uniform worn by politicians
+of more or less the Bryan type. Almost invariably there seems to be
+something of the minister and something of the actor in such men.
+
+Once I asked one of the famous Washington correspondents what manner of
+man Mr. Daniels was.
+
+"He's a man," he said, "that you'd like to go with on a hunting trip in
+his native North Carolina. He would be a good companion and would have a
+lot of funny stories. He is full of kind intentions. Had you known him
+before the War, and had he liked you, and had you wished to take a ride
+upon a battleship, he would be disposed to order up a battleship and
+send you for a ride, even if, by doing so, he muddled up the fleet a
+little. That would be in line with his fixing it for moving picture
+people to act scenes on a battleship's deck--which he permitted. He saw
+no reason why that was not proper, and the kind of people who admire him
+most are those who, likewise, see no reason why it was not proper. The
+great lack in his nature is that of personal dignity--or even the
+dignity which should be his because of his position. If you are sitting
+beside him and he is amiably disposed toward you, he may throw his arm
+over your shoulder, or massage your knee while talking with you.
+
+"But if some friend of his were to go to him and convince him that he
+lacked dignity, he is the kind of man who, in my judgment, would become
+so much the worse. That is, if he attempted to attain dignity he would
+not achieve it, but would merely grow arbitrary. That, to my mind, shows
+his great ineradicable weakness, for it not only reveals him as a man
+too little for his job, but prevents his comprehending the basic thing
+upon which naval discipline is founded. Nevertheless, as a man you like
+him. It is as Secretary of the Navy, and particularly as a War
+Secretary, that you very definitely don't."
+
+Some time after our visit to Raleigh my companion and I heard Secretary
+Daniels speak in Charleston. He told a funny story and talked
+generalities about the navy. That was before the United States entered
+the War. I do not know what he meant the speech for, but what it
+actually was, was a speech against preparedness. So was the speech made
+on the same occasion by Lemuel P. Padgett, chairman of the House
+Committee on Naval Affairs. It was a disingenuous speech, a speech to
+lull the country into confidence, a speech which, alone, should have
+been sufficient to prove Mr. Padgett's unfitness to serve on that
+committee. Mr. Daniels argued that "Germany's preparedness had not kept
+Germany out of war"; that seemed enough, but there was one thing he
+said which utterly dumbfounded me. It was this:
+
+"_The Southern statesman who serves his section best, serves the country
+best._"
+
+Let the reader reflect for a moment upon such an utterance. Carried a
+little farther what would it mean? Would it not be equally logical to
+say that the man who serves himself best serves the country best? It is
+the theory of narrow sectionalism, and by implication, at least, the
+theory of individualism as well. And sectionalism and individualism are
+two of the great curses of the United States.
+
+Compare with Mr. Daniels' words those of John Hay who, veiling fine
+patriotism beneath a web of delicate humor, said:
+
+"_In my bewilderment of origin and experience I can only put on an
+aspect of deep humility in any gathering of favorite sons, and confess
+that I am nothing but an American._"
+
+Or again, compare with them the famous words of Patrick Henry:
+
+"_I am not a Virginian, but an American._"
+
+Clearly, one point of view or the other is wrong. Perhaps Mr. Daniels
+has more light on sectional questions than had Patrick Henry or John
+Hay. At all events, the Charleston audience applauded.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+ITEMS FROM "THE OLD NORTH STATE"
+
+
+Two of the most interesting things we saw in Raleigh were the model jail
+on the top floor of the new County Court House, where a lot of very
+honest looking rustics were confined to await trial for making
+"blockade" (otherwise moonshine) whisky, and the North Carolina Hall of
+History, which occupies a floor in the fine new State Administration
+Building, opposite the Capitol. At the head of the first stair landing
+in the Administration Building is a memorial tablet to William Sidney
+Porter ("O Henry"), who was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, with a
+bust of the author, in relief, by Lorado Taft. Porter, it may be
+mentioned, was a connection of Worth Bagley, the young ensign who was
+the only American naval officer killed in the Spanish-American War.
+Bagley was a brother of Mrs. Josephus Daniels. A monument to him stands
+in the park before the Capitol. Aside from Porter, the only author well
+known in our time whom I heard mentioned in connection with North
+Carolina, was the Rev. Thomas Dixon, whose name is most familiar,
+perhaps, in connection with the moving-picture called "The Birth of a
+Nation," taken from one of his novels. Mr. Dixon was born in the town of
+Shelby, North Carolina, and was for some years pastor of the Tabernacle
+Baptist Church, Raleigh.
+
+The Hall of History, containing a great variety of State relics, is one
+of the most fascinating museums I ever visited. Too much praise cannot
+be given Colonel Fred A. Olds and Mr. Marshall De Lancey Haywood, of the
+North Carolina Historical Society, for making it what it is. As with the
+Confederate Museum in Richmond, so, here, it is impossible to give more
+than a faint idea of the interest of the museum's contents. Among the
+exhibits of which I made note, I shall, however, mention a few. There
+was a letter written from Paris in the handwriting of John Paul Jones,
+requesting a copy of the Constitution of North Carolina; there was the
+Ku Klux warning issued to one Ben Turner of Northampton County; and
+there was an old newspaper advertisement signed by James J. Selby, a
+tailor, dated at Raleigh, June 24, 1824, offering a reward of ten
+dollars for the capture and return of two runaways: "apprentice boys,
+legally bound, named William and Andrew Johnson." The last named boy was
+the same Andrew Johnson who later became a distinctly second-rate
+President of the United States. Also there was a peculiarly tragic Civil
+War memento, consisting of a note which was found clasped in the dead
+hand of Colonel Isaac Avery, of the 6th North Carolina Regiment, who was
+killed while commanding a brigade on the second day at Gettysburg.
+
+     _Tell my father I died with my face to the enemy._
+
+These words were written by the fallen officer with his left hand, his
+right arm having been rendered useless by his mortal wound. For ink he
+used his own life blood.
+
+Also in the museum may be seen the chart-book of Blackbeard, the pirate,
+who, one of the curators of the museum informed me, was the same person
+as Edward Teach. Blackbeard, who is commemorated in the name of
+Blackbeard's Island, off the coast of South Georgia, met his fate when
+he encountered a cruiser fitted out by Governor Spotswood of Virginia
+and commanded by Lieutenant Maynard. Maynard found Blackbeard's ship at
+Okracoke Inlet, on the North Carolina coast. Before he and his men could
+board the pirate vessel the pirates came and boarded them. Severe
+fighting ensued, but the pirates were defeated, Maynard himself killing
+Blackbeard in single combat with swords. The legend around Okracoke is
+that Blackbeard's bad fortune on this occasion came to him because of
+the unlucky number of his matrimonial adventures, the story being that
+he had thirteen wives. It is said also that his vanquishers cut off his
+head and hung it at the yard-arm of their ship, throwing his body into
+the sea, and that as soon as the body struck the water the head began to
+call, "Come on, Edward!" whereupon the headless body swam three times
+around the ship. Personally I think there may be some slight doubt about
+the authenticity of this part of the story. For, while from one point of
+view we might say that to swim about in such aimless fashion would be
+the very thing a man without a head might do, yet from another point of
+view the question arises: Would a man whose head had just been severed
+from his body feel like taking such a long swim?
+
+And what a rich lot of other historic treasures!
+
+Did you know, for instance, that Flora Macdonald, the Scottish heroine,
+who helped Prince Charles Edward to escape, dressed as a maidservant,
+after the Battle of Culloden, in 1746, came to America with her husband
+and many relatives just before the Revolutionary War and settled at
+Cross Creek (now Fayetteville), North Carolina? When General Donald
+Macdonald raised the Royal standard at the time of the Revolution, her
+husband and many of her kinsmen joined him, and these were later
+captured at the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge, in 1776, and taken as
+prisoners to Philadelphia. Yes; and Flora Macdonald's garter-buckles are
+now in the museum at Raleigh.
+
+A portrait of Captain James J. Waddell, C.S.N., who was a member of a
+famous North Carolina family, recalls the story of his post-bellum
+cruise, in command of the _Shenandoah_, when, not knowing that the War
+was over, he preyed for months on Federal commerce in the South Seas.
+
+The museum of course contains many uniforms worn by distinguished
+soldiers of the Confederacy and many old flags, among them one said to
+be the original flag of the Confederacy. This flag was designed by Orren
+R. Smith of Louisburg, North Carolina, and was made in that town. The
+journals of the Confederate Congress show that countless designs for a
+flag were submitted, that the Committee on a Flag reported that all
+designs had been rejected and returned, the committee having adopted one
+of its own; nevertheless Mr. Smith's claim to have designed the flag
+finally adopted is so well supported that the Confederate Veterans, at
+their General Reunion held in Richmond in 1915, passed a resolution
+endorsing it.
+
+Also in the museum is the shot-riddled smokestack of the Confederate ram
+_Albemarle_, which was built on the farm of Peter E. Smith, on Roanoke
+River, and is said to have been the first vessel ever launched sidewise.
+The _Albemarle_, after a glorious career, was sunk by Lieutenant
+Cushing, U.S.N., in his famous exploit with a torpedo carried on a pole
+at the bow of a launch. It will be remembered that the launch was sunk
+by the shock and that only Cushing and one member of his crew survived,
+swimming away under fire.
+
+North Carolina also claims--and not without some justice--that the first
+English settlement on this continent was not that at Jamestown, but the
+one made by Sir Walter Raleigh's expedition, under Amadas and Barlowe,
+which landed at Roanoke Island, August 4, 1584, and remained there for
+some weeks. The Jamestown Colony, say the North Carolinians, was merely
+the first to _stick_.
+
+Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, across the sound from Roanoke Island, is the
+site of the first flight of a man in an aeroplane, the Wright brothers
+having tried out their first crude plane there, among the Kill-Devil
+sand dunes. A part of the original plane is preserved in the museum. Nor
+must I leave the museum without mentioning the bullet-riddled hat of
+General W.R. Cox, and his gray military coat, with a blood-stained gash
+in front, where a solid shell ripped across. General Cox's son, Mr.
+Albert Cox, was with us in the museum when we stopped to look at this
+grim souvenir. "It tore father open in front," he said, "spoiled a coat
+which had cost him $550, Confederate, and damaged his watchchain.
+Nevertheless he lived to take part in the last charge at Appomattox, and
+the watchchain wasn't so badly spoiled but what, with the addition of
+some new links, it could be worn." And he showed us where the chain,
+which he himself was wearing at the time, had been repaired.
+
+I must say something, also, of the North Carolina College of Agriculture
+and Mechanic Arts, an institution doing splendid work, and doing it
+efficiently, both in its own buildings and through extension courses.
+Fifty-two per cent. of the students at this college earn their way
+through, either wholly or in part. And better yet, eighty-three per
+cent. of the graduates stick to the practical work afterwards--an
+unusually high record.
+
+The president of the college, Dr. D.H. Hill, is a son of the Confederate
+general of the same name, who has been called "the Ironsides of the
+South."
+
+There are a number of other important educational institutions in and
+about Raleigh, and there is one which, if not important, is at all
+events, a curio. This is "Latta University," consisting of a few flimsy
+shacks in the negro village of Oberlin, on the outskirts of Raleigh.
+
+"Professor" Latta is one of the rare negroes who combines the habit with
+white folks of the old fashioned southern darky, and the astuteness of
+the "new issue" in high finance. Years ago he conceived the idea of
+establishing a negro school near Raleigh, to which he gave the above
+mentioned name. He had no funds, no credit and little or no education.
+Nevertheless he had ideas, the central one of which was that New England
+was the land of plenty. With the "university" in his head, and with a
+miscellaneous collection of photographs, he managed to make a tour of
+northern cities, and came back with his pockets lined. As a result he
+procured a little land, put up frame buildings, gathered a few youths
+about him, and was fully launched on his career as a university
+president.
+
+So long as the money held out, Latta was content to drift along with his
+school. When he came to the bottom of the bag he invested the last of
+his savings in another ticket north and, armed with his title of
+"president," made addresses to northern audiences and replenished his
+finances with their contributions.
+
+Finally, as the great act of his career, Latta managed to get passage to
+Europe and was gone for several months. When he came back he had added a
+manuscript to his possessions: "The History of My Life and Work," which
+he published, and which is one of the most curious volumes I have ever
+seen.
+
+It is illustrated--largely with photographs of the author. One of the
+pictures is entitled, "Rev. M.L. Latta when he first commenced to build
+Latta University." This shows Latta with the tips of his fingers resting
+on a small table. Another picture shows him posed with one hand raised
+and the other resting on what is unmistakably the same little table. The
+latter picture, however, has the caption, "Rev. M.L. Latta making a
+speech in Pawtucket, R.I., at Y.M.C.A." Both pictures were all too
+clearly taken in a photographer's studio. Another page shows us, "Rev.
+M.L. Latta and three of his Admirable Presidents." In this case Latta
+merely takes for himself the upper right-hand corner, the other eminent
+persons pictured being ex-Presidents Roosevelt, McKinley and Cleveland.
+The star illustration, however, is a "made up" picture, in which a
+photograph of Latta, looking spick-and-span, has been pasted onto what
+is very obviously a painted picture of a hall full of people in evening
+dress, all of them gazing at Latta, who stands upon the stage,
+dignified, suave, impressive, and all dressed-up by the brush of the
+"re-toucher." This picture is called: "In the Auditorium at London, in
+1894." Similar artfulness is shown in pictures of the "university"
+buildings, where the same frame structure, photographed from opposite
+ends, appears in one case as, "Young Ladies' Dormitory," and in the
+other as, "Chapel and Young Men's Dormitory."
+
+In his autobiography, Latta tells how, in the course of getting his own
+schooling, he raised money by teaching a district school during
+vacation. He says:
+
+     After paying my expenses, I had nearly a hundred dollars to return
+     to school with. When I returned I was able to dress very neatly
+     indeed, and the young ladies received me very cordially on the
+     green during social hour. Before I taught school it was a common
+     saying among the young ladies and young men "Latta"; but after I
+     returned with a hundred dollars it was "Mr. Latta" all over the
+     campus. I would hear the young ladies saying among themselves, "I
+     bet Mr. Latta will not go with you--he will correspond with me this
+     afternoon." I paid no attention to it. I said to myself, "Don't you
+     see what a hundred dollars will do?"
+
+In another place the Professor reveals how he came to write his book:
+"Professor King, one of the teachers at Latta University said to me, 'If
+I had done what you have done I would have wrote a history of my life
+several years ago.'"
+
+The best part of the book, however, gives us Latta's account of his
+doings in London:
+
+     Just before I left the city of London I was invited by a
+     distinguished friend, a close relation to Queen Victoria, to make a
+     speech. He told me there would be a meeting in one of the large
+     halls in that city. I can't just think of the name of the hall. He
+     invited me to be present. The distinguished friend that I have just
+     mentioned presided over the meeting. There was an immense audience
+     present. If memory serves me right, I was the only Negro in the
+     hall. The gentleman came to me and asked if I would make a speech.
+     I told him I had already delivered one address, besides several
+     sermons I had preached, and I thought that I would not speak again
+     during my stay. I accepted the invitation, however, and spoke.
+
+The Professor then tells how he was introduced as one whose addresses
+were "among the ablest ever delivered in London." Also he gives his
+speech in full. Great events followed. His distinguished unnamed friend,
+the "close relation of the Queen," came to him soon after, he says, and
+asked him if he had "ever been to the palace."
+
+Continues Latta:
+
+     He said to me, "If you will come over before you leave the city,
+     and call to see me, I will take you to the palace with me and
+     introduce you to the Queen." I told him I would do so, that I had
+     heard a good deal about the royal throne, and I would be very much
+     interested to see the palace. He said he thought I would, because
+     the government was very different from ours.
+
+     I called at his residence as I had promised, and he went with me to
+     the palace. The Queen knew him, of course. He was received very
+     cordially. Everything shined so much like gold in the palace that I
+     had to stop and think where I was. He introduced me to the Queen,
+     and told her I was from North America. He told her that I spoke at
+     a meeting he presided over, and he enjoyed my speech very much. He
+     told her we had an immense audience, and all the people were well
+     pleased with the speech. The Queen said she was more than glad to
+     meet me, and she would have liked very much to have been present,
+     and heard the speech that her cousin said I made.... She told me
+     she hoped that would not be the last visit I would make to their
+     city. I shook hands with her and bade her good-bye. The
+     distinguished friend carried me and showed me the different
+     departments of the palace, and I bade him good-bye.
+
+In Raleigh, I think, they rather like Latta. It amuses them to see him
+go north and get money, and it is said that he appreciates the situation
+himself. He ought to. Not many southern negroes have such comfortable
+homes as "Latta University's" best kept-up building--the residence of
+the President.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+UNDER ST. MICHAEL'S CHIMES
+
+    And where St. Michael's chimes
+    The fragrant hours exquisitely tell,
+    Making the world one loveliness, like a true poet's rhymes.
+
+    --RICHARD WATSON GILDER.
+
+
+It has been said--by Mrs. T.P. O'Connor, I think--that whereas
+twenty-five letters of introduction for New York may produce one
+invitation to dinner, one letter of introduction for Charleston will
+produce twenty-five dinner invitations. If this be an exaggeration it
+is, at least, exaggeration in the right direction; that is, along the
+lines of truth. For though Charleston's famed "exclusiveness" is very
+real, making letters of introduction very necessary to strangers
+desiring to see something of the city's social life, such letters
+produce, in Charleston, as Mrs. O'Connor suggests, results definite and
+delightful.
+
+Immediately upon our arrival, my companion and I sent out several
+letters we had brought with us, and presently calling cards began to
+arrive for us at the hotel. Also there came courteous little notes,
+delivered in most cases by hand, according to the old Charleston
+custom--a custom surviving pleasantly from times when there were no
+postal arrangements, but plenty of slaves to run errands. Even to this
+day, I am told, invitations to Charleston's famous St. Cecilia balls are
+delivered by hand.
+
+One of the notes we received revealed to us a characteristic custom of
+the city. It contained an invitation to occupy places in the pew of a
+distinguished family, at St. Michael's Church, on the approaching Sunday
+morning. In order to realize the significance of such an invitation one
+must understand that St. Michael's is to Charleston, socially, what St.
+George's, Hanover Square, is to London. A beautiful old building,
+surrounded by a historic burial ground and surmounted by a delicate
+white spire containing fine chimes, it strongly suggests the
+architectural touch of Sir Christopher Wren; but it is not by Wren, for
+he died a number of years before 1752, when the cornerstone of St.
+Michael's was laid. When the British left Charleston--or Charles Town,
+as the name of the place stands in the early records--after occupying it
+during the Revolutionary War, they took with them, to the horror of the
+city, the bells of St. Michael's, and the church books. The silver,
+however, was saved, having been concealed on a plantation some miles
+from Charleston. Later the bells were returned.
+
+Pre-Revolutionary Charleston was divided into two parishes: St.
+Michael's below Broad Street, and St. Philip's above. Under governmental
+regulation citizens were not allowed to hold pews in both churches
+unless they owned houses in both parishes. St. Michael's, being nearer
+the battery, in which region are the finest old houses, had, perhaps,
+the wealthier congregation, but St. Philip's is, to my mind, the more
+beautiful church of the two, largely because of the open space before
+it, and the graceful outward bend of Church Street in deference to the
+projecting portico.
+
+When the Civil War broke out St. Philip's bells were melted and made
+into cannon, but those of St. Michael's were left in place until
+cannonballs from the blockading fleet struck the church, when they were
+taken down and sent, together with the silver plate, to Columbia, South
+Carolina, for safe-keeping. But Columbia was, as matters turned out, the
+worst place to which they could have been sent. The silver was looted by
+troops under Sherman, and the bells were destroyed when the city was
+burned. The fragments were, however, collected and sent to England,
+whence the bells originally came, and there they were recast. Their
+music--perhaps the most characteristic of all the city's characteristic
+sounds--has been called "the voice of Charleston." Of the silver only a
+few fragments have been returned. One piece was found in a pawn shop in
+New York, and another in a small town in Ohio. _Mais que voulez-vous?
+C'est la guerre!_
+
+In mentioning Charleston churches one becomes involved in a large
+matter. In 1801, when St. Mary's, the first Roman Catholic church in the
+city, was erected, there were already eighteen churches in existence,
+among them the present Huguenot Church, at the corner of Church and
+Queen Streets, which, though a very old building, is nevertheless the
+second Huguenot Church to occupy the same site, the first, built in
+1687, having been destroyed in the great conflagration of 1796, which
+very nearly destroyed St. Philip's, as well. A number of the old
+Huguenot families long ago became Episcopalians, and the descendants of
+many of the early French settlers of Charleston, buried in the Huguenot
+churchyard, are now parishioners of St. Michael's and St. Philip's. The
+Huguenot Church in Charleston is the only church of this denomination in
+America; its liturgy is translated from the French, and services are
+held in French on the third Sunday of November, January and March. A
+Unitarian Church was established in 1817, as an offshoot of the Scotch
+Presbyterian Church, the old White Meeting House of which (built 1685,
+used by the British as a granary, during the Revolution, and torn down
+1806) gave Meeting Street its name. Early in the history of the
+Unitarian Church, the home of which was a former Presbyterian Church
+building, in Archdale Street, Dr. Samuel Gilman, a young minister from
+Gloucester, Massachusetts, became its pastor. This was the same Dr.
+Gilman who wrote "Fair Harvard."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In only one instance did the letters of introduction we sent out produce
+a response of the kind one would not be surprised at receiving in some
+rushing city of the North: a telephone call. A lady, not a native
+Charlestonian, but one who has lived actively about the world, rang us
+up, bade us welcome, and invited us to dinner.
+
+But she was a very modern sort of lady, as witness not only her use of
+the telephone--an instrument which seems in Charleston almost an
+anachronism; as, for that matter, the automobile does, too--but her
+dinner hour, which was eight o'clock. Very few Charleston families dine
+at night. Dinner invitations are usually for three, or perhaps half-past
+three or four, in the afternoon, and there is a light supper in the
+evening. I judge that this custom holds also in some other cities of the
+region, for I remember calling at the office of a large investment
+company in Wilmington, North Carolina, to find it wearing, at three in
+the afternoon, the deserted look of a New York office between twelve and
+one o'clock. Every one had gone home to dinner. Mr. W.D. Howells, in his
+charming essay on Charleston, makes mention of this matter:
+
+"The place," he says, "has its own laws and usages, and does not trouble
+itself to conform to those of other aristocracies. In London the best
+society dines at eight o'clock, and in Madrid at nine, but in Charleston
+it dines at four.... It makes morning calls as well as afternoon calls,
+but as the summer approaches the midday heat must invite rather to the
+airy leisure of the verandas, and the cool quiescence of interiors
+darkened against the fly in the morning and the mosquito at
+night-fall."
+
+The household fly is a year-round resident of Charleston, by grace of a
+climate which permits--barely permits, at its coldest--the use of the
+open surrey as a public vehicle in all seasons. Sometimes, during a
+winter cold-snap, when a ride in a surrey is not a pleasant thing to
+contemplate, when residents of old mansions have shut themselves into a
+room or two heated by grate fires, then the fly seems to have
+disappeared, but let the cold abate a little and out he comes again like
+some rogue who, after brief and spurious penance, resumes the evil of
+his ways.
+
+The stranger going to a humble Charleston house will find on the gate a
+coiled spring at the end of which hangs a bell. By touching the spring
+and causing the bell to jingle he makes his presence known. The larger
+houses have upon their gates bell-pulls or buttons which cause bells to
+ring within. This is true of all houses which have front gardens. The
+garden gate constitutes, by custom, a barrier comparable in a degree
+with the front door of a Northern house; a usage arising, doubtless, out
+of the fact that almost all important Charleston houses have not only
+gardens, but first and second story galleries, and that in hot weather
+these galleries become, as it were, exterior rooms, in which no small
+part of the family life goes on. Many Charleston houses have their
+gardens to the rear, and themselves abut upon the sidewalk. Calling at
+such houses, you ring at what seems to be an ordinary front door, but
+when the door is opened you find yourself entering not upon a hall, but
+upon an exterior gallery running to the full depth of the house, down
+which you walk to the actual house door. In still other houses--and this
+is true of some of the most notable mansions of the city, including the
+Pringle, Huger, and Rhett houses--admittance is by a street door of the
+normal sort, opening upon a hall, and the galleries and gardens are at
+the side or back, the position of the galleries in relation to the house
+depending upon what point of the compass the house faces, the desirable
+thing being to get the breezes which are prevalently from the southwest
+and the westward.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Charleston is very definitely two things: It is old, and it is a city.
+
+There is the story of a young lady who asked a stranger if he did not
+consider it a unique town.
+
+He agreed that it was, and inquired whether she knew the derivation of
+the word "unique."
+
+When she replied negatively he informed her that the word came from the
+Latin _unus_, meaning "one," and _equus_, meaning "a horse"; otherwise
+"a one-horse town."
+
+This tale, however, is a libel, for despite the general superstition of
+chambers of commerce to the contrary, the estate of cityhood is not
+necessarily a matter of population nor yet of commerce. That is one of
+the things which, if we were unaware of it before, we may learn from
+Charleston. Charleston is not great in population; it is not very great,
+as seaports go, in trade. Were cities able to talk with one another as
+men can, and as foolishly as men often do, I have no doubt that many a
+hustling middle-western city would patronize Charleston, precisely as a
+parvenue might patronize a professor of astronomy; nevertheless,
+Charleston has a stronger, deeper-rooted city entity than all the cities
+of the Middle West rolled into one. This is no exaggeration. Where
+modern American cities strive to be like one another, Charleston strives
+to be like nothing whatsoever. She does not have to strive to _be_
+something. She _is_ something. She understands what most other American
+cities do not understand, and what, in view of our almost unrestricted
+immigration laws, it seems the National Government cannot be made to
+understand: namely, that mere numbers do not count for everything; that
+there is the matter of quality of population to be considered.
+Therefore, though Charleston's white population is no greater than that
+of many a place which would own itself frankly a small town, Charleston
+knows that by reason of the character of its population it is a great
+city. And that is precisely the case. Charleston people are city people
+_par excellence_. They have the virtues of city people, the vices of
+city people, and the civilization and sophistication of those who reside
+in the most aristocratic capitals. For that is another thing that
+Charleston is; it is unqualifiedly the aristocratic capital of the
+United States; the last stronghold of a unified American upper class;
+the last remaining American city in which Madeira and Port and
+_noblesse oblige_ are fully and widely understood, and are employed
+according to the best traditions.
+
+I have been told of a lady who remarked that Charleston was "the biggest
+little place" she ever saw. I say the same. The littleness of the place,
+it is sometimes pointed out, is expressed by the "vast cousinship" which
+constitutes Charleston society, but it is to my mind expressed much
+better in the way bicyclists leave their machines leaning against the
+curb at the busiest parts of main shopping streets. Its bigness, upon
+the other hand, is expressed by the homes from which some of those
+bicyclists come, by the cultivation which exists in those homes, and has
+existed there for generations, by the amenities of life as they are
+comprehended and observed, by the wealth of the city's tradition and the
+richness of its background. Nor is that background a mere arras of
+recollection. It exists everywhere in the wood and brick and stone of
+ancient and beautiful buildings, in iron grilles and balconies
+absolutely unrivaled in any other American city, and equaled only in
+European cities most famous for their artistry in wrought iron. It
+exists also in venerable institutions--the first orphanage established
+in the United States; the William Enston Home; the Public Library, one
+of the first and now one of the best libraries in the country; the art
+museum, the St. Cecilia Society, and various old clubs. More intimately
+it exists within innumerable old homes, which are treasure-houses of
+fine old English and early American furniture and of
+portraits--portraits by Sir Joshua, by Stuart, Copley, Trumbull, and
+most of the other portrait painters who painted from the time the
+Colonies began to become civilized to the time of the Civil War--among
+them S.F.B. Morse, who, I believe it is not generally known, made a
+considerable reputation as a portrait painter, in Charleston, before he
+made himself a world figure by inventing the telegraph.
+
+Even without seeing these private treasures the visitor to Charleston
+will see enough to convince him that Charleston is indeed
+"unique"--though not in the sense implied in the story--that it is the
+most intimately beautiful city upon the American continent.
+
+To call Charleston "unique," and immediately thereafter to liken it to
+other places may seem paradoxical. These likenesses are, however,
+evanescent. It is not that Charleston is actually like other places, but
+that here in a church building, there in an old tile roof, wrought iron
+gate, or narrow cobbled street, the visitor will find himself delicately
+reminded of Old World towns and cities. Mr. Howells, for example, found
+on the East Battery a faint suggestion of Venetian palaces, and in the
+doorway and gates of the Smyth house, in Legare Street, I was struck,
+also, with a Venetian suggestion so strange and subtle that I could not
+quite account for it. At night some of the old narrow streets, between
+Meeting Street and Bay, made me think of streets in the old part of
+Paris, on the left bank of the Seine; or again I would stop before an
+ancient brick house which was Flemish, or which--in the case of houses
+diagonally opposite St. Philip's Church--exampled the rude architecture
+of an old French village, stucco walls colored and chipped, red tile
+roof and all. The busy part of King Street, on a Saturday night when the
+fleet was in, made me think of Havana, and the bluejackets seemed to me,
+for the moment, to be American sailors in a foreign port; and once, on
+the same evening's walk, when I chanced to look to the westward across
+Marion Square, I found myself transported to the central _place_ of a
+Belgian city, with a slope-shouldered church across the way masquerading
+as a _hotel de ville_, and the sidewalk lights at either side figuring
+in my imagination as those of pleasant terrace cafes. So it was always.
+The very hotel in which we stayed--the Charleston--is like no other
+hotel in the United States, though it has about it something which
+caused me to think of the old Southern, in St. Louis. Still, it is not
+like the Southern. It is more like some old hotel in a provincial city
+of France--large and white, with a pleasing unevenness of floor, and,
+best of all, a great inner court which, in provincial France, might be a
+_remise_, but is here a garden. If I mistake not, carriages and coaches
+did in earlier times drive through the arched entrance, now the main
+doorway, and into this courtyard, where passengers alighted and baggage
+was taken down. The Planter's Hotel, now a ruin, opposite the Huguenot
+Church, antedates all others in the city, and used to be the fashionable
+gathering place for wealthy Carolinians and their families who came to
+Charleston annually for the racing season.
+
+The fact that Charleston has a rather important art museum and that its
+library is one of the four oldest town libraries in the country, no less
+than the fact that the city was, in its day, a great racing center,
+contribute to an understanding of the spirit of the place. The present
+Charleston Library is not the first public library started in the city.
+Not by any means! For it was founded as late as 1748, and the original
+public library of Charleston was the first one of the kind in the
+country, having been started about the beginning of the 18th century.
+Old records of this library still exist, showing that citizens voted so
+many skins to its support. Probably the most valuable possession of the
+present library are its files of Charleston newspapers, dating from 1732
+to the present time, including three files covering the War of 1812, and
+two covering the Civil War. These files are consulted by persons from
+all over the United States, for historical material. The library has
+recently moved into a good modern building. In the old building there
+was a separate entrance at the back for ladies, and it is only lately
+that ladies have been allowed full membership in the Library Society,
+and have entered by the front door. The former custom, I suppose,
+represented certain old-school sentiments as to "woman's place" such as
+I find expressed in "Reminiscences of Charleston," by Charles Fraser,
+published in 1854. Declares Mr. Fraser:
+
+     The ambition for literary distinction is now very prevalent with
+     the sex. But without any disposition to undervalue their claims,
+     whenever I hear of a female traveler clambering the Alps, or
+     describing the classic grounds of Greece and Italy, publishing her
+     musings in the holy land, or revealing the mysteries of the harem,
+     I cannot but think that for every success obtained some appropriate
+     duty has been neglected.
+
+     I except the poetess, for hers are the effusions of the heart and
+     the imagination, prompted by nature and uttered because they are
+     irrepressible. Many females travel for the purpose of writing and
+     publishing books--whilst Mrs. Heman's, Mrs. Osgood's, and Mrs.
+     Sigourney's volumes may be regarded as grateful offerings to the
+     muse in return for her inspiration.
+
+It is hard not to be irritated, even now, with the man who wrote that,
+especially in view of the fact that the two most interesting books to
+come out of the Carolinas of recent years are both by women: one of them
+being "Charleston--the Place and the People," by Mrs. St. Julien
+Ravenel, a volume any chapter of which is worth the whole of Mr.
+Fraser's "Reminiscences," and the other "A Woman Rice-Planter," by
+"Patience Pennington," otherwise Mrs. John Julius Pringle (nee Alston),
+who lives on her plantation near Georgetown, South Carolina.
+
+The Carolina Jockey Club subscribed regularly to the support of the
+library, and now that that club is no more, its chief memorial may be
+said to rest there. This club was probably the first racing club in the
+country, and it is interesting to note that the old cement pillars from
+the Washington Race Course at Charleston were taken, when that course
+was abandoned, and set up at the Belmont Park course, near New York.
+
+The turf history of Carolina began (according to the "South Carolina
+Gazette," dated February 1, 1734) in that same year, on the first
+Tuesday in February. One of the prizes was a saddle and bridle valued at
+L20. The riders were white men and the course was a green at Charleston
+Neck, near where the lower depot of the South Carolina Railroad now
+stands. In a "History of the Turf in South Carolina," which I found in
+the library, I learned that Mr. Daniel Ravenel bred fine horses on his
+plantation, Wantoot, in St. John's Parish, as early as 1761, that Mr.
+Frank Huger had imported an Arabian horse, and that many other gentlemen
+were importing British running horses, and were engaged in breeding. The
+book refers to the old York Course, later called the New Market Course.
+A long search did not, however, enable me to establish the date on which
+the Jockey Club was founded. It was clearly a going institution in 1792,
+for under date of Wednesday, February 15, in that year, I found the
+record of a race for the Jockey Club Purse--"four mile-heats--weight for
+age--won by Mr. Lynch's _Foxhunter_, after a well contested race of four
+heats, beating Mr. Sumter's _Ugly_, who won the first heat; Col.
+Washington's _Rosetta_, who won the second heat; Capt. Alston's _Betsy
+Baker_," etc., etc.
+
+The Civil War practically ended the Jockey Club, though a feeble effort
+was, for a time, made to carry it on. In 1900 the club properties and
+the funds remaining in the club treasury were transferred as an
+endowment to the Charleston Library Society. The proceeds from this
+endowment add to the library's income by about two thousand dollars
+annually. Other items of interest in connection with the Carolina Jockey
+Club are that Episcopal Church conventions used to be held in Charleston
+during the racing season, so that the attending parsons might take in
+the races; that the Jockey Club Ball used to be the great ball of the
+Charleston season, as the second St. Cecilia Ball became later and now
+is; that the Charleston Club, a most delightful club, founded in 1852,
+was an outgrowth of the Jockey Club; and that the Jockey Club's old
+Sherries, Ports and Madeiras went to New York where they were purchased
+by Delmonico--among them a Calderon de la Barca Madeira of 1848, and a
+Peter Domecq Sherry of 1818.
+
+Mr. S.A. Nies, one of the old employees of Delmonico's, tells me that
+the Calderon de la Barca of the above mentioned year is all gone, but
+that Delmonico's still has a few bottles of the same wine of the vintage
+of 1851.
+
+"This wine," Mr. Nies said, "is listed on our wine card at $6.00 per
+bottle. It is not the best Madeira that we have, although it is a very
+fine one. Recently we served a bottle of Thompson's Auction Madeira, of
+which the year is not recognizable on the label, but which to my
+knowledge was an old wine forty years ago. This wine brought $25.00 a
+bottle and was worth it.
+
+"The Peter Domecq Sherry of 1818 does not figure on our wine list as we
+have but a few bottles left. It is $20.00 a bottle.
+
+"The prices brought to-day by old Madeiras and Sherries do not represent
+their real values. One has but to look at the compound interest of
+savings banks to realize that these wines should be selling at four
+times the price they are; but unfortunately, since the advent of Scotch
+whisky in the American market, the American palate seems to have
+deteriorated, and if the wines were listed at the price they ought to
+bring, we could not sell them. As it is, the demand for the very rare
+old wines is irregular and infrequent. We keep them principally to
+preserve our reputation; not for the money there is in it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+HISTORY AND ARISTOCRACY
+
+    The cool shade of aristocracy....
+
+    --SIR W.F.P. NAPIER.
+
+
+Just now, when we are being unpleasantly awakened to the fact that our
+vaunted American melting-pot has not been doing its work; when some of
+us are perhaps wondering whether the quality of metal produced by the
+crucible will ever be of the best; it is comforting to reflect that a
+city whose history, traditions and great names are so completely
+involved with Americanism in its highest forms, a city we think of as
+ultra-American, is peculiarly a melting-pot product.
+
+The original Charleston colonists were English and Irish, sent out under
+Colonel Sayle, in 1669, by the Lords Proprietors, to whom Charles II had
+granted a tract of land in the New World, embracing the present States
+of Georgia and North and South Carolina. These colonists touched at Port
+Royal--where the Marine Barracks now are (and ought not to be)--but
+settled on the west side of the Ashley River, across from where
+Charleston stands. It was not until 1680 that they transferred their
+settlement to the present site of the city, naming the place Charles
+Town in honor of the King. In 1671 the colony contained 263 men able to
+bear arms, 69 women and 59 children. In 1674, when New York was taken by
+the English from the Dutch, a number of the latter moved down to the
+Carolina colony. French Protestants had, at that time, already begun to
+arrive, and more came after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in
+1685. In 1680 Germans came. By 1684 there were four Huguenot settlements
+in Carolina. In 1696 a Quaker was governor for a short time, and in the
+same year a body of New Englanders arrived from Dorchester,
+Massachusetts, establishing a town which they called Dorchester, near
+the present town of Summerville, a few miles from Charleston. At that
+time a number of Scottish immigrants had already arrived, though more
+came in 1715 and 1745, after the defeat of the Highlanders. From 1730 to
+1750 new colonists came from Switzerland, Holland and Germany. As early
+as 1740 there were several Jewish families in Charleston, and some of
+the oldest and most respected Jewish families in the United States still
+reside there. Also, when the English drove the Acadians from Canada in
+1755, twelve hundred of them immigrated to Carolina. By 1790, then, the
+city had a population of a little more than 15,000, which was about half
+the number of inhabitants then contained in the city of New York. In the
+case of Charleston, however, more than one half her people, at that
+time, were negroes, slavery having been introduced by Sir John Yeamans,
+an early British governor. By 1850 the city had about 20,000 white
+citizens and 23,000 blacks, and by 1880 some 7,500 more, of which
+additional number two thirds were negroes. The present population is
+estimated at 65,000, which makes Charleston a place of about the size of
+Rockford, Illinois, Sioux City, Iowa, or Covington, Kentucky; but as, in
+the case of Charleston, more than half this number is colored,
+Charleston is, if the white population only is considered, a place of
+approximately 30,000 inhabitants, or, roughly speaking, about the size
+of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., or Colorado Springs, Colorado.
+
+In area, also, Charleston is small, covering less than four square
+miles. This is due to the position of the city on a peninsula formed by
+the convergence and confluence of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers, which
+meet at Charleston's beautiful Battery precisely as the Hudson River and
+the East River meet at the Battery in New York. The shape of Charleston,
+indeed, greatly resembles that of Manhattan Island, and though her
+harbor and her rivers are neither so large nor so deep as those of the
+port of New York, they are altogether adequate to a considerable
+maritime activity.
+
+The Charleston Chamber of Commerce (which, like everything else in
+Charleston dates from long ago, having been founded in 1748) quotes
+President Taft as calling this port the most convenient one to Panama--a
+statement which the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce is in position to
+dispute. The fact remains, however, that Charleston's position on the
+map justifies the Chamber of Commerce's alliterative designation of the
+place as "The Plumb-line Port to Panama." This is so true that if
+Charleston should one day be shaken loose from its moorings by an
+earthquake--something not unknown there--and should fall due south upon
+the map, it would choke up the mouth of the Canal, were not Cuba
+interposed, to catch the debris.
+
+Before the Civil War, Charleston was the greatest cotton shipping port
+of the country, and it still handles large amounts of cotton and rice.
+Until a few years ago South Carolina was the chief rice producing State
+in the Union, and history records that the first rice planted in the
+Carolinas, if not in the country, was secured and sown by an early
+governor of Carolina, Thomas Smith, who died in 1694. It may be noted in
+passing that this Thomas Smith bore the title "Landgrave," the Lords
+Proprietors, in their plan of government for the colony--which, by the
+way, was drawn up by the philosopher Locke--having provided for a
+colonial nobility with titles. The titles "Baron" and "Landgrave" were
+hereditary in several Charleston families, and constitute, so far as I
+know, the only purely American titles of nobility that ever existed.
+Descendants of the old Landgraves still reside in Charleston, and in at
+least one instance continue to use the word "Landgrave" in connection
+with the family name.
+
+The prosperity of Charleston since the Civil War has depended more,
+perhaps, than on any other single product, upon the trade in phosphate,
+large deposits of which underlie this region.
+
+The real wonder of Charleston, the importance of the place among
+American cities, cannot, however, be said to have resulted primarily
+from commerce (though her commerce is growing), or from greatness of
+population (though Charleston is the metropolis of the Carolinas), but
+is involved with matters of history, tradition and beauty. The mantle of
+greatness was assumed by this city in colonial times, and has never been
+laid aside. Among the most distinguished early Americans were many
+Charlestonians, and in not a few instances the old blood still endures
+there, and even the old names: such names as Washington, Pinckney, Bull,
+Pringle, Rutledge, Middleton, Drayton, Alston, Huger, Agassiz, Ravenel,
+Izard, Gadsden, Rhett, Calhoun, Read, De Saussure, Lamar and Brawley, to
+mention but a few.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Charleston's early history is rich in pirate stories of the most
+thrilling moving-picture variety. Blackbeard, Stede Bonnet and other
+disciples of the Jolly Roger preyed upon Charleston shipping. Bonnet
+once held a Mr. Samuel Wragg of Charleston prisoner aboard his ship
+threatening to send his head to the city unless the unfortunate man
+should be ransomed--the demand being for medicines of various kinds.
+Colonel Rhett, of Charleston, captured Bonnet and his ship after a
+savage fight, but Bonnet soon after escaped from the city in woman's
+clothing. Still later he was retaken, hanged, as he deserved to be, and
+buried along with forty of his band at a point now covered by the
+Battery Garden, that exquisite little park at the tip of the city, which
+is the favorite promenade of Charlestonians. In another fight which
+occurred just off Charleston bar, a crew of citizens under Governor
+Robert Johnson defeated the pirate Richard Worley, who was killed in the
+action, and captured his ship, which, when the hatches were opened
+proved to be full of prisoners, thirty-six of them women. Even as late
+as the period of the War of 1812--a war which did not affect Charleston
+save in the way of destroying her shipping and causing poverty and
+distress--a case of brutal piracy is recorded. The daughter of Aaron
+Burr, Theodosia by name, was married to Governor Joseph Alston. After
+her father's trial for high treason, when he was disgraced and broken,
+she tried to comfort him, for the two were peculiarly devoted. Intending
+to visit him she set sail from Charleston for New York in a ship which
+was never heard from again. Somewhere I have read a description of the
+distraught father's long vigils at New York, where he would stand gazing
+out to sea long after all hope had been abandoned by others. Mrs. St.
+Julien Ravenel tells us in her charming book, that thirty years later an
+old sailor, dying in a village of the North Carolina coast, confessed
+that he had been one of a pirate crew which had captured the ship and
+compelled the passengers to walk the plank. This story is also given by
+Charles Gayarre, who says the pirate chief was none other than Dominick
+You, who fought under Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans, and is
+buried in that city. The husband and father of Mrs. Alston were spared
+the ghastly tale, Mrs. Ravenel says, since both were already in their
+graves when the sailor's deathbed confession solved the mystery.
+
+In the Revolution, Charleston played an important part. Men of
+Charleston were, of course, among the signers of the Declaration of
+Independence. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, who gave us the immortal
+maxim: "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!" who was on
+Washington's staff, was later Ambassador to France and president-general
+of the Sons of the Cincinnati, was a Charlestonian of the
+Charlestonians, and lies buried in St. Michael's. Such Revolutionary
+names as Marion, Laurens, William Washington, Greene, Hampton, Moultrie
+and Sumter are associated with the place, and two of these are reechoed
+in the names of those famous forts in Charleston harbor on which
+attention was fixed at the outbreak of the Civil War: Moultrie and
+Sumter--the latter, target for the first shot fired in the conflict.
+
+Nearly thirty years before the Civil War, Charleston had distinguished
+herself in the arts of peace by producing the first locomotive tried in
+the United States, and by constructing the first consecutive hundred
+miles of railroad ever built in the world, and now, with the War, she
+distinguished herself by initiating other mechanical devices of very
+different character--a semi-submersible torpedo boat and the first
+submarine to torpedo a hostile war vessel. True, David Bushnell of
+Connecticut did construct a crude sort of submarine during the
+Revolutionary War, and succeeded in getting under a British ship with
+the machine, but he was unable to fasten his charge of powder and his
+effort consequently failed. Robert Fulton also experimented with
+submarines, or "plunging boats" as he called them, and was encouraged
+for a time by Napoleon I. The little _David_ of the Confederate navy is
+sometimes referred to as the first submarine but the _David_ was not
+actually an underwater boat, but a torpedo boat which could run awash,
+with her funnels and upper works slightly out of water. She was a
+cigar-shaped vessel thirty-three feet long, built of wood, propelled by
+steam, and carrying her torpedo on a pole, forward. Dr. St. Julien
+Ravenel of Charleston and Captain Theodore Stoney devised the craft, and
+she was built by funds subscribed by Charleston merchants. In command of
+Lieutenant W.T. Glassell, C.S.N., and with three other men aboard, she
+torpedoed the United States ship _New Ironsides_, flagship of the fleet
+blockading Charleston. The _New Ironsides_ was crippled, but not lost.
+After this United States vessels blockading Charleston protected
+themselves with booms. This resulted in the construction of an actual
+undersea torpedo boat, the _Hunley_. This extraordinary vessel has been
+spoken of as having had the appearance of a huge iron coffin, as well as
+the attributes of one, for she proved a death-trap for successive crews
+on three trial trips. As there were no electric motors or gasoline
+engines in those days, she was run by hand, eight men crowded together
+turning a crank-shaft which operated her propeller. After repeated
+sinkings, she was raised, manned by new men, and sent forth again.
+Finally, in Charleston harbor she succeeded in destroying the United
+States man-o'-war _Housatonic_, but at the same time went down, herself,
+drowning or suffocating all on board. A memorial drinking fountain on
+the Battery, at the foot of Meeting Street, commemorates "the men of the
+Confederate Army and Navy, first in marine warfare to employ torpedo
+boats--1863-1865." On this memorial are given the names of sixteen men
+who perished in torpedo attacks on the blockading fleet, among them
+Horace L. Hunley, set down as inventor of the submarine boat. The names
+of fourteen others who were lost are unknown.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lord William Campbell, younger son of the Duke of Argyll, was British
+governor at Charleston when the Revolution broke out. He had married a
+Miss Izard, of Charleston, who brought him a dowry of fifty thousand
+pounds, a large sum in those times. Their home was in a famous old house
+which stands on Meeting Street, and it was from the back yard of this
+house that Lord William fled in a rowboat to a British man-o'-war, when
+it became evident that Charleston was no longer hospitable to
+representatives of the Crown. Later his wife followed him to Great
+Britain, where they remained.
+
+The Pringle House, as it is now called, formerly the Brewton house,
+perhaps the most superb old residence in the city, was the headquarters
+of General Sir Henry Clinton, after he had captured Charleston, and was
+the residence of Lord Rawdon, the unpleasant British commander who
+succeeded Clinton. Cornwallis lived outside the town at Drayton Hall,
+which still stands, on the Ashley River. After his capture Cornwallis
+was exchanged for Henry Laurens, a distinguished Charlestonian, who,
+though he wept over the Declaration of Independence, was before long
+president of the Continental Congress, and later went to France, where
+he was associated with Benjamin Franklin, John Jay and John Adams in
+negotiating the treaty of peace and independence for America.
+
+Mrs. Ravenel says in her book that Sherman destroyed all but one of the
+superb old houses on the Ashley River, and when we consider that
+Sherman's troops invested Charleston just before the end of the War, and
+reflect upon the general's notorious "carelessness with fire," we have
+cause for national rejoicing that Charleston, with its unmatched
+buildings and their splendid contents, was not laid in ashes, as were
+Atlanta and Columbia. Had Sherman burned Charleston it would be hard for
+even a Yankee to forgive him.
+
+Even without the aid of the Northern general, the city has been able to
+furnish disastrous conflagrations of her own, over a period of two
+centuries and more, and I find in the quaint reminiscences of Charles
+Fraser, already alluded to, a lamentation that, because of fires, many
+of the old landmarks have disappeared, and the city is "losing its look
+of picturesque antiquity." To make matters worse, there came, in 1886,
+an earthquake, rendering seven eighths of the houses uninhabitable until
+repairs aggregating some millions of dollars had been made. Up to the
+time of the earthquake the old mansion from which Lord William Campbell
+fled at the beginning of the Revolution, was adorned by a battlemented
+roof. It is recorded that when the shock came, an Englishman was in the
+house, and that in his eagerness to get outdoors he pushed others aside.
+As he reached the front steps, however, the battlements came crashing
+down. He was the one person from that house who perished, and his only
+monument is the patch of comparatively new stone where the broken steps
+have been repaired.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My companion and I achieved entrance to one of the famous old Charleston
+houses which we had been particularly anxious to see, through the
+kindness of a lady to whom we had a letter of introduction, who happened
+to be a relative of the owner of the house.
+
+It seems necessary to explain, at this juncture, that in Charleston,
+many proper names of foreign origin have been corrupted in
+pronunciation. A few examples will suffice: The Dutch name Vanderhorst,
+conspicuous in the early annals of the city, has come to be pronounced
+"Van-Dross"; Legare, the name of another distinguished old family,
+commemorated in the name of Legare Street, is pronounced "Legree"; De
+Saussure has become "Dess-a-sore," with the accent on the first
+syllable, and Prioleau is called "Pray-low."
+
+I was unaware of these matters when my companion and I visited the
+ancient house I speak of. Though I had heard the name of the proprietor
+of the mansion spoken many times, and recognized it as a distinguished
+Charleston name, I had never seen it written; however, without having
+given the matter much thought, I had, unfortunately, reached my own
+conclusions as to how it was spelled. Still more unfortunately, while I
+was delighting in the drawing-room of that wonderful old house, with the
+portraits of ladies in powdered hair and men in cocked hats and periwigs
+looking down upon me from the walls, I was impelled to reassure myself
+as to the spelling of the name. Let us assume that the name sounded like
+"Bowfee." That was not it but it will suffice for illustration.
+
+"I suppose," I said to our charming cicerone, "that the family name is
+spelled 'B-o-w-f-e-e'?"
+
+I had no sooner spoken than I realized, with a sudden access of horror
+what I had done. In guessing I had sinned, but in guessing wrong I had
+ruined myself. All this came to me instantly and positively, as by a
+psychic message of unparalleled definiteness from the dead ancestors
+whose portraits hung upon the paneling. It was as though they had joined
+in a great ghostly shout of execration, which was the more awful because
+it was a silent shout that jarred upon the senses rather than the ear
+drums. Then, before the lady replied, while the sound of my own voice
+saying "B-o-w-f-e-e" seemed to reverberate through the apartment, I
+suddenly comprehended the spirit of Charleston: understood that,
+compared with Charleston, Boston is as a rough mining camp, while New
+York hardly exists at all, being a mere miasma of vulgarity.
+
+There was a long silence, in which the lady to whom I had spoken gazed
+from the window at the rainy twilight. Her silence, I am persuaded, was
+not intended to rebuke me; she was not desirous of crushing me; she was
+merely stunned. Indeed, when at last she spoke, there was in her tone
+something of gentleness.
+
+"The name," she said, "is Beaufoy--B-e-a-u-f-o-y. It is of Huguenot
+origin."
+
+Passionately I wished for an earthquake--one that might cause the floor
+to open beneath me, or the roof to fall through and blot me from her
+sight. How to get away?--that was my one thought. To cover my
+embarrassment, I tried to make small-talk about a medallion of an
+Emperor of France, which hung upon the paneling. The lady said it had
+been given to an ancestor of the Beaufoys by the Emperor himself. That,
+for some reason, seemed to make things rather worse. I wished I had not
+dragged the Emperor into the conversation.
+
+"It is getting dark," I said. "It is time we were going."
+
+This the lady did not dispute.
+
+Of our actual farewells and exit from that house, I remember not a
+detail, save that, as we departed, I knew that we should never see this
+lady again; that for her I no longer existed, and that in my downfall I
+had dragged my companion with me. The next thing I definitely recollect
+is walking swiftly up Meeting Street beside him, in the rain and
+darkness of late afternoon. All the way back to the hotel we strode side
+by side in pregnant silence; neither did we speak as we ascended to our
+rooms.
+
+Some time later, while I was dressing for dinner, he entered my
+bedchamber. At the moment, as it happened, I was putting cuff-links into
+a dress shirt. With this task I busied myself, dreading to look up. In
+the meantime I felt his eyes fixed upon me. When the links were in, I
+delayed meeting his gaze by buttoning the little button in one
+sleeve-vent, above the cuff.
+
+"Do you mean to say you button those idiotic little buttons?" he
+demanded. "I didn't know that anybody ever did that!"
+
+"I don't always," I answered apologetically.
+
+"I should hope not!" he returned. Then he continued: "Do you remember
+where we are to be taken to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes," I said. "To the Pringle house."
+
+"Well," said he, "I just came in to ask you, as a favor, not to get off
+any fanciful ideas that you may have thought up, about the way to spell
+Pringle."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+POLITICS, A NEWSPAPER AND ST. CECILIA
+
+
+Charleston is very definitely a part of South Carolina. That is not
+always the case with a State and its chief city. It is not the case with
+the State and the City of New York. New York City has about the same
+relation to New York State as a goldpiece has to a large table-top on
+one corner of which it lies. Charleston, on the other hand, harmonizes
+into its state setting, as a beautiful ancient vase harmonizes into the
+setting afforded by some rare old cabinet. Moreover, Charleston's
+individuality amongst cities is more or less duplicated in South
+Carolina's individuality amongst States. South Carolina is a State as
+definitely marked--though in altogether different ways--as Kansas or
+California. It is a State that does nothing by halves. It has
+rattlesnakes larger and more venomous than other rattlesnakes, and it
+has twice had the disgraceful Cole Blease, otherwise
+"To-hell-with-the-Constitution" Blease, as governor. For senator it has
+the old war-horse Tillman, a man so admired for his power that, in our
+easy-going way, we almost forgive his dives into the pork-barrel.
+Tillman has been to South Carolina more or less what the late Senator
+Hale was to his section of New England. Hale grabbed a navy yard for
+Kittery, Maine (the Portsmouth yard), where there never should have been
+a navy yard; Tillman performed a like service, under like circumstances,
+for Charleston. Both are purely political yards. Naval officers opposed
+them, but were overridden by politicians, as so often happens. For in
+time of peace the army and the navy are political footballs, and it is
+only when war comes that the politicians cease kicking them about and
+cry: "Now, football, turn into a cannon-ball, and save your country and
+your country's flag!" For obviously, if the flag cannot be saved, the
+politicians will be without a "starry banner" to gesture at and roar
+about.
+
+Now, of course, with war upon us, any navy yard is a blessing, and the
+Charleston yard is being used, as it should be, to the utmost. But in
+time of peace the yard comes in for much criticism from the navy, the
+contention being that it is not favorably located from a strategic point
+of view, and that, owing to bars in the Cooper River, up which it is
+situated, it cannot be entered by large ships. The point is also made
+that while labor is cheaper at this yard than at any other, skilled
+metal-workers are hard to get. Friends of the yard contend, upon the
+other hand, that it is desirable because of its convenience to the
+Caribbean Sea, where, according to naval theory, this country will some
+day have to fight a battle in defense of the Panama Canal. The Pensacola
+yard, it is pointed out, is exposed and can be bombarded, whereas the
+Charleston yard is far enough inland to be safe from sea attack. As to
+the channel, it is navigable for destroyers and other small
+craft--though whether it would be so to a large destroyer which had been
+injured and was drawing more water than usual, I do not know. The
+practical situation of the navy, with regard to this and some of the
+other political yards, is like that of some man who has been left a lot
+of heterogeneous houses, scattered about town, none of them suited to
+his purposes, and who is obliged to scatter his family amongst them as
+best he can, or else abandon them and build a new house. We have been
+following the former course, and are only now preparing to adopt the
+latter, by establishing a naval base at Norfolk, as mentioned in an
+earlier chapter.
+
+Charleston politics have been peculiar. Until a few years ago the
+government of the city had long rested in the hands of a few old
+families, among them the Gadsdens and the Rhetts. The overthrow of this
+ancient and aristocratic rule by the election to the mayoralty of John
+P. Grace, an alleged "friend of the people," was spoken of by the New
+York "Sun," as being not a mere change in municipal government, but the
+fall of a dynasty which had controlled the city politically, financially
+and socially for a century and a half. Mr. Grace may be dismissed with
+the remark that he supported Blease and that he is editor of the
+recently founded Charleston "American," which I have heard called a
+Hearst newspaper, and which certainly wears the Hearst look about it.
+
+On January 19, 1917, this newspaper printed a full account of the ball
+of the St. Cecilia Society, Charleston's most sacred social
+organization. Never before in the history of the St. Cecilia Society,
+covering a period of a century and a half, had an account of one of its
+balls, and the names of those attending, been printed. The publication
+caused a great stir in the city and resulted in an editorial, said to
+have been written by Grace, which appeared next day, and which reveals
+something of Charleston tradition and something of Grace, as well. It
+was headed "The Saint Cecilia Ball," and ran as follows:
+
+     We carried on yesterday a full account of the famous Saint Cecilia
+     Ball. From the foundation of Charleston until the present moment it
+     has been regarded as an unwritten law that the annual events of
+     this ancient society shall not be touched upon.
+
+     Of course it was permissible for the thirty-five thousand poor
+     white people of Charleston to talk about the Saint Cecilia, and to
+     indulge in the thrilling sensation that comes to the proverbial cat
+     when she looks at a queen. Some of them, moved by curiosity, even
+     ventured within half a block of the Hibernian Hall to observe from
+     afar the gay festivities.
+
+     The press being forbidden to cover Saint Cecilia events, there grew
+     up in the vulgar mind weird stories of what went on behind the
+     scenes. While the Saint Cecilia has enjoyed the happy privilege of
+     journalistic silence, it has, therefore, correspondingly suffered
+     on the tongue of gossip. The truth is that we always knew that the
+     Saint Cecilia was just about the same as every other social
+     collection of human beings--a little gaiety flavored with a little
+     frivolity; nothing more, nothing less.
+
+     There was a time when this society was the extreme limit of social
+     exclusiveness. It was an anachronism on American soil, a matter of
+     pure heredity, the right to membership in which was as fixed as
+     Median law, but transcendently above the median line. Now, however,
+     since the society, in keeping with the spirit of the age, has
+     relaxed its rules to admit from year to year (if, indeed, only a
+     few now and then) members whose blood is far from indigo, we think
+     it perfectly legitimate for the newspaper, which represents ALL
+     classes of people, to invade the quondam sanctity of its functions
+     which are now being OPENED to all classes.
+
+Following this, the editorial quoted from Don Seitz's book, telling how
+the elder James Gordon Bennett was in the habit of mocking "events to
+which he was not invited," and how, in 1840, he managed to get one of
+his reporters into "Henry I Brevoort's fancy dress ball, the social
+event of the period." The quotation from Mr. Seitz's book ends with the
+following: "A far cry from this to 1894, when Ward McAlister, arbiter of
+the '400' at Mrs. Astor's famous ball, became a leader on social topics
+for the New York 'World.' It took many years for this umbrage at the
+reporting of social events to wear off and make the reporter welcome.
+Indeed, there is one place yet on the map where it is not even now
+permitted to record a social event, though the editors and owners of
+papers may be among those present. That is Charleston, South
+Carolina...."
+
+The Charleston editor then resumes his own reflections in this wise:
+
+     We regret to say, and it is the regret of our life, that we were
+     not one of the editors present at the Saint Cecilia. This,
+     therefore, relieves us of the implied condition to adhere any
+     longer to this silly and absurd custom which, in the language of
+     this great newspaper man, has made its last stand "on the map" at
+     Charleston. We are glad that we have forever nailed, in the opinion
+     of one hundred million ordinary people who make the American
+     nation, the absurdity that there is any social event so sacred, any
+     people so DIFFERENT from the rest of us poor human beings, that we
+     dare not speak of them.
+
+Just why private social events should be, as Mr. Grace seems to assume,
+particularly the property of the press, it is somewhat difficult to
+explain, unless we do so by accepting as fundamental the theory that the
+press is justified in invading personal privacy purely in order to
+pander, on the one hand to the new breed of vulgar rich which thrives on
+"publicity," and on the other, to the breed of vulgar poor which enjoys
+reading that supremest of American inanities, the "society page."
+
+What Mr. Seitz said in his book as to the reticence of Charleston
+newspapers, where society is concerned, is, however, generally
+true--amazingly so to one who has become hardened to the attitude of the
+metropolitan press elsewhere. The society columns of Charleston papers
+hardly ever print the names of the city's real aristocrats, and in the
+past they have gone much farther than this, for they have been known to
+suppress important news stories in which prominent citizens were
+unpleasantly involved. It may be added that earthquakes are evidently
+classed as members of the aristocracy, since occasional tremors felt in
+the city are pointedly ignored by the press. Whether or not the paper
+edited by the fearless Mr. Grace ignores these manifestations I am
+unable to say. One can easily fancy his taking a courageous stand on
+such a subject as well as upon social matters. Indeed, with a few slight
+changes, his editorial upon the St. Cecilia ball, might be made to serve
+equally well after an earthquake shock. He might say:
+
+     The press being forbidden to cover earthquakes, there grew up in
+     the vulgar mind weird stories of what went on behind the scenes.
