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Title: American Adventures
       A Second Trip 'Abroad at home'

Author: Julian Street

Illustrator: Wallace Morgan

Release Date: May 3, 2006 [EBook #18304]

Language: English

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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

[Pg vii]

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[Pg viii] 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.

—J. S.

New York, October, 1917.

CONTENTS

[Pg xiii]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[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.]

[Pg 1]

[Pg 2]

THE BORDERLAND

AMERICAN ADVENTURES

CHAPTER I

ON JOURNEYS THROUGH THE STATES

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.[Pg 4]

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[Pg 5] 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[Pg 6] 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,[Pg 7] 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[Pg 8] 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.[Pg 9]

"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.

"Railroad ticket!" said the baggageman with exaggerated patience. I began to feel in various pockets

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?"[Pg 10]

"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[Pg 11] 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[Pg 12] 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.[Pg 13]

CHAPTER II

A BALTIMORE EVENING

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[Pg 14] 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[Pg 15] 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?

Can most travellers, I wonder, enjoy as I do a solitary walk, by night, through the mysterious streets of a strange city?

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 ma[Pg 16]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.

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[Pg 17] 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,[Pg 18] 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 an[Pg 19]tique," 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[Pg 20] 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[Pg 21] 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,[Pg 22] 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[Pg 23] 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[Pg 24] 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,[Pg 25] 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.

Coming out of my slumber with the curious and unpleasant sense of being stared at, I found his eyes fixed upon me

"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[Pg 26] 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.[Pg 27]

CHAPTER III

WHERE THE CLIMATES MEET

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[Pg 28] 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 Balti[Pg 29]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 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[Pg 30] 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. Chi[Pg 31]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"—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[Pg 32]—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.

Mount Vernon Place is the centre of Baltimore. Everything begins there, including Baedeker

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:[Pg 33] 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[Pg 34] 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.[Pg 35]

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[Pg 36] 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]

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.[Pg 37] 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.[Pg 38]

CHAPTER IV

TRIUMPHANT DEFEAT

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[Pg 39] 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[Pg 40] 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 pave[Pg 41]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—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[Pg 42] 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,[Pg 43] 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.[Pg 44]

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[Pg 45] 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.[Pg 46]

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[Pg 47] 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.

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

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[Pg 48] 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[Pg 49] 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[Pg 50] 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[Pg 51] 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[Pg 52] 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![Pg 53]

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.[Pg 54]

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 naïveté 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.[Pg 55]

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 lit[Pg 56]tle 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,[Pg 57] 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 rea[Pg 58]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.

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[Pg 59] 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.[Pg 60]

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:

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"[Pg 61] 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."[Pg 62]

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,[Pg 63] 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[Pg 64] 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.

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

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[Pg 65] 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.[Pg 66]

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:

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[Pg 67]man 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.[Pg 68] 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.[Pg 69]

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, per[Pg 70]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.

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[Pg 71] 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,[Pg 72] 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.[Pg 73]

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 man[Pg 74]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.

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 be[Pg 75]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.

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[Pg 76] 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[Pg 77] 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[Pg 78] 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[Pg 79] 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.[Pg 80]

CHAPTER VIII

WE MEET THE HAMPTON GHOST

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[Pg 81] 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[Pg 82] 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[Pg 83] 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[Pg 84] 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[Pg 85] 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[Pg 86] 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."

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"

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[Pg 87] 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.[Pg 88]

"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.[Pg 89]

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[Pg 90] 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[Pg 91]—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 lit[Pg 92]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—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[Pg 93] 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[Pg 94] 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[Pg 95] 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 moun[Pg 96]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.

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."[Pg 97]

CHAPTER X

HARPER'S FERRY AND JOHN BROWN

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.

Harpers Ferry is an entrancing old town; a drowsy place piled up beautifully yet carelessly upon terraced roads clinging to steep hillsides

There is something foreign in the appearance of the place. Many times, as I looked at old stone houses,[Pg 98] 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."[Pg 99]

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[Pg 100] 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 ele[Pg 101]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.

