The Project Gutenberg EBook of American Adventures, by Julian Street This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: American Adventures A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' Author: Julian Street Illustrator: Wallace Morgan Release Date: May 3, 2006 [EBook #18304] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMERICAN ADVENTURES *** Produced by Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net [Illustration: Charleston is the last stronghold of a unified American upper class; the last remaining American city in which Madeira and Port and _noblesse oblige_ are fully and widely understood, and are employed according to the best traditions] AMERICAN ADVENTURES A SECOND TRIP "ABROAD AT HOME" BY JULIAN STREET WITH PICTORIAL SIDELIGHTS BY WALLACE MORGAN NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1917 Copyright, 1917, by THE CENTURY CO. Copyright, 1916, 1917, by P.F. COLLIER & SON, INC. _Published, November, 1917_ TO MY AUNT AND SECOND MOTHER JULIA ROSS LOW FOREWORD Though much has been written of the South, it seems to me that this part of our country is less understood than any other part. Certainly the South, itself, feels that this is true. Its relationship to the North makes me think of nothing so much as that of a pretty, sensitive wife, to a big, strong, amiable, if somewhat thick-skinned husband. These two had one great quarrel which nearly resulted in divorce. He thought her headstrong; she thought him overbearing. The quarrel made her ill; she has been for some time recovering. But though they have settled their difficulties and are living again in amity together, and though he, man-like, has half forgotten that they ever quarreled at all, now that peace reigns in the house again, _she_ has _not_ forgotten. There still lingers in her mind the feeling that he never really understood her, that he never understood her problems and her struggles, and that he never will. And it seems to me further that, as is usually the case with wives who consider themselves misunderstood, the fault is partly, but by no means altogether, hers. He, upon one hand, is inclined to pass the matter off with a: "There, there! It's all over now. Just be good and forget it!" while she, in the depths of her heart, retains a little bit of wistfulness, a little wounded feeling, which causes her to say to herself: "Thank God our home was not broken up, but--I wish that he could be a little more considerate, sometimes, in view of all that I have suffered." For my part, I am the humble but devoted friend of the family. Having known him first, having been from boyhood his companion, I may perhaps have sympathized with him in the beginning. But since I have come to know her, too, that is no longer so. And I do think I know her--proud, sensitive, high-strung, generous, captivating beauty that she is! Moreover, after the fashion of many another "friend of the family," I have fallen in love with her. Loving her from afar, I send her as a nosegay these chapters gathered in her own gardens. If some of the flowers are of a kind for which she does not care, if some have thorns, even if some are only weeds, I pray her to remember that from what was growing in her gardens I was forced to make my choice, and to believe that, whatever the defects of my bouquet, it is meant to be a bunch of roses. J.S. _October 1, 1917._ The Author makes his grateful acknowledgments to the old friends and the new ones who assisted him upon this journey. And once more he desires to express his gratitude to the friend and fellow-traveler whose illustrations are far from being his only contribution to this volume. --J.S. New York, October, 1917. CONTENTS THE BORDERLAND CHAPTER PAGE I ON JOURNEYS THROUGH THE STATES 3 II A BALTIMORE EVENING 13 III WHERE THE CLIMATES MEET 27 IV TRIUMPHANT DEFEAT 38 V TERRAPIN AND THINGS 44 VI DOUGHOREGAN MANOR AND THE CARROLLS 53 VII A RARE OLD TOWN 69 VIII WE MEET THE HAMPTON GHOST 80 IX ARE WE STANDARDIZED? 89 X HARPER'S FERRY AND JOHN BROWN 97 XI THE VIRGINIAS AND THE WASHINGTONS 105 XII I RIDE A HORSE 117 XIII INTO THE OLD DOMINION 136 XIV CHARLOTTESVILLE AND MONTICELLO 150 XV THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 159 XVI FOX-HUNTING IN VIRGINIA 169 XVII "A CERTAIN PARTY" 186 XVIII THE LEGACY OF HATE 193 XIX "YOU-ALL" AND OTHER SECTIONAL MISUNDERSTANDINGS 203 XX IDIOMS AND ARISTOCRACY 214 XXI THE CONFEDERATE CAPITAL 222 XXII RANDOM RICHMOND NOTES 233 XXIII JEDGE CRUTCHFIELD'S COT 242 XXIV NORFOLK AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD 248 XXV COLONEL TAYLOR AND GENERAL LEE 258 THE HEART OF THE SOUTH XXVI RALEIGH AND JOSEPHUS DANIELS 273 XXVII ITEMS FROM "THE OLD NORTH STATE" 285 XXVIII UNDER ST. MICHAEL'S CHIMES 296 XXIX HISTORY AND ARISTOCRACY 312 XXX POLITICS, A NEWSPAPER AND ST. CECILIA 326 XXXI "GULLA" AND THE BACK COUNTRY 338 XXXII OUT OF THE PAST 349 XXXIII ALIVE ATLANTA 356 XXXIV GEORGIA JOURNALISM 369 XXXV SOME ATLANTA INSTITUTIONS 384 XXXVI A BIT OF RURAL GEORGIA 392 XXXVII A YOUNG METROPOLIS 403 XXXVIII BUSY BIRMINGHAM 417 XXXIX AN ALLEGORY OF ACHIEVEMENT 426 XL THE ROAD TO ARCADY 440 XLI A MISSISSIPPI TOWN 447 XLII OLD TALES AND A NEW GAME 458 XLIII OUT OF THE LONG AGO 467 XLIV THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND HIM 474 XLV VICKSBURG OLD AND NEW 482 XLVI SHREDS AND PATCHES 494 XLVII THE BAFFLING MISSISSIPPI 500 XLVIII OLD RIVER DAYS 508 XLIX WHAT MEMPHIS HAS ENDURED 518 L MODERN MEMPHIS 535 FARTHEST SOUTH LI BEAUTIFUL SAVANNAH 553 LII MISS "JAX" AND SOME FLORIDA GOSSIP 572 LIII PASSIONATE PALM BEACH 579 LIV ASSORTED AND RESORTED FLORIDA 595 LV A DAY IN MONTGOMERY 603 LVI THE CITY OF THE CREOLE 619 LVII HISTORY, THE CREOLE, AND HIS DUELS 629 LVIII FROM ANTIQUES TO PIRATES 648 LIX ANTOINE'S AND MARDI GRAS 663 LX FINALE 675 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE Charleston is the last stronghold of a unified American upper class; the last remaining American city in which Madeira and Port and _noblesse oblige_ are fully and widely understood, and are employed according to the best traditions _Frontispiece_ "Railroad tickets!" said the baggageman with exaggerated patience 8 Can most travellers, I wonder, enjoy as I do a solitary walk, by night, through the mysterious streets of a strange city? 17 Coming out of my slumber with the curious and unpleasant sense of being stared at, I found his eyes fixed upon me 24 Mount Vernon Place is the centre of Baltimore 32 If she is shopping for a dinner party, she may order the costly and aristocratic diamond-back terrapin, sacred in Baltimore as is the Sacred Cod in Boston 48 Doughoregan Manor--the house was a buff-colored brick 65 I began to realize that there was no one coming 80 Harper's Ferry is an entrancing old town; a drowsy place piled up beautifully yet carelessly upon terraced roads clinging to steep hillsides 100 "What's the matter with him?" I asked, stopping 117 When I came down, dressed for riding, my companion was making a drawing; the four young ladies were with him, none of them in riding habits 124 Claymont Court is one of the old Washington houses 132 Chatham, the old Fitzhugh house, now the residence of Mark Sullivan 148 Monticello stands on a lofty hilltop, with vistas, between trees of neighboring valleys, hills, and mountains 157 Like Venice, the University of Virginia should first be seen by moonlight 168 One party was stationed on the top of an old-time mail-coach, bearing the significant initials "F.F.V." 180 The Piedmont Hunt Race Meet 189 The Southern negro is the world's peasant supreme 200 The Country Club of Virginia, out to the west of Richmond 216 Judge Crutchfield 228 Negro women squatting upon boxes in old shadowy lofts stem the tobacco leaves 237 The Judge: "What did he do, Mandy?" 244 Some genuine old-time New York ferryboats help to complete the illusion that Norfolk is New York 253 "The Southern statesman who serves his section best, serves his country best" 280 St. Philip's is the more beautiful for the open space before it 300 Opposite St. Philip's, a perfect example of the rude architecture of an old French village 305 In the doorway and gates of the Smyth house, in Legaré Street, I was struck with a Venetian suggestion 316 Nor is the Charleston background a mere arras of recollection 320 Charleston has a stronger, deeper-rooted city entity than all the cities of the Middle West rolled into one 328 The interior is the oldest looking thing in the United States--Goose Creek Church 344 A reminder of the Chicago River--Atlanta 353 With the whole Metropolitan Orchestra playing dance music all night long 368 The office buildings are city office buildings, and are sufficiently numerous to look very much at home 376 The negro roof-garden, Odd Fellows' Building, Atlanta 385 I was never so conscious, as at the time of our visit to the Burge Plantation, of the superlative soft sweetness of the spring 396 The planters cease their work 400 Birmingham--the thin veil of smoke from far-off iron furnaces softens the city's serrated outlines 408 Birmingham practices unremittingly the pestilential habit of "cutting in" at dances 424 Gigantic movements and mutations, Niagara-like noises, great bursts of flame like falling fragments from the sun 437 A shaggy, unshaven, rawboned man, gray-haired and collarless, sat near the window 444 Gaze upon the character called Daniel Voorhees Pike! 456 The houses were full of the suggestion of an easy-going home life and an informal hospitality 465 Her hands looked very white and small against his dark coat 480 As water flows down the hills of Vicksburg to the river, so the visitor's thoughts flow down to the great spectacular, mischievous, dominating stream 485 Over the tenement roofs one catches sight of sundry other buildings of a more self-respecting character 492 Vicksburg negroes 497 On some of the boats negro fish-markets are conducted 504 The old Klein house 512 Citizens go at midday to the square 520 Hanging in the air above the middle of the stream 536 These small parks give Savannah the quality which differentiates it from all other American cities 556 The Thomas house, in Franklin Square 561 You will see them having tea, and dancing under the palm fronds of the cocoanut grove 576 Cocktail hour at The Breakers 581 Nowhere is the sand more like a deep warm dust of yellow gold 588 The couples on the platform were "ragging" 600 Harness held together by that especial Providence which watches over negro mending 613 It was a very jolly fair 616 The mysterious old Absinthe House, founded 1799 620 St. Anthony's Garden 632 Courtyard of the old Orleans Hotel 641 The little lady who sits behind the desk 656 The lights are always lowered at Antoine's when the spectacular Café Boulot Diabolique is served 664 Passing between the brilliantly illuminated buildings, the Mardi Gras parades are glorious sights for children from eight to eighty years of age 672 THE BORDERLAND O magnet-South! O glistening, perfumed South! O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and love! good and evil! O all dear to me! WALT WHITMAN. AMERICAN ADVENTURES CHAPTER I ON JOURNEYS THROUGH THE STATES On journeys through the States we start, ... We willing learners of all, teachers of all, lovers of all. We dwell a while in every city and town ... --WALT WHITMAN. Had my companion and I never crossed the continent together, had we never gone "abroad at home," I might have curbed my impatience at the beginning of our second voyage. But from the time we returned from our first journey, after having spent some months in trying, as some one put it, to "discover America," I felt the gnawings of excited appetite. The vast sweep of the country continually suggested to me some great delectable repast: a banquet spread for a hundred million guests; and having discovered myself unable, in the time first allotted, to devour more than part of it--a strip across the table, as it were, stretching from New York on one side to San Francisco on the other--I have hungered impatiently for more. Indeed, to be quite honest, I should like to try to eat it all. Months before our actual departure for the South the day for leaving was appointed; days before we fixed upon our train; hours before I bought my ticket. And then, when my trunks had left the house, when my taxicab was ordered and my faithful battered suitcase stood packed to bulging in the hall, my companion, the Illustrator, telephoned to say that certain drawings he must finish before leaving were not done, that he would be unable to go with me that afternoon, as planned, but must wait until the midnight train. Had the first leap been a long one I should have waited for him, but the distance from New York to the other side of Mason and Dixon's Line is short, and I knew that he would join me on the threshold of the South next morning. Therefore I told him I would leave that afternoon as originally proposed, and gave him, in excuse, every reason I could think of, save the real one: namely, my impatience. I told him that I wished to make the initial trip by day to avoid the discomforts of the sleeping car, that I had engaged hotel accommodations for the night by wire, that friends were coming down to see me off. Nor were these arguments without truth. I believe in telling the truth. The truth is good enough for any one at any time--except, perhaps, when there is a point to be carried, and even then some vestige of it should, if convenient, be preserved. Thus, for example, it is quite true that I prefer the conversation of my fellow travelers, dull though it may be, to the stertorous sounds they make by night; so, too, if I had not telegraphed for rooms, it was merely because I had forgotten to--and that I remedied immediately; while as to the statement that friends were to see me off, that was absolutely and literally accurate. Friends had, indeed, signified their purpose to meet me at the station for last farewells, and had, furthermore, remarked upon the very slight show of enthusiasm with which I heard the news. The fact is, I do not like to be seen off. Least of all, do I like to be seen off by those who are dear to me. If the thing must be done, I prefer it to be done by strangers--committees from chambers of commerce and the like, who have no interest in me save the hope that I will live to write agreeably of their city--of the civic center, the fertilizer works, and the charming new abattoir. Seeing me off for the most practical of reasons, such gentlemen are invariably efficient. They provide an equipage, and there have even been times when, in the final hurried moments, they have helped me to jam the last things into my trunks and bags. One of them politely takes my suitcase, another kindly checks my baggage, and all in order that a third, who is usually the secretary of the chamber of commerce, may regale me with inspiring statistics concerning the population of "our city," the seating capacity of the auditorium, the number of banks, the amount of their clearings, and the quantity of belt buckles annually manufactured. When the train is ready we exchange polite expressions of regret at parting: expressions reminiscent of those little speeches which the King of England and the Emperor of Germany used to make at parting in the old days before they found each other out and began dropping high explosives on each other's roofs. Such a committee, feeling no emotion (except perhaps relief) at seeing me depart, may be useful. Not so with friends and loved ones. Useful as they may be in the great crises of life, they are but disturbing elements in the small ones. Those who would die for us seldom check our trunks. By this I do not mean to imply that either of the two delightful creatures who came to the Pennsylvania Terminal to bid me good-by would die for me. That one has lived for me and that both attempt to regulate my conduct is more than enough. Hardly had I alighted from my taxicab, hardly had the redcap seized my suitcase, when, with sweet smiles and a twinkling of daintily shod feet, they came. Fancy their having arrived ahead of me! Fancy their having come like a pair of angels through the rain to see me off! Enough to turn a man's head! It did turn mine; and I noticed that, as they approached, the heads of other men were turning too. Flattered to befuddlement, I greeted them and started with them automatically in the direction of the concourse, forgetting entirely the driver of my taxicab, who, however, took in the situation and set up a great shout--whereat I returned hastily and overpaid him. This accomplished, I rejoined my companions and, with a radiant dark-haired girl at one elbow and a blonde, equally delectable, at the other, moved across the concourse. How gay they were as we strolled along! How amusing were their prophecies of adventures destined to befall me in the South. Small wonder that I took no thought of whither I was going. Presently, having reached the wall at the other side of the great vaulted chamber, we stopped. "Which train, boss?" asked the porter who had meekly followed. Train? I had forgotten about trains. The mention of the subject distracted my attention for the moment from the _Loreleien_, stirred my drugged sense of duty, and reminded me that I had trunks to check. My suggestion that I leave them briefly for this purpose was lightly brushed aside. "Oh, no!" they cried. "We shall go with you." I gave in at once--one always does with them--and inquired of the porter the location of the baggage room. He looked somewhat fatigued as he replied: "It's away back there where we come from, boss." It was a long walk; in a garden, with no train to catch, it would have been delightful. "Got your tickets?" suggested the porter as we passed the row of grilled windows. He had evidently concluded that I was irresponsible. As I had them, we continued on our way, and presently achieved the baggage room, where they stood talking and laughing, telling me of the morning's shopping expedition--hat-hunting, they called it--in the rain. I fancy that we might have been there yet had not a baggageman, perhaps divining that I had become a little bit distrait and that I had business to transact, rapped smartly on the iron counter with his punch and demanded: "Baggage checked?" Turning, not without reluctance, from a pair of violet eyes and a pair of the most mysterious gray, I began to fumble in my pockets for the claim checks. "How long shall you stay in Baltimore?" asked the girl with the gray eyes. "Yes, indeed!" I answered, still searching for the checks. "That doesn't make sense," remarked the blue-eyed girl as I found the checks and handed them to the baggageman. "She asked how long you'd stay in Baltimore, and you said: 'Yes, indeed.'" "About a week I meant to say." "Oh, I don't believe a week will be enough," said Gray-eyes. "We can't stay longer," I declared. "We must keep pushing on. There are so many places in the South to see." "My sister has just been there, and she--" "Where to?" demanded the insistent baggageman. "Why, Baltimore, of course," I said. Had he paid attention to our conversation he might have known. "You were saying," reminded Violet-eyes, "that your sister--?" "She just came home from there, and says that--" "Railroad ticket!" said the baggageman with exaggerated patience. I began again to feel in various pockets. "She says," continued Gray-eyes, "that she never met more charming people or had better things to eat. She loves the southern accent too." I don't know how the tickets got into my upper right vest pocket; I never carry tickets there; but that is where I found them. "Do you like it?" asked the other girl of me. "Like what?" "Why, the southern accent." "Any valuation?" the baggageman demanded. "Yes," I answered them both at once. "Oh, you _do_?" cried Violet-eyes, incredulously. "Why, yes; I think--" "Put down the amount and sign here," the baggageman directed, pushing a slip toward me and placing a pencil in my hand. I obeyed. The baggageman took the slip and went off to a little desk. I judged that he had finished with me for the moment. "But don't you think," my fair inquisitor continued, "that the southern girls pile on the accent awfully, because they know it pleases men?" "Perhaps," I said. "But then, what better reason could they have for doing so?" "Listen to that!" she cried to her companion. "Did you ever hear such egotism?" "He's nothing but a man," said Gray-eyes scornfully. "I wouldn't be a man for--" "A dollar and eighty-five cents," declared the baggageman. I paid him. "I wouldn't be a man for anything!" my fair friend finished as we started to move off. "I wouldn't have you one," I told her, opening the concourse door. "_Hay!