+     While the earthquakes have enjoyed the happy privilege of
+     journalistic silence, they have, therefore, correspondingly
+     suffered on the tongue of gossip.
+
+He could also make the point that since, "in keeping with the spirit of
+the age," the earthquake shakes people "(if indeed only a few of them
+now and then), whose blood is far from indigo, we think it perfectly
+legitimate for the newspaper, which represents ALL classes of people, to
+invade the quondam sanctity of its functions which are now being OPENED
+to all classes."
+
+But of course, where the editor of such a paper is concerned, there is
+always the element of natural delicacy and nicety of feeling to be
+considered. Mr. Grace felt that because he was not present at the St.
+Cecilia ball, he was free to print things about it. An earthquake would
+not be like the St. Cecilia Society--it would not draw the line at Mr.
+Grace. At a Charleston earthquake he would undoubtedly be present. The
+question therefore arises: Having been PRESENT, might his AMOUR PROPRE
+make him feel that to REPORT the event would not be altogether in GOOD
+TASTE?
+
+The St. Cecilia Society began in 1737 with a concert given on St.
+Cecilia's day, and continued for many years to give concerts at which
+the musicians were both amateurs and professionals. Josiah Quincy, in
+his "Journal," tells of having attended one of these concerts in 1773,
+and speaks of the richness of the men's apparel, noting that there were
+"many with swords on."
+
+When, in 1819, difficulty was experienced in obtaining performers, it
+was proposed that a ball be held in place of a concert, and by 1822 the
+society was definitely transformed from a musical to a dancing
+organization, which it has remained ever since.
+
+The statement in the "American" editorial that St. Cecilia balls have
+been the subject of scandalous gossip is, I believe, quite false, as is
+also the statement that the balls are now "being opened to all classes."
+
+Mrs. Ravenel in her book tells how the organization is run. Members are
+elected, and all are men, though the names of the ladies of a member's
+household are placed on the club list. "Only death or removal from the
+city erases them--change of fortune affects them not at all." A man
+whose progenitors have belonged to the society is almost certain of
+election, though there have been cases in which undesirables of good
+family have been blackballed. Two blackballs are sufficient to cause the
+rejection of a candidate. Men who are not of old Charleston stock are
+carefully investigated before they can be elected, but of late years not
+a few such, having been considered desirable, have become members. The
+members elect officers and a board of managers, and these have entire
+control of the society. Three balls are given each year, one in January
+and two in February. Until a few years ago the hall in which the balls
+are given was lighted by innumerable candelabra; only lately has
+electricity been used. The society owns its own plate, damask, china and
+glassware, and used to own a good stock of wines. Of late years, I
+believe, wines have not been served, the beverage of the evening
+consisting of coffee, hot and iced. The greatest decorum is observed at
+the balls. Young ladies go invariably with chaperones; following each
+dance there is a brief promenade, whereafter the young ladies are
+returned to their duennas--who, if they be Charleston dowagers in
+perfection, usually carry turkey-feather fans. Cards are filled months
+in advance. As lately as the year 1912 every other dance was a square
+dance; since then, however, I believe that square dances have gone the
+way of candle-light. The society has an endowment and membership is
+inexpensive, costing but fifteen dollars a year, including the three
+balls. This enables young men starting in life to be members without
+going into extravagance, and is in accord with the best social tradition
+of Charleston, where the difference between an aristocracy and a
+plutocracy is well understood. Most of the rules of the organization are
+unwritten. One is that men shall not smoke on the premises during a
+ball; another is that divorced persons shall not be members or guests of
+the society. In this respect the St. Cecilia Society may be said, in
+effect, to be applying, socially, the South Carolina law; for South
+Carolina is the only State in the Union in which divorces are not
+granted for any cause whatsoever.
+
+This reminds me that the State has an anti-tipping law. The Pullman
+porter is required to hang up copies of the law in his car when it
+enters South Carolina, and copies of it are displayed on the doors of
+hotel bedrooms. The penalty for giving or receiving a tip is a fine of
+from ten to one hundred dollars, or thirty days in jail. Perhaps the law
+is observed. I know, at least, that no one offered me a tip while I was
+in that State.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The old grandees of Charleston were usually sent to Oxford or Cambridge
+for an education and English tradition still remains, I fancy, the
+foundation for what Charleston social life is to-day. I thought at first
+that Charlestonians spoke like the English, but later came to the
+conclusion that there is in the pronunciation of some of them a quality
+resembling a very faint brogue--a brogue such as might be possessed by a
+cultivated Irishman who had moved to England in his boyhood, and had
+been educated there. The "vanishing _y_" of tidewater Virginia is also
+used by some Charlestonians, I am told, though I do not remember hearing
+it.
+
+Generalizations on the subject of dialectic peculiarities are dangerous,
+as I have good reason to know. Naturally, not all Charlestonians speak
+alike. I should say, however, that the first _a_ in the words "Papa"
+and "Mama" is frequently given a short sound, as _a_ in "hat"; also
+that many one-syllable words are strung out into two. For instance,
+"eight" is heard as "ay-et" ("ay" as in "gray"); "where" as "whey-uh,"
+or "way-uh," and "hair" as "hay-uh." "Why?" sometimes sounds like "Woi?"
+Such words as "calm" and "palm" are sometimes given the short _a_: "cam"
+and "pam"--which, of course, occurs elsewhere, too. The name "Ralph" is
+pronounced as "Rafe" (_a_ as in "rate")--which I believe is Old English;
+and the names "Saunders" and "Sanders" are pronounced exactly alike,
+both being called "Sanders." Tomatoes are sometimes called "tomatters."
+Two dishes I never heard of before are "Hopping John," which is rice
+cooked with peas, and "Limping Kate," which is some other rice
+combination. What we, in the North, call an "ice-cream freezer" becomes
+in Charleston an "ice-cream _churn_." "Good morning" is the salutation
+up to three P.M., whereas in other parts of the South "Good evening" is
+said for the Northern "Good afternoon." Charlestonians speak of being
+"parrot-toed"--not "pigeon-toed." Where, in the North, we would ask a
+friend, "How are things out your way?" a Charlestonian may inquire, "How
+are things out your _side_?" The expression "going out" means to go to
+St. Cecilia Balls, and I have been told that it is never used in any
+other way. That is, if a lady is asked: "Are you going out this winter?"
+it means definitely, "Are you going to the St. Cecilia balls?" If you
+heard it said that some one was "_on_ Mount Pleasant," you might
+suppose that Mount Pleasant was an island; but it is not; it is a
+village on the mainland across the Cooper River. And what is to me one
+of the most curious expressions I ever heard is "do don't," as when a
+lady called to her daughter, "Martha, _do_ don't slam that door again!"
+
+How generally these peculiarities crop out in the speech of Charleston I
+cannot say. It occurs to me, however, that, assembled and catalogued in
+this way, they may create the idea that slovenly English is generally
+spoken in the city. If so they give an impression which I should not
+wish to convey, since Charleston has no more peculiarities of language
+than New York or Boston, and not nearly so many as a number of other
+cities. Cultivated Charlestonians have, moreover, the finest voices I
+have heard in any American city.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+"GULLA" AND THE BACK COUNTRY
+
+
+The most extraordinary negro dialect I know of is the "gulla" (sometimes
+spelled "gullah") of the rice plantation negroes of South Carolina and
+of the islands off the South Carolina and Georgia coast. I believe that
+the region of Charleston is headquarters for "gulla niggers," though I
+have heard the argot spoken as far south as Sepeloe Island, off the town
+of Darien, Georgia, near the Florida line. Gulla is such an extreme
+dialect as to be almost a language by itself. Whence it came I do not
+know, but I judge that it is a combination of English with the primitive
+tongues of African tribes, just as the dialect of old Creole negroes, in
+Louisiana, is a combination of African tribal tongues with French.
+
+A Charleston lady tells me that negroes on different rice
+plantations--even on adjoining plantations--speak dialects which differ
+somewhat, and I know of my own knowledge that thick gulla is almost
+incomprehensible to white persons who have not learned, by long
+practice, to understand it.
+
+A lady sent a gulla negro with a message to a friend. This is the
+message as it was delivered:
+
+"Missis seh all dem turrah folk done come shum. Enty you duh gwine come
+shum?" (To get the gulla effect the sounds should be uttered very
+rapidly.)
+
+Translated, this means: "Mistress says all them other folks have come to
+see her. Aren't you coming to see her?"
+
+"Shum" is a good gulla word. It means all kinds of things having to do
+with seeing--_to see her_, _to see him_, _to see it_. Thus, "You shum,
+enty?" may mean, _You see him_--_her_--or _it_? or _You see what
+he_--_she_--or _it_--_is doing_, or _has done_? For gulla has no genders
+and no tenses. "Enty" is a general question: _Aren't you? Didn't you?
+Isn't it?_ etc. Another common gulla word is "Buckra" which means _a
+white man of the upper class_, in contradistinction to a poor white. I
+have known a negro to refer to "de frame o' de bud," meaning the
+carcass, or frame, of a fowl. "Ay ain' day" means "They aren't (ain't)
+there."
+
+A friend of mine who resided at Bluffton, South Carolina, has told me of
+an old gulla fisherman who spoke in parables.
+
+A lady would ask him: "Have you any fish to-day?" To which, if replying
+affirmatively, he would answer: "Missis, de gate open"; meaning, "The
+door (of the 'car,' or fish-box) is open to you." If he had no fish he
+would reply: "Missis, ebb-tide done tack (take) crick"; signifying: "The
+tide has turned and it is too late to go to catch fish." This old man
+called whisky "muhgundy smash," the term evidently derived from some
+idea of the word "burgundy" combined with the word "mash."
+
+Here is a gulla dialect story, with a line-for-line translation. A train
+has killed a cow, and a negro witness is being examined by a justice of
+the peace:
+
+JUSTICE--Uncle John, did you see
+what killed Sam's cow?
+
+NEGRO--Co'ose Uh shum.                   (Of) course I saw him.
+
+JUSTICE--What was it, Uncle
+John?
+
+NEGRO--Dat black debble you-all          (It was) that black devil you-all
+runnin' tru we lan'. Nigga duh           (are) running through our land.
+                                         (A) nigger (fireman) he
+stan' deh, duh po' coal                  stands there (and) he pours coal
+in eh stomach.                           into its stomach.
+Buckra duh sit up on eh seat,            (A) white man (engineer)
+                                         he sits up on his seat.
+duh smoke eh cigah, an' ebry             (and) he smokes his cigar, and every
+tahme eh twis' eh tail eh run fasteh.    time he twists its (engine's) tail it
+An'                                      runs faster. And
+eh screams dis lak uh pantuh. Eben       it screams just like a panther. Even
+w'en eh git tuh de station, eh stan'     when it gets to the station, it stands
+tuh de station an' seh: "_Kyan_-stop!    at the station and says: "_Can't_-stop!
+_Kyan_-stop! _Kyan_-stop!"               _Can't_-stop! _Can't_-stop!"
+
+Sam cow binna browse down deh            Sam's cow was browsing down there
+tuh Bull Head Crick. Eh ram eh           to (at) Bull Head Creek. It (engine)
+                                         rammed its
+nose innum, an' eh bussum wahde          nose into it (the cow), and it
+                                         busted him wide
+loose. Eh t'row eh intrus on de          loose (open). It threw its entrails
+                                         on the
+reyel on de cross-tie, an' clean-up      rails, on the cross-ties, and clean up
+on de tele_gram_ pole.                   on the telegraph pole.
+
+Mrs. Leiding (Harriette Kershaw Leiding), of Charleston, has done a fine
+service to lovers of Old Charleston, and its ways, in collecting and
+publishing in pamphlet form a number of the cries of the negro street
+vendors. Of these I shall rob Mrs. Leiding's booklet of but one
+example--the cry of a little negro boy, a peddler of shrimp ("swimp"),
+who stood under a window in the early morning and sang:
+
+[Music:
+
+An' a Daw-try Daw! an' a swimp-y raw! an' a Daw-try Daw-try Daw-try Raw Swimp.]
+
+While on the subject of the Charleston negro I must not neglect two of
+his superstitions. One is his belief that a two-dollar bill is unlucky.
+The curse may be removed only by tearing off a corner of the bill. The
+other is that it is unlucky to hand any one a pin. A Charleston lady
+told me that when she was motoring and wished to pin her hat or her
+veil, she could never get her negro chauffeur to hand her pins. Instead
+he would stick them in the laprobe, or in the sleeve of his coat, whence
+she could pick them out herself. Another lady told me of the case of an
+old black slave who lived years ago on a plantation on the Santee River,
+owned by her family. This slave, who was a very powerful, taciturn and
+high-tempered man, had a curious habit of disappearing for about half an
+hour each day. He would go into the swamp, and for many years no one
+ever followed him, the other negroes being afraid to do so because of
+his temper and his strength. At last, however, they did spy upon him and
+discovered that in the swamp there stood a cypress tree on which were
+strange rude carvings, before which he prostrated himself. No one ever
+learned the exact significance of this, but it was assumed that the man
+practised some barbaric form of worship, brought from Africa.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The country back of Charleston is very lovely and is rich in interest,
+even though most of the houses on the old estates have been destroyed.
+Drayton Hall, however, stands, and the old Drayton estate, Magnolia, not
+far distant from the Hall (which was on another estate), has one of the
+most famous gardens in the world. Seven persons touching fingertips can
+barely encircle the trunks of some of the live-oaks at Magnolia; there
+are camellias more than twenty feet high, and a rose tree nearly as
+large, but the great glory of the garden is its huge azaleas--ninety-two
+varieties, it is said--which, when they blossom in the spring, are so
+wonderful that people make long journeys for no other purpose than to
+see them.
+
+In "Harper's Magazine" for December, 1875, I find an account of the
+gardens which were, at that time, far from new. The azaleas were then
+twelve and thirteen feet tall; now, I am told, they reach to a height of
+more than twenty feet, with a corresponding spread.
+
+"It is almost impossible," says the anonymous writer of the article, "to
+give a Northerner any idea of the affluence of color in this garden when
+its flowers are in bloom. Imagine a long walk with the moss-draped
+live-oaks overhead, a fairy lake and a bridge in the distance, and on
+each side the great fluffy masses of rose and pink and crimson,
+reaching far above your head, thousands upon tens of thousands of
+blossoms packed close together, with no green to mar the intensity of
+their color, rounding out in swelling curves of bloom down to the turf
+below, not pausing a few inches above it and showing bare stems or
+trunk, but spreading over the velvet, and trailing out like the rich
+robes of an empress. Stand on one side and look across the lawn; it is
+like a mad artist's dream of hues; it is like the Arabian nights; eyes
+that have never had color enough find here a full feast, and go away
+satisfied at last. And with all their gorgeousness, the hues are
+delicately mingled; the magic effect is produced not by unbroken banks
+of crude reds, but by blended shades, like the rich Oriental patterns of
+India shawls, which the European designers, with all their efforts, can
+never imitate."
+
+Another remarkable garden, though not the equal of Magnolia, is at
+Middleton Place, not many miles away, and still another is at the
+pleasant winter resort town of Summerville, something more than twenty
+miles above Charleston. The latter, called the Pinehurst Tea Garden, is
+said to be the only tea garden in the United States. It is asserted that
+the teas produced here are better than those of China and Japan, and are
+equal to those of India. The Government is cooeperating with the owners
+of this garden with a view to introducing tea planting in the country in
+a large way.
+
+The finest grade of tea raised here is known as "Shelter Tea," and is
+sold only at the gardens, the price being five dollars per pound. It is
+a tea of the Assam species grown under shelters of wire mesh and pine
+straw. This type of tea is known in Japan, where it originated, as
+"sugar tea," because, owing to the fact that it is grown in the shade,
+the sap of the bush, which is of starchy quality, is turned chemically
+into sugar, giving the leaf an exceedingly delicate flavor.
+
+From the superintendent in charge of the gardens I learned something of
+the bare facts of the tea growing industry. I had always been under the
+impression that the name "pekoe" referred to a certain type of tea, but
+he told me that the word is Chinese for "eyelash," and came to be used
+because the tip leaves of tea bushes, when rolled and dried, resemble
+eyelashes. These leaves--"pekoe tips"--make the most choice tea. The
+second leaves make the tea called "orange pekoe," while the third leaves
+produce a grade of tea called simply "pekoe." In China it is customary
+to send three groups of children, successively, to pick the leaves, the
+first group picking only the tips, the second group the second leaves,
+and the third group the plain pekoe leaves. At the Pinehurst Tea Gardens
+the picking is done by colored children, ranging from eight to fifteen
+years of age. All the leaves are picked together and are later separated
+by machinery.
+
+Summerville itself seems a lovely lazy town. It is the kind of place to
+which I should like to retire in the winter if I had a book to write.
+One could be very comfortable, and there would be no radical
+distractions--unless one chanced to see the Most Beautiful Girl in the
+World, who has been known to spend winters at that place.
+
+On the way from Charleston to Summerville, if you go by motor, you pass
+The Oaks, an estate with a new colonial house standing where an ancient
+mansion used to stand. A long avenue bordered by enormous live-oaks,
+leading to this house, gives the place its name, and affords a truly
+noble approach. Here, in Revolutionary times, Marion, "the Swamp Fox,"
+used to camp.
+
+Not far distant from the old gate at The Oaks is Goose Creek Church--the
+most interesting church I have ever seen. The Parish of St. James, Goose
+Creek, was established by act of the Assembly, November 30, 1706, and
+the present church, a brick building of crudely simple architecture, was
+built about 1713. The interior of the church, though in good condition,
+is the oldest looking thing, I think, in the United States. The memorial
+tablets in the walls, with their foreign names and antique lettering,
+the curious old box pews, the odd little gallery at the back, the tall
+pulpit, with its winding stair, above all the Royal Arms of Great
+Britain done in relief on the chancel wall and brilliantly colored--all
+these make Goose Creek Church more like some little Norman church in
+England, than like anything one might reasonably expect to find on this
+side of the world.
+
+Countless items of curious interest hang about the church and parish.
+Michaux, the French botanist who came to this country in 1786, lived for
+a time at Goose Creek. He brought with him the first four camellias
+seen in the United States, planting them at Middleton Place above
+Drayton Hall, where, I believe, they still stand, having reached a great
+height. A British officer known as Mad Archy Campbell was married at
+Goose Creek Church during the Revolution, under romantic circumstances.
+Miss Paulina Phelps, a young lady of the parish, was a great beauty and
+a great coquette, who amused herself alike with American and British
+officers. Campbell met and fell desperately in love with her, and it is
+said that she encouraged him, though without serious intent. One day he
+induced her to go horseback-riding with him and on the ride made love to
+her so vehemently that she was "intimidated into accepting him." They
+rode to the rectory, and Campbell, meeting the rector, demanded that he
+should marry them at once. The dominie replied that he would do so "with
+the consent of the young lady and her mother," but Campbell proposed to
+await no such formalities. Drawing his pistol he gave the minister the
+choice of performing the ceremony then and there, or perishing. This
+argument proved conclusive and the two were promptly wed.
+
+When Goose Creek was within the British lines it is said that the
+minister proceeded, upon one occasion, to utter the prayer for the King
+of England, in the Litany. At the end of the prayer there were no
+"Amens," the congregation having been composed almost entirely, as the
+story goes, of believers in American independence. Into the awkward
+pause after the prayer one voice from the congregation was at last
+injected. It was the voice of old Ralph Izard, saying heartily, not
+"Amen," but "Good Lord, deliver us!" There is a tablet in the church to
+the memory of this worthy.
+
+The story is told, also, of an old gentleman, a member of the
+congregation in Revolutionary times, who informed the minister that if
+he again read the prayer for the King he would throw his prayer-book at
+his head. The minister took this for a jest, but when he began to read
+the prayer on the following Sunday, he found that it was not, for sure
+enough the prayer-book came hurtling through the air. Prayer-books were
+heavier then than they are now, and it is said that as a result of this
+episode, the minister refused to hold service thereafter.
+
+The church is not now used regularly, an occasional memorial service
+only being held there.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Charleston is a hard place to leave. Wherever one may be going from
+there, the change is likely to be for the worse. Nevertheless, it is
+impossible to stay forever; so at last you muster up your resignation
+and your resources, buy tickets, and reluctantly prepare to leave. If
+you depart as we did, you go by rail, driving to the station in the
+venerable bus of the Charleston Transfer Company--a conveyance which,
+one judges, may be coeval with the city's oldest mansions. Little as we
+wished to leave Charleston we did not wish to defer our departure
+through any such banality as the unnecessary missing of a train.
+Therefore as we waited for the bus, on the night of leaving, and as
+train time drew nearer and nearer, with no sign of the lumbering old
+vehicle, we became somewhat concerned.
+
+When the bus did come at last there was little time to spare;
+nevertheless the conductor, an easygoing man of great volubility,
+consumed some precious minutes in gossiping with the hotel porter, and
+then with arranging and rearranging the baggage on the roof of the bus.
+His manner was that of an amateur bus conductor, trying a new
+experiment. After watching his performances for a time, looking
+occasionally at my watch, by way of giving him a hint, I broke out into
+expostulation at the unnecessary delay.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked the man in a gentle, almost grieved tone.
+
+"There's very little time!" I returned. "We don't wish to miss the
+train."
+
+"Oh, all right," said the bus conductor, making more haste, as though
+the information I had given him put a different face on matters
+generally.
+
+Presently we started. After a time he collected our fares. I have
+forgotten whether the amount was twenty-five or fifty cents. At all
+events, as he took the money from my hand he said to me reassuringly:
+
+"Don't you worry, sir! If I don't get you to the train I'll give you
+this money back. That's fair, ain't it?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+OUT OF THE PAST
+
+
+By no means all the leading citizens of Atlanta were in a frame of mind
+to welcome General Sherman when, ten or a dozen years after the Civil
+War, he revisited the city. Captain Evan P. Howell, a former Confederate
+officer, then publisher of the Atlanta "Constitution," was, however, not
+one of the Atlantans who ignored the general's visit. Taking his young
+son, Clark, he called upon the general at the old Kimball House (later
+destroyed by fire), and had an interesting talk with him. Clark Howell,
+who has since succeeded his father as publisher of the "Constitution,"
+was born while the latter was fighting at Chickamauga, and was
+consequently old enough, at the time of the call on Sherman, to remember
+much of what was said. He heard the general tell Captain Howell why he
+had made such a point of taking Atlanta, and as Sherman's military
+reasons for desiring possession of the Georgia city explain, to a large
+extent, Atlanta's subsequent development, I shall quote them as Clark
+Howell gave them to me.
+
+First however, it is perhaps worth while to remind the reader of the
+bare circumstances preceding the fall of Atlanta. After the defeat of
+the Confederate forces at Chattanooga, General Joseph E. Johnston's army
+fell back slowly on Atlanta, much as the French fell back on Paris at
+the beginning of the European War, shortening their own lines of
+communication while those of the advancing Germans were being
+continually attenuated. As the Germans kept after the French, Sherman
+kept after Johnston; and as Joffre was beginning to be criticized for
+failing to make a stand against the enemy, so was Johnston criticized as
+he continued to retire without giving battle. One of the chief
+differences between Joffre's retirement and Johnston's lies, however, in
+the length of time consumed; for whereas the French retreat on Paris
+covered a few days only, the Confederate retreat on Atlanta covered
+weeks and months, giving the Confederate Government time to become
+impatient with Johnston and finally to remove him from command before
+the time arrived when, in his judgment, the stand against Sherman should
+be made. Nor is it inconceivable that, had the French retreat lasted as
+long as Johnston's, Joffre would have been removed and would have lost
+the opportunity to justify his Fabian policy, as he did so gloriously at
+the Battle of the Marne.
+
+Though Atlanta was, at the time of the war, a city of less than 10,000
+inhabitants, it was the chief base of supply for men and munitions in
+the Far South.
+
+"When my father asked him why all his effort and power had been
+centered, after Chickamauga, on the capture of Atlanta," said Clark
+Howell, "I remember that General Sherman extended one hand with the
+fingers spread apart, explaining the strategic situation by imagining
+Atlanta as occupying a position where the wrist joins the hand, while
+the thumb and fingers represented, successively, New Orleans, Mobile,
+Savannah, Charleston, and Norfolk. 'If I held Atlanta,' he said, 'I was
+only one day's journey from these chief cities of the South.'"
+
+In spite, therefore, of the assertion, which I have heard made, that the
+prosperity of Atlanta is "founded on insurance premiums, coca-cola, and
+hot air," it seems to me that it is founded on something very much more
+solid. Nor do I refer to the layer of granite which underlies the city.
+The prosperity of Atlanta is based upon the very feature which made its
+capture seem to Sherman so desirable: its strategic position as a
+central point in the Far South.
+
+Neither in Atlanta nor in any other part of Georgia is General Sherman
+remembered with a feeling that can properly be described as
+affectionate, though it may be added that Atlanta has good reason for
+remembering him warmly. The burning of Atlanta by Sherman did not,
+however, prove an unalloyed disaster, for the war came to an end soon
+after, and the rebuilding of the city supplied work for thousands of
+former Confederate soldiers, and also drew to Atlanta many of the strong
+men who played leading parts in the subsequent commercial upbuilding of
+the place: such men as the late General Alfred Austell, Captain James W.
+English, and the three Inman brothers, Samuel, John, and Hugh--to
+mention but a few names. The First National Bank, established by General
+Austell, is, I believe, Atlanta's largest bank to-day, and was literally
+the first national bank established in Georgia, if not in the whole
+South, after the war.
+
+Woodrow Wilson was admitted to the bar in Atlanta, and, if I mistake
+not, practised law in an office not far from that meeting place of
+highways called Five Points. Here, at Five Points, two important trails
+crossed, long before there was any Atlanta: the north-and-south trail
+between Savannah and Ross's Landing, and the east-and-west trail, which
+followed the old Indian trails between Charleston and New Orleans. When
+people from this part of the country wished to go to Ohio, Indiana, or
+the Mississippi Valley, they would take the old north-and-south trail to
+Ross's Landing, follow the Tennessee River to where it empties into the
+Ohio, near Paducah, Kentucky, and proceed thence to Mississippi.
+
+In the thirties, Atlanta--or rather the site of Atlanta, for the city
+was not founded until 1840--was on the border of white civilization in
+northern Georgia, all the country to the north of the Chattahoochee
+River, which flows a few miles distant from the city, having belonged to
+the Cherokee Indians, who had been moved there from Florida. Even in
+those times the Cherokees were civilized, as Indians go, for they lived
+in huts and practised agriculture. Of course, however, their
+civilization was not comparable with that of the white man. If they had
+been as civilized as he, they might have driven him out of Florida,
+instead of having been themselves driven out, and they might have driven
+him out of Georgia, too, instead of having been pushed on, as they were,
+to the Indian Territory--eighteen thousand of them, under military
+supervision, on boats from Ross's Landing--leaving the beautiful white
+Cherokee rose, which grows wild and in great profusion, in the spring,
+as almost their sole memorial on Georgia soil.
+
+As Georgia became settled the trails developed into wagon and stage
+routes, and later they were followed, approximately, by the railroads.
+After three railroads had reached Atlanta, the State of Georgia engaged
+in what may have been the first adventure, in this country, along the
+lines of government-owned railroads: namely, the building of the Western
+& Atlantic, from Atlanta to Chattanooga, to form a link between the
+lower South and the rapidly developing West. This road was built in the
+forties, and it was along its line that Johnston retreated before
+Sherman, from Chattanooga to Atlanta. Though it is now leased and
+operated by the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railroad Company, it
+is still owned by the State of Georgia. The lease, however, expires
+soon, and (an interesting fact in view of the continued agitation in
+other parts of the country for government ownership of corporations)
+there is a strong sentiment in Georgia in favor of selling the railroad;
+for it is estimated that, at a fair price, it would yield a sum
+sufficient not only to wipe out the entire bonded indebtedness of the
+State ($7,000,000), but to leave ten or twelve millions clear in the
+State treasury.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At Roswell, Georgia, a sleepy little hamlet in the hills, not many miles
+from Atlanta, stands Bulloch Hall, where Martha ("Mittie") Bulloch,
+later Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, mother of the President, was born.
+Roswell was originally settled, long ago, by people from Savannah,
+Darien, and other towns of the flat, hot country near the coast, who
+drove there in their carriages and remained during the summer. After a
+time, however, three prosperous families--the Bullochs, Dunwoodys, and
+Barrington Kings--made their permanent homes at Roswell.
+
+Bulloch Hall is one of those old white southern colonial houses the
+whole front of which consists of a great pillared portico, in the Greek
+style, giving a look of dignity and hospitality. Almost all such houses
+are, as they should be, surrounded by fine old trees; those at Bulloch
+Hall are especially fine: tall cedars, ancient white oaks, giant osage
+oranges, and a pair of holly trees, one at either side of the walk near
+the front door.
+
+Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., and Mittie Bulloch met here when they were
+respectively seventeen and fifteen years of age. A half sister of Miss
+Mittie had married a relative of the Roosevelts and gone from Roswell to
+live in Philadelphia, and it was while visiting at her home that young
+Roosevelt, hearing a great deal of the South, conceived a desire to go
+there. This resulted in his first visit to Bulloch Hall, and his
+meeting with Mittie Bulloch. On his return to the North he was sent
+abroad, but two or three years later when he went again to visit his
+relatives in Philadelphia, Miss Mittie was also a guest at their house,
+and this time the two became engaged.
+
+Save that the Bulloch furniture is no longer there, the interior of the
+old Georgia residence stands practically as it was when Theodore
+Roosevelt and Mittie Bulloch were married in the dining room. Through
+the center, from front to back, runs a wide hall, on either side of
+which is a pair of spacious square rooms, each with a fireplace, each
+with large windows looking out over the beautiful hilly country which
+spreads all about. It is a lovely house in a lovely setting, and, though
+the Bullochs reside there no longer, Miss Mittie Bulloch is not
+forgotten in Roswell, for one of her bridesmaids, Miss Evelyn King, now
+Mrs. Baker, still resides in Barrington Hall, not far distant from the
+old Bulloch homestead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+ALIVE ATLANTA
+
+
+An army officer, a man of broad sympathies, familiar with the whole
+United States, warned me before I went south that I must not judge the
+South by northern standards.
+
+"On the side of picturesqueness and charm," he said, "the South can more
+than hold its own against the rest of the country; likewise on the side
+of office-holding and flowery oratory; but you must not expect southern
+cities to have the energy you are accustomed to in the North."
+
+As to the picturesqueness, charm, officeholding, and oratory, I found
+his judgments substantially correct, but though I did perceive a certain
+lack of energy in some small cities, I should not call that trait a
+leading one in the larger southern cities to-day. On the contrary, I was
+impressed, in almost every large center that I visited, with the fact
+that, in the South more, perhaps, than in any other part of the country,
+a great awakening is in progress. The dormant period of the South is
+past, and all manner of developments are everywhere in progress. Nor do
+I know of any city which better exemplifies southern growth and progress
+than Atlanta.
+
+My Baedeker, dated 1909, opens its description of Atlanta with the
+statement that the German consul there is Dr. E. Zoepffel. I doubt
+it--but let us pass over that. It describes Atlanta as "a prosperous
+commercial and industrial city and an important railroad center, well
+situated, 1030-1175 feet above the sea, enjoying a healthy and bracing
+climate." That is true. Atlanta is, if I mistake not, the highest
+important city east of Denver, and I believe her climate is in part
+responsible for her energy, as it is also for the fact that her
+vegetation is more like that of a northern than a southern city, elms
+and maples rather than magnolias, being the trees of the Atlanta
+streets.
+
+Baedeker gave Atlanta about 90,000 inhabitants in 1909, but the census
+of 1910 jumped her up to more than 150,000, while the estimate of 1917
+in the "World Almanac" credits her with about 180,000. Moreover, in the
+almanac's list of the largest cities of the earth, Atlanta comes
+twentieth from the top. It is my duty, perhaps, to add that the list is
+arranged alphabetically--which reminds me that some cynic has suggested
+that there may have been an alphabetical arrangement of names, also, in
+the celebrated list in which Abou Ben Adhem's "name led all the rest."
+Nevertheless, it may be stated that, according to the almanac's
+population figures, Atlanta is larger than the much more ancient city of
+Athens (I refer to Athens, Greece; not Athens, Georgia), as well as such
+considerable cities as Bari, Bochum, Graz, Kokand, and Omsk. Atlanta is,
+in short, a city of about the size of Goteborg, and if she has not yet
+achieved the dimensions of Baku, Belem, Changsha, Tashkent, or West Ham,
+she is growing rapidly, and may some day surpass them all; yes, and even
+that thriving metropolis, Yekaterinoslav.
+
+As to the "healthy and bracing climate," I know that Atlanta is cool and
+lovely in the spring, and I am told that her prosperous families do not
+make it a practice to absent themselves from home during the summer,
+according to the custom of the corresponding class in many other cities,
+northern as well as southern.
+
+Atlanta is one of the few large inland cities located neither upon a
+river nor a lake. When the city was founded, the customs of life in
+Georgia were such that no one ever dreamed that the State might some day
+go dry. Having plenty of other things to drink, the early settlers gave
+no thought to water. But, as time went on, and prohibition became a more
+and more important issue, the citizens of Atlanta began to perceive
+that, in emergency, the Chattahoochee River might, after all, have its
+uses. Water was, consequently, piped from the river to the city, and is
+now generally--albeit in some quarters mournfully--used. Though I am
+informed by an expert in Indian languages that the Cherokee word
+"chattahoochee" is short for "muddy," the water is filtered before it
+reaches the city pipes, and is thoroughly palatable, whether taken plain
+or mixed.
+
+Well-off though Atlanta is, she would esteem herself better off, in a
+material sense at least, had she a navigable stream; for her chief
+industrial drawback consists in railroad freight rates unmodified by
+water competition. She has, to be sure, a number of factories, including
+a Ford automobile plant, but she has not so many factories as her
+strategic position, stated by General Sherman, would seem to justify, or
+as her own industrial ambitions cause her to desire. For does not every
+progressive American city yearn to bristle with factory chimneys, even
+as a summer resort folder bristles with exclamation points? And is not
+soot a measure of success?
+
+Atlanta's line of business is largely office business; many great
+corporations have their headquarters or their general southern branches
+in the city; one of the twelve Federal Reserve Banks is there, and there
+are many strong banks. Indeed, I suppose Atlanta has more bankers, in
+proportion to her population, than any other city in the United States.
+Some of these bankers are active citizens and permanent residents of the
+city; others have given up banking for the time being and are in
+temporary residence at the Federal Penitentiary.
+
+The character of commerce carried on, naturally brings to Atlanta large
+numbers of prosperous and able men--corporation officials, branch
+managers, manufacturers' agents, and the like--who, with their families,
+give Atlanta a somewhat individual social flavor. This class of
+population also accounts for the fact that the enterprisingness so
+characteristic of Atlanta is not the mere rough, ebullient spirit of "go
+to it!" to be found in so many hustling cities of the Middle West and
+West, but is, oftentimes, an informed and cultivated kind of
+enterprisingness, which causes Atlanta not only to "do things," but to
+do things showing vision, and, furthermore, to do them with an "air."
+
+This is illustrated in various ways. It is shown, for example, in
+Atlanta's principal hotels, which are not small-town hotels, or
+good-enough hotels, but would do credit to any city, however great. The
+office buildings are city office buildings, and in the downtown section
+they are sufficiently numerous to look very much at home, instead of
+appearing a little bit exotic, self-conscious, and lonesome, as new
+skyscrapers do in so many cities of Atlanta's size. Even the smoke with
+which the skyscrapers are streaked is city smoke. Chicago herself could
+hardly produce smoke of more metropolitan texture--certainly not on the
+Lake Front, where the Illinois Central trains send up their black
+clouds; for Atlanta's downtown smoke, like Chicago's, comes in large
+part from railroads piercing the heart of the city. Where downtown
+business streets cross the railroad tracks, the latter are depressed,
+the highways passing above on steel bridges resembling the bridges over
+the Chicago River. The railroad's right of way is, furthermore, just
+about as wide as the Chicago River, and rows of smoke-stained brick
+buildings turn their backs upon it, precisely as similar buildings turn
+theirs upon Chicago's busy, narrow stream. I wonder if all travelers,
+familiar with Chicago, are so persistently reminded of that portion of
+the city which is near the river, as I was by that portion of Atlanta
+abutting on the tracks by which the Seaboard Air Line enters the city.
+
+Generally speaking, railroads in the South have not been so prosperous
+as leading roads in the North, and with the exception of the most
+important through trains, their passenger equipment is, therefore, not
+so good. The Seaboard Air Line, however, runs an all-steel train between
+Atlanta and Birmingham which, in point of equipment, may be compared
+with the best limited trains anywhere. The last car in this train,
+instead of being part sleeping car and part observation car, is a
+combination dining and observation car--a very pleasant arrangement, for
+men are allowed to smoke in the observation end after dinner. This is,
+to my mind, an improvement over the practice of most railroads, which
+obliges men who wish to smoke to leave the ladies with whom they may be
+traveling. All Seaboard dining cars offer, aside from regular a la carte
+service, a sixty-cent dinner known as the "Blue Plate Special." This
+dinner has many advantages over the usual dining-car repast. In the
+first place, though it does not comprise bread and butter, coffee or
+tea, or dessert, it provides an ample supply of meat and vegetables at a
+moderate price. In the second place, though served at a fixed price, it
+bears no resemblance to the old-style dining car table d'hote, but, upon
+the contrary, looks and tastes like food. The food, furthermore, instead
+of representing a great variety of viands served in microscopic helpings
+on innumerable platters and "side dishes," comes on one great plate,
+with recesses for vegetables. The "Blue Plate Special" furnishes, in
+short, the chief items in a "good home meal."
+
+This is, perhaps, as convenient a place as any in which to speak of
+certain points concerning various railroads in the South. The Central of
+Georgia Railway, running between Atlanta and Savannah, instead of
+operating Pullmans, has its own sleeping cars. This is the only railroad
+I know of in the country on which the tenant of a lower berth, below an
+unoccupied upper, may have the upper closed without paying for it. One
+likes the Central of Georgia for this humane dispensation. The
+locomotives of the Western & Atlantic carry as a distinguishing mark a
+red band at the top of the smokestack. The Southern Railway assigns
+engineers to individual engines, instead of "pooling power," as is the
+practice, I believe, on many railroads. Because of this, engineers on
+the Southern regard the locomotives to which they are regularly
+assigned, as their personal property, and exercise their individual
+taste in embellishing them. Brass bands, brass flagstaffs, brass eagles
+over the headlight, and similar adornments are therefore often seen on
+the engines of this road, giving the most elaborate of them a carnival
+appearance, by contrast with the somber black to which most of us are
+accustomed, and hinting that not all the individuality has been
+unionized out of locomotive engineers--an impression heightened by the
+Southern Railway's further pleasant custom of painting the names of its
+older and more expert engineers upon the cabs of their locomotives.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some cities are like lumbering old farm horses, plugging along a dusty
+country road. When another horse overtakes them, if they be not
+altogether wanting in spirit, they may be encouraged to jog a little
+faster for a moment, stimulated by example. If, besides being stupid,
+they are mean, then they want to kick or bite at the speedier animal
+going by. Some cities are like that, too. If an energetic city overtakes
+them, they are not spurred on to emulation, but lay back their ears, so
+to speak. Again, there are tough, sturdy little cities like buckskin
+ponies. There are skittish cities which seem to have been badly broken.
+There are old cities with a worn-out kind of elegance, like that of
+superannuated horses of good breed, hitched to an old-fashioned
+barouche. There are bad, bucking cities, like Butte, Montana. And here
+and there are cities, like Atlanta, reminding one of thoroughbred
+hunters. There is a brave, sporting something in the spirit of Atlanta
+which makes it rush courageously at big jumps, and clear them, and land
+clean on the other side, and be off again. Like a thoroughbred, she
+loves the chase. She goes in to win. She doesn't stop to worry about
+whether she can win or not. She knows she will. And as the thoroughbred,
+loving large and astonishing achievement, lacks the humbler virtues of
+the reliable family carriage horse, Atlanta, it cannot be denied, has
+"_les defauts de ses qualites_." For whereas, on the side of dashing
+performance, Atlanta held a stock fair which, in one year, surpassed any
+other held in the South, and secured the grand circuit of races, on the
+other side she is careless about hospitals and charities; and whereas,
+on the one side, she has raised millions for the building of two new
+universities (which, by the way, would be much better as one great
+university, but cannot be, because of sectarian domination), on the
+other, she is deficient as to schools; and again, whereas she is the
+only secondary city to have an annual season of Metropolitan grand opera
+(and to make it pay!) she is behind many other cities, including her
+neighbors, New Orleans and Savannah, in caring for the public health.
+
+I am by no means sure that the regular spring visit of the Metropolitan
+Grand Opera Company may be taken as a sign that Atlanta is peculiarly a
+music-loving community. Indeed, I was told by one Atlanta lady, herself
+a musician, that the city did not contain more than a thousand persons
+of real musical appreciation, that a number of these could not afford to
+attend the operatic performances, and that opera week was, consequently,
+in reality more an occasion of great social festivity than of devout
+homage to art.
+
+"Our opera week," she told me, "bears the same relation to the life of
+Atlanta as Mardi Gras does to that of New Orleans. It is an
+advertisement for the city, and an excuse for every one to have a good
+time. Every night after the performance there are suppers and dances,
+which the opera stars attend. They always seem to enjoy coming here.
+They act as though they were off on a picnic, skylarking about the
+hotel, snap-shotting one another, and playing all manner of pranks. And,
+of course, while they are here they own the town. Caruso draws his
+little caricatures for the Atlanta girls, and Atlanta men have been
+dazzled, in successive seasons, by such gorgeous beings as Geraldine
+Farrar, Alma Gluck, and Maria Barrientos--not only across the footlights
+of the auditorium, mind you, but at close range; as, for instance, at
+dances at the Driving Club, with Chinese lanterns strung on the terrace,
+a full moon above, and--one year--with the whole Metropolitan Orchestra
+playing dance music all night long!"
+
+Another lady, endeavoring to picture to me the strain involved in the
+week's gaieties, informed me that when it was all over she went for a
+rest to New York, where she attended "a house party at the Waldorf"!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of all Atlanta's undertakings, planned or accomplished, that which most
+interested my companion and me was the one for turning a mountain into a
+sculptured monument to the Confederacy.
+
+Sixteen miles to the east of the city the layer of granite which
+underlies the region stuck its back up, so to speak, forming a great
+smooth granite hump, known as Stone Mountain. This mountain is one of
+America's natural wonders. In form it may be compared with a
+round-backed fish, such as a whale or porpoise, lying on its belly,
+partly imbedded in a beach, and some conception of its dimensions may be
+gathered from the fact that from nose to tail it measures about two
+miles, while the center of its back is as high as the Woolworth Building
+in New York. Moreover, there is not a fissure in it; monoliths a
+thousand feet long have been quarried from it; it is as solid as the
+Solid South.
+
+The perpendicular streaks of light and dark gray and gray-green, made by
+the elements upon the face of the rock, coupled with the waterfall-like
+curve of that face, make one think of a sort of sublimated petrified
+Niagara--a fancy enhanced, on windy days, by the roar of the gale-lashed
+forest at the mountain's foot.
+
+The idea of turning the mountain into a Confederate memorial originated
+with Mr. William H. Terrell of Atlanta. It was taken up with inspired
+energy by Mrs. C. Helen Plane, an Atlanta lady, now eighty-seven years
+of age, who is honorary president of the United Daughters of the
+Confederacy and president of the Stone Mountain Memorial Association.
+Mrs. Plane presented the memorial plan to Mr. Samuel H. Venable of
+Venable Brothers, owners of the mountain, and Mr. Venable promptly
+turned over the whole face of the mountain to the Memorial Association.
+The exact form the memorial was to take had not at that time been
+developed. Gutzon Borglum was, however, called in, and worked out a
+stupendous idea, which he has since been commissioned to execute. On the
+side of the mountain, about four hundred feet above the ground, a
+roadway is to be gouged out of the granite. On this roadway will be
+carved, in gigantic outlines, a Confederate army, headed by Lee and
+Jackson on horseback. Other generals will follow, and will, in turn, be
+followed by infantry, cavalry and artillery. The leading groups will be
+in full relief and the equestrian figures will be fifty or more feet
+tall. This means that the faces of the chief figures will measure almost
+the height of a man. The figures to the rear of the long column will,
+according to present plans, be in bas-relief, and the whole procession
+will cover a strip perhaps a mile long, all of it carved out of the
+solid mountainside.
+
+A considerable tract of forest land at the foot of the great rock has
+already been dedicated as a park. Here, concealed by the trees, at a
+point below the main group of figures, a temple, with thirteen columns
+representing the thirteen Confederate States, is to be hewn out of the
+mountain, to be used as a place for the safe-keeping of Confederate
+relics and archives.
+
+Two million dollars is the sum spoken of to cover the total cost, and
+one of the finest things about the plans for raising this money is that
+contributions from the entire country are being accepted, so that not
+only the South, but the whole nation, may have a share in the creation
+of a memorial to that dead government which the South so poetically
+adores, yet which it would not willingly resurrect, and in the
+realization of a work resembling nothing so much as Kipling's conception
+of the artist in heaven, who paints on "a ten-league canvas, with
+brushes of comet's hair."
+
+Until the Stone Mountain Memorial is completed, Atlanta's most
+celebrated monument will continue to be that of Jack Smith. The Jack
+Smith monument stands in Oakland Cemetery, not over the grave of Jack
+Smith, but over the grave that local character intends some day to
+occupy. Mr. Smith is reputed to be rich. He built the downtown office
+building known as "The House that Jack Built." As befits the owner of an
+office building, he wears a silk hat, but a certain democratic
+simplicity may be observed in the rest of his attire, especially about
+the region of the neck, for though he apparently believes in the
+convention concerning the wearing of collars, he has a prejudice against
+the concealing of a portion of the collar by that useless and snobbish
+adornment, the necktie. Each spring, I am informed, it is his custom to
+visit his cemetery lot and inspect the statue of himself which a
+commendable foresight has caused him to erect over his proposed final
+resting place. It is said that upon the occasion of last season's vernal
+visit he was annoyed at finding his effigy cravated by a vine which had
+grown up and encircled the neck. This he caused to be removed; and it is
+to be hoped that when, at last, his monument achieves its ultimate
+purpose, those who care for the cemetery will see to it that leafy
+tendrils be not permitted to mount to the marble collar of the figure,
+to form a necktie, or to obscure the nobly sculptured collar button.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+GEORGIA JOURNALISM
+
+
+In journalism Atlanta is far in advance of many cities of her size,
+North or South. The Atlanta "Constitution," founded nearly half a
+century ago, is one of the country's most distinguished newspapers. The
+"Constitution" came into its greatest fame in the early eighties, when
+Captain Evan P. Howell--the same Captain Howell who commanded a battery
+at the battle of Peachtree Creek, in the defense of Atlanta, and who
+later called, with his son, on General Sherman, as already
+recorded--became its editor, and Henry W. Grady its managing editor.
+Like William Allen White and Walt Mason of the Emporia (Kansas)
+"Gazette," who work side by side, admire each other, but disagree on
+every subject save that of the infallibility of the ground hog as a
+weather prophet, Howell and Grady worked side by side and were devoted
+friends, while disagreeing personally, and in print, on prohibition and
+many other subjects. Grady would speak at prohibition rallies and,
+sometimes on the same night, Howell would speak at anti-prohibition
+rallies. In their speeches they would attack each other. The accounts of
+these speeches, as well as conflicting articles written by the two,
+would always appear in the "Constitution."
+
+Of the pair of public monuments to individuals which I remember having
+seen in Atlanta, one was the pleasing memorial, in Piedmont Park, to
+Sidney Lanier (who was peculiarly a Georgia poet, having been born in
+Macon, in that State, and having written some of his most beautiful
+lines under the spell of Georgia scenes), and the other the statue of
+Henry W. Grady, which stands downtown in Marietta Street.
+
+The Grady monument--one regrets to say it--is less fortunate as a work
+of art than as a deserved symbol of remembrance. Grady not only ought to
+have a monument, but as one whose writings prove him to have been a man
+of taste, he ought to have a better one than this poor mid-Victorian
+thing, placed in the middle of a wide, busy street, with Fords parked
+all day long about its base.
+
+Says the inscription:
+
+    HE NEVER SOUGHT A PUBLIC OFFICE.
+     WHEN HE DIED HE WAS LITERALLY
+      LOVING A NATION INTO PEACE.
+
+On another side of the base is chiseled a characteristic extract from
+one of Grady's speeches. This speech was made in 1899, in Boston, and
+one hopes that it may have been heard by the late Charles Francis Adams,
+who labored in Massachusetts for the cause of intersectional harmony,
+just as Grady worked for it in Georgia.
+
+     This hour [said Grady] little needs the loyalty that is loyal to
+     one section and yet holds the other in enduring suspicion and
+     estrangement. Give us the broad and perfect loyalty that loves and
+     trusts Georgia alike with Massachusetts--that knows no South, no
+     North, no East, no West; but endears with equal and patriotic love
+     every foot of our soil, every State in our Union.
+
+Grady could not only write and say stirring things; he could be witty.
+He once spoke at a dinner of the New England Society, in New York, at
+which General Sherman was also present.
+
+"Down in Georgia," he said, "we think of General Sherman as a great
+general; but it seems to us he was a little careless with fire."
+
+Nor was Grady less brilliant as managing editor than upon the platform.
+He had the kind of enterprise which made James Gordon Bennett such a
+dashing figure in newspaper life, and the New York "Herald" such a
+complete _news_paper--the kind of enterprise that charters special
+trains, and at all hazards gets the story it is after. Back in the early
+eighties Grady was running the Atlanta "Constitution" in just that way.
+If a big story "broke" in any of the territory around Atlanta, Grady
+would not wait upon train schedules, but would hire an engine and send
+his men to the scene. Once, following a sensational murder, he learned
+that the Birmingham "Age-Herald" had a big story dealing with
+developments in the case. He wired the "Age-Herald" offering a large
+price for the story. When his offer was refused Grady knew that if he
+could not devise a way to get the story, Atlanta would be flooded next
+day with "Age-Heralds" containing the "beat" on the "Constitution." He
+at once chartered a locomotive and rushed two reporters and four
+telegraph operators down the line toward Birmingham. At Aniston,
+Alabama, the locomotive met the train which was bringing "Age-Heralds"
+to Atlanta. A copy of the paper was secured. The "Constitution" men then
+broke into a telegraph office and wired the whole story in to their
+paper, with the result that the "Constitution" was out with it before
+the Birmingham papers reached Atlanta.
+
+Atlanta was at that time a town of only about 40,000 inhabitants, but
+the "Constitution," in the days of Howell and Grady, had a circulation
+four times greater than the total population of the city--a situation
+almost unheard of in journalism. Something of the breadth of its
+influence may be gathered from the fact that in several counties in
+Texas, where the law provided that whatever newspaper had the largest
+circulation in the county should be the county organ, the county organ
+was the Atlanta "Constitution."
+
+An Atlanta lady tells of having called upon Grady to complain about an
+article which she did not think the "Constitution" should have printed.
+
+"Why did you put that objectionable article in your paper?" she asked
+him.
+
+"Did you read it?" he inquired.
+
+"Yes, I did."
+
+"Then," said Grady, "that's why I put it there."
+
+Grady and Howell always ran a lively sporting department. Away back in
+the days of bare-knuckle prize fights--such as those between Sullivan
+and Ryan, and Sullivan and Kilrain--a "Constitution" reporter was always
+at the ringside, no matter where the fight might take place. For a
+newspaper in a town of forty or fifty thousand inhabitants, a large
+percentage of them colored illiterates, this was real enterprise.
+
+A favorite claim of Grady's was that his reporters were the greatest
+"leg artists" in the world. He used to organize walking matches for
+reporters, offering large prizes and charging admission. This developed,
+in the middle eighties, a general craze for such matches, and resulted
+in the holding of many inter-city contests, in which teams, four men to
+a side, took part. One of the "Constitution's" champion "leg artists"
+was Sam W. Small, now an evangelist and member of the "flying squadron"
+of the Anti-Saloon League of America.
+
+The most widely celebrated individual ever connected with the
+"Constitution" was Joel Chandler Harris, many of whose "Uncle Remus"
+stories--those negro folk tales still supreme in their field--appeared
+originally in that paper. In view of Mr. Harris's achievement it is
+pleasant to recall that there was paid to him during his life one of the
+finest tributes that an author can receive. As with "Mr. Dooley" of our
+day, he came, himself, to be affectionately referred to by the name of
+the chief character in his works. "Uncle Remus" he was, and "Uncle
+Remus" he will always be. Mr. Harris's eldest son, Julian, widely known
+as a journalist, is said to have been the little boy to whom "Uncle
+Remus" told his tales.
+
+Though there is, as yet, no public monument in Atlanta to Joel Chandler
+Harris, the "Wren's Nest," his former home, at 214 Gordon Street, is
+fittingly preserved as a memorial. Visitors may see the old letter box
+fastened to a tree by the gate--that box in which a wren built her nest,
+giving the house its name. It is a simple old house with the air of a
+home about it, and the intimate possessions of the author lie about as
+he left them. His bed is made up, his umbrella hangs upon the
+mantelshelf, his old felt hat rests upon the rack, the photograph of his
+friend James Whitcomb Riley looks down from the bedroom wall, and on the
+table, by the window, stands his typewriter--the confidant first to know
+his new productions.
+
+The presence of these personal belongings keeps alive the illusion that
+"Uncle Remus" has merely stepped out for a little while--is hiding in
+the garden, waiting for us to go away. It would be like him, for he was
+among the most modest and retiring of men, as there are many amusing
+anecdotes to indicate. Once when some one had persuaded him to attend a
+large dinner in New York, they say, he got as far as New York, but as
+the dinner hour approached could not bear to face the adulation awaiting
+him, and incontinently fled back to Atlanta.
+
+Frank L. Stanton, poet laureate of Georgia, and of the "Constitution,"
+joined the "Constitution" staff through the efforts of Mr. Harris, one
+of whose closest intimates he was. Speaking of Mr. Harris's gift for
+negro dialect, Mr. Stanton told me that there was one negro exclamation
+which "Uncle Remus" always wished to reproduce, but which he never quite
+felt could be expressed, in writing, to those unfamiliar with the negro
+at first hand: that is the exclamation of amazement, which has the
+sound, "mmm--_mh!_"--the first syllable being long and the last sharp
+and exclamatory.
+
+Mr. Stanton has for years conducted a column of verse and humorous
+paragraphic comment, under the heading "Just from Georgia," on the
+editorial page of the "Constitution." Some idea of the high estimation
+in which he is held in his State is to be gathered from the fact that
+"Frank L. Stanton Day" is annually celebrated in the Georgia schools.
+
+Mr. Stanton began his newspaper career as a country editor in the town
+of Smithville, Georgia. Mr. Harris, then a member of the
+"Constitution's" editorial staff, began reprinting in that journal
+verses and paragraphs written by Stanton, with the result that the
+Smithville paper became known all over the country. Later Stanton moved
+to Rome, Georgia, becoming an editorial writer on a paper there--the
+"Tribune," edited at that time by John Temple Graves, if I am not
+mistaken. Still later he removed to Atlanta, joined the staff of the
+"Constitution," and started the department which has now continued for
+more than twenty-five years.
+
+Joel Chandler Harris used to tell a story about Stanton's first days in
+the "Constitution" office. According to this story, the paper on which
+Stanton had worked in Rome had not been prosperous, and salaries were
+uncertain. When the business manager went out to try to raise money in
+the town, he never returned without first reading the signals placed by
+his assistant in the office window. If a red flag was shown, it
+signified that a collector was waiting in the office. In that event the
+business manager would not come in, but would circle about until the
+collector became tired of waiting and departed--a circumstance indicated
+by the withdrawal of the red flag and the substitution of a white one.
+According to the story, as it was told to me, reporters on the paper
+were seldom paid; if one of them made bold to ask for his salary, he was
+likely to be discharged. It was from this uncertain existence that
+Stanton was lured to the "Constitution" by an offer of $22.50 per week.
+When he had been on the "Constitution" for three weeks Mr. Harris
+discovered that he had drawn no salary. This surprised him--as indeed it
+would any man who had had newspaper experience.
+
+"Stanton," he said, "you are the only newspaper man I have ever seen who
+is so rich he doesn't need to draw his pay."
+
+But, as it turned out, Stanton was not so prosperous as Harris perhaps
+supposed. He was down to his last dime, and had been wondering how he
+could manage to get along; for his training on the Rome paper had
+taught him never to ask for money lest he lose his job.
+
+"Well," he said to Harris, "I could use _some_ of my salary--if you're
+sure it won't be any inconvenience?"
+
+Those familiar with the works of Mr. Stanton, Mr. Harris, and James
+Whitcomb Riley, Indiana's great poet, will perceive that certain similar
+tastes and feelings inform their writings, and will not be surprised to
+learn, if not already aware of it, that the three were friends. Mr.
+Stanton's only absence from Atlanta since he joined the "Constitution,"
+was on the occasion of a visit he paid Mr. Riley at the latter's home in
+Indianapolis. The best of Stanton's work must have appealed to Riley,
+for it contains not a little of the kindly, homely, humorous
+truthfulness, and warmth of sentiment, of which Riley was himself such a
+master. Among the most widely familiar verses of the Georgia poet are
+those of his "Mighty Like a Rose," set to music by Ethelbert Nevin, and
+"Just a-Wearying for You," with music by Carrie Jacobs Bond. "Money" is
+a verse in hilarious key, which many will remember for the comical vigor
+of the last three lines in its first stanza:
+
+    When a fellow has spent
+    His last red cent
+    The world looks blue, you bet!
+    But give him a dollar
+    And you'll hear him holler:
+    "There's life in the old land yet!"
+
+Richly humorous though Stanton is, he can also reach the heart. The
+former Governor of a Western State picked up Stanton's book, "Songs of
+the Soil," and after reading "Hanging Bill Jones," and "A Tragedy,"
+therein, commuted the sentence of a man who was to have been executed
+next day. One hopes the man deserved to escape. In another case an
+individual who was about to commit suicide chanced to see in an old
+newspaper Stanton's encouraging verses called "Keep a-Goin'," and was
+stimulated by them to have a fresh try at life on earth instead of
+elsewhere.
+
+Joel Chandler Harris wrote the introduction to "Songs of the Soil."
+Other collections of Stanton's works are "Songs of Dixie Land," and
+"Comes One With a Song." The danger in starting to quote from these
+books--which, by the way, are chiefly made up of measures that appeared
+originally in the "Constitution"--is that one does not like to stop. I
+have, however, limited myself to but one more theft, and instead of
+making my own choice, have left the selection to a friend of Mr.
+Stanton's, who has suggested the lines entitled "A Poor Unfortunate":
+
+    His hoss went dead, an' his mule went lame,
+    He lost six cows in a poker game;
+    A harricane come on a summer's day
+    An' carried the house whar he lived away,
+    Then a earthquake come when _that_ wuz gone
+    An' swallered the land that the house stood on!
+    An' the tax collector, he come roun'
+    An' charged him up fer the hole in the groun'!
+    An' the city marshal he come in view
+    An' said he wanted his street tax, too!
+
+    Did he moan an' sigh? Did he set an' cry
+    An' cuss the harricane sweepin' by?
+    Did he grieve that his old friends failed to call
+    When the earthquake come and swallered all?
+    Never a word o' blame he said,
+    With all them troubles on top his head!
+    Not him! He climbed on top o' the hill
+    Whar stan'in' room wuz left him still,
+    An', barrin' his head, here's what he said:
+    "I reckon it's time to git up an' git,
+    But, Lord, I hain't had the measles yit!"
+
+Among those who have been on the staff of the "Constitution" and have
+become widely known, may be mentioned the gifted Corra Harris, many of
+whose stories have Georgia backgrounds, and who still keeps as a country
+home in the State where she was born, a log cabin, known as "In the
+Valley," at Pine Log, Georgia; also the perhaps equally (though
+differently) talented Robert Adamson, whose administration as fire
+commissioner of the City of New York was so able as to result in a
+reduction of insurance rates.
+
+Atlanta reporters, it would seem, run to the New York Fire Department,
+for Joseph Johnson, who preceded Mr. Adamson as commissioner, was once a
+reporter on the Atlanta "Journal." The latter paper used to belong to
+Hoke Smith. It was at one time edited by John Temple Graves, who later
+edited the Atlanta "Georgian," and is now a member of the forces of
+William Randolph Hearst, in New York. The late Jacques Futrelle, the
+author, who went down with the _Titanic_, was a Georgian, and worked for
+years on the "Journal." Don Marquis, one of the most brilliant American
+newspaper "columnists," now in charge of the department known as "The
+Sun Dial" on the New York "Evening Sun," was also at one time on the
+"Journal," as was likewise Grantland Rice, America's most widely read
+sporting writer. Lollie Belle Wiley, whose poetry has a distinct
+southern quality, is, I believe, a member of the "Journal's" staff. As
+the eminent Ty Cobb once wrote a book, it seems fair to mention him also
+among Georgian authors, though so far as I know he never worked on an
+Atlanta paper. And if Atlanta's three celebrated golfers have not
+written for the papers, they have at least supplied the sporting page
+with much material. Miss Alexa Sterling of Atlanta, a young lady under
+twenty, is one of the best women golfers in the United States; Perry
+Adair also figures in national golf, and Robert T. ("Bobby") Jones, Jr.,
+who was southern champion at the age of fourteen, is, perhaps, an
+unprecedented marvel at the game--so at least my golfing friends inform
+me.