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[Pg 102] 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.[Pg 103]

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.[Pg 104]

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.[Pg 105]

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[Pg 106] 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.[Pg 107]

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[Pg 108] 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[Pg 109] 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[Pg 110] 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[Pg 111] 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, actu[Pg 112]ally 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[Pg 113] 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:

[Pg 114]

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[Pg 115] 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[Pg 116] 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:

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."[Pg 117]

CHAPTER XII

I RIDE A HORSE

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.

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

The estate was sold out of the Washington family[Pg 118] 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[Pg 119] 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 rid[Pg 120]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—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 aristo[Pg 121]cratic 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[Pg 122] 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.

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

"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.[Pg 123]

"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[Pg 124] 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.[Pg 125]

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.[Pg 126]

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.

"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?"[Pg 127]

"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 horseman. 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.[Pg 128] 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.[Pg 129]

"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 pre[Pg 130]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.

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[Pg 131] 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.[Pg 132]

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.[Pg 133]

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."[Pg 134]

"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[Pg 135] 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.[Pg 136]

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[Pg 137] 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.[Pg 138]

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[Pg 139] 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[Pg 140] 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[Pg 141] 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[Pg 142] 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[Pg 143] 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 pen[Pg 144]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.

"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."[Pg 145]

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,[Pg 146] 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.

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

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,[Pg 147] 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[Pg 148] 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 in[Pg 149]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.

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.[Pg 150]

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 anæmia of the theater in the South, as well as the falling off generally of theatergoing in lesser American cities[Pg 151]—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 unprepossess[Pg 152]ing 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 eve[Pg 153]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.

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[Pg 154] 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[Pg 155] 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."

Monticello stands on a lofty hilltop, with vistas, between trees of neighboring valleys, hills, and mountains

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[Pg 156] 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[Pg 157] 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[Pg 158] 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.[Pg 159]

CHAPTER XV

THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

—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 dormito[Pg 160]ries 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.

Like Venice, the University of Virginia should first be seen by moonlight

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[Pg 161] 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.[Pg 162]

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[Pg 163] 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[Pg 164] 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,[Pg 165] 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."[Pg 166]

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 roman[Pg 167]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.

"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[Pg 168] 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.[Pg 169]

CHAPTER XVI

FOX-HUNTING IN VIRGINIA

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[Pg 170] 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[Pg 171] 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:

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."[Pg 172]

"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.[Pg 173] 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.

One party was stationed on the top of an old-time mail-coach bearing the significant initials "F. F. V."

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[Pg 174] 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.

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

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[Pg 175]ance 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.[Pg 176]

"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[Pg 177] 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:

In old times many of Virginia's country gentlemen kept their own packs, but though some followed the[Pg 179] 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[Pg 180] 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[Pg 181] 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[Pg 182] 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:

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.[Pg 184]

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 ad[Pg 185]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.'

"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.'"[Pg 186]

CHAPTER XVII

"A CERTAIN PARTY"

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[Pg 187] 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![Pg 188]

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.[Pg 189]

"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:[Pg 190]

"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?"[Pg 191]

"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!"[Pg 192]

"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.[Pg 193]

CHAPTER XVIII

THE LEGACY OF HATE

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.[Pg 194]

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.[Pg 195] 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, de[Pg 196]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—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[Pg 197] 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[Pg 198] 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:

This letter has caused me to wonder whether the frequency with which my companion and I heard the Civil[Pg 199] 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.

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.

[Pg 200]

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[Pg 201] 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!"[Pg 202]

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."[Pg 203]

The southern negro is the world's peasant supreme

CHAPTER XIX

"YOU-ALL" AND OTHER SECTIONAL MISUNDERSTANDINGS

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[Pg 204] 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:

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."[Pg 206]

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[Pg 207] 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."[Pg 208]

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:

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[Pg 209] which had preceded the question. For example, this, from a gentleman of Pell City, Alabama:

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, clev[Pg 210]erest, 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:

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, Ala[Pg 212]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.