_" shouted the baggageman. "Here's your ticket and your checks!" I returned, took them, and put them in my pocket. Again we proceeded upon our way. I was glad to leave the baggageman. This time the porter meant to take no chances. "What train, boss?" he asked. "The Congressional Limited." "You got jus' four minutes." "Goodness!" cried Gray-eyes. "I thought," said Violet-eyes as we accelerated our pace, "that you prided yourself on always having time to spare?" "Usually I do," I answered, "but in this case--" "What car?" the porter interrupted tactfully. Again I felt for my tickets. This time they were in my change pocket. I can't imagine how I came to put them there. "But in this case--_what_?" The violet eyes looked threatening as their owner put the question. "Seat seven, car three," I told the porter firmly as we approached the gate. Then, turning to my dangerous and lovely cross-examiner: "In this case I am unfortunate, for there is barely time to say good-by." There are several reasons why I don't believe in railway station kisses. Kisses given in public are at best but skimpy little things, suggesting the swift peck of a robin at a peach, whereas it is truer of kissing than of many other forms of industry that what is worth doing at all is worth doing well. Yet I knew that one of these enchantresses expected to be kissed, and that the other very definitely didn't. Therefore I kissed them both. Then I bolted toward the gate. "Tickets!" demanded the gateman, stopping me. At last I found them in the inside pocket of my overcoat. I don't know how they got there. I never carry tickets in that pocket. As the train began to move I looked at my watch and, discovering it to be three minutes fast, set it right. That is the sort of train the Congressional Limited is. A moment later we were roaring through the blackness of the Hudson River tunnel. There is something fine in the abruptness of the escape from New York City by the Pennsylvania Railroad. From the time you enter the station you are as good as gone. There is no progress between the city's tenements, with untidy bedding airing in some windows and fat old slatterns leaning out from others to survey the sordidness and squalor of the streets below. A swift plunge into darkness, some thundering moments, and your train glides out upon the wide wastes of the New Jersey meadows. The city is gone. You are even in another State. Far, far behind, bathed in glimmering haze which gives them the appearance of palaces in a mirage, you may see the tops of New York's towering sky-scrapers, dwarfed yet beautified by distance. Outside the wide car window the advertising sign-boards pass to the rear in steady parade, shrieking in strong color of whiskies, tobaccos, pills, chewing gums, cough drops, flours, hams, hotels, soaps, socks, and shows. CHAPTER II A BALTIMORE EVENING I felt her presence by its spell of might, Stoop o'er me from above; The calm, majestic presence of the night, As of the one I love. --LONGFELLOW. Before I went to Baltimore I had but two definite impressions connected with the place: the first was of a tunnel, filled with coal gas, through which trains pass beneath the city; the second was that when a southbound train left Baltimore the time had come to think of cleaning up, preparatory to reaching Washington. Arriving at Baltimore after dark, one gathers an impression of an adequate though not impressive Union Station from which one emerges to a district of good asphalted streets, the main ones wide and well lighted. The Baltimore street lamps are large and very brilliant single globes, mounted upon the tops of substantial metal columns. I do not remember having seen lamps of the same pattern in any other city. It is a good pattern, but there is one thing about it which is not good at all, and that is the way the street names are lettered upon the sides of the globes. Though the lettering is not large, it is large enough to be read easily in the daytime against the globe's white surface, but to try to read it at night is like trying to read some little legend printed upon a blinding noon-day sun. I noticed this particularly because I spent my first evening in wandering alone about the streets of Baltimore, and wished to keep track of my route in order that I might the more readily find my way back to the hotel. Can most travelers, I wonder, enjoy as I do a solitary walk, by night, through the mysterious streets of a strange city? Do they feel the same detached yet keen interest in unfamiliar highways, homes, and human beings, the same sense of being a wanderer from another world, a "messenger from Mars," a Harun-al-Rashid, or, if not one of these, an imaginative adventurer like Tartarin? Do they thrill at the sight of an ill-lighted street leading into a no-man's-land of menacing dark shadows; at the promise of a glowing window puncturing the blackness here or there; at the invitation of some open doorway behind which unilluminated blackness hangs, threatening and tempting? Do they rejoice in streets the names of which they have not heard before? Do they--as I do--delight in irregularity: in the curious forms of roofs and spires against the sky; in streets which run up hill or down; or which, instead of being straight, have jogs in them, or curves, or interesting intersections, at which other streets dart off from them obliquely, as though in a great hurry to get somewhere? Do they love to emerge from a street which is narrow, dim, and deserted, upon one which is wide, bright, and crowded; and do they also like to leave a brilliant street and dive into the darkness of some somber byway? Does a long row of lights lure them, block by block, toward distances unknown? Are they tempted by the unfamiliar signs on passing street cars? Do they yearn to board those cars and be transported by them into the mystic caverns of the night? And when they see strangers who are evidently going somewhere with some special purpose, do they wish to follow; to find out where these beings are going, and why? Do they wish to trail them, let the trail lead to a prize fight, to a church sociable, to a fire, to a fashionable ball, or to the ends of the world? For the traveler who does not know such sensations and such impulses as these--who has not at times indulged in the joy of yielding to an inclination of at least mildly fantastic character--I am profoundly sorry. The blind themselves are not so blind as those who, seeing with the physical eye, lack the eye of imagination. Residence streets like Chase and Biddle, in the blocks near where they cross Charles Street, midway on its course between the Union Station and Mount Vernon Place, are at night, even more than by day, full of the suggestion of comfortable and settled domesticity. Their brick houses, standing wall to wall and close to the sidewalk, speak of honorable age, and, in some cases of a fine and ancient dignity. One fancies that in many of these houses the best of old mahogany may be found, or, if not that, then at least the fairly old and quite creditable furniture of the period of the sleigh-back bed, the haircloth-covered rosewood sofa, and the tall, narrow mirror between the two front windows of the drawing room. Through the glass panels of street doors and beneath half-drawn window shades the early-evening wayfarer may perceive a feeble glow as of illuminating gas turned low; but by ten o'clock these lights have begun to disappear, indicating--or so, at all events, I chose to believe--that certain old ladies wearing caps and black silk gowns with old lace fichus held in place by ancient cameos, have proceeded slowly, rustlingly, upstairs to bed, accompanied by their cats. At Cathedral Street, a block or two from Charles, Biddle Street performs a jog, dashing off at a tangent from its former course, while Chase Street not only jogs and turns at the corresponding intersection, but does so again, where, at the next corner, it meets at once with Park Avenue and Berkeley Street. After this it runs but a short way and dies, as though exhausted by its own contortions. Here, in a region of malformed city blocks--some of them pentagonal, some irregularly quadrangular, some wedge-shaped--Howard Street sets forth upon its way, running first southwest as far as Richmond Street, then turning south and becoming, by degrees, an important thoroughfare. Somewhere near the beginning of Howard Street my attention was arrested by shadowy forms in a dark window: furniture, andirons, chinaware, and weapons of obsolete design: unmistakable signs of a shop in which antiquities were for sale. After making mental note of the location of this shop, I proceeded on my way, keeping a sharp lookout for other like establishments. Nor was I to be disappointed. These birds of a feather bear out the truth of the proverb by flocking together in Howard Street, as window displays, faintly visible, informed me. Since we have come naturally to the subject of antiques, let us pause here, under a convenient lamp-post, and discuss the matter further. Baltimore--as I found out later--is probably the headquarters for the South in this trade. It has at least one dealer of Fifth Avenue rank, located on Charles Street, and a number of humbler dealers in and near Howard Street. Among the latter, two in particular interested me. One of these--his name is John A. Williar--I have learned to trust. Not only did I make some purchases of him while I was in Baltimore, but I have even gone so far, since leaving there, as to buy from him by mail, accepting his assurance that some article which I have not seen is, nevertheless, what I want, and that it is "worth the price." At the other antique shop which interested me I made no purchases. The stock on hand was very large, and if those who exhibited it to me made no mistakes in differentiating between genuine antiques and copies, the assortment of ancient furniture on sale in that establishment, when I was there, would rank among the great collections of the world. However, human judgment is not infallible, and antique dealers sometimes make mistakes, offering, so to speak, "new lamps for old." The eyesight of some dealers may not be so good as that of others; or perhaps one dealer does not know so well as another the difference between, say, an old English Chippendale chair and a New York reproduction; or again, perhaps, some dealers may be innocently unaware that there exist, in this land of ours, certain large establishments wherein are manufactured most extraordinary modern copies of the furniture of long ago. I have been in one of these manufactories, and have there seen chairs of Chippendale and Sheraton design which, though fresh from the workman's hands, looked older than the originals from which they had been plagiarized; also I recall a Jacobean refectory table, the legs of which appeared to have been eaten half away by time, but which had, in reality, been "antiqued" with a stiff wire brush. I mention this because, in my opinion, antique dealers have a right to know that such factories exist. What curious differences there are between the customs of one trade and those of another. Compare, for instance, the dealer in old furniture with the dealer in old automobiles. The latter, far from pronouncing a machine of which he wishes to dispose "a genuine antique," will assure you--and not always with a strict regard for truth--that it is "practically as good as new." Or compare the seller of antiques with the horse dealer. Can you imagine the latter's taking you up to some venerable quadruped--let alone a three-year-old--and discoursing upon its merits in some such manner as the following: "This is the oldest and most historic horse that has ever come into my possession. Just look at it, sir! The farmer of whom I bought it assured me that it was brought over by his ancestors in the _Mayflower_. The place where I found it was used as Washington's headquarters during the Revolutionary War, and it is known that Washington himself frequently sat on this very horse. It was a favorite of his. For he was a large man and he liked a big, comfortable, deep-seated horse, well braced underneath, and having strong arms, so that he could tilt it back comfortably against the wall, with its front legs off the floor, and--" But no! That won't do. It appears I have gotten mixed. However, you know what I meant to indicate. I merely meant to show that a horse dealer wouldn't talk about a horse as an antique dealer would talk about a chair. Even if the horse was once actually ridden by the Father of his Country, the dealer won't stress the point. You can't get him to admit that a horse has reached years of discretion, let alone that it is one hundred and forty-five years old, or so. It is this difference between the horse dealer and the dealer in antiques which keeps us in the dark to-day as to exactly which horses Washington rode and which he didn't ride; although we know every chair he ever sat in, and every bed he ever slept in, and every house he ever stopped in, and how he is said to have caught his death of cold. Having thus wandered afield, let me now resume my nocturnal walk. Proceeding down Howard Street to Franklin, I judged by the signs I saw about me--the conglomerate assortment of theaters, hotels, rathskellers, bars, and brilliantly lighted drug stores--that here was the center of the city's nighttime life. Not far from this corner is the Academy, a very spacious and somewhat ancient theater, and although the hour was late, into the Academy I went with a ticket for standing room. Arriving during an intermission, I had a good view of the auditorium. It is reminiscent, in its interior "decoration," of the recently torn-down Wallack's Theater in New York. The balcony is supported, after the old fashion, by posts, and there are boxes the tops of which are draped with tasseled curtains. It is the kind of theater which suggests traditions, dust, and the possibility of fire and panic. After looking about me for a time, I drew from my pocket a pamphlet which I had picked up in the hotel, and began to gather information about the "Monumental City," as Baltimore sometimes calls itself--thereby misusing the word, since "monumental" means, in one sense, "enduring," and in another "pertaining to or serving as a monument": neither of which ideas it is intended, in this instance, to convey. What Baltimore intends to indicate is, not that it pertains to monuments, but that monuments pertain to it: that it is a city in which many monuments have been erected--as is indeed the pleasing fact. My pamphlet informed me that the first monument to Columbus and the first to George Washington were here put up, and that among the city's other monuments was one to Francis Scott Key. I had quite forgotten that it was at Baltimore that Key wrote the words of "The Star-Spangled Banner," and, as others may have done the same, it may be well here to recall the details. In 1814, after the British had burned a number of Government buildings in Washington, including "the President's palace" (as one of their officers expressed it), they moved on Baltimore, making an attack by land at North Point and a naval attack at Fort McHenry on Whetstone Point in the estuary of the Patapsco River--here practically an arm of Chesapeake Bay. Both attacks were repulsed. Having gone on the United States cartel ship _Minden_ (used by the government in negotiating exchanges of prisoners) to intercede for his friend, Dr. William Beanes, of Upper Marlborough, Maryland, who was held captive on a British vessel, Key witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry from the deck of the _Minden_, and when he perceived "by the dawn's early light" that the flag still flew over the fort, he was moved to write his famous poem. Later it was printed and set to music; it was first sung in a restaurant near the old Holliday Street Theater, but neither the restaurant nor the theater exists to-day. It is sometimes stated that Key was himself a prisoner, during the bombardment, on a British warship. That is a mistake. By a curious coincidence, only a few minutes after my pamphlet had reminded me of the origin of "The Star-Spangled Banner" here in Baltimore, I heard the air played under circumstances very different from any which could have been anticipated by the author of the poem, or the composer who set it to music. The entertainment at the Academy that night was supplied by an elaborate "show" of the burlesque variety known as "The Follies," and it so happened that in the course of this hodgepodge of color, comedy, scenery, song, and female anatomy, there was presented a "number" in which actors, garbed and frescoed with intent to resemble rulers of various lands, marched successively to the front of the stage, preceded in each instance by a small but carefully selected guard wearing the full-dress-uniform of Broadway Amazons. This uniform consists principally of tights and high-heeled slippers, the different nations being indicated, usually, by means of color combinations and various types of soldiers' hats. No arms are presented save those provided by nature. The King of Italy, the Emperor of Austria, the Czar, the Mikado, the British Monarch, the President of France, the King of the Belgians, the Kaiser (for the United States had not then entered the war), and, I think, some others, put in an appearance, each accompanied by his Paphian escort, his standard, and the appropriate national air. Apprehending that this symbolic travesty must, almost inevitably, end in a grand orgy of Yankee-Doodleism, I was impelled to flee the place before the thing should happen. Yet a horrid fascination held me there to watch the working up of "patriotic" sentiment by the old, cheap, stage tricks. Presently, of course, the supreme moment came. When all the potentates had taken their positions, right and left, with their silk-limbed soldiery in double ranks behind them, there came into view upstage a squad of little white-clad female naval officers, each, according to my recollection, carrying the Stars and Stripes. As these marched forward and deployed as skirmishers before the footlights, the orchestra struck up "The Star-Spangled Banner," fortissimo, and with a liberal sounding of the brasses. Upon this appeared at the back a counterfeit President of the United States, guarded on either side by a female militia--or were they perhaps secret-service agents?