+
+The continued militancy of the "Constitution," under the editorship of
+Clark Howell, who sits in his father's old chair, with a bust of Grady
+at his elbow, is evidenced not only by its frequent editorials against
+lynching, but by its fearless campaign against another Georgia
+specialty--the "paper colonel." The ranks of the "paper colonels" in
+the South are chiefly made up of lawyers who "have been colonelized by
+custom for no other reason than that they have led their clients to
+victory in legal battles." Some of the real colonels have been objecting
+to the paper kind, and the "Constitution" has bravely backed up the
+objection.
+
+The liveliness of journalism in Georgia does not begin and end in
+Atlanta. The Savannah "Morning News" has an able editorial page, and
+there are many others in the State. Some of the small-town papers are,
+moreover, well worth reading for that kind of breeziness which we
+usually associate with the West rather than the South. Consider, for
+example, the following, in which the Dahlonega (Georgia) "Nugget,"
+published up in the mountains, in the section where gold is mined,
+discusses the failings of one Billie Adams, the editor's own son-in-law:
+
+     On Saturday last, Billie Adams and his wife waylaid the public road
+     over on Crown Mountain, where this sorry piece of humanity stood
+     and cursed while his wife knocked down and beat her sister, Emma.
+     He is a son-in-law of ours, but if the Lord had anything to do with
+     him, He must have made a mistake and thought He was breathing the
+     breath of life into a dog.
+
+     He is too lazy to work and lays around and waits for his wife to
+     get what she can procure on credit, until she can get nothing more
+     for him and the children to eat. Recently he claimed to be gone to
+     Tennessee in search of work. Upon hearing that his family had
+     nothing to eat, we had Carl Brooksher send over nearly four
+     dollars' worth of provisions. In he came and sat there and feasted
+     until every bite was gone. But this ends it with us.
+
+     There are a lot of people who have sorry kinfolks, but in this
+     instance if there were prizes offered, we would certainly win the
+     first.
+
+     Last year, thinking he would scare his mother-in-law and
+     sister-in-law off from where they live, so he could get the place,
+     he shot two holes through their window, turned their mule out of
+     the stable, and tried to run it into the bean patch, besides
+     hanging up a bunch of switches at the drawbars. Then their fence
+     was set afire twice. This is said to be the work of his wife. Then,
+     after carrying home meat, flour, lard, and vegetables to eat for
+     her mother and sister, he whipped the latter because she refused to
+     give him two of the wagon wheels.
+
+     The city made a case against both for the whipping, and the wife,
+     although coming to town alone frequently during the day, brought
+     her baby and everything to the council room, plead guilty and was
+     fined one and costs. Billie didn't appear, but if he stays in this
+     country Marshal Wimpy will have him, when all these things will
+     come to light, both in the council chamber and grand jury room.
+
+The scandal of newspaperdom in Georgia is, of course, Tom Watson, who
+publishes the "Jeffersonian"--a misnamed paper if there ever was one--in
+the town of Thomson. Many years ago, when Edward P. Thomas, now
+assistant to the president of the United States Steel Corporation, was a
+little boy in Atlanta, complaining about having his ears washed; when
+Theodore D. Rousseau, secretary to Mayor Mitchel of New York, was having
+his early education drilled into him at the Ivy Street school; when
+Ralph Peters, now president of the Long Island Railroad, had left
+Atlanta and become a division superintendent on the Panhandle Road; when
+the parents of Ivy Ledbetter Lee were wondering to what college they
+would send him when he grew to be a big boy; when Robert Adamson was a
+page in the Georgia Legislature--as long ago as that, Tom Watson was
+waving his red head and prominent Adam's apple as a member of the State
+House of Representatives. In the mad and merry days of Bryanism he
+became a Populist Member of Congress. He was nominated for
+vice-president, to run on the Populist ticket with Bryan. Later he ran
+for president on the ticket of some unheard-of party, organized in
+protest against the "conservatism" of the Populists. Watson's paper
+reminds one of Brann and his "Iconoclast." Reading it, I have never been
+able to discover what Watson was _for_. All I could find out was what he
+was violently against--and that is almost everything. He is the wild ass
+of Georgia journalism; the thistles of chaos are sweet in him, and order
+in any department of life is a chestnut burr beneath his tail.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+SOME ATLANTA INSTITUTIONS
+
+
+There has been great rejoicing in Atlanta over the raising of funds for
+the establishment there of two new universities, Emory and Oglethorpe.
+Emory was founded in 1914, as the result of a feud which developed in
+Vanderbilt University, located at Nashville, Tennessee, over the
+question as to whether the institution should be controlled by the Board
+of Bishops of the southern Methodist Episcopal Church, or by the
+University trustees, who were not so much interested in the development
+of the sectarian side of the university. The fight was taken to the
+courts where the trustees won. As a result, Methodist influence and
+support were withdrawn from Vanderbilt, which thenceforward became a
+non-sectarian college, and Emory was started--Atlanta having been
+selected as its home because nearly a million and a half dollars was
+raised in Atlanta to bring it there.
+
+Oglethorpe is to be a Presbyterian institution, and starts off with a
+million dollars.
+
+This will give Atlanta three rather important colleges, since she
+already has the technical branch of the University of Georgia, the main
+establishment of which located at Athens, Georgia, is one of the oldest
+state universities in the country, having been founded in 1801. (The
+University of Tennessee is the oldest state university in the South. It
+was founded in 1794. The University of Pennsylvania, dating from 1740,
+is the oldest of all state universities. Harvard, founded in 1636, was
+the first college established in the country; and the only other
+American colleges which survive from the seventeenth century are William
+and Mary, at Williamsburg, Virginia, established in 1693, and St. John's
+College, at Annapolis, dating from 1696.)
+
+There is a tendency in some parts of the South to use the terms
+"college" and "university" loosely. Some schools for white persons,
+doing little if anything more than grammar and high-school work, are
+called "colleges," and negro institutions doing similar work are
+sometimes grandiloquently termed "universities."
+
+Atlanta has thirteen public schools for negroes, but no public high
+school for them. There are, however, six large private educational
+institutions for negroes in the city, doing high-school, college, or
+graduate work, making Atlanta a great colored educational center. Of
+these, Atlanta University, a non-sectarian co-educational college with a
+white president (Mr. Edward T. Ware, whose father came from New England
+and founded the institution in 1867), is, I believe, the oldest and
+largest. It is very highly spoken of. Atlanta and Clark Universities are
+the only two colored colleges in Atlanta listed in the "World Almanac's"
+table of American universities and colleges. Clark also has a white man
+as president.
+
+Spelman Seminary, a Baptist institution for colored girls, has a white
+woman president, and is partially supported by Rockefeller money.
+Morehouse College, for boys, has a colored president, an able man, is of
+similar denomination and is also partially supported by Rockefeller
+funds. Spelman and Morehouse are run separately, excepting in college
+work, on which they combine. Both are said to be excellent. Morris Brown
+University is not a university at all, but does grammar and high-school
+work. It is officered and supported by colored people, all churches of
+the African Methodist Episcopal denomination subscribing funds for its
+maintenance. Gammon Theological Seminary is, I am informed, the one
+adequately endowed educational establishment for negroes in Atlanta. It
+would, of course, be a splendid thing if the best of these schools and
+colleges could be combined.
+
+Citizens of Atlanta do not, generally, take the interest they ought to
+take in these or other institutions for the benefit of negroes. To be
+sure, most Southerners do not believe in higher education for negroes;
+but, even allowing for that viewpoint, it is manifestly unfair that
+white children should have public high schools and that negro children
+should have none, but should be obliged to pay for their education above
+the grammar grades. Perhaps there are people in Atlanta who believe that
+even a high-school education is undesirable for the negro. That,
+however, seems to me a pretty serious thing for one race to attempt to
+decide for another--especially when the deciding race is not deeply and
+sincerely interested in the uplift of the race over which it holds the
+whip hand. Certainly intelligent people in the South believe in
+industrial training for the negro, and equally certainly a negro high
+school could give industrial training.
+
+Negroes are not admitted to Atlanta parks, nor are there any parks
+exclusively for them. Until recently there was no contagious-disease
+hospital to which negroes could be taken, and there is not now a
+reformatory for colored girls in the State of Georgia. Neither is there
+any provision whatsoever in the State for the care of feeble-minded
+colored children. And there is one thing even worse to be said. Shameful
+as are Georgia's frequent lynchings, shameful as is the State's
+indifference to negro welfare, blacker yet is the law upon her statute
+books making the "age of consent" _ten years_! Various women's
+organizations, and individual women, have, for decades, worked to change
+this law, but without success. The term "southern chivalry" must ring
+mocking and derisive in the ears of Georgia legislators until this
+disgrace is wiped out. Standing as it does, it means but one thing: that
+in order to protect some white males in their depravity, the voters of
+Georgia are satisfied to leave little girls, ten, eleven, twelve years
+of age, and upward, white as well as colored, utterly unprotected by the
+law in this regard.
+
+I have heard more than one woman in Georgia intimate that she would be
+well pleased with a little less exterior "chivalry" and a little more
+plain justice. Aside from their efforts to change the "age of consent"
+law, leading women in the State have been working for compulsory
+education, for the opening of the State University to women, for factory
+inspection and decent child-labor laws. The question of child labor has
+now been taken in hand by the National Government--as, of course, the
+"age of consent" should also be--but in other respects but little
+progress has been made in Georgia.
+
+From such cheerless items I turn gladly to a happier theme.
+
+As I have said elsewhere in this book, many colored people in Atlanta
+are doing well in various ways. At Atlanta University I saw several
+students whose fathers and mothers were graduates of the same
+institution. Higher education for the negro has, thus, come into its
+second generation. More prosperous negroes in Atlanta are doing social
+settlement work among less fortunate members of their race, and have
+started a free kindergarten for negro children. Many good people in
+Atlanta are unaware of these facts, and I believe their judgment on the
+entire negro question would be modified, at least in certain details,
+were they merely to inform themselves upon various creditable negro
+activities in the city. The northern stranger, attempting to ascertain
+the truth about the negro and the negro problem, has to this extent the
+advantage of the average Southerner: prejudice and indifference do not
+prevent his going among the negroes to find out what they are doing for
+themselves.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At various times in my life chance has thrown me into contact with
+charities in great variety, and philanthropic work of many kinds. I have
+seen theoretical charities, sentimental charities, silly charities,
+pauperizing charities, wild-eyed charities, charities which did good,
+and others which worked damage in the world; I have seen organized
+charities splendidly run under difficult circumstances (as in the
+Department of Charities under Commissioner Kingsbury, in New York City),
+and I have seen other organized charities badly run at great expense; I
+have seen charities conducted with the primary purpose of ministering to
+the vanity of self-important individuals who like to say: "See all the
+good that I am doing!" and I have seen other personal charities operated
+(as in the case of the Rockefeller Foundation) with a perfectly
+magnificent scope and effectiveness.
+
+Nevertheless, of all the charities I have seen, of all the efforts I
+have witnessed to improve the condition of humanity, none has taken a
+firmer hold upon my heart than the Leonard Street Orphans' Home, for
+negro girls, in Atlanta.
+
+The home is a humble frame building which was used as a barracks by
+northern troops stationed in Atlanta after the Civil War. In it reside
+Miss Chadwick, her helpers, and about seventy little negro girls; and it
+is an interesting fact that several of the helpers are young colored
+women who, themselves brought up in the home and taught to be
+self-supporting, have been drawn back to the place by homesickness. Was
+ever before an orphan homesick for an orphans' home?
+
+Miss Chadwick is an Englishwoman. Coming out to America a good many
+years ago, she somehow found Atlanta, and in Atlanta somehow found this
+orphanage, which was then both figuratively and literally dropping to
+pieces. Some one had to take hold of it, so Miss Chadwick did. How
+successful she has been it is hard to convey in words. I do not mean
+that she has succeeded in building up a great flourishing plant with a
+big endowment and all sorts of improvements. Far from it. The home
+stands on a tiny lot, the building is ramshackle and not nearly large
+enough for its purpose, and sometimes it seems doubtful where the money
+to keep it going will come from. Nevertheless the home is a hundred
+times more successful than I could have believed a home for orphans,
+colored or white, could be made, had I not seen it with my own eyes. Its
+success lies not in material possessions or prosperity, not in the food
+and shelter it provides to those who so pitifully needed it, but in the
+fact that it is in the truest and finest sense a _home_, a place endowed
+with the greatest blessings any home can have: contentment and
+affection. What Miss Chadwick has provided is, in short, an institution
+with a heart.
+
+How did she do it? That, like the other mystery of how she manages to
+house those seventy small lively people in that little building, is
+something which only Heaven and Miss Chadwick understand.
+
+But then, if you have ever visited the home and met Miss Chadwick, and
+seen her with her children, you know that Heaven and Miss Chadwick
+understand a lot of things the rest of us don't know about at all!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+A BIT OF RURAL GEORGIA
+
+    To walk with the morning and watch its rose unfold;
+    To drowse with the noontide lulled in its heart of gold;
+    To lie with the night-time and dream the dreams of old.
+
+    --MADISON CAWEIN.
+
+
+A man I know studies as a hobby something which he calls "graphics"--the
+term denoting the reaction of the mind to certain words. One of the
+words he used in an experiment with me was "winter." When he said
+"winter" there instantly came to me the picture of a snowstorm in
+Quebec. I saw the front of the Hotel Frontenac at dusk through a mist of
+driving snow. There were lights in the windows. A heavy wind was blowing
+and as I leaned against it the front of my overcoat was plastered with
+sticky white flakes. The streets and sidewalks were deep with snow, and
+the only person besides myself in the vision was a sentry standing with
+his gun in the lee of the vestibule outside the local militia
+headquarters.
+
+If my friend were to come now and try me with the word "spring," I know
+what picture it would call to mind. I should see the Burge plantation,
+near Covington, Georgia: the simple old white house with its rose-clad
+porch, or "gallery," its grove of tall trees, its carriage-house, its
+well-house, and other minor dependencies clustering nearby like
+chickens about a white hen, its background the rolling cottonfields,
+their red soil glowing salmon-colored in the sun. For, as I was never so
+conscious of the brutality of winter as in that evening snowstorm at
+Quebec, I was never so conscious, as at the time of our visit to the
+Burge plantation, of the superlative soft sweetness of the spring.
+
+In seasons, as in other things, we have our individual preferences.
+Melancholy natures usually love autumn, with its colorings so like sweet
+sad minor chords. But what kind of natures they are which rejoice in
+spring, which feel that with each spring the gloomy past is blotted out,
+and life, with all its opportunities, begins anew--what kind of natures
+they are which recognize April instead of January as the beginning of
+their year I shall not attempt to tell, for mine is such a nature, and
+one must not act at once as subject and diagnostician.
+
+So long as I endure, spring can never come again without turning my
+thoughts to northwestern Georgia; to the peculiar penetrating warmth
+which passed through the clothing to the body and made one feel that one
+was not surrounded by mere air, but was immersed in a dry bath of some
+infinitely superior vapor, a vapor volatile, soothing, tonic, distilled,
+it seemed, from the earth, from pine trees, tulip trees, balm-of-Gilead
+trees, (or "bam" trees, as they call them), blossoming Judas trees,
+Georgia crabapple, dogwood pink and white, peach blossom, wistaria,
+sweet-shrub, dog violets, pansy violets, Cherokee roses, wild
+honeysuckle and azalia, and the evanescent green of new treetops, all
+carried in solution in the sunlight. By day the brilliant cardinal adds
+his fine note of color and sound, but at night he is silent, and when
+the moon comes out one hears the mockingbird and, it may be also, two
+whippoorwills, one in the grove near the house, one in the woods across
+the road, calling back and forth. Then one is tempted to step down from
+the porch, and follow the voices of the birds into the vague recesses of
+a night webbed with dark tree shadows outlined in blue moonlight.
+
+Small wonder it is, if, as report says, no houseparty on a southern
+plantation is a success unless young couples become "sort of engaged,"
+and if in a region so provocative in springtime under a full moon, a
+distinction is recognized between being merely "engaged," and being
+engaged _to be married_.
+
+One Georgia belle we met, a sloe-eyed girl whose reputation not only for
+beauty but for charm reached through the entire South, had, at the time
+of our visit, recently become engaged in the more grave and permanent
+sense.
+
+"How does it seem?" a girl friend asked her.
+
+"I feel," she answered, "like a man who has built up a large business
+and is about to go into the hands of a receiver."
+
+Such ways as those girls have! Such voices! Such eyes! And such names,
+too! Names which would not fit at all into a northern setting,
+relatively so hard and unsentimental, but which, when one becomes
+accustomed to them, take their place gracefully and harmoniously in the
+southern picture. The South likes diminutives and combinations in its
+women's names. Its Harriets, Franceses, Sarahs, and Marthas, become
+Hatties, Fannies, Sallies and Patsies, and Patsy sometimes undergoes a
+further transition and becomes Passie. Moreover, where these diminutives
+have been passed down for several generations in a family, their origin
+is sometimes lost sight of, and the diminutive becomes the actual
+baptismal name. In one family of my acquaintance, for example, the name
+Passie has long been handed down from mother to daughter. The original
+great-grandmother Passie was christened Martha but was at first called
+Patsy; then, because her black mammy was also named Patsy, the daughter
+of the house came to be known, for purposes of differentiation, as
+Passie, and when she married and had a daughter of her own, the child
+was christened Passie. In this family the name May has more recently
+been adopted as a middle name, and it is customary for familiars of the
+youngest Passie, to address her not merely as Passie, but as Passie-May.
+The inclusion of the second name, in this fashion, is another custom not
+uncommon in the South. In Atlanta alone I heard of ladies habitually
+referred to as Anna-Laura, Hattie-May, Lollie-Belle, Sally-Maud,
+Nora-Belle, Mattie-Sue, Emma-Belle, Lottie-Belle, Susie-May, Lula-Belle,
+Sallie-Fannie, Hattie-Fannie, Lou-Ellen, Allie-Lou, Clara-Belle,
+Mary-Ella, and Hattie-Belle. Another young lady was known to her friends
+as Jennie-D.
+
+The train from Atlanta set us down at Covington, Georgia, or rather at
+the station which lies between the towns of Covington and Oxford--for
+when this railroad was built neither town would allow it a right of way,
+and to this day each is connected with the station by a street car line,
+either line equipped with one diminutive car, a pair of disconsolate
+mules, and a driver. Covington is the County seat, a quiet southern
+town, part old, part new, with a look of rural prosperity about it.
+Stopping at the postoffice to inquire for mail we saw this peremptory
+sign displayed:
+
+     When the window is down don't bang around and ask for a stamp or
+     two.
+
+     --J.L. CALLAWAY, Postmaster.
+
+As the window was down we tiptoed out and went upon our way, driving
+through Oxford before going to the plantation. This town was named for
+Oxford, England, and is, like its namesake, a college town. A small and
+very old Methodist educational institution, with a pretty though ragged
+campus and fine trees, is all there is to Oxford, save a row of
+ante-bellum houses. One of them, a pleasant white mansion, half
+concealed by the huge magnolias which stand in its front yard, was at
+one time the residence of General Longstreet. The old front gate,
+hanging on a stone post, was made by the general with his own hands--and
+well made, for it is to-day as good a gate as ever. Corra Harris lived
+at one time in Oxford; her husband, Rev. Lundy H. Harris, having been a
+professor at the college.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Though plantation life has necessarily changed since the war, I do not
+believe that there is in the whole South a plantation where it has
+changed less than on the Burge plantation. In appearance the place is
+not as Sherman's men found it, for they tore down the fences and ruined
+the beautiful old-fashioned garden, and neither has been replaced; nor,
+of course, is it run, so far as practical affairs are concerned, as it
+was before the War; that is to say, instead of being operated as a unit
+of nine-hundred acres, it is now worked chiefly on shares, and is
+divided up into "one mule farms" and "two mule farms," these being
+tracts of about thirty and sixty acres, respectively, thirty acres being
+approximately the area which can be worked by a man and a mule.
+
+Practically all the negroes on the place--perhaps a hundred in
+number--are either former slaves of the Burge family, or the children,
+grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of slaves who lived on the
+plantation. That is one reason why the plantation is less changed in
+spirit than are many others. The Burges were religious people, used
+their slaves kindly, and brought them up well, so that the negroes on
+the plantation to-day are respectable, and in some instances, exemplary
+people, very different from the vagrant negro type which has developed
+since the War, making labor conditions in some parts of the South
+uncertain, and plantation life, in some sections, not safe for
+unprotected women.
+
+The present proprietors of the Burge plantation are two ladies,
+granddaughters of Mrs. Thomas Burge, who lived here, a widow, with a
+little daughter, when General Sherman and his hosts came by. These
+ladies frequently spend months at the plantation without male protectors
+save only the good negroes of their own place, who look after them with
+the most affectionate devotion. True, the ladies keep an ugly looking
+but mild mannered bulldog, of which the negroes are generally afraid;
+true also they carry a revolver when they drive about the country in
+their motor, and keep revolvers handy in their rooms; but these
+precautions are not taken, they told me, because of any doubts about the
+men on their place, their one fear being of tramp negroes, passing by.
+
+Of their own negroes several are remarkable, particularly one old
+couple, perfect examples of the fine ante-bellum type so much beloved in
+the South, and so much regretted as it disappears.
+
+During the period of twenty years or more, while the owners were absent,
+growing up and receiving their education, the whole place, indoors and
+out, was in charge of Uncle George and Aunt Sidney. The two lived, and
+still do live, in one wing of the house--over which Aunt Sidney presides
+as housekeeper and cook, as her mother, Aunt Liddy, did before her. Aunt
+Liddy died only a short time ago, aged several years over a hundred.
+Uncle George supervises all the business of the plantation, as he has
+done for thirty or forty years. He collects all rents, markets the crops
+and receives the payments, makes purchases, pays bills, and keeps peace
+between the tenants--nor could any human being be more honorable or
+possess a finer, sweeter dignity. As for devotion, when the little girls
+who were away returned after all the years as grown women, every ribbon,
+every pin in that house was where it had been left, and the place was no
+less neat than if the "white folks" had constantly remained there.
+
+Before Georgia went dry it was customary for negroes of the rougher sort
+to get drunk in town every Saturday night. Drunken negroes would
+consequently be passing by, all night, on their way to their homes,
+yelling and (after the manner of their kind when intoxicated) shooting
+their revolvers in the air. Every Saturday night, when the ladies were
+at home, Uncle George would quietly take his gun and place himself on
+the porch, remaining there until the last of the obstreperous wayfarers
+had passed.
+
+Uncle Abe and Uncle Wiley are two other worthy and venerable men who
+live in cabins on the place. Both were there when Sherman's army passed
+upon its devastating way, and both were carried off, as were thousands
+upon thousands of other negroes out of that wide belt across the State
+of Georgia, which was overrun in the course of the March to the Sea.
+
+"Ah was goin' to mill wid de ox-caht," Uncle Abe told me, "when de
+soljas dey kim 'long an' got me. Dey tol' me, 'Heah, nigga! Git out dat
+caht, an' walk behin'. When _it_ moves _you_ move; when _it_ stops _you_
+stop!' An' like dat Ah walk all de way to Savannah [two hundred and
+fifty miles]. Den, after dat, dey took us 'long up No'th--me an' ma
+brotha Wiley, ovah deh."
+
+I asked him what regiment he went with. He said it was the Twenty-second
+Indiana, and that Dr. Joe Stilwell, of that regiment, who came from a
+place near Madison, Indiana ("Ah reckon de town was name Brownstown"),
+was good to him. An officer whom he knew, he said, was Captain John
+Snodgrass, and another Major Tom Shay.
+
+"All Ah was evvuh wo'ied about aftuh dey kim tuck me," he declared, "was
+gittin' somep'n t' eat. Dat kinda put me on de wonduh, sometahmes, but
+dey used us all right. Dr. Pegg--him dat did de practice on de
+plantation befo' de Wah--he tol' de niggas dat de Yankees would put gags
+in deh moufs an' lead 'em eroun' like dey wuz cattle. But deh wa' n't
+like dat nohow. I b'longed to de Secon' Division, Thuhd B'gade,
+Fou'teenth Co' [corps]. Cap'n Snodgrass, he got to be lieutenant-cuhnel.
+He was de highes' man Ah evuh hel' any convuhsation wid, but I _saw_ all
+de gennuls of dat ahmy."
+
+Uncle Wiley is older than Uncle Abe. He was already a grown man with
+three children when taken away by some of Sherman's men. He told me he
+was with the Fifty-second Ohio, and mentioned Captain Shepard.
+
+The two brothers got as far as Washington, D.C.
+
+"We got los' togedduh in de U.S. buildin' in dat city," said Uncle
+Wiley. "De President of de U.S. right at dat tahme he was daid. He was
+kill', Ah don' s'pose it wuz a week befo' we got to Wash'n, D.C."
+
+"How did you happen to come all the way back?" I asked.
+
+"Well-l," ruminated the old man, "home was always a-restin' on mah min'.
+Ah kep' thinkin' 'bout home. So aftuh de Wah ceasted Ah jus' kim 'long
+back."
+
+Many of the old plantation customs still survive. A little before noon
+the bell is rung to summon the hands from the cotton fields. Over the
+red plowed soil you hear a darky cry, a melodious "Oh-_oh_-oh!" as wild
+and musical as the cries of the south-Italian olive gatherers. The
+planters cease their work, mules stand still, traces are unhooked from
+singletrees, and chain-ends thrown over the mules' backs; then the men
+mount the animals and ride in to the midday meal, the women trudging
+after. Those who rent land, or work on shares, go to their own cabins,
+while those employed by the hour or by the day (the rate of pay is ten
+cents an hour or seventy-five cents a day) come to the kitchen to be
+fed. Nor is it customary to stop there at feeding negroes. As in the old
+days, any negro who has come upon an errand or who has "stopped by" to
+sell supplies, or for whatever purpose, expects to stay for "dinner,"
+and makes it a point to arrive about noon. Thus from sixteen to twenty
+negroes are fed daily at the Burge plantation house.
+
+The old Christmas traditions are likewise kept up. On Christmas day the
+negroes come flocking up to the house for their gifts. Their first
+concern is to attempt to cry "Christmas gift!" to others, before it can
+be said to them--for according to ancient custom the one who says the
+words first must have a gift from the other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+A YOUNG METROPOLIS
+
+
+An observer approaching a strange city should be "neutral even in
+thought." He may listen to what is said of the city, but he must not
+permit his opinions to take form in advance; for, like other gossip,
+gossip about cities is unreliable, and the casual stranger's estimate of
+cities is not always founded upon broad appreciations. But though it is
+unwise to judge of cities by what is said of them, it is perhaps worth
+remarking that one may often judge of men by what they say of cities.
+
+I remember an American manufacturer, broken down by overwork, who, when
+he looked at Pompeii, could think only of the wasted possibilities of
+Vesuvius as a power plant, and I remember two traveling salesmen on a
+southern railroad train who expressed scorn for the exquisite city of
+Charleston because--they said--it is but a poor market place for
+suspenders and barbers' supplies. There are those who think of Boston
+only as headquarters of the shoe trade, others who think of it only in
+the terms of culture, and still others who regard it solely as an abode
+of negrophiles.
+
+In the case of the chief city of Alabama, however, my companion and I
+noticed, as we journeyed through the South, that reports were
+singularly in accord. Birmingham is too young to have any Civil War
+history. Her history is the history of the steel industry in the South,
+and one hears always of that: of the affluence of the city when the
+industry is thriving, and hard times when it is not. One is invariably
+told that Birmingham is not a southern city, but a northern city in the
+South, and the chief glories of the place, aside from steel, are (if one
+is to believe rumors current upon railroad trains and elsewhere), a
+twenty-seven story building, Senator Oscar Underwood, the distinguished
+Democratic leader, and the Tutwiler Hotel. Even in Atlanta it is
+conceded that the Tutwiler is a good hotel, and when Atlanta admits that
+anything in Birmingham is good it may be considered as established that
+the thing is very, very good--for Birmingham and Atlanta view each other
+with the same degree of cordiality as is exchanged between St. Louis and
+Kansas City, Minneapolis and St. Paul, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
+
+Having been, in the course of our southern wanderings, in several very
+bad hotels, and having heard the Tutwiler compared with Chicago's
+Blackstone, my companion and I held eager anticipation of this hostelry.
+Nor were our hopes dashed by a first glimpse of the city on the night of
+our arrival. It was a modern-looking city--just the sort of city that
+would have a fine new hotel. The railroad station through which we
+passed after leaving the train was not the usual dingy little southern
+station, but an admirable building, and the streets along which we
+presently found ourselves gliding in an automobile hack, were wide,
+smooth, and brightly illuminated by clustered boulevard lights.
+
+True, we had long since learned not to place too much reliance upon the
+nocturnal aspects of cities. A city seen by night is like a woman
+dressed for a ball. Darkness drapes itself about her as a black-velvet
+evening gown, setting off, in place of neck and arms, the softly glowing
+facades of marble buildings; lights are her diamond ornaments, and her
+perfume is the cool fragrance of night air. Almost all cities, and
+almost all women, look their best at night, and there are those which,
+though beautiful by night, sink, in their daylight aspect, to utter
+mediocrity.
+
+Presently our motor drew up before the entrance of the Tutwiler--a proud
+entrance, all revolving doors and glitter and promise. A brisk bell boy
+came running for our bags. The signs were of the best.
+
+The lobby, though spacious, was crowded; the decorations and equipment
+were of that rich sumptuousness attained only in the latest and most
+magnificent American hotels; there was music, and as we made our way
+along we caught a glimpse, in passing, of an attractive supper room,
+with small table-lights casting their soft radiance upon white shirt
+fronts and the faces of pretty girls. In all it was a place to make glad
+the heart of the weary traveler, and to cause him to wonder whether his
+dress suit would be wrinkled when he took it from his trunk.
+
+Behind the imposing marble "desk" stood several impeccable clerks, and
+to one of these I addressed myself, giving our names and mentioning the
+fact that we had telegraphed for rooms. I am not sure that this young
+man wore a braided cutaway and a white carnation; I only know that he
+affected me as hotel clerks in braided cutaways and white carnations
+always do. While I spoke he stood a little way back from the counter,
+his chin up, his gaze barely missing the top of my hat, his nostrils
+seeming to contract with that expression of dubiousness assumed by
+delicate noses which sense, long before they encounter it, the aroma of
+unworthiness.
+
+"Not a room in the house," he said. Then, as though to forestall further
+parley, he turned and spoke with gracious lightness to one of his own
+rank and occupation who, at the request of my companion, was
+ascertaining whether letters were awaiting us.
+
+"But we telegraphed two days ago!" I protested desperately.
+
+"Can't help it. Hardware Convention. Everything taken."
+
+Over my shoulder I heard from my companion a sound, half sigh, half
+groan, which echoed the cry of my own heart.
+
+"I felt this coming!" he murmured. "Didn't you notice all these people
+with ribbons on them? There's never any room in a hotel where
+everybody's wearing ribbons. It's like a horse show. They get the
+ribbons and we get the gate."
+
+"Surely," I faltered, "you can let us have one small room?"
+
+"Impossible," he answered brightly. "We've turned away dozens of people
+this evening."
+
+"Then," I said, abandoning hope, "perhaps you will suggest some other
+hotel?"
+
+I once heard a woman, the most perfect parvenu I ever met, speak of her
+poor relations in a tone exactly similar to that in which the clerk now
+spoke the names of two hotels. Having spoken, he turned and passed
+behind the partition at one end of the marble counter.
+
+My companion and I stood there for a moment looking despondently at each
+other. Then, without a word, we retreated through that gorgeous lobby,
+feeling like sad remnants of a defeated Yankee army.
+
+Again we motored through the bright streets, but only to successive
+disappointments, for both hotels mentioned by the austere clerk were
+"turning 'em away." Our chauffeur now came to our aid, mentioning
+several small hotels, and in one of these, the Granada, we were at last
+so fortunate as to find lodgings.
+
+"It begun to look like you'd have to put up at the Roden," the chauffeur
+smiled as we took our bags out of the car and settled with him.
+
+"The Roden?"
+
+"Yes," he returned "Best ventilated hotel in the United States."
+
+Next day when the Hotel Roden was pointed out to us we appreciated the
+witticism, for the Roden is--or was at the time of our visit--merely
+the steel skeleton of a building which, we were informed, had for some
+years stood unfinished owing to disagreements among those concerned with
+its construction.
+
+As for the Granada, though a modest place, it was new and clean; the
+clerk was amiable, the beds comfortable, and if our rooms were too small
+to admit our trunks, they were, at all events, outside rooms, each with
+a private bath, at a rate of $1 per day apiece. Never in any hotel have
+I felt that I was getting so much for my money.
+
+Next morning, after breakfast, we set out to see the city. Having
+repeatedly heard of Birmingham as the "Pittsburgh of the South," we
+expected cold daylight to reveal the sooty signs of her industrialism,
+but in this we were agreeably disappointed. By day as well as by night
+the city is pleasing to the eye, and it is a fact worth noting that the
+downtown buildings of Atlanta (which is not an industrial city) are
+streaked and dirty, whereas those of Birmingham are clean--the reason
+for this being that the mills and furnaces of Birmingham are far removed
+from the heart of the town, whereas locomotives belch black smoke into
+the very center of Atlanta's business and shopping district.
+
+Moreover, the metropolis of Alabama is better laid out than that of
+Georgia. The streets of Birmingham are wide, and the business part of
+the city, lying upon a flat terrain, is divided into large, even
+squares. From this district the chief residence section mounts by easy,
+graceful grades into the hills to the southward. Because of these
+grades, and the curving drives which follow the contours of the hills,
+and the vistas of the lower city, and the good modern houses, and the
+lawns and trees and shrubbery and breezes, this Highlands region is
+reminiscent of a similar residence district in Portland, Oregon--which
+is to say that it is one of the most agreeable districts of the kind in
+the United States.
+
+Well up on the hillside, Highland Avenue winds a charming course between
+pleasant homes, with here and there a little residence park branching
+off to one side, and here and there a small municipal park occupying an
+angle formed by a sharp turn in the driveway; and if you follow the
+street far enough you will presently see the house of the Birmingham
+Country Club, standing upon its green hilltop, amidst rolling, partly
+wooded golf links, above the road.
+
+Nor is the Country Club at the summit of this range of hills. Back of it
+rise other roads, the most picturesque of them being Altamont Road,
+which runs to the top of Red Mountain, reaching a height about
+equivalent to that of the cornice line of Birmingham's tallest building.
+The houses of this region are built on streets which, like some streets
+of Portland, are terraced into the hillside, and the resident of an
+upper block can almost look down the chimneys of his neighbors on the
+block below. The view commanded from these mountain perches does not
+suggest that the lower city runs up into the Highlands. It seems to be a
+separate place, down in a distant valley, and the sense of its
+remoteness is heightened by the thin veil of gray smoke which wafts from
+the tall smokestacks of far-off iron furnaces, softening the serrated
+outlines of the city and wrapping its tall buildings in the industrial
+equivalent for autumn haze.
+
+At night the scene from the Highlands is even more spectacular, for at
+brief intervals the blowing of a converter in some distant steel plant
+illuminates the heavens with a great hot glow, like that which rises and
+falls about the crater of a volcano in eruption. Thus the city's vast
+affairs are kept before it by day in a pillar of cloud, and by night in
+a pillar of fire. Iron and steel dominate Birmingham's mind, activities
+and life. The very ground of Red Mountain is red because of the iron ore
+that it contains, and those who reside upon the charming slopes of this
+hill do not own their land in fee simple, but subject always to the
+mineral rights of mining companies.
+
+The only other industry of Birmingham which is to be compared, in
+magnitude or efficiency, with the steel industry is that of "cutting in"
+at dances. All through the South it is carried on, but whereas in such
+cities as Memphis, New Orleans and Atlanta, men show a little mercy to
+the stranger--realizing that, as he is presumably unacquainted with all
+the ladies at a dance, he cannot retaliate in kind--Birmingham is
+merciless and prosecutes the pestilential practice unremittingly, even
+going so far as to apply the universal-service principle and call out
+her highschool youths to carry on the work. Before I went to certain
+dances in Birmingham I felt that high-school boys ought to be kept at
+home at night, but after attending these dances I realized that such
+restriction was altogether inadequate, and that the only way to deal
+with them effectively would be to pickle them in vitriol.
+
+Where, in other cities of the South, I have managed to dance as much as
+half a dance without interruption, I never danced more than twenty feet
+with one partner in Birmingham. Nor did my companion.
+
+Our host was energetic in presenting us to ladies of infinite
+pulchritude and State-wide terpsichorean reputation, but we would start
+to tread a measure with them, only to have them swiftly snatched from us
+by some spindle-necked, long-wristed, big-boned, bowl-eared high-school
+youth, in a dinner suit which used to fit him when it was new, six
+months ago.
+
+As we would start to dance the lady would say:
+
+"You-all ah strangehs, ahn't you?"
+
+We would reply that we were.
+
+"Wheh do you come from?"
+
+"New York."
+
+Then, because the Hardware Convention was being held in town at the
+time, she would continue:
+
+"Ah reckon you-all ah hahdware men?"
+
+But that was as far as the conversation ever got. Just about the time
+that she began to reckon we were hardware men a mandatory hand would be
+laid upon us, and before we had time to defend ourselves against the
+hardware charge, the lady would be wafted off in the arms of some
+predatory youth who ought to have been at home considering _pons
+asinorum_.
+
+Had we indeed been hardware men, and had we had our hardware with us,
+they could have done with fewer teachers in the high schools of that
+city after the night of our first dance in Birmingham.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Up in the hills, some miles back of the Country Club, on the banks of a
+large artificial lake, stands the new clubhouse of the Birmingham Motor
+and Country Club, and around the lake runs the club's
+two-and-a-half-mile speedway. Elsewhere is the Roebuck Golf Club, the
+links of which are admitted ("even in Atlanta!") to be excellent--the
+one possible objection to the course of the Birmingham Country Club
+being that it is suited only to play with irons.
+
+I mention these golfing matters not because they interest me, but
+because they may interest you. I am not a golfer. I played the game for
+two seasons; then I decided to try to lead a better life. The first time
+I played I did quite well, but thence onward my game declined until,
+toward the last, crowds would collect to hear me play. When I determined
+to abandon the game I did not burn my clubs or break them up, according
+to the usual custom, but instead gave them to a man upon whom I wished
+to retaliate because his dog had bitten a member of my family.
+
+Small wonder that all golf clubs have extensive bars! It is not hard to
+understand why men who realize that they have become incurable victims
+of the insidious habit of golf should wish to drown the thought in
+drink. But in Birmingham they can't do it--not, at least, at bars.
+Alabama has beaten her public bars into soda fountains and quick-lunch
+rooms, and though her club bars still look like real ones, the drinks
+served are so soft that no splash occurs when reminiscent tears drop
+into them.
+
+When we were in Alabama each citizen who so desired was allowed by law
+to import from outside the State a small allotment of strong drink for
+personal use, but the red tape involved in this procedure had already
+discouraged all but the most ardent drinkers, and those found it next to
+impossible, even by hoarding their "lonesome quarts," and pooling
+supplies with their convivial friends, to provide sufficient alcoholic
+drink for a "real party."
+
+We met in Birmingham but one gentleman whose cellars seemed to be well
+stocked, and the tales of ingenuity and exertion by which he managed to
+secure ample supplies of liquor were such as to lead us to believe that
+this matter had become, with him, an occupation to which all other
+business must give second place.
+
+It was this gentleman who told us that, since the State went dry, the
+ancient form, "R.S.V.P.," on social invitations, had been revised to
+"B.W.H.P.," signifying, "bring whisky in hip pocket."
+
+To the "B.W.H.P." habit he himself strictly adhered. One night, when we
+chanced to meet him in a downtown club, he drew a flask from a hip
+pocket, and invited us to "have something."
+
+"What is it?" asked my companion.
+
+"Scotch."
+
+When my companion had helped himself he passed the flask to me, but I
+returned it to the owner, explaining that I did not drink Scotch whisky.
+
+"What do you drink?" he asked.
+
+"Bourbon."
+
+"Here it is," he returned, drawing a second flask from the other hip
+pocket.
+
+How well, too, do I remember the long, delightful evening upon which my
+companion and I sat in an Atlanta club with a group of the older
+members, the week before Georgia went bone dry. There, as in Alabama
+before 1915, there had been pretended prohibition, but now the bars of
+leading clubs were being closed, and convivial men were looking into the
+future with despair. One of the gentlemen was a justice of the Supreme
+Court of the State, and I remember his wistful declaration that
+prohibition would fall hardest upon the older men.
+
+"When a man is young," he said, "he can be lively and enjoy himself
+without drinking, because he is full of animal spirits. But we older men
+aren't bubbling over with liveliness. We can't dance, or don't want to,
+and we lack the stimulus which comes of falling continually in love. My
+great pleasure is to sit of an evening, here at a table in the cafe of
+this club, conversing with my friends. That is where prohibition is
+going to hurt me. I shall not see my old friends any more."
+
+The others protested at this somber view, but the judge gravely shook
+his head, saying: "You don't believe me, but I know whereof I speak, for
+I have been through something like this, in a minor way, before. A good
+many years ago I was one of a little group of congenial men to organize
+a small club. We had comfortable quarters, and we used to drop in at
+night, much as we have been doing of late years here, and have the kind
+of talks that are tonic to the soul. Of course we had liquor in the
+club, but there came a time when, for some reason or other--I think it
+was some trouble over a license--we closed our bar. We didn't think it
+was going to make a great difference, but it did. The men began to stop
+coming in, and before long the club ceased to exist.
+
+"It won't be like that here. This club will go on. But we won't come
+here. We won't want to sit around a table, like this, and drink ginger
+ale and sarsaparilla; and even if we do, the talk won't be so good. The
+thing that makes me downcast is not that liquor is going, but that we
+are really parting this week.
+
+"Every one knows that the abuse of drink does harm in the world, but
+these pious prohibitionists are not of the temperament to understand how
+alcohol ministers to the esthetic side of certain natures. It gives us
+better companions and makes us better companions for others. It
+stimulates our minds, enhances our appreciations, sharpens our wit,
+loosens our tongues, and saves brilliant conversation from becoming a
+lost art."
+
+My sympathies went out to the judge. It has always seemed to me a pity
+that the liquor question has resolved itself into a fight between
+extremists--for I think the wine and beer people might survive if they
+were not tied up with the distillers, and I do not believe that any
+considerable evil comes of drinking wine or beer.
+
+Nevertheless it must be apparent to every one who troubles to
+investigate, that prohibition invariably works great good wherever it is
+made effective. Take, for example, Birmingham.
+
+There was one year--I believe it was 1912--when there was an average of
+more than one murder a day, for every working day in the year, in the
+county in which Birmingham is located. On one famous Saturday night
+there were nineteen felonious assaults (sixteen by negroes and three by
+whites), from which about a dozen deaths resulted, two of those killed
+having been policemen.
+
+All this has changed with prohibition. Killings are now comparatively
+rare, arrests have diminished to less than a third of the former
+average, whether for grave or petty offenses, and the receiving jail,
+which was formerly packed like a pigpen every Saturday night, now stands
+almost empty, while the city jail, which used continually to house from
+120 to 150 offenders, has diminished its average population to 30 or
+35.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+BUSY BIRMINGHAM
+
+
+The fact that a man may shut off his motor and coast downhill from his
+home to his office in the lower part of Birmingham, is not without
+symbolism. Birmingham is all business. If I were to personify the place,
+it would be in the likeness of a man I know--a big, powerful fellow with
+an honest blue eye and an expression in which self-confidence, ambition,
+and power are blended. Like Birmingham, this man is a little more than
+forty years of age. Like Birmingham, he has built up a large business of
+his own. And, like Birmingham, he is a little bit naive in his pride of
+success. His life is divided between his office and his home, and it
+would be difficult to say for which his devotion is the greater. He
+talks business with his wife at breakfast and dinner, and on their
+Sunday walks. He brings his papers home at night and goes over them with
+her, for, though her specialty is bringing up the children, she is
+deeply interested in his business and often makes suggestions which he
+follows. This causes him to admire her intensely, which he would not
+necessarily do were she merely a good wife and mother.
+
+He has no hobbies or pastimes. True, he plays golf, but with him golf is
+not a diversion. He plays because he finds the exercise increases his
+efficiency ("efficiency" is perhaps his favorite word), and because many
+of his commercial associates are golfers, and he can talk business with
+them on the links.
+
+His house is pleasant and stands upon a good-sized city lot. It is
+filled with very shiny mahogany furniture and strong-colored portieres
+and sofa cushions. It is rather more of a house than he requires, for
+his tastes are simple, but he has a feeling that he ought to have a
+large house, for the same reason that he and his wife ought to dress
+expensively--that is, out of respect, as it were, to his business.
+
+One of his chief treasures is an automatic piano, upon which he rolls
+off selections from Wagner's operas. He likes the music of the great
+German because, as he has often told me, it stirs his imagination,
+thereby helping him to solve business problems and make business plans.
+
+The thing he most abhors is general conversation, and he is never so
+amusing--so pathetically and unconsciously amusing--as when trying to
+take part in general conversation and at the same time to conceal the
+writhings of his tortured spirit. There is but one thing which will
+drive him to attempt the feat, and that is the necessity of making
+himself agreeable to some man, or the wife of some man, from whom he
+wishes to get business.
+
+The census of 1910 gave Birmingham a population of 132,000, and it is
+estimated that since that time the population has increased by 50,000.
+Birmingham not only knows that it is growing, but believes in trying to
+make ready in advance for future growth. It gives one the impression
+that it is rather ahead of its housing problems than behind them. Its
+area, for instance, is about as great as that of Boston or Cleveland,
+and its hotels may be compared with the hotels of those cities. If it
+has not so many clubs as Atlanta, it has, at least, all the clubs it
+needs; and if it has not so many skyscrapers as New York, it has several
+which would fit nicely into the Wall Street district. Moreover, the tall
+buildings of Birmingham lose nothing in height by contrast with the
+older buildings, three or four stories high, which surround them, giving
+the business district something of that look which hangs about a boy who
+has outgrown his clothing. Nor are the vehicles and street crowds,
+altogether in consonance, as yet, with the fine office buildings of the
+city, for many of the motors standing at the curb have about them that
+gray, rural look which comes of much mud and infrequent washing, and the
+idlers who lean against the rich facades of granite and marble are
+entirely out of the picture, for they look precisely like the idlers who
+lean against the wooden posts of country railroad station platforms.
+
+Such curious contrasts as these may be noted everywhere. For instance,
+Birmingham has been so busy paving the streets that it seems quite to
+have forgotten to put up street signs. Also, not far from the majestic
+Tutwiler Hotel, and the imposing apartment building called the Ridgely,
+the front of which occupies a full block, is a park so ill kept that it
+would be a disgrace to the city but for the obvious fact that the city
+is growing and wide-awake, and will, of course, attend to the park when
+it can find the time. Here are, I believe, the only public monuments
+Birmingham contains. One is a Confederate monument in the form of an
+obelisk, and the other two are statues erected in memory of Mary A.
+Cahalan, for many years principal of the Powell School, and of William
+Elias B. Davis, a distinguished surgeon. Workers in these fields are too
+seldom honored in this way, and the spirit which prompted the erection
+of these monuments is particularly creditable; sad to say, however, both
+effigies are wretchedly placed and are in themselves exceedingly poor
+things. Art is something, indeed, about which Birmingham has much to
+learn. So far as I could discover, no such thing as an art museum has
+been contemplated. But here again the critic should remember that,
+whereas art is old, Birmingham is young. She is as yet in the stage of
+development at which cities think not of art museums, but of municipal
+auditoriums; and with the latter subject, at least, she is now
+concerning herself.
+
+Even in the city's political life contrasts are not wanting, for though
+the town is Republican in sentiment, it proves itself southern by voting
+the Democratic ticket, and it is interesting to note further that the
+commission by which it is governed had as one of its five members, when
+we were there, a Socialist.
+
+Another curious and individual touch is contributed by the soda-fountain
+lunch rooms which abound in the city, and which, I judge, arrived with
+the disappearance of barroom lunch counters. In connection with many of
+the downtown soda fountains there are cooking arrangements, and business
+lunches are served.
+
+The roads leading out of the city in various directions have many
+dangerous grade crossings, and accidents must be of common occurrence.
+At all events, I have never known a city in which cemeteries and
+undertaking establishments were so widely advertised. In the street
+cars, for instance, I observed the cheerful placards of one Wallace
+Johns, undertaker, who promises "all the attention you would expect from
+a friend," and I was informed that Mr. Johns possesses business cards
+(for restricted use only) bearing the gay legend: "I'll get you yet!"
+
+As to schools the city is well off. Dr. J.H. Phillips, superintendent of
+public schools, has occupied his post probably as long as any school
+superintendent in the country. He organized the city school system in
+1883, beginning with seven teachers, as against 750 now employed. The
+colored schools are reported to be better than in most southern cities.
+
+Of the general status of the negro in Birmingham I cannot speak with
+authority. As in Atlanta, negroes are sometimes required to use separate
+elevators in office buildings, and, as everywhere south of Washington,
+the Birmingham street cars give one end to whites and the other to
+negroes. But whereas negroes use the back of the car in Atlanta, they
+use the front in Birmingham. It was attempted, at one time, to reverse
+this order, for reasons having to do with draft and ventilation, but the
+people of Birmingham had become accustomed to the existing arrangement
+and objected to the change. "After all," one gentleman said to me, in
+speaking of this matter, "it is not important which end of the car is
+given to the nigger. The main point is that he must sit where he is
+told."
+
+The means by which the negro vote is eliminated in various Southern
+States are generally similar, though Alabama has, perhaps, been more
+thorough in the matter than some other States. The importance of this
+issue to the southern white man is very great, for if all negroes were
+allowed to vote the control of certain States would be in negro hands.
+To the Southerner such an idea is intolerable, and it is my confident
+belief that if the State of Alabama were resettled by men from
+Massachusetts, and the same problems were presented to those men, they
+would be just as quick as the white Alabamans of to-day to find means to
+suppress the negro vote. With all my heart I wish that such an exchange
+of citizens might temporarily be effected, for when the immigrants from
+Massachusetts moved back to their native New England, after an
+experience of the black belt, they would take with them an
+understanding of certain aspects of the negro problem which they have
+never understood; an understanding which, had they possessed it sixty or
+seventy years ago, might have brought about the freeing of slaves by
+government purchase--a course which Lincoln advocated and which would
+probably have prevented the Civil War, and thereby saved millions upon
+millions of money, to say nothing of countless lives. Had they even
+understood the problems of the South at the end of the Civil War, the
+horrors of Reconstruction might have been avoided, and I cannot too
+often reiterate that, but for Reconstruction we should not be perplexed,
+to-day, by the unhappy, soggy mass of political inertia known as the
+Solid South.
+
+I asked a former State official how the negro vote had been eliminated
+in Alabama. "At first," he said, "we used to kill them to keep them from
+voting; when we got sick of doing that we began to steal their ballots;
+and when stealing their ballots got to troubling our consciences we
+decided to handle the matter legally, fixing it so they couldn't vote."
+
+I inquired as to details. He explained.
+
+It seems that in 1901 a constitutional convention was held, at which it
+was enacted that, in order to be eligible for life to vote, citizens
+must register during the next two years. There were, however, certain
+qualifications prescribed for registration. A man must be of good
+character, and must have fought in a war, or be the descendant of a
+person who had fought. This enactment, known as the "grandfather
+clause," went far toward the elimination of the negro. As an additional
+safeguard, however, an educational clause was added, but the educational
+requirement did not become effective at once, as that would have made
+illiterate whites ineligible as voters. Not until the latter were safely
+registered under the "grandfather clause," was the educational clause
+applied, and as, under this clause, the would-be voter must read and
+write _to the satisfaction of his examiner_, the negro's chance to get
+suffrage was still more reduced.
+
+The United States Supreme Court has, I believe, held that the
+educational clause does not constitute race discrimination.
+
+As though the above measures were not sufficient, it is further required
+that, in order to vote at November elections in Alabama, voters must pay
+a small voluntary poll tax. This tax, however, must be paid each year
+before February first--that is, about nine months before elections
+actually take place. The negro has never been distinguished for his
+foresightedness with a dollar, and, to make matters harder for him, this
+tax is cumulative from the year 1901, so that a man who wishes to begin
+to vote this year, and can qualify in other respects, must pay a tax
+amounting to nearly twenty dollars.
+
+These measures give Alabama, as my informant put it, a "very exclusive
+electorate." With a population of approximately two millions, the
+greatest number of votes ever cast by the State was 125,000. Of this
+number, 531 votes were those of negroes, "representing" a colored
+population of 840,000!
+
+The gentleman who explained these matters also told me a story
+illustrative of the old-time Southerner's attitude toward the negro in
+politics.
+
+During Reconstruction, when Alabama's Legislature was about one-third
+white and two-thirds negro, a fine old gentleman who had been a
+slaveholder and was an experienced parliamentarian, was attempting to
+preside over the Legislature. In this he experienced much difficulty,
+his greatest _bete noir_ being a negro member, full of oratory, who
+continually interrupted other speakers.
+
+Realizing that this was a part of the new order of things, the presiding
+officer tried not to allow his irritation to get the better of him, and
+to silence the objectionable man in parliamentary fashion. "The member
+will kindly come to order!" he repeated over and over, rapping with his
+gavel. "The member will kindly come to order!"
+
+After this had gone on for some time without effect, the old gentleman's
+patience became exhausted. He laid down his gavel, arose to his feet,
+glared at the irrepressible member, and, shaking his finger savagely,
+shouted: "Sit down, you blankety-blank black blankety-blank!"
+
+Whereupon the negro dropped instantly to his seat and was no more heard
+from.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+AN ALLEGORY OF ACHIEVEMENT
+
+
+To visit Birmingham without seeing an iron and steel plant would be like
+visiting Rome without seeing the Forum. Consequently my companion and I
+made application for permission to go through the Tennessee Coal, Iron,
+& Railroad Company's plant, at Ensley, on the outskirts of the city.
+When the permission was refused us we attacked from another angle--using
+influence--and were refused again. Next we called upon a high official
+of the company, and (as we had, of course, done in making our previous
+requests for admission to the plant) explained our errand.
+
+Though this gentleman received us with the utmost courtesy, he declared
+that the company desired no publicity, and plainly indicated that he was
+not disposed to let us into the plant.
+
+"I'll tell you what the trouble is," said my companion to me. "This
+company is a part of the United States Steel Corporation, and in the old
+muckraking days it was thoroughly raked. They think that we have come
+down here full of passionate feeling over the poor, downtrodden
+workingman and the great, greedy octopus."
+
+"What makes you think that?"
+
+"Well, we are a writer and an artist. Lots of writers and artists have
+made good livings by teaching magazine readers that it is dishonest for
+a corporation, or a corporation official, to prosper; that the way to
+integrity is through insolvency; that the word 'company' is a term of
+reproach, while 'corporation' is a foul epithet, and 'trust' blasphemy."
+
+"What shall we do?"
+
+"We must make it clear to these people," he said, "that we have no
+mission. We must satisfy them that we are not reformers--that we didn't
+come to dig out a red-hot story, but to see red-hot rails rolled out."
+
+Pursuing this course, we were successful. All that any official of the
+company required of us was that we be open-minded. The position of the
+company, when we came to understand it, was simply that it did not wish
+to facilitate the work of men who came down with pencils, paper, and
+preconceived "views," deliberately to play the great American game of
+"swat the corporation."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Surely there is not in the world an industry which, for sheer pictorial
+magnificence, rivals the modern manufacturing of steel. In the first
+place, the scale of everything is inexpressibly stupendous. To speak of
+a row of six blast furnaces, with mouths a hundred feet above the
+ground, and chimneys rising perhaps another hundred feet above these
+mouths, is not, perhaps, impressive, but to look at such a row of
+furnaces, to see their fodder of ore, dolomite, and coke brought in by
+train loads; to see it fed to them by the "skip"; to hear them roar
+continually for more; to feel the savage heat generated within their
+bodies; to be told in shouts, above the din, something of what is going
+on inside these vast, voracious, savage monsters, and to see them
+dripping their white-hot blood when they are picked by a long steel bar
+in the hands of an atom of a man--this is to witness an almost
+terrifying allegory of mankind's achievement.
+
+The gas generated by blast furnaces is used in part in the hot-blast
+stoves--gigantic tanks from which hot air, at very high pressure, is
+admitted to the furnaces themselves, and is also used to develop steam
+for the blowing engines and other auxiliaries. In the furnaces the
+molten iron, because of its greater specific gravity, settles to the
+bottom, while the slag floats to the top. The slag, by the way, is not,
+as I had supposed, altogether worthless, but is used for railroad
+ballast and in the manufacture of cement.
+
+The molten iron drawn from the blast furnaces runs in glittering
+rivulets (which, at a distance of twenty or thirty feet, burn the face
+and the eyes), into ladle cars which are like a string of devils' soup
+bowls, mounted on railroad trucks ready to be hauled away by a
+locomotive and served at a banquet in hell.
+
+That is not what happens to them, however. The locomotive takes them to
+another part of the plant, and their contents, still molten, is poured
+into the mixers. These are gigantic caldrons as high as houses, which
+stand in rows in an open-sided steel shed, and the chief purpose of them
+is to keep the "soup" hot until it is required for the converters--when
+it is again poured off into ladle cars and drawn away.
+
+The converters are in still another part of the grounds. They are huge,
+pear-shaped retorts, resembling in their action those teakettles which
+hang on stands and are poured by being tilted. But a million teakettles
+could be lost in one converter, and the boiling water from a million
+teakettles, poured into a converter, would be as one single drop of ice
+water let fall into a red-hot stove.
+
+In the converters the metalloids--silicon, manganese, and carbon--are
+burned out of the iron under a flaming heat which, by means of high air
+pressure, is brought to a temperature of about 3400 degrees. It is the
+blowing of these converters, and the occasional pouring of them, which
+throws the Vesuvian glow upon the skies of Birmingham at night. The heat
+they give off is beyond description. Several hundred feet away you feel
+it smiting viciously upon your face, and the concrete flooring of the
+huge shed in which they stand is so hot as to burn your feet through the
+soles of your shoes.
+
+The most elaborate display of fireworks ever devised by Mr. Pain would
+be but a poor thing compared with the spectacle presented when a
+converter is poured. The whole world glows with golden heat, and is
+filled with an explosion of brilliant sparks, and as the molten metal
+passes out into the sunlight that light is by contrast so feeble that it
+seems almost to cast a shadow over the white-hot vats of iron.
+
+Next come the tilting open-hearth furnaces, where the iron is subjected
+to the action of lime at a very high temperature. This removes the
+phosphorus and leaves a bath of commercially pure iron which is then
+"teemed" into a hundred-ton ladle, wherein it is treated in such a way
+as to give it the properties required in the finished steel. What these
+properties may be, depends, of course, upon the purpose to which the
+steel is to be put. Rails, for example, must, above all, resist
+abrasion, and consequently have a higher carbon content than, say,
+reinforcing bars for concrete work. To obtain various qualities in steel
+are added carbon, ferro-manganese, or ferro-silicon in proportions
+differing according to requirements.
+
+In the next process steel ingots are made. I lost track of the exact
+detail of this, but I remember seeing the ingots riding about in their
+own steel cars, turning to an orange color as they cooled, and I
+remember seeing them pounded by a hammer that stood up in the air like
+an elevated railroad station, and I know that pretty soon they got into
+the blooming mill and were rolled out into "blooms," after which they
+were handled by a huge contrivance like a thumb and forefinger of steel
+which--though the blooms weigh five tons apiece--picked them up much as
+you might pick up a stick of red candy.
+
+Still orange-hot, the blooms find their way to the rolling mill, where
+they go dashing back and forth upon rollers and between rollers--the
+latter working in pairs like the rollers of large wringers, squeezing
+the blooms, in their successive passages, to greater length and greater
+thinness, until at last they take the form of long, red, glowing rails;
+after which they are sawed off, to the accompaniment of a spray of white
+sparks, into rail lengths, and run outside to cool. And I may add that,
+while there is more brilliant heat to be seen in many other departments
+of the plant, there is no department in which the color is more
+beautiful than in the piles of rails on the cooling beds--some of them
+still red as they come from the rollers, others shading off to rose and
+pink, and finally to their normal cold steel-gray.
+
+Presently along comes a great electromagnet; from somewhere in the sky
+it drops down and touches the rails; when it rises bunches of them rise
+with it, and, after sailing through the air, are gently deposited upon
+flat cars. Here, even after the current is shut off, some of them may
+try to stick to the magnet, as though fearing to go forth into the
+world. If so, it gives them a little shake, whereupon they let go, and
+it travels back to get more rails and load them on the cars.
+
+Iron ore, coal, and limestone, the three chief materials used in the
+making of steel, are all found in the hills in the immediate vicinity of
+Birmingham. I am told that there is no other place in the world where
+the three exist so close together. That is an impressive fact, but one
+grows so accustomed to impressive facts, while passing through this
+plant, that one ceases to be impressed, becoming merely dazed.
+
+If I were asked to mention one especially striking item out of all that
+welter, I should think of many things--things having to do with
+vastness, with gigantic movements and mutations, with Niagara-like
+noises, with great bursts of flame suggesting fallen fragments from the
+sun itself--but above all I think that I should speak of the apparent
+absence of men.