"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,[Pg 213] 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.[Pg 214]

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^yar" and "g^yarden." 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[Pg 215] "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[Pg 216] 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[Pg 217] 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!"[Pg 218]

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."[Pg 219]

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[Pg 220] 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-[Pg 221]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.[Pg 222]

CHAPTER XXI

THE CONFEDERATE CAPITAL

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[Pg 223] 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,[Pg 224] 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[Pg 225] 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[Pg 226] 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[Pg 227] 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[Pg 228] 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 Confeder[Pg 229]ate 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[Pg 230] 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 gov[Pg 231]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:

"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:[Pg 232]

[Pg 233]

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 Glas[Pg 234]gow, 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[Pg 235] 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.

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

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:

[Pg 236]

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:

In the burial ground of old St. John's Church—the building in which Patrick Henry delivered his "Give me[Pg 237] 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[Pg 238] 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.

Negro women squatting upon boxes in old shadowy lofts stem the tobacco leaves

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."[Pg 239]

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[Pg 240] 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?"[Pg 241]

"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.[Pg 242]

CHAPTER XXIII

JEDGE CRUTCHFIELD'S CO'T

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.[Pg 243]

"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[Pg 244] 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[Pg 245]—a white-haired, hook-nosed man of more than seventy, peering over the top of his eyeglasses with a look of shrewd, merciless divination.

Judge Crutchfield—a white-haired, hook-nosed man of more than seventy, peering over 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: 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!

The Judge (to the prisoner, sarcastically)—You wasn't drunk, eh?[Pg 246]

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[Pg 247] 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![Pg 248]

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 Will[Pg 249]oughby Spit protrudes into Hampton Roads like Sandy Hook reduced to miniature.

Some genuine old-time New York ferryboats help to complete the illusion that Norfolk is New York

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[Pg 250] 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[Pg 251] 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[Pg 252]—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[Pg 253] 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[Pg 254] 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?

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[Pg 255] 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.[Pg 256]

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[Pg 257] 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![Pg 258]

CHAPTER XXV

COLONEL TAYLOR AND GENERAL LEE

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,[Pg 259] 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.[Pg 260]

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[Pg 261] 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":[Pg 262]

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[Pg 264] 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:

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.

[Pg 265]

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:

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:

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[Pg 266] 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:

[Pg 267]

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:

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,[Pg 269] 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."[Pg 271][Pg 270]

[Pg 272]

[Pg 273]

THE HEART OF THE SOUTH

CHAPTER XXVI

RALEIGH AND JOSEPHUS DANIELS

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.[Pg 274]

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.'[Pg 275]

"'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[Pg 276] 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[Pg 277] 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[Pg 278] 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,[Pg 279] 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.[Pg 280]

"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[Pg 281] 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[Pg 282] 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[Pg 283] 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[Pg 284] 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."

"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.[Pg 285]

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[Pg 286] 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.

[Pg 287]

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[Pg 288] 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[Pg 289] 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[Pg 290] 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[Pg 291] 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 manu[Pg 292]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.

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[Pg 293] 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:

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:

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:

[Pg 295]

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.[Pg 296]

CHAPTER XXVIII

UNDER ST. MICHAEL'S CHIMES

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[Pg 297] 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[Pg 298] 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.

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

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,[Pg 299] 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[Pg 300] 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."[Pg 301]

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[Pg 302] 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.[Pg 303] 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[Pg 304] noblesse oblige are fully and widely understood, and are employed according to the best traditions.

Charleston has a stronger, deeper-rooted city entity than all the cities of the middle west rolled into one

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[Pg 305] 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.

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....

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.

In the doorway and gates of the Smyth house, in Legaré Street, I was struck with a Venetian suggestion

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 op[Pg 306]posite 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.[Pg 307]

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

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:

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.[Pg 309]

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 £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—"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[Pg 310] 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.[Pg 311]

"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."[Pg 312]

CHAPTER XXIX

HISTORY AND ARISTOCRACY

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[Pg 313] 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[Pg 314] 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, how[Pg 315]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—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[Pg 316] 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[Pg 317] 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[Pg 318] 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[Pg 319] 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[Pg 320] 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.[Pg 321]

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[Pg 322] 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 distin[Pg 323]guished 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[Pg 324] 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."[Pg 325]

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."[Pg 326]

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[Pg 327] 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[Pg 328] 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.[Pg 329]

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:

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:

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 fear[Pg 332]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:

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?[Pg 333]

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[Pg 334] 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[Pg 335] 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[Pg 336] "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[Pg 337] 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.[Pg 338]

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:[Pg 339]

"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[Pg 340] 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:

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[Pg 341] 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:

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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[Pg 342]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.