--in striking uniforms consisting of pink fleshings partially draped with thin black lace. As this incongruous parade proceeded to the footlights, American flags came into evidence, and, though I forget whether or not Columbia appeared, I recollect that a beautiful young woman, habited in what appeared to be a light pink union suit of unexceptionable cut and material, appeared above the head of the pseudo-chief executive, suspended at the end of a wire. Never having heard that it was White House etiquette to hang young ladies on wires above the presidential head, I consulted my program and thereby learned that this young lady represented that species of poultry so popular always with the late Secretary of State, Mr. Bryan, and so popular also at one time with the President himself: namely, the Dove of Peace. The applause was thunderous. At the sound of "The Star-Spangled Banner" a few members of the audience arose to their feet; others soon followed--some of them apparently with reluctance--until at last the entire house had risen. Meanwhile the members of the company lined up before the footlights: the mock president smirking at the center, the half-clad girls posing, the pink young lady dangling above, the band blaring, the Stars and Stripes awave. It was a scene, in all, about as conducive to genuine or creditable national pride as would be the scene of a debauch in some fabulous harem. The difference between stupidity and satire lies, not infrequently, in the intent with which a thing is done. Presented without essential change upon the stage of a music hall in some foreign land, the scene just described would, at that time, when we were playing a timid part amongst the nations, have been accepted, not as a glorification of the United States, but as having a precisely opposite significance. It would have been taken for burlesque; burlesque upon our country, our President, our national spirit, our peace policy, our army, and perhaps also upon our women--and insulting burlesque at that. Some years since, it was found necessary to pass a law prohibiting the use of the flag for advertising purposes. This law should be amended to protect it also from the even more sordid and vulgarizing associations to which it is not infrequently submitted on the American musical-comedy stage. * * * * * In the morning, before I was awake, my companion arrived at the hotel, and, going to his room, opened the door connecting it with mine. Coming out of my slumber with that curious and not altogether pleasant sense of being stared at, I found his eyes fixed upon me, and noticed immediately about him the air of virtuous superiority which is assumed by all who have risen early, whether they have done so by choice or have been shaken awake. "Hello," I said. "Had breakfast?" "No. I thought we could breakfast together if you felt like getting up." Though the phraseology of this remark was unexceptionable, I knew what it meant. What it really meant was: "Shame on you, lying there so lazy after sunup! Look at _me_, all dressed and ready to begin!" I arose at once. For all that I don't like to get up early, it recalled old times, and was very pleasant, to be away with him again upon our travels; to be in a strange city and a strange hotel, preparing to set forth on explorations. For he is the best, the most charming, the most observant of companions, and also one of the most patient. That is one of his greatest qualities--his patience. Throughout our other trip he always kept on being patient with me, no matter what I did. Many a time instead of pushing me down an elevator shaft, drowning me in my bath, or coming in at night and smothering me with a pillow, he has merely sighed, dropped into a chair, and sat there shaking his head and staring at me with a melancholy, ruminative, hopeless expression--such an expression as may come into the face of a dumb man when he looks at a waiter who has spilled an oyster cocktail on him. All this is good for me. It has a chastening effect. Therefore in a spirit happy yet not exuberant, eager yet controlled, hopeful yet a little bit afraid, I dressed myself hurriedly, breakfasted with him (eating ham and eggs because he approves of ham and eggs), and after breakfast set out in his society to obtain what--despite my walk of the night before--I felt was not alone my first real view of Baltimore, but my first glimpse over the threshold of the South: into the land of aristocracy and hospitality, of mules and mammies, of plantations, porticos, and proud, flirtatious belles, of colonels, cotton, chivalry, and colored cooking. CHAPTER III WHERE THE CLIMATES MEET Here, where the climates meet, That each may make the other's lack complete-- --SIDNEY LANIER. Because Baltimore was built, like Rome, on seven hills, and because trains run under it instead of through, the passing traveler sees but little of the city, his view from the train window being restricted first to a suburban district, then to a black tunnel, then to a glimpse upward from the railway cut, in which the station stands. These facts, I think, combine to leave upon his mind an impression which, if not actually unfavorable, is at least negative; for certainly he has obtained no just idea of the metropolis of Maryland. Let it be declared at the outset, then, that Baltimore is not in any sense to be regarded as a suburb of Washington. Indeed, considering the two merely as cities situated side by side, and eliminating the highly specialized features of Washington, Baltimore becomes, according to the standards by which American cities are usually compared, the more important city of the two, being greater both in population and in commerce. In this aspect Baltimore may, perhaps, be pictured as the commercial half of Washington. And while Washington, as capital of the United States, has certain physical and cosmopolitan advantages, not only over Baltimore, but over every other city on this continent, it must not be forgotten that, upon the other hand, every other city has one vast advantage over Washington, namely, a comparative freedom from politicians. To be sure, Congress did once move over to Baltimore and sit there for several weeks, but that was in 1776, when the British approached the Delaware in the days before the pork barrel was invented. As a city Baltimore has marked characteristics. Though south of Mason and Dixon's Line, and though sometimes referred to as the "metropolis of the South" (as is New Orleans also), it is in character neither a city entirely northern nor entirely southern, but one which partakes of the qualities of both; where, in the words of Sidney Lanier, "the climates meet," and where northern and southern thought and custom meet, as well. This has long been the case. Thus, although slaves were held in Baltimore before the Civil War, a strong abolitionist society was formed there during Washington's first Administration, and the sentiment of the city was thereafter divided on the slavery question. Thus also, while the two candidates of the divided Democratic party who ran against Lincoln for the presidency in 1860 were nominated at Baltimore, Lincoln himself was nominated there by the Union-Republican party in 1864. Speaking of the blending of North and South in Baltimore, you will, of course, remember that the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment was attacked by a mob as it passed through the city on the way to the Civil War. The regiment arrived in Baltimore at the old President Street Station, which was then the main station of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and which, now used as a freight station, looks like an old war-time woodcut out of _Harper's Weekly_. It was the custom in those days to hitch horses to passenger coaches which were going through and draw them across town to the Baltimore & Ohio Station; but when it was attempted thus to transport the northern troops a mob gathered and blocked the Pratt Street bridge over Jones's Falls, forcing the soldiers to leave the cars and march through Pratt Street, along the water front, where they were attacked. It is, however, a noteworthy fact that Mayor Brown of Baltimore bravely preceded the troops and attempted to stop the rioting. A few days later the city was occupied by northern troops, and the warship _Harriet Lane_ anchored at a point off Calvert Street, whence her guns commanded the business part of town. After this there was no more serious trouble. Moreover, it will be remembered that though Maryland was represented by regiments in both armies, the State, torn as it was by conflicting feeling, nevertheless held to the Union. A pretty sequel to the historic attack on the Sixth Massachusetts occurred when the same regiment passed through Baltimore in 1898, on its way to the Spanish War. On this occasion it was "attacked" again in the streets of the city, but the missiles thrown, instead of paving-stones and bricks, were flowers. Continuing the category of contrasts, one may observe that while the general appearance of Baltimore suggests a northern city rather than a southern one--Philadelphia, for instance, rather than Richmond--Baltimore society is strongly flavored with the tradition and the soft pronunciation of the South; particularly of Virginia and the "Eastern Shore." So, too, the city's position on the border line is reflected in its handling of the negro. Of American cities, Washington has the largest negro population, 94,446, New York and New Orleans follow with almost as many, and Baltimore comes fourth with 84,749, according to the last census. New York has one negro to every fifty-one whites, Philadelphia one to every seventeen whites, Baltimore one to every six, Washington a negro to every two and a half whites, and Richmond not quite two whites to every negro. But, although Baltimore follows southern practice in maintaining separate schools for negro children, and in segregating negro residences to certain blocks, she follows northern practice in casting a considerable negro vote at elections, and also in not providing separate seats for negroes in her street cars. Have you ever noticed how cities sometimes seem to have their own especial colors? Paris is white and green--even more so, I think, than Washington. Chicago is gray; so is London usually, though I have seen it buff at the beginning of a heavy fog. New York used to be a brown sandstone city, but is now turning to one of cream-colored brick and tile; Naples is brilliant with pink and blue and green and white and yellow; while as for Baltimore, her old houses and her new are, as Baedeker puts it, of "cheerful red brick"--not always, of course, but often enough to establish the color of red brick as the city's predominating hue. And with the red-brick houses--particularly the older ones--go clean white marble steps, on the bottom one of which, at the side, may usually be found an old-fashioned iron "scraper," doubtless left over from the time (not very long ago) when the city pavements had not reached their present excellence. The color of red brick is not confined to the center of the city, but spreads to the suburbs, fashionable and unfashionable. At one margin of the town I was shown solid blocks of pleasant red-brick houses which, I was told, were occupied by workmen and their families, and were to be had at a rental of from ten to twenty dollars a month. For though Baltimore has a lower East Side which, like the lower East Side of New York, encompasses the Ghetto and Italian quarter, she has not tenements in the New York sense; one sees no tall, cheap flat houses draped with fire escapes and built to make herding places for the poor. Many of the houses in this section are instead the former homes of fashionables who have moved to other quarters of the city--handsome old homesteads with here and there a lovely, though battered, doorway sadly reminiscent of an earlier elegance. So, also, red brick permeates the prosperous suburbs, such as Roland Park and Guilford, where, in a sweetly rolling country which lends itself to the arrangement of graceful winding roads and softly contoured plantings, stand quantities of pleasing homes, lately built, many of them colonial houses of red brick. Indeed, it struck us that the only parts of Baltimore in which red brick was not the dominant note were the downtown business section and Mount Vernon Place. Mount Vernon Place is the center of Baltimore. Everything begins there, including Baedeker, who, in his little red book, gives it the asterisk of his approval, says that it "suggests Paris in its tasteful monuments and surrounding buildings," and recommends the view from the top of the Washington Monument. This monument, standing upon an eminence at the point where Charles and Monument Streets would cross each other were not their courses interrupted by the pleasing parked space of Mount Vernon Place, is a gray stone column, surmounted by a figure of Washington--or, rather, by the point of a lightning rod under which the figure stands. Other monuments are known as this monument or that, but when "the monument" is spoken of, the Washington Monument is inevitably meant. This is quite natural, for it is not only the most simple and picturesque old monument in Baltimore, but also the largest, the oldest, and the most conspicuous: its proud head, rising high in air, having for nearly a century dominated the city. One catches glimpses of it down this street or that, or sees it from afar over the housetops; and sometimes, when the column is concealed from view by intervening buildings, and only the surmounting statue shows above them, one is struck by a sudden apparition of the Father of his Country strolling fantastically upon some distant roof. Though it may be true that Mount Vernon Place, with its symmetrical parked center and its admirable bronzes (several of them by Baryé), suggests Paris, and though it is certainly true that it is more like a Parisian square than a London square, nevertheless it is in reality an American square--perhaps the finest of its kind in the United States. If it were Parisian, it would have more trees and the surrounding buildings would be uniform in color and in cornice height. It is perhaps as much like Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia as any other, and that resemblance is of the slightest, for Mount Vernon Place has a quality altogether its own. It has no skyscrapers or semi-skyscrapers to throw it out of balance; and though the structures which surround it are of white stone, brown stone, and red brick, and of anything but homogeneous architecture, nevertheless a comparative uniformity of height, a universal solidity of construction, and a general grace about them, combine to give the Place an air of equilibrium and dignity and elegance. Including the Washington Monument, Baltimore has three lofty landmarks, likely to be particularly noticed by the roving visitor. Of the remaining two, one is the old brick shot-tower in the lower part of town, which legend tells us was put up without the use of scaffolding nearly a hundred years ago; while the other, a more modern, if less modest structure, proudly surmounts a large commercial building and is itself capped by the gigantic effigy of a bottle. This bottle is very conspicuous because of its emplacement, because it revolves, and because it is illuminated at night. You can never get away from it. One evening I asked a man what the bottle meant up there. "It's a memorial to Emerson," he told me. "Are they so fond of Emerson down here?" "I don't know as they are so all-fired fond of him," he answered. "But they _must_ be fond of him to put up such a big memorial. Why, even in Boston, where he was born, they have no such memorial as that." "He put it up himself," said the man. That struck me as strange. It seemed somehow out of character with the great philosopher. Also, I could not see why, if he did wish to raise a memorial to himself, he had elected to fashion it in the form of a bottle and put it on top of an office building. "I suppose there is some sort of symbolism about it?" I suggested. "Now you got it," approved the man. I gazed at the tower for a while in thought. Then I said: "Do you suppose that Emerson meant something like this: that human life or, indeed, the soul, may be likened to the contents of a bottle; that day by day we use up some portion of the contents--call it, if you like, the nectar of existence--until the fluid of life runs low, and at last is gone entirely, leaving only the husk, as it were--or, to make the metaphor more perfect, the shell, or empty bottle: the container of what Emerson himself called, if I recollect correctly, 'the soul that maketh all'--do you suppose he meant to teach us some such thing as that?" The man looked a little confused by this deep and beautiful thought. "He _might_ of meant that," he said, somewhat dubiously. "But they tell me Captain Emerson's a practical man, and I reckon what he _mainly_ meant was that he made his money out of this-here Bromo Seltzer, and he was darn glad of it, so he thought he'd put him up a big Bromo Seltzer bottle as a kind of cross between a monument and an ad." If the bottle tower represents certain modern concepts of what is suitable in architecture, it is nevertheless pleasant to record the fact that many honorable old buildings--most of them residences--survive in Baltimore, and that, because of their survival, the city looks older than New York and fully as old as either Philadelphia or Boston. But in this, appearances are misleading, for New York and Boston were a century old, and Philadelphia half a century, when Baltimore was first laid out as a town. Efforts to start a settlement near the city's present site were, it is true, being made before William Penn and his Quakers established Philadelphia, but a letter written in 1687 by Charles Calvert, third Baron Baltimore, explains that: "The people there [are] not affecting to build nere each other but soe as to have their houses nere the watters for conveniencye of trade and their lands on each side of and behynde their houses, by which it happens that in most places there are not fifty houses in the space of thirty myles."