+
+There were some four thousand men in the plant, I believe, at the time
+we were there, but excepting when a shift changed, and a great army
+passed out through the gates, we never saw a crowd; indeed I hardly
+think we saw a group of any size. Here and there two or three men would
+be doing something--something which, probably, we did not understand; in
+the window of a locomotive cab, or that of a traveling crane, we would
+see a man; we kept passing men as we went along; and sometimes as we
+looked from a high perch over the interior of one of the great sheds, we
+would be vaguely conscious of men scattered about the place. But they
+were very small and gray and inconspicuous dots upon the surface of
+great things going on--going on, seemingly by themselves, with a sort of
+mad, mechanical, majestic, molten sweep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At this time, when the great efficient organization started by Bismarck
+is being devoted entirely to destruction, it is interesting to recall
+that the idea of industrial welfare work originated in Germany during
+the period of Bismarckian reorganization. So, paradoxically, the very
+forces which, on one hand, were building towards the new records for the
+extinction of life established in the present war, were, upon the other
+hand, developing plans for the safeguarding of life and for making it
+worth living--plans which have enormously affected the industrial
+existence of the civilized world.
+
+The broad theory of industrial welfare work was brought to this country
+by engineers, chemists, and workmen who had resided in Germany; but,
+where this work developed over there along cooeperative lines, it has
+remained for Great Britain and the United States to work it out in a
+more individualistic way.
+
+In this country welfare work has come as a logical part of the general
+industrial development. The first step in this development was the
+assembling of small, weak industrial units into large, powerful,
+effective units--that is to say, the formation of great corporations and
+trusts. The second step was the cooerdination of these great industrial
+alliances for "efficiency." The third step was the achievement of
+material success.
+
+When our great corporations were in their formative period, effort was
+concentrated on making them successful, but with success came thoughts
+of other things. It began to be seen, for example, that whereas the old
+small employer of labor came into personal contact with his handful of
+workmen, and could himself supervise their welfare, some plan must now
+be devised for doing this work in a large, corporate way.
+
+Thus welfare work developed in the United States, and it is interesting
+to observe, now, that many of our great corporations are finding time
+and funds to expend upon purely aesthetic improvements, and that, in the
+construction of the most modern American industrial plants, architects,
+landscape gardeners, and engineering men work in cooeperation, so that,
+instead of being lopsided, the developments are harmonious and
+oftentimes beautiful.
+
+On work calculated to prevent accidents in mines, not only the Tennessee
+Coal, Iron, & Railroad Company, but all the leading mining companies in
+the State join for conference. As a result the number of accidents
+steadily decreases. Nine years ago one man was killed, on an average,
+for every 100,000 tons of iron ore raised. The record at the time of our
+visit was one man to 450,000 tons. In the coal mines, where nine years
+ago one man was killed for every 75,000 tons raised, the recent record
+is one man for 650,000 tons.
+
+In 1914, 126 men were killed in the coal mines of Alabama. In 1915,
+though the tonnage was about the same, this number was reduced to 63,
+which was a record. All this is the result of safety work.
+
+"Aside from humane considerations," said an official of the Tennessee
+Company, "this concern realizes that the man is the most valuable
+machine it has."
+
+This gentleman was one of the ablest men we met in the South. While
+taking us through the company's plant, and explaining to us the various
+operations, he was interesting, but the real enthusiasm of the man did
+not crop out until he took us to the company's villages and showed us
+what was being done for the benefit of operatives and their families,
+and, of course, for the benefit of the company as well--for he was a
+corporation official of the modern school, and he knew that by
+benefiting its men a corporation necessarily benefits itself.
+
+The story of the Tennessee Company's work among its employees, which
+began about five years ago, some time after the company was taken over
+by the United States Steel Corporation, is too great to be more than
+touched on here. In the department of health thirty-six doctors, sixteen
+nurses, and a squad of sanitary inspectors are employed. The department
+of social science covers education, welfare, and horticulture. To me the
+work of these departments was a revelation. Each camp has a first-rate
+hospital, each has its schools and guildhall, and everything is run as
+only an efficiently managed corporation can run things.
+
+The Docena Village is less like one's idea of a coal "camp" than of a
+pretty suburban development, or a military post, with officers' houses
+built around a parade. The grounds are well kept; there is a tennis
+court with vine-clad trellises about it, a fine playground for children,
+pretty brick walks, with splendid trees to shade them; and there is a
+brick schoolhouse which is a better building, better equipped, better
+lighted, and, above all, better ventilated than the schools I attended
+in my boyhood.
+
+Near the school is the guildhall, which is used for religious services,
+meetings, and entertainments. And best of all, perhaps, the houses are
+not the rows of sad, unpainted cabins one remembers having seen in
+western mining camps, but are pretty cottages, touched with a slight
+architectural variety, and with little variations of color, so that each
+home has individuality.
+
+The schools are financed partly by the company and partly by the parents
+of the three thousand scholars. The teachers are, for the most part,
+graduates of leading colleges--Smith, Wellesley, Vassar, the University
+of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin--and educational work of great
+variety is carried on, including instruction in English for foreign
+employees, and domestic-science classes for women--separate
+establishments, of course, for whites and blacks, for the color line is
+drawn in southern mining camps as elsewhere. Negroes are, however,
+better provided for by the corporation than by most southern
+municipalities, both in the way of living conditions and of education.
+
+On the whole, I believe that a child who grows up in the Docena Village,
+and is educated there, has actually a better chance than one who grows
+up in most Alabama towns, or, for the matter of that, in towns in any
+other State which has not compulsory education. Moreover, I doubt that
+there is in all Alabama another kindergarten as truly charming as the
+one we visited at Docena, or that there is, in the State, a schoolhouse
+of the same size which is as perfect as the one we saw in that camp.
+
+In another camp old houses have been remodeled, giving practical
+demonstration of what can be done in the way of making a hovel into a
+pretty home by the intelligent use of a little lattice-work, a little
+paint, and a few vines and flowers. Old boarding-houses in this
+neighborhood have been converted into community houses, with
+entertainment halls, shower baths, and other conveniences for the men
+and their families. Thus tests are being made to discover whether it is
+possible to encourage among certain classes of foreign laborers, whose
+habits of life have not, to put it mildly, been of the tidiest, some
+appreciation of the standard of civilization represented by clean,
+pretty cottages, pleasant meeting houses, and shower baths.
+
+I have not told about the billiard tables, bowling alleys, and game
+rooms of the clubs, nor about the model rooms fitted up to show
+housewives how they may make their homes attractive at but slight
+expense, nor about the annual medical examination of the children, nor
+about the company dentists who charge their patients only for the cost
+of gold actually used, nor about the fine company store at Edgewater
+Mine, nor about the excellent meats supplied by the company butchers,
+nor about the low prices of supplies, nor about the effort to
+discourage employees from buying cheap furniture at high prices on the
+installment plan, nor, above all, about the clean, decent, happy look of
+the families we chanced to see.
+
+Even had I the space in which to tell of these things, it is perhaps
+wiser that I refrain from doing so. For I am aware that in speaking
+anything but ill of a great corporation I have scandalously outraged
+precedent. Nor does it argue well for my powers of observation, or those
+of my companion. I feel confident that where our limited visions
+perceived only prosperity and contentment, certain of my brother
+writers, and his brother illustrators would, in our places, have rent
+the thin, vaporish veil of apparent corporate kindliness, and found such
+foul shame, such hideous malignity, such grasping, grubby greed, such
+despicable soul-destroying despotism, as to shock the simple nature of a
+chief of the old-time Russian Secret Police.
+
+It shames me to think what my friend Lincoln Steffens could have done
+had he but enjoyed my opportunities. It shames me to think what John
+Reed or other gifted writers for "The Masses" could have done. And I
+should think that Wallace Morgan would writhe with shame. For, where Art
+Young would have seen heavy-jowled, pig-eyed Capital, in a silk hat and
+a checked suit, whirling a cruel knout over the broad and noble (but
+bent and shuddering) back of Labor--where Boardman Robinson would have
+found a mother, her white, drawn face half hidden by the shoddy shawl
+of black, to which cling the hands of her emaciated brood--what has
+Wallace Morgan seen?
+
+A steel-plant in operation. A company steel-plant! A _corporation_
+steel-plant! A TRUST steel-plant.
+
+Yet never so much as a starving cat or a pile of garbage in the
+foreground!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+THE ROAD TO ARCADY
+
+
+Before we saw the train which was to take us from Birmingham to
+Columbus, Mississippi, we began to sense its quality. When we attempted
+to purchase parlor car seats of the ticket agent at the Union Station
+and were informed by him that our train carried no parlor car, it seemed
+to us that his manner was touched with cynicism, and this impression was
+confirmed by his reply to our further timid inquiry as to a dining car:
+
+"Where do you gentlemen reckon you're a-goin' to, anyhow?"
+
+Presently we passed through the gate and better understood the nature of
+the ticket agent's thoughts. The train consisted of several untidy day
+coaches, the first a Jim Crow car, the others for white people. The
+negro car was already so full that many of its occupants had to stand in
+the aisle, but this did not seem to trouble them, for all were gabbling
+happily, and the impression one got, in glancing through the door, was
+of many sets of handsome white teeth displayed in as many dark grinning
+faces. There are innumerable things for which we cannot envy the negro,
+but neither his teeth nor his good nature are among them.
+
+It was Saturday afternoon, and the two or three other cars, though not
+overcrowded, were well filled with people from the neighboring mining
+towns who were going home after having spent the morning shopping in the
+city. Almost all our fellow passengers carried packages, many had
+infants with them, and we were struck with the fact that the complexions
+of these people suggested a diet of pie--fried pie, if there be such a
+thing--that a peculiarly high percentage of them suffered from diseases
+of the eye, and that the pervading smell of the car in which we sat was
+of oranges, bananas, babies, and overheated adults.
+
+A young mother in the seat in front of us had with her three small
+children, the youngest an infant in arms. She was feeding a banana to
+the second child, who looked about two years old. Behind us a clean,
+capable-looking woman talked in a broad Scottish dialect with another
+housewife whose jargon was that of the mountaineers.
+
+The region through which the train presently began to wind its way was
+green and hilly, and there were many stops at villages, all of them
+mining camps apparently, made up of shabby little cabins scattered
+helter-skelter upon the hillsides. In many of the cabin doorways mothers
+lingered with their broods watching the train, and on all the station
+platforms stood crowds of idlers--men, women, and children, negro and
+white--many of the men stamped, by their coal-begrimed faces, their
+stained overalls, and the lamps above the visors of their caps, as mine
+workers.
+
+After a time my companion and I moved to the exceedingly dirty smoking
+room at the end of the car, where we sat and listened to the homely
+conversation of a group of men who seemed not only to know one another,
+but to know the same people in towns along the line. Between stations
+they gossiped, smoked, chewed, spat, and swore together like so many New
+England crossroad sages, but when the train stopped they gave
+encouraging attention to the droll performances of one of their number,
+a shaggy, unshaven, rawboned man, of middle age, gray-haired and
+collarless, who sat near the window and uttered convincing imitations of
+the sounds made by chickens, roosters, pigs, goats, and crows.
+
+The platform crowds, the negroes in particular, were mystified and lured
+by this animal chorus coming from a passenger coach. On hearing it they
+would first gaze in astonishment at the car, then edge up to the windows
+and doors, and peer in with eyes solemn, round, and wondering, only to
+be more amazed than ever by the discovery that the car housed neither
+bird nor beast. This bucolic comedy was repeated at every station until
+we reached Wyatt, Alabama, where our gifted fellow traveler arose,
+pointed his collar button toward the door, bade us farewell, and
+departed, saying that he was going to "walk over to Democrat."
+
+Presently the conductor dropped in for a chat, in the course of which
+he informed the assembly that a certain old lady in one of the towns
+along the way had died the night before, whereupon our companions of the
+smoking room, all of whom seemed to have known the old lady well, held a
+protracted discussion of her history and traits.
+
+After a time my companion and I put in a few questions about the State
+of Mississippi. Boiled down, the principal information we gathered was
+as follows:
+
+By the 1910 census Mississippi had not one city of 25,000 inhabitants.
+Meridian, with 23,000, was (and probably still is) her metropolis, with
+Jackson and Vicksburg, cities of about 20,000 each, following. The
+entire State has but fifteen cities having a population of 5000 or more,
+so that, of a total of about a million and three-quarters of people in
+the State (more than half of them colored), only about one-tenth live in
+towns with a population of 5000 or over.
+
+After a little visit the conductor went away. Now and then a man would
+leave us and get off at a station, or some new passenger would join our
+group. Presently I found myself thinking about dinner, and asked a man
+wearing an electric-blue cap if he knew what provision was made for the
+evening meal.
+
+Before he could reply the train boy, who had come into the smoking room
+a few minutes before, piped up. He was a train boy of a type I had
+supposed extinct: the kind of train boy one might have encountered on
+almost any second-rate train twenty years ago,--a bold, impudent young
+smartaleck, full of insistent salesmanship and obnoxious conversation.
+He declared that dinner was not to be had, and that the only sustenance
+available en route consisted in the uninviting assortment of fruit,
+nuts, candy, and sweet tepid beverages contained in his basket.
+
+Fortunately for us, the man we had addressed knew better.
+
+"What do you want to lie like that for, boy?" he demanded. "You know as
+well as I do that the brakeman takes on five boxes of lunch at Covin."
+
+"Well," said the boy, with a grin, "I gotta sell things, ain't I? The
+brakeman hadn't oughta have that graft anyhow. _I'd_ oughta have it. He
+gets them lunches fer two bits and sells 'em for thirty-five cents." Far
+from feeling abashed, he was pleased with himself.
+
+"Folks is funny people," remarked a man with a weather-beaten face who
+sat in the corner seat, and seemed to be addressing no one in
+particular. "I know a boy that's going to git hung some day. And when
+they've got the noose rigged nice around his neck, and everything ready,
+and the trap a-waitin' to be sprung, why, then that boy is goin' to be
+so sorry for hisself that he won't hardly know what to do. He'll say: 'I
+ain't never had no chance in life, I ain't. The world ain't never used
+me right.' ... Yes, folks is funny people."
+
+After this soliloquy there occurred a brief silence in the smoking
+room, and presently the train boy took up his basket and went upon his
+way.
+
+"You say they take on the lunches at Covin now?" one of the passengers
+asked of the man in the electric-blue cap.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What's become of old man Whitney, over to Fayetteville?"
+
+"They used to git lunches off of him," replied the other, "but the old
+man wasn't none too dependable. Now and then he'd oversleep, and folks
+on the 5 A.M. out of Columbus was like to starve for breakfast."
+
+"Right smart shock-headed boy the old man's got," put in another. "The
+old man gives 'im anything he wants. He wanted a motorcycle, and the old
+man give 'im one. Then he wanted one of them hot-candy machines; they
+cost about two hundred and fifty dollars, but the old man give it to 'im
+just the same."
+
+"The kid went to San Francisco with it, didn't he?" asked the man with
+the electric-blue cap.
+
+"He started to go there," replied the former speaker, "but he only got
+as fur as Little Rock; then he come on back home, and the old man bought
+'im a wireless-telegraph plant. Yeaup! That boy gets messages right outa
+the air--from Washington, D.C., and Berlin, and every place. The
+Govamunt don't allow 'im to tell you much of it. He tells a little,
+though--just to give you a notion."
+
+So, through the five-hour ride the conversation ran. Several times the
+talk drifted to politics and to the European War, but the politics
+discussed were local and lopsided, and the war was all too clearly
+regarded as something interesting but vague and remote. On the entire
+journey not one word was spoken indicating that the people of this
+section had the least grasp on any national question, or that they were
+considering national questions, or that they realized what the war in
+Europe is about--that it is a war for freedom and democracy, a war
+against war, a war to prevent a few individuals from ever again plunging
+the world into war. Nor, though the day of our entry into the war was
+close at hand, had the idea that we might be forced to take part in the
+conflict so much as occurred to any of them.
+
+They were not stupid people; on the contrary, some of them possessed a
+homely and picturesque philosophy; but they were not informed, and the
+reason they were not informed has to do with one of the chief needs of
+our rural population--especially the rural population of the South.
+
+What they need is good newspapers. They need more world news and
+national news in place of county news and local briefs. In the whole
+South, moreover, there is need for general political news instead of
+biased news written always from inside the Democratic party, and
+sandwiched in between patent medicine advertisements.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+A MISSISSIPPI TOWN
+
+
+It was dark when, after a journey of one hundred and twenty miles at the
+rate of twenty miles an hour, we reached Columbus, a city which was
+never intended to be a metropolis and which will never be one.
+
+Columbus is situated upon a bluff on the east bank of the Tombigbee
+River, to the west of which is a very fertile lowland region, filled
+with plantations, the owners of which, a century ago, founded the town
+in order that their families might have churches, schools, and the
+advantages of social life. As the town grew, a curious but entirely
+natural community spirit developed; when a gas plant, water works, or
+hotel was needed, prosperous citizens got together and financed the
+enterprise, not so much for profit as for mutual comfort.
+
+In these ante bellum times the planters used to make annual journeys to
+Mobile and New Orleans, going by boat on the Tombigbee and taking their
+crops and their families with them. After selling their cotton and
+enjoying themselves in the city, they would load supplies for the
+ensuing year upon river boats and return to Columbus, where the supplies
+were transferred to their vast attic storerooms.
+
+Though their only water transportation was to the southward, they did
+not journey invariably in that direction, but sometimes made excursions
+to such fashionable watering places as the Virginia Springs, or
+Saratoga, to which they drove in their own carriages.
+
+When, in the early days of railroad building, the Mobile & Ohio Railroad
+was being planned, the company proposed to include Columbus as one of
+its main-line points and asked for a right of way through the town and a
+cash bonus in consideration of the benefits Columbus would derive from
+railroad service. Both requests were refused. The railroad company then
+waived the bonus and attempted to obtain a right of way by purchase. But
+to no purpose. The citizens would not sell. They did not want a
+railroad. They were prosperous and healthy, and they contended that a
+railroad would bring poor people and disease among them, besides killing
+farm animals and causing runaways. The company was consequently forced
+to make a new survey, and when the line was built it passed at a
+distance of a dozen miles or more from the city.
+
+Gradually dawned the era of speed and impatience. People who had
+hitherto been satisfied to make long journeys in horse-drawn vehicles,
+and had refused the railroad a right of way, now began to complain of
+the twelve-mile drive to the nearest station, and to suggest that the
+company build a branch line into the town. But this time it was the
+railroad's turn to say no, and Columbus was informed that if it wished a
+branch line it could go ahead and build it at its own expense. This was
+finally done at a cost of fifty thousand dollars.
+
+With the construction of the branch line, carriages fell into disuse and
+dilapidation, and many an old barouche, landau, and brett passed into
+the hands of the negro hackmen who were former slaves of the old
+families. Among these ex-slaves the traditions of the first families of
+Columbus were upheld long after the war, and it thus happened that when,
+a few years since, a young New Yorker, arriving for a visit in the town,
+alighted from his train, he was greeted by an ancient negro who,
+indicating an equally ancient carriage, cried: "Hack, suh! Hack, suh!
+Ain't nevah been rid in by none but the Billupses."
+
+Not every young man from the North would have understood this reference,
+but by a coincidence it was at the residence of Mrs. Billups that this
+one had come to visit.
+
+Neither as to hack nor habitation were my companion and I so fortunate
+as the earlier visitor. Our conveyance was a Ford, and the driver warned
+us, as we progressed through shadowy tree-bordered streets, that the
+Gilmer Hotel was crowded with delegates who had come to attend the State
+convention of the Order of the Eastern Star. Nor was his warning without
+foundation. The wide old-fashioned lobby of the Gilmer was hung with the
+colors of the Order and packed with Ladies of the Eastern Star and their
+ecstatic families; we managed to make our way through the press only to
+be told by the single worn-out clerk on duty that not a room was to be
+had.
+
+Unlike the haughty clerk who had dismissed us from the Tutwiler Hotel in
+Birmingham, the clerk at the Gilmer was not without the quality of
+mercy. Overworked though he was, he began at once to telephone about the
+town in an effort to secure us rooms. But if this led us to conclude
+that our problem was thereby in effect solved, we discovered, after
+listening to his brief telephonic conversations with a series of unseen
+ladies, that the conclusion was premature. Though there were vacant
+rooms in several private houses, strange stray males were not desired as
+lodgers.
+
+Concerned as we were over our plight, my companion and I could not help
+being aware that a young lady who had been standing at the desk when we
+came in, and had since remained there, was taking kindly interest in the
+situation. Nor, for the matter of that, could we help being aware, also,
+that she was very pretty in her soft black dress and corsage of
+narcissus. She did not speak to us; indeed, she hardly honored us with a
+glance; but, despite her sweet circumspection, we sensed in some subtle
+way that she was sorry for us, and were cheered thereby.
+
+After a time, when the clerk seemed to have reached the end of his
+resources, the young lady hesitantly ventured some suggestions as to
+other houses where rooms might possibly be had. These suggestions she
+addressed entirely to the clerk--who, upon receiving them, did more
+telephoning.
+
+"Have you tried Mrs. Eichelberger?" the young lady asked him, after
+several more failures.
+
+He had not, but promptly did so. His conversation with Mrs. Eichelberger
+started promisingly, but presently we heard him make the damning
+admission he had been compelled repeatedly to make before:
+
+"No, ma'am. It's two men."
+
+Then, just as the last hope seemed to be fading, our angel of mercy
+spoke again.
+
+"Wait!" she put in impulsively. "Tell her--tell her I recommend them."
+
+Thus informed, Mrs. Eichelberger became compliant; but when the details
+were arranged, and we turned to thank our benefactor, she had fled.
+
+Mrs. Eichelberger's house was but a few blocks distant from the Gilmer.
+She installed us in two large, comfortable rooms, remarking, as we
+entered, that we had better hurry, as we were already late.
+
+"Late for what?" one of us asked.
+
+"Didn't you come for the senior dramatics?"
+
+"Senior dramatics where?"
+
+"At the I.I. and C."
+
+"What is the I.I. and C?"
+
+At this question a look of doubt, if not suspicion, crossed the lady's
+face.
+
+"Where are you-all from?" she demanded.
+
+The statement that we came from New York seemed to explain
+satisfactorily our ignorance of the I.I. and C. Evidently Mrs.
+Eichelberger expected little of New Yorkers. The I.I. and C., she
+explained, was the Mississippi Industrial Institute and College,
+formerly known as the Female College, a State institution for young
+women; and the senior dramatics were even then in progress in the
+college chapel, just up the street.
+
+To the chapel, therefore, my companion and I repaired as rapidly as
+might be, guided thither by frequent sounds of applause.
+
+From among the seniors standing guard in cap and gown at the chapel
+door, the quick artistic eye of my companion selected a brown-eyed
+auburn-haired young goddess as the one from whom tickets might most
+appropriately be bought. Nor did he display thrift in the transaction.
+Instead of buying modest quarter seats he magnificently purchased the
+fifty-cent kind.
+
+The dazzling ticket seller, transformed to usher, now led us into the
+crowded auditorium and down an aisle. A few rows from the stage she
+stopped, and, fastening a frigid gaze upon two hapless young women who
+were seated some distance in from the passageway, bade them emerge and
+yield their place to us.
+
+Of course we instantly protested, albeit in whispers, as the play was
+going on. But the beautiful Olympian lightly brushed aside our
+objections.
+
+"They don't belong here," she declared loftily. "They're freshmen--and
+they only bought quarter seats."
+
+Then, as the guilty pair seemed to hesitate, she summoned them with a
+compelling gesture and the command: "Come out!"
+
+At this they arose meekly enough, whereupon we redoubled our protests.
+But to no purpose. The Titian-tinted creature was relentless. Our pleas
+figured no more in her scheme of things than if they had been babblings
+in an unknown tongue. To add to our discomfiture, a large part of the
+audience seemed to have perceived the nature of our dilemma, and was
+giving us amused attention.
+
+It was a crisis; and in a crisis--especially one in which a member of
+the so-called gentle sex is involved--I have learned to look to my
+companion. He understands women. He has often told me so. And now, by
+his action, he proved it. What he did was to turn and flee, and I fled
+with him; nor did we pause until we were safely hidden away in humble
+twenty-five cent seats at the rear of the chapel, in the shadow of the
+overhanging gallery.
+
+It is not my intention to write an extended criticism of the
+performance. For one thing, I witnessed only a fragment of it, and for
+another, though I once acted for a brief period as dramatic critic on a
+New York newspaper, I was advised by my managing editor to give up
+dramatic criticism, and I have followed his advice.
+
+The scene evidently represented a room, its walls made of red screens
+behind which rose the lofty pipes of the chapel organ. On a pedestal at
+one side stood a bust of the Venus de Milo, while on the other hung an
+engraving of a familiar picture which I believe is called "The Fates,"
+and which has the appearance of having been painted by some-one-or-other
+like Leighton or Bouguereau or Harold Bell Wright.
+
+After we had given some attention to the play my companion remarked
+that, from the dialect, he judged it to be "Uncle Tom's Cabin." I had
+been told, however, that for certain reasons "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is
+never played in the South; I therefore asked the young man in front of
+me what play it was. He replied that it was Booth Tarkington and Harry
+Leon Wilson's comedy, "The Man From Home," and as he made the statement
+openly, I feel that I am violating no confidence in repeating what he
+said--especially since his declaration was supported by the program
+which he showed me.
+
+He was a pleasant young man. Perceiving that I was a stranger, he
+volunteered the additional information that the masculine roles, as well
+as the feminine ones, were being played by girls; and I trust that I
+will not seem to be boasting of perspicacity when I declare that there
+had already entered my mind a suspicion that such was indeed the case.
+
+Behold them! Gaze upon the character called Daniel Voorhees Pike! See
+what long strides he takes, and with what pretty tiny feet! Observe the
+manliness with which he thrusts his pink little hands deep in the
+pockets of his--or somebody's--pantaloons!
+
+Look at the Grand Duke Vasili of Russia, his sweet oval face and rosy
+mouth partly obscured by mustache and goatee of a most strange
+wooliness.
+
+Observe the ineradicable daintiness of the Honorable Almeric St. Aubyn,
+but more particularly attend to that villain of helpless loveliness, the
+Earl of Hawcastle. The frightful life which, it is indicated, the Earl
+has led, leaves no tell-tale marks upon his blooming countenance. His
+only facial disfigurement consists in a mustache which, by reason of its
+grand-ducal lanateness, seems to hint at a mysterious relationship
+between the British and Russian noblemen.
+
+Take note, moreover, of the outlines of the players. If ever earl was
+belted it was this one. If ever duke in evening dress revealed
+delectable convexities of figure, it was this duke. If ever worthy male
+from Indiana spoke in a soprano voice and was lithe, alluring, and
+recurvous, she was Daniel Voorhees Pike.
+
+A young woman seated near us described to her escort the personal
+characteristics of the various young ladies on the stage, and when we
+heard her call one girl who played in a betrousered part, "a perfect
+darling," we echoed inwardly the sentiment. All were darlings. And this
+especial "perfect darling" appeared as well to be a "perfect
+thirty-six."
+
+The Earl was my undoing. At a critical point in the unfolding of the
+plot there was talk of his having been connected with a scandal in St.
+Petersburg. This he attempted to deny, and though I am unable to quote
+the exact words of his denial, the sound of it lingers sweetly in my
+memory. Nor would the exact words, could I give them, convey, in print,
+the quality of what was said, for the Earl, and all the rest, spoke in
+the soft, melodious tones of Mississippi.
+
+"What you-all fussin' raound heah for, this mownin'?" That, perhaps,
+conveys some sense of a line he spoke on entering.
+
+And when, in reply, one of the others mentioned the scandal at St.
+Petersburg, the flavor of the Earl's retort, as its cooing tones remain
+with me, was this:
+
+"Wha', honey! What you-all mean hintin' raound 'baout St. Petuhsbuhg? I
+reckon you don' know what you talkin' 'baout! Ah nevuh was in that taown
+in all ma bo'n days!"
+
+What followed I am unable to relate, for the Earl's speech caused me to
+become emotional, and my companion, after informing me severely that I
+was making myself conspicuous, removed me from the chapel.
+
+The auburn goddess was still on duty at the door as we went out.
+Advancing, she placed in each of our hands a quarter. I regret to say
+that, in my shaken state, I misinterpreted this action.
+
+"Oh, no! _Please!_" I protested, fearing that she thought we had not
+enjoyed the performance, and was therefore returning our money. "It
+really wasn't bad at all. We're only going because we have an
+engagement."
+
+"Be quiet!" interrupted my companion in a savage undertone, jerking me
+along by the arm. "It's only a rebate on the seats!" And without
+allowing me a chance to set myself right he dragged me out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+OLD TALES AND A NEW GAME
+
+
+Mrs. Eichelberger supplied us merely with a place to sleep. For meals
+she referred us to a lady who lived a few doors up the street. But when
+in the morning we went, full of hunger and of hope, to the house of this
+lady, we were coldly informed that breakfast was over, and were
+recommended to the Bell Cafe, downtown.
+
+My companion and I are not of that robust breed which enjoys a bracing
+walk before its morning coffee, and the fact that the streets of
+Columbus charmed us, as we now saw them for the first time by daylight,
+is proof enough of their quality. There is but little appetite for
+beauty in an empty stomach.
+
+The streets were splendidly wide, and bordered with fine old trees, and
+the houses, each in its own lawn, each with its vines and shrubs, were
+full of the suggestion of an easy-going home life and an informal
+hospitality. Most of them were of frame and in their architecture
+illustrated the decadence of the eighties and nineties, but here or
+there was a fine old brick homestead with a noble columned portico, or a
+formal Georgian house, disposed among beautiful trees and gardens and
+sheltered from the street by an ancient hedge of box. So, though
+Columbus is, as I have indicated, not too easily reached by rail, and
+though, as I have further indicated, walks before breakfast are not to
+my taste, I am compelled to say that for both the journey and the walk I
+felt repaid by the sight of some of the old houses--the Baldwin house,
+the W.D. Humphries house, the J.O. Banks house, the old McLaren house,
+the Kinnebrew house, the Thomas Hardy house, the J.M. Morgan house, with
+its garden of lilies and roses, its giant magnolia trees and its huge
+camellia bushes; and most of all, perhaps, for its Georgian beauty, the
+mellow tone of its old brick, its rich tangle of southern growths, and
+its associations, the venerable mansion of the late General Stephen D.
+Lee, C.S.A.--now the property of the latter's only son, Mr. Blewett Lee,
+general counsel of the Illinois Central Railroad, and a resident of
+Chicago.
+
+It was apropos of our visit to the Lee house that I was told of a
+dramatic and touching example of the rebirth of amity between North and
+South.
+
+Stephen D. Lee it was who, as a young artillery officer attached to the
+staff of General Beauregard, transmitted the actual order to fire on
+Fort Sumter, the shot which began the war. Two years later, having been
+promoted to the rank of lieutenant-general, the same Stephen D. Lee
+participated in the defense of Vicksburg against the assaults of
+Porter's gunboats from the river and of Grant's armies, which hemmed in
+the hilled city on landward side, until at last, on the 4th of July,
+1863, the place was surrendered, making Grant's fame secure.
+
+Years after, when the Government of the United States accepted a statue
+of General Stephen D. Lee, to be placed upon the battle ground of
+Vicksburg--now a national park--it was the late General Frederick Dent
+Grant, son of the capturer of the city, who journeyed thither to unveil
+the memorial to his father's former foe. And by a peculiarly gracious
+and fitting set of circumstances it came about that when, in April last,
+the ninety-fifth anniversary of the birth of U.S. Grant was celebrated
+in his native city, Galena, Illinois, it was Blewett Lee, only son of
+the general taken by Grant at Vicksburg, who journeyed to Galena and
+there in a memorial address, returned the earlier compliment paid to the
+memory of his own father by Grant's son.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Columbus may perhaps appreciate the charm of its old homes, but there is
+evidence to show that it did not appreciate certain other weatherworn
+structures of great beauty. I have seen photographs of an old Baptist
+Church with a fine (and not at all Baptist-looking) portico and fluted
+columns, which was torn down to make room for the present stupidly
+commonplace Baptist church: and I have seen pictures of the beautiful
+old town hall which was recently supplanted by an ignorantly ordinary
+town building of yellow pressed brick. The destruction of these two
+early buildings represents an irreparable loss to Columbus, and it is to
+be hoped that the town will some day be sufficiently enlightened to
+know that this is true and to regret that it did not restore and enlarge
+them instead of tearing them down.
+
+Until a decade or two ago Columbus had, so far as I can learn, but four
+streets possessing names: Main Street, Market Street, College Street,
+and Catfish Alley, all other streets being known as "the street that
+Mrs. Billups, or Mrs. Sykes, or Mrs. Humphries, or Mrs. Some-one-else
+lives on."
+
+Market and Main are business streets--at least they are so where they
+cross--and, like the other streets, are wide. They are lined with brick
+buildings few if any of them more than three stories in height, and it
+was in one of these buildings, on Main Street, that we found the Bell
+Cafe--advertised as "the most exclusive cafe in the State."
+
+Being in search of breakfast rather than exclusiveness, we did not sit
+at one of the tables, but at the long lunch counter, where we were
+quickly served.
+
+After breakfast we felt strong enough to look at picture post cards, and
+to that end visited first "Cheap Joe's" and then the shop of Mr.
+Divilbis, where newspapers, magazines, sporting goods, cameras, and all
+such things, are sold. Having viewed post cards picturing such scenes as
+"Main Street looking north," "The 1st Baptist Church," and "Steamer
+_America_, Tombigbee River," we were about to depart, when our attention
+was drawn to a telephonic conversation which had started between Mr.
+Divilbis's clerk and a customer who was thinking of going in for the
+game of lawn tennis. The half of the conversation which was audible to
+us proved entertaining, and we dallied, eavesdropping.
+
+The clerk began by recommending tennis. "Yes," he said, "that would be
+very nice. Everybody is playing tennis now."
+
+But that got him into trouble, for after a pause he said: "I'm sorry I
+can't tell you everything about it. I don't play tennis myself. Al could
+tell you, though. He plays."
+
+Then, after a much longer pause: "Well, ma'am, you see, in a game of
+lawn tennis everybody owns their own racquet."
+
+At this juncture a tall, thin man in what is known (excepting at Palm
+Beach) as a "Palm Beach suit," entered the shop and the clerk asked his
+inquisitor to hold the wire while he made some inquiries. After a long
+conversation with the new arrival he returned to the telephone and
+resumed his explanation.
+
+"Well, you see, they have a net, and one stands on one side and one on
+the other--yes, ma'am, there _can_ be two on each side--and one serves.
+What? Yes, he hits the ball over the net, and it has to go in the
+opposite court on the other side, and then if that one doesn't send it
+back--Yes, the court is marked with lines--why, that counts fifteen. The
+next count is thirty. What? No, ma'am, I don't know why they count that
+way. No, it's just the way they do in lawn tennis. If your opponent has
+nothing, why, they call that 'love.' Yes, that's it--l-o-v-e--just the
+same as when anybody's _in_ love. No, ma'am, I don't know why.... So
+that's the way they count.
+
+"No, ma'am, the lines are boundaries. You have to stand in a certain
+place and hit the ball in a certain place.... No, I don't mean that way.
+You've got to hit it so it _lands_ in a certain place; and the one
+that's playing against you has to hit it back in a certain place, and if
+it goes in some _other_ place, then you can't play it any more. Oh, no!
+Not all day. I mean that ends _that_ part, and you start over. You just
+keep on doing like that."
+
+But though it was apparent that he considered his explanation complete,
+the lady at the other end of the wire was evidently not yet satisfied,
+and as he began to struggle with more questions we left the shop and
+went to the Gilmer Hotel to see if any mail had come for us.
+
+The Gilmer was built by slave labor some years before the war, and was
+in its day considered a very handsome edifice. Nor is it to-day an
+unsatisfactory hotel for a town of the size of Columbus. Its old brick
+walls are sturdy, and its rooms are of a fine spaciousness. Downstairs
+it has been somewhat remodeled, but the large parlor on the second floor
+is much as it was in the beginning, even to the great mirrors and the
+carved furniture imported more than sixty years ago from France. Most of
+the doors still have the old locks, and the window cords originally
+installed were of such a quality that they have not had to be renewed.
+
+The Gilmer was still new when the Battle of Shiloh was fought, and
+several thousand of the wounded were brought to Columbus. The hotel and
+various other buildings, including that of the former Female Institute,
+were converted into hospitals, as were also many private houses in the
+town.
+
+Though there was never fighting at Columbus, the end of the war found
+some fifteen hundred soldiers' graves in Friendship Cemetery, perhaps
+twoscore of the number being those of Federals. The citizens were, at
+this time, too poor and too broken in spirit to erect memorials, but
+several ladies of Columbus made it their custom to visit the cemetery
+and care for the graves of the Confederate dead. This movement, started
+by individuals--Miss Matt Moreton, Mrs. J.T. Fontaine, and Mrs. Green T.
+Hill--was soon taken up by other ladies of the place and resulted in a
+determination to make the decoration of soldiers' graves an annual
+occurrence.
+
+In an old copy of the "Mississippi Index," published at the time, may be
+found an account of the solemn march of the women, young and old, to the
+cemetery, on April 25, 1866--one year after Robert E. Lee's
+surrender--and of the decoration of the graves not only of Confederate
+but of Federal soldiers. It is the proud boast of Columbus that this
+occasion constituted the first celebration of the now national
+Decoration Day--or, as it is more properly called, Memorial Day.
+
+It should perhaps be said here that Columbus, Georgia, disputes the
+claim of Columbus, Mississippi, as to Memorial Day. In the Georgia city
+it is contended that the idea of decorating soldiers' graves originated
+with Miss Lizzie Rutherford, later Mrs. Roswell Ellis, of that place.
+The inscription of Mrs. Ellis' monument in Linwood Cemetery, Columbus,
+Georgia, states that the idea of Memorial Day originated with her.
+
+It seems clear, however, that the same idea occurred to women in both
+cities simultaneously, and that, while the actual celebration of the day
+occurred in Columbus, Mississippi, one day earlier than in Columbus,
+Georgia, the ladies of the latter city may have been first in suggesting
+that Memorial Day be not a local celebration, but one in which the whole
+South should take part.
+
+The incident of the first decoration of the graves of Union as well as
+Confederate soldiers appears, however, to belong entirely to Columbus,
+Mississippi, and it is certain that this exhibition of magnanimity
+inspired F.W. Finch to write the famous poem, "The Blue and the Gray,"
+for when that poem was first published in the "Atlantic Monthly" for
+September, 1867, it carried the following headnote:
+
+     The women of Columbus, Miss., animated by noble sentiments, have
+     shown themselves impartial in their offerings to the memory of the
+     dead. They strewed flowers on the graves of the Confederate and of
+     the National soldiers.
+
+This episode becomes the more touching by reason of the fact that the
+Columbus lady who initiated the movement to place flowers on the Union
+graves, at a time when such action was sure to provoke much criticism in
+the South, was Mrs. Augusta Murdock Sykes, herself the widow of a
+Confederate soldier.
+
+    So with an equal splendor
+      The morning sun rays fall,
+    With a touch impartially tender
+      On the blossoms blooming for all;
+    Under the sod and the dew,
+      Waiting the Judgment Day;
+    Broidered with gold the Blue;
+    Mellowed with gold the Gray.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+OUT OF THE LONG AGO
+
+
+While local historians attempt to tangle up the exploration of De Soto
+with the early history of this region, saying that De Soto "entered the
+State of Mississippi near the site of Columbus," and that "he probably
+crossed the Tombigbee River at this point," their conclusions are
+largely the result of guesswork. But it is not guesswork to say that
+when the Kentucky and Tennessee volunteers, going to the aid of Andrew
+Jackson, at New Orleans, in 1814, cut a military road from Tuscumbia,
+Alabama, to the Gulf, they passed over the site of Columbus, for the
+road they cut remains to-day one of the principal highways of the
+district as well as one of the chief streets of the town.
+
+More clearly defined, of course, are memories of the Civil War and of
+Reconstruction, for there are many present-day residents of Columbus who
+remember both. Among these is one of those wonderful, sweet,
+high-spirited, and altogether fascinating ladies whom we call old only
+because their hair is white and because a number of years have passed
+over their heads--one of those glorious young old ladies in which the
+South is, I think, richer than any other single section of the world.
+
+It was our good fortune to meet Mrs. John Billups, and to see some of
+her treasured relics--among them the flag carried through the battles of
+Monterey and Buena Vista by the First Mississippi Regiment, of which
+Jefferson Davis was colonel, and in which her husband was a lieutenant;
+and a crutch used by General Nathan Bedford Forrest when he was housed
+at the Billups residence in Columbus, recovering from a wound. But
+better yet it was to hear Mrs. Billups herself tell of the times when
+the house in which she lived as a young woman, at Holly Springs,
+Mississippi, was used as headquarters by General Grant.
+
+Mrs. Billups, who was a Miss Govan, was educated in Philadelphia and
+Wilmington, and had many friends and relatives in the North. Her mother
+was Mrs. Mary Govan of Holly Springs, and her brother's wife, who
+resided with the Govans during the war, was a Miss Hawkes, a daughter of
+the Rev. Francis L. Hawkes, then rector of St. Thomas's Church in New
+York. All were, however, good Confederates.
+
+Mrs. Govan's house at Holly Springs was being used as a hospital when
+Grant and his army marched, unresisted, into the town, and Mrs. Govan,
+with her daughters and daughter-in-law, had already moved to the
+residence of Colonel Harvey Walter, which is to this day a show place,
+and is now the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Johnson of St.
+Louis--Mrs. Johnson being Colonel Walter's daughter.
+
+This house was selected by Grant as his headquarters, and he resided
+there for a considerable period. ("It seemed a mighty long time," says
+Mrs. Billups.) With the general was Mrs. Grant and their son Jesse, as
+well as Mrs. Grant's negro maid, Julia, who, Mrs. Grant told Mrs.
+Billups, had been given to her, as a slave, by her father, Colonel Dent.
+Mrs. Billups was under the impression that Julia was, at that time,
+still a slave. At all events, she was treated as a slave.
+
+"We all liked the Grants," Mrs. Billups said. "He had very little to
+say, but she was very sociable and used to come in and sit with us a
+great deal.
+
+"One day the general took his family and part of his army and went to
+Oxford, Mississippi, leaving Colonel Murphy in command at Holly Springs.
+While Grant was away our Confederate General Van Dorn made a raid on
+Holly Springs, capturing the town, tearing up the railroad, and
+destroying the supplies of the Northern army. He just dashed in, did his
+work, and dashed out again.
+
+"Some of his men came to the house and, knowing that it was Grant's
+headquarters, wished to make a search. My mother was entirely willing
+they should do so, but she knew that there were no papers in the house,
+and assured the soldiers that if they did search they would find nothing
+but Mrs. Grant's personal apparel--which she was sure they would not
+wish to disturb.
+
+"That satisfied them and they went away.
+
+"Next morning back came Grant with his army. He rode up on horseback,
+preceded by his bodyguard, and I remember that he looked worn and
+worried.
+
+"As he dismounted he saw my sister-in-law, Mrs. Eaton Pugh Govan--the
+one who was Miss Hawkes--standing on the gallery above.
+
+"He called up to her and said: 'Mrs. Govan, I suppose my sword is gone?'
+
+"'What sword, General?' she asked him.
+
+"'The sword that was presented to me by the army. I left it in my wife's
+closet.'
+
+"Mrs. Govan was thunderstruck.
+
+"'I didn't know it was there,' she said. 'Oh! I should have been tempted
+to send it to General Van Dorn if I had known that it was there!'
+
+"The next morning, as a reward to us for not having known that his sword
+was there, the general gave us a protection paper explicitly forbidding
+soldiers to enter the house."
+
+Of course the Govans, like all other citizens of invaded districts in
+the South, buried their family plate before the "Yankees" came.
+
+Shortly after this had been accomplished--as they thought, secretly--the
+Govans were preparing to entertain friends at dinner when a negro boy
+who helped about the dining-room remarked innocently, in the presence of
+Mrs. Govan and several of her servants:
+
+"Missus ain't gwine to have no fine table to-night, caze all de silvuh's
+done buried in de strawbe'y patch."
+
+He had seen the old gardener "planting" the plate.
+
+Thereafter it was quietly decided in the family that the negroes had
+better know nothing about the location of buried treasure. That night,
+therefore, some gentlemen went out to the strawberry patch, disinterred
+the silver, carried it to Colonel Walter's place, and there buried it
+under the front walk.
+
+"And after Grant came," said Mrs. Billups, "we used to laugh as we
+watched the Union sentries marching up and down that walk, right over
+our plate."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Among the items not already mentioned, of which Columbus is proud, are
+the facts that she has supplied two cabinet members within the past
+decade--J.M. Dickinson, Taft's Secretary of War, and T.W. Gregory,
+Wilson's Attorney General--and that J. Gano Johnson, breeder of famous
+American saddle horses, has recently come from Kentucky and established
+his Emerald Chief Stock Farm in Lowndes County, a short distance from
+the town.
+
+But items like these, let me be frank to say, do not appeal to me as do
+the picturesque old stories which cling about such a town.
+
+There is, for instance, the story of Alexander Keith McClung, famous
+about the middle of the last century as a duellist and dandy. McClung
+was a Virginian by birth, but while still a young man took up his
+residence in Columbus. His father studied law under Thomas Jefferson and
+was later conspicuous in Kentucky politics, and his mother was a sister
+of Chief Justice John Marshall. In 1828, at the age of seventeen,
+McClung became a midshipman in the navy, and though he remained in the
+service but a year, he managed during that time to fight a duel with
+another midshipman, who wounded him in the arm. At eighteen he fought a
+duel near Frankfort, Kentucky, with his cousin James W. Marshall. His
+third duel was with a lawyer named Allen, who resided in Jackson,
+Mississippi. Allen was the challenger--as it is said McClung took pains
+to see that his adversaries usually were, so that he might have the
+choice of weapons, for he was very skillful with the pistol. In his duel
+with Allen he specified that each was to be armed with four pistols and
+a bowie knife, that they were to start eighty paces apart, and upon
+signal were to advance, firing at will. At about thirty paces he shot
+Allen through the brain. His fourth duel was with John Menifee, of
+Vicksburg, and was fought in 1839, on the river bank, near that city,
+with rifles at thirty yards. Some idea of the spirit in which duelling
+was taken in those days may be gathered from the fact that the Vicksburg
+Rifles, of which Menifee was an officer, turned out in full uniform to
+see the fight. However they were doubly disappointed, for it was Menifee
+and not McClung who died. It is said that a short time after this, one
+of Menifee's brothers challenged McClung, who killed this brother, and
+so on until he had killed all seven male members of the Menifee family.
+
+McClung fought gallantly in the Mexican War, as lieutenant-colonel of
+the First Mississippi Regiment, of which Jefferson Davis was colonel.
+Though he remained always a bachelor it is said that he had many love
+affairs. He was a hard drinker, a flowery speaker, and a writer of
+sentimental verse. It is said that in his later life he was exceedingly
+unhappy, brooding over the lives he had taken in duels--fourteen in all.
+His last poem was an "Invocation to Death," ending with the line:
+
+    "Oh, Death, come soon! Come soon!"
+
+Shortly after writing it he shaved, dressed himself with the most
+scrupulous care, and shot himself. This occurred March 23, 1855, in the
+Eagle Hotel, North Capitol Street, Jackson, Mississippi.
+
+"To preserve the neatness and cleanliness of his attire after death
+should have ensued," says Colonel R.W. Banks, "it is said he poured a
+little water upon the floor to ascertain the direction the blood would
+take when it flowed from the wound. Then, placing himself in proper
+position, so that the gore would run from and not toward his body, he
+placed the pistol to the right temple, pulled the trigger and death
+quickly followed."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND HIM
+
+
+On our second evening in Columbus my companion and I returned to the
+house, near our domicile, to which we had been sent by Mrs. Eichelberger
+for our meals; but owing to a misunderstanding as to the dinner hour we
+found ourselves again too late. The family, and the teachers from the
+I.I. and C. who took meals there, were already coming out from dinner to
+sit and chat on the steps in the twilight.
+
+We were disappointed, for we were tired of restaurants, and had counted
+on a home meal that night; nor was our disappointment softened by the
+fact that the lady whom we interviewed seemed to have no pity for us,
+but dismissed us in a chilling manner, which hinted that, even had we
+been in time for dinner, we should have been none too welcome at her
+exclusive board.
+
+Crestfallen, we turned away and started once more in the direction of
+the Belle Cafe. In the half light the street held for us a melancholy
+loveliness. Above, the great trees made a dark, soft canopy; the air was
+balmy and sweet with the scent of lilacs and roses; lights were
+beginning to appear in windows along the way. Yet none of it was for
+us. We were wanderers, condemned forever to walk through strange streets
+whose homes we might not enter, and whose inhabitants we might not know.
+
+When we had proceeded in silence for a block or two, we perceived a
+woman strolling toward us on the walk ahead. Nor was it yet so dark that
+we could fail to notice, as we neared her, that she was very pretty in
+her soft black dress and her corsage of narcissus--that, in short, she
+was the young lady whom, though we were indebted to her for our rooms at
+Mrs. Eichelberger's, we had not been able to thank.
+
+Now, of course, we stopped and told her of our gratitude. First my
+companion told her of his. Then I told her of mine. Then we both told
+her of our combined gratitude. And after each telling she assured us
+sweetly that it was nothing--nothing at all.
+
+All this made quite a little conversation. She hoped that we were
+comfortable. We assured her that we were. Then, because it seemed so
+pleasant to be talking, on a balmy, flower-scented evening, with a
+pretty girl wearing a soft black dress and a corsage of narcissus, we
+branched out, telling her of our successive disappointments as to meals
+in the house up the street.
+
+"Which house?" she asked.
+
+We described it.
+
+"That's where I live," said she.
+
+And to think we had twice been late!
+
+"_You_ live there?"
+
+"Yes. It was my elder sister whom you saw." Then we all smiled, for we
+had spoken of the chill which had accompanied the rebuff.
+
+"Do you think your sister will let us come to-morrow for breakfast?"
+ventured my companion.
+
+"If you're there by eight."
+
+"Because," he added, "breakfast is our last meal here."
+
+"You're going away?"
+
+"Yes. About noon."
+
+"Oh," she said. And we hoped the way she said it meant that she was just
+the least bit sorry we were going.
+
+With that she started to move on again.
+
+"We'll see you at breakfast, then?"
+
+"Perhaps," she said in a casual tone, continuing on her way.
+
+"Not surely?"
+
+"Why not come and see?" The words were wafted back to us provocatively
+upon the evening air.
+
+"We will! Good night."
+
+"Good night."
+
+We walked some little way in silence.
+
+"Eight o'clock!" murmured my companion presently in a reflective, rueful
+tone. "We must turn in early."
+
+We did turn in early, and we should have been asleep early was it not
+for the fact that among the chief wonders of Columbus must be ranked its
+roosters--birds of a ghastly habit of nocturnal vocalism.
+
+But though these creatures interfered somewhat with our slumbers, and
+though eight is an early hour for us, we reached the neighboring house
+next morning five minutes ahead of time. And though the manner of the
+elder sister was, as before, austere, that made no difference, for the
+younger sister was there.
+
+After breakfast we dallied, chatting with her for a time; then a bell
+began to toll, and my companion reminded me that I had an engagement to
+visit the Industrial Institute and College before leaving.
+
+It was quite true. I had made the engagement the day before, but it had
+been my distinct understanding that he was to accompany me; for if
+anything disconcerts me it is to go alone to such a place. However sweet
+girls may be as individuals, or in small groups, they are in the mass
+diabolically cruel, and their cruelty is directed especially against
+men. I know. I have walked up to a college building to pay a call, while
+thirty girls, seated on the steps, played, sang, and whistled an inane
+marching tune, with the rhythm of which my steps could not but keep
+time. I have been the only man in a dining-room full of college girls. A
+hundred of them put down their knives and forks with a clatter as I
+entered, and a hundred pairs of mischievously solemn eyes followed my
+every movement. Voluntarily to go through such experiences alone a man
+must be in love. And certainly I was not in love with any girl at the
+Industrial Institute.
+
+"We both have an engagement," I said.
+
+"I can't go," he returned.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I have two sketches to make before train time."
+
+"You're going to make me go over there _alone_?"
+
+"I don't care whether you go or not," he replied mercilessly. "You made
+the engagement. I had nothing to do with it. But I am responsible for
+the pictures."
+
+Perceiving that it was useless to argue with him, I reluctantly departed
+and, not without misgivings, made my way to the Industrial Institute.
+
+I am thankful to say that there matters did not turn out so badly for me
+as I had anticipated. I refused to visit classrooms, and contented
+myself with gathering information. And since the going to gather this
+information cost me such uneasiness, I do not propose to waste entirely
+the fruits of my effort, but shall here record some of the facts that I
+collected.
+
+The Industrial Institute and College is for girls of sixteen years or
+over who are graduates of high schools. There are about 800 students
+taking either the collegiate, normal, industrial, or musical courses, or
+combination courses. This college, I was informed, was the first in the
+country to offer industrial education to women.
+
+Most of the students come from families in modest circumstances, and
+attend the college with the definite purpose of fitting themselves to
+become self-supporting. The cost is very slight, the only regular
+charge, aside from board and general living expenses, being a nominal
+matriculation fee of $5. There is no charge for rooms in the large
+dormitories connected with the college. Board, light, fuel, and laundry
+are paid for cooeperatively, the average cost per student, for all these,
+being about ten dollars a month--which sum also includes payment for a
+lyceum ticket and for two hats per annum. Uniforms are worn by all,
+these being very simple navy-blue suits with sailor hats. Seniors and
+juniors wear cap and gown. All uniform requirements may be covered at a
+cost of twenty dollars a year, and a girl who practices economy may get
+through her college year at a total cost of about $125, though of course
+some spend considerably more.
+
+Many students work their way, either wholly or in part. Thirty or forty
+of them serve in the dining room, for which work they are allowed
+sixty-five dollars a year. Others, who clean classrooms are allowed
+fifty dollars a year, and still others earn various sums by assisting in
+the library or reading room or by doing secretarial work.
+
+Unlike the other departments of the college, the musical department is
+not a tax upon the State, but is entirely self-sustaining, each girl
+paying for her own lessons. This department is under the direction of
+Miss Weenonah Poindexter, to whose enthusiasm much if not all of its
+success is due. Miss Poindexter began her work in 1894, as the college's
+only piano teacher, giving lessons in the dormitories. Now she not only
+has a splendid music hall and a number of assistants, but has succeeded
+in making Columbus one of the recognized musical centers of the South,
+by bringing there a series of the most distinguished artists:
+Paderewski, Nordica, Schumann-Heinck, Gadski, Sembrich, Bispham, Albert
+Spaulding, Maud Powell, Damrosch's Orchestra, and Sousa's Band.
+
+So much I had learned of the I.I. and C. when it came time for me to
+flee to the train. My companion and I had already packed our suitcases,
+and it had been arranged between us that, instead of consuming time by
+trying to meet and drive together to the station, we should work
+independently, joining each other at the train.
+
+I left the college in an automobile, stopping at Mrs. Eichelberger's
+only long enough to get my suitcase. As I drove on past the next corner
+I chanced to look up the intersecting street. There, by a lilac bush,
+stood my companion. He was not alone. With him was a very pretty girl
+wearing a soft black dress and a corsage of narcissus. But the corsage
+was now smaller, by one flower, than it had been before, for, as I
+sighted them, she was in the act of placing one of the blooms from her
+bouquet in my companion's buttonhole. Her hands looked very white and
+small against his dark coat, and I recall that he was gazing down at
+them, and that his features were distorted by a sentimental smile.
+
+"Come on!" I called to him.
+
+He looked up. His expression was vague.
+
+"Go along," he returned.
+
+"Why don't you come with me now?"
+
+"I'll be there," he replied. "You buy the tickets and check the
+baggage." And with that he turned his back.
+
+"Good-by," I called to the young lady. But she was looking up at him and
+didn't seem to hear me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My companion arrived at the station in an old hack, with horses at the
+gallop. He was barely in time.
+
+When we were settled in the car, bowling along over the prairies toward
+the little junction town of Artesia, I turned to him and inquired how
+his work had gone that morning. But at that moment he caught sight,
+through the car window, of some negroes sitting at a cabin door, and
+exclaimed over their picturesqueness.
+
+I agreed. Then, as the train left them behind, I repeated my question:
+"How did your work go?"
+
+"This is very fertile-looking country," said he.
+
+This time I did not reply, but asked:
+
+"Did you finish both sketches?"
+
+"No," he answered. "Not both. There wasn't time."
+
+"Let's see the one you did."
+
+"As a matter of fact," he returned, "I didn't do any. You know how it
+is. Sometimes a fellow feels like drawing--sometimes he doesn't. Somehow
+I didn't feel like it this morning."
+
+With that he lifted the lapel of his coat and, bending his head
+downward, sniffed in a romantic manner at the sickeningly sweet flower
+in his buttonhole.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+VICKSBURG OLD AND NEW
+
+
+I should advise the traveler who is interested in cities not to enter
+Vicksburg by the Alabama & Vicksburg Railroad, which has a dingy little
+station in a sort of gulch, but by the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley
+Railroad--a branch of the Illinois Central--which skirts the river bank
+and flashes a large first impression of the city before the eyes of
+alighting passengers.
+
+The station itself is a pretty brick colonial building, backed by a neat
+if tiny park maintained by the railroad company, and facing the levee
+(pronounce "_lev_-vy"), along which the tracks are laid. Beyond the
+tracks untidy landing places are scattered along the water front, with
+here and there a tall, awkward, stern-wheel river steamer tied up,
+looking rather like an old-fashioned New Jersey seacoast hotel, covered
+with porches and jimcrack carving, painted white, embellished with a
+cupola and a pair of tall, thin smokestacks, and set adrift in its old
+age to masquerade in maritime burlesque.
+
+At other points along the bank are moored a heterogeneous assortment of
+shanty boats of an incredible and comic slouchiness. Some are nothing
+but rafts made of water-soaked logs, bearing tiny shacks knocked
+together out of driftwood and old patches of tin and canvas, but the
+larger ones have barges, or the hulks of old launches, as their
+foundation. These curious craft are moored in long lines to the
+half-submerged willow and cottonwood trees along the bank, or to stakes
+driven into the levee, or to the railroad ties, or to whatever objects,
+ashore, may be made fast an old frayed rope or a piece of telephone
+wire. Long, narrow planks, precariously propped, connect them with the
+river bank, so that the men, women, children, dogs, and barnyard
+creatures who inhabit them may pass to and fro. Some of the boats are
+the homes of negro families, some of whites. On some, negro fish markets
+are conducted, advertised by large catfish dangling from their posts and
+railings.
+
+Whether fishing for market, for personal use, or merely for the sake of
+having an occupation involving a minimum of effort, the residents of
+shanty boats--particularly the negroes--seem to spend most of their days
+seated in drowsy attitudes, with fish poles in their hands. Their eyes
+fall shut, their heads nod in the sun, their lines lag in the muddy
+water; life is uneventful, pleasant, and warm.
+
+When Porter's mortar fleet lay in the river, off Vicksburg, bombarding
+the town, that river was the Mississippi, but though it looks the same
+to-day as it did then, it is not the Mississippi now, but the Yazoo
+River. This comes about through one of those freakish changes of course
+for which the great stream has always been famous.
+
+In the old days Vicksburg was situated upon one of the loops of a large
+letter "S" formed by the Mississippi, but in 1876 the river cut through
+a section of land and eliminated the loop upon which the town stood.
+Fortunately, however, the Yazoo emptied into the Mississippi above
+Vicksburg, and it was found possible, by digging a canal, to divert the
+latter river from its course and lead its waters into the loop left dry
+by the whim of the greater stream. Thus the river life, out of which
+Vicksburg was born, and without which the place would lose its
+character, was retained, and the wicked old Mississippi, which has
+played rough pranks on men and cities since men and cities first
+appeared upon its banks, was for once circumvented. This is but one item
+from the record of grotesque tricks wrought by changes in the river's
+course: a record of farms located at night on one side of the stream,
+and in the morning on the other; of large tracts of land transferred
+from State to State by a sudden switch of this treacherous fluid line of
+boundary; of river boats crashing by night into dry land where yesterday
+a deep stream flowed; of towns built up on river trade, utterly
+dependent upon the river, yet finding themselves suddenly deserted by
+it, like wives whose husbands disappear, leaving them withering,
+helpless, and in want.
+
+Where the upper Mississippi, above St. Louis, flows between tall bluffs
+it attains a grandeur which one expects in mighty streams, but that is
+not the part of the river which gets itself talked about in the
+newspapers and in Congress, nor is it the part of the river one
+involuntarily thinks of when the name Mississippi is mentioned. The
+drama, the wonder, the mystery of the Mississippi are in the lower
+river: the river of countless wooded islands, now standing high and dry,
+now buried to the tree tops in swirling torrents of muddy water; the
+river of black gnarled snags carried downstream to the Gulf with the
+speed of motor boats; the river whose craft sail on a level with the
+roofs of houses; the river of broken levees, of savage inundations.
+
+The upper river has a beauty which is like that of some lovely, stately,
+placid, well-behaved blond wife. She is conventional and correct. You
+always know where to find her. The lower river is a temperamental
+mistress. At one moment she is all sweetness, smiles and playfulness; at
+the next vivid and passionate. Even when she is at her loveliest there
+is always the possibility of sudden fury: of her rising in a rage,
+breaking the furniture, wrecking the house--yes, and perhaps winding her
+wicked cold arms about you in a final destroying embrace.