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[Pg 343] 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[Pg 344] 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[Pg 345]—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.

The interior is the oldest looking thing in the United States—Goose Creek Church

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[Pg 346] 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[Pg 347] 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 unneces[Pg 348]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.

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?"[Pg 349]

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[Pg 350] 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[Pg 351] 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[Pg 352] 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[Pg 353] 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[Pg 354] 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[Pg 355] 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.[Pg 356]

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 At[Pg 357]lanta 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[Pg 358] 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[Pg 359] 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,[Pg 360] 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."

The office buildings are city office buildings, and are sufficiently numerous to look very much at home

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[Pg 361] by that portion of Atlanta abutting on the tracks by which the Seaboard Air Line enters the city.

A reminder of the Chicago River—Atlanta

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 à 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[Pg 362] 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[Pg 363] 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 car[Pg 364]riage 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[Pg 365] 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!"

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-[Pg 366]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,[Pg 367] 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[Pg 368] 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.[Pg 369]

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[Pg 370] 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.

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 newspaper—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[Pg 372]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.

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 de[Pg 373]partment. 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[Pg 374] 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[Pg 375] 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.[Pg 376]

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[Pg 377] 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:

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":

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[Pg 380] 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[Pg 381] "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:

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[Pg 383] 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.[Pg 384]

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[Pg 385] 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[Pg 386] 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[Pg 387] 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.[Pg 388]

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,[Pg 389] 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.

The negro roof-garden, Odd Fellows' Building, Atlanta

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[Pg 390] 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.[Pg 391] 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![Pg 392]

CHAPTER XXXVI

A BIT OF RURAL GEORGIA

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 depend[Pg 393]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.

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[Pg 394] 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[Pg 395] 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.[Pg 396]

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:

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[Pg 397] 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[Pg 398] 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 busi[Pg 399]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—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[Pg 400] 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,"[Pg 401] 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 planters cease their work

The old Christmas traditions are likewise kept up.[Pg 402] 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.[Pg 403]

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[Pg 404] 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[Pg 405] 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.[Pg 406]

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."[Pg 407]

"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[Pg 408] 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,[Pg 409] 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[Pg 410] 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.

Birmingham—The thin veil of smoke from far-off iron furnaces softens the city's serrated outlines

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[Pg 411] 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.

Birmingham practices unremittingly the pestilential habit of "cutting in" at dances

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,[Pg 412] 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.[Pg 413]

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 ad[Pg 414]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."

"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[Pg 415] 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[Pg 416] 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.[Pg 417]

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 naïve 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.[Pg 418]

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 portières 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.[Pg 419]

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[Pg 420] 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[Pg 421] 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 of[Pg 422]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."

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[Pg 423]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—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[Pg 424] 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[Pg 425] 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 bête 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.[Pg 426]

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?"[Pg 427]

"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[Pg 428] 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.[Pg 429] 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[Pg 430] 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.[Pg 431]

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[Pg 432] 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.

Gigantic movements and mutations, Niagara-like noises, great bursts of flame like fallen fragments from the sun

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 destruc[Pg 433]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—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[Pg 434] 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 æsthetic 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[Pg 435] 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[Pg 436] 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.[Pg 437] 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[Pg 438] 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[Pg 439] 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![Pg 440]

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[Pg 441] 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[Pg 442]—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.

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

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[Pg 443] 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, im[Pg 444]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.

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[Pg 445] 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."[Pg 446]

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.[Pg 447]

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.[Pg 448]

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[Pg 449] 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[Pg 450] 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 ad[Pg 451]dressed 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[Pg 452] 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."[Pg 453]

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[Pg 454] 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!

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!