[1] [1] From "Historic Towns of the Southern States." The difficulty experienced by the Barons Baltimore, Lords Proprietary of Maryland, in building up communities in their demesne was not a local problem, but one which confronted those interested in the development of the entire portion of this continent now occupied by the Southern States. Generally speaking, towns came into being more slowly in the South than in the North, and it seems probable that one of the principal reasons for this may be found in the fact that settlers throughout the South lived generally at peace with the Indians, whereas the northern settlers were obliged to congregate in towns for mutual protection. Thus, in colonial days, while the many cities of New York and New England were coming into being, the South was developing its vast and isolated plantations. Farms on the St. Lawrence River and on the Detroit River, where the French were settling, were very narrow and very deep, the idea being to range the houses close together on the river front; but on such rivers as the Potomac, the Rappahannock and the James, no element of early fear is to be traced in the form of the broad baronial plantations. Nevertheless, when Baltimore began at last to grow, she became a prodigy, not only among American cities, but among the cities of the world. Her first town directory was published in 1796, and she began the next year as an incorporated city, with a mayor, a population of about twenty thousand, and a curiously assorted early history containing such odd items as that the first umbrella carried in the United States was brought from India and unfurled in Baltimore in 1772; that the town had for some time possessed such other useful articles as a fire engine, a brick theater, a newspaper, and policemen; that the streets were lighted with oil lamps; that such proud signs of metropolitanism as riot and epidemic were not unknown; that before the Revolution bachelors were taxed for the benefit of his Britannic Majesty; and that at fair time the "lid was off," and the citizen or visitor who wished to get himself arrested must needs be diligent indeed. CHAPTER IV TRIUMPHANT DEFEAT There are some defeats more triumphant than victories. --MONTAIGNE. Following the incorporation of the city, Baltimore grew much as Chicago was destined to grow more than a century later; within less than thirty years, when Chicago was a tiny village, Baltimore had become the third city in the United States: a city of wealthy merchants engaged in an extensive foreign trade; for in those days there was an American merchant marine, and the swift, rakish Baltimore clippers were known the seven seas over. The story of modern Baltimore is entirely unrelated to the city's early history. It consists in a simple but inspiring record of regeneration springing from disaster. It is the story of Chicago, of San Francisco, of Galveston, of Dayton, and of many a smaller town: a cataclysm, a few days of despair, a return of courage, and another beginning. Imagine yourself being tucked into bed one night by your valet or your maid, as the case may be, calm in the feeling that all was secure: that your business was returning a handsome income, that your stocks and bonds were safe in the strong box, that the prosperity of your descendants was assured. Then imagine ruin coming like lightning in the night. In the morning you are poor. Your business, your investments, your very hopes, are gone. Everything is wiped out. The labor of a lifetime must be begun again. Such an experience was that of Baltimore in the fire of 1904. On the sickening morning following the conflagration two Baltimore men, friends of mine, walked down Charles Street to a point as near the ruined region as it was possible to go. "Well," said one, surveying the smoking crater, "what do you think of it?" "Baltimore is gone," was the response. "We are off the map." How many citizens of Chicago, of San Francisco, of Galveston, of Dayton have known the anguish of that first aftermath of hopelessness! How many citizens of Baltimore knew it that day! And yet how bravely and with what magic swiftness have these cities risen from their ruins! Was not Rome burned? Was not London? And is it not, then, time for men to learn from the history of other men and other cities that disaster does not spell the end, but is oftentimes another name for opportunity? Always, after disaster to a city, come improvements, but because disaster not only cleans the slate but simultaneously stuns the mind, a portion of the opportunity is invariably lost. The task of rebuilding, of widening a few streets, looks large enough to him who stands amidst destruction--and there, consequently, improvement usually stops. That is why the downtown boulevard system of Chicago has yet to be completed, in spite of the fact that it might with little difficulty have been completed after the Chicago fire (although it is only just to add that city planning was almost an unknown art in America at that time); and that also is why the hills of San Francisco are not terraced, as it was suggested they should be after the fire, but remain to-day inaccessible to frontal attack by even the maddest mountain goat of a taxi driver. These matters are not mentioned in the way of criticism: I have only admiration for the devastated cities and for those who built them up again. I call attention to lost opportunities with something like reluctance, and only in the wish to emphasize the fact that our crippled or destroyed cities do invariably rise again, and that if the next American city to sustain disaster shall but have this simple lesson learned in advance, it may thereby register a new high mark in municipal intelligence and a new record among the rebuilt cities, by making more sweet than any other city ever made them, the uses of adversity. The fire of 1904 found Baltimore a town of narrow highways, old buildings, bad pavements, and open gutter drains. The streets were laid in what is known as "southern cobble," which is the next thing to no pavement at all, being made of irregular stones, large and small, laid in the dirt and tamped down. For bumps and ruts there is no pavement in the world to be compared with it. There were no city sewers. Outside a few affluent neighborhoods, the citizens of which clubbed together to build private sewers, the cesspool was in general use, while domestic drainage emptied into the roadside gutters. These were made passable, at crossings, by stepping stones, about the bases of which passed interesting armadas of potato peelings, floating, upon wash days, in water having the fine Mediterranean hue which comes from diluted blueing. Everybody seemed to find the entire system adequate; for, it was argued, the hilly contours of the city caused the drainage quickly to be carried off, while as for typhoid and mosquitoes--well, there had always been typhoid and mosquitoes, just as there had always been these open gutters. It was all quite good enough. Then the fire. And then the upbuilding of the city--not only of the acres and acres comprising the burned section, in which streets were widened and skyscrapers arose where fire-traps had been--but outside the fire zone, where sewers were put down and pavements laid. Nor was the change merely physical. With the old buildings, the old spirit of _laissez faire_ went up in smoke, and in the embers a municipal conscience was born. Almost as though by the light of the flames which engulfed it, the city began to see itself as it had never seen itself before: to take account of stock, to plan broadly for the future. Nor has the new-born spirit died. Only last year an extensive red-light district was closed effectively and once for all. Baltimore is to-day free from flagrant commercialized vice. And if not quite all the old cobble pavements and open-gutter drains have been eliminated, there are but few of them left--left almost as though for purposes of contrast--and the Baltimorean who takes you to the Ghetto and shows you these ancient remnants may immediately thereafter escort you to the Fallsway, where the other side of the picture is presented. The Fallsway is a brand-new boulevard of pleasing aspect, the peculiar feature of which is that it is nothing more or less than a cover over the top of Jones's Falls, which figured in the early history of Baltimore as a water course, but which later came to figure as a great, open, trunk sewer. Every one in Baltimore is proud of the Fallsway, but particularly so are the city engineers who carried the work through. While in Baltimore I had the pleasure of meeting one of these gentlemen, and I can assure you that no young head of a family was ever more delighted with his new cottage in a suburb, his wife, his children, his garden, and his collie puppy, than was this engineer with his boulevard sewer. Like a lover, he carried pictures of it in his pocket, and like a lover he would assure you that it was "not like other sewers." Nor could he speak of it without beginning to wish to take you out to see it--not merely for a motor ride along the top of it, either. No, his hospitality did not stop there. When _he_ invited you to a sewer he invited you _in_. And if you went in with him, no one could make you come out until you wanted to. As he told my companion and me of the three great tubes, the walks beside them, the conduits for gas and electricity, and all the other wonders of the place, I began to wish that we might go with him, for, though we have been to a good many places together, this was something new: it was the first time we had ever been invited to drop into a sewer and make ourselves as much at home as though we lived there. My companion, however, seemed unsympathetic to the project. "Sewers, you know," he said, when I taxed him with indifference, "have come to have a very definite place in both the literary and the graphic arts. How do you propose to treat it?" "What do you mean?" "When you write about it: Are you going to write about it as a realist, a mystic, or a romanticist?" I said I didn't know. "Well, a man who is going to write of a sewer _ought_ to know," he told me severely. "You're not up to sewers yet. They're too big for you. If you take my advice you'll keep out of the sewers for the present and stick to the gutters." So I did. CHAPTER V TERRAPIN AND THINGS Baltimore society has a Maryland and Virginia base, but is seasoned with families of Acadian descent, and with others descended from the Pennsylvania Dutch--those "Dutch" who, by the way, are not Dutch at all, being of Saxon and Bavarian extraction. Many Virginians settled in Baltimore after the war, and it may be in part owing to this fact, that fox-hunting with horse and hound, as practised for three centuries past in England, and for nearly two centuries by Virginia's country gentlemen, is carried on extensively in the neighborhood of Baltimore, by the Green Spring Valley Hunt Club, the Elkridge Fox-Hunting Club and some others--which brings me to the subject of clubs in general. The Baltimore Country Club, at Roland Park, just beyond the city limits, has a large, well-set clubhouse, an active membership, and charming rolling golf links, one peculiarity of the course being that a part of the city's water-supply system has been utilized for hazards. The two characteristic clubs of the city itself, the Maryland Club and the Baltimore Club, are known the country over. The former occupies a position in Baltimore comparable with that of the Union Club in New York, the Chicago Club in Chicago, or the Pacific Union in San Francisco, and has to its credit at least one famous dish: Terrapin, Maryland Club Style. The Baltimore Club is used by a younger group of men and has a particularly pleasant home in a large mansion, formerly the residence of the Abell family, long known in connection with that noteworthy old sheet, the Baltimore "Sun," which, it may be remarked in passing, is curiously referred to by many Baltimoreans, not as the "Sun," but as the "Sun-paper." This odd item reminds me of another: In the Balti-telephone book I chanced to notice under the letter "F" the entry: Fisher, Frank, of J. Upon inquiry I learned that the significance of this was that, there being more than one gentleman of the name of Frank Fisher in the city, this Mr. Frank Fisher added "of J" to his name (meaning "son of John") for purposes of differentiation. I was informed further that this custom is not uncommon in Baltimore, in cases where a name is duplicated, and I was shown another example: that of Mr. John Fyfe Symington of S. A typically southern institution of long standing, and highly characteristic of the social life of Baltimore, is the Bachelors' Cotillion, one of the oldest dancing clubs in the country. During the season this organization gives a series of some half-dozen balls which are the events of the fashionable year. The organization and general character of the Bachelors' Cotillion is not unlike that of the celebrated St. Cecilia Society of Charleston. The cost of membership is so slight that almost any eligible young man can easily afford it. There is, however, a long waiting-list. The club is controlled by a board of governors, the members of which hold office for life, and who, instead of being elected by the organization are selected _in camera_ by the board itself, when vacancies occur. The balls given by this society are known as the Monday Germans, and at these balls, which are held in the Lyric Theater, the city's débutantes are presented to society. As in all southern cities, much is made of débutantes in Baltimore. On the occasion of their first Monday German all their friends send them flowers, and they appear flower-laden at the ball, followed by their relatives who are freighted down with their darlings' superfluous bouquets. The modern steps are danced at these balls, but there are usually a few cotillion figures, albeit without "favors." And perhaps the best part of it all is that the first ball of the season, and the Christmas ball, end at one o'clock, and that all the others end at midnight. That seems to me a humane arrangement, although the opinion may only signify that I am growing old. Another very characteristic phase of Baltimore life, and of southern life--at least in many cities--is that, instead of dealing with the baker, and the grocer, and the fish-market man around the corner, all Baltimore women go to the great market-sheds and do their own selecting under what amounts to one great roof. The Lexington Market, to which my companion and I had the good fortune to be taken by a Baltimore lady, is comparable, in its picturesqueness with _Les Halles_ of Paris, or the fascinating market in Seattle, where the Japanese pile up their fresh vegetables with such charming show of taste. The great sheds cover three long blocks, and in the countless stall-like shops which they contain may be found everything for the table, including flowers to trim it and after-dinner sweets. I doubt that any northern housewife knows such a market or such a profusion of comestibles. In one stall may be purchased meat, in the next vegetables, in the next fish, in the next bread and cake, in the next butter and buttermilk, in the next fruit, or game, or flowers, or--at Christmas time--tree trimmings. These stalls, with their contents, are duplicated over and over again; and if your fair guide be shopping for a dinner party, at which two men from out of town are to be initiated into the delights of the Baltimore cuisine, she may order up the costly and aristocratic _Malacoclemmys_, the diamond-back terrapin, sacred in Baltimore as is the Sacred Cod himself in Boston. The admirable encyclopedia of Messrs. Funk & Wagnall's informs me that "the diamond-back salt-water terrapin ... is caught in salt marshes along the coast from New England to Texas, _the finest being those of the Massachusetts and the northern coasts_." The italics are mine; and upon the italicized passage I expect the mayor and town council of Baltimore, or even the Government of the State of Maryland, to proceed against Messrs. Funk & Wagnalls, whose valuable volumes should forthwith be placed upon the State's _index expurgatorius_. Of a marketman I obtained the following lore concerning the tortoise of the terrapin species: In the Baltimore markets four kinds of terrapin are sold--not counting muskrat, which is sometimes disguised with sauce and sherry and served as a substitute. The cheapest and toughest terrapin is known as the "slider." Slightly superior to the "slider" is the "fat-back," measuring, usually, about nine or ten inches in length, and costing, at retail, fifty cents to a dollar, according to season and demand. Somewhat better than the "fat-back," but of about the same size and cost, is the "golden-stripe" terrapin; but all these are the merest poor relations of the diamond-back. Some diamond-back terrapin are supplied for the Baltimore market from North Carolina, but these, my marketman assured me, are inferior to those of Chesapeake Bay. (Everything in, or from, North Carolina seems to be inferior, according to the people of the other Southern States.) Although there is a closed season for terrapin, the value of the diamond-back causes him to be relentlessly hunted during the open season, with the result that, like the delectable lobster, he is passing. As the foolish lobster-fishermen of northern New England are killing the goose--or, rather, the crustacean--that lays the golden eggs, so are the terrapin hunters of the Chesapeake. Two or three