+
+Being the "Gibraltar of the river" (albeit a Gibraltar of clay and not
+of rock), Vicksburg does not suffer when floods come. Turn your back
+upon the river, as you stand on the platform of the Yazoo & Mississippi
+railroad station, and you may gather at a glance an impression of the
+town piling up the hillside to the eastward.
+
+The first buildings, occupying the narrow shelf of land at the water's
+edge, are small warehouses, negro eating houses, dilapidated little
+steamship offices, and all manner of shacks in want of paint and
+repairs. From the station Mulberry Street runs obliquely up the hillside
+to the south. This street, which forms the main thoroughfare to the
+station, used to be occupied by wholesale houses, but has more lately
+been given over largely to a frankly and prominently exposed district of
+commercialized vice--negro and white. Not only is it at the very door of
+Vicksburg, but it parallels, and is but one block distant from, the
+city's main street.
+
+Other streets, so steep as hardly to be passable, directly assault the
+face of the hill, mounting abruptly to Washington Street, which runs on
+a flat terrace at about the height of the top of the station roof, and
+exposes to the view of the newly arrived traveler the unpainted wooden
+backs of a number of frame buildings which, though they are but two or
+three stories high in front, reach in some cases a height of five or six
+stories at the rear, owing to the steepness of the hillside to which
+they cling. The roof lines, side walls, windows, chimneys, galleries,
+posts, and railings of these sad-looking structures are all
+picturesquely out of plumb, and some idea of the general dilapidation
+may be gathered from the fact that, one day, while my companion stood on
+the station platform, drawing a picture of this scene, a brick chimney,
+a portrait of which he had just completed, softly collapsed before our
+eyes, for all the world like a sitter who, having held a pose too long,
+faints from exhaustion.
+
+A brief inspection of the life on the galleries of these foul old fire
+traps reveals them as negro tenements; and, though they front on the
+main street of Vicksburg, it should be explained that about here begins
+the "nigger end" of Washington Street--the more prosperous portion of
+the downtown section lying to the southward, where substantial brick
+office buildings may be seen.
+
+Between the ragged, bulging tenements above are occasional narrow gaps
+through which are revealed cinematographic glimpses of street traffic;
+and over the tenement roofs one catches sight of sundry other buildings,
+these being of brick, and, though old, and in no way imposing, yet of a
+more prosperous and self-respecting character than the nearer
+structures.
+
+Altogether, the scene, though it is one to delight an etcher, is not of
+a character to inspire hope in the heart of a humanitarian, or an expert
+on sanitation or fire prevention. Nor, indeed, would it achieve
+completeness, even on the artistic side, were it not for its crowning
+feature. Far off, over the roofs and above them, making an apex to the
+composition, and giving to the whole picture a background of beauty and
+of ancient dignity, rises the graceful white-columned cupola of
+Vicksburg's old stone courthouse, partially obscured by a feathery
+green tree top, hinting of space and foliage upon the summit of the
+hill.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pamphlets on Vicksburg, issued by railroad companies for the enticement
+of tourists, give most of their space to the story of the campaign
+leading to Grant's siege of Vicksburg and to descriptions of the various
+operations in the siege--the battlefield, now a national military park,
+being considered the city's chief object of interest.
+
+Though I am not constitutionally enthusiastic about seeing battlefields,
+I must admit that I found the field of Vicksburg engrossing. The siege
+of a small city presents a comparatively simple and compact military
+problem which is, therefore, comprehensible to the civilian mind, and in
+addition to this the Vicksburg battlefield is splendidly preserved and
+marked, so that the visitor may easily reconstruct the conflict.
+
+The park, which covers the fighting area, forms a loose crescent-shaped
+strip over the hills which surround the city, its points abutting on the
+river above and below. The chief drives of the park parallel each other,
+the inner one, Confederate Avenue, following, as nearly as the hills
+permit, the city's line of defense, while the other, Union Avenue, forms
+an outer semicircle and follows, in a similar manner, the trenches of
+the attacking forces.
+
+That the battlefield is so well preserved is due in part to man and in
+part to Nature. Many of the hills of Warren County, in which Vicksburg
+is situated, are composed of a curious soft limy clay, called marl,
+which, normally, has not the solidity of soft chalk. Marse Harris
+Dickson, who knows more about Vicksburg--and also about negroes, common
+law, floods, funny stories, geology, and rivers--than any other man in
+Mississippi, tells me that this marl was deposited by the river, in the
+form of silt, centuries ago, and that it was later thrown up into hills
+by volcanic action. He did not live in Vicksburg when this took place,
+but deduces his facts from the discovery of the remains of shellfish in
+the soil of the hills.
+
+Whatever its geological origin, this soil has some very strange
+characteristics. In composition it is neither stone nor sand, but a
+cross between the two--brown and brittle. One can easily crush it to
+dust in one's hand, in which form it has about the consistency of talcum
+powder, and it may be added that when this brown powder is seized by the
+winds and whirled about, Vicksburg becomes one of the most mercilessly
+dusty cities on this earth.
+
+On exposed slopes the marl washes very badly, forming great caving
+gullies, but, curiously enough, where it is exposed perpendicularly it
+does not wash, but slicks over on the outside, and stands almost as well
+as soft sandstone, although you can readily dig into it with your
+fingers.
+
+Many of the highways leading in and out of the city pass between tall
+walls of this peculiar soil, through deep cuts which a visitor might
+naturally take for the result of careful grading by the road builders;
+but Marse Harris Dickson tells me that the cuts are entirely the result
+of erosion wrought by a hundred years of wheeled traffic.
+
+So far as I know there is but one man who has witnessed this phenomenon
+without being impressed. That man is Samuel Merwin. Merwin went down and
+visited Marse Harris in Vicksburg, and saw all the sights. He was polite
+about the battlefield, and the river, and the negro stories, and
+everything else, until Marse Harris showed him how the highways had
+eroded through the hills. That did not seem to impress him at all.
+Moreover, instead of being tactful, he started telling about his trip to
+China. In China, he said, there were similar formations, but, as the
+civilization of China was much older than that of Vicksburg (fancy his
+having said a thing like that!) the gorges over there had eroded to a
+much greater extent. He said he had seen them three hundred feet deep.
+
+The more Marse Harris tried to get him to say something a little bit
+complimentary about the Vicksburg erosions, the more Merwin boasted
+about China. He declared that the Vicksburg erosions didn't amount to a
+hill of beans compared with what he could show Marse Harris if Marse
+Harris would go with him to a certain point on the banks of the Wa Choo,
+in the province of Lang Pang Si.
+
+Evidently he harped on this until he touched not only his host's local
+pride, but his pride of discovery. Before that, Marse Harris had been
+content to stick around in Mississippi, with perhaps a little run down
+to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, or up to Dogtail to see a break in the
+levee, but after Merwin's talk about China he began to grow restless,
+and it is generally said in Vicksburg that it was purely in order to
+have something to tell Merwin about, the next time he saw him, that he
+made his celebrated trip to the source of the Nile. As for Merwin, he
+has never been invited back to Vicksburg, and it is to be observed that,
+even to this day, Marse Harris, by nature of a sunny disposition, shows
+signs of erosion of the spirit when China is mentioned.
+
+It is apropos the battlefield that I mention the peculiarities of the
+soil. Had the bare ground been exposed to the rains of a few years, the
+details of redoubts, trenches, gun positions, saps, and all other
+military works would have melted away. Fortunately, however, there is a
+kind of tough, strong-rooted grass, called Bermuda grass, indigenous to
+that part of the country, and this grass quickly covered the
+battlefield, holding the soil together so effectually that all outlines
+are practically embalmed. So, although those in charge of the park have
+contributed not a little to its preservation--putting old guns in their
+former places, perpetuating saps with concrete work, and placing white
+markers on the hillsides, to show how far up those hillsides the
+assaulting Union troops made their way in various historic charges--it
+is due most of all to Nature that the Vicksburg battlefield so well
+explains itself.
+
+Could Grant and Pemberton look to-day upon the hills and valleys where
+surged their six weeks' struggle for possession of the city, I doubt
+that they would find any important landmark wanting, and it is certain
+that they could not say, as Wellington did when he revisited Waterloo:
+"They have spoiled my battlefield!"
+
+Besides the old guns and the markers, the field is dotted over with
+observation towers and all manner of memorials. Of the latter, the
+marble pantheon erected by the State of Illinois, and the beautiful
+marble and bronze memorial structure of the State of Iowa, are probably
+the finest. The marble column erected by Wisconsin carries at its summit
+a great bronze effigy of "Old Abe," the famous eagle, mascot of the
+Wisconsin troops. Guides to the battlefield are prone to relate to
+visitors--especially, I suspect, those whose accents betray a Northern
+origin--how "Old Abe," the bird of battle, went home and disgraced
+himself, after the war, by his ungentlemanly action in laying a setting
+of eggs.
+
+The handsomest monument to an individual which I saw upon the
+battlefield was the admirable bronze bust of Major General Martin L.
+Smith, C.S.A., and the one which appealed most to my imagination was
+also a memorial to a Confederate soldier: Brigadier-General States
+Rights Gist. Is there not something Roman in the thought that, thirty or
+more years before the war, a southern father gave his new-born son that
+name, dedicating him, as it were, to the cause of States Rights, and
+that the son so dedicated gave his life in battle for that cause? The
+name upon that stone made me better understand the depth of feeling that
+existed in the South long years before the War, and gave me a clearer
+comprehension of at least one reason why the South made such a gallant
+fight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of more than fourscore national cemeteries in the United States, that
+which stands among the hills and trees, overlooking the river, at the
+northerly end of the military park, is one of the most beautiful, and
+is, with the single exception of Arlington, the largest. It contains the
+graves of nearly 17,000 Union soldiers lost in this
+campaign--three-fourths of them "unknown"!
+
+It is interesting to note that, because the surrender of Pemberton to
+Grant occurred on July 4, that date has, in this region, associations
+less happy than attach to it elsewhere, and that the Fourth has not been
+celebrated in Vicksburg since the Civil War, except by the negroes, who
+have taken it for their especial holiday. This reminds me, also, of the
+fact that, throughout the South, Christmas, instead of the Fourth of
+July, is celebrated with fireworks.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+SHREDS AND PATCHES
+
+
+It was Marse Harris Dickson who showed us the battlefield. As we were
+driving along in the motor we overtook an old trudging negro, very
+picturesque in his ragged clothing and battered soft hat. My companion
+said that he would like to take a picture of this wayfarer, and asked
+Marse Harris, who, as author of the "Old Reliable" stories, seemed best
+fitted for the task, to arrange the matter. The automobile, having
+passed the negro, was stopped to wait for him to catch up. Presently, as
+he came by, Marse Harris addressed him in that friendly way Southerners
+have with negroes.
+
+"Want your picture taken, old man?" he asked.
+
+To which the negro, still shuffling along, replied:
+
+"I ain't got no money."
+
+Marse Harris, knowing the workings of the negro mind, got the full
+import of this reply at once, but I must confess that a moment passed
+before I realized that the negro took us for itinerant photographers
+looking for trade.
+
+With the possible exception of Irvin S. Cobb, I suppose Marse Harris has
+the largest collection of negro character stories of any individual in
+this country. And let me say, in this connection, that I know of no
+better place than Vicksburg for the study of southern negro types.
+
+One day Marse Harris was passing by the jail. It was hot weather, and
+the jail windows were open. Behind the bars of one window, looking down
+upon the street, stood a negro prisoner. As Marse Harris passed this
+window a negro wearing a large watch chain came by in the other
+direction. His watch chain evidently caught the eye of the prisoner, who
+spoke in a wistful tone, demanding:
+
+"What tahme is it, brotha?"
+
+"What foh you want t' know what tahme it is?" returned the other
+sternly, as he continued upon his way. "You ain't goin' nowhere."
+
+Through Marse Harris I obtained a copy of a letter written by a negro
+named Walter to Mr. W.H. Reeve of Vicksburg. Walter had looked out for
+Mr. Reeve's live stock during a flood, and had certain ideas about what
+should be done for him in consequence. I give the letter exactly as it
+was written, merely inserting, parenthetically, a few explanatory words:
+
+     _Mr. H W Reeve an bos dear sir I like to git me a par [pair] second
+     hand pance dont a fail or elce I will be dout [without] a pare to
+     go eny where so send me something. Dont a fail an send me a par of
+     youre pance [or] i will hafter go to work for somebody to git some.
+     I don't think you all is treating me right at all I stayed with
+     youre hogs in the water till the last tening [attending] to them
+     and I dont think that youre oder [ought to] fail me bout a pare old
+     pance_
+
+     WALTER
+
+Though I cannot see just why it should be so, it seemed to us that the
+Vicksburg negroes were happier than those of any other place we visited.
+Whether drowsing in the sun, walking the streets, doing a little stroke
+of work, fishing, or sitting gabbling on the curbstone, they were upon
+the whole as cheerful and as comical a lot of people as I ever saw.
+
+"Wha' you-all goin' to?" I heard a negro ask a group of mulatto women,
+in clean starched gingham dresses, who went flouncing by him on the
+street one Saturday afternoon.
+
+"Oh," returned one of the women, with the elaborate superiority of a
+member of the class of idle rich, "we're just serenadin' 'round."
+
+"Serenading," as she used the word, meant a promenade about the town.
+
+Perhaps the happiness of the negro, here, has to do with the lazy life
+of the river. The succulent catfish is easily obtainable for food, and
+the wages of the roustabout--or "rouster," as he is called for
+short--are good.
+
+The rouster, in his red undershirt, with a bale hook hung in his belt,
+is a figure to fascinate the eye. When he works--which is to say, when
+he is out of funds--he works hard. He will swing a two-hundred-pound
+sack to his back and do fancy steps as he marches with it up the springy
+gangplank to the river steamer's deck, uttering now and then a strange,
+barbaric snatch of song. He has no home, no family, no responsibilities.
+An ignorant deck hand can earn from forty to one hundred dollars a
+month. Pay him off at the end of the trip, let him get ashore with his
+money, and he is gone. Without deck hands the steamer cannot move. For
+many years there has been known to river captains a simple way out of
+this difficulty. Pay the rousters off a few hours before the end of the
+trip. Say there are twenty of them, and that each is given twenty
+dollars. They clear a space on deck and begin shooting craps. No one
+interferes. By the time the trip ends most of the money has passed into
+the hands of four or five; the rest are "broke" and therefore remain at
+work. Yet despite the ingenuity of those who have the negro labor
+problem to contend with, Marse Harris tells me that there have been
+times when the levee was lined with steamers, full-loaded, but unable to
+depart for want of a crew. Not that there was any lack of roustabouts in
+town, but that, money being plentiful, they would not work. In such
+times perishable freight rots and is thrown overboard.
+
+I am conscious of a tendency, in writing of Vicksburg, to dwell
+continually upon the negro and the river for the reason that the two
+form an enchanting background for the whole life of the place. This
+should not, however, be taken to indicate that Vicksburg is not a city
+of agreeable homes and pleasant society, or that its only
+picturesqueness is to be found in the river and negro life.
+
+The point is that Vicksburg is a patchwork city. The National Park
+Hotel, its chief hostelry, is an unusually good hotel for a city of
+this size, and Washington Street, in the neighborhood of the hotel, has
+the look of a busy city street; yet on the same square with the hotel,
+on the street below, nearer the river, is an unwholesome negro
+settlement. So it is all over the city; the "white folks" live on the
+hills, while the "niggers" inhabit the adjacent bottoms. Nor is that the
+only sense in which the town is patched together. Some of the most
+charming of the city's old homes are tucked away where the visitor is
+not likely to see them without deliberate search. Such a place, for
+example, is the old Klein house, standing amid lawns and old-fashioned
+gardens, on the bluff overlooking the Mississippi. This house was built
+long before the railroad came to Vicksburg, cutting off its grounds from
+the river. A patch in the paneling of the front door shows where a
+cannon ball passed through at the time of the bombardment, and the ball
+itself may still be seen embedded in the woodwork of one of the rooms
+within.
+
+And there are other patches. Near the old courthouse, which rears itself
+so handsomely at the summit of a series of terraces leading up from the
+street, are a number of old sand roads which must be to-day almost as
+they were in the heyday of the river's glory, when the region in which
+the courthouse stands was the principal part of the city--the days of
+heavy drinking and gambling, dueling, slave markets, and steamboat
+races. These streets are not the streets of a city, but of a small town.
+So, too, where Adams Street crosses Grove, it has the appearance of a
+country lane, the road represented by a pair of wheel tracks running
+through the grass; but Cherry Street, only a block distant, is built up
+with city houses and has a good asphalt pavement and a trolley line.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+THE BAFFLING MISSISSIPPI
+
+
+As inevitably as water flows down the hills of Vicksburg to the river,
+the visitor's thoughts flow down always to the great spectacular,
+historic, mischievous, dominating stream.
+
+Mark Twain, in that glorious book, "Life on the Mississippi," declared,
+in speaking of the eternal problems of the Mississippi, that as there
+are not enough citizens of Louisiana to take care of all the theories
+about the river at the rate of one theory per individual, each citizen
+has two theories. That is the case to-day as it was when Mark Twain was
+a pilot. I have heard half a dozen prominent men, some of them
+engineers, state their views as to what should be done. Each view seemed
+sound, yet all were at variance.
+
+Consider, for example, that part of the river lying between Vicksburg
+and the mouth. Here, quite aside from the problem as to the hands in
+which river-control work should be vested--a very great problem in
+itself--three separate and distinct physical problems are presented.
+
+From Vicksburg to Red River Landing there are swift currents which
+deposit silt only at the edge of the bank, or on sand bars. From Red
+River Landing to New Orleans the problem is different; here the channel
+is much improved, and slow currents at the sides of the river, between
+the natural river bank and the levee, deposit silt in the old "borrow
+pits"--pits from which the earth was dug for the building of the
+levees--filling them up, whereas, farther up the river, the borrow pits,
+instead of filling up, are likely to scour, undermining the levee. From
+New Orleans to the head of the Passes--these being the three main
+channels by which the river empties into the Gulf--the banks between the
+natural river bed and the levees build up with silt much more rapidly
+than at any other point on the entire stream; here there are no sand
+bars, and the banks cave very little. In this part of the river it is
+not current, but wind, which forms the great problem, for the winds are
+terrific at certain times of year, and when they blow violently against
+the current, waves are formed which wash out the levees.
+
+This is the barest outline of three chief physical problems with which
+river engineers must contend. There are countless others which have to
+be met in various ways. In some places the water seeps through, under
+the levee, and bubbles up, like a spring, from the ground outside. This,
+if allowed to continue, soon undermines the levee and causes a break.
+The method of fighting such a seepage is interesting. When the water
+begins to bubble up, a hollow tower of sand-filled sacks is built up
+about the place where it comes from the ground, and when this tower has
+raised the level of the water within it to that of the river, the
+pressure is of course removed, on the siphon principle.
+
+As river-control work is at present handled, there is no centralization
+of authority, and friction, waste, and politics consequently play a
+large part.
+
+Consider, for example, the situation in the State of Louisiana. Here
+control is, broadly speaking, in the hands of three separate bodies: (1)
+the United States army engineer, who disburses the money appropriated by
+Congress for levees and bank revetment, working under direction of the
+Mississippi River Commission; (2) the State Board of Engineers, which
+disburses Louisiana State funds wherever it sees fit, and which,
+incidentally, does not use, in its work, the same specifications as are
+used by the Government; and (3) the local levee boards, of which there
+are eight in Louisiana, one to each river parish--a parish being what is
+elsewhere called a county. Each of these eight boards has authority as
+to where parish money shall be spent within its district, and it may be
+added that this last group (considering the eight boards as a unit) has
+the largest sum to spend on river work.
+
+The result of this division of authority creates chaos, and has built up
+a situation infinitely worse than was faced by General Goethals when
+Congress attempted to divide control in the building of the Panama
+Canal. It will be remembered that, in that case, a commission was
+appointed, but that Roosevelt circumvented Congress by making General
+Goethals head of the commission with full powers.
+
+While the canal was in course of construction, General Goethals appeared
+before the Senate Committee on Commerce. When asked what he knew of
+levee building and work on the Mississippi, he replied:
+
+"I don't know a single, solitary thing about the work on the Mississippi
+except that it is being carried on under the annual appropriation
+system. If we had that system to hamper us, the Panama Canal would not
+be completed on time and within the estimate, as it will be. That system
+leaves engineers in uncertainty as to how much they may plan to do in
+the year ahead of them. Big works cannot be completed economically,
+either as to time or money, unless the man who is making the plan can
+proceed upon the theory that the money will be forthcoming as fast as he
+can economically spend it."
+
+In view of the foregoing, I cannot myself claim to be free from river
+theory. It seems to me clear that the Mississippi should be under
+exclusive Federal control from source to mouth; that the various
+commissions should be abolished, and that the whole matter should be in
+the hands of the chief of United States Engineers, who would have ample
+funds with which to carry on work of a permanent character.
+
+As one among countless items pointing to the need of Federal control,
+consider the case of the Tensas Levee Board, one of the eight local
+boards in Louisiana. This board does not build any levees whatsoever in
+the State of Louisiana, but does all its work with Louisiana money, in
+the State of Arkansas, where it has constructed, and maintains,
+eighty-two miles of levees, protecting the northeastern corner of
+Louisiana from floods which would originate in Arkansas. These same
+levees, however, also protect large tracts of land in Arkansas, for
+which protection the inhabitants of Arkansas do not pay one cent,
+knowing that their Louisiana neighbors are forced, for their own safety,
+to do the work.
+
+Cairo, Illinois, is the barometer of the river's rise and fall, the gage
+at that point being used as the basis for estimates for the entire river
+below Cairo. These estimates are made by computations which are so
+accurate that Vicksburg, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans know, days or even
+weeks in advance, when to expect high water, and within a few inches of
+the precise height the floods will reach.
+
+Some years since, the United States engineer in charge of a river
+district embracing a part of Louisiana, notified the local levee boards
+that unusually high water might be expected on a certain date and that
+several hundred miles of levees would have to be "capped" in order to
+prevent overflow. The local boards in turn notified the planters, in
+sections where capping was necessary.
+
+One of the planters so notified was an old Cajun--Cajun being a
+corruption of the word "Acadian," denoting those persons of French
+descent driven from Acadia, in Canada, by the British many years ago.
+This old man did not believe that the river would rise as high as
+predicted and was not disposed to cap his levee.
+
+"But," said the member of the local levee board, who interviewed him,
+"the United States engineer says you will have to put two twelve-inch
+planks, one above the other, on top of your levee, and back them with
+earth, or else the water will come over."
+
+At last the old fellow consented.
+
+Presently the floods came. The water mounted, mounted, mounted. Soon it
+was halfway up the lower plank; then it rose to the upper one. When it
+reached the middle of that plank the Cajun became alarmed and called
+upon the local levee board for help to raise the capping higher still.
+
+"No," said the local board member who had given him the original
+warning, "that will not be necessary. I have just talked to the United
+States engineer. He says the water will drop to-morrow."
+
+The old man was skeptical, however, and was not satisfied until the
+board member agreed that in case the flood failed to abate next day, as
+predicted, the board should do the extra capping. This settled, a nail
+was driven into the upper plank to mark the water's height.
+
+Sure enough, on the following morning the river had dropped away from
+the nail, and thereafter it continued to fall.
+
+After watching the decline for several days, the Cajun, very much
+puzzled, called on his friend, the local levee board member, to talk the
+matter over.
+
+"Say," he demanded, "what kinda man dis United States engineer is,
+anyhow? Firs' he tell when de water comes. Den he tell jus' how high she
+comes. Den he tell jus' when she's agoin' to fall. What kinda man is
+dat, anyhow? Is he been one Voodoo?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The spirit of the people of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, who
+live, in flood time, in the precarious safety afforded by the levees, is
+characterized by the same optimistic fatalism that is to be found among
+the inhabitants of the slopes of Vesuvius in time of eruption.
+
+One night, a good many years ago, I ascended Vesuvius at such a time,
+and I remember well a talk I had with a man who gave me wine and sausage
+in his house, far up on the mountain side, at about two o'clock that
+morning.
+
+Seventeen streams of lava were already flowing down, and signs of
+imminent disaster were at hand.
+
+"Aren't you afraid to stay here with your family?" I asked the man.
+
+"No," he replied. "Three times I have seen it worse than this. I have
+lived here always, and"--with a good Italian smile--"it is evident,
+signore, that I am still alive."
+
+Less than a week later I read in a newspaper that this man's house,
+which was known as Casa Bianca, together with his vineyards and his
+precious wine cellars, tunneled into the mountain side, had been
+obliterated by a stream of lava.
+
+Precisely as he went about his affairs when destruction threatened, so
+do the planters along the Mississippi. But there is this difference:
+against Vesuvius no precaution can avail; whereas, in the case of a
+Mississippi flood, foresight may save life and property. For instance,
+many planters build mounds large enough to accommodate their barns, and
+all their live stock. Likewise, when floods are coming, they construct
+false floors in their houses, elevating their furniture above high-water
+mark, so that, if the whole house is not carried away, they may return
+to something less than utter ruin. It is the custom, also, to place
+ladders against trees, in the branches of which provisions are kept in
+time of danger, and to have skiffs, containing food and water, ready on
+the galleries of the houses.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+OLD RIVER DAYS
+
+
+Among the honored citizens of Vicksburg, at the time of our visit, were
+a number of old steamboat men who knew the river in its golden days;
+among them, Captain "Mose" Smith, Captain Tom Young, Captain W.S.
+("Billy") Jones, and Captain S.H. Parisot--the latter probably the
+oldest surviving Mississippi River captain.
+
+We were sent to see Captain Parisot at his house, where he received us
+kindly, entertained us for an hour or more with reminiscences, and
+showed us a most interesting collection of souvenirs of the river,
+including photographs of famous boats, famous deck loads of cotton, and
+famous characters: among the latter the celebrated rivals, Captain John
+W. Cannon of the _Robert E. Lee_ and Captain Thomas P. Leathers of the
+_Natchez_. Captain Parisot knew both these men well, and was himself
+aboard the _Lee_ at the time of her famous race with the _Natchez_ from
+New Orleans to St. Louis.
+
+"We left New Orleans 31/2 minutes ahead of the _Natchez_," said Captain
+Parisot, "made the run to Vicksburg in 24 hours and 28 minutes, beat her
+to Cairo by 1 hour and 12 minutes, and to St. Louis by more than 3
+hours."
+
+Captain Parisot's father was a soldier under Napoleon I, and moved to
+Warren County, Mississippi, after having been wounded at Moscow. He
+built, at the foot of Main Street, Vicksburg, the first brick house that
+city had.
+
+"There was a law in France," said the captain, "that any citizen absent
+from the country for thirty-five years lost all claim to property. My
+father's people were pretty well off, so in '42 he started back, but he
+was taken ill and died in New Orleans."
+
+Captain Parisot was born in 1828, and in 1847 began "learning the
+river." In 1854 he became part owner of a boat, and three years later
+purchased one of his own.
+
+"I bought her in Cincinnati," he said. Then, reflectively, he added:
+"There was a good deal of drinking in those days. When I brought her
+down on her first trip I had 183 tons of freight, and 500 barrels of
+whisky, from Cincinnati, for one little country store--Barksdale &
+McFarland's, at Yazoo City."
+
+"There was a good deal of gambling, too, wasn't there?" one of us
+suggested.
+
+"There was indeed," smiled the old captain. "Every steamboat was a
+gambling house, and there used to be big games before the war."
+
+"How big?"
+
+"Well," he returned, "as Captain Leathers once put it, it used to be
+'nigger ante and plantation limit.' And that's no joke about playing for
+niggers either. Those old planters would play for anything. I've known
+people to get on a boat at Yazoo City to come to Vicksburg, and get in a
+game, and never get off at Vicksburg at all--just go back to Yazoo; yes,
+and come down again, to keep the game going.
+
+"There was a saloon called the Exchange near our house in Yazoo, and I
+remember once my father got into a game, there, with a gambler named
+Spence Thrift. That was before the war. Thrift was a terrible stiff
+bluffer. When he got ready to clean up, he'd shove up his whole pile.
+Well, he did that to my father. Thrift's pile was twenty-two hundred
+dollars, and all my father had in front of him was eight hundred. But he
+owned a young negro named Calvin, so he called Calvin, and told him:
+'Here, boy! Jump up on the table.' That equalled the gambler's pile; and
+it finished him--he threw down his hand, beaten.
+
+"Business in those times was done largely on friendship. It used to be
+said that I 'owned' the Yazoo River when I was running my line. I knew
+everybody up there. They were my friends, and they gave me their
+business for that reason, and also because I brought the cotton down
+here to Vicksburg, and reshipped it from here on, down the river. It was
+considered an advantage to reship cotton because moving it from one boat
+to another knocked the mud off the bales.
+
+"There used to be some enormous cargoes of cotton carried. The largest
+boat on the river was the _Henry Frank_, owned by Frank Hicks of
+Memphis. She ran between Memphis and New Orleans, and on one trip
+carried 9226 bales. Those were the old-style bales, of course. They
+weighed 425 to 450 pounds each, as against 550 to 600 pounds, which is
+the weight of a bale to-day, now that powerful machinery is used to make
+them. The heavy bale came into use partly to beat transportation
+charges, as rates were not made by weight, but at so much per bale.
+
+"The land up the Yazoo belonged to the State, and the State sold it for
+$1.25 per acre. The fellows that got up there first weren't any too
+anxious to see new folks coming in and entering land. Used to try all
+kinds of schemes to get them out.
+
+"There were two brothers up there named Parker. One of them was a
+surveyor--we called him 'Baldy'--and the other was lumbering, getting
+timber out of the cypress breaks and rafting it down. Almost all the
+timber used from Vicksburg to New Orleans came out of there.
+
+"One time a man came up the Yazoo to take up land and went to stop with
+Baldy Parker. When they sat down to dinner Baldy took some flour and
+sprinkled it all over his meat.
+
+"'What's that?' asked the stranger.
+
+"'Quinine,' says Baldy. 'Haven't you got any?'
+
+"'No,' says the fellow; 'what would I want it for?'
+
+"'You'll find out if you go out there in the swamps,' Baldy tells him.
+'It's full of malaria. We eat quinine on everything.'
+
+"The fellow was quiet through the rest of the meal.
+
+"Pretty soon they got up to go out, and Baldy took up a pair of
+stovepipes.
+
+"'What do you do with them pipes?' asks the stranger.
+
+"'Wear 'em, of course,' says Baldy. 'Haven't you got any?'
+
+"'No,' says the fellow. 'What for?'
+
+"'Why,' says Baldy, 'the rattlesnakes out there will bite the legs right
+off of you.'
+
+"With that the fellow had enough. He didn't go any farther, but turned
+around and took the boat down the river."
+
+In all his years as captain and line owner on the river, Captain Parisot
+never lost a vessel. "I never insured against sinking," he told us.
+"Just against fire. But I got the best pilots I could hire. In all I
+built twenty-seven steamboats. I had $150,000 worth of boats when I sold
+my line in 1880. After I sold they did lose some boats."
+
+Later we saw Captain "Billy" Jones, a much younger man than Captain
+Parisot, yet old enough to have known the river in its prime. Captain
+Jones deserted the river years ago, and is now a golfer with a
+prosperous banking business on the side.
+
+"Captain Parisot was right when he said business on the river was done
+largely on friendship," said Captain Jones. "Also business used to be
+turned down for the opposite reason. There was a historic case of that
+in this town.
+
+"Captain Tom Leathers was in the habit of refusing to take freight on
+the _Natchez_ if he didn't like the shipper or the consignee. For some
+reason or other he had it in for the firm of Lamkin & Eggleston,
+wholesale grocers here in Vicksburg, and declined their freight. They
+sued him in the Circuit Court and got judgment. Leathers carried the
+case to the Supreme Court, but the verdict was sustained and he had to
+pay $2500 damages. He was furious.
+
+"'What's the use,' he said, 'of being a steamboat captain if you can't
+tell people to go to hell?'"
+
+It is the lamentable fact, and I must face it, and so must you if you
+intend to read on, that the language of the river was rough. At least
+ninety-nine out of every hundred river stories are, therefore, not
+printable in full. Either they must be vitiated by deletions, or
+interpreted at certain points by blanks and "blanketys." As for me, I
+prefer the blankety-blanks and I consider that this method of avoiding
+the complete truth relieves me of all responsibility. And of course, if
+that is so, it absolves, at the same time, good Captain "Billy" Jones,
+or any one else who may have happened to tell me the stories.
+
+Both Leathers and Cannon were large, powerful men, and they always hated
+each other. Leathers was never popular, for he was very arrogant, but he
+had a great reputation for pushing the _Natchez_ through on time. Also,
+such friends as he did have always stuck by him.
+
+Something of the feeling between the two old river characters is
+revealed in the following story related by Captain Jones:
+
+"Ed Snodgrass, who lived in St. Joseph, La., was a friend of both Cannon
+and Leathers. When the _Natchez_ would arrive at St. Joseph, he would go
+and give Leathers news about Cannon, and when the _Lee_ came in he would
+see Cannon and tell him about Leathers.
+
+"Well, one time Leathers was laid up with a carbuncle on his back, and
+brought a doctor up on the boat with him. So, of course, Ed Snodgrass
+told Cannon about it when he came along.
+
+"'A carbuncle, eh?' said Cannon.
+
+"'Yes,' said Ed.
+
+"'Well,' said Cannon, 'you tell the old blankety-blank-blank that I had
+a brother--a bigger, stronger man than I am--and he had one o' them
+things and died in two weeks.'
+
+"Soon after that Cannon made a misstep when backing the _Natchez_ out,
+at Natchez, and fell, breaking his collar bone. Of course Ed Snodgrass
+gave the news to Leathers when he came along.
+
+"'Huh!' said Leathers. 'His collar bone, eh? You tell the old
+blankety-blank-blank that I wish it had been his blankety-blank neck!'"
+
+I asked Captain Jones for stories about gambling.
+
+"After the war," he said, "there weren't the big poker games there used
+to be. Mostly we had sucker games then. There was a gambler named George
+Duval who wrote a book--or, rather, he had somebody write it for him,
+for he was a very ignorant fellow, and began his life calking the seams
+of boats in a shipyard. He had a partner who was known as 'Jew Mose,'
+who used to dress like a rich planter. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and a
+very elegant tail coat, and was a big, handsome man.
+
+"After the boat left New Orleans, this 'Jew Mose' would disguise himself
+with whiskers and goggles, go to the barber shop and lay out his game.
+George Duval and a fellow called 'Canada Bill' were the cappers. They
+would bring in suckers, get their money, and generally get off the boat
+about Baton Rouge.
+
+"Once when I was a clerk on the _Robert E. Lee_, Duval got a young
+fellow in tow, and the young fellow wanted to bet on the game, but he
+had a friend with him, and his friend kept pulling him away.
+
+"Later, when Duval had given up the idea of getting this young fellow's
+money, and closed up his game, he appeared in the social hall of the
+boat with a small bag held up to his face.
+
+"Somebody asked him what was in the bag.
+
+"'It's hot salt,' he said. 'I've got a toothache, and a bag of hot salt
+is the best thing in the world for toothache.'
+
+"Presently, when he went to his stateroom to get something, he left the
+bag of salt on the stove to heat it up. While he was gone somebody
+suggested, as a joke, that they dump out the salt and fill the bag with
+ashes, instead. So they did it. And when Duval came back he held it up
+to his face again, and seemed perfectly satisfied.
+
+"'How does it feel now?' one of the fellows asked.
+
+"'Fine,' said Duval. 'Hot salt is the best thing going.'
+
+"At that, the man who had prevented the young fellow from betting, down
+in the barber shop, earlier in the day, offered to bet Duval a hundred
+dollars that the bag didn't contain salt.
+
+"Duval took the bet and raised him back another hundred. But the man had
+only fifty dollars left. However, another fellow, standing in the crowd,
+put in the extra fifty to make two hundred dollars a side.
+
+"Then Duval opened the bag, and it _was_ salt. He had changed the bags,
+and the fellows who worked up the trick were his cappers."
+
+One of the old-time river gamblers was an individual, blind in one eye,
+known as "One-eyed Murphy." Murphy was an extremely artful manipulator
+of cards, and made a business of cheating. One day, shortly after the
+_Natchez_ had backed out from New Orleans and got under way, Marion
+Knowles, a picturesque gentleman of the period, and one who had the
+reputation of being polite even in the most trying circumstances, and no
+matter how well he had dined, came in and stood for a time as a
+spectator beside a table at which Murphy was playing poker with some
+guileless planters. Mr. Knowles was not himself guileless, and very
+shortly he perceived that the one-eyed gambler was dealing himself cards
+from the bottom of the pack. Thereupon he drew his revolver from his
+pocket and rapping with it on the table addressed the assembly:
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, speaking in courtly fashion, "I regret to say that
+there is something wrong here. I will not call any names, neither will I
+make any personal allusions. _But if it doesn't stop, damn me if I don't
+shoot his other eye out!_"
+
+I cannot drop the river, and stories of river gambling, without
+referring to one more tale which is a classic. It is a long story about
+a big poker game, and to tell it properly one must know the exact words.
+I do not know them, and therefore shall not attempt to tell the whole
+story, but shall give you only the beginning.
+
+It is supposed to be told by a Virginian.
+
+"There was me," he says, "and another very distinguished gentleman from
+Virginia and a gentleman from Kentucky, and a man from Ohio, and a
+fellow from New York, and a blankety-blank from Boston--"
+
+That is all I know of the story, but I can guess who got the money in
+that game.
+
+Can't you?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+WHAT MEMPHIS HAS ENDURED
+
+
+An article on Memphis, published in the year 1855, gives the population
+of the place as about 13,000 (one quarter of the number slaves), and
+calls Memphis "the most promising town in the Southwest." It predicts
+that a railroad will some day connect Memphis with Little Rock,
+Arkansas, and that a direct line between Memphis and Cincinnati may even
+be constructed. This article begins the history of Memphis in the year
+1820, when the place had 50 inhabitants. In 1840 the settlement had
+grown to 1,700, and fifteen years thereafter it was almost eight times
+that size.
+
+Your Memphian, however, is not at all content to date from 1820. He
+begins the history of Memphis with the date May 8, 1541--a time when
+Henry VIII was establishing new matrimonial records in England, when
+Queen Elizabeth was a little girl, and Shakespeare, Bacon, Galileo and
+Cromwell were yet unborn. For that was the date when a Spanish gentleman
+bearing some personal resemblance to "Uncle Joe" Cannon--though he was
+younger, had black hair and beard, was differently dressed and did not
+chew long black cigars--arrived at the lower Chickasaw Bluffs, from
+which the city of Memphis now overlooks the Mississippi River. This
+gentleman was Hernando De Soto, and with his soldiers and horses he had
+marched from Tampa Bay, Florida, hunting for El Dorado, but finding
+instead, a lot of poor villages peopled by savages whom he killed in
+large numbers, having been brought up to that sort of work by Pizarro,
+under whom he served in the conquest of Peru. It seems to be well
+established, through records left by De Soto's secretary, and other men
+who were with him, and through landmarks mentioned by them, that De Soto
+and his command camped where Memphis stands, crossed the Mississippi at
+this point in boats which they built for the purpose, and marched on to
+an Indian village situated on the mound, a few miles distant, which now
+gives Mound City, Arkansas, its name. One hundred and thirty-two years
+later Marquette passed by on his way down the river, and nine years
+after him La Salle, but so far as is known, neither stopped at the site
+of Memphis, though they must have noticed as they passed, that the river
+is narrower here than at any point within hundreds of miles, and that
+the Chickasaw Bluffs afford about as good a place for a settlement as
+may be found along the reaches of the lower river, being high enough for
+safety, and flat on top. The first white man known to have visited the
+actual site of Memphis after De Soto, was De Bienville, the French
+Governor of Louisiana, who came in 1739. De Bienville found the
+Chickasaw village where De Soto had found it two centuries earlier; but
+whereas De Soto managed to avoid battle with the inhabitants of this
+particular village, De Bienville came to attack them. He fought them
+near their village, was defeated, and retired to Mobile.
+
+Thus this part of the United States belonged first to Spain, and then to
+France; but in 1762 France ceded it back to Spain, and in the year
+following, Spain and France together ceded their territory in the
+eastern part of the continent to England. The next change came with the
+Revolution, when the United States came into being. The Spanish were,
+however, still in possession of the vast territory of Louisiana, to the
+west of the Mississippi. In 1795, Gayoso, Spanish Governor of Louisiana,
+came across and built a fort on the east side of the river, but was
+presently ousted by the United States. In 1820, as has been said, the
+settlement of Memphis had begun, one of the early proprietors having
+been Andrew Jackson. Some of the first settlers wished to name the place
+Jackson, in honor of the general, but Jackson himself, it is said,
+decided on the name Memphis, because the position of the town suggested
+that of ancient Memphis, on the Nile.
+
+In 1857 Memphis got her first railroad--the Memphis &
+Charleston--connecting her with Charleston, South Carolina. About the
+time the road was completed there were severe financial panics which
+held the city back; also there was trouble, as in so many other river
+towns, with hordes of gamblers and desperadoes. Judge J.P. Young, in
+his "History of Memphis," tells of an interesting episode of those
+times. There were two professional gamblers, father and son, of the name
+of Able. The father shot a man in a saloon brawl, and soon after, the
+son committed a similar crime of violence. A great mob started to take
+the younger Able out of jail and lynch him, but one firm citizen,
+addressing them from the balcony of a hotel, persuaded them to desist.
+Next day, however, there was a mass meeting to discuss the case of Able.
+At this meeting the hotheads prevailed, and Able was taken from the jail
+by a mob of three thousand men. When the noose was around his neck, and
+he and his mother and sister were pleading that his life be spared, the
+same man who had previously prevented mob action, stepped boldly up, cut
+the rope from Abel's neck, and assisted him to fly, standing between him
+and the mob, fighting the mob off, and finally getting Able back into
+the jail. When the mob stormed the jail, furious at having been
+circumvented by a single man, the same powerful figure appeared at the
+jail door with a pistol, and, incredible though it seems, actually held
+the mob at bay until it finally dispersed. This man was Nathan Bedford
+Forrest, later the brilliant Confederate cavalry leader. Forrest and his
+wife are buried in Memphis, in a square called Forrest Park, under a
+fine equestrian monument, by C.H. Niehaus.
+
+Before the war Forrest was a member of the slave-dealing firm of Forrest
+& Maples, of Memphis. Subjoined is a photographic reproduction of an
+advertisement of this firm, which appeared in the Memphis City
+Directory for 1855-6.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+                         CITY DIRECTORY. 251
+                         --------------------
+
+                         #FORREST & MAPLES,#
+                           #SLAVE DEALERS,#
+
+                           #87 Adams Street#,
+                        Between Second and Third,
+                          #MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE#,
+
+        Have constantly on hand the best selected assortment of
+
+                #FIELD HANDS, HOUSE SERVANTS & MECHANICS#,
+      at their Negro Mart, to be found in the city. They are daily
+    receiving from Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri, fresh supplies of
+                           likely Young Negroes.
+
+                      #Negroes Sold on Commission#,
+
+    and the highest market price always paid for good stock. Their Jail
+     is capable of containing Three Hundred, and for comfort, neatness
+       and safety, is the best arranged of any in the Union. Persons
+      wishing to purchase, are invited to examine their stock before
+                         purchasing elsewhere.
+
+    They have on hand at present, Fifty likely young Negroes, comprising
+             Field hands, Mechanics, House and Body Servants, &c.
+
+]
+
+When the Civil War loomed close, sentiment in Memphis was divided, but
+at a call for troops for the Union, the State of Tennessee balked, and
+soon after it seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy. Many
+people believed, at that time, that if the entire South united, the
+North would not dare fight. When the war came, however, Memphis knew
+where she stood; it is said that no city of the same size (22,600)
+furnished so many men to the Confederate armies. In 1862, when the Union
+forces got control of the river to the north and the south of the city,
+it became evident that Memphis was likely to be taken. A fleet of Union
+gunboats came down and defeated the Confederate fleet in the river
+before the city, while the populace lined the banks and looked on. The
+city, being without military protection, then surrendered, and was
+occupied by troops under Sherman. Nor, with the exception of one period
+of a few hours' duration, did it ever again come under Confederate
+control. That was when Forrest made his famous raid in 1864, an event
+which exhibited not only the dash and hardihood of that intrepid leader,
+but also his strategy and his sardonic humor.
+
+General A.J. Smith, with 13,000 Union soldiers was marching on the great
+grain district of central Mississippi, and was forcing Forrest, who had
+but 3,500 men, to the southward. Unable to meet Smith's force on
+anything like equal terms, Forrest conceived the idea of making a "run
+around the end" and striking at Memphis, which was Smith's base. Taking
+1,500 picked men and horses, he executed a flanking movement over night,
+and before Smith knew he was gone, came careering into Memphis at dawn
+at the head of 500 galloping, yelling men--many of them Memphis boys.
+There were some 7,000 Union troops in and about Memphis at this time,
+but they were surprised out of their slumbers, and made no effective
+resistance. The only part of Forrest's plan which miscarried was his
+scheme to capture three leading Union officers, who were then stationed
+in Memphis: Generals C.C. Washburn, S.A. Hurlbut and R.P. Buckland.
+General Hurlbut's escape occurred by reason of the fact that instead of
+having passed the night at the old Gayoso Hotel, where he made his
+headquarters, he happened to be visiting a brother officer, elsewhere.
+General Washburn was warned by a courier and made his escape in his
+nightclothes and bare feet from the residence he occupied as
+headquarters, running down alleys to the river, and thence along under
+the bluff to the Union fortifications. Forrest's men found the general's
+papers, uniform, hat, boots and sword in his bedroom, and also found
+there Mrs. Washburn. The only things they failed to find were the
+general's nightshirt and the general himself, who was inside it. General
+Buckland also avoided capture by the narrowest margin. The soldiers
+first went to the wrong house to look for him. That gave him time to
+escape.
+
+It is recorded that, later in the day, under a flag of truce, Forrest
+sent General Washburn his sword and clothing with a humorous message,
+informing him, at the same time, that he had 600 Federal prisoners
+without shoes or clothing, and that he would like supplies for them.
+The supplies, we are told, were promptly forthcoming.
+
+Forrest waited until he was sure that news of the raid had been
+telegraphed to General Smith in the field. Then he cut the wires. Smith
+immediately came back toward Memphis with his army, which was what
+Forrest desired him to do. The Confederates then retired from the
+immediate vicinity of the city.
+
+Judge Young, in his history, reports that when General Hurlbut heard of
+the raid he exclaimed, "There it goes again! They superseded me with
+Washburn because I could not keep Forrest out of West Tennessee, and
+Washburn cannot keep him out of his own bedroom!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After the War there was corruption and carpet-bag rule in Memphis, and
+Forrest was again to the fore, becoming "Grand Wizard" of the famous Ku
+Klux Klan, the mysterious secret organization designed to intimidate
+Scalawags, Carpet-baggers and negroes, whose arrogance had become
+intolerable. General George W. Gordon prepared the oath and ritual for
+the Klan, which was founded in the town of Pulaski, Giles County,
+Tennessee. General Forrest took the oath in 1866, in Room 10 of the old
+Maxwell House, at Nashville.
+
+It is my belief that the Ku Klux Klan has been a good deal maligned.
+Many of its members were men of high type. I have been told, for
+instance, that one southern gentleman who has since been in the cabinet
+of a President of the United States, was active in the Ku Klux. I
+withhold his name because the purposes of the Ku Klux Klan, and the
+urgent need which called it into being, are not yet fully understood in
+the North, and for the further reason that depredations committed by
+other bodies were frequently charged to the Ku Klux, giving it a bad
+name. So far as I can discover the Ku Klux endeavored to avoid violence
+where it could be avoided. Its aim seems to have been to frighten
+negroes and bad whites into behaving themselves or going away; though
+sometimes, of course, bad characters had to be killed. It must be
+remembered that the ballot was denied former Confederate soldiers for
+quite a period after the War, that they were not allowed to possess
+firearms, and that, at the same time, negro troops were quartered in the
+South. In many parts of the South the government and the courts were in
+the hands of third-rate Northerners (carpet-baggers) who had come down
+to dominate the defeated section, and who used the Scalawags (disloyal
+southern whites) and negroes for their own purposes. Obviously this was
+outrageous, and equally obviously, a proud people, even though defeated,
+could not endure it. The service performed by the Ku Klux Klan seems to
+have been comparable with that rendered by the Vigilantes of early
+western days. Something had to be done and the Klan did it.
+
+In 1869 General Forrest ordered the Klan to disband, which it did; but
+owing to the fact that it was a secret organization, and that disguises
+had been used, it was an easy matter for mobs, not actually associated
+with the Ku Klux, to assume its costume and commit outrages in its name.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In writing of Raleigh I referred to the post-bellum activities of the
+Confederate cruiser _Shenandoah_. Captain Dabney M. Scales, a
+distinguished citizen of Memphis, was on the _Shenandoah_. Born in
+Orange County, Virginia, in 1842, Captain Scales was appointed to the
+Naval Academy by L.Q.C. Lamar. He was a classmate of Captain Clark,
+later of the _Oregon_. When the war broke out, young Scales was in his
+second year at the Academy, but like most of the other southern cadets
+he resigned and offered his services to the South. When commissioned he
+was the youngest naval officer in the Confederate service. Eight months
+after the War was over, the _Shenandoah_ was still cruising in the South
+Seas, looking for Federal merchantmen. In January 1866, somewhere south
+of Australia, she overhauled the British bark _Baracouta_, taking her
+for a Yankee man-o'-war flying the British flag as a ruse. Young Scales
+was sent in command of a boarding party, and was informed by the skipper
+of the _Baracouta_ that the Civil War had terminated months and months
+ago. The _Shenandoah_ then made for Liverpool. In the meantime a Federal
+court had ruled that her officers were guilty of piracy--a hanging
+offense. Naturally, they did not dare return to the United States. Young
+Scales went to Mexico and remained there two years before coming home.
+When the Spanish War came, Captain Scales volunteered and was made
+navigating officer of a naval vessel. At the time of our visit he was a
+practising lawyer in Memphis, and was in command of Company A of the
+Uniform Confederate Veterans, a body of old heroes who go out every now
+and then and win the first prize for the best drilled organization
+operating Hardee's tactics.
+
+Another distinguished citizen of Memphis who has lively recollections of
+the Civil War, is the Right Reverend Thomas F. Gailor, Episcopal Bishop
+of Tennessee. Bishop Gailor, who succeeded the famous Bishop Quintard,
+is my ideal of everything an Episcopal bishop--or I might even say a
+Church of England bishop--ought to be. The Episcopal Church seems to me
+to have about it more "style" than most other churches, and an Episcopal
+bishop ought not to look the ascetic. He ought to be well filled out,
+well dressed, well fed. He ought to have a distinguished appearance, a
+ruddy complexion, a good voice, and a lot of what we call
+"humanness"--including humor. All these qualities Bishop Gailor has.
+
+In the bishop's study, in Memphis, hangs the sword of his father, Major
+Frank M. Gailor, who commanded the 33rd Mississippi Regiment. Major
+Gailor was killed while giving a drink of water to a wounded brother
+officer, and that officer, though dying, directed a soldier to take the
+Major's sword and see that it reached Mrs. Gailor, in Memphis, within
+the Union lines. A young woman, a Confederate spy, took the sword, and
+wearing it next her body, brought it through to Mrs. Gailor. Somehow or
+other it became known that the widow had her husband's sword, and as the
+possession of arms was prohibited to citizens, a corporal and guard were
+sent to the house to search for it. They found it between the mattresses
+of Mrs. Gailor's bed, and confiscated it. Mrs. Gailor then went with
+another lady to see General Washburn. Her friend started a long harangue
+upon the injustice which had been done, but Mrs. Gailor, seeing that the
+General was becoming impatient, broke in saying: "General, soldiers came
+to my house and took away my dead husband's sword. I can't use it, nor
+can my little son. I want it back. You would want your boy to have your
+sword, wouldn't you?"
+
+"Of course I would!" cried Washburn. "Thank God for a woman who can say
+what she has to say, and be done with it!"
+
+The sword was returned.
+
+In the Spring of 1863, when Bishop Gailor was a child of about seven
+years, he accompanied his mother on a journey by wagon from Memphis to
+Jackson, Mississippi. The only other member of the party was a lady who
+had driven in the same wagon from Jackson to Kentucky, to get the body
+of her brother, a Confederate soldier who had been killed there. The
+coffin containing the remains was carried in the wagon. When it was
+known in Memphis that Mrs. Gailor was going through the lines, a great
+many people came to her with letters which they wished to send to
+friends. Mrs. Gailor sewed many of the letters into the clothing of the
+little boy. ("I remember it well," said the bishop. "I felt like a
+mummy.") Also one of Forrest's spies came with important papers, asking
+if she would undertake to deliver them. Only by very clever manipulation
+did Mrs. Gailor get the papers through, for everything was carefully
+searched. After they had passed out of the northern lines they met one
+of Forrest's pickets. Mrs. Gailor told him that she had papers for the
+general, and before long Forrest rode up with his staff and received
+them. Then the two women and the little boy, with their tragic burden in
+the wagon, drove along on their two-hundred mile journey. And later,
+when Jackson was bombarded, they were there.
+
+Before the war Major Gailor had been editor of the Memphis "Avalanche,"
+a paper which was suppressed when the Union troops took the town. After
+the War the "Avalanche" was started up again, and had a stormy time of
+it, because it criticized a Carpet-bag judge who had come to Memphis. In
+1889 the "Avalanche" was consolidated with the "Appeal," another famous
+ante-bellum journal, surviving to-day in the "Commercial-Appeal," a
+strong newspaper, edited by one of the ablest journalists in the South,
+Mr. C.P.J. Mooney.
+
+When Memphis was captured the "Appeal" would have been suppressed, as
+the "Avalanche" was, had it been there. But when it became evident that
+Memphis would fall, Mr. S.C. Toof (later a well-known book publisher)
+who was then connected with the "Appeal," packed up the press and other
+equipment and shipped them to Grenada, Mississippi, where Mr. B.F. Dill,
+editor of the paper, continued to bring it out. When Grenada was
+threatened, a few months later, Mr. Dill moved with his newspaper
+equipment to Birmingham, where for a second time he resumed publication.
+His next move was to Atlanta. There, when he could not get news-print,
+he used wallpaper, or any sort of paper he could lay his hands on. When
+Sherman took Atlanta the "Appeal" moved again, this time to Columbus,
+Georgia, where, at last, it was captured, and its press destroyed.
+Wherever it went it remained the "Memphis Daily Appeal," with
+correspondents in all southern armies. No wonder a paper with such
+vitality as that, has survived and become great!
+
+Poor Memphis! After the War she had Reconstruction to contend with;
+after Reconstruction, financial difficulties; after that, pestilence. In
+1873, when the population of the city was about 40,000, and there had
+been a long period of hard times, yellow fever broke out. The condition
+of the city was exceedingly unsanitary, and after the pestilence had
+passed, was allowed to remain so, though at that time the origin of
+yellow fever was, of course, not known, and it was assumed that the
+disease resulted from lack of proper sanitation.
+
+In 1878 there was another yellow fever epidemic. The first case
+developed August 2, but the news was suppressed until the middle of the
+month, by which time a number of cases had come down. The day after the
+news became known 22 new cases were reported. Terror spread through the
+town. Hordes of people tried to flee at once. Families left their houses
+with the doors wide open and silver standing on the sideboards. People
+flocked to the trains; when they could not get seats they stood in the
+aisles or clambered onto the roofs of the cars; if they could not get in
+at car doors they climbed in through the windows, and sometimes, when
+the father of a family was refused admittance to a crowded car, he would
+force a way in for his wife and children at the pistol's point.
+
+In the first week of the panic there were 1,500 cases, with an average
+of ten deaths daily; in the next week, 3,000 cases with fifty deaths
+daily, and so on into September during which month there was an average
+of 8,000 to 10,000 cases with about two hundred deaths a day.
+
+Not every one fled, however. Leading citizens remained, forming a relief
+committee, and some brave helpers came from outside. Thus the sick and
+needy were attended to, though of course many of the volunteers
+contracted the disease and perished.
+
+Added to the epidemic there was, as so often happens in such
+circumstances, an outbreak of thievery and other crime, which had to be
+put down. It is related that in the height of the epidemic hardly any
+one was seen upon the streets save an occasional nurse, doctor, or
+other member of the relief committee; household pets starved to death
+or fled the city; among the newspapers the staffs were so reduced that
+only two or three men were left in each office, and in the case of the
+"Appeal," but one, that one Colonel J.M. Keating, the proprietor, who
+stuck to Memphis and for a time wrote, set up and printed the paper
+without assistance, feeling that refugees must have news from the city.
+
+The next year the epidemic came again, but in less violent form, there
+being, this time, but 2,000 cases. However the effect was cumulative.
+Memphis dropped from a city of nearly 50,000 to one of 20,000 and the
+reputation of the place was such that a bill was proposed in Congress to
+purchase the ground on which the city stood and utterly destroy it as
+unfit for human habitation.
+
+Stricken as she was, however, Memphis "came back." A great campaign for
+sanitation was begun; city sewage-disposal was installed, and after a
+few years, artesian wells were bored for a new water supply. And though,
+as we now know, yellow fever does not come from the same sources as
+typhoid, nevertheless the new sanitary measures did greatly reduce the
+city's death rate.
+
+Memphis, like all other cities, has her troubles now and then, but since
+the great pestilence there has never been a real disaster. The city has
+grown and thriven. Indeed, she had become so used to growing fast that
+when, in 1910, the Federal census gave her but 131,000, she indignantly
+demanded a recount, for she had been talking to herself, and had
+convinced herself that she had a great many more than that number of
+inhabitants. However, the census was taken again, and the first count
+proved accurate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+MODERN MEMPHIS
+
+
+To be charmed by the social side of a city, yet to find little to admire
+in its physical aspect, is like knowing a brilliant and beautiful woman
+whose housekeeping is not of the neatest. If one were compelled to
+discuss such a woman, and wished to do so sympathetically but with
+truth, one might avoid brutal comment on the condition of her rooms by
+likening them to other rooms elsewhere: rooms which one knew to be
+untidy, but which the innocent listener might not understand to be so.
+By this device one may even appear to pay a compliment, while, in
+reality, indicating the grim truth. In such a case, I, for example,
+might say that this supposititious lady's rooms reminded me of those I
+occupied on the second floor of the famous restaurant called Antoine's,
+in New Orleans; whereupon the reader, knowing the high reputation of
+Antoine's cuisine, and never having seen the apartments to which I
+refer, might assume an implication very favorable.
+
+Let me say, then, that Memphis reminds me of St. Louis. Like St. Louis,
+Memphis has charming society. Like St. Louis she has pretty girls. Like
+St. Louis she is hospitable. And without particularizing too much, I
+may say that her streets remind me of St. Louis streets, that many of
+her houses remind me of St. Louis houses, and that her levee, with its
+cobbled surface sloping down to the yellow, muddy Mississippi, the
+bridges in the distance, the strange looking river steamers loading and
+unloading below, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, is much like the St.
+Louis levee. So, if the reader happens to be unfamiliar with the
+physical appearance of St. Louis, he may, at all events, perceive that I
+have likened Memphis to a much larger city--thus, (it seems fair to
+suppose) paying Memphis a handsome tribute.
+
+Memphis has a definite self-given advantage over St. Louis in possessing
+a pretty little park at the heart of the city, overlooking the river;
+also she has the advantage of lying to the east of the great stream,
+instead of to the west, so that, in late afternoon, when the sun
+splashes down into the mysterious deserted reaches of the Arkansas
+flats, across the way, sending splatterings of furious color across the
+sky, one may seat oneself on a bench in the park and witness a
+stupendous natural masterpiece. A sunset over the sea can be no more
+wonderful than a sunset over this terrible, beautiful, inspiring,
+enigmatic domineering flood. Or one may see the sunset from the
+readingroom of the Cossitt Library, with its fine bay window commanding
+the river almost as though it were the window of a pilot-house.
+
+The Cossitt Library is only one of several free libraries in the city.
+There is, for example, a free library in connection with the Goodwyn
+Institute, an establishment having an endowment of half a million
+dollars, left to Memphis by the late William A. Goodwyn. The Goodwyn
+Institute provides courses of free lectures, by well-known persons, on a
+great variety of subjects. The library is designed to add to the
+educational work. Books are not, however, loaned, as they are from the
+Cossitt Library, an institution to which I found myself returning more
+than once; now for a book, now to look at the interesting collection of
+mound-builder relics contained in an upper room, now merely because it
+is a place of such reposeful hospitality that I liked to make excuses to
+go back.
+
+The library, a romanesque building of Michigan red sandstone, is by a
+southern architect, but is in the style of Richardson, and is one of the
+few buildings in that style which I have ever liked. It was given to
+Memphis as a memorial to Frederick H. Cossitt, by his three daughters,
+Mrs. A.D. Juilliard, Mrs. Thomas Stokes, and Mrs. George E. Dodge, all
+of New York. Mr. Cossitt was born in Granby, Connecticut, but as a young
+man moved South and in 1842 adopted Memphis as his home, residing there
+until 1861. At the outbreak of the Civil War he made an amicable
+division of his business with his partner, and removed to New York,
+where he resided until the time of his death. Finding among his papers a
+memorandum indicating that he had intended to endow a library in
+Memphis, his daughters carried out his wish.