Look at the Grand Duke Vasili of Russia, his sweet[Pg 455] 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[Pg 456] 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."[Pg 457]

"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.[Pg 458]

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 shel[Pg 459]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—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.

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.)

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,[Pg 460] 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[Pg 461] 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[Pg 462] 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[Pg 463] 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,[Pg 464] 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.[Pg 465]

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:

This episode becomes the more touching by reason of the fact that the Columbus lady who initiated the[Pg 466] 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.

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[Pg 468] 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.[Pg 469]

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[Pg 470] 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.[Pg 471]

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 Mar[Pg 472]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—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,[Pg 473] 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:

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."[Pg 474]

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[Pg 475] 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?"[Pg 476]

"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.[Pg 477]

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.[Pg 478]

"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[Pg 479] 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[Pg 480] 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.

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

"Come on!" I called to him.

He looked up. His expression was vague.

"Go along," he returned.[Pg 481]

"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.[Pg 482]

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[Pg 483] 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.

In some of the boats negro fish-markets are conducted, advertised by large catfish dangling from posts and railing

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[Pg 484] 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 ex[Pg 485]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.

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 im[Pg 486]pression 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[Pg 487] 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[Pg 488] a feathery green tree top, hinting of space and foliage upon the summit of the hill.

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

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[Pg 489] 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[Pg 490] 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. Be[Pg 491]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.

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.[Pg 492]

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[Pg 493] 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.[Pg 494]

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.[Pg 495] 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:

Walter

[Pg 496]

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.

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

"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 hun[Pg 497]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.

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 un[Pg 498]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.

The old Klein house, standing amid lawns and old-fashioned gardens on the bluff overlooking the river

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[Pg 499] 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.[Pg 500]

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.

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

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[Pg 501] 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[Pg 502] 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[Pg 503] 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[Pg 504] 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," denot[Pg 505]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.

"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 Ca[Pg 506]jun, 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, to[Pg 507]gether 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.[Pg 508]

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 3½ minutes ahead of the Natchez," said Captain Parisot, "made the run to Vicksburg in 24 hours and 28 minutes, beat her to Cairo by[Pg 509] 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[Pg 510] 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[Pg 511] 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,'[Pg 512] 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[Pg 513] 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[Pg 514] 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[Pg 515] 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[Pg 516] 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[Pg 517] 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?[Pg 518]

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[Pg 519] 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 [Pg 520]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.[Pg 521] 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 advertise[Pg 522]ment of this firm, which appeared in the Memphis City Directory for 1855-6.

When the Civil War loomed close, sentiment in Memphis was divided, but at a call for troops for the Union,[Pg 523] 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 career[Pg 524]ing 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 with[Pg 525]out 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[Pg 526] 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[Pg 527] 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[Pg 528] 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[Pg 529] 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[Pg 530] 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[Pg 531] 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[Pg 532] 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[Pg 533] 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[Pg 534] 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.[Pg 535]

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[Pg 536] 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[Pg 537] 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.[Pg 538]

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.[Pg 539]

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[Pg 540] 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.[Pg 541]

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[Pg 542] 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[Pg 543] 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 add[Pg 544]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!

Citizens go at midday to the square where they buy popcorn for the squirrels and pigeons—Memphis

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[Pg 545] 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[Pg 546] 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 sur[Pg 547]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—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.

Hanging in the air above the middle of the stream

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[Pg 548] 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[Pg 549] 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.[Pg 550] 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.[Pg 551]

[Pg 552]

[Pg 553]

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[Pg 554] 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.

These small parks give Savannah a quality which differentiates it from all other American cities

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[Pg 555] 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,[Pg 556] 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 Wes[Pg 557]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.

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.[Pg 558] 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[Pg 559] 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.[Pg 560]

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.

The Thomas House in Franklin Square in which Lafayette was entertained

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[Pg 561] 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,[Pg 562] 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[Pg 563] 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 £820, or about $3,280. Sir Patrick Houston bought two women at £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 £3206, 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:

Certain negroes are mentioned by name:

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[Pg 566] 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[Pg 567] 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[Pg 568] 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 an[Pg 569]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.