decades ago, lobster and terrapin alike were eaten in the regions of their abundance as cheap food. One Baltimore lady told me that her father's slaves, on an Eastern Shore plantation, used to eat terrapin. Yet behold the cost of the precious diamond-back to-day! In his smaller sizes, according to my marketman, he is worth about a dollar an inch, while when grown to fair proportions he costs as much as a railroad ticket from Baltimore to Chicago. And for my part I would about as soon eat the ticket as the terrapin. Of a number of other odd items which help to give Baltimore distinct flavor I find the following in my notebooks: There are good street railways; also 'bus lines operated by the United Railways Company. Under the terms of its charter this company was originally obliged to turn over to the city thirteen per cent. of its gross income, to be expended upon the upkeep of parks. Of late years the amount has been reduced to nine per cent. The parks are admirable. Freight rates from the west to Baltimore are, I am informed, enough lower than freight rates to New York, Boston, or Philadelphia, to give Baltimore a decided advantage as a point of export. Also she is admirably situated as to sources of coal supply. (I do not care much for the last two items, myself, but put them in to please the Chamber of Commerce.) * * * * * It is the habit of my companion and myself, when visiting strange cities, to ask for interesting eating-places of one sort or another. In Baltimore there seems to be no choice but to take meals in hotels--unless one may wish to go to the Dutch Tea room or the Woman's Exchange for a shoppers' lunch, and to see (in the latter establishment) great numbers of ladies sitting upon tall stools and eating at a lunch-counter--a somewhat curious spectacle, perhaps, but neither pleasing to the eye nor thrilling to the senses. The nearest thing to "character" which I found in a Baltimore eating-place was at an establishment known as Kelly's Oyster House, a place in a dark quarter of the town. It had the all-night look about it, and the negro waiters showed themselves not unacquainted with certain of the city's gilded youth. Kelly's is a sort of southern version of "Jack's"--if you know Jack's. But I don't think Jack's has any flight of stairs to fall down, such as Kelly's has. The dining rooms of the various hotels are considerably used, one judges, by the citizens of Baltimore. The Kernan Hotel, which we visited one night after the theater, looked like Broadway. Tables were crowded together and there was dancing between them--and between mouthfuls. So, too, at the Belvedere, which is used considerably by Baltimore's gay and fashionable people. My companion and I stayed at the Belvedere and found it a good hotel, albeit one which has, I think, become a shade too well accustomed to being called good. Perhaps because of a city ordinance, perhaps because the waiters want to go to bed, they have a trick, in the Belvedere dining-room, during the cold weather, of opening the windows and freezing out such dilatory supper-guests as would fain sit up and talk. This is a system even more effective than the ancient one of mopping up the floors, piling chairs upon the tables, and turning out enough lights to make the room dull. A good post-midnight conversationalist--and Baltimore is not without them--can stand mops, buckets, and dim lights, but turn cold drafts upon his back and he gives up, sends for his coat, buttons it about his paunch and goes sadly home. It is fitting that last of all should be mentioned the man who views you with keen eye as you arrive in Baltimore, and who watches you depart. If you are in Baltimore he knows it. And when you go away he knows that, too. Also, during racing season, he knows whether you bet, and whether you won or lost. He is always at the station and always at the race track, and if you don't belong in Baltimore he is aware of it the instant he sets eyes upon you, because he knows every man, woman, child, and dog in Baltimore, and they all know him. If you are a Baltimorean you are already aware that I refer to the sapient McNeal, policeman at the Union Station. McNeal and Cardinal Gibbons are, I take it, the two preëminent figures of the city. Their duties, I admit, are not alike, but each performs his duties with discretion, with devotion, with distinction. The latter has already celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of his nomination as cardinal, but the former is well on the way toward his fortieth anniversary as officer at the Union Station. McNeal is an artist. He loves his work. And when his day off comes and he puts on citizen's clothing and goes out for a good time, where do you suppose he goes? Why down to the station, of course, to talk things over with the man who is relieving him! CHAPTER VI DOUGHOREGAN MANOR AND THE CARROLLS If I am to be honest about the South, and about myself--and I propose to be--I must admit that, though I approached the fabled land in a most friendly spirit, I had nevertheless become a little tired of the southern family tree, the southern ancestral hall, and the old southern negro servant of stage and story, and just a little skeptical about them. Almost unconsciously, at first, I had begun to wonder whether, instead of being things of actuality, they were not, rather, a mere set of romantic trade-marks, so to speak; symbols signifying the South as the butler with side whiskers signifies English comedy; as "Her" visit to "His" rooms, in the third act, signifies English drama; or as double doorways in a paneled "set" signify French farce. Furthermore, it had occurred to me that of persons of southern accent, or merely southern extraction, whom I had encountered in the North, a strangely high percentage were not only of "fine old southern family," but of peculiarly tenacious purpose in respect to having the matter understood. I cannot pretend to say when the "professional Southerner," as we know him in New York, began to operate, nor shall I attempt to place the literary blame for his existence--as Mark Twain attempted to place upon Sir Walter Scott the blame for southern "chivalry," and almost for the Civil War itself. Let me merely say, then, that I should not be surprised to learn that "Colonel Carter of Cartersville"--that lovable old fraud who did not mean to be a fraud at all, but whose naďveté passed the bounds of human credulity--was not far removed from the bottom of the matter. In the tenor of these sentiments my companion shared--though I should add that he complained bitterly about agreeing with me, saying that with hats alike, and overcoats alike, and trunks alike, and suitcases alike, we already resembled two members of a minstrel troupe, and that now since we were beginning to think alike, through traveling so much together, our friends would not be able to tell us apart when we got home again--in spite of this he admitted to the same suspicion of the South as I expressed. Wherefore we entered the region like a pair of agnostics entering the great beyond: skeptical, but ready to be "shown." It was with the generous purpose of "showing" us that a Baltimore friend of ours called for us one day with his motor car and was presently wafting us over the good oiled roads of Maryland, through sweet, rolling country, which seemed to have been made to be ridden over upon horseback. It was autumn, but though the chill of northern autumn was in the air, the coloring was not so high in key as in New York or New England, the foliage being less brilliant, but rich with subtle harmonies of brown and green, blending softly together as in a faded tapestry, and giving the landscape an expression of brooding tenderness. After passing through Ellicott City, an old, shambling town quite out of character with its new-sounding name, which has such a western ring to it, we traversed for several miles the old Frederick Turnpike--formerly a national highway between East and West--swooping up and down over a series of little hills and vales, and at length turned off into a private road winding through a venerable forest, which was like an old Gothic cathedral with its pavement of brown leaves and its tree-trunk columns, tall, gray, and slender. When we had progressed for perhaps a mile, we emerged upon a slight eminence commanding a broad view of meadow and of woodland, and in turn commanded by a great house. The house was of buff-colored brick. It was low and very long, with wings extending from its central structure like beautiful arms flung wide in welcome, and at the end of each a building like an ornament balanced in an outstretched hand. The graceful central portico, rising by several easy steps from the driveway level, the long line of cornice, the window sashes, the delicate wooden railing surmounting the roof, the charming little tower which so gracefully held its place above the geometrical center of the house, the bell tower crowning one wing at its extremity--all these were white. No combination of colors can be lovelier, in such a house, than yellow-buff and white, provided they be brightened by some notes of green; and these notes were not lacking, for several aged elms, occupying symmetrical positions with regard to the house, seemed to gaze down upon it with the adoration of a group of mothers, aunts, and grandmothers, as they held their soft draperies protectively above it. The green of the low terrace--called a "haha," supposedly with reference to the mirth-provoking possibilities of an accidental step over the edge--did not reach the base of the buff walls, but was lost in a fringe of clustering shrubbery, from which patches of lustrous English ivy clambered upward over the brick, to lay strong, mischievous fingers upon the blinds of certain second-story windows. The blinds were of course green; green blinds being as necessary to an American window as eyelashes to an eye. Immediately before the portico and centering upon it the drive swung in a spacious circle, from which there broke, at a point directly opposite the portico, an avenue, straight and long as a rifle range, and lovely as the loveliest of New England village greens. Down the middle of this broad way, between grass borders each as wide as a great boulevard, and double rows of patriarchal trees, ran a road which, in the old days, continued straight to Annapolis, thirty or more miles away, where was the town house of the builder of this manor. As it stands to-day the avenue is less than half a mile long, but whatever its length, and whether one look down it from the house, or up the gentle grade from the far end, to where the converging lines of grass and foliage and sky melt into the house, it has about it something of unreality, something of enchantment, something of that quality one finds in the rhapsodic landscapes of those poet painters who dream of distant shimmering palaces and supernal vistas peopled by fauns and nymphs dancing amid the trunks of giant trees whose luxuriant dark tops are contoured like the cumulus white clouds floating above them. There is nothing "baronial," nothing arrogant, about Doughoregan Manor, for though the house is noble, its nobility, consisting in spaciousness, simplicity, and grace combined with age, fits well into what, it seems to me, should be the architectural ideals of a republic. No house could be freer of unessential embellishment; in detail it is plain almost to severity; yet the full impression that it gives, far from being austere, is of friendliness and hospitality. An approachable sort of house, a "homelike" house, it is perhaps less "imposing" than some other mansions, coeval with it, in Virginia, in Annapolis, and in Charleston; and yet it is as impressive, in its own way, as Warwick Castle, or Hurstmonceaux, or Loches, or Chinon, or Chenonceaux, or Heidelberg--not that it is so vast, that it has glowering battlements, or that it stuns the eye, but for precisely opposite reasons: because it is a consummate expression of republican cultivation, of a fine old American home, and of the fine old American gentleman who built it, and whose descendants inhabit it to-day: Charles Carroll of Carrollton, last to survive of those who signed the Declaration of Independence. The first Charles Carroll, known in the family as "the Settler," came from Ireland in 1688, and became a great landowner in Maryland. He was a highly educated gentleman and a Roman Catholic, as have also been his descendants. He acted as agent for Lord Baltimore. His son, Charles Carroll of Annapolis, or "Breakneck Carroll" (so called because he was killed by a fall from the steps of his house), built the Carroll mansion at Annapolis, now the property of the Redemptionist Order. The third and most famous member of the family was Charles Carroll of Carrollton, "the Signer," builder of the manor house at Doughoregan--which, by the way, derives its name from a combination of the old Irish words _dough_, meaning "house" or "court," and _O'Ragan_, meaning "of the King"; the whole being pronounced, as with a slight brogue, "Doo-ray-gan," the accent falling on the middle syllable--this Charles Carroll, "the Signer," most famous of his line, was "Breakneck's" only son. When eight years old he was sent to France to be educated by the Jesuits. He spent six years at Saint-Omer, one at Rheims, two at the College of Louis le Grand, one at Bourges, where he studied civil law, and after some further time in college in Paris went to London, entered the Middle Temple and there worked at the common law until his return to Maryland in 1765. Although Maryland was founded by the Roman Catholic Baron Baltimore on a basis of religious toleration, the Church of England had later come to be the established church in the British colonies in America, and Roman Catholics were unjustly used, being disfranchised, taxed for the support of the English Church, and denied the right to establish schools or churches of their own, to celebrate the Mass, or to bear arms--the bearing of arms having been "at that time the insignia of social position and gentle breeding." Finding this situation well-nigh intolerable, Carroll of Carrollton, already a man of great wealth, joined with his cousin, Father John Carroll, who later became first Archbishop of Baltimore (for many years the only Roman Catholic diocese in the United States, embracing all States and Territories), in an appeal to the King of France for a grant of land in what is now Arkansas, but was then a part of Louisiana, this land to be used as a refuge for Roman Catholics and Jesuits, whom the Carrolls proposed to lead thither precisely as Cecilius Calvert, Lord Baltimore, had led them to Maryland to escape persecution. The Roman Catholics were not, however, by this time the only American colonists who felt themselves abused; the whole country was chafing, and the seeds of revolution were beginning to show their red sprouts. It might have been expected that Mr. Carroll, being the richest man in the country, would hesitate at rebellion, but he did not. Unlike some of our present-day citizens of foreign extraction, and in circumstances involving not merely sentiment, but property and perhaps life, he showed no tendency to split his Americanism, but boldly threw his noble old cocked hat into the ring. Nor did he require a Roosevelt to make his duty clear to him. In 1775 Mr. Carroll was a delegate to the Revolutionary Convention of Maryland; in 1776 he went with three other commissioners (Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Father John Carroll) to try to induce the Canadian colonies to join in the revolt; and soon after his return from this unsuccessful journey he signed the Declaration of Independence. Of the circumstances of the signing the late Robert C. Winthrop of Boston gave the following description: "Will you sign?" said Hancock to Charles Carroll. "Most willingly," was the reply. "There goes two millions with the dash of a pen," says one of those standing by; while another remarks: "Oh, Carroll, you will get off, there are so many Charles Carrolls." And then we may see him stepping back to the desk and putting that addition "of Carrollton" to his name, which will designate him forever, and be a prouder title of nobility than those in the peerage of Great Britain, which were afterward adorned by his accomplished and fascinating granddaughters. Some doubt has been cast upon this tale by the fact that papers in possession of the Carroll family prove that Mr. Carroll was wont to sign as "of Carrollton" long before the Declaration. Further, it is recorded that John H.B. Latrobe, Mr. Carroll's contemporaneous biographer, never heard the story from the subject of his writings. Nevertheless, I believe that it is true, for it seems to me likely that though Mr. Carroll used the subscription "of Carrollton" in conducting his affairs at home, where there was chance for confusion between his son Charles, his cousin Charles, and himself, he might well have been inclined to omit it from a public document, as to the signers of which there could be no confusion. Further, the fact that he never told the story to Latrobe does not invalidate it, for as every man (and every man's wife) knows, men do not remember to tell everything to their wives, and it is still less likely that they tell everything to their biographers. Further still, Mr. Winthrop visited Mr. Carroll just before the latter's death, and as he certainly did not invent the story it seems probable that he got it from "the Signer" himself. Last, I like the story and intend to believe it anyway--which, it occurs to me, is the best reason of all, and the one most resembling my reason for being more or less Episcopalian and Republican. Latrobe tells us that Mr. Carroll was, in his old age, "a small, attenuated old man, with a prominent nose and somewhat receding chin, and small eyes that sparkled when he was interested in conversation. His head was small and his hair white, rather long and silky, while his face and forehead were seamed with wrinkles." From the same source, and others, we glean the information that he was a charming and courteous gentleman, that he practised early rising and early retiring, was regular at meals, and at morning and evening prayer in the chapel, that he took cold baths and rode horseback, and that for several hours each day he read the Greek, Latin, English, or French classics. At the age of eighty-three he rode a horse in a procession in Baltimore, carrying in one hand a copy of the Declaration of Independence; and six years later, when by that strange freak of chance ex-Presidents Adams and Jefferson died simultaneously on July 4, leaving Mr. Carroll the last surviving signer of the