+
+Having already spoken of a number of Memphis' interesting citizens, I
+find myself left with an ill-assorted trio of names yet to be mentioned,
+because, different as they are, each of the three supplies a definite
+part of the character of the city. First, then, Memphis has the honor of
+possessing what not many of our cities possess: a man who stands high
+among the world's artist-bookbinders. This gentleman is Mr. Otto Zahn,
+executive head of the publishing house of S.C. Toof & Co. Mr. Zahn
+himself has done some famous bindings, and books bound by him are to be
+found in some of the finest private libraries in the land. Until a few
+years ago he conducted an art-bindery in connection with the Toof
+company's business, but it was unprofitable and finally had to be given
+up.
+
+Second, to descend to a more popular form of art, but one from which the
+revenue is far more certain, Memphis has, in W.C. Handy, a negro ragtime
+composer whose dance tunes are widely known. Among his compositions may
+be mentioned the "Memphis Blues," the "St. Louis Blues," "Mr. Crump,"
+and "Joe Turner." "Mr. Crump" is named in honor of a former mayor of
+Memphis who was ousted for refusing to enforce the prohibition law; "Joe
+Turner" is the name of a negro pianist who plays for Memphis to
+dance--as Handy also does. Most of Handy's tunes are negro "rags" in
+fox-trot time, and they are so effective that Memphis dances them
+generally in preference to the one step.
+
+My third celebrity is of a more astounding type. While in Memphis I
+called aboard the river steamer _Grand_, and had a talk with Mrs. Nettie
+Johnson, who is captain of that craft. Some one told me that Mrs.
+Johnson was the only woman steamboat captain in the world, but she
+informed me that at Helena, Arkansas, there lives another Mrs.
+Johnson--no relative of hers--who follows the same calling.
+
+The steamer _Grand_ is almost entirely a Johnson family affair. Mrs.
+Johnson is captain; her husband, I.S. Johnson is pilot (though Mrs.
+Johnson has, in addition to her master's license, a pilot's license, and
+often takes the wheel); her elder son, Emery, is clerk; Emery's wife is
+assistant clerk, while Arthur, the captain's younger son, is engineer.
+Russell Johnson, Mrs. Johnson's grandson, is the only member of the
+family I saw aboard the boat who does not take part in running it.
+Russell was five years old when I met him, but that was nearly a year
+ago, and by now he is probably chief steward, boatswain, or ship's
+carpenter.
+
+The regular route of the _Grand_ is from Memphis to Mhoon's Landing, on
+the Arkansas River, a round trip of 120 miles, with thirty landings.
+
+I asked Mrs. Johnson if she had ever been shipwrecked. Indeed she had!
+Her former ship, the _Nettie Johnson_, struck thin ice one night in the
+Arkansas River and went down.
+
+"What did you do?" I asked.
+
+"I reached after an iron ring," she replied, "and clumb on up into the
+rigging. She went down about four-thirty A.M. and we stayed on her till
+daylight; then we all swum ashore. I tell you it was cold! There was
+icicles on my dress; my son Emery put his arms around me to keep me
+warm, and his clothes froze onto mine."
+
+"How long a swim was it to shore?" I asked.
+
+"Oh," put in her husband, "it didn't amount to nothing. She was only
+swimming about two minutes."
+
+This statement, however, was repudiated by the captain. "Two minutes, my
+foot!" she flung back at her spouse. "It was more than that, all right!"
+
+Mrs. Johnson has done flood rescue work for the Government, with the
+_Grand_. In the spring previous to our visit she rescued sixty families
+from one plantation, besides towing barge-loads of provisions to various
+points on the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers.
+
+Captaining and piloting a river boat are clearly good for the health.
+Mrs. Johnson looks too young to be a grandmother. Her skin is clear, her
+cheeks are rosy, her brown eyes flash and twinkle, her voice, somewhat
+hoarse from shouting commands, is deep and strong, and her laugh is like
+the hearty laugh of a big man.
+
+"Are you a suffragist?" I asked her.
+
+"Not on your life!" was her reply.
+
+"Now, what do you want to talk like that for?" objected her husband.
+"You know women ought to be allowed to vote."
+
+"I don't think so," she returned firmly.
+
+At that her daughter-in-law, the assistant clerk of the _Grand_, took up
+the cudgels.
+
+"Of course they ought to vote!" she insisted. "You know _you_ can do
+just as good as a man can do!"
+
+"No," asseverated Captain Nettie. "Women ought to stay home and tend to
+their families."
+
+"As you do?" I suggested, mischievously.
+
+"That's all right!" she flung back. "I stayed home and raised my family
+until it was big enough to do its own navigating. Then I started in
+steamboating. I had to have _something_ to do."
+
+But the daughter-in-law did not intend to let the woman suffrage issue
+drop.
+
+"Do you mean to say," she demanded of Captain Nettie, "that you think
+women haven't got as much sense as men?"
+
+"Sure I do!" the captain tossed back. "There never was a woman on earth
+that had as much sense as the men. Take it from me, that's so. I know
+what I'm talking about--and that's more than a half of these other women
+do!"
+
+Then, as it was about time for the _Grand_ to cast off, Captain Nettie
+terminated the interview by blowing the whistle; whereupon my companion
+and I went ashore.
+
+One of the best boats on the river is the _Kate Adams_ and one of the
+most delightful two-days' outings I can imagine would be to make the
+round trip with her from Memphis to Arkansas City. But if I were seeking
+rest I should not take the trip at the time when it is taken by a score
+or more of Memphis young men and women, who, with their chaperones, and
+with Handy to play their dance-music, make the _Kate Adams_ an extremely
+lively craft on one round trip each year.
+
+Apropos of Arkansas, I am reminded that Memphis is not only the
+metropolis of Tennessee, but is the big city of Arkansas and
+Mississippi, as well. The Peabody Hotel in Memphis, a somewhat
+old-fashioned hostelry, is a sort of Arkansas political headquarters,
+and is sometimes humorously referred to as "Peabody township, Arkansas."
+It is also used to a considerable extent by Mississippi politicians, as
+well as by the local breed. The Peabody grill has a considerable
+reputation for good cookery, and the Peabody bar, though it still looks
+like a bar, serves only soft drinks, which are dispensed by female
+"bartenders." The Gayoso hotel, named for the Spanish governor who
+intruded upon Memphis territory for a time, stands where stood the old
+Gayoso, which figured in Forrest's raid. The Gayoso made me think a
+little of the old Victoria, in New York, torn down some years ago. The
+newest hotel in town, at the time of our visit, was the Chicsa, an
+establishment having a large and rather flamboyant office, and
+considerably used, we were told, as a place for conventions. If I were
+to go again to Memphis I should have a room at the Gayoso and go to the
+Peabody for meals.
+
+The axis of the earth, which Oliver Wendell Holmes declared, "sticks out
+visibly through the center of each and every town or city," sticks out
+in Memphis at Court Square, which the good red Baedeker dismisses
+briefly with the remark that it "contains a bust of General Andrew
+Jackson and innumerable squirrels." This is not meant to indicate that
+the squirrels are a part of the bust of Jackson. The two are separate
+and distinct. So are the pigeons which alight on friendly hands and
+shoulders as do other confident pigeons on Boston Common, and in the
+Piazza San Marco, in Venice.
+
+I am always disposed to like the people of a city in which pigeons and
+squirrels are tame. Every day, at noon, an old policeman, a former
+Confederate soldier I believe he is, comes into the square with a basket
+of corn. When he arrives all the pigeons see him and rush toward him in
+a great flapping cloud, brushing past your face if you happen to be
+walking across the square at the time. Nor is he the only one to feed
+them. Numbers of citizens go at midday to the square, where they buy
+popcorn and peanuts for the squirrels and pigeons--which, by the way,
+are all members of old Memphis families, being descendants of other
+squirrels and pigeons which lived in this same place before the Civil
+War. One might suppose that the pigeons, being able to fly up to the
+seventeenth floor windowsills of the Merchants' Exchange Building, where
+men of the grain and hay bureau of the exchange are in the habit of
+leaving corn for them, would prosper more than the squirrels, but that
+is not the case for--and I regret to have to report such immorality--the
+squirrels are in the habit of adding to the stores of peanuts which are
+thrown to them, by thievery. Like rascally urchins they will watch the
+peanut venders, and when their backs are turned, will make swift dashes
+at the peanut stands, seizing nuts and scampering away again. Sometimes
+the venders detect them, and give chase for a few steps, but that is
+dangerous, for the minute the vender goes after one squirrel, others
+rush up and steal more. It is saddening to find that even squirrels are
+corrupted by metropolitan life!
+
+In reviewing my visit to Memphis I find myself, for once, kindly
+disposed toward a Chamber of Commerce and Business Men's Club. I like
+the Business Men's Club because, besides issuing pamphlets shrieking the
+glory of the city, it has found time to do things much more worth
+while--notably to bring to Memphis some of the great American
+orchestras.
+
+A pamphlet issued by these organizations tells me that Memphis is the
+largest cotton market in the country, the largest hardwood producing
+market, the third largest grocery and jobbing market.
+
+Cotton is, indeed, much in evidence in the city. The streets in some
+sections are full of strange little two-wheel drays, upon which three
+bales are carried, and which display, in combination, those three
+southern things having such perfect artistic affinity: the negro, the
+mule, and the cotton bale. The vast modern cotton warehouses on the
+outskirts of the city cover many acres of ground, and with their gravity
+system of distribution for cotton bales, and their hydraulic compresses
+in which the bales are squeezed to minimum size, to the accompaniment of
+negro chants, are exceedingly interesting.
+
+The same pamphlet speaks also of the unusually large proportion of the
+city's area which is given over to parks and playgrounds, and it seems
+worth adding that though Memphis follows the general southern custom of
+barring negroes--excepting, of course, nursemaids in charge of
+children--from her parks, she has been so just as to provide a park for
+negroes only. In this she stands ahead of most other southern cities.
+
+Memphis has the only bridge crossing the Mississippi below the mouth of
+the Ohio. At the time of our visit a new bridge was being built very
+near the old one, and an interesting experience of our trip was our
+visit to this bridge, under the guidance of Mr. M.B. Case, a young
+engineer in charge.
+
+On a great undertaking, such as this one, where the total cost mounts
+into millions, the first work done is not on the proposed bridge itself,
+but on the plant and equipment to be used in construction--derricks,
+barges, concrete-mixers, air compressors for the caissons, small
+engines, dump-cars and all manner of like things. This preparatory work
+consumes some months. Caissons are then sunk far down beneath the river
+bed. Caisson work is dangerous, and the insurance rate on "sand
+hogs"--the men who work in the caissons--is very high. The scale of
+wages, and of time, varies in proportion to the risk, which is according
+to the depth at which work is being done. On this enterprise, for
+example, men working from mean level to a depth of 50 feet received $3
+for an eight-hour day. From 50 to 70 feet they worked but six hours and
+received $3.75. From 90 to 105 feet they worked in three shifts of one
+hour each, and received $4.25. And while they were placing concrete to
+seal the working chamber there was an additional allowance of fifty
+cents a day.
+
+The chief danger of caisson work is the "bends," or "caisson disease."
+In the caisson a man works under high air pressure. When he comes out,
+the pressure on the fluids of the body is reduced, and this sometimes
+causes the formation of a gas bubble in the vascular system. If this
+bubble reaches a nerve-center it causes severe pain, similar to
+neuralgia; if it gets to the brain it causes paralysis. Day after day
+men will go into the caisson and come out without trouble, but sooner or
+later from 2 to 8 per cent. of caisson workers are affected. Of 320
+"sand-hogs" who labored in the caissons of this bridge, three died of
+paralysis, and of course a number of others had slight attacks of the
+"bends," in one form or another.
+
+The bridge, when we visited it, was more than half completed. On the
+Memphis side the approaches were almost ready, and the steel framework
+of the bridge reached from the shore across the front pier, and was
+being built out far beyond the pier, on the cantilever principle,
+hanging in the air above the middle of the stream. By walking out on the
+old bridge we could survey the extreme end of the new one, which was
+being extended farther and farther, daily, by the addition of new steel
+sections. There were then about 100 journeymen bridgemen on the
+work--these being workmen of the class that erects steel skyscraper
+frames--with some fifty apprentices and carpenters, and about twenty
+common laborers. Bridgemen are among the highest paid of all workmen. In
+New York, at that time, their wage was $6 for eight hours' work. Here it
+was $4.50. Very few of the men had families with them in Memphis. They
+are the soldiers of fortune among wage-earners, a wild, reckless, fine
+looking lot of fellows, with good complexions like those of men in
+training, and eyes like the eyes of aviators. No class of men in the
+world, I suppose, have steadier nerves, think quicker, or react more
+rapidly from stimulus to action, whether through sight or sound. They
+have to be like that. For where other workmen pay for a mistake by loss
+of a job, these men pay with life. Yet they will tell you that their
+work is not dangerous. It is "just as safe as any other kind of
+job"--that, although four of their number had already been lost from
+this bridge alone. One went off the end of the structure with a derrick,
+the boom of which he lowered before the anchor-bolts had been placed.
+Two others fell. A fourth was struck by a falling timber.
+
+Once, while we were watching the men scrambling about upon the steel
+members of the uncompleted cantilever arm, one of them thought something
+was about to fall, and ran swiftly in, over a steel beam, toward the
+body of the structure; whereafter, as nothing did fall, he was
+unmercifully twitted by his fellow workers for having shown timidity.
+
+Many of the men working on this bridge had worked on the older structure
+paralleling it. This was true not only of the laboring men, but of the
+engineers. Ralph Modjeski, the consulting engineer at the head of the
+work (he is, by the way, a son of Madame Modjeska), was chief
+draughtsman when the earlier structure was designed; W.E. Angier,
+assistant chief engineer in the present work, was a field engineer on
+the first bridge, and it is interesting to know that, in constructing
+the approach to the old bridge he unearthed a Spanish halbert which, it
+is thought, may date from the time of De Soto. These bridge engineers
+and bridgebuilders move in a large orbit. Their last job may have been
+in Mexico, in the far West, or in India; their next may be in France.
+Many of the men here, worked on the Blackwell's Island bridge, on the
+Quebec bridge (which fell), on the Thebes bridge over the Mississippi,
+twenty miles above Cairo, on the Vancouver and Portland bridges over the
+Columbia and Willamette rivers, and on the great Oregon Trunk Railway
+bridges.
+
+After standing for a time on the old bridge watching work on the new,
+and shuddering, often enough, at the squirrel-like way in which the men
+scampered about up there, so far above the water, we walked in and moved
+out again upon the partially completed floor of the new bridge. Here it
+was necessary to walk on railroad ties, with gaps, six or eight inches
+wide, between them. Even had one tried, one could hardly have managed to
+squeeze one's body through these chinks; to fall through was impossible;
+nevertheless it gave me an uncomfortable feeling in the region of the
+stomach to walk out there, seeing the river all the time between the
+interstices. When we had progressed for some distance we came to a gap
+where, for perhaps a yard, there were no ties--just open space, with the
+muddy water shining cold and cruel below. The opening was only about as
+wide as the hall of a small New York flat, and heaven knows that to step
+across such a hall is easy enough. But this was not so easy. When we
+came to the gap I stopped. Mr. Case, the young engineer, who loved all
+bridges with a sort of holy passion, and loved this bridge in
+particular, was talking as we went along. I liked to hear him talk. He
+had been telling us how a thing that is to _be_ strong ought to _look_
+strong, too, and from that had got somehow to the topic of expansion and
+contraction in bridges, with variations of temperature. "It isn't only
+the steel bridges that do it," he said. "Stone arch bridges do it, too.
+The crown of the arch rises and falls. The Greeks and Romans and
+Egyptians knew that expansion and contraction occurred. They--"
+
+While talking he had gone across the gap, stepping lightly upon a
+stringpiece probably a foot wide, and proceeding over the ties. Now,
+however, he ceased speaking and looked back, for I was no longer beside
+him. At the gap I had stopped. I intended to step across, but I did not
+propose to do so without giving the matter the attention it seemed to me
+to deserve.
+
+Mr. Case did not laugh at me. He came back and stood on the string-piece
+where it crossed the opening, telling me to put my hand on his shoulder.
+But I did not want to do that. I wanted to cross alone--when I got
+ready. It took me perhaps two minutes to get ready. Then I stepped over.
+It was, of course, absurdly easy. I had known it would be. But as we
+walked along I kept thinking to myself: "I shall have to cross that
+beastly place again when we come back," and I marveled the more at the
+amazing steadiness of eye and mind and nerve that enables some men to go
+continually prancing about over emptiness infinitely more engulfing than
+that which had troubled and was troubling me.
+
+Returning I stepped across without physical hesitation. But after I had
+crossed I continued to hate that gap. I hated it as I drove back to the
+hotel, that afternoon, as I ate dinner that night, as I went to bed, and
+in my dreams I continued to cross it, and to see the river waiting for
+me, seeming to look up and leer and beckon. I woke up hating the gap in
+the bridge as much as ever; I hated it down into the State of
+Mississippi, and over into Georgia; and wherever I have gone since, I
+have continued to hate it. Of course there isn't any gap there now. It
+was covered long ago. Yet for me it still exists, like some obnoxious
+person who, though actually dead, lives on in the minds of those who
+knew him.
+
+
+
+
+FARTHEST SOUTH
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+BEAUTIFUL SAVANNAH
+
+
+How often it occurs that the great work a man set out originally to
+accomplish, is lost sight of, by future generations, in contemplation of
+other achievements of that man, which he himself regarded as of
+secondary importance.
+
+In 1733, the year in which General Oglethorpe started his Georgia
+colony, there were more than a hundred offenses for which a person might
+be hanged in England; Oglethorpe's primary idea in founding the colony
+was to provide a means of freeing debtors from prison, and giving them a
+fresh start in life; yet it is as the man responsible for the laying out
+of the beautiful city of Savannah, that Oglethorpe is probably most
+widely remembered to-day.
+
+Oglethorpe was a first-rate soldier. He defeated a superior Spanish
+force from Florida, and successfully resisted attacks from the Indians.
+Also, he was a man whose ethical sense was in advance of his period. He
+did not permit slavery in Georgia, and it was not adopted there until he
+went back to England. In planning Savannah he was assisted by a
+Charleston engineer named Bull, for whom the chief street of Savannah
+is named. The place is laid out very simply; it has rectangular blocks
+and wide roads, with small parks, or squares, at regular intervals.
+There are some two dozen of these small parks, aside from one or two
+larger parks, a parade ground, and numerous boulevards with double
+roadways and parked centers, and the abundance of semi-tropical foliage
+and of airy spaces, in Savannah, gives the city its most distinctive and
+charming quality--the quality which differentiates it from all other
+American cities. Originally these parks were used as market-places and
+rallying points in case of Indian attack; now they serve the equally
+utilitarian purposes of this age, having become charming public gardens
+and playgrounds. One of them--not the most important one--is named
+Oglethorpe Square; but the monument to Oglethorpe is placed elsewhere.
+
+Madison Square, Savannah, is relatively about as important as Madison
+Square, New York, and though smaller than the latter, is much prettier.
+It contains a monument to Sergeant Jasper, the Revolutionary hero who,
+when the flag was shot down from Fort Moultrie, off Charleston, by the
+British, flung it to the breeze again, under fire. Jasper was later
+killed with the flag in his arms, in the French-American attempt to take
+Savannah from the British. Monterey Square has a statue of Count
+Pulaski, who also fell at the siege of Savannah. Another Revolutionary
+hero remembered with a monument is General Nathanael Greene who, though
+born in Rhode Island, moved after the war to Georgia where, in
+recognition of his services, he was given an estate not far from
+Savannah. "Mad" Anthony Wayne, a Pennsylvanian by birth, also accepted
+an estate in Georgia and resided there after the Revolution.
+
+An interesting story attaches to Greene's settlement in Georgia. The
+estate given to him was that known as Mulberry Grove, above the city, on
+the Savannah River. The property had previously belonged to
+Lieutenant-governor John Graham, but was confiscated because Graham was
+a loyalist. Along with the property, Greene apparently took over the
+Graham vault in Colonial Cemetery--now a city park, and a very
+interesting one because of the old tombs and gravestones--and there he
+was himself buried. After a while people forgot where Greene's remains
+lay, and later, when it was decided to erect a monument to his memory in
+Johnson Square, they couldn't find any Greene to put under it. However,
+they went ahead and made the monument, and Lafayette laid the
+cornerstone, when he visited Savannah in March, 1825. Greene's remains
+were lost for 114 years. They did not come to light until 1902, when
+some one thought of opening the Graham vault. Thereupon they were
+removed and reinterred in their proper resting place beneath the
+monument which had so long awaited them. That monument, by the way, was
+not erected by Savannah people, or even by Southerners, but was paid for
+by the legislature of the general's native Rhode Island. When the
+remains were discovered, Rhode Island asked for them, but Savannah,
+which had lost them, also wanted them. The matter was settled by a vote
+of Greene's known descendants, who decided almost unanimously to leave
+his remains in Savannah.
+
+The foundation of the general's former home at Mulberry Grove may still
+be seen. It was in this house that Eli Whitney invented the cotton-gin.
+Whitney was a tutor in the Greene family after the general's death, and
+it was at the suggestion of Mrs. Greene that he started to try and make
+"a machine to pick the seed out of cotton." It is said that Whitney's
+first machine would do, in five hours, work which, if done by hand,
+would take one man two years. This was, of course, an epoch-making
+invention and caused enormous commercial growth in the South, where
+cotton-gins are as common things as restaurants in the city of New York.
+Which reminds me of a story.
+
+A northern man was visiting Mr. W.D. Pender, at Tarboro, North Carolina.
+On the day of the guest's arrival Mr. Pender spoke to his cook, a negro
+woman of the old order, telling her to hurry up the dinner, because he
+wished to take his friend down to see the cotton-gin. "You know," he
+explained, "this gentleman has never seen a cotton-gin."
+
+The cook looked at him in amazement.
+
+"Lor'! Mistuh Penduh," she exclaimed. "An' dat man _look_ like he was
+edjacated!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another item in Savannah history is that John Wesley came over about
+the middle of the eighteenth century to convert the Indians to
+Christianity. It was not until after this attempt, when he returned to
+England, that he began the great religious movement which led to the
+founding of the Methodist Church. George Whitfield also preached in
+Savannah. Evidently Wesley did not get very far with the savages who, it
+may be imagined, were more responsive to the kind of "conversion"
+attempted in South Carolina, by a French dancing-master, who went out
+from Charleston in the early days and taught them the steps of the
+stately minuet.
+
+Another great event in Savannah history was the departure from that
+port, in 1819, of the _City of Savannah_, the first steamship to cross
+the Atlantic. If I may make a suggestion to the city, it is that the
+centennial of this event be celebrated, and that a memorial be erected.
+Inspiration for such a memorial might perhaps be found in the simple and
+charming monument, crowned by a galleon in bronze, which has been
+erected in San Francisco, in memory of Robert Louis Stevenson. A ship in
+bronze can be a glorious thing--which is more than can be said of a
+bronze statesman in modern pantaloons.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+More lately Savannah initiated another world-improvement: she was the
+first city to abolish horses entirely from her fire department,
+replacing them with automobile engines, hook-and-ladders, and
+hose-carts. That is in line with what one would expect of Savannah, for
+she is not only a progressive city, but is a great automobile city,
+having several times been the scene of important international
+automobile road races, including the Grand Prize and the Vanderbilt Cup.
+
+Nor is there want of other history. The Savannah Theater, though gutted
+by fire and rebuilt, is the same theater that Joseph Jefferson owned and
+managed for a time, in the fifties; in the house on Lafayette Square,
+now occupied by Judge W.W. Lambdin, Robert E. Lee once stayed, and
+Thackeray is said to have written there a part of "The Virginians."
+
+A sad thing was happening in Savannah when we were there. The Habersham
+house, one of the loveliest old mansions of the city, was being torn
+down to make room for a municipal auditorium.
+
+The first Habersham in America was a Royal Governor of Georgia. He had
+three sons one of whom, Joseph, had, by the outbreak of the Revolution,
+become a good enough American to join a band of young patriots who took
+prisoner the British governor, Sir James Wright. The governor's house
+was situated where the Telfair Academy now is. He was placed under
+parole, but nevertheless fled to Bonaventure, the Tabnall estate, not
+far from the city, where he was protected by friends until he could
+escape to the British fleet, which then lay off Tybee Island at the
+mouth of the Savannah River, some eighteen miles below the city. This
+same Joseph Habersham, it is said, led a party which went out in 1775
+in skiffs--called _bateaux_ along this part of the coast--boarded the
+British ship _Hinchenbroke_, lying at anchor in the river, and captured
+her in a hand-to-hand conflict. Mr. Neyle Colquitt of Savannah, a
+descendant of the Habershams, tells me that the powder taken from the
+_Hinchenbroke_ was used at the Battle of Bunker Hill. After the war, in
+which Joseph Habersham commanded a regiment of regulars, he was made
+Postmaster General of the United States. The old house itself was built
+by Archibald Bulloch, a progenitor of that Miss "Mittie" Bulloch who
+later became Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., mother of the President. It
+was designed by an English architect named Jay, who did a number of the
+fine old houses of Savannah, which are almost without exception of the
+Georgian period. Archibald Bulloch bought the lot on which he built the
+house from Matthew McAllister, great-grandfather of Ward McAllister.
+When sold by Bulloch it passed through several hands and finally came
+into the possession of Robert Habersham, a son of Joseph.
+
+The old house was spacious and its interiors had a fine formality about
+them. The staircase, fireplace and chandeliers were handsome, and there
+was at the rear a charming oval room, the heavy mahogany doors of which
+were curved to conform to the shape of the walls. To tear down such a
+house was sacrilege--also it was a sacrilege hard to commit, for some of
+the basement walls were fifteen feet thick, and of solid brick straight
+through.
+
+Sherman's headquarters were on the Square, just south of the De Soto
+Hotel, in the battlemented brick mansion which is the residence of
+General Peter W. Meldrim, ex-president of the American Bar Association,
+and former Mayor of Savannah.
+
+Among other old houses characteristic of Savannah, are the Scarborough
+house, the Mackay house, the Thomas house in Franklin Square (also known
+as the Owens house), in which Lafayette was entertained, and the Telfair
+house, now the Telfair Academy. The Telfair and Thomas houses were built
+by the architect who built the Habersham house, and it is to be hoped
+that they will never go the way of the latter mansion.
+
+In 1810, about the time these houses were built, Savannah had 5,000
+inhabitants; by 1850 the population had trebled, and 1890 found it a
+place of more than 40,000. Since then the city has grown with wholesome
+rapidity, and attractive suburban districts have been developed. The
+1910 census gives the population as 65,000, but the city talks
+exuberantly of 90,000. Well, perhaps that is not an exaggerated claim.
+Certainly it is a city to attract those who are free to live where they
+please. In fall, winter and spring it leaves little to be desired. I
+have been there three times, and I have never walked up Bull Street
+without looking forward to the day when I could go there, rent an old
+house full of beautiful mahogany, and pass a winter. Not even New
+Orleans made me feel like that. I feel about New Orleans that it is a
+place to visit rather than to settle down in. I want to go back to New
+Orleans, but I do not want to stay more than a few weeks. I want to see
+some people that I know, prowl about the French quarter, and have Jules
+Alciatore turn me out a dinner; then I want to go away. So, too, I want
+to go back to Atlanta--just to see some people. I want to stay there a
+week or two. Also I want to go to St. Augustine when cold weather comes,
+and bask in the warm sun, and breathe the soft air full of gold dust,
+and feel indolent and happy as I watch the activities about the
+excellent Ponce de Leon Hotel; but there are two cities in the South
+that I dream of going to for a quiet happy winter of domesticity and
+work, in a rented house--it must be the right house, too--and those
+cities are, first Charleston; then Savannah.
+
+The Telfair Academy in the old Telfair mansion was left, by a member of
+the family, to the city, to be used as a museum. Being somewhat
+skeptical about museums in cities of the size of Savannah, not to say
+much larger cities, especially when they are art museums, I very nearly
+omitted a visit to this one. Had I done so I would have missed seeing
+not only a number of exceedingly interesting historic treasures, but
+what I believe to be the best public art collection contained in any
+southern city.
+
+The museum does, to be sure, contain a number of old "tight" paintings
+of the kind with which the country was deluged at the time of the
+Chicago World's Fair, but upstairs there is a surprise in shape of an
+exhibition of modern American paintings (the best paintings being
+produced in the world to-day) showing brilliant selection. I was utterly
+amazed when I found this collection. There were excellent canvases by
+Childe Hassam, Ernest Lawson, George Bellows, and other living American
+painters whose work, while it is becoming more and more widely
+appreciated each year, is still beyond all but the most advanced and
+discriminating buyers of paintings. I went into ecstasies over this
+collection, and I said to myself: "Away down here in Savannah there is
+some one buying better paintings for a little museum than the heads of
+many of the big museums in the country have had sense enough or courage
+enough to buy. This man ought to be 'discovered' and taken to some big
+museum where his appreciation will be put to the greatest use." With
+that I rushed downstairs, sought out the curator, and asked who had
+purchased the modern American pictures. And then my bubble was pricked,
+for who had they had, down there, buying their pictures for them, but
+Gari Melchers! Naturally the pictures were good!
+
+In one room of the building, on the ground floor, is a collection of
+fine old furniture, etc., which belonged to the Telfair family,
+including two beautiful mantelpieces of black and white marble, some
+cabinets, and a very curious and fascinating extension dining-table,
+built of mahogany. The table is perfectly round, and the leaves, instead
+of being added in the middle, are curved pieces, fitting around the
+outer edge in two series, so that when extended to its full capacity the
+table is still round. I have never seen another such table.
+
+Also I found many interesting old books and papers passed down from the
+Telfairs. One of these was a ledger with records of slave sales.
+
+In a sale held Friday, October 14, 1774, Sir James Wright, the same
+British governor who was presently put to flight, purchased four men,
+five women, nine boys, and one girl, at a total cost of L820, or about
+$3,280. Sir Patrick Houston bought two women at L90, or $450. The whole
+day's sale disposed of thirty-five men, seventeen women, twenty-seven
+boys and ten girls, at a grand total of L3206, or roughly between nine
+and ten thousand dollars.
+
+The Telfairs were great planters. Among the papers was one headed "Rules
+and Directions to be strictly attended to by all overseers at Thorn
+Island Plantation." This plantation was on the North Carolina side of
+the river, and was owned by Alexander Telfair, a brother of Miss Mary
+Telfair who gave the Academy to the city. Dates which occur in the
+papers stamp them as having been issued some time prior to 1837. Here
+are some of the regulations:
+
+    The allowance for every grown negro, let him or her be old and good
+    for nothing, and every young one that works in the field, is a peck
+    of corn a week and a pint of salt and a piece of meat not exceeding
+    fourteen pounds per month.
+
+    No negro to have more than forty lashes, no matter what his crime.
+
+    The suckling children and all small ones who do not work in the
+    field draw a half allowance of corn and salt.
+
+    Any negro can have a ticket to go about the neighborhood, but cannot
+    leave it without a pass. No strangers allowed to come on the place
+    without a pass.
+
+    The negroes to be tasked when the work allows it. I require a
+    reasonable day's work well done. The task to be regulated by the
+    state of the ground and the strength of the negro.
+
+    All visiting between the Georgia plantation to be refused. [The
+    Telfairs owned another plantation on the Georgia side of the river.]
+    No one to get husbands or wives across the river. No night meeting
+    or preaching allowed on the place except on Saturday or Sunday
+    morning.
+
+    If there is any fighting on the place whip all engaged in it, no
+    matter what may be the cause it may be covered with.
+
+    In extreme cases of sickness employ a physician. After a dose of
+    castor oil is given, a dose of calomel, and blister applied, if no
+    relief, then send.
+
+    My negroes are not allowed to plant cotton for themselves.
+    Everything else they may plant. Give them ticket to sell what they
+    make.
+
+    I have no Driver (slave-driver). You are to task the negroes
+    yourself. They are responsible to you alone for work.
+
+Certain negroes are mentioned by name:
+
+    Many persons are indebted to Elsey for attending upon their negroes.
+    I wish you to see them or send to them for the money.
+
+    If Dolly is unable to return to cooking she must take charge of all
+    the little negroes.
+
+    Pay Free Moses two dollars and a half for taking care of things left
+    at his landing.
+
+Bull Street, the fashionable street of the city, is a gem of a street,
+despite the incursions made at not infrequent intervals, by
+comparatively new, and often very ugly buildings. Every few blocks Bull
+Street has to turn out of its course and make the circuit of one of the
+small parks of which I have spoken, and this gives it charm and variety.
+On this street stands the De Soto Hotel, which, when I first went to
+Savannah, years ago, was by all odds the leading hostelry of the city.
+It is one of those great rambling buildings with a big porch out in
+front, an open court in back, and everything about it, including the
+bedchambers, very spacious and rather old fashioned. Lately the Savannah
+Hotel has been erected down at the business end of Bull Street. It is a
+modern hotel of the more conventional commercial type. But even down
+there, near the business part of town, it is not confronted by congested
+cobbled streets and clanging trolley cars, but looks out upon one of the
+squares, filled with magnolias, oaks and palms. But another time I
+think I shall go back to the De Soto.
+
+The building of the Independent Presbyterian Church, on Bull Street, is
+one of the most beautiful of its kind in the country, inside and out. It
+reminds one of the old churches in Charleston, and it is gratifying to
+know that though the old church which stood on this site (dedicated in
+1819) burned in 1889, the congregation did not seize the opportunity to
+replace it with a hideosity in lemon-yellow brick, but had the rare good
+sense to duplicate the old church exactly, with the result that, though
+a new building, it has all the dignity and simple beauty of an old one.
+
+Broughton Street, the shopping street, crosses Bull Street in the
+downtown section, and looks ashamed of itself as it does so, for it is
+about as commonplace a looking street as one may see. There is simply
+nothing about it of distinction save its rather handsome name.
+
+Elsewhere, however, there are several skyscrapers, most of them good
+looking buildings. It seemed to me also that I had never seen so many
+banks as in Savannah, and I am told that it is, indeed, a great banking
+city, and that the record of the Savannah banks for weathering financial
+storms is very fine. On a good many corners where there are not banks
+there are clubs, and some of these clubs are delightful and thoroughly
+metropolitan in character. I know of no city in the North, having a
+population corresponding to that of Charleston or of Savannah, which has
+clubs comparable with the best clubs of these cities, or of New
+Orleans. When it is considered that of the population of these southern
+cities approximately one half, representing negroes, must be deducted in
+considering the population from which eligibles must be drawn, the
+excellence of southern clubs becomes remarkable in the extreme.
+Savannah, by the way, holds one national record in the matter of clubs.
+It had the first golf club founded in America. Exactly when the club was
+founded I cannot say, but Mr. H.H. Bruen, of Savannah, has in his
+possession an invitation to a golf club ball held in the old City Hall
+in the year 1811.
+
+The commercial ascendancy of Savannah over Charleston is due largely to
+natural causes. The port of Savannah drains exports from a larger and
+richer territory than is tapped by Charleston, though new railroads are
+greatly improving Charleston's situation in this respect. Savannah is a
+shipping port for cotton from a vast part of the lower and central
+South, and is also a great port for lumber, and the greatest port in the
+world for "naval stores." I did not know what naval stores were when I
+went to Savannah. The term conjured up in my mind pictures of piles of
+rope, pulleys and anchors. But those are not naval stores. Naval stores
+are gum products, such as resin and turpentine, which are obtained from
+the long-leafed pines of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Florida.
+The traveler through these States cannot have failed to notice gashes on
+the tree-trunks along the way. From these the resinous sap exudes and
+is caught in cups, after which it is boiled, there in the woods, and
+thus separated into turpentine, resin and pitch. Vast quantities of
+these materials are stored on the great modern docks of Savannah. It is
+said that owing to wasteful methods, the long-leafed pine forests are
+being rapidly destroyed, and that this industry will die out before very
+long because the eager grabbers of to-day's dollars, having no thought
+for the future, fail to practise scientific forestry.
+
+All about Savannah, within easy reach by trolley, motor or boat, lie
+pleasant retreats and interesting things to see. The roads of the
+region, built by convict labor, are of the finest, and the convict
+prison camps are worth a visit. In the Brown Farm camp, living
+conditions are certainly more sanitary than in ninety nine out of a
+hundred negro homes. The place fairly shines with cleanliness, and there
+are many cases in which "regulars" at this camp are no sooner released
+than they offend again with the deliberate purpose of carrying out what
+may be termed a "back to the farm" movement. The color line is drawn in
+southern jails and convict camps as elsewhere. White prisoners occupy
+one barracks; negroes another. The food and accommodations for both is
+the same. The only race discrimination I could discover was that when
+white prisoners are punished by flogging, they are flogged with their
+clothes on, whereas, with negroes, the back is exposed. The men in this
+camp are minor offenders and wear khaki overalls in place of the stripes
+in which the worse criminals, quartered in another camp, are dressed.
+Strict discipline is maintained, but the life is wholesome. The men are
+marched to work in the morning and back at night escorted by guards who
+carry loaded shotguns, and who always have with them a pack of ugly
+bloodhounds to be used in case escape is attempted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All the drives in this region are extremely picturesque, for the
+live-oak grows here at its best, and is to be seen everywhere, its trunk
+often twenty or more feet in circumference, its wide-spreading branches
+reaching out their tips to meet those of other trees of the same
+species, so that sometimes the whole world seems to have a groined
+ceiling of foliage, a ceiling which inevitably suggests a great shadowy
+cathedral from whose airy arches hang long gray pennons of Spanish moss,
+like faded, tattered battle-flags.
+
+On country roads you will come, now and then, upon a negro burial ground
+of very curious character. There may be such negro cemeteries in the
+upper Southern States, but if so I have never seen them. In this portion
+of Georgia they are numerous, and their distinguishing mark consists in
+the little piles of household effects with which every grave is covered.
+I do not know whether this is done to propitiate ghosts and devils
+(generally believed to "hant" these graveyards), or whether it is the
+idea that the deceased can still find use for the assortment of
+pitchers, bowls, cups, saucers, knives, forks, spoons, statuettes,
+alarm-clocks, and heaven only knows what else, which were his treasured
+earthly possessions.
+
+In Savannah, I have heard Commodore Tatnall, who used to live at
+Bonaventure, credited with having originated the saying "Blood is
+thicker than water," but I am inclined to believe that the Commodore
+merely made apposite use of an old formula. The story is told of one of
+the old Tatnalls that in the midst of a large dinner-party which he was
+giving at his mansion at Bonaventure plantation, a servant entered and
+informed him that the house was on fire. Whereupon the old thoroughbred,
+instead of turning fireman, persisted in his role of host, ordering the
+full dining-room equipment to be moved out upon the lawn, where the
+company remained at dinner while the house burned down.
+
+Most of the old houses of the plantations on the river have long since
+been destroyed. That at Whitehall was burned by the negroes when
+Sherman's army came by, but the old trees and gardens still endure,
+including a tall hedge of holly which is remarkable even in this
+florescent region. The old plantation house at the Hermitage, approached
+by a handsome avenue of live-oaks, is, I believe, the only one of those
+ancient mansions which still stands, and it does not stand very
+strongly, for, beautiful though it is in its abandonment and decay, it
+is like some noble old gentleman dying alone in an attic, of age,
+poverty and starvation--dying proudly as poor Charles Gayarre did in New
+Orleans.
+
+The Hermitage has, I believe, no great history save what is written in
+its old chipped walls of stucco-covered brick, and the slave-cabins
+which still form a background for it. It is a story of baronial decay,
+resulting, doubtless, from the termination of slavery. Hordes of negroes
+of the "new issue" infest the old slave-cabins and on sight of visitors
+rush out with almost violent demands for money, in return for which they
+wish to sing. Their singing is, however, the poorest negro singing I
+have ever heard. All the spontaneity, all the relish, all the vividness
+which makes negro singing wonderful, has been removed, here, by the
+fixed idea that singing is not a form of expression but a mere noise to
+be given vent to for the purpose of extracting backsheesh. It is
+saddening to witness the degradation, through what may be called
+professionalism, of any great racial quality. These negroes, half
+mendicant, half traders on the reputation of their race, express
+professionalism in its lowest form. They are more pitiful than the
+professional tarantella dancers who await the arrival of tourists, in
+certain parts of southern Italy, as spiders await flies.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII
+
+MISS "JAX" AND SOME FLORIDA GOSSIP
+
+    "Or mebbe you 're intendin' of
+      Investments? Orange-plantin'? Pine?
+    Hotel? or Sanitarium? What above
+      This yea'th _can_ be your line?..."
+
+    SIDNEY LANIER ("A FLORIDA GHOST.")
+
+
+It is the boast of Jacksonville (known locally by the convenient
+abbreviation "Jax") that it stands as the "Gate to Florida." But the
+fact that a gate is something through which people pass--usually without
+stopping--causes some anguish to an active Chamber of Commerce, which
+has been known to send bands to the railway station to serenade tourists
+in the hope of enticing them to alight.
+
+If I were to personify Jacksonville, it would be, I think, as an amiable
+young woman, member of a domestic family, whose papa and mama had moved
+to Florida from somewhere else--for it is as hard to find a native of
+Jacksonville in that city as to find a native New Yorker in New York.
+Miss Jacksonville's papa, as I conceive it, has prospered while daughter
+has been growing up, and has bought for her a fine large house on a main
+corner, where many people pass. Having reached maturity Miss
+Jacksonville wishes to be in Florida society--to give, as it were,
+house parties, like those of her neighbors, the other winter resorts.
+She sees people passing her doors all winter long, and she says to
+herself: "I must get some of these people to come in."
+
+To this end she brushes off the walk, lays a carpet on the steps, puts
+flowers in the vases, orders up a lot of fancy food and drink (from the
+very admirable Hotel Mason), turns on the lights and the Victor, leaves
+the front door invitingly open, and hopes for the best. Soon people
+begin to come in, but as she meets them she discovers that most of them
+have come to see papa on business; only a few have come on her account.
+They help themselves to sandwiches, look about the room, and listen to
+what Miss Jacksonville has to say.
+
+Time passes. Nothing happens. She asks how they like the chairs.
+
+"Very comfortable," they assure her.
+
+"Do have some more to eat and drink," says she.
+
+"What is your history?" a guest asks her presently.
+
+"I haven't much history to speak of," she replies. "They tell me Andrew
+Jackson had his territorial government about where my house stands, but
+I don't know much about it. We don't care much about history in our
+family."
+
+"What do you do with yourself?"
+
+"Oh, I keep house, and go occasionally to the Woman's Club, and in the
+evenings father tells me about his business."
+
+"Very nice," says one guest, whom we shall picture as a desirable and
+wealthy young man from the North. "Now let's do something. Do you play
+or sing? Are you athletic? Do you go boating on the St. John's River? Do
+you gamble? Can you make love?"
+
+"I dance a little and play a little golf out at the Florida Country
+Club," she says, with but small signs of enthusiasm. "The thing I'm
+really most interested in, though, is father's business. He lost a lot
+of money in the fire of 1901, but he's made it all back and a lot more
+besides."
+
+"What about surf-bathing?" asks the pleasure-seeking visitor, stifling a
+yawn.
+
+"There's Atlantic Beach only eighteen miles from here. It's a wonderful
+beach. Father's putting a million in improvements out there, but there's
+no time to go there just now. However, if you'd like to, I can take you
+down and show you the new docks he has built."
+
+"Oh, no, thanks," says the guest. "I don't care for docks--not, that is,
+unless we can go boating."
+
+"I'm afraid we can't do that," says Miss Jacksonville. "We don't use the
+river much for pleasure. I can't say just why, unless it is that every
+one is too busy.... But please eat something more, and do have something
+to drink. There's plenty for every one."
+
+"I must be running along," says the visitor. "I've been invited to call
+at some other houses down the block. By the way, what is the name of
+your neighbor next door?"
+
+"St. Augustine," says Jacksonville, with a little reluctance. "She is of
+Spanish descent and sets great store by it. If you call there she'll
+show you a lot of interesting old relics she has, but I assure you that
+when it comes to commercial success her family isn't one-two-three with
+papa."
+
+"Thanks," says the visitor, "but just at the moment commerce doesn't
+appeal to me. Who lives beyond her?"
+
+Miss Jacksonville sighs. "There are some pleasant, rather attractive
+people named Ormonde, beyond," she says, "and a lively family named
+Daytona next door to them. Neither family is in business, like papa.
+They just play all the time. Then come a number of modest places, and
+after them, in the big yellow and white house with the palm trees all
+around it--but I'd advise you to keep away from there! Yes, you'd better
+go by that house. On the other side of it, in another lovely house, live
+some nicer, simpler people named Miami. Or if you like fishing, you
+might drop in on Mrs. Long-Key--she's wholesome and sweet, and goes out
+every day to catch tarpon. Or, again, you might--"
+
+"What's the matter with the people in the big yellow and white house
+surrounded by palm trees? Why shouldn't I go there?" asks the guest.
+
+"A young widow lives there," says Miss Jacksonville primly. "I don't
+know much about her history, but she looks to me as though she had been
+on the stage. She's frightfully frivolous--not at all one of our
+representative people."
+
+"Ah!" says the visitor. "Is she pretty?"
+
+"Well," admits Miss Jacksonville, "I suppose she _is_--in a fast way.
+But she's all rouged and she overdresses. Her bathing suits are too
+short at the bottom and her evening gowns are too short at the top. Yes,
+and even at that, she has a trick of letting the shoulder straps slip
+off and pretending she doesn't know it has happened."
+
+"What's her name?"
+
+"Mrs. Palm-Beach."
+
+"Oh," says the visitor. "I've heard of her. She's always getting into
+the papers. Tell me more."
+
+Miss Jacksonville purses her lips and raises her eyebrows. "Really," she
+says, "I don't like to talk scandal."
+
+"Oh, come on! Do!" pleads the visitor. "Is she bad--bad and beautiful
+and alluring?"
+
+"Judge for yourself," says Miss Jacksonville sharply. "She keeps that
+enormous place of hers shut up except for about two months or so in the
+winter, when she comes down gorgeously dressed, with more jewelry than
+is worn by the rest of the neighborhood put together. Few Southerners go
+to her house. It's full of rich people from all over the North."
+
+"Is she rich?"
+
+"You'd think so to look at her--especially if you didn't know where she
+got her money. But she really hasn't much of her own. She's a grafter."
+
+"How does she manage it?"
+
+"Men give her money."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Because she knows how to please the rich. She understands them. She
+makes herself beautiful for them. She plays, and drinks, and gambles,
+and dances with them, and goes riding with them in wheel chairs by
+moonlight, and sits with them by the sea, and holds their hands, and
+gets them sentimental. There's some scent she uses that is very
+seductive--none of the rest of us have been able to find out exactly
+what it is."
+
+"But how does she get their money?"
+
+"She never tells a hard-luck story--you can't get money out of the kind
+she goes with, that way. She takes the other tack. She whispers to them,
+and laughs with them, and fondles them, and makes them love her, and
+when they love her she says: 'But dearie, be reasonable! Think how many
+people love me! I like to have you here, you fat old darling with the
+gold jingling in your pockets! but I can't let you sit with me unless
+you pay. Yes, I'm expensive, I admit. But don't you love this scent I
+wear? Don't you adore my tropical winter sea, my gardens, my palm trees,
+my moonlight, and my music? They are all for you, dearie--so why
+shouldn't you pay? Don't I take you from the northern cold and slush?
+Haven't I built a siding for your private car, and made an anchorage for
+your yacht? Don't I let you do as you please? Don't I keep you amused?
+Don't you love to look at me? Don't I put my warm red lips to yours?
+Well, then, dearie, what is all your money for?' ... That is her way of
+talking to them! That is the sort of creature that she is!"
+
+"Shocking!" says the visitor, rising and looking for his hat "You say
+hers is the third large house from here?"
+
+"Yes. Remember, she's as mercenary as can be!"
+
+"Thanks. I can take care of myself. If she's amusing that suits me.
+Good-by."
+
+In the vestibule he pauses to count his money.
+
+"Jacksonville seems to be a nice girl," he says to himself as he hastens
+down the block. "I imagine she might make a good wife and mother, and
+that she'd help her husband on in business. However, I'm not thinking of
+getting married and settling down in Florida. I'm out for some fun. I
+think I'll run in and call upon Mrs. Palm-Beach."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII
+
+PASSIONATE PALM BEACH
+
+    A very merry, dancing, drinking,
+    Laughing, quaffing and unthinking time.
+
+    --DRYDEN.
+
+
+Like all places in which idlers try to avoid finding out that they are
+idle, Palm Beach has very definite customs as to where to go, and at
+what time to go there. Excepting in its hours for going to bed and
+getting up, it runs on schedule. The official day begins with the
+bathing hour--half past eleven to half past twelve--when the two or
+three thousand people from the pair of vast hotels assemble before the
+casino on the beach. Golfers will, of course, be upon the links before
+this hour; fishermen will be casting from the pier or will be out in
+boats searching the sail fish--that being the "fashionable" fish at the
+present time; ladies of excessive circumference will be panting rapidly
+along the walks, their eyes holding that look of dreamy determination
+which painters put into the eyes of martyrs, and which a fixed intention
+to lose twenty pounds puts into the eyes of banting women. So, too,
+certain gentlemen of swarthy skin make their way to the casino sun
+parlor, where they disrobe and bake until the bathing hour. The object
+of this practice is to acquire, as nearly as a white man may, the
+complexion of a mulatto, and it is surprising to see how closely the
+skins of some more ardent members of the "Browning Club," as this group
+is called, match those of their chair boys. The underlying theory of the
+"Browning Club" is that a triple-plated coat of tan, taken north in
+March, advertises the wearer as having been at Palm Beach during the
+entire winter, thus establishing him as a man not merely of means, but
+of great endurance.
+
+The women of Palm Beach seem to be divided into two distinct schools of
+thought on the subject of tanning. While none of them compete with the
+radicals of the "Browning Club," one may nevertheless observe that, in
+evening dress, many young ladies reveal upon their necks, shoulders, and
+arms, stenciled outlines of the upper margins of their bathing suits.
+Ladies of the opposing school, upon the contrary, guard the whiteness of
+their skins as jealously as the men of the "Browning Club" guard their
+blackness. Rather than be touched with tan, many ladies of the latter
+group deny themselves the pleasures of the surf. The parasols beneath
+which they arrive upon the sands are not lowered until they are safely
+seated beneath the green and blue striped canvas tops of their beach
+chairs, and it may be observed that even then they are additionally
+fortified against the light, by wide black hats and thick dark veils
+draped to mask their faces up to the eyes; "harem" veils, they call
+them--the name, however, signifying nothing polygamous.
+
+A pleasant diversion at the beginning of the bathing hour occurs when
+some mere one-horse millionaire from a Middle-Western town appears on
+the beach with his family. He is newly arrived and is under the fond
+delusion that he is as good as anybody else and that his money is as
+good as any other person's money. Seeing the inviting rows of beach
+chairs, he and his family plump into several of them. They are hardly
+settled, however, when the man who attends to the beach chairs comes and
+asks them to get out, saying that the chairs are reserved.
+
+The other thinks the man is lying like a head waiter, and demands to
+know for whom the chairs are reserved.
+
+In reply the beach-chair man mentions, with suitable deference, the name
+of Mrs. Hopkinson Skipkinson Jumpkinson-Jones.
+
+"Well," cries the Middle-Westerner, "Mrs. Jones isn't here yet, is she?
+She can't use the chairs _now_, can she, if she isn't here?"
+
+Even without this evidence that he does not grasp at all, the
+seriousness of the beach-chair situation, the fact that the uncouth
+stranger has referred to Mrs. H.S. Jumpkinson-Jones merely as "Mrs.
+Jones," brands him among the Palm Beach "regulars" who have overheard
+him, as a barbarian of the barbarians. People in neighboring chairs at
+once turn their backs upon him and glance at each other knowingly with
+raised eyebrows. At this juncture, let us hope, the daughter of the
+intruder manages to pry him loose; let us hope also that she takes him
+aside and tells him what everybody ought to know: namely, that Mrs. H.S.
+Jumpkinson-Jones has been a society leader ever since the "Journal"
+published the full-page Sunday story about her having gold fillings put
+in her Boston terrier's teeth. That was away back in 1913, just before
+she was allowed to get her divorce from Royal Tewksbury Johnson III of
+Paris, Newport, and New York. The day after the divorce she married her
+present husband, and up to last year, when the respective wives of a
+munitions millionaire and a moving-picture millionaire began to cut in
+on her, no one thought of denying her claim to be the most wasteful
+woman in Palm Beach.
+
+True, she may not come down to the beach to-day, but in that case it is
+obviously proper that her chairs--including those of her dog and her
+husband--remain magnificently vacant throughout the bathing hour.
+
+The lady is, however, likely to appear. She will be wearing one of the
+seventy hats which, we have learned by the papers, she brought with her,
+and a pint or so of her lesser pearls. Her dog--which is sometimes
+served beside her at table at the Beach Club, and whose diet is the same
+as her own, even to strawberries and cream followed by a demi
+tasse--will be in attendance; and her husband, whose diet is even
+richer, may also appear if he has recovered from his matutinal headache.
+Here she will sit through the hour, gossiping with her friends,
+watching the antics of several beautiful, dubious women, camp followers
+of the rich, who add undoubted interest to the place; calling languidly
+to her dog: "_Viens, Tou-tou! Viens vite!_" above all waiting patiently,
+with crossed knees, for news-service photographers to come and take her
+picture--a picture which, when we see it presently in "Vogue," "Vanity
+Fair," or a Sunday newspaper, will present indisputable proof that Mrs.
+H.S. Jumpkinson-Jones and the ladies sitting near her (also with legs
+crossed) refrained from wearing bathing suits neither through excessive
+modesty nor for fear of revealing deformity of limb.
+
+Many a Mrs. H.S. Jumpkinson-Jones has beaten her way to glory by the
+Palm Beach route. Many of the names which sound vaguely familiar when
+you read them in connection with the story of a jewel robbery, in lists
+of "those present," or in an insinuating paragraph in the tattered copy
+of "Town Topics" which you pick up, in lieu of reading matter, from the
+table in your dentist's waiting room, first broke into the paradise of
+the society column by way of this resort. For a woman with money and the
+press-agent type of mind it is not a difficult thing to accomplish. One
+must think of sensational things to do--invent a new fad in dress, or
+send one's dog riding each day in a special wheel chair, or bring down
+one's own private dancing instructor or golf instructor at $5,000 for
+the season. Above all, one must be nice to the correspondents of
+newspapers. Never must one forget to do that. Never must one imagine
+oneself so securely placed in society columns that one may forget the
+reporters who gave one that place.
+
+One lady who, for several seasons, figured extensively in the news from
+Palm Beach, fell into this error. She thought herself safe, and altered
+her manner toward newspaper folk. But, alas! thereupon they altered
+their manner toward her. The press clippings sent by the bureau to which
+she subscribed became fewer and fewer. Her sensational feats went
+unnoticed. At last came a ball--one of the three big balls of the
+season; a New York paper printed a list of names of persons who went to
+the ball; a column of names in very small type. Lying in bed a few
+mornings later she read through the names and came to the end without
+finding her own. Thinking that she must have skipped it, she read the
+names over again with great care. Then she sent for her husband, and he
+read them. When it was clear to them both that her name was actually not
+there, it is said she went into hysterics. At all events, her husband
+came down in a rage and complained to the hotel management. But what
+could the management do? What can they do? The woman is doomed. The Palm
+Beach correspondents who "made" her have been snubbed by her and have
+unanimously declared "thumbs down." It is theirs to give, but let no
+climber be unmindful of the fact that it is also theirs to take away!
+
+As Mrs. H.S. Jumpkinson-Jones looks over the top of her harem veil she
+may see a great glistening steam yacht, with rakish masts and funnel,
+lying off the pier-head; and down on the sand she may see the young
+master and mistress of that yacht: a modest, attractive pair, possessors
+of one of the world's great fortunes, yet not nearly so elaborately
+dressed, nor so insistent upon their "position," as the
+Jumpkinson-Joneses. By raising the brim of her hat a trifle Mrs. H.S.
+Jumpkinson-Jones may see, sweeping in glorious circles above the yacht,
+the hydroplane which, when it left the edge of the beach a few minutes
+since, blew back with its propeller a stinging storm of sand, and caused
+skirts to snap like flags in a hundred-mile-an-hour hurricane; and in
+that hydroplane she knows there is another multimillionaire.
+
+Near by, sitting disconsolately upon the sand, are the one-horse
+Middle-Western millionaire with his wife and daughter--the three who
+were ousted from her seats by the beach-chair man. Mrs. H.S.
+Jumpkinson-Jones, like every one who has spent a season, let alone half
+a dozen seasons, at Palm Beach, immediately recognizes the type.
+
+Father is the leading merchant of his town; mother the social arbiter;
+daughter the regnant belle. Father definitely didn't wish to come here,
+nor was mother anxious to, but daughter made them. Often she has read
+the lists of prominent arrivals at Palm Beach and seen alluring pictures
+of them taken on the sand. She has dreamed of the place, and in her
+dreams has seemed to hear the call of Destiny. Who knows? may it not be
+at Palm Beach that she will meet _him_?--the beautiful and wealthy
+scion of a noble house who (so the fortune teller at the Elks' Club
+bazaar told her) will rescue her from the narrow life at home, and
+transport her, as his bride, into a world of wonder and delight, and
+footmen in knee-breeches. Daughter insisted on Palm Beach. So mother got
+a lot of pretty clothes for daughter, and father purchased several yards
+of green and yellow railroad tickets, and off they went. They arrived at
+Palm Beach. They walked the miles of green carpeted corridor. They were
+dazed--as every one must be who sees them for the first time--at the
+stunning size of the hotels. They looked upon the endless promenade of
+other visitors. They went to the beach at bathing hour, to the cocoanut
+grove at the time for tea and dancing, in wheel chairs through the
+jungle trail and _Reve d'Ete_, to the waiters' cake walk in the
+Poinciana dining room, to the concert at the Breakers, to the palm room,
+and to the sea by moonlight; everywhere they went they saw people,
+people, people: richly dressed people, gay people, people who knew
+quantities of other people; yet among them all was not one single being
+that they had ever seen before. After several days of this, father met a
+man he knew--a business friend from Akron. A precious lot of good that
+did! Why didn't father know the two young men who sat last night at the
+next table in the dining room? Even those two would have done just now.
+Clearly they had been mad to know her too, for they were likewise
+feeling desolate. Perhaps mother can get father to scrape up an
+acquaintance with them. But alas, before this plan can be set in motion,
+the two young men have formed their own conclusions as to what Palm
+Beach is like when you do not know anybody in the place. They have
+departed. Next day, when mother enters daughter's room to say good
+night, she finds her weeping; and next day, to father's infinite relief,
+they start for home. So it has gone with many a bush-league belle.
+
+Even the Mrs. Jumpkinson-Joneses, satiated though they be with private
+cars, press notices, and Palm Beach, can hardly fail to be sensible to
+the almost delirious beauty of the scene at bathing hour.
+
+Nowhere is the sand more like a deep, warm dust of yellow gold; nowhere
+is there a margin of the earth so splashed with spots of brilliant
+color: sweaters, parasols, bathing suits, canvas shelters--blue, green,
+purple, pink, yellow, orange, scarlet--vibrating together in the sharp
+sunlight like brush marks on a high-keyed canvas by Sorolla; nowhere has
+flesh such living, glittering beauty as the flesh of long, white, lovely
+arms which flash out, cold and dripping, from the sea; nowhere does
+water appear less like water, more like a flowing waste of liquid
+emeralds and sapphires, held perpetually in cool solution and edged with
+a thousand gleaming, flouncing strings of pearls.
+
+Over the beach lies a layer of people, formed in groups, some of them
+costumed for the water, some for the shore; some of them known to the
+great lady, many of them unknown to her. The groups are forever
+shifting as their members rise and run down to the sea, or come back
+shiny and dripping, to fling themselves again upon the warm sand, roll
+in it, or stretch out in lazy comfort while their friends shovel it over
+them with their hands. Now one group, or another, will rise and form a
+grinning row while a snap-shot is taken; now they recline again; now
+they scamper down to see the hydroplane come in; now they return, drop
+to the sand, and idly watch women bathers tripping past them toward the
+water. Here comes a girl in silken knickerbockers, with cuffs buttoning
+over her stockings like the cuffs of riding breeches. Heads turn
+simultaneously as she goes by. Here is a tomboy in a jockey cap; here
+two women wearing over their bathing suits brilliant colored satin wraps
+which flutter revealingly in the warm, fresh fragrant breeze. And now
+comes the slender, aristocratic, foreign-looking beauty who wears
+high-heeled slippers with her bathing costume, and steps gracefully to
+the water's edge under the shade of a bright colored Japanese parasol.
+It seems that every one must now be on the beach. But no! Here come the
+three most wonderful of all: the three most watched, most talked about,
+most spoiled, most coveted young women at Palm Beach. Their bathing
+suits are charming: very short, high waisted, and cut at the top like
+Empire evening gowns, showing lovely arms and shoulders. Hovering about
+them, like flies about a box of sweets, yet also with something of the
+jealous guardianship of watchdogs, is their usual escort of young
+men--for though they know none of the fashionable women, their beauty
+gives them a power of wide selection as to masculine society.
+
+One is a show girl, famous in the way such girls become famous in a New
+York season, vastly prosperous (if one may judge by appearances), yet
+with a prosperity founded upon the capitalization of youth and amazing
+loveliness of person. The other two, less advertised, but hardly less
+striking in appearance, have been nicknamed, for the convenience of the
+gossips, "The Queen of Sheba," and "The Queen of the May." They too
+suggest, somehow, association with the trivial stage, but it is said
+that one of them--the slender wonderfully rounded one--has never had the
+footlights in her face, but has been (in some respects, at least), a
+model.