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[Pg 570] 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[Pg 571] 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.[Pg 572]

CHAPTER LII

MISS "JAX" AND SOME FLORIDA GOSSIP

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[Pg 573] 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."[Pg 574]

"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.[Pg 575] 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[Pg 576] 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[Pg 577] 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[Pg 578] 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."[Pg 579]

CHAPTER LIII

PASSIONATE PALM BEACH

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[Pg 580] 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.[Pg 581]

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 in[Pg 582]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. 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,[Pg 583] 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[Pg 584] 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[Pg 585] 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[Pg 586] 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[Pg 587] 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.

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

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[Pg 588] 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[Pg 589] 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[Pg 590] 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.

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

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[Pg 591] 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[Pg 592] 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[Pg 593] 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[Pg 594] 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!"[Pg 595]

CHAPTER LIV

ASSORTED AND RESORTED FLORIDA

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[Pg 596] 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[Pg 597] 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, naïve 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[Pg 598] 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-[Pg 599]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.[Pg 600]

"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[Pg 601] 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[Pg 602] 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.

Cocktail hour at The Breakers

[Pg 603]

CHAPTER LV

A DAY IN MONTGOMERY

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[Pg 604] 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.

The couples on the platform were "ragging," their shoulders working like the walking-beams of side-wheelers

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[Pg 605] 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."[Pg 606]

"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[Pg 607] 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[Pg 608] 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.

Harness held together by that especial Providence which watches over negro mendings

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[Pg 609] 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[Pg 610] 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.[Pg 611] 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."[Pg 612]

"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[Pg 613] 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 com[Pg 614]panion 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[Pg 615] 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[Pg 616] 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.

It was a very jolly fair, with the usual lot of barkers and the usual gaping crowd

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[Pg 617] 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?"[Pg 618]

"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:

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.[Pg 619]

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[Pg 620] 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[Pg 621] 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.[Pg 622]

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 incom[Pg 623]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—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[Pg 624] 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[Pg 625] 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.[Pg 626] 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 or[Pg 627]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.

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 fêtes the carnival is also worth seeing—once. The two are, however, hardly to[Pg 628] 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.[Pg 629]

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[Pg 630] 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[Pg 631] 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 Puc[Pg 632]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.

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[Pg 633] 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 à 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[Pg 634] 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[Pg 635] 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 bene[Pg 636]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—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 Poñtalba 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[Pg 637] 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[Pg 638] 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[Pg 639] 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[Pg 640] 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 com[Pg 641]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 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[Pg 642] 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 Or[Pg 643]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 "Père Antoine's Date Palm."

St. Anthony's Garden, where duels originating at the quadroon balls were fought

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[Pg 644] 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 op[Pg 645]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!"—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[Pg 646] 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[Pg 647] 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.[Pg 648]

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:

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:[Pg 649]

So that, at least, is the neighborhood in which he learned that:

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.[Pg 650]

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[Pg 651] 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[Pg 652] 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 chênières, 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 [Pg 653]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 Missis[Pg 654]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.

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[Pg 655] 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[Pg 656] 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 [Pg 657]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[Pg 658] 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.[Pg 659]

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.[Pg 660] 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[Pg 661] 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.

Courtyard of the old Orleans Hotel

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, in[Pg 662]cluding 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!

The mysterious old Absinthe House, founded 1799

[Pg 663]

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 à 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, de[Pg 664]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 café opposite the slave market, where he proceeded to cook and let his cooking speak for him. His dinde à 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[Pg 665] 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[Pg 666] 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[Pg 667] 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 à la Jules César; for the bisque of crayfish à 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 à la Créole, and pompano en Papillotte, and pressed duck à 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.

The lights are always lowered at Antoine's when the spectacular Café Boulot Diabolique is served

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.

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

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.[Pg 668]

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[Pg 669] 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[Pg 670] 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.[Pg 671]

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-[Pg 672]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.

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

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[Pg 673] 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[Pg 674] 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."[Pg 675]

CHAPTER LX

FINALE

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[Pg 676] 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.[Pg 677]

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[Pg 678] 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,[Pg 679] 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[Pg 680] 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[Pg 681] 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?"

FOOTNOTES

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