Declaration, he took part in a memorial parade and service in their memory. In 1826, at the age of eighty-nine, he was elected a director of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company, and at the age of ninety he laid the foundation stone marking the commencement of that railroad--the first important one in the United States. We are told that at this time Mr. Carroll was erect in carriage and that he could see and hear as well as most men. In 1832, having lived to within five years of a full century, having been active in the Revolution, having seen the War of 1812, he died less than thirty years before the outbreak of the Civil War, and was buried in the chapel of the manor house. This chapel, the like of which does not, so far as I know, exist in any other American house, is the burial place of a number of the Carrolls. It is used to-day, regular Sunday services being held for the people of the neighborhood. An alcove to the south of the chancel contains seats for members of the family, and has access to the main portion of the house by a passageway which passes the bedroom known as the Cardinal's room, a large chamber furnished with massive old pieces of mahogany and decorated in red. This room has been occupied by Lafayette, by John Carroll, cousin of "the Signer" and first archbishop of Baltimore, and by Cardinal Gibbons. It is on the ground floor and its windows command the series of terraces, with their plantings of old box, which slope away to gardens more than a century old. Viewed in one light Doughoregan Manor is a monument, in another it is a treasure house of ancient portraits and furniture and silver, but above all it is a home. The beautifully proportioned dining-room, the wide hall which passes through the house from the front portico to another overlooking the terraces and gardens at the back, the old shadowy library with its tree-calf bindings, the sunny breakfast room, the spacious bedchambers with their four-posters and their cheerful chintzes, the big bright shiny pantries and kitchens, all have that pleasant, easy air which comes of being lived in, and which is never attained in a "show place" which is merely a "show place" and nothing more. No dining table at which great personages have dined in the past has the charm of one the use of which has been steadily continued; no old chair but is better for being sat in; no ancient Sheffield tea service but gains immeasurably in charm from being used for tea to-day; no old Venetian mirror but what is lovelier for reflecting the beauties of the present as it reflected those of the past; no little old-time crib but what is better for a modern baby in it. It is pleasant, therefore, to report that, like all other things the house contains, the crib at Doughoregan Manor was being used when we were there, for in it rested the baby son of the house; by name Charles, and of his line the ninth. Further, it may be observed that from his youthful parents, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Bancroft Carroll, present master and mistress of the place, Master Charles seemed to have inherited certain amiable traits. Indeed, in some respects, he outdoes his parents. For example, where the father and mother were cordial, the son chewed ruminatively upon his fingers and fastened upon my companion a gaze not merely interested, but expressive of enraptured astonishment. Likewise, though his parents received us kindly, they did not crow and gurgle with delight; and though, on our departure, they said that we might come again, they neither waved their hands nor yet blew bubbles. Though the house has been "done over" four times, and though the paneling was torn out of one room to make way for wall paper when wall paper came into style, everything has now been restored, and the place stands to-day to all intents and purposes exactly as it was. That so few changes were ever made in it, that it weathered successfully, with its contents, the disastrous period of Eastlake furniture and the American mansard roof, is a great credit to the Carroll family, and it is delightful to see such a house in the possession of those who can love it as it deserves to be loved, and preserve it as it deserves to be preserved. Mr. Charles Bancroft Carroll, who is a graduate of Annapolis and a grandson of the late Governor John Lee Carroll of Maryland, now farms some twenty-four hundred acres of the five or six thousand which surround the manor house. He raises blooded cattle and horses, and, though he rides with the Elkridge Hunt, also keeps his own pack and is starting the Howard County Hounds, an organization that will hunt the country around the manor, which is full of foxes. Of the innumerable family portraits contained in the house not a few are valuable and almost all are pleasing. When I remarked upon the high average of good looks among his progenitors, Mr. Carroll smiled in agreement, saying: "Yes, I'm proud of these pictures of my ancestors; most people's ancestors seem to have looked like the dickens." Among these noteworthy family portraits I recollect one of "the Signer" as a boy, standing on the shore and watching a ship sail out to sea; one of the three beautiful Caton sisters, his granddaughters, who lived at Brooklandwood, in the Green Spring Valley, now the home of Mr. Isaac Emerson; one of Charles Carroll of Homewood, son of "the Signer"; and one of Governor John Lee Carroll, who was born at Homewood. The Caton sisters and Charles Carroll of Homewood supply to the Carroll family archives that picturesqueness which the history of every old family should possess; the former contributing beauty, the latter dash and extravagance, those qualities so annoying in a living relative, but so delightfully suggestive in an ancestor long defunct. If anything more be needed to round out the composition, it is furnished by the ghosts of Doughoregan Manor: an old housekeeper with jingling keys, and an invisible coach, the wheels of which are heard upon the driveway before the death of any member of the family. Of the Caton sisters there were four, but because one of them, Mrs. McTavish, stayed at home and made the life of her grandfather happy, we do not hear so much of her as of the other three, who were internationally famous for their pulchritude, and were known in England as "the Three American Graces." All three married British peers, one becoming Marchioness of Wellesley, another Duchess of Leeds, while the third became the wife of Lord Stafford, one of the noblemen embalmed in verse by Fitz-Greene Halleck: Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt, The Duke of Norfolk deals in malt, The Douglas in red herrings. As for Charles Carroll of Homewood, he was handsome, charming, and athletic, and, as indicated in letters written to him by his father, caused that old gentleman a good deal of anxiety. It is said that at one time--perhaps during some period of estrangment from his wealthy parent--he acted as a fencing master in Baltimore. At the age of twenty-five he settled down--or let us hope he did--for he married Harriet Chew, whose sister "Peggy," Mrs. John Eager Howard of Baltimore, was a celebrated belle, and of whose own charm we may judge by the fact that General Washington asked her to remain in the room while he sat to Gilbert Stuart, declaring that her presence there would cause his countenance to "wear its most agreeable expression." The famous portrait painted under these felicitous conditions hung in the White House when, in 1814, the British marched on Washington; but when they took the city and burned the White House, the portrait did not perish with it, for history records that Dolly Madison carried it to safety, and along with it the original draft of the Declaration of Independence. Charles Carroll of Homewood died before his father, "the Signer," but the house, Homewood, which the latter built for his son and daughter-in-law in 1809, stands to-day near the Baltimore city limits, at the side of Charles Street Boulevard, amid pleasant modern houses, many of which are of a design not out of harmony with the old mansion. Though not comparable in size with the manor house at Doughoregan, Homewood is an even more perfect house, being one of the finest examples of Georgian architecture to be found in the entire country. The fate of this house is hardly less fortunate than that of the paternal manor, for, with its surrounding lands, it has come into the possession of Johns Hopkins University. The fields of Homewood now form the campus and grounds of that excellent seat of learning, and the trustees of the university have not merely preserved the residence, using it as a faculty club, but have had the inspiration to find in it the architectural motif for the entire group of new college buildings, so that the campus may be likened to a bracelet wrought as a setting for this jewel of a house. CHAPTER VII A RARE OLD TOWN The drive from Baltimore to the sweet, slumbering city of Annapolis is over a good road, but through barren country. Taken in the crisp days of autumn, by a northern visitor sufficiently misguided to have supposed that beyond Mason and Dixon's Line the winters are tropical it may prove an uncomfortable drive--unless he be able to borrow a fur overcoat. It was on this drive that my disillusionment concerning the fall and winter climate of the South began, for, wearing two cloth overcoats, one over the other, I yet suffered agonies from cold. The sun shone down upon the open automobile in which we tore along, but its rays were no competitors for the biting wind. Through lap robes, cloth caps, and successive layers of clothing, and around the edges of goggles, fine little frozen fangs found their way, like the pliable beaks of a race of gigantic, fabulous mosquitoes from the Arctic regions. I have driven an open car over the New England snows for miles in zero weather, and been warm by comparison, because I was prepared. My former erroneous ideas as to the southern climate may be shared by others, and it is therefore well, perhaps, to enlarge a little bit upon the subject. Never, except during a winter passed in a stone tile-floored villa on the island of Capri, whither I went to escape the cold, have I been so conscious of it, as during fall, winter, and spring in the South. In the hotels of the South one may keep warm in cold weather, but in private homes it is not always possible to do so, for the popular illusion that the "sunny South" is of a uniformly temperate climate in the winter persists nowhere more violently than in the South itself. Many a house in Virginia, let alone the other States farther down the map, is without a furnace, and winter life in such houses, with their ineffectual wood fires, is like life in a refrigerator tempered by the glow of a safety match. As in Italy and Spain, so in the South it is often warmer outdoors than in; more than once during my southern voyage I was tempted to resume the habit, acquired in Capri, of wearing an overcoat in the house and taking it off on going out into the sunshine. True, in Capri we had roses blooming in the garden on Christmas Day, but that circumstance, far from proving warmth, merely proved the hardiness of roses. So, in the far South--excepting Florida and perhaps a strip of the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama--the blooming of flowers in the winter does not prove that "Palm Beach suits" and panama hats invariably make a desirable uniform. Furthermore, I am inclined to believe that because some southern winter days are warm and others cold, a Northerner feels cold in the South more than he feels the corresponding temperature at home--on somewhat the principle which caused the Italians who went with the Duke of the Abruzzi on his polar expedition to withstand cold more successfully than did the Scandinavians. Of the southern summer I have no experience, but I have been repeatedly assured that certain of the southern beaches are nearly, if not quite, as comfortable in hot weather as are those of New Jersey or Long Island, while in numerous southern mountain retreats one may be fairly cool through the hot months--a fact which spells fortune for the hotel keepers of such high-perched resorts as Asheville, White Sulphur Springs, and the Hot Springs of Virginia, who have their houses full of Northerners in winter and Southerners in summer. * * * * * The experience of arrival in Annapolis, delightful in any weather and at any time of year, gives one a satisfaction almost ecstatic after a cold, windy automobile ride such as we had suffered. To ache for the shelter of almost any town, or any sort of building, and, with such yearnings, to arrive in this dreamy city, whose mild air seems to be compounded from fresh winds off a glittering blue sea, arrested by the barricade of ancient hospitable-looking houses, warmed by the glow of their sun-baked red brick, and freighted with a ghostly fragrance, as from the phantoms of the rose gardens of a century or two ago--to arrive, frigid and forlorn in such a haven, to drink a cup of tea in the old Paca house (now a hotel), is to experience heaven after purgatory. For there is no town that I know whose very house fronts hold out to the stranger that warm, old-fashioned welcome that Annapolis seems to give. The Paca house, which as a hotel has acquired the name Carvel Hall, is the house that Winston Churchill had in mind as the Manners house, of his novel "Richard Carvel." A good idea of the house, as it was, may be obtained by visiting the Brice house, next door, for the two are almost twins. When Mr. Churchill was a cadet at Annapolis, before the modern part of the Carvel Hall hotel was built, there were the remains of terraced gardens back of the old mansion, stepping down to an old spring house, and a rivulet which flowed through the grounds was full of watercress. The book describes a party at the house and in these gardens. The Chase house on Maryland Avenue was the one Mr. Churchill thought of as the home of Lionel Carvel, and he described the view from upper windows of this house, over the Harwood house, across the way, to the Severn. Annapolis, Baedeker tells me, was the first chartered city in the United States, having been granted its charter by Queen Anne considerably more than two centuries ago. It is, as every little boy and girl should know, the capital of Maryland, and is built around a little hill upon the top of which stands the old State House in which Washington surrendered his commission and in which met the first Constitutional Convention. In its prime Annapolis was nearly as large a city as it is to-day, but that is not saying a great deal, for at the present time it has not so many inhabitants as Amarillo, Texas, or Brazil, Indiana. Nevertheless, the life of Annapolis in colonial days, and in the days which followed them, was very brilliant, and we learn from the diary of General Washington and from the writings of amazed Englishmen and Frenchmen who visited the city in its period of glory that there were dinners and balls night after night, that the theater was encouraged in Annapolis more than in any other city, that the race meets compared with English race meets both as to the quality of the horses and of the fashionable attendance, that there were sixteen clubs, that the women of the city were beautiful, charming, and superbly dressed, that slaves in sumptuous liveries were to be seen about the streets, that certain gentlemen paid calls in barges which were rowed by half a dozen or more blacks, in uniform, and that the perpetual hospitality of the great houses was gorgeous and extravagant. The houses hint of these things. If you have seen the best old brick mansions of New England, and will imagine them more beautifully proportioned, set off by balancing wings and having infinitely finer details as to doorways, windows, porticos, and also as to wood carvings and fixtures within--as, for instance, the beautiful silver latches and hinges of the Chase house at Annapolis--you will gather something of the flavor of these old Southern homes. For though such venerable mansions as the Chase, Paca, Brice, Hammond, Ridout, and Bordley houses, in Annapolis, are not without family resemblance to the best New England colonial houses, the resemblance is of a kind to emphasize the differences, not only between the mansions of the North and South, but between the builders of them. The contrast is subtle, but marked. Your New England house, beautiful as it is, is stamped with austere simplicity. The man who built it was probably a scholar but he was almost certainly a Calvinist. He habited himself in black and was served by serving maids, instead of slaves in livery. If a woman was not flat-chested and forlorn, he was prone to regard her as the devil masquerading for the downfall of man--and no doubt with some justice, too. Night and morning he presided at family prayers, the purpose of which was to impress upon his family and servants that to have a good time was wicked, and that to be gay in this life meant hell-fire and damnation in the next. Upon this pious person his cousin of Annapolis looked with something not unlike contempt; for the latter, though he too was a scholar, possessed the sort of scholarliness which takes into account beauty and the lore of cosmopolitanism. He may have been religious or he may not have been, but if religious he demanded something handsome, something stylish, in his religion, as he did also in his residence, in his wife, his sons, his daughters, his horses, coaches, dinners, wines, and slaves. He did things with a flourish, and was not beset by a perpetual consciousness and fear of hell. He approved of pretty women; he made love to them; he married them; he was the father of them. His pretty daughters married men who also admired pretty women, and became the mothers of other pretty women, who became, in turn, the mothers and grandmothers of the pretty women of the South to-day. Your old-time Annapolis gentleman's ideas of a republic were far indeed from those now current, for he understood perfectly the difference between a republic and a democracy--a difference which is not now so well understood. He believed that the people should elect the heads of the government, but he also believed that these heads should be elected from his own class, and that, having voted, the people should go about their business, trusting their betters to run the country as it should be run. This, at least, is my picture of the old aristocrats of Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina, as conveyed to me by what I have seen of their houses and possessions and what I have read of their mode of life. They were the early