+
+Like the climbers, like the bush league belle, these girls, we judge,
+brought definite ambitions with them to Palm Beach. Partly, no doubt,
+they came for pleasure, but also one hears stories of successful
+ventures made by men, on their behalf, at Beach Club tables, and of
+costly rings and brooches which they now possess, although they did not
+bring them with them. But after all, the sources from which come their
+jeweled trinkets may only be surmised, whereas, to the success of their
+desire for fun, the eyes and ears of the entire smiling beach bear
+witness. Watch them as they clasp hands and run down to the water's
+edge; see them prancing playfully where the waves die on the sand, while
+devoted swains launch the floating mattress upon which it is their
+custom to bask so picturesquely; see them now as they rush into the
+green waves and mount the softly rocking thing; observe the gleam of
+their white arms as, idly, they splash and paddle; note the languid
+grace of their recumbence: chins on hands, heels waving lazily in air;
+hear them squeal in inharmonious unison, as a young member of the
+"Browning Club," makes as though to splatter them, or mischievously
+threatens to overturn their unwieldy couchlike craft. Free from the
+restriction of ideas about "society," about the "tradition" of Palm
+Beach, about "convention," they seem to detect no difference between
+this resort and certain summer beaches, more familiar to them, and at
+the same time more used to boisterousness and cachinnation. They go
+everywhere, these girls. You will see them having big cocktails, in a
+little while, on the porch of the Breakers; you will see them having
+tea, and dancing under the dry rustling palm fronds of the cocoanut
+grove, when the colored electric lights begin to glow in the luminous
+semi-tropical twilight; and you will see them, resplendent, at the Beach
+Club, dining, or playing at the green-topped tables.
+
+The Beach Club has been for some time, I suppose, the last redoubt held
+in this country by the forces of open, or semi-open gambling. Every now
+and then one hears a rumor that it is to be stormed and taken by the
+hosts of legislative piety, yet on it goes, upon its gilded way--a
+place, it should be said, of orderly, spectacular distinction. The Beach
+Club occupies a plain white house, low-spreading and unpretentious, but
+fitted most agreeably within, and boasting a superb cuisine. Not every
+one is admitted. Members have cards, and must be vouched for, formally,
+by persons known to those who operate the place. Many of the quiet
+pleasant people who, leading their own lives regardless of the splurging
+going on about them, form the background of Palm Beach life--much as
+"walking ladies and gentlemen" form the crowd in a spectacular
+theatrical production--have never seen the inside of the Beach Club; and
+I have little doubt that many visitors who drop in at Palm Beach for a
+few days never so much as hear of it. It is not run for them, nor for
+the "piker," nor for the needy clerk, but for the furious spenders.
+
+Let us therefore view the Beach Club only as an interesting adjunct to
+Palm Beach life, and let us admit that, as such, it is altogether in the
+picture. Let us, in short, seek, upon this brief excursion, not only to
+recover from our case of grippe, but to recover also that sense of the
+purely esthetic, without regard to moral issues, which we used to enjoy
+some years ago, before our legislatures legislated virtue into us. Let
+us soar, upon the wings of our checkbook, in one final flight to the
+realms of unalloyed beauty. Let us, in considering this most
+extravagantly passionate and passionately extravagant of American
+resorts, be great artists, who are above morals. Let us refuse
+pointblank to consider morals at all. For by so doing we may avoid
+giving ourselves away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The season wanes. Crowds on the beach grow thinner. Millionaires begin
+to move their private cars from Palm Beach sidings, and depart for other
+fashionable places farther north. Croupiers at the Beach Club stand idle
+for an hour at a time, though ready to spin the wheel, invitingly, for
+any one who saunters in. The shops hold cut-price sales. And we,
+regarding somewhat sadly our white trousers, perceive that there does
+not remain a single spotless pair. The girl in Mr. Foster's fruit store
+has more leisure, now, and smiles agreeably as we pass upon our way to
+the hotel dining-room. The waiter, likewise, is not pressed for time.
+
+"They was seven-hunduhd an' twe've folks heah yestahday," he says. "On'y
+six-fohty-three to-day. Ah reckon they a-goin' t' close the Breakuhs day
+aftuh t'-mo'w."
+
+Still the flowers bloom; still the place is beautiful; still the weather
+is not uncomfortably warm. Nevertheless the season dies. And so it comes
+about that we depart.
+
+The ride through Florida is tedious. The miles of palmettoes, with
+leaves glittering like racks of bared cutlasses in the sun, the miles of
+dark swamp, in which the cypresses seem to wade like dismal club-footed
+men, the miles of live-oak strung with their sad tattered curtains of
+Spanish moss, the miles of sandy waste, of pineapple and orange groves,
+of pines with feathery palm-like tops, above all the sifting of fine
+Florida dust, which covers everything inside the car as with a coat of
+flour--these make you wish that you were North again.
+
+The train stops at a station. You get off to walk upon the platform. The
+row of hackmen and hotel porters stand there, in gloomy silent defiance
+of the rapidly approaching end of things, each holding a sign bearing
+the name of some hotel. In another week the railway company may, if it
+wishes, lift the ban on shouting hotel runners. Let them shout. There
+will be nobody to hear.
+
+You buy a newspaper.
+
+Ah! What is this? "Great Blizzard in New York--Trains Late--Wires Down."
+
+You know what New York blizzards are. You picture the scenes being
+enacted there to-day. You see the icy streets with horses falling down.
+You see cyclonic clouds of snow whirl savagely around the corners of
+high buildings, pelting the homegoing hoards, whirling them about,
+throwing women down upon street crossings. You have a vision of the
+muddy, slushy subway steps, and slimy platforms, packed with people,
+their clothing caked with wet white spangles. You see them wedged, cross
+and damp, into the trains, and hear them coughing into one another's
+necks. You see emaciated tramps, pausing to gaze wanly into bakery
+windows: men without overcoats, their collars turned up, their hands
+deep in the pockets of their trousers, their heads bent against the
+storm; you see them walk on to keep from freezing. You remember Roscoe
+Conkling. That sort of thing can happen in a New York blizzard! Little
+tattered newsboys, thinly clad, will die to-night upon cold corners.
+Poor widows, lacking money to buy coal, are shuddering even now in
+squalid tenements, and covering their wailing little ones with shoddy
+blankets.
+
+"Horrible!" you say, sighing upon the balmy air. Then, with the sweetly
+resigned philosophy of Palm Beach, you add:
+
+"Oh, well, what does it matter? _I'm_ in Florida anyhow. After all it is
+a pretty good old world!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV
+
+ASSORTED AND RESORTED FLORIDA
+
+    "Some year or more ago, I s'pose,
+      I roamed from Maine to Floridy,
+    And,--see where them Palmettoes grows?
+      I bought that little key...."
+
+    --SIDNEY LANIER ("A FLORIDA GHOST.")
+
+
+Florida in winter comes near to being all things to all men. To all she
+offers amusement plus her climate, and in no one section is the contrast
+in what amusement constitutes, and costs, set forth more sharply than
+where, on the west coast of the State, Belleair and St. Petersburg are
+situated, side by side.
+
+The Hotel Belleview at Belleair compares favorably with any in the
+State, and is peopled, during the cold months, with affluent golf
+maniacs, for whom two fine courses have been laid out.
+
+When the pipes supplying water for the greens of his home course, at
+Brook, Indiana, freeze, annually, George Ade, for instance, knows that,
+instead of hibernating, it is time for him to take his white flannel
+suits, hang them on the clothesline in the back yard until the fragrance
+of the moth-ball has departed, pack them in his wardrobe trunk, and take
+his winter flight to the Belleview. He knows that, at the Belleview, he
+will meet hundreds of men and women who are suffering from the malady
+with which he is afflicted.
+
+The conversation at Belleair is, so far as my companion and I could
+learn, confined entirely to comparisons between different courses,
+different kinds of clubs and balls, and different scores. Belleair turns
+up its nose at Palm Beach. It considers the game of golf as played at
+Palm Beach a trifling game, and it feels that the winter population of
+Palm Beach wastes a lot of time talking about clothes and the stock
+market when it might be discussing cleeks, midirons, and mashies. The
+woman who thinks it essential to be blond whether she is blond or not,
+and who regards Forty-second Street as the axle upon which the universe
+turns, would be likely to die of ennui in a week at Belleair, whereas,
+in Palm Beach, if she died in that time, it would probably be of
+delight--with a possibility of alcoholism as a contributing cause. And
+likewise, though Belleair has plutocrats in abundance, they are not
+starred for their wealth, as are the Palm Beach millionaires, nor yet
+for their social position, but are rated strictly according to their
+club handicap. Hence it happens that if, speaking of a Palm Beach
+millionaire, you ask: "How did he make it?" you will be told the story
+of some combine of trusts, some political grafting, or some widely
+advertised patent medicine; but if you ask in Belleair: "How did he make
+it?" the answer is likely to be: "He made it in 4, with a cleek."
+
+Consider on the other hand, St. Petersburg, with its cheap hotels, its
+boarding houses, its lunch rooms and cafeterias, and its winter
+population of farmers and their wives from the North. The people you see
+in St. Petersburg are identical with those you might see on market day
+in a county town of Ohio or Indiana. Several thousands of them come
+annually from several dozen States, and many a family of them lives
+through the winter comfortably on less than some other families spend at
+Belleair in a week, or at Palm Beach in a day.
+
+If I am any judge of the signs of happiness, there is plenty of it in
+the hearts of those who winter at St. Petersburg. The city park is full
+of contented people, most of them middle-aged or old. The women listen
+to the band, and the men play checkers under the palmetto-thatched
+shelter, or toss horseshoes on the greensward, at the sign of the
+Sunshine Pleasure Club--an occupation which is St. Petersburg's
+equivalent for Palm Beach's game of tossing chips on the green-topped
+tables of a gambling house. And yet--
+
+Is it always pleasant to be virtuous? Is it always delightful to be
+where pious people, naive people, people who love simple pastimes, are
+enjoying themselves? I am reminded of a talk I had with a negro whose
+strong legs turned the pedals of a wheel chair in which my companion and
+I rode one day through the Palm Beach jungle trail. It is a wonderful
+place, that jungle, with its tangled trunks and vines and its green
+foliage swimming in sifted sunlight; with its palms, palmettoes, ferns,
+and climbing morning-glories, its banana trees, gnarled rubber banyans,
+and wild mangoes--which are like trees growing upside down, digging
+their spreading branches into the ground. For a time we forgot the
+pedaling negro behind us, but a faint puffing sound on a slight up-grade
+reminded us, presently, that our party was not of two, but three. When
+the chair was running free again, one of us inquired of the chairman:
+
+"What would you do if you had a million dollars?"
+
+"Well, boss," replied the negro seriously, "Ah knows one thing Ah'd do.
+No mattuh how much o' dis worl's goods Ah haid, Ah'd allus get mah
+exuhcize."
+
+"That's wise," my companion replied. "What kind of exercise would you
+take?"
+
+"Ah ain't nevvuh jest stedied dat out, boss," returned the man. "But it
+sho' would be some kind o' exuhcize besides pushin' one o' dese-heah
+chaihs."
+
+"When you weren't exercising would you go and have a good time?"
+
+"No, boss."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Well, boss, y' see Ah's a 'ligious man, Ah is."
+
+"But can't people who are religious have a good time?"
+
+"Oh," said the negro, "dey might have deh little pleasuhs now an' den,
+but dey cain't hev no sich good times like othah folks kin. A man 't 's
+a 'ligious man, he cain't hev no sich good times like Mistuh
+Wahtuhbe'y's an' dem folks 'at was heah up to laist week. Ah was Mistuh
+Wahtuhbe'y's chaih boy. He gimme ninety-two dollahs an' fifty cents
+tips one week! Yassuh! Dat might be _cha'ity_ but 't ain't 'ligion.
+Mistuh Dodge, his chaih boy's been a-wohkin' foh 'im six weeks. I 'spec'
+Mistuh Dodge give dat boy fahve hund'ud dollahs if he give 'im a cent!
+Mistuh Wahtuhbe'y's pahty, dey haid nineteen chaihs waitin' on 'em all
+de time, jest foh t' drive 'em f'om de _ho-_tel to de club, an' de
+casino. Dat cos' 'em nineteen hund'ud dollahs a week, and de boys, dey
+ain't one o'em 'at git less'n hund'ud dolluhs fo' hisself. Dat's de kin'
+o' gen'men Mistuh Wahtuhbe'y an' his pahty is. Ah's haid sev'ul gen'men
+dis season dat ain't what you'd jes' say, 'ligious, but dey was, as
+folks calls it, p'ofuse. Dey was one ol' gen'man heah two weeks, an' deh
+was a young lady what he haid a attachment on, an' evvy evenin' 'e use'
+t' take huh foh a wheel-chaih ride in de moonlight. Fuhst night Ah took
+'em out he tuhn to me, an' he says: 'Look-a-heah, boy! You sho you knows
+youah duties?'
+
+"'Yassuh, boss,' Ah tell 'im. 'Deed Ah does!'
+
+"'Den what is youah duties den?' sez 'e.
+
+"Ah say: 'Boss, de chaih boy's duties, dey's to be dumb, an' deef, an'
+blin', an' dey cain't see nothin', an' dey cain't say nothin', an' dey
+cain't heah nothin', and dey cain't--'
+
+"'Dass 'nuff,' he say. 'Ah sees you knows youah business. Heah's fiffy
+dollahs.'"
+
+"Well," one of us asked presently, "what happened?"
+
+"Ah took 'em ridin' through de jungle trail, boss," he returned,
+innocently.
+
+"What did they do?"
+
+"How does Ah know, boss? Di'n' Ah have ma eyes covuhed wi' dat fiffy
+dollahs? Di'n' Ah have ma eahs stuff' wid it? Yassuh! An' Ah got ma
+_mouf_ full o' it _yit_!"
+
+The chair boys, bell boys, waiters, barbers, porters, bartenders,
+waitresses, chambermaids, manicures, and shop attendants one finds in
+Palm Beach, Belleair, Miami, and many other winter resorts, are,
+numerically, a not inconsiderable part of the season's population, and
+the lives of these people who form a background of service, of which
+many an affluent visitor is hardly conscious, parallel the lives of the
+rich in a manner that is not without a note of caricature.
+
+When the rich go South so do the hordes that serve them; when the
+Florida season begins to close and the rich move northward, the serving
+population likewise begins to melt away; if you are in Palm Beach near
+the season's end, and move up to St. Augustine, or Jacksonville, or
+Augusta, or any one of a dozen other places, you are likely to
+recognize, here and there, a waiter, a bell-boy, or a chambermaid whom
+you tipped, some weeks earlier, preparatory to leaving a latitude
+several degrees nearer the Equator. When you leave the Poinciana or the
+Breakers at the season's close, your waiter may, for all you know, be in
+the Jim Crow car, ahead, and when you go in to dinner at the Ponce de
+Leon at St. Augustine, or the Mason at Jacksonville, you may discover
+that he too has stopped off there for a few days, to gather in the
+final tips. Nor must you fancy, when you depart for the North, that you
+have seen the last of him. Next summer when you take a boat up the
+Hudson, or go to Boston by the Fall River Line, or drop in at a hotel at
+Saratoga, there he will be, like an old friend. The bartender who mixes
+you a pick-me-up on the morning that you leave the Breakers, will be
+ready to start you on the downward path, at the beginning of the summer,
+at some Northern country club; the barber who cuts your hair at the
+Royal Palm in Miami will be ready to perform a like service, later on,
+at some hotel in the Adirondacks or the White Mountains; the neat
+waitress who serves you at the Belleview at Belleair will appear before
+you three or four months hence at the Griswold near New London; the
+adept waiter from the Beach Club at Palm Beach will seem to you to look
+like some one you have seen before when, presently, he places viands
+before you at Sherry's, or the Ritz, or some fashionable restaurant in
+London or Paris. Likewise, when you enter the barber shop of a large
+hostelry just off the board walk in Atlantic City, next July, you will
+find there, in the same generously ventilated shirt waist, the
+manicurist who caused your nails to glisten so superbly in the Florida
+sunlight; and if she has the memory for faces which is no small part of
+a successful manicurist's stock in trade, she will remember you, and
+where she saw you last, and will tell you just which of the young women
+from "The Follies" and the Century Theater are to be seen upon the
+beach that day, and whether they are wearing, here on the Jersey coast,
+those same surprising bathing suits which, last February, caused blase
+gentlemen basking upon the Florida sands to sit up, arise, say it was
+time for one last dip before luncheon, and then, without seeming too
+deliberate about it, follow the amazing nymphs in the direction of a
+matchless sea--that sea which, as a background for these Broadway girls
+in their long silken hosiery, takes on a tone of spectacular unreality,
+like some fantastic marine back drop devised by Mr. Dillingham or Mr.
+Ziegfeld.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV
+
+A DAY IN MONTGOMERY
+
+    I have walk'd in Alabama
+      My morning walk....
+
+    --WALT WHITMAN.
+
+
+As I have remarked before, it is a long haul from the peninsula of
+Florida to New Orleans. There are two ways to go. The route by way of
+Pensacola, following the Gulf Coast, looks shorter on the map but is, I
+believe, in point of time consumed, the longer way. My companion and I
+were advised to go by way of Montgomery, Alabama--a long way around it
+looked--where we were to change trains, catching a New Orleans-bound
+express from the North.
+
+It was nearly midnight when, after a long tiresome journey, we arrived
+in Alabama's capital, and after midnight when we reached the comfortable
+if curiously called Hotel Gay-Teague, which is not named for an Indian
+chief or a kissing game, but for two men who had to do with building it.
+
+We had heard that Montgomery was a quiet, sleepy old town, and had
+expected to go immediately to bed on our arrival. What then was our
+amazement at hearing, echoing through the wide street in front of the
+hotel, the sound of strident ragtime. Investigation disclosed a gaudily
+striped tent of considerable size set up in the street and illuminated
+by those flaring naphtha lamps they use in circuses. Going over to the
+tent, we learned that there was dancing within, whereupon we paid our
+fifteen cents apiece and entered. I have forgotten what produced the
+music--it may have been a mechanical piano or a hurdy-gurdy--but there
+was music, and it was loud, and there was a platform laid over the
+cobble-stones of the street, and on that platform ten or more couples
+were "ragging," their shoulders working like the walking beams of
+side-wheelers. The men were of that nondescript type one would expect to
+see in a fifteen-cent dancing place, but the women were of curious
+appearance, for all were dressed alike, the costume being a fringed
+khaki suit with knee-length skirt, a bandana at the neck, and a
+sombrero. On inquiry I learned that this was called a "cowgirl" costume.
+The dances were very brief, and in the intervals between them most of
+the dancers went to a "bar" at the end of the tent where (Alabama being
+a dry State) the beverage called "coca-cola"--a habit as much as a
+drink--was being served in whisky glasses.
+
+Unable to understand why this pageant of supposed western mining-camp
+life should confront us in the streets of Alabama's capital, I made
+inquiry of an amiable policeman who was on duty in the tent, and learned
+that this was not a regular Montgomery institution, but one of the
+attractions of a street fair which had invaded the city--the main body
+of the fair being a block or two distant.
+
+These fairs, he said, travel about the country much as circuses do,
+making arrangements in advance with various organizations in different
+places to stand sponsor for them.
+
+Long after we were in our beds that night we were kept awake by the
+sound of ragtime from the tent across the way. I arose next morning with
+the feeling of one who has had insufficient sleep, and a glance at my
+companion, who was already at table when I reached the hotel dining
+room, informed me that he was suffering from a like complaint. I took my
+seat opposite him in silence, and he acknowledged my presence with a nod
+which he accomplished without looking up from his newspaper.
+
+After breakfast there arrived a pleasant gentleman who announced himself
+as secretary of one of the city's commercial organizations.
+
+"We have a motor here," said the secretary, "and will show you points of
+interest. Is there anything in particular you wish to see?"
+
+"I think," said my companion, "that it would be a good thing to see the
+street fair."
+
+"Oh, no," said the secretary earnestly. "You don't want to see that.
+There is nothing about it that is representative of Montgomery. It is
+just a traveling show such as you might run into anywhere."
+
+"Yes," I said, "but we never _have_ run into one before, and here it
+is."
+
+"I have said right along," declared the secretary, somberly, "that it
+was a great mistake to bring this fair here at all. I don't think you
+ought to pay any attention to it in your book. It will give people a
+wrong impression of our city."
+
+"Do you think it will, if I explain that it is just a traveling fair?"
+
+"Yes. Wait until you see what we have to show you. We want you to
+understand that Montgomery is a thriving metropolis, sir!"
+
+"What is there to see?"
+
+"Montgomery," he replied, "is known as 'The City of Sunshine.' It is
+rich in history. It has superior hotels, picturesque highways, good
+fishing and hunting, two golf courses, seven theaters, a number of
+tennis courts, and unsurpassed artesian water. It has free factory
+sites, the cheapest electric power rates in the United States, and is
+the best-lighted city in the country."
+
+"We have some pretty fair street lighting in New York," interjected my
+companion, who takes much pride in his home town.
+
+"I said '_one_ of the best lighted,'" replied the secretary.
+
+"What is the population?"
+
+"Montgomery," the other returned, "is typical of both the Old and the
+New South. Though it may be called a modern model city, its wealth of
+history and tradition are preserved with loving care by its myriad
+inhabitants."
+
+"How many inhabitants?"
+
+"Roses and other flowers are in bloom here throughout the year," said
+he. "Also there are six hundred miles of macadamized and picturesque
+highways in Montgomery County. Indeed, this region is a motorist's
+paradise."
+
+"How many people did you say?"
+
+"Montgomery," he answered, "is the trading center for a million
+prosperous souls."
+
+At this my companion, who had been reading up Montgomery in a guidebook,
+began to bristle with hidden knowledge.
+
+"You say there are a million people here?" he demanded.
+
+"Not right _here_," admitted the secretary.
+
+"Well, how many do you claim?"
+
+"Fifty-five thousand four hundred and ten."
+
+"Right _in_ the city?"
+
+"Well, in the trolley-car territory."
+
+"But in the city itself?" my companion insisted.
+
+The secretary was fairly cornered. "The 1910 census," he said, with a
+smile, "gave us about forty thousand."
+
+"Thirty-eight thousand one hundred and thirty-six," corrected my
+companion. He had not spent hours with the guidebook for nothing.
+
+When, presently, we got into the automobile, I gave another feeble
+chirp about the fair, but the secretary was adamant, so we yielded
+temporarily, and were whirled about the city.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Montgomery is a charming old town, not only by reason of the definite
+things it has to show, but also because of a general rich suggestion of
+old southern life.
+
+The day, by a fortunate chance, was Saturday, and everywhere we went we
+encountered negroes driving in from the country to market, in their
+rickety old wagons. On some wagons there would be four or five men and
+women, and here and there one would be playing a musical instrument and
+they would all be singing, while the creaking of the wagon came in with
+an orchestral quality which seemed grotesquely suitable. The mules, too,
+looked as though they ought to creak, and an inspection of the harness
+suggested that it was held together, not so much by the string and wire
+with which it was mended, as by the fingers of that especial Providence
+which watches over all kinds of absurd repairs made by negroes, and
+makes them hold for negroes, where they would not hold for white men.
+
+In an old buff-painted brick building standing on the corner of Commerce
+and Bibb Streets, the Confederate Government had its first offices, and
+from this building, if I mistake not, was sent the telegraphic order to
+fire on Fort Sumter. Another historical building is the dilapidated
+frame residence at the corner of Bibb and Lee Streets, which was the
+first "White House of the Confederacy." This building is now a boarding
+house, and is in a pathetic state of decay. But perhaps when Montgomery
+gets up the energy to build a fine tourist hotel, or when outside
+capital comes in and builds one, the old house will be furbished up to
+provide a "sight" for visitors.
+
+There are several reasons why Montgomery would be a good place for a
+large winter-resort hotel, and if I were a Montgomery "booster" I should
+give less thought to free factory sites than to building up the town as
+a winter stopping place for tourists. The town itself is picturesque and
+attractive; as to railroads it is well situated (albeit the claim that
+Montgomery is the "Gateway to Florida" strikes me as a little bit
+exaggerated); the climate is delightful, and the surrounding country is
+not only beautiful but fertile. Furthermore, there are already two golf
+clubs--one for Jews and one for Gentiles--and the links are reputed to
+be good.
+
+Unlike many southern cities of moderate size, Montgomery has well-paved
+streets, and the better residence streets, being wide, and lined with
+trees and pleasant houses, each in its own lawn, give a suggestion of an
+agreeable home and social life--a suggestion which, by implication at
+least, report substantiates: for it has been said that the chief
+industry of Montgomery is that of raising beautiful young women to make
+wives for the rich men of Birmingham.
+
+On such pleasant thoroughfares as South Perry Street, it may be noticed
+that many of the newer houses have taken their architectural inspiration
+from old ones, with the result that, though "originality" does not jump
+out at the passer-by, as it does on so many streets, North and South,
+which are lined with the heterogeneous homes of prosperous families,
+there is an agreeable architectural harmony over the town.
+
+This is not, of course, invariably true, but it is truer, I think, in
+Montgomery than in most other cities, and if Montgomery is defaced by
+the funny little settlement called Bungalow City, that settlement is, at
+least, upon the outskirts of the town. Bungalow City is without
+exception the queerest real-estate development I ever saw. It consists
+of several blocks of tiny houses, standing on tiny lots, the scale of
+everything being so small as to suggest a play village for children. The
+houses are, however, homes, and I was told that in some of them all
+sorts of curious space-saving devices are installed--as, for instance,
+tables and beds which can be folded into the walls. Not far from this
+little settlement is an old house which used to be the home of Tweed,
+New York's notorious political boss, who, it is said, used to spend much
+time here.
+
+The chief lion of the city is the old State House, which stands on a
+graceful eminence in a small well-kept park. Just as the New York State
+Capitol is probably the most shamefully expensive structure of the kind
+in the entire country, that of Alabama is, I fancy, the most creditably
+inexpensive. Building and grounds cost $335,000. Moreover, the Capitol
+of Alabama is a better-looking building than that of New York, for it is
+without gingerbread trimmings, and has about it the air of honest
+simplicity that an American State House ought to have. Of course it has
+a dome, and of course it has a columned portico, but both are plain, and
+there is a large clock, in a quaint box-like tower, over the peak of the
+portico, which contributes to the building a curious touch of
+individuality. At the center of the portico floor, under this clock, a
+brass plate marks the spot where Jefferson Davis stood when he delivered
+his inaugural address, February 18, 1861, and in the State Senate
+Chamber, within--a fine simple room with a gallery of peculiar
+grace--the Provisional Government of the Confederacy was organized. The
+flag of the Confederacy was, I believe, adopted in this room, and was
+first flung to the breeze from the Capitol building.
+
+It was past three in the afternoon when we left the State House, and we
+had had no luncheon.
+
+"Now," said my companion as we returned to the automobile, "I think we
+had better have something to eat, and then go to the fair."
+
+"But you were going to give up the fair," put in the secretary.
+
+"Oh, no," we said in chorus.
+
+"I have arranged about luncheon," he returned. "We will have it served
+at the hotel in a short time. But first there are some important sights
+I wish you to see."
+
+"Man shall not live by sights alone," objected my companion. "What are
+you going to show us?"
+
+"We have a beautiful woman's college."
+
+"That," said my companion, "is the one thing that could tempt me. How
+many beautiful women are there?"
+
+"It's not the women--it's the building," the secretary explained.
+
+"Then," said my companion firmly, "I think we'd better go and have our
+lunch."
+
+It seemed to me time to back him up in this demand. By dint of
+considerable insistence we persuaded our enthusiastic cicerone to drive
+to the hotel, where we found a table already set for us.
+
+"I want to tell you," said the secretary as we sat down, "about the
+agricultural progress this section has been making. Until recently our
+farmers raised nothing but cotton; they didn't even feed themselves, but
+lived largely on canned goods. But the boll weevil and the European War,
+affecting the cotton crop and the cotton market as they did, forced the
+farmers to wake up."
+
+The secretary talked interestingly on this subject for perhaps a quarter
+of an hour, during which time we waited for luncheon to be served.
+
+"You see," he said, "our climate is such that it is possible to rotate
+crops more than in most parts of the country. Cotton is now a surplus
+crop with us, and our farmers are raising cattle, vegetables, and food
+products."
+
+"Speaking of food products," said my companion, "I wonder if we could
+hurry up the lunch?"
+
+"It will be along in a little while," soothed the secretary. Then he
+returned to agriculture.
+
+Ten minutes more passed. I saw that my companion was becoming nervous.
+
+"I'm sorry to trouble you," he said at last, "but if we can't speed up
+this luncheon, I don't see how I can wait. You see, we are leaving town
+this evening, and I have an awful lot to do."
+
+"I'll step back and investigate," the secretary said, rising and moving
+toward the kitchen door.
+
+When he was out of hearing, my companion leaned toward me.
+
+"I suspect this fellow!" he said.
+
+"What of?"
+
+"I think he's delaying us on purpose. He's a nice chap, but it's his
+business to boost this town, and he's artful. He doesn't want us to see
+the street fair. That's why he's stalling like this!"
+
+Now, however, the secretary returned, followed by a waiter bearing soup.
+
+The soup was fine, but it was succeeded by another long interval, during
+which the secretary said some very, very beautiful things about the
+charm of Montgomery life. However, it was clear to me that my companion
+was not interested. After he had looked at his watch several times, and
+drummed a long tattoo upon the table, he arose, declaring:
+
+"I can't wait another minute."
+
+"Sit down, my dear fellow," said the secretary in his most genial tone.
+"I am having some special southern dishes prepared for you."
+
+"You're very kind," said my companion, "but I must get to work. It's
+half-past four now; we are leaving in a few hours. It will take me an
+hour to make my sketches, and the light will be failing pretty soon."
+
+"What are you going to sketch?" It seemed to me that there was
+suppressed emotion in the secretary's voice as he asked the question.
+
+"Why, the street fair."
+
+"Surely, you're not going to _draw_ it?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It's not representative of Montgomery. You ought to do something
+representative! What pictures have you made here?"
+
+"I made one of those negroes driving in to market," said my companion,
+"and one of the dancing cowgirls in the tent across the way--the ones
+who kept us awake last night."
+
+"My God!" cried the secretary, turning to me. "You intend to print such
+pictures and say that they represent the normal life of this city?"
+
+"No, I won't say anything about it."
+
+"But--" the secretary arose and looked wanly at the illustrator--"but
+you haven't drawn any of our pretty homes! You didn't draw the golf
+clubs--not either one of them! You didn't draw the State House, or the
+Confederate Monument, or the Insane Asylum, or anything!"
+
+"I haven't had time."
+
+"Well, you have time now! I tell you what: We'll let this luncheon go.
+I'll take you to the top of our tallest building, and you can draw a
+panoramic bird's-eye view of the entire city. That will be worth while."
+
+My companion reached out, helped himself to a French roll, and put it in
+his pocket.
+
+"No," he said. "I will not go to the top of a high building with you."
+
+"But why not?"
+
+"Because," he replied, "I am afraid you would try to push me off the
+roof to prevent my drawing the street fair."
+
+I do not remember that the secretary denied having harbored such a plan.
+At all events, he countermanded the remainder of the luncheon order and
+departed with us.
+
+At the entrance of an office building he made one final desperate
+appeal: "Just come up to the top floor and see the view!"
+
+But we stood firm, and he continued with us on our way.
+
+The fair was strung along both sides of a wide, cobbled street. It was
+really a very jolly fair, with the usual lot of barkers and the usual
+gaping crowd, plus many negroes, who stood fascinated before the highly
+colored canvas signs outside the tents, with their bizarre pictures of
+wild animals, snake charmers, "Nemo, the Malay Prince," and "The
+Cigarette Fiend," pictured as a ghastly emaciated object with a blue
+complexion, and billed as "Endorsed by the Anti-Cigarette League of
+America." I wished to inquire why an anti-cigarette league should
+indorse a cigarette fiend, but lack of time compelled us to press on,
+leaving the apparent paradox unsolved.
+
+As we progressed between the tents and the booths with their catchpenny
+"wheels of fortune," and ring-tossing enticements, the secretary
+maintained a protesting silence.
+
+Near the end of the block we stopped to listen to a particularly
+vociferous barker. I saw my companion take his pad from his pocket and
+place it under his arm, while he sharpened a pencil.
+
+"Come!" cried the secretary. "Come across the square and let me show you
+our beautiful bronze fountain. Draw that!"
+
+But my companion was already beginning to sketch. He was drawing the
+barker and the crowd.
+
+Meanwhile an expression of horror came into the secretary's face.
+Looking at him, I became conscience-stricken.
+
+"Come away," I said gently, taking him by the arm. "Don't watch him
+draw. He draws wonderfully, but Art for Art's sake doesn't appeal to
+you just now. The better he draws the worse it will make you feel. Let
+me get your mind off all this. Let me take you over to the autodrome,
+where we can see Mr. O.K. Hager and his beautiful sister, Miss Olive
+Hager, the 'Two Daredevil Motorcyclists, in the Thrilling Race against
+Death.' That will make you forget."
+
+"No," said the secretary, shaking his head with a despondency the very
+sight of which made me sad; "I have letters to sign at the office."
+
+"And we have taken up your whole day!"
+
+"It has been a pleasure," he said kindly. "There is only one thing that
+worries me. Those drawings are not going to represent what is typical of
+Montgomery life. Not in the least!"
+
+There arose in me a sudden desire to comfort him.
+
+"How would it be," I suggested, "if I were to print that statement in my
+book?"
+
+He looked at me in surprise.
+
+"But you couldn't very well do that, could you?"
+
+"Certainly," I replied.
+
+His face brightened. It was delightful to see the change come over him.
+
+"For that matter," I went on, "I might say even more. I could say that,
+while I admire my companion as a man, and as an artist, he lacks
+ingenuity in ordering breakfast. He always reads over the menu and then
+orders a baked apple and scrambled eggs and bacon. Would you like me to
+attack him on that line also?"
+
+"Oh, no," said the secretary. "Nothing of that kind. It's just about
+these pictures. They aren't representative. If you'll say that, I'll be
+more than satisfied."
+
+Presently we parted.
+
+"Don't forget!" he said as we shook hands in farewell.
+
+And I have not forgotten. Moreover, to give full measure, I am going to
+ask the printer to set the statement in italics:
+
+_The drawings accompanying this chapter are not representative of what
+is typical of Montgomery life._
+
+With this statement my companion is in full accord. He admits that he
+would have drawn the State House had there been no fair, to interfere.
+But, as with certain items on the breakfast bill, street fairs are a
+passion with him. And so they are with me.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI
+
+THE CITY OF THE CREOLE
+
+
+When a poet, a painter, or a sculptor wishes to personify a city, why
+does he invariably give it the feminine gender? Why is this so, even
+though the city be named for a man, or for a masculine saint? And why is
+it so in the case of commonplace cities, commercial cities, and ugly,
+sordid cities? It is not difficult to understand why a beautiful,
+sparkling city, like Washington or Paris, suggests a handsome woman,
+richly gowned and bedecked with jewels, but it is hard to understand why
+some other cities, far less pleasing, seem somehow to be stamped with
+the qualities of woman-nature rather than man-nature. Is it perhaps
+because the nature of all cities is so complicated? Is it because they
+are volatile, changeful, baffling? Or is it only that they are the
+mothers of great families of men?
+
+When I arrive in a strange city I feel as though I were making the
+acquaintance of a woman of whom I have often heard. I am curious about
+her. I am alert. I gaze at her eagerly, wondering if she is as I have
+imagined her. I try to read her expression while listening to her voice.
+I consider her raiment, noticing whether it is fine, whether it is good
+only in spots, and whether it is well put together. I inspect the
+important buildings, boulevards, parks, and monuments with which she is
+jeweled, and judge by them not only of her prosperity, but of her sense
+of beauty. Before long I have a distinct impression of her. Sometimes,
+as with a woman, this first impression has to be revised; sometimes not.
+Sometimes, on acquaintance, a single feature, or trait, becomes so
+important in my eyes that all else seems inconsequential. A noble spirit
+may cover physical defects; beauty may seem to compensate for weaknesses
+of character. The spell of a beautiful city which is bad resembles the
+spell of such a city's prototype among women.
+
+Some young growing cities are like young growing women of whom we think:
+"She is as yet unformed, but she will fill out and become more charming
+as she grows older." Or again we think: "She is somewhat dowdy and run
+down at the heels but she is ambitious, and is replenishing her wardrobe
+as she can afford it." One expects such failings in young cities, and
+readily forgives them where there is wholesome promise for the future.
+But where old cities become slovenly, the affair is different, for then
+it means physical decay, and physical decay should never come to a
+city--for a city is not only feminine, but should be immortal. The
+symbol for every city should be a goddess, forever in her prime.
+
+Among southern cities Richmond is the _grande dame_; she is gray and
+distinguished, and wears handsome old brocades and brooches. Richmond
+is aquiline and crisp and has much "manner." But though Charleston is
+actually the older, the wonderful beauty of the place, the softness of
+the ancient architectural lines, the sweet scents wafting from walled
+gardens, the warmth of color everywhere, gives the place that very
+quality of immortal youth and loveliness which is so rare in cities, and
+is so much to be desired. Charleston I might allegorize in the person of
+a young woman I met there. I was in the drawing-room of a fine old
+house; a beautifully proportioned room, paneled to the ceiling, hung
+with family portraits and other old paintings, and furnished with
+mahogany masterpieces a century and a half old. The girl lived in this
+house. She was not exactly pretty, nor was her figure beautiful in the
+usual sense; yet it was beautiful, all the same, with a sort of
+long-limbed, supple, aristocratic aliveness. Most of all there was about
+her a great fineness--the kind of fineness which seems to be the
+expression of generations of fineness. She was the granddaughter of a
+general in the Civil War, the great-granddaughter of an ambassador, the
+great-great-granddaughter of a Revolutionary hero, and though one could
+not but be thankful that she failed of striking resemblance to the
+portraits of these admirable ancestors, nevertheless it seemed to me
+that, had I not known definitely of their place in her family history, I
+might almost have sensed them hovering behind her: a background,
+nebulous and shadowy, out of which she had emerged.
+
+Memphis, upon the other hand, will always be to me a lively modern
+debutante. I vision her as dancing--dancing to Handy's ragtime
+music--all shoulders, neck, and arms, and tulle, and twenty-dollar satin
+slippers. Atlanta, too, is young, vivid, affluent, altogether modern;
+while as for Birmingham, she is pretty, but a little strident, a little
+overdressed; touched a little with the amiability, and the other
+qualities, of the _nouveau riche_.
+
+The beauty of New Orleans is of a different kind. She is a full-blown,
+black-eyed, dreamy, drawly creature, opulent of figure, white of skin,
+and red of lip. Like San Francisco she has Latin blood which makes her
+love and preserve the carnival spirit; but she is more voluptuous than
+San Francisco, for not only is she touched with the languor and the fire
+of her climate, but she is without the virile blood of the forty-niner,
+or the invigorating contact of the fresh Pacific wind. In my imaginary
+picture I see her yawning at eleven in the morning, when her negro maid
+brings black coffee to her bedside--such wonderful black
+coffee!--whereas, at that hour, I conceive San Francisco as having long
+been up and about her affairs. Even in the afternoon I fancy my New
+Orleans beauty as a little bit relaxed. But at dinner she becomes alive,
+and after dinner more alive, and by midnight she is like a flame.
+
+I must admit, however, that of late years New Orleans has developed a
+perfect case of dual personality, and that, as often happens where there
+is dual personality, one side of her nature seems altogether
+incompatible with the other. The very new New Orleans has no
+resemblance to the picture I have drawn; moreover, my picture is not her
+favorite likeness of herself. She prefers more recent ones--pictures
+showing the lines of determination which, within the last ten years have
+stamped themselves upon her features, as she has fought and overcome the
+defects of character which logically accompanied her peculiar,
+temperamental type of charm. I, upon the other hand, am like some lover
+who values most an older picture of the woman he adores. I admire her
+for building character, but it is by her languorous beauty that I am
+infatuated, and the portrait which most effectively displays that beauty
+is the one for which I care.
+
+Her very failings were so much a part of her that they made us the more
+sympathetic; she was too lovely to be greatly blamed for anything;
+gazing into her eyes, we hardly noticed that there was dust under the
+piano and in the corners; dining at her sumptuous table, we gave but
+little thought to the fact that the cellar was damp, the house none too
+healthy, and that there were mosquitoes and rats about the place; nor
+did it seem to matter, in face of her allurements, that she was
+shiftless, extravagant, improvident in the management of her affairs. If
+these things were brought to our attention, we excused them on the
+grounds of Latin blood and enervating climate.
+
+But if we excused her, she did not excuse herself. Without being shaken
+awake by an earthquake, or forced to action by a devastating fire or
+flood, she set to work, calmly and of her own volition, to reform her
+character.
+
+First she cleaned house, providing good surface drainage, an excellent
+filtered water supply from the river in place of her old
+mosquito-breeding cisterns, and modern sewers in place of cesspools. She
+killed rats by the hundreds of thousands, rat-proofed her buildings, and
+thus, at one stroke, eliminated all fear of bubonic plague. She began to
+take interest in the public schools, and soon trebled their advantages.
+She concerned herself with the revision of repressive tax laws. She
+secured one of the best street railway systems in the country. But,
+perhaps most striking of all, she set to work to build scientifically
+toward the realization of a gigantic dream. This dream embodies the
+resumption by New Orleans of her old place as second seaport city. To
+this end she is doing more than any other city to revive the commerce of
+the Mississippi River, and is at the same time making a strong bid for
+trade by way of the Panama Canal, as well as other sea traffic. She has
+restored her forty miles of water front to the people, has built
+municipal docks and warehouses at a cost of millions, and has so
+perfectly cooerdinated her river-rail-sea traffic-handling agencies that
+rates have been greatly reduced. Upon these, and related enterprises,
+upward of a hundred millions are being spent, and the vast plan is
+working out with such promise that one almost begins to fear lest New
+Orleans become too much enamored of her new-found materialism--lest the
+easy-going, pleasure-loving, fascinating Creole belle be transformed
+into the much-less-rare and much-less-desirable business type of woman:
+a woman whose letters, instead of being written in a fine French hand
+and scented with the faint fragrance of vertivert, are typewritten upon
+commercial paper; whose lips, instead of causing one to think of kisses,
+are laden with the deadly cant of commerce; whose skin, instead of
+seeming to be made of milk and rose leaves, is dappled with industrial
+soot.
+
+Lord Chesterfield in one of his letters to his son, intimated that
+beautiful women desire to be flattered upon their intelligence, while
+intelligent women who are not altogether ugly like to be told that they
+are beautiful. So with New Orleans. Speak of her individuality, her
+picturesqueness, her gift of laughter, and she will listen with polite
+ennui; but admire her commercial progress and she will hang upon your
+words. Gaiety and charm are so much a part of her that she not only
+takes them as a matter of course, but seems to doubt, sometimes, that
+they are virtues. She is like some unusual and fascinating woman who,
+instead of rejoicing because she is not like all other women, begins to
+wonder if she ought not to be like them. Perhaps she is wrong to be gay?
+Perhaps her carnival proves her frivolous? Perhaps she ought not to
+continue to hold a carnival each year?
+
+Far to the north of New Orleans the city of St. Paul was afflicted, some
+years since, by a similar agitation. It will be remembered that St.
+Paul used to build an ice palace each year. People used to go to see it
+as they go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Then came some believer in the
+standardization of cities, advancing the idea that ice palaces
+advertised St. Paul as a cold place. As a result they ceased to be
+built. St. Paul threw away something which drew attention to her and
+which gave her character. Moreover, I am told this mania went so far
+that when folders were issued for the purpose of advertising the region,
+they were designed to suggest the warmth and brilliance of the tropics.
+Had St. Paul a bad climate, instead of a peculiarly fine one, we might
+feel sympathetic tolerance for these performances, but a city which
+enjoys cool summers and dry, bracing winters has no apologies to make
+upon the score of climate, and only need apologize if she tries to make
+us think that bananas and cocoanuts grow on sugar-maple trees. However,
+in the last year or two, St. Paul has perceived the folly of her course,
+and has resumed her annual carnival.
+
+In the case of New Orleans I cannot believe there is real danger that
+the carnival will be given up. Instead, I believe that the business
+enthusiasts will be appeased--as they were a year or two ago, for the
+first time in carnival history--by the inclusion of an industrial
+pageant glorifying the city's commercial renaissance. Also the New
+Orleans newspapers soothe the spirit of the Association of Commerce, at
+carnival time, by publishing items presumably furnished by that capable
+organization, showing that business is going on as usual, that bank
+clearings have not diminished during the festivities, and that, despite
+the air of happiness that pervades the town, New Orleans is not really
+beginning to have such a good time as a stranger might suppose from
+superficial signs. With such concessions made to solemn visaged
+commerce, is the carnival continued.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are at least six cities on this continent which every one should
+see. Every one should see New York because it is the largest city in the
+world, and because it combines the magnificence, the wonder, the beauty,
+the sordidness, and the shame of a great metropolis; every one should
+see San Francisco because it is so vivid, so alive, so golden; every one
+should see Washington, the clean, white splendor of which is like the
+embodiment of a national dream; every one should see the old gray
+granite city of Quebec, piled on its hill above the river like some
+fortified town in France; every one should see the sweet and
+aristocratic city of Charleston, which suggests a museum of tradition
+and early American elegance; and of course every one should see New
+Orleans.
+
+As to whether it is best to see the city in everyday attire, or masked
+for the revels, that is a matter of taste, and perhaps of age as well.
+To any one who loves cities, New Orleans is always good to see, while to
+the lover of spectacles and fetes the carnival is also worth
+seeing--once. The two are, however, hardly to be seen to advantage
+simultaneously. To visit New Orleans in carnival time is like visiting
+some fine old historic mansion when it is all in a flurry over a
+fancy-dress ball. The furniture is moved, master, mistress and servants
+are excited, the cook is overworked and is perhaps complaining a little,
+and the brilliant costumes of the masquerade divert the eye of the
+visitor so that he hardly knows what sort of house he is in. Attend the
+ball if you like, but do not fail to revisit the house when normal
+conditions have been restored; see the festivities of Mardi Gras if you
+will, but do not fail to browse about old New Orleans and sit down at
+her famous tables when her chefs have time to do their best.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII
+
+HISTORY, THE CREOLE, AND HIS DUELS
+
+
+Canal Street is to New Orleans much more than Main Street is to Buffalo,
+much more than Broad Street is to Philadelphia, much more than Broadway
+and Fifth Avenue are to New York, for Canal Street divides New Orleans
+as no other street divides an American city. It divides New Orleans as
+the Seine divides Paris, and there is not more difference between the
+right bank of the Seine and the Latin Quarter than between American New
+Orleans and Creole New Orleans: between the newer part of the city and
+the _vieux carre_. The sixty squares ("islets" according to the Creole
+idiom, because each block was literally an islet in time of flood) which
+comprise the old French town established in 1718 by the Sieur de
+Bienville, are unlike the rest of the city not merely in architecture,
+but in all respects. The street names change at Canal Street, the
+highways become narrower as you enter the French quarter, and the
+pavements are made of huge stone blocks brought over long ago as ballast
+in sailing ships. Nor is the difference purely physical. For though they
+will tell you that this part of the city is not so French and Spanish as
+it used to be, that it has run down, that large parts of it have been
+given over to Italians of the lower class, and to negroes, it remains
+not only in appearance, but in custom, thought and character, the most
+perfectly foreign little tract of land in the whole United States. Long
+ago, under the French flag, it was a part of the Roman Catholic
+bishopric of Quebec; later under the Spanish flag, a part of that of
+Havana; and it is charming to trace in old buildings, names, and customs
+the signs of this blended French and Spanish ancestry.
+
+La Salle, searching out a supposed route to China by way of the
+Mississippi River, seems to have perceived what the New Orleans
+Association of Commerce perceives to-day: that the control of the mouth
+of the river ought to mean also the control of a vast part of the
+continent. At all events, he took possession in 1682 in the name of the
+French King, calling the river St. Louis and the country Louisiana. The
+latter name persisted, but La Salle himself later rechristened the
+river, giving it the name Colbert, thereby showing that in two attempts
+he could not find a name one tenth as good as that already provided by
+the savages. The "St. Louis River" might, from its name, be a fair-sized
+stream, but "Colbert" sounds like the name of a river about twenty miles
+long, forty feet wide at the mouth, and five feet deep at the very
+middle.
+
+La Salle intended to build a fort at a point sixty leagues above the
+mouth of the river, but his expedition met with disaster upon disaster,
+until at last he was assassinated in Texas, when setting out on foot to
+seek help from Canada. In 1699 came Iberville, the Canadian, exploring
+the river and fixing on the site for the future city. Iberville
+established settlements at old Biloxi (now Ocean Springs) and Mobile,
+but before he had time to make a town at New Orleans he caught yellow
+fever at Havana, and died there. It therefore remained for his brother,
+Bienville, actually to establish the town, and New Orleans is
+Bienville's city, just as Detroit is Cadillac's, and Cleveland General
+Moses Cleveland's.
+
+Bienville's settlers were hardy pioneers from Canada, and presently we
+find him writing to France: "Send me wives for my Canadians. They are
+running in the woods after Indian girls." The priests also urged that
+unless white wives could be sent out for the settlers, marriages with
+Indians be sanctioned.
+
+Having now a considerable investment in Louisiana, France felt that a
+request for wives for the colony was practical and legitimate. Louisiana
+must have population. A bonus of so much per head was offered for
+colonists, and hideous things ensued: servants, children, and helpless
+women were kidnapped, and the occupants of hospitals, asylums, and
+houses of correction were assembled and deported. Incidentally it will
+be remembered that out of these black deeds flowered "the first
+masterpiece of French literature which can properly be called a novel,"
+the Abbe Prevost's "Manon Lescaut," which has been dramatized and
+redramatized, and which is the theme of operas by both Massenet and
+Puccini. Though a grave alleged to be that of Manon used to be shown on
+the outskirts of the city, there is doubt that such a person actually
+existed, although those who wish to believe in a flesh-and-blood Manon
+may perhaps take encouragement from the fact that the arrival in the
+colony of a Chevalier des Grieux, in the year 1719, fourteen years
+before the book appeared, has been established, and, further, that the
+name of the Chevalier des Grieux may be seen upon a crumbling tomb in
+one of the river parishes.
+
+When the girls arrived they were on inspection in the daytime, but at
+night were carefully guarded by soldiers, in the house where they were
+quartered together. Miss Grace King, in her delightful book, "New
+Orleans, the Place and the People," tells us that in these times there
+were never enough girls to fill the demand for wives, and that in one
+instance two young bachelors proposed to fight over a very plain
+girl--the last one left out of a shipload--but that the commandant
+obliged them to settle their dispute by the more pacific means of
+drawing lots. As the place became settled Ursuline sisters arrived and
+established schools. And at last, a quarter of a century after the
+landing of the first shipment of girls, the curious history of female
+importations ended with the arrival of that famous band of sixty
+demoiselles of respectable family and "authenticated spotless
+reputation," who came to be taken as wives by only the more prosperous
+young colonists of the better class. The earlier, less reputable girls
+have come down to us by the name of "correction girls," but these later
+arrivals--each furnished by the Company of the West with a casket
+containing a trousseau--are known to this day as _les filles a la
+cassette_, or "casket girls."
+
+A curious feature of this bit of history, as it applies to present-day
+New Orleans, is that though one hears of many families that claim
+descent from some nice, well-behaved "casket girl," one never by any
+chance hears of a family claiming to be descended from a lady of the
+other stock. When it is considered that the "correction girls" far
+outnumbered their virtuous sisters of the casket, and ought, therefore,
+by the law of averages, to have left a greater progeny, the matter
+becomes stranger still, taking on a scientific interest. The explanation
+must, however, be left to some mind more astute than mine--some mind
+capable, perhaps, of unraveling also those other riddles of New Orleans
+namely: Who was the mysterious chevalier who many years ago invented
+that most delectable of _sucreries_, the praline, and whither did he
+vanish? And how, although the refugee Duc d'Orleans (later Louis
+Philippe of France) stayed but a short time in New Orleans, did he
+manage to sleep in so many hundred beds, and in houses which were not
+built until long after his departure? And why are so many of the signs,
+over bars, restaurants, and shops, of that blue and white enamel one
+associates with the signs of the Western Union Telegraph Company? And
+why is the nickel as characteristic of New Orleans as is the silver
+dollar of the farther Middle West, and gold coin of the Pacific
+Slope--why, when one pays for a ten-cent purchase with a half-dollar,
+does one receive eight nickels in change? Ah, but New Orleans is a
+mysterious city!
+
+Once, when the French and English were fighting for the possession of
+Canada and New Orleans was depending for protection on Swiss
+mercenaries, the French officer in command of these troops disciplined
+them by stripping them and tying them to trees, where they were a prey
+to the terrible mosquitoes of the Gulf. One day they killed him and
+fled, but some of them were captured. These were taken back to New
+Orleans, court-martialed, and punished according to the regulations:
+they were nailed alive to their coffins and sawed in two.
+
+Ceded to Spain by a secret clause in the Treaty of Paris, of which she
+did not know until 1764, Louisiana could not believe the news. Even when
+the Acadians, appeared, after having been so cruelly ejected from their
+lands in what is now New Brunswick, Louisiana could not believe that
+Louis XV would coldly cast off his loyal colony. The fact that he had
+done so was not credited until a Spanish governor arrived. For three
+years after, there was confusion. Then a strong force was sent from
+Spain under Count O'Reilly, a man of Irish birth, but Spanish
+allegiance, and the flag of Spain was raised. O'Reilly maintained
+viceregal splendor; he invited leading citizens to a levee; here in his
+own house he caused his soldiers to seize the group of prominent men who
+had attempted to prevent the accomplishment of Spanish rule, and five
+of these he presently caused to be shot as rebels.
+
+Spanish governors came and went. The people settled down. At one time
+Padre Antonio de Sedella, a Spanish Capuchin, arrived with a commission
+to establish in the city the Holy office of the Inquisition, but he was
+discouraged and shipped back to Cadiz. Miss King tells us that when,
+half a century later, the calaboose was demolished, secret dungeons
+containing instruments of torture were discovered.
+
+On Good Friday, 1788, fire broke out, and as the priests refused to let
+the bells be rung in warning, saying that all bells must be dumb on Good
+Friday, the conflagration gained such headway that it could not be
+checked, and a large part of the old French town was reduced to ashes.
+Six years later another fire equally destructive, completed the work of
+blotting out the French town, and the old New Orleans we now know is the
+Spanish city which arose in its place: a city not of wood but of adobe
+or brick, stuccoed and tinted, of arcaded walks, galleries, jalousies,
+ponderous doors, and inner courts with carriage entrances from the
+street, and, behind, the most charming and secluded gardens. Also, owing
+to premiums offered by Baron Carondelet, the governor, tile roofs came
+into vogue, so that the city became comparatively fireproof. Much of the
+present-day charm of the old city is due also to the noble Andalusian,
+Don Andreas Almonaster y Roxas, who having immigrated and made a great
+fortune in the city, became its benefactor, building schools and other
+public institutions, the picturesque old Cabildo, or town hall, which is
+now a most fascinating museum, the cathedral, which adjoins the Cabildo,
+and which, like it, faces Jackson Square, formerly the Place d'Armes. In
+front of the altar of his cathedral Don Andreas is buried, and masses
+are said, in perpetuity, for his soul. When the Don's young widow
+remarried, she and her husband were pursued by a charivari lasting three
+days and three nights--the most famous charivari in the history of a
+city widely noted for these detestable functions. The Don's daughter, a
+great heiress, became the Baronne Pontalba and resided in magnificence
+in Paris, where she died, a very old woman, in 1874.
+
+In the Place d'Armes much of the early history of New Orleans, and
+indeed, of Louisiana, was written. Here, and in the Cabildo, the
+transfers from flag to flag took place, ending with the ceding of
+Louisiana by Spain to France, and by France to the United States. At
+this time New Orleans had about ten thousand inhabitants, most of the
+whites being Creoles.
+
+Harris Dickson, who knows a great deal about New Orleans, declared in an
+article published some years ago, that outside lower Louisiana the word
+"Creole" is still misunderstood, and added this definition of the term:
+"A person of mixed French and Spanish blood, born in Louisiana." As I
+understand it, however, the blood need not necessarily be mixed, but may
+be pure Spanish or pure French, or again, there may be some admixture
+of English blood. The word itself was, I am informed, originally
+Spanish, and signified an American descended from Spaniards; later it
+got into the language of the French West Indies, whence it was imported,
+to Louisiana, about the end of the eighteenth century, by refugees who
+arrived in considerable numbers from San Domingo, after the revolution
+of the blacks there. Thus, the early French settlers did not use the
+word.
+
+If any misapprehension as to whether a Creole is a white person does
+still exist, that misunderstanding is, I believe, to be traced to the
+doors of an old-time cheap burlesque theater in Chicago, where the late
+impresario, Sam T. Jack, put on a show in which mulatto women were
+billed as "a galaxy of Creole beauties." This show traveled about the
+country libeling the Creoles and doubtless causing many persons of that
+class which attended Sam T. Jack's shows, to believe that "Creole" means
+something like "quadroon." But when the show got to Baton Rouge the
+manager was waited upon by a committee of citizens who said certain
+things to him which caused him to give up his engagement there and
+cancel any other engagements he had in the Creole country.
+
+True, one frequently hears references in New Orleans to "Creole
+mammies," and "Creole negroes," but the word used in that sense merely
+indicates a negro who has been the servant of Creoles, and who speaks
+French--"gombo French" the curious dialect is called. Similarly one
+hears of "Creole ponies"--these being ponies of the small, strong type
+used by the Cajan farmers. According to the Louisiana dialect
+Longfellow's "Evangeline" was a Cajan, the word being a corruption of
+"Acadian." About a thousand of these unfortunate expatriates arrived in
+New Orleans between 1765 and 1768. Within a century they had multiplied
+to forty times that number, spreading over the entire western part of
+the State.
+
+Much of the temperament, the gaiety, the sensitiveness of New Orleans
+comes from the Creole. He was Latin enough to be a good deal of a
+gambler, to love beautiful women, and on slight provocation to draw his
+sword.
+
+The street names of New Orleans--not only those of the French Quarter,
+but of the whole city--reflect his various tastes. Many of the streets
+bear the names of historic figures of the French and Spanish regimes;
+Rampart Street, formerly the rue des Ramparts marks, like the outer
+boulevards of Paris, the line of the old city wall. Other streets were
+given pretty feminine names by the old Creole gallants: Suzette,
+Celeste, Estelle, Angelie, and the like. The devout doubtless had their
+share in the naming of Religious Street, Nuns Street, Piety Street,
+Assumption Street, and Amen Street. The taste for Greek and Roman
+classicism which developed in France at the time of the Revolution,
+found its way to Louisiana, and is reflected in New Orleans by streets
+bearing the names of gods, demi gods, the muses and the graces. The
+pronunciation given to some of these names is curious: Melpomene,
+instead of being given four syllables is called Melpomeen; Calliope is
+similarly Callioap; Euterpe, Euterp, and so on. This, however, is the
+result not of ignorance, but of a slight corruption of the correct
+French pronunciations, the Americans having taken their way of
+pronouncing the names from the French. The Napoleonic wars are
+commemorated in the names of Napoleon Avenue, and Austerlitz and Jena
+Streets, and the visit of Lafayette in the naming for him of both a
+street and an avenue. But perhaps the most striking names of all the old
+ones were Mystery Street, Madman's Street, Love Street (Rue de l'Amour),
+Goodchildren Street (Rue des Bons Enfants), and above all those two
+streets in the Faubourg Marigny which old Bernard Marigny amused himself
+by naming for two games of chance at which, it is said, he had lost a
+fortune--namely Bagatelle and Craps--the latter not the game played with
+dice, but an old-time game of cards.
+
+The French spoken by cultivated Creoles bears to the French of modern
+France about the same relation as the current English of Virginia does
+to that of England. Creole French is founded largely upon the French of
+the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, just as many of the
+so-called "Americanisms" of older parts of the country, including
+Virginia and New England, are Elizabethan. The early English and French
+colonists, coming to this country with the language of their times,
+dropped, over here, into a linguistic backwater. In the mother
+countries language continued to renew itself as it flowed along, by
+elisions, by the adoption and legitimatizing of slang words (as for
+instance the word "cab," to which Dean Swift objected on the ground that
+it was slang for "cabriolet"), and by all the other means through which
+our vocabularies are forever changing. But to the colonies these changes
+were not carried, and such changes as occurred in the French and English
+of America were, for the most part, separate and distinct (as exampled
+by such Creole words as "banquette" for "sidewalk," in place of the
+French word _trottoir_, and the word "baire," whence comes the American
+term "mosquito bar.") The influence of colloquial French from Canada may
+also be traced in New Orleans, and the language there was further
+affected by the strange jargon spoken by the Creole negro--precisely as
+the English dialect of negroes in other parts of the South may be said
+to have affected the speech of all the Southern States.
+
+Between the dialect of the Louisiana Cajan and that of the French
+Canadian of Quebec and northern New York there is a strong resemblance;
+but the Creole negro language is a thing entirely apart, being made up,
+it is said, partly from French and partly from African word sounds, just
+as the "gulla" of the South Carolina coast is made up from African and
+English. The one is no more intelligible to a Frenchman than the other
+to a Londoner. The ignorant Creole negro wishing to say "I do not
+understand," would not say "moi je ne comprends pas," but "mo pas
+connais"; similarly for "I am going away," he does not say, "je m'en
+vais," but "ma pe couri"; while for "I have a horse," instead of "j'ai
+un cheval," he will put the statement, "me ganye choue." It is a dialect
+lacking mood, tense, and grammar.