princes of the Republic and by all odds its most picturesque figures. * * * * * Very different from the spirit of appreciation and emulation shown by the trustees of Johns Hopkins University with regard to the old house, Homewood, in Baltimore, is that manifested in the architecture of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, where, in a city fairly flooded with examples of buildings, both beautiful and typically American, architectural hints were ignored, and there were erected great stone structures whose chief characteristics are size, solidity, and the look of being "government property." The main buildings of the Academy, with the exception of the chapel, suggest the sort of sublimated penitentiary that Mr. Thomas Mott Osborne might, one fancies, construct under a carte-blanche authorization, while the chapel, the huge dome of which is visible to all the country round, makes one think of a monstrous wedding cake fashioned in the form of a building and covered with white and yellow frosting in ornamental patterns. This chapel, one imagines, may have been inspired by the Invalides in Paris, but of the Invalides it falls far short. I know nothing of the history of the building, but it is easy to believe that the original intention may have been to place at the center of it, under the dome, a great well, over the parapet of which might have been seen the sarcophagus of John Paul Jones, in the crypt. One prefers to think that the architect had some such plan; for the crypt, as at present arranged, is hardly more than a dark cellar, approached by what seems to be a flight of humble back stairs. To descend into it, and find there the great marble coffin with its bronze dolphins, is not unlike going down into the cellar of a residence and there discovering the family silver reposing in the coal-bin. In this connection it is interesting to recall the fact that our sometimes piratical and always brilliant Revolutionary naval hero died in Paris, and that until a few years ago his resting place was unknown. The reader will remember that while General Horace Porter was American ambassador to France a search was instituted for the remains of John Paul Jones, the greater part of the work having been conducted by Colonel H. Baily Blanchard, then first secretary of the Embassy, assisted by the ambassador and Mr. Henry Vignaud, dean of secretaries of embassy. The resting place of Jones was finally discovered in an abandoned cemetery in the city of Paris, over which houses had been built. The body was contained in a leaden casket and was preserved in alcohol so that identification was easily accomplished by means of a contemporaneous likeness of Jones, and also by means of measurements taken from Houdin's bust. The remains were accorded military honors in Paris, and were brought to this country on a war vessel. Why the crypt at Annapolis is as it is, I do not know, but in my own purely imaginary picture of what happened, I see the architect's plans for a heroic display of Jones's tomb knocked on the head by some "practical man," some worthy dunce in the Navy Department, whom I can imagine as protesting: "But no! We can't take up space at the center of the chapel for any such purpose. It must be floored over to make room for pews. Otherwise where will the cadets sit?" So, although the grounds of the academy, with their lawns, and aged trees, and squirrels, and cadets, are charming, and although the solemn and industrious Baedeker assures me that the academy is the "chief lion" of Annapolis, and although I know that it is a great school, and that we need another like it in order properly to officer our navy, I prefer the old town with its old houses, and old streets bearing such reminiscent names as Hanover, Prince George, and Duke of Gloucester. For certain slang expressions used by cadets I am indebted to a member of the corps. From this admiral-to-be I learn that a "bird" or "wazzo" is a man or boy; that a "pap sheet" is a report covering delinquencies, and that to "hit the pap" is to be reported for delinquency; that "steam" is marine engineering, and to be "bilged for juice" is to fail in examinations in electrical engineering--to get an "unsat," or unsatisfactory mark, or even a "zip" or "swabo," which is a zero. Cadets do not escort girls to dances, but "drag" them; a girl is a "drag," and a "heavy drag" or "brick" is an unattractive girl who must be taken to a dance. A "sleuth" or "jimmylegs" is a night watchman, and to be "ragged" is to be caught. Mess-hall waiters are sometimes called "mokes," while at other times the names of certain exalted dignitaries of the Navy Department, or of the academy, are applied to them. * * * * * I shall never cease to regret that dread of the cold kept us from seeing ancient Whitehall, a few miles from Annapolis, which was the residence of Governor Horatio Sharpe, and is one of the finest of historic American homes; nor shall I, on the other hand, ever cease to rejoice that, in spite of cold we did, upon another day, visit Hampton, the rare old mansion of the Ridgelys, of Maryland, which stands amid its own five thousand acres some dozen miles or so to the north of Baltimore. The Ridgelys were, it appears, the great Protestant land barons of this region as the Carrolls were the great Catholics, and, like the Carrolls, they remain to-day the proprietors of a vast estate and an incomparable house. CHAPTER VIII WE MEET THE HAMPTON GHOST There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple; If the ill spirit have so fair a house, Good things will strive to dwell with 't. --THE TEMPEST. Hampton is probably the largest of Maryland's old mansions, and the beauty of it is more theatrical than the beauty of Doughoregan Manor; for although the latter is the older of the two, the former is not only spectacular by reason of its spaciousness, the delicacy of its architectural details, and the splendor of its dreamlike terraced gardens, but also for a look of beautiful, dignified, yet somehow tragic age--a look which makes one think of a wonderful old lady; a belle of the days of minuets and powdered wigs and patches; a woman no less wonderful in her declining years than in her youth, but wonderful in another way; a proud old aristocrat, erect and spirited to the last; her bedchamber a storehouse of ivory lace and ancient jewelry, her memory a storehouse of recollections, like chapters from romantic novels of the days when all men were gallant, and all women beautiful: recollections of journeys made in the old coach, which is still in the stable, though its outriders have been buried in the slaves' burying ground these many years; recollections of the opening of Hampton, when, as the story goes, gay Captain Charles Ridgely, builder of the house, held a card party in the attic to celebrate the event, while his wife, Rebecca Dorsey Ridgely, a lady of religious turn, marked the occasion simultaneously with a prayer-meeting in the drawing room; of the ball given by the Ridgelys in honor of Charles Carroll's granddaughters, the exquisite Caton sisters; of hunt meets here, long, long ago, and hunt balls which succeeded them; of breakneck rides; of love-making in that garden peopled with the ghosts of more than a century of lovers; of duels fought at dawn. Of such vague, thrilling tales the old house seems to whisper. Never, from the moment we turned into the tree-lined avenue, leading to Hampton, from the moment when I saw the fox hounds rise resentfully out of beds which they had dug in drifts of oak leaves in the drive, from the moment when I stood beneath the stately portico and heard the bars of the shuttered doors being flung back for our admittance--never, from my first glimpse of the place, have I been able to dispel the sense of unreality I felt while there, and which makes me feel, now, that Hampton is not a house that I have seen, but one built by my imagination in the course of a particularly charming and convincing dream. Stained glass windows bearing the Ridgely coat of arms flank the front doorway, and likewise the opposing doorway at the end of the enormous hall upon which one enters, and the light from these windows gives the hall a subdued yet glowing illumination, so that there is something spectral about the old chairs and the old portraits with which the walls are solidly covered. There are portraits here by Gilbert Stuart and other distinguished painters of times gone by, and I particularly remember one large canvas showing a beautiful young woman in evening dress, her hair hanging in curls beside her cheeks, her tapering fingers touching the strings of a harp. She was young then; yet the portrait is that of the great-grandmother, or great-great-grandmother, of present Ridgelys, and she has lain long in the brick-walled family burying ground below the garden. But there beneath the portrait stands the harp on which she played. One might tell endlessly of paneling, of the delicate carving of mantels and overmantels, of chairs, tables, desks, and sofas of Chippendale, Hepplewhite, Phyfe and Sheraton, yet giving such an inventory one might fail utterly to suggest the feeling of that great house, with its sense of homelike emptiness, its wealth of old furniture and portraits, blending together, in the dim light of a late October afternoon, to form shadowy backgrounds for autumnal reverie, or for silent, solitary listening--listening to the tales told by the soughing wind outside, to the whisper of embers in the fireplace, the slow somber tick of the tall clock telling of ages past and passing, the ghostly murmur of the old house talking softly to itself. From the windows of the great dining-room one looks away toward Hampton Gate, a favorite meeting place for the Elkridge Hunt, or, at another angle, toward the stables where the hunters are kept, the old slave cabins, and the overseer's house, with its bell tower--a house nearly two hundred years old. But the library is perhaps the more natural resting place for the guest, and it looks out over the garden, with its enormous descending terraces, its geometrical walks and steps, its beautiful old trees, and arbors of ancient box. Such terraces as these were never built by paid labor. We were given tea in the library, our hostess at this function being a young lady of five or six years--a granddaughter of Captain John Ridgely, present master of Hampton--who, with her pink cheeks, her serious eyes and demeanor, looked like a canvas by Sir Joshua come to life, as she sat in a large chair and ate a large red apple. Nor did Bryan, Captain Ridgely's negro butler, fit less admirably into the pervasive atmosphere of fiction which enveloped the place. In the absence of his master, Bryan did the honors of the old house with a style which was not "put on," because it did not have to be put on--nature and a good bringing-up having supplied all needs in this respect. There was about him none of that affectation of being a graven image, which one so often notices in white butlers and footmen imported from Europe by rich Americans, and which, of all shams, is one of the most false and absurd, as carried out on both sides--for we pretend to think these functionaries the deft mechanisms, incapable of thought, that they pretend to be; yet all the time we know--and they know we know--that they see and hear and think as we do, and that, moreover, they are often enough observant cynics whose elaborate gentility is assumed for hire, like the signboard of a sandwich man. Bryan was without these artificial graces. His manner, in showing us the house, in telling us about the various portraits, indicated some true appreciation of the place and of its contents; and the air he wore of natural dignity and courtesy--of being at once acting-host and servitor--constituted as graceful a performance in a not altogether easy rôle as I have ever seen, and satisfied me, once for all, as to the verity of legends concerning the admirable qualities of old-time negro servants in the South. After tea, when fading twilight had deepened the shadows in the house, we went up the stairway, past the landing with its window containing the armorial bearings of the family in stained glass, and, achieving the upper hall, crossed to a great bedchamber, the principal guest room, and paused just inside the door. And now, because of what I am about to relate, I shall give the names of those who were present. We were: Dr. Murray P. Brush, A.B., Ph.D., acting Dean of Johns Hopkins University; Dr. John McF. Bergland of Baltimore; my companion, Wallace Morgan, illustrator; and myself. The light had, by this time, melted to a mere faint grayness sifting like mist through the many oblong panes of several large windows. Nevertheless I could discern that it was a spacious room, and from the color of it and certain shadowy lines upon the walls, I judged that it was paneled to the ceiling in white-painted wood. I am under the impression that it contained a fireplace, and that the great four-post bed, standing to the right of the doorway, was placed upon a low platform, a step or two above the floor--though of this I am not quite certain, the bulk of the bed and the dim light having, perhaps, deceived me. The rest of the furniture in the room was dark in color, and massed in heavy vague spots against the lighter background of the walls. Directly before the door, at about the center of the wall against which it was backed, stood something which loomed tall and dark, and which I took to be either a gigantic clothespress or a closet built into the room. Looking past the front of this obstruction, I saw one of the windows; the piece of furniture was therefore exhibited sidewise, in silhouette. I do not think that I had definitely thought of ghost stories before, and I know that ghosts had not been spoken of, but as I looked into this room, and reflected on the long series of persons who had occupied it, and on where they were now, and on all the stories that the room must have heard, there entered my mind thoughts of the supernatural. Having taken a step or two into the room, I was a little in advance of my three friends, and as these fancies came strongly to me, I spoke over my shoulder to one of them, who was at my right and a little behind me, saying, half playfully: "There ought to be ghosts in a room like this." Hardly had I spoken when without a sound, and swinging very slowly, the door of the large piece of furniture before me gently opened. My first idea was that the thing must be a closet, built against the wall, with a door at the back opening on a passageway, or into the next room, and that the little girl whom we had met downstairs had opened it from the other side and was coming in. I fully expected to see her enter. But she did not enter, for, as I learned presently, she was in the nursery at the time. After waiting for an instant to see who was coming, I began to realize that there was no one coming; that no one had opened the door; that, like an actor picking up a cue, the door had begun to swing immediately upon my saying the word "ghosts." The appropriateness of the coincidence was striking. I turned quickly to my friends, who were in conversation behind me, and asked: "Speaking of ghosts--did you see that door open?" It is my recollection that none of them had seen it. Certainly not more than one of them had, for I remember my feeling of disappointment that any one present should have missed so strange a circumstance. Some one may have asked what I had seen; at all events I was full of the idea, and, indicating the open door, I began to tell what I had seen, when--exactly as though the thing were done deliberately to circumstantiate my story--with the slow, steady movement of a heavy door pushed by a feeble hand, the other portal of the huge cabinet swung open. This time all four of us were looking. Presently, as we moved across the wide hall to go downstairs again, Bryan came from one of the other chambers, whither, I think, he had carried the young lady's supper on a tray. "Are there supposed to be any ghosts in this house?" I asked him. Bryan showed his white teeth in the semi-darkness. Whether he believed in ghosts or not, evidently he did not fear them. "Yes, sir," he said. "We're supposed to have a ghost here." "Where?" "In that room over there," he answered, indicating the bedroom from which we had come. We listened attentively to Bryan while he told how the daughter of Governor Swan had come to attend a ball at Hampton, and how she had died in the four-post bed in that old shadowy guest room, and of how, since then, she had been seen from time to time. "They's several people say they saw her," he finished. "She comes out and combs her hair in front of the long mirror." However, as we drove back to Baltimore that evening, we repeatedly assured one another that we did not believe in ghosts. CHAPTER IX ARE WE STANDARDIZED? Almost all modern European critics of the United States agree in complaining that our telephones and sleeping cars are objectionable, and that we are "standardized" in everything. Their criticism of the telephone seems to be that the state of perfection to which it has been brought in this country causes it to be widely used, while their disapproval of our sleeping cars is invariably based on the assumption that they have no compartments--which is not the fact, since most of the great transcontinental railroads do run compartment cars, and much better ones than the best _wagons lits_, and since, also, all our sleeping cars have drawing-rooms which are incomparably better than the most comfortable European compartments. The charge of standardization will, however, bear a little thought. It is true that most American cities have a general family resemblance--that a business street in Atlanta or Memphis looks much like a business street in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo, Milwaukee, St. Paul, Kansas City, or St. Louis--and that much the same thing may be said of residence streets. Houses and office buildings in one city are likely to resemble those of corresponding grade in another; the men who live in the houses and go daily to the offices are also similar; so are the trolley cars in which they journey to and fro; still more so the Fords which many of them use; the clothing of one man is like that of another, and all have similar conventions concerning the date at which--without regard to temperature--straw hats should be discarded. Their womenfolk, also, are more or less alike, as are the department stores in which they shop and the dresses they buy. And the same is true of their children, the costumes of those children, and the schools they attend. Every American city has social