+
+To this day one may occasionally see in New Orleans and in other lower
+river towns an old "mammy" wearing the bandanna headdress called a
+_tignon_, which, toward the end of the eighteenth century, was made
+compulsory for colored women in Louisiana. The need for some such
+distinguishing racial badge was, it is said, twofold. Yellow sirens from
+the French West Indies, flocking to New Orleans, were becoming
+exceedingly conspicuous in dress and adornment; furthermore one hears
+stories of wealthy white men, fathers of octoroon or quadroon girls, who
+sent these illegitimate daughters abroad to be educated. The latter, one
+learns from many sources, were very often beautiful in the extreme, as
+were also the Domingan girls, and history is full of the tales of the
+curious, wild, fashionably caparisoned, declasse circle of society,
+which came to exist in New Orleans through the presence there of so many
+alluring women of light color and equally light character. Some of these
+women, it is said, could hardly be distinguished from brunette whites,
+and it was largely for this reason that the _tignon_ was placed by law
+upon the heads of all women having negro blood.
+
+No morsels from the history of old New Orleans are more suggestive to
+the imagination than the hints we get from many sources of wildly
+dissipated life centering around the notorious quadroon balls--or as
+they were called in their day, _cordon bleu_ balls. An old guide book
+informs me that the women who were the great attraction at these
+functions were "probably the handsomest race of women in the world, and
+were, besides, splendid dancers and finished dressers." Authorities seem
+to agree that these balls were exceedingly popular among the young
+Creole gentlemen, as well as with men visiting the city, and that duels,
+resulting from quarrels over the women, were of common occurrence. If a
+Creole had the choice of weapons slender swords called _colichemardes_
+were used, whereas pistols were almost invariably selected by Americans.
+Duels with swords were often fought indoors, but when firearms were to
+be employed the combatants repaired to one of the customary dueling
+grounds. Under the fine old live oaks of the City Park--then out in the
+country--it is said that as many as ten duels have been fought in a
+single day. Duels having their beginnings at the quadroon balls were,
+however, often fought in St. Anthony's Garden, for the ballroom was in a
+building (now occupied by a sisterhood of colored nuns) which stands on
+Orleans Street, near where it abuts against the Garden. This garden,
+bearing the name of the saint whose temptations have been of such
+conspicuous interest to painters of the nude, is not named for him so
+much in his own right, as because he was the patron of that same Padre
+Antonio de Sedella, already mentioned, who came to New Orleans to
+institute the Inquisition, but who, after having been sent away by
+Governor Miro, returned as a secular priest and became much beloved for
+his good works. Padre Antonio lived in a hut near the garden, and it is
+he who figures in Thomas Bailey Aldrich's story "Pere Antoine's Date
+Palm."
+
+To the Creole, more than to any other source, may be traced the origin
+of dueling in the United States, and no city in the country has such a
+dueling history as New Orleans. The American took the practice from the
+Latin and by the adoption of pistols made the duel a much more serious
+thing than it had previously been, when swords were employed and first
+blood usually constituted "satisfaction." Up to the time of the Civil
+War the man who refused a challenge became a sort of outcast, and I have
+been told that even to this day a duel is occasionally fought. Governor
+Claiborne, first American governor of Louisiana, was a duelist, and his
+monument--a family monument in the annex of the old Basin Street
+division of St. Louis cemetery--bears upon one side an inscription in
+memory of his brother-in-law, Micajah Lewis, "who fell in a duel,
+January 14, 1804."
+
+Gayarre, in his history of Louisiana, tells a story of six young French
+noblemen who, one night, paired off and fought for no reason whatever
+save out of bravado. Two of them were killed.
+
+Two famous characters of New Orleans, about the middle of the last
+century, were Major Joe Howell, a brother-in-law of Jefferson Davis, and
+Major Henry, a dare-devil soldier of fortune who had filibustered in
+Nicaragua and fought in the Mexican War. One day while drinking together
+they quarreled, and as a result a duel was arranged to take place the
+same afternoon. Henry kept on drinking, but Howell went to sleep and
+slept until it was time to go to the dueling ground, when he took one
+cocktail, and departed.
+
+Feeling that a duel over a disagreement the occasion for which neither
+contestant could remember, was the height of folly, friends intervened,
+and finally succeeded in getting Major Henry to say that the fight could
+be called off if Howell would apologize.
+
+"For what?" he was asked.
+
+"Don't know and don't care," returned the old warrior.
+
+As Howell would not apologize, navy revolvers were produced and the two
+faced each other, the understanding being that they should begin at ten
+paces with six barrels loaded, firing at will and advancing. At the word
+"Fire!" both shot and missed, but Howell cocked his revolver with his
+right thumb and fired again immediately, wounding Henry in the arm.
+Henry then fired and missed a second time, while Howell's third shot
+struck his antagonist in the abdomen. Wounded as he was, Henry managed
+to fire again, narrowly missing the other, who was not only a giant in
+size, but was a conspicuous mark, owing to the white clothing which he
+wore. At this Howell advanced a step and took steady aim, and he would
+almost certainly have killed his opponent had not his own second
+reached out and thrown his pistol up, sending the shot wild. This
+occurred after the other side has cried "Stop!"--as it had been agreed
+should be done in case either man was badly wounded. A foul was
+consequently claimed, the seconds drew their pistols, and a general
+battle was narrowly averted. After many weeks Henry recovered.
+
+A great number of historic duels were over politics. Such a one was the
+fight which took place in 1843, between Mr. Hueston, editor of the Baton
+Rouge "Gazette" and Mr. Alcee La Branche, a Creole gentleman who had
+been speaker of the Louisiana House of Representatives, and was running
+for Congress. Mr. La Branche was one of the few public men in the State
+who had never fought a duel, and in the course of a violent political
+campaign, Hueston twitted him on this subject in the columns of the
+"Gazette," trying to make him out a coward. Soon after the insulting
+article appeared, the two men met in the billiard room of the old St.
+Charles Hotel, and when La Branche demanded an apology, and was refused,
+he struck Hueston with a cane, or a cue, and knocked him down. A duel
+was, of course, arranged, the weapons selected being double-barreled
+shotguns loaded with ball. At the first discharge Hueston's hat and coat
+were punctured by bullets. He demanded a second exchange of shots, which
+resulted about as before--his own shots going wild, while those of his
+opponent narrowly missed him. Hueston, however, obstinately insisted
+that the duel be continued, and the guns were loaded for the third
+time. In the next discharge the editor received a scalp wound. It was
+now agreed by all present that matters had gone far enough, but Hueston
+remained obdurate in his intention to kill or be killed, and in the face
+of violent protests, demanded that the guns again be loaded. The next
+exchange of shots proved to be the last. Hueston let both barrels go
+without effect, and fell to the ground shot through the lungs. Taken to
+the Maison de Sante, he was in such agony that he begged a friend to
+finish the work by shooting him through the head. Within a few hours he
+was dead.
+
+The old guide book from which I gather these items cites, also, cases in
+which duels were fought over trivial matters, such, for instance, as a
+mildly hostile newspaper criticism of an operatic performance, and an
+argument between a Creole and a Frenchman over the greatness of the
+Mississippi River.
+
+Professor Brander Matthews tells me of an episode in which the wit
+exhibited by a Creole lawyer, in the course of a case in a New Orleans
+court, caused him to be challenged. The opposing counsel, likewise a
+Creole, was a great dandy. He appeared in an immaculate white suit and
+boiled shirt, but the weather was warm, and after he had spoken for
+perhaps half an hour his shirt was wilted, and he asked an adjournment.
+The adjournment over, he reappeared in a fresh shirt, but this too
+wilted presently, whereupon another adjournment was taken. At the end of
+this he again reappeared wearing a third fresh shirt, and in it managed
+to complete his plea.
+
+It now became the other lawyer's turn. He arose and, speaking with the
+utmost gravity, addressed the jury.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said (Professor Matthews tells it in French), "I shall
+divide my speech into three shirts." He then announced: "First
+shirt"--and made his first point. This accomplished, he paused briefly,
+then proclaimed: "Second shirt," and followed with his second point.
+Then: "Third and last shirt," and after completing his argument sat
+down. The delighted jury gave him the verdict, but his witticism
+involved him in a duel with the worsted advocate. The result of this
+duel Professor Matthews does not tell, but if the wag's _colichemarde_
+was as swift and penetrating as his wit, we may surmise that his
+opponent of the Code Napoleon and the code duello had a fourth shirt
+spoiled.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII
+
+FROM ANTIQUES TO PIRATES
+
+
+The numerous antique shops of the French quarter, with their gray,
+undulating floors and their piled-up, dusty litter of old furniture,
+plate, glass, and china, and the equally numerous old book stores, with
+their piles of French publications, their shadowy corners, their
+pleasant ancient bindings and their stale smell, are peculiarly
+reminiscent of similar establishments in Paris.
+
+That Eugene Field knew these shops well we have reason to know by at
+least two of his poems. In one, "The Discreet Collector," he tells us
+that:
+
+    Down south there is a curio shop
+    Unknown to many men;
+    Thereat do I intend to stop
+    When I am South again;
+    The narrow street through which to go--
+    Aha! I know it well!
+    And maybe you would like to know--
+    But no--I will not tell!
+
+But later, when filled with remorse over his extravagance in "blowing
+twenty dollars in by nine o'clock A.M.," he reveals the location of his
+favorite establishment, saying:
+
+    In Royal Street (near Conti) there's a lovely curio shop,
+    And there, one balmy fateful morn, it was my chance to stop--
+
+So that, at least, is the neighborhood in which he learned that:
+
+    The curio collector is so blindly lost in sin
+    That he doesn't spend his money--he simply blows it in!
+
+In his verses called "Doctor Sam," Field touched on another fascinating
+side of Creole negro life: the mysterious beliefs and rites of
+voodooism--or, as it is more often spelled, voudouism.
+
+Until a few years ago it used to be possible for a visitor with a "pull"
+in New Orleans to see some of the voudou performances and to have "a
+work made" for him, but the police have dealt so severely with those who
+believe in this barbarous nonsense, that it is practised in these times
+only with the utmost secrecy.
+
+Voudouism was brought by the early slaves from the Congo, but in
+Louisiana the negroes--probably desiring to imitate the religion of
+their white masters--appropriated some of the Roman Catholic saints and
+made them subject to the Great Serpent, or _Grand Zombi_, who is the
+voudou god. These saints, however, are given voudou names, St. Michael,
+for example, being _Blanc Dani_, and St. Peter, _Papa Liba_. This
+situation is the antithesis of that to be found in Brittany, where
+Druidical beliefs, handed down for generations among the peasants, may
+now be faintly traced running like on odd alien threads through the
+strong fabric of Roman Catholicism.
+
+Voudouism is not, however, to be dignified by the name "religion." It is
+superstition founded upon charms and hoodoos. It is witchcraft of the
+maddest kind, involving the most hideous performances. Moreover, it is
+said that a hoodoo is something of which a French negro is very much
+afraid, and that his fear is justifiable, for the reason that the
+throwing of a _wanga_, or curse, may also involve the administering of
+subtle poisons made from herbs.
+
+Legend is rich with stories of Marie Le Veau, the voudou queen, who
+lived long ago in New Orleans, and of love and death accomplished by
+means of voudou charms. Charms are brought about in various ways. Among
+these the burning of black candles, accompanied by certain performances,
+brings evil upon those against whom a "work" is made, while blue candles
+have to do with love charms. It may also be noted that "love powders"
+can be purchased now-a-days in drug stores in New Orleans.
+
+In the days of long ago the great negro gathering place used to be Congo
+Square--now Beauregard Square--and here, on Sunday nights, wild dances
+used to occur--the "bamboula" and "calinda"--and sinister spells were
+cast. Later the voudous went to more secluded spots on the shores of
+Lake Pontchartrain, and on St. John's Eve, which is their great
+occasion, many of the whites of the city used to go to the lake in hopes
+of discovering a voudou seance, and being allowed to see it. A friend of
+mine, who has seen several of these seances, says that they are
+unbelievably weird and horrible. They will make a gombo, put a snake in
+it, and then devour it, and they will wring a cat's neck and drink its
+blood. And of course, along with these loathsome ceremonies, go
+incantations, chants, dances, and frenzies, sometimes ending in
+catalepsis.
+
+There are weird stories of white women of good family who have believed
+in voudou, and have taken part in the rites; and there are other tales
+of evil spells, such as that of the Creole bride of long ago, whose
+affianced had been the lover of a quadroon girl, a hairdresser. The
+hairdresser when she came to do the bride's hair for the wedding, gave
+her a bouquet of flowers. The bride smelled the bouquet--and died at the
+church door.
+
+It was, I think, in an old book store on Royal Street--or else on
+Chartres--that I found the tattered guide book to which I referred in an
+earlier chapter. It was "edited and compiled by several leading writers
+of the New Orleans Press," and published in 1885, and it contains an
+introductory recommendation by George W. Cable--which is about the
+finest guarantee that a book on New Orleans can have.
+
+Mr. Cable, of course, more than all the rest of the people who have
+written of New Orleans put together, placed the city definitely in
+literature. And it is interesting, if somewhat saddening, to recall that
+for lifting the city into the world of belles lettres, for adorning it
+and preserving it in such volumes as "Old Creole Days," "The
+Grandissimes," "Madame Delphine," and other valuable, truthful, and
+charming works, he was roundly abused by his own fellow-townsmen. Far
+from attacking Mr. Cable, New Orleans ought to build him a monument, and
+I am glad to say that, though the monument is not there yet, the city
+does seem to have come to its senses, and that the prophet is no longer
+without honor in his own country.
+
+Some further leaves are added to the literary laurels of the city by
+what Thomas Bailey Aldrich has written of it, and the wreath is made the
+greater by the fact that in New Orleans was born "the only literary man
+in New York," Professor Brander Matthews.
+
+Another distinguished name in letters, connected with the place, is that
+of Lafcadio Hearn, who was at one time a reporter on a New Orleans
+newspaper, and who not only wrote about the French quarter, but
+collected many proverbs of the Creoles in a book which he called "Gombo
+Zebes." In his little volume, "Chita," Hearn described the land of
+lakes, bayous, and _chenieres_, which forms a strip between the city and
+the Gulf, and which, with its wild birds, wild scenery, and wild storms,
+and its extraordinary population of hunters and fishermen--Cajuns,
+Italians, Japanese, Spanish, Kanakas, Filipinos, French, and half-breed
+Indians, all intermarrying--is the strangest, most outlandish section of
+this country I have ever visited. The Filipinos, who introduced shrimp
+fishing in this region, building villages on stilts, like those of their
+own islands, were not there when Hearn wrote "Chita," nor was Ludwig
+raising diamond-back terrapin on Grand Isle, but the live-oaks, draped
+with sad Spanish moss, lined the bayous as they do to-day, and the
+alligators, turtles and snakes were there, and the tall marsh grass, so
+like bamboo, fringed the banks as it does now, and water hyacinth
+carpeted the pools, and the savage tropical storms came sweeping in, now
+and then, from the Gulf, flooding the entire country, tearing everything
+up by the roots, then receding, carrying the floating debris back with
+them to the salt sea. One has to see what they call a "slight" storm, in
+that country, to know what a great storm there must be. Hearn surely saw
+storms there, for in "Chita" he describes with terrifying vividness that
+historic tempest which, in 1856, obliterated, at one stroke, Last
+Island, with its fashionable hotel and all the guests of that hotel. I
+have seen a "little" thunderstorm in Barataria Bay and I do not want to
+see a big one. I have seen brown men who, in the storm of 1915 (which
+did a million dollars' worth of damage in New Orleans), floated about
+the Baratarias for days, upon the roofs of houses, and I have seen
+little children, half Italian, half Filipino, who were saved by being
+carried by their parents into the branches of an old live-oak, where
+they waited until good Horace Harvey, "the little father of the
+Baratarias," came down there in his motor yacht, the _Destrehan_,
+rescued them, warmed them, fed them, and gave them back to life. I was
+told in New Orleans that there were ten seconds in that storm when the
+wind reached a velocity of 140 miles per hour at the mouth of the
+Mississippi, that it blew for four hours at the rate of 90 miles, and
+that the lowest barometrical reading ever recorded in the United States
+(28.11) was recorded in New Orleans during this hurricane.
+
+Of the summer climate of New Orleans I know nothing at first hand, and
+judging from what people have told me, that is all I want to know. The
+winter climate suited me very well while I was there, although the boast
+that grass is green and roses bloom all the year round, does not imply
+such intense heat as some people may suppose. Furthermore, I believe
+that the thermometer has once or twice in the history of the city
+dropped low enough to kill any ordinary rose, for a friend of mine told
+me a story about some water pipes that froze and burst during an
+unprecedented cold snap which occurred some years ago. He said that an
+English colonel, whom he knew, was visiting the city at the time and
+that, finding himself unable to get water in his bathtub, he sent out
+for several cases of Apollinaris, and with true British phlegm proceeded
+to empty them into the tub and get in among the bubbles.
+
+Still another figure having to do with literature, and also with the
+history of New Orleans, is Jean Lafitte, known as a pirate, whose life
+is said to have inspired Byron's poem, "The Corsair." There was a time,
+long ago, when Lafitte, together with his brother, his doughty
+lieutenant, Dominique You, and his rabble of Baratarians, caused New
+Orleans a great deal of annoyance, but like many other doubtful
+characters, they have, since their death, become entirely picturesque,
+and the very idea that Lafitte was not a first-class blood-and-thunder
+pirate is as distasteful to the people of New Orleans to-day, as his
+being any kind of a near-pirate at all, used to be to their ancestors.
+Nevertheless Frank R. Stockton, who made a great specialty of pirates,
+says of Lafitte: "He never committed an act of piracy in his life; he
+was [before he went to Barataria] a blacksmith, and knew no more about
+sailing a ship or even the smallest kind of a boat than he knew about
+the proper construction of a sonnet.... It is said of him that he was
+never at sea but twice in his life: once when he came from France, and
+once when he left this country, and on neither occasion did he sail
+under the Jolly Roger." According to Stockton, Lafitte, when he gave up
+his blacksmith shop (in which he is said to have made some of the fine
+wrought iron balcony railings which still adorn the old town), and went
+to Barataria, became nothing more nor less than a "fence" for pirates
+and privateers, taking their booty, smuggling it up to New Orleans, and
+selling it there on commission.
+
+But if the fact that he was not a gory-handed freebooter is against
+Lafitte, there is one great thing in his favor. When the British were
+making ready to attack New Orleans in 1814, they tried both to bribe and
+to browbeat Lafitte into joining forces with them. As the American
+government was planning, at this very time, a punitive expedition
+against him, it would perhaps have seemed good policy for the
+pseudo-pirate to have accepted the British offer, but what Lafitte did
+was to go up and report the matter at New Orleans, giving the city the
+first authentic information of the contemplated attack, and offering to
+join with his men in the defense, in exchange for amnesty.
+
+A good many people, however, did not believe his story, and a good many
+others thought it beneath the dignity of the government to treat with a
+man of his dubious occupation. Therefore poor Lafitte was not listened
+to, but, upon the contrary, only succeeded in stirring up trouble for
+himself, for an expedition was immediately sent against him; his
+settlement at Barataria--on the gulf, about forty miles below the
+city--was demolished and the inhabitants driven to the woods and swamps.
+
+But in spite of this discouraging experience, Lafitte would not join the
+British, and it came about that when the Battle of New Orleans was about
+to be fought, Andrew Jackson, who had a short time before referred to
+Lafitte and his men as a band of "hellish banditti," was glad to accept
+their aid. Dominique You--with his fine pirate name--commanded a gun,
+and the others fought according to the best piratical tradition. After
+the battle was won, the Baratarians were pardoned by President Madison.
+Incidentally it may be remarked here that the American line of defense
+on the plains of Chalmette, below the city, had been indicated some
+years before by the French General Moreau, hero of Hohenlinden, as the
+proper strategic position for safeguarding New Orleans on the south.
+
+Even after he had been pardoned, Lafitte felt, not without some justice,
+that he had been ill-used by the Americans, and because of this he
+determined to leave the country. He set sail with a band of his
+followers for other climes, but what became of them is not known. Some
+think their ship went down in a storm which crossed the Gulf soon after
+their departure; others believe that they reached Yucatan, and that
+Lafitte died there. Whatever his fate, he did not improve it by
+departing from New Orleans, for had he not done so he would, at the end,
+have been given a handsome burial and a nice monument like that of
+Dominique You--which may be seen to this day in the old cemetery on
+Claiborne Avenue, between Iberville and St. Louis Streets.
+
+Having disposed of literary men and pirates, we now come in logical
+sequence to composers and actors. Be it known, then, that E.H. Sothern
+first raised, in the house at 79 Bienville Street, the voice which has
+charmed us in the theater, and that Louis Gottschalk, composer of the
+almost too well-known "Last Hope," was also born in New Orleans.
+
+The records of the opera and the theater might, in themselves, make a
+chapter. As early as 1791 a French theatrical company played in New
+Orleans, using halls, and in 1808 a theater was built in St. Philip
+Street. It is said that the first play given in the city in English was
+performed December 24, 1817, the play being "The Honey Moon," and the
+manager Noah M. Ludlow; but it was not until some years later that the
+English drama became a feature of the city's life, with the
+establishment of a stock company under the management of James H.
+Caldwell. Edwin Forrest appeared, in 1824, with Mr. Caldwell's company
+at the Camp Street Theater, which he built on leaving the Orleans
+Theater. The former was, when opened, out in the swamp, and people had
+to walk to it from Canal Street on a narrow path of planks. It was the
+first building in the city to be lighted by gas.
+
+The annals of the old St. Charles theater, called "old Drury," are rich
+with history. Practically all our great players from 1835 until long
+after the Civil War, appeared in this theater, and an old prompter's
+book which, I believe, is still in existence, records, among many other
+things, certain details of the appearance there, in 1852, of Junius
+Brutus Booth, father of Edwin Booth, and mentions also that Joseph
+Jefferson (Sr.) then a young man, was reprimanded for being noisy in his
+dressing-room.
+
+New Orleans was, I believe, the first American city regularly to support
+grand opera and to give it a home. For a great many years before 1859
+(in which year the present French Opera House on Bourbon Street was
+built) there was a regular annual season of opera at the Orleans
+Theater, long since destroyed.
+
+In the days of the city's operatic grandeur great singers used to visit
+New Orleans before visiting New York, as witness, for example, the debut
+at the French Opera House of Adelina Patti. Since the time of the Civil
+War, however, the city has suffered a decline in this department of art.
+Opera seasons have not been regular, and in spite of occasional attempts
+to revive the old-time spirit, the ancient Opera House, with its brave
+columned front, its cracking veneer of stucco, and its surrounding of
+little vari-colored one story cafes and shops (which are themselves like
+bits of operatic scenery), does not so much suggest to the imagination a
+home of modern opera, as a mournful mortuary chapel haunted by the
+ghosts of old half-forgotten composers: Herold, Spontini, Mehul, Varney;
+old conductors, long since gone to dust: Prevost, John, Calabresi; old
+arias of Meyerbeer, Auber, and Donizetti; and above all, by the ghosts
+of pretty pirouetting ballerinas, and of great singers whose voices
+have, these many years, been still.
+
+An old lady who knew Louisiana in the forties and fifties, has left
+record of the fact that plantation negroes used to know and sing the
+French operatic airs, just as the Italian peasants of to-day know and
+sing the music of Puccini and Leoncavallo. But if opera no longer
+reaches the negro, it cannot be said that it has failed to leave its
+stamp on the French quarter. From open windows and doors, from little
+shops and half-hidden courtyards, from shuttered second story galleries,
+there comes floating to the ears of the wayfarer the sound of music. In
+one house a piano is being played with dash; in another a child is
+practising her scales; from still another comes a soprano voice, the sad
+whistling of a flute, the tinkle of a guitar, or the anguished squeal of
+a tortured violin. Never except in Naples have I heard, on one block, so
+many musical instruments independently at work, as in some single blocks
+of the _vieux carre_; and never anywhere have I seen a sign which struck
+as more expressive of the industries of a locality, than that one which
+I saw near the house of Mme. Lalurie, which read: "Odd Jobs Done, and
+Music."
+
+The reason for this musical congestion is twofold. Not only is the
+Creole a great lover of good light music, but the whole region for
+blocks about the Opera House is populated by old musicians from the
+opera's orchestra, and women, some middle aged, some old, who used to be
+in the ballet or the chorus, and who not only keep alive the musical
+tradition of the district, but pass it on to the younger generation.
+Indeed there are almost as many places in the French quarter where music
+may be heard, as where stories are told.
+
+In one street may be seen a house where the troubles with the Mafia
+began. On a corner--the southeast corner of Royal and St. Peter--is
+shown the house in which Cable's "'Sieur George" resided. This house is,
+I believe, the same one which, when erected, caused people to move away
+from its immediate neighborhood, for fear that its height would cause it
+to fall down. It is a four story house--the first built in the city. At
+the southeast corner of Royal and Hospital Streets stands that
+"haunted" house of Mme. Lalaurie, who fled the town when indignation was
+aroused because of devilish tortures she inflicted on her slaves. This
+house is now an Italian tenement, but even in its decay it will be
+recognized as a mansion which, in its day, was fit to house such guests
+as Louis Philippe, Lafayette, and Ney. A guest even more distinguished
+than these, was to have been housed in the mansion at the northeast
+corner of St. Louis and Chartres Streets, for the Creoles had a plan to
+rescue Napoleon from St. Helena and bring him here, and had this house
+prepared to receive him.
+
+And are we to forget where Andrew Jackson was entertained before and
+after the Battle of New Orleans--where General Beauregard, military idol
+of the Creoles, resided--where Paul Morphy the "chess king" lived--where
+General Butler took up his quarters when, in 1862, under the guns of
+Farragut's fleet, the city surrendered--? Shall we fail to visit the
+curious old tenements and stables surrounding the barnyard which once
+was the _remise_ of the old Orleans Hotel? Shall we neglect old Metaire
+cemetery, with its graves built above ground in the days when drainage
+was less perfect? Shall we fail to go to the levee (pronounced "levvy")
+and see the savage flood of the muddy Mississippi coursing toward the
+gulf behind the embankment which alone saves the city from inundation?
+Shall we ignore the French Market with its clean stalls piled with fresh
+vegetables, sea food, and all manner of comestibles, including _file_
+for the glorious Creole gombo. Shall we not view the picturesque if
+sinister old Absinthe House, dating from 1799, with its court and
+stairway so full of mysterious suggestion, and its misty
+paregoric-flavored beverage, containing opalescent dreams? Shall we not
+go to Sazerac's for a cocktail, or to Ramos' for one of those delectable
+gin-fizzes suggesting an Olympian soda-fountain drink? Are we to ignore
+all these wonders of the city?
+
+Yes, for it is time to go to luncheon at Antoine's!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIX
+
+ANTOINE'S AND MARDI GRAS
+
+
+Antoine's is to me one of the four or five most satisfactory restaurants
+in the United States,--two of the others being the Louisiane and
+Galatoire's. But one has one's slight preferences in these things; and
+just as I have a feeling that the cuisine of the Hotel St. Regis in New
+York surpasses, just a little bit, that of any other eating place in the
+city, I have a feeling about Antoine's in New Orleans. This is not,
+perhaps, with me, altogether a culinary matter, for whereas I remember
+delightful meals at the Louisiane and Galatoire's--meals which, indeed,
+could hardly be surpassed--I lived for a week at Antoine's, and felt at
+home there, and became peculiarly attached to the quaint, rambling old
+restaurant, up stairs and down.
+
+Antoine's has never been "fixed up." The cafe makes one think of such
+old Parisian restaurants as the Boeuf a la Mode, or the Tour d'Argent.
+Far from being a showy place, it is utterly simple in its decorations
+and equipment, but if there is in this country a restaurant more French
+than Antoine's, I do not know where that restaurant is.
+
+Antoine Alciatore, founder of the establishment, departed nearly forty
+years ago to the realms to which great chefs are ultimately taken.
+Coming from France as a young man he established himself in a small cafe
+opposite the slave market, where he proceeded to cook and let his
+cooking speak for him. His dinde a la Talleyrand soon made him famous,
+and he prospered, moving before long to the present building. His sons,
+Jules and Fernand, were sent to Paris to learn at headquarters the best
+traditions of the haute cuisine, doing service as apprentices in such
+establishments as the Maison d'Or and Brabant's. Jules is now proprietor
+of Antoine's, while Fernand is master of the Louisiane.
+
+The two brothers are of somewhat different type. Fernand is, above all,
+a chef; I have never seen him outside his own kitchen. His son, Fernand
+Jr., superintends the front part of the Louisiane, which he has
+transformed into a place having the appearance of a New York restaurant.
+The young man has made a successful bid for the fashionable patronage of
+New Orleans, and there is dancing in the Louisiane in the evening.
+Jules, upon the other hand, is perhaps more the director than his
+brother Fernand--more the suave delightful host, less the man of cap and
+apron. Jules loves to give parties--to astonish his guests with a
+brilliant dinner and with his unrivaled grace as gerant. That he is able
+to do these things no one is better aware than my companion and I, for
+it was our good fortune to be accepted by Jules as friends and fellow
+artists.
+
+Never while my companion and I lived at Antoine's did we escape the
+feeling that we were not in the United States, but in some foreign land.
+To go to his rooms he went upstairs, around a corner, down a few steps,
+past a pantry, and a back stairway by which savory smells ascended from
+the kitchen, along a latticed gallery overlooking a courtyard like that
+of some inn in Segovia, along another gallery running at right angles to
+the first and overlooking the same court, including the kitchen door and
+the laundry, and finally to a chamber with French doors, a canopied bed,
+and French windows opening upon a balcony that overlooked the side
+street. His room was called "The Creole Yacht," while mine was the
+"Maison Vert."
+
+I remember a room in that curious little hotel opposite the Cafe du
+Dome, in Paris (the hotel in which it is said Whistler stayed when he
+was a student), which almost exactly resembled my room at Antoine's,
+even to the dust which was under the bed--until 'Genie got to work with
+broom and brush. Moreover, connected with my room there was a bath which
+actually had a _chaufbain_ to heat the water: one of those weird French
+machines resembling the engine of a steam launch, which pops savagely
+when you light the gas beneath it, and which, as you are always
+expecting it to blow up and destroy you, converts the morning ablutions
+from a perfunctory duty into a great adventure.
+
+Then too, there was Marie who has attended to the _linge_ at Antoine's
+for the last fifty years, and who helped the gray-haired genial Eugenie
+to "make proper the rooms." Ever since 'Genie--as she is called, for
+short--came from her native Midi, she has been at Antoine's; and like
+Francois--the gentle, kindly, white-mustached old waiter who, when we
+were there, had just moved up to Antoine's after thirty-five years'
+service at the Louisiane--'Genie is always ready with a smile; yes, even
+in the rush of Mardi Gras!
+
+Antoine's does not set up to be a regular hotel, and we stopped there
+because, during the carnival, all rooms in the large modern hotels
+across Canal Street were taken. The carnival rush made room-service at
+Antoine's a little slow, now and then; sometimes the bell would not be
+answered when we rang for breakfast; or again, our morning coffee and
+_croissants_ would be forty minutes on the way; sometimes we became a
+little bit impatient--though we could never bring ourselves to say so to
+such amiable servitors. As a result, when we were leaving the city for a
+little trip, we determined to stay, on our return, at the Grunewald, a
+hotel like any one of a hundred others in the United States--marble
+lobbies, gold ceilings, rathskellers, cabaret shows, dancing, and page
+boys wandering through the corridors and dining-rooms, calling in nasal,
+sing-song voices: "_Mis_-ter _Shoss_-futt! _Mis_-ter _Ahm_-kaplopps!
+_Mis_-ter _Praggle_-fiss! _Mis_-ter Blahms!"
+
+We did return and go to the Grunewald. But comfortable as we were made
+there, we had to own to each other that we missed Antoine's. We missed
+our curious old rooms. I even missed my _chaufbain_, and was bored at
+the commonplace matutinal performance of turning on hot water without
+preliminary experiments in marine engineering. We thought wistfully of
+'Genie's patient smile, and of her daily assurance to us, when we went
+out, that "when she had made the apartments she would render the key to
+the bureau, _alors_,"--which is to say, leave the key at the office. We
+yearned for the cafe, for good Francois, for the deliciously flavored
+oysters cooked on the half-shell and served on a pan of hot rock-salt
+which kept them warm; for the cold tomatoes _a la Jules Cesar_; for the
+bisque of crayfish _a la Cardinal_; for the bouillibasse (which
+Thackeray admitted was as good in New Orleans as in Marseilles, and
+which Otis Skinner says is better); for the unrivaled gombo _a la
+Creole_, and pompano _en Papillotte_, and pressed duck _a la Tour
+d'Argent_, and orange Brulot, and the wonderful Cafe Brulot
+Diabolique--that spiced coffee made in a silver bowl from which emerge
+the blue flames of burning cognac, and in honor of which the lights of
+the cafe are always temporarily dimmed.
+
+Nor least of all was it that we wished to see again the mother of Jules,
+who sits back of the _caisse_ and takes in the money, like many another
+good French wife and mother--a tiny little old lady more than
+ninety-five years old, who came to New Orleans in 1840 as the bride of
+the then young Antoine Alciatore.
+
+So we put on our hats and coats when evening came, and went back to
+Antoine's for dinner, and as long as we were in New Orleans we kept on
+going back.
+
+That is not to say, of course, that we did not go also to the Louisiane
+and Galatoire's, or that we did not drop in for luncheon, sometimes, at
+Brasco's, in Gravier Street, or at Kolb's, a more or less conventional
+German restaurant in St. Charles Street; or that we failed to go out to
+Tranchina's at Spanish Fort, on Lake Pontchartrain, or to the quainter
+little place called Noy's where, we learned, Ernest Peixotto had been
+but a short time before, gathering material for indigestion and an
+article in "Scribner's Magazine." But when all is said and done there
+remain the three restaurants of the old quarter.
+
+I should like to give some history of Galatoire's as well as of the
+other two, but when I asked the _patron_ for the story of his
+restaurant, he smiled, and with a shrug replied: "But Monsieur, the
+story is in the food!"
+
+Do not expect any of these places to present the brilliant appearance of
+distinguished New York restaurants. They are comparatively simple, all
+of them, and are engaged not with soft carpets and gilt ceilings, but
+with the art of cookery.
+
+I have been told that some of them have what may be termed "tourist
+cooking," which is not their best, but if you know good food, and let
+them know you know it, and if you visit them at any time except during
+the carnival, then you have a right to expect in any one of these
+establishments, a superb dinner. For as I once heard my friend Col.
+Beverly Myles, one of the city's most distinguished _gourmets_, remark:
+"To talk of 'tolerably good food' in a French restaurant is like
+talking of 'a tolerably honest man.'"
+
+The carnival of Mardi Gras and the several days preceding, is one of
+those things about which I feel as I do concerning Niagara Falls, and
+gambling houses, and the red light district of Butte, Montana, and the
+underground levels of a mine, and the world as seen from an aeroplane,
+and the Quatres Arts ball, and a bull fight--I am glad to have seen it
+once, but I have no desire to see it again. During the carnival my
+companion and I enjoyed a period of sleepless gaiety. To be sure, we
+went to bed every morning, but what is the use in doing that if you also
+get up every morning? We went to the street pageants, we went to the
+balls at the French Opera House, we saw the masking on the streets, and
+when the carnival was finished we were finished, too.
+
+The great thing about the carnival, it seems to me, is that it bears the
+relation to the life of the city, that a well-developed hobby does to
+the life of an individual. It keeps the city young. It keeps it from
+becoming pompous, from taking itself too seriously, from getting into a
+rut. It stimulates not alone the young, but the grave and reverend
+seigniors also, to give themselves up for a little while each year to
+play, and moreover to use their imaginations in annually devising new
+pageants and costumes. From this point of view such a carnival would be
+a good thing for any city.
+
+But that is where the Latin spirit of New Orleans comes in, with its
+pleasing combination of gaiety and restraint. You could not hold such a
+carnival in every city. You could not do it in New York. For more
+important even than the pageants and the balls, is the carnival frame of
+mind. To hold a carnival such as New Orleans holds, a city must know how
+to be lively and playful without becoming drunk, without breaking
+barroom mirrors, upsetting tables, annoying women, thrusting "ticklers"
+into people's faces, jostling, fighting, committing the thousand rough
+vulgar excesses in which New York indulges every New Year's Eve, and in
+which it would indulge to an even more disgusting extent under the
+additional license of the mask.
+
+The carnival--_carne vale_, farewell flesh--which terminates with Mardi
+Gras--"Fat Tuesday," or Shrove Tuesday, the day before the beginning of
+Lent--comes down to us from pagan times by way of the Latin countries.
+The "Cowbellions," a secret organization of Mobile, in 1831 elaborated
+the idea of historical and legendary processions, and as early as 1837
+New Orleans held grotesque street parades. Twenty years later the
+"Mystic Krewe," now known as "Comus," appeared from nowhere and
+disappeared again. The success of Comus encouraged the formation of
+other secret societies, each having its own parade and ball, and in
+1872, Rex, King of the Carnival, entered his royal capital of New
+Orleans in honor of the visit of the Grand Duke Alexis--who, by the way,
+is one of countless notables who have feasted at Antoine's.
+
+The three leading carnival societies, Comus, Momus, and Proteus, are
+understood to be connected with three of the city's four leading clubs,
+all of which stand within easy range of one another on the uptown side
+of Canal Street: the Boston Club (taking its name from an old card
+game); the Pickwick (named for Dickens' genial gentleman, a statue of
+whom stands in the lobby); the Louisiana, a young men's club; and the
+Chess, Checkers and Whist Club. The latter association is, I believe,
+the one that takes no part in the carnival.
+
+Each of the carnival organizations has its own King and Queen, and the
+connection between certain clubs and certain carnival societies may be
+guessed from the fact that the Comus Queen and Proteus Queen always
+appear on the stand in front of the Pickwick Club, to witness their
+respective parades, and that the Queen of the entire Carnival appears
+with her maids of honor on the stand before the Boston Club upon the day
+of Mardi Gras, to witness the triumphal entry and parade of Rex. As Rex
+passes the club he sends her a bouquet--the official indication of her
+queenship. That night she appears for the first time in the glory of her
+royal robes at the Rex Ball, which is held in a large hall; and the
+great event of the carnival, from a social standpoint, is the official
+visit, on the same night, of Rex and his Queen, attended by their court,
+to the King and Queen of Comus, at the Comus Ball, held in the Opera
+House.
+
+Passing between the brilliantly illuminated flag-draped buildings,
+under festoons of colored electric lights, the street parades, with
+their spectacular colored floats, their bands, their negro
+torch-bearers, their strangely costumed masked figures, throwing favors
+into the dense crowds, are glorious sights for children ranging anywhere
+from eight to eighty years of age. Public masking on the streets, on the
+day of Mardi Gras, is also an amusing feature of the carnival.
+
+The balls, upon the other hand, are social events of great importance in
+the city, and as spectacles they are peculiarly fine. Invitations to
+these balls are greatly coveted, and the visitor to the city who would
+attend them, must exert his "pull" some time in advance. The
+invitations, by the way, are not sent by individuals, but by the
+separate organizations, and even those young ladies who are so fortunate
+as to have "call-outs"--cards inclosed with their invitations,
+indicating that they are to be asked to dance, and may therefore have
+seats on the ground floor--are not supposed to know from what man these
+cards come. Ladies who have not received call-outs, and gentlemen who
+are not members of the societies, are packed into the boxes and seats
+above the parquet floor, and do not go upon the dancing floor until very
+late in the evening. Throughout each ball the members of the society
+giving the ball continue to wear their costumes and their masks, so that
+ladies, called from their seats to dance, often find themselves treading
+a measure with some gallant who speaks in a strange assumed voice,
+striving to maintain the mystery of his identity. The ladies, upon the
+other hand, are not in costume and are not masked; about them, there is
+no more mystery than women always have about them. After each dance the
+masker produces a present for his partner--usually a pretty bit of
+jewelry. Etiquette not only allows, but insists, that a woman accept any
+gift offered to her at a carnival ball, and it is said that by this
+means many a young gentleman has succeeded in bestowing upon the lady of
+his heart a piece of jewelry the value of which would make acceptance of
+the gift impossible under other than carnival conditions.
+
+After the balls many of the younger couples go to the Louisiane and
+Antoine's, to continue the dance, and as my room at Antoine's was
+directly over one of the dancing rooms of the establishment, I might
+make a shrewd guess as to how long they stayed up, after my companion
+and I retired.
+
+Let it not be supposed that we retired early. I remember well the look
+of the pale blue dawn of Ash Wednesday morning, and no less do I
+remember a conversation with a gentleman I met at the Louisiane, just
+before the dawn broke. I never saw him before and I have never seen him
+since; nor do I know his name, or where he came from. I only know that
+he was an agreeable, friendly person who did not wish to go to bed.
+
+When I said that I was going home he protested.
+
+"Don't do that!" he urged. "There's a nice French restaurant in this
+town. I can't think of the name of it. Let's go there."
+
+"Well, how can we go if you don't know what place it is?" I asked,
+intending to be discouraging.
+
+The young man looked dazed at this. Then his face brightened suddenly.
+
+"Oh, yes!" he cried. "I remember the name now! It's the Louisiane! Come
+on! Let's get our coats an' go there!"
+
+"But," I said, "this is the Louisiane right here."
+
+The thought seemed to stagger him, for he swayed ever so slightly.
+
+"All right," he said, regarding me with great solemnity. "Let's go
+there!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have wondered since if this same young man may not have been the one
+who, returning to the St. Charles Hotel in the early hours of that sad
+Ash Wednesday morning, was asked by the clerk, who gave him his key,
+whether he wished to leave a call.
+
+"What day's this?" he inquired.
+
+"Wednesday," said the clerk.
+
+"All ri'," replied the other, moving toward the elevator. "Call me
+Saturday."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LX
+
+FINALE
+
+    Yonder the long horizon lies, and there by night and day
+    The old ships draw to home again, the young ships sail away;
+    And come I may, but go I must, and if men ask you why,
+    You may put the blame on the stars and the sun and the white road and
+        the sky!
+
+    --GERALD GOULD.
+
+
+It is good to look about the world; but always there comes a time when
+the restless creature, man, having yielded to the call of the seas and
+the stars and the sky, and gone a-journeying, begins to think of home
+again. Even were home a less satisfactory, a less happy place than it
+is, he would be bound to think of it after so long a journey as that
+upon which my companion and I had spent so many months. For, just as it
+is necessary for a locomotive to go every so often for an overhauling,
+so it is necessary for the traveler to return to headquarters. The
+fastenings of his wardrobe trunk are getting loose, and the side of it
+has been stove in; his heels are running down in back, his watch needs
+regulating, his umbrella-handle is coming loose, he is running out of
+notebooks and pencils and has broken a blade of his knife in trying to
+open a bottle with it (because he left his corkscrew in a hotel
+somewhere along the way). His fountain pen has sprung a leak and
+spoiled a waistcoat, his razors are dull, his strop is nicked, and he
+has run out of the kind of cigarettes and cigars he likes. One lens of
+his spectacles has gotten scratched, his mail has ceased to reach him,
+his light suits are spotted, baggy and worn, and his winter suits are
+becoming too heavy for comfort as the spring advances. His neckties are
+getting stringy, he has hangnails and a cough; he never could fix his
+own hangnails, and he cannot cure his cough because the bottle of
+glycerine and wild cherry provided for just such an emergency by the
+loved ones at home, got broken on the trip from Jacksonville to
+Montgomery, and went dribbling down through the trunk, ruining his
+reference books, three of his best shirts, and the only decent pair of
+russet shoes he had left. The other shoes have been ruined in various
+ways; one pair was spoiled in a possum hunt at Clinton, North
+Carolina--and it was worth it, and worth the overcoat that was ruined at
+the same time; two pairs of black shoes have been caked up with layers
+and layers of sticky blacking, and one pair of russets was ruined by a
+well intentioned negro lad in Memphis, who thought they would look
+better painted red. His traveler's checks are running low and he is
+continually afraid that, amid his constantly increasing piles of notes
+and papers, he will lose the three books in each of which remains a few
+feet of "yellow scrip"--the mileage of the South--which will take him on
+his return journey as far as Washington.
+
+Nor is that all. The determining factor in his decision to go home lies
+in the havoc wrought by a long succession of hotel laundries--laundries
+which starch the bosoms of soft silk shirts, which mark the owner's name
+in ink upon the hems of sheer linen handkerchiefs which already have
+embroidered monograms, which rip holes in those handkerchiefs and then
+fold them so that the holes are concealed until, some night, he whips
+one confidently from the pocket of his dress suit, and reveals it
+looking like a tattered battle-flag; laundries which leave long trails
+of iron rust on shirt-bosoms, which rip out seams, tear off buttons,
+squeeze out new standing collars to a saw-tooth edge, iron little pieces
+of red and brown string into collars, cuffs, and especially into the
+bosoms of dress shirts, and "finish" dress shirts and collars, not only
+in the sense of ending their days of usefulness as fast as possible, but
+also by making them shine like the interiors of glazed porcelain
+bathtubs. But the greatest cruelty of the hotel laundry is to socks. It
+is not that they do more damage to socks, than to other garments, but
+that the laundry devil has been able to think of a greater variety of
+means for the destruction of socks than for the destruction of any other
+kind of garment. He begins by fastening to each sock a cloth-covered tin
+tag, attached by means of prongs. On this tag he puts certain marks
+which will mean nothing to the next laundry. The next laundry therefore
+attaches other tin tags, either ripping off the old ones (leaving holes
+where the prongs went through) or else letting them remain in place, so
+that, after a while, the whole top of the sock is covered with tin,
+making it an extraordinarily uncomfortable thing to wear, and a strange
+thing to look at. There is still another way in which the laundry devil
+tortures the sock-owner. He can find ways to shrink any sock that is not
+made of solid heavy silk; and of course he can rip silk socks all to
+pieces. He will take silk-and-wool socks of normal length, and in one
+washing will so reduce them that you can hardly get your foot into them,
+and that the upper margins of them come only about an inch above your
+shoe-tops. People who have no business to do so, are thus enabled, when
+you are seated, to see the tops of your socks and to amuse themselves by
+counting the tin tags with which they are adorned. Also, the socks,
+being so short, become better pullers than the garters, so that instead
+of the garters holding the socks up, the socks pull the garters down.
+This usually occurs as you are walking up the aisle in church, or in the
+middle of a dance, and of course your garter manages to come unclasped,
+into the bargain, and goes trailing after you, like a convict's ball and
+chain.
+
+For a time you can stand this sort of thing, but presently you begin to
+pine for the delicate washtub artistry of Amanda, at home; for vestments
+which, when sent to the wash, do not come back riddled with holes, or
+smelling as though they had been washed in carbolic acid, or in the tub
+with a large fish.
+
+So, presently, you fold up your rags like the Arabs, fasten your
+battered baggage shut as best you can, put it on a taxi, and head for
+the railway station. No train ever looks so handsome as the home-bound
+train you find there. No engineer ever looks so sturdy and capable,
+leaning from the window of his cab, as the one who is to take you home.
+
+Up through the South you fly, past many places you have seen before,
+past towns where you have friends whom you would like to see again--only
+not now! Now nothing will do but home! Out of the region of magnolias,
+palmettoes and live-oaks you pass into the region of pines, and out of
+the region of pines into that of maples and elms. At last you come to
+Washington.... Only a few hours longer! How satisfyingly the train slips
+along! You are not conscious of curves, or even of turning wheels
+beneath you. Your progress is like the swift glide of a flying sled.
+Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, Trenton. Nothing to do but look
+from the car windows and rejoice. Not that you love the South less, but
+that you love home more.
+
+"I wonder if we will ever go on such a trip as this again?" you say to
+your companion.
+
+"I don't believe so," he replies.
+
+"It doesn't seem now as though we should," you return. "But do you
+remember?--we talked the same way when we were coming home before. What
+will it be two years hence?"
+
+"True," he says. "And of course there's Conan Doyle. He always thinks
+he's never going to do it any more. But in a year or so Sherlock Holmes
+pops out again, drawn by Freddy Steele, all over the cover of
+'Collier's.' Not that your stuff is as good as Doyle's, but that the
+general case is somewhat parallel."
+
+"Doyle has killed Holmes," you put in.
+
+"Yes," he agrees, "and several times you've almost killed me."
+
+Then as the train speeds scornfully through Newark, without stopping, he
+catches sight of a vast concrete building--a warehouse of some kind,
+apparently.
+
+"Look!" he cries. "Isn't it wonderful?"
+
+"That building?"
+
+"Not the building itself. The thought that we don't have to get off here
+and go through it. Think what it would be like if we were on our
+travels! There would be a lot of citizens in frock coats. Probably the
+mayor would be there, too. They would drive us to that building, and
+take us in, and then they would cry if we refused to go to the
+fourteenth floor, where they keep the dried prunes."
+
+The train slips across the Jersey meadows and darts into the tunnel.
+
+"Now," he remarks hopefully, "we are really going to get home--if this
+tunnel doesn't drop in on us."
+
+And when the train has emerged from the tunnel, and you have emerged
+from the train, he says: "Now there's no doubt that we are going to get
+home--unless we are smashed up in a taxi, on the way."
+
+And when the taxi stops at your front door, and you bid him farewell
+before he continues on his way to his own front door, he says: "Now
+you're going to get home for sure--unless the elevator drops."
+
+And when the elevator has not dropped, but has transported you in safety
+to the door of your apartment, and you have searched out the old key,
+and have unlocked the door, and entered, and found happiness within,
+then you wonder to yourself as I once heard a little boy wonder, when he
+had gone out of his own yard, and had found a number of large cans of
+paint, and had upset them on himself:
+
+"I have a very happy home," he said, reflectively. "I wonder why I don't
+seem to stay around it more?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: Charleston is the last stronghold of a unified American
+upper class; the last remaining American city in which Madeira and Port
+and _noblesse oblige_ are fully and widely understood, and are employed
+according to the best traditions]
+
+[Illustration: "Railroad ticket!" said the baggageman with exaggerated
+patience. I began to feel in various pockets]
+
+[Illustration: Can most travellers, I wonder, enjoy as I do a solitary
+walk, by night, through the mysterious streets of a strange city?]
+
+[Illustration: Coming out of my slumber with the curious and unpleasant
+sense of being stared at, I found his eyes fixed upon me]
+
+[Illustration: Mount Vernon Place is the centre of Baltimore. Everything
+begins there, including Baedeker]
+
+[Illustration: If she is shopping for a dinner party, she may order the
+costly and aristocratic diamond-back terrapin, sacred in Baltimore as is
+the Sacred Cod in Boston]
+
+[Illustration: Doughoregan Manor--The house was of buff-colored brick.
+It was low and very long, with wings extending from its central
+structure like beautiful arms flung wide in welcome]
+
+[Illustration: I began to realize that there was no one coming; that no
+one had opened the door; that it had begun to swing immediately upon my
+saying the word "ghosts"]
+
+[Illustration: Harpers Ferry is an entrancing old town; a drowsy place
+piled up beautifully yet carelessly upon terraced roads clinging to
+steep hillsides]
+
+[Illustration: "What's the matter with him?" I asked, stopping]
+
+[Illustration: When I came down, dressed for riding, my companion was
+making a drawing; the four young ladies were with him, none of them in
+riding habits]
+
+[Illustration: Claymont Court is one of the old Washington houses. But
+in all its history it has never been a happier home or a more
+interesting one than it is to-day]
+
+[Illustration: Chatham, the old Fitzhugh house, now the residence of
+Mark Sullivan. Washington, Madison, Monroe, Washington Irving, Lee and
+Lincoln have known the shelter of its roof]
+
+[Illustration: Monticello stands on a lofty hilltop, with vistas,
+between trees of neighboring valleys, hills, and mountains]
+
+[Illustration: Like Venice, the University of Virginia should first be
+seen by moonlight]
+
+[Illustration: One party was stationed on the top of an old-time
+mail-coach bearing the significant initials "F.F.V."]
+
+[Illustration: The Piedmont Hunt Race Meet--There is a distinct note of
+histrionism about many of the rich Americans who "go in for" elaborate
+ruralness, and there is a touch of it, also, about ultra-"horsey"
+people]
+
+[Illustration: The southern negro is the world's peasant supreme]
+
+[Illustration: The Country Club of Virginia, out to the west of
+Richmond, is one of the most charming clubs of its kind in the United
+States]
+
+[Illustration: Judge Crutchfield--a white-haired, hook-nosed man of more
+than seventy, peering over his eyeglasses with a look of shrewd,
+merciless divination]
+
+[Illustration: Negro women squatting upon boxes in old shadowy lofts
+stem the tobacco leaves]
+
+[Illustration: THE JUDGE: What did he do, Mandy?
+
+THE WIFE: Jedge, he come bustin' in, an' he come so fas' he untook de
+do' off'n de hinges!]
+
+[Illustration: Some genuine old-time New York ferryboats help to
+complete the illusion that Norfolk is New York]
+
+[Illustration: "The Southern Statesman who serves his section best,
+serves the country best."]
+
+[Illustration: St. Philip's is the more beautiful for the open space
+before it, and the graceful outward bend of Church Street in deference
+to the projecting portico]
+
+[Illustration: Or, opposite St. Philip's, a perfect example of the rude
+architecture of an old French village; stucco walls, tinted and chipped,
+red tile roofs and all]
+
+[Illustration: In the doorway and gates of the Smyth house, in Legare
+Street, I was struck with a Venetian suggestion]
+
+[Illustration: Nor is the Charleston background a mere arras of
+recollection. It exists everywhere in the wood and brick and stone of
+ancient and beautiful buildings, in iron grilles and balconies
+unrivalled in any other American city....]
+
+[Illustration: Charleston has a stronger, deeper-rooted city entity than
+all the cities of the middle west rolled into one]
+
+[Illustration: The interior is the oldest looking thing in the United
+States--Goose Creek Church]
+
+[Illustration: A reminder of the Chicago River--Atlanta]
+
+[Illustration: With the whole Metropolitan Orchestra playing dance music
+all night long]
+
+[Illustration: The office buildings are city office buildings, and are
+sufficiently numerous to look very much at home]
+
+[Illustration: The negro roof-garden, Odd Fellows' Building, Atlanta]
+
+[Illustration: I was never so conscious, as at the time of our visit to
+the Burge plantation, of the superlative soft sweetness of the spring]
+
+[Illustration: The planters cease their work]
+
+[Illustration: Birmingham--The thin veil of smoke from far-off iron
+furnaces softens the city's serrated outlines]
+
+[Illustration: Birmingham practices unremittingly the pestilential habit
+of "cutting in" at dances]
+
+[Illustration: Gigantic movements and mutations, Niagara-like noises,
+great bursts of flame like fallen fragments from the sun]
+
+[Illustration: A shaggy, unshaven, rawboned man, gray-haired and
+collarless, sat near the window and uttered convincing imitations of the
+sounds made by chickens, roosters, pigs, goats and crows]
+
+[Illustration: Gaze upon the character called Daniel Voorhees Pike!
+Observe the manliness with which he thrusts his pink little hands deep
+in the pockets of his--or somebody's--pantaloons!]
+
+[Illustration: The houses were full of the suggestion of an easy-going
+home life and an informal hospitality. (Back yard of the former home of
+General Stephen D. Lee.)]
+
+[Illustration: Her hands looked very white and small against his dark
+coat. He was gazing down at them, his features distorted by a shockingly
+sentimental smile]
+
+[Illustration: As water flows down the hills of Vicksburg to the river,
+so the visitor's thoughts flow down to the great spectacular,
+mischievous, dominating stream]
+
+[Illustration: Over the tenement roofs one catches sight of sundry other
+buildings of a more self-respecting character, and, far off, the cupola
+of Vicksburg's old stone court house]
+
+[Illustration: Vicksburg negroes. Whether drowsing in the sun, doing a
+little stroke of work, or sitting gabbling on the curbstone, they were
+upon the whole as cheerful and comical a lot of people as I ever saw]
+
+[Illustration: In some of the boats negro fish-markets are conducted,
+advertised by large catfish dangling from posts and railing]
+
+[Illustration: The old Klein house, standing amid lawns and
+old-fashioned gardens on the bluff overlooking the river]
+
+[Illustration: Citizens go at midday to the square where they buy
+popcorn for the squirrels and pigeons--Memphis]
+
+[Illustration: Hanging in the air above the middle of the stream]
+
+[Illustration: These small parks give Savannah a quality which
+differentiates it from all other American cities]
+
+[Illustration: The Thomas House in Franklin Square in which Lafayette
+was entertained]
+
+[Illustration: You will see them having tea, and dancing under the palm
+fronds of the cocoanut grove, when the electric lights begin to glow in
+the luminous semi-tropical twilight]
+
+[Illustration: Cocktail hour at The Breakers]
+
+[Illustration: Nowhere is the sand more like a deep warm dust of yellow
+gold; nowhere is there a margin of the earth so splashed with spots of
+brilliant color; nowhere is water less like water, more like a flowing
+waste of liquid emeralds and sapphires edged with a thousand gleaming
+flouncing strings of pearls]
+
+[Illustration: The couples on the platform were "ragging," their
+shoulders working like the walking-beams of side-wheelers]
+
+[Illustration: Harness held together by that especial Providence which
+watches over negro mendings]
+
+[Illustration: It was a very jolly fair, with the usual lot of barkers
+and the usual gaping crowd]
+
+[Illustration: The mysterious old Absinthe House, founded 1799]
+
+[Illustration: St. Anthony's Garden, where duels originating at the
+quadroon balls were fought]
+
+[Illustration: Courtyard of the old Orleans Hotel]
+
+[Illustration: The little lady who sits behind the desk is more than
+ninety-five years old, and came to New Orleans as the bride of Antoine]
+
+[Illustration: The lights are always lowered at Antoine's when the
+spectacular Cafe Boulot Diabolique is served]
+
+[Illustration: Passing between the brilliantly illuminated buildings,
+under festoons of electric lights the Mardi Gras parades, with their
+floats, their bands, their torch-bearers, their masked figures, are
+glorious sights for children from eight to eighty years of age]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes.
+
+    Page 82: changed "Ridgleys" to "Ridgelys" (of present
+    Ridgelys)
+
+    Page 83: changed "her serious, eyes" to "her serious
+    eyes"
+
+    Page 138: Added missing word "we" (said as we were about
+    to leave)
+
+    Page 161: removed hyphen from "one-course" (prescribed
+    one course)
+
+    Page 169: changed "not" to "now" (now know that I did)
+
+    Page 172: added missing quotation mark (such a long
+    telegram.")
+
+    Page 209: changed "Virgina" to "Virginia" (in Virginia,
+    save,)
+
+    Page 217: changed "it" to "in" (harm in it)
+
+    Page 217: added missing quotation mark (raised with
+    niggers around him."")
+
+    Page 245: removed superfluous quotation marks from end
+    of two lines (Yass, Jedge, drunk. _Always_ drunk.)
+                 (he come so fast he untook the do' off'n
+                  de hinges; den 'e begins--")
+
+    Page 283: added missing quotation mark (you very
+    definitely don't.")
+
+    Page 287: changed "Okrakoke" to "Ocracoke" (legend
+    around Okracoke)
+
+    Page 295: changed "seem" to "see" (them to see him)
+
+    Page 328: changed "new York" to "New York" (New York
+    "Sun,")
+
+    Page 334: changed "coffe" to "coffee" (coffee, hot and
+    iced.)
+
+    Page 355: changed "maried" to "married" (were married in
+    the dining room)
+
+    Page 438: changed "corporaton" to "corporation"
+    (corporation I have scandalously)
+
+    Page 449: changed "constructon" to "construction" (With
+    the construction)
+
+    Page 450: changed "conversatons" to "conversations" and
+    "wth" to "with" (telephonic conversations with a)
+
+    Page 453: changed "objectons" to "objections" (brushed
+    aside our objections.)
+
+    Page 514: changed " to ' ("'Yes,' said Ed.)
+
+    Page 518: added missing quotation mark (town in the
+    Southwest.")
+
+    Page 521: changed "repreduction" to "reproduction" (is a
+    photographic reproduction)
+
+    Page 527: changed "crusing" to "cruising" (was still
+    cruising in the South)
+
+    Page 528: added missing word "a" (officer of a naval
+    vessel.)
+
+    Page 532: changed "stading" to "standing" (and silver
+    standing on the)
+
+    Page 538: added missing word "ago" (years ago he
+    conducted)
+
+    Page 542: added missing quotation mark (innumerable
+    squirrels.")
+
+    Page 590: changed "redout" to "redoubt" (last redoubt
+    held)
+
+    Page 631: changed "hardly" to "hardy" (hardy pioneers
+    from Canada,)
+
+    Page 640: added missing ) ("mosquito bar.") The)
+
+    Page 649: changed "This, situation is" to "This
+    situation is" (This situation is)
+
+    Page 649: changed "may" to "my" (it was my chance)
+
+    Page 655: added missing quotation mark (the Jolly
+    Roger.")
+
+    Page 657: changed "well-know" to "well-known" (too
+    well-known "Last)
+
+    Page 669: changed "is" to "it" (that it bears the
+    relation)
+
+    Page 670: changed "that" to "than" (even than the
+    pageants)
+
+    Page 734: changed "coconut" to "cocoanut" in image
+    caption (palm fronds of the cocoanut grove,)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of American Adventures, by Julian Street
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