groups corresponding to similar groups in other cities. There is always the small, affluent group, made up of people who keep butlers and several automobiles, and who travel extensively. In this group there are always some snobs: ladies who give much time to societies founded on ancestry, and have a Junkerish feeling about "social leadership." Every city has also its "fast" group: people who consider themselves "unconventional," who drink more than is good for them, and make much noise. Some members of this group may belong to the first group, as well, but in the fast group they have a following of well-dressed hangers-on: unmarried men and women, youngish rather than young, who, with little money, yet manage to dress well and to be seen eating and drinking and dancing in public places. There is usually to be found in this group a hectic widow or two--be it grass or sod--and a few pretty girls who, having been given too much freedom at eighteen, begin to wonder at twenty-eight, why, though they have always been "good fellows," none of the dozens of men who take them about have married them. To this aggregation drift also those restless husbands and wives whose glances rove hopefully away from their mates, a few well-bred drunkards, and a few men and women who are trying to forget things they cannot forget. Then there is always the young married group--a nice group for the most part--living in comfortable new houses or apartments, and keeping, usually, both a small automobile and a baby carriage. They also go to the Country Club on Saturday nights, leave their motors standing in the drive, eat a lukewarm supper that tastes like papier-mâché, and dance themselves to wiltedness. Another group is entirely masculine, being made up of husbands of various ages, their mutual bond being the downtown club to which they go daily, and in which the subjects discussed are politics, golf, and the evils of prohibition. To this group always belong the black-sheep husbands who, after taking their wives to the Country Club, disappear and remain away until they are sent for because it is time to go home, when they come back shamefaced and scented with Scotch. Every American city has also what Don Marquis calls its "little group of serious thinkers"--women, most of them--possessed of an ardent desire to "keep abreast of the times." These women belong to clubs and literary societies which are more serious than war. They are always reading papers or attending lectures, and at these lectures they get a strange assortment of "cultural" information and misinformation, delivered with ghastly assurance by heterogeneous gentlemen in cutaway coats, who go about and spout for pay. If you meet these ladies, and they suspect you of being infested by the germs of "culture," they will open fire on you with a "thought," about which you may detect a curious ghostly fragrance, as of Alfred Noyes's lecture, last week, or of "the New Republic" or the "Literary Digest." The most "liberal" of them may even take "The Masses," precisely as people rather like them used to take "The Philistine," a generation or two ago. Among the members of this group are the women who work violently for suffrage--something in which I personally believe, but which, merely because I believe in it, I do not necessarily like to take in my coffee as a substitute for sugar, on my bread as a substitute for butter, and in my ear as a substitute for pleasant general conversation. I do not wish to seem to speak disparagingly of women of this type, for they are doing good, and they will do more good when they have become more accustomed to possessing minds. Having but recently discovered their minds, they are playing with them enthusiastically, like children who have just discovered their new toys on Christmas morning. It is delightful to watch them. It is diverting to have them pop ideas at you with that bright-eyed, efficient, assertive look which seems to say: "See! I am a liberal woman--a woman of the new type. I meet men on their own ground. Do you wish to talk of birth control, social hygiene, and sex attraction? Or shall we reverse the order? Or shall I show you how much I know about Brieux, and household economics, and Ellen Key, and eugenics, and George Meredith, and post-impressionism, and "Roberts' Rules of Order," and theosophy, and conditions in the Sixteenth Ward?" When one thinks of these city groups, and of mail-order houses, and Fords, one may begin to fear it is indeed true that we are becoming standardized, but when one lets one's mind drift over the country as the eye drifts over a map; when one thinks of the quantities of modest, thoughtful, gentle, generous, intelligent, sound American families which are to be found in every city and every town, and thinks again, in a twinkling, of sheriffs and mining-camp policemen in the Far West, of boys going to Harvard, and other boys going to the University of Kansas, others to the old Southern universities, so rich in tradition, and still others to Annapolis or West Point; when one thinks of the snow glittering on the Rocky Mountain wall, back of Denver; of sleepy little towns drowsing in the sun beside the Mississippi; of Charles W. Eliot of Cambridge, and Hy Gill of Seattle; of Dr. Lyman Abbott of New York and Tom Watson of Georgia; of General Leonard Wood and Colonel William Jennings Bryan; of ex-slaves living in their cabins behind Virginia manor houses, and Filipino and Kanaka fishermen living in villages built on stilts beside the bayous below New Orleans; of the dry salt desert of Utah, and two great rivers meeting between green rocky hills, at Harper's Ferry; of men working in offices at the top of the Woolworth Building in New York, and other men working thousands of feet below the ground, in the copper mines of Butte and the iron and coal mines of Birmingham--when one thinks of these things one quickly ceases to fear that the United States is standardized, and instead begins to fear that few Americans will ever know the varied wonder of their country, and the varied character of its inhabitants, their problems, hopes, and views. If I lived somewhere in the region of Boston, New York, or Philadelphia and wished quickly to learn whether the country were really standardized or not, I should get into my automobile--or into some one else's--and take an autumn tour through Baltimore, past Doughoregan Manor, some miles to the west of Baltimore, on to Frederick, Maryland (where they dispute, quite justly, I believe, the truth of the Barbara Frietchie legend), and thence "over the mountain wall" and down into the northeastern corner of the most irregularly shaped State in the Union, West Virginia. I should strike for Harper's Ferry, and from there run to Charles Town, a few miles distant (where John Brown was tried and executed for the Harper's Ferry raid), and after circulating about that corner of the State, I should go down into Virginia by the good highway which leads from Charles Town to Berryville--"Bur'v'l," they pronounce it--and to "Winchester twenty miles away" (where they say that Sheridan's Ride was nothing to make such a lot of talk about!), and then back, by way of Berryville, and over the Blue Ridge Mountains into the great fox-hunting counties of Virginia: Clark, Loudon, and Fauquier. Here I should see a hunt meet or a race meet. There are many other places to which I might go after that, but as I meant only to suggest an easy little tour, I shall stop at this point, contenting myself with saying that not far to the south is Charlottesville, where Jefferson built that most beautiful of all universities, the University of Virginia, and his wonderful house Monticello; that Staunton (pronounced as without the "u"), where Woodrow Wilson was born, lies west of Charlottesville, while Fredericksburg, where Washington's mother lived, lies to the northeast. Some such trip as this I should take instead of a conventional New England tour. And before starting I should buy a copy of Louise Closser Hale's delightful book, "Into the Old Dominion." One beauty of the trip that I suggest is that it isn't all the same. In one place you get a fair country hotel, in another an inn, and somewhere along the way you may have to spend a night in a private house. Also, though the roads through Maryland, and the part of West Virginia I speak of, are generally good, my experience of Virginia roads, especially through the mountains, leads me to conclude that in respect to highways Virginia remains a backward State. But who wants to ride always over oiled roads, always to hotels with marble lobbies, or big white porches full of hungry-eyed young women, and old ladies, knitting? Only the standardized tourist. And I am not addressing him. I am talking to the motorist who is not ossified in habit, who has a love of strangeness and the picturesque--not only in scenery but in houses and people and the kind of life those people lead. For it is quite true that, as Professor Roland C. Usher said in his "Pan Americanism," "the information in New York about Buenos Aires is more extended, accurate, and contemporaneous than the notions in Maine about Alabama.... Isolation is more a matter of time than of space, and common interests are due to the ease of transportation and communication more often than geographical location." CHAPTER X HARPER'S FERRY AND JOHN BROWN Mad Old Brown, Osawatomie Brown, With his eighteen other crazy men, went in and took the town. --EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. Three States meet at Harper's Ferry, and the line dividing two of them is indicated where it crosses the station platform. If you alight at the rear end of the train, you are in Maryland; at the front, you are in West Virginia. This I like. I have always liked important but invisible boundaries--boundaries of states or, better yet, of countries. When I cross them I am disposed to step high, as though not to trip upon them, and then to pause with one foot in one land and one in another, trying to imagine that I feel the division running through my body. Harper's Ferry is an entrancing old town; a drowsy place, piled up beautifully, yet carelessly, upon terraced roads clinging to steep hills, which slope on one side to the Potomac, on the other to the Shenandoah, and come to a point, like the prow of a great ship, at the confluence of the two. There is something foreign in the appearance of the place. Many times, as I looked at old stone houses, a story or two high on one side, three or four stories on the other, seeming to set their claws into the cliffs and cling there for dear life, I thought of houses in Capri and Amalfi, and in some towns in France; and again there were low cottages built of blocks of shale covered with a thin veneer of white plaster showing the outlines of the stones beneath, which, squatting down amid their trees and flowers, resembled peasant cottages in Normandy or Brittany, or in Ireland. It is a town in which to ramble for an hour, uphill, down and around; stopping now to delight in a crumbling stone wall, tied together with Kenilworth ivy; now to watch a woman making apple butter in a great iron pot; now to see an old negro clamber slowly into his rickety wagon, take up the rope reins, and start his skinny horse with the surprising words: "Come hither!"; now to look at an old tangled garden, terraced rudely up a hillside; now to read the sign, on a telegraph pole in the village, bearing the frank threat: "If you Hitch your Horses Here they will be Turned Loose." Now you will come upon a terraced road, at one side of which stands an old house draped over the rocks in such a way as to provide entrance from the ground level, on any one of three stories; or an unexpected view down a steep roadway, or over ancient moss-grown housetops to where, as an old book I found there puts it, "between two ramparts, in a gorge of savage grandeur, the lordly Potomac takes to his embrace the beautiful Shenandoah." The liaison between the rivers, described in this Rabelaisian manner by the author of "The Annals of Harper's Ferry," has been going on for a long time with all the brazen publicity of a love scene on a park bench. I recommend the matter to the attention of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, which once took action to prohibit a novel by Mr. Theodore Dreiser. A great many people wish to read Mr. Dreiser's books yet no one has to read them if he does not want to. But it is a different matter with these rivers. Sensitive citizens of Harper's Ferry and pure-minded passengers on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad are obliged daily to witness what is going on. Before the days of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, and of the late Anthony Comstock, when we had no one to make it clear to us exactly what was shocking, little was thought of the public scandal between the Potomac and the Shenandoah. Thomas Jefferson seems to have rather liked it; there is a point above the town, known as Jefferson's Rock, at which, it is said, the author of the Declaration of Independence stood and uttered a sentiment about the spectacle. Everybody in Harper's Ferry agrees that Jefferson stood at Jefferson's Rock and said something appropriate, and any one of them will try to tell you what he said, but each version will be different. A young lady told me that he said: "This view is worth a trip across the Atlantic Ocean." A young man in a blue felt hat of the fried-egg variety said that Jefferson declared, with his well-known simplicity: "This is the grandest view I ever seen." An old man who had to go through the tobacco chewer's pre-conversational rite before replying to my question gave it as: "Pfst!--They ain't nothin' in Europe ner Switzerland ner nowheres else, I reckon', to beat this-here scenery." The man at the drug store quoted differently alleging the saying to have been: "Europe has nothing on this": whereas the livery stable man's version was: "This has that famous German river--the Rhine River don't they call it?--skinned to death." Whatever Jefferson's remark was, there has been added to the spectacle at Harper's Ferry, since his day, a new feature, which, could he have but seen it, must have struck him forcibly, and might perhaps have caused him to say more. At a lofty point upon the steep wall of Maryland Heights, across the Potomac from the town, far, far up upon the side of the cliff, commanding a view not only of both rivers, but of their meeting place and their joint course below, and of the lovely contours of the Blue Ridge Mountains, fading to smoky coloring in the remote distance, there has, of late years, appeared the outline of a gigantic face, which looks out from its emplacement like some Teutonic god in vast effigy, its huge luxuriant mustaches pointing East and West as though in symbolism of the conquest of a continent. A blue and yellow background, tempered somewhat by the elements, serves to attract attention to the face and to the legend which accompanies it, but the thing one sees above all else, the thing one recognizes, is the face itself, with its look half tragic, half resigned, yet always so inscrutable: for it is none other than the beautiful brooding countenance of Gerhard Mennen, the talcum-powder gentleman. * * * * * The great story of Harper's Ferry is of course the John Brown story. Joseph I.C. Clarke, writing in the New York "Sun" of Sir Roger Casement's execution for treason in connection with the Irish rebellion, compared him with John Brown and also with Don Quixote. The spiritual likeness between these three bearded figures is striking enough. All were idealists; all were fanatics. Brown's ideal was a noble one--that of freedom--but his manner of attempting to translate it into actuality was that of a madman. He believed not only that the slaves should be freed, but that the blood of slaveholders should be shed in atonement. In "bleeding Kansas" he led the Ossawatomie massacre, and committed cold-blooded murders under the delusion that the sword of the Lord was in his hand. In October, 1859, Brown, who had for some time been living under an assumed name in the neighborhood of Harper's Ferry, led a score of his followers, some of them negroes, in a surprise attack upon the Government arsenal at this place, capturing the watchmen and taking possession of the buildings. It was his idea to get the weapons the arsenal contained and give them to the slaves that they might rise and free themselves. Before this plan could be executed, however, Brown and his men were besieged in the armory, and here, after a day or two of bloody fighting, with a number of deaths on both sides, he was captured with his few surviving men, by Colonel (later General) Robert E. Lee, whose aide, upon this occasion, was J.E.B. Stuart, later the Confederate cavalry leader. Stuart had been in Kansas, and it was he who recognized the leader of the raid as Brown of Ossawatomie. It is said that Brown's violent anti-slavery feeling was engendered by his having seen, in his youth, a colored boy of about his own age cruelly misused. He brooded over the wrongs of the blacks until, as some students of his life believe, he became insane on this subject. His utterances show that he was willing to give up his life and those of his sons and other followers, if by such action he could merely draw attention to the cause which had taken possession of his soul. In the course of the fighting he saw his two sons mortally wounded, and was himself stabbed and cut. Throughout the fight and his subsequent trial at Charles Town he remained imperturbable; when taken to the gallows he sat upon his coffin, in a wagon, and he not only mounted the scaffold without a tremor, but actually stood there, apparently unmoved, for ten or fifteen minutes, with the noose around his neck, while the troops which had formed his escort were marched to their positions. A large number of troops were present at the execution, for it was then believed in the South that the Brown raid was not the mere suicidal stroke of an individual fanatic, but an organized movement on the part of the Republican party; an effort to rescue Brown was therefore apprehended. This idea was later shown to be a fallacy, Brown having made his own plans, and been financed by a few northern friends, headed by Gerrit Smith of New York. There has been a tendency in the North to make a saint of John Brown, and in the South to make a devil of him. As a matter of fact he was a poor, misguided zealot, with a wild light in his eye, who had set out to do a frightful thing; for, bad though slavery was, its evils were not comparable with the horrors which would have resulted from a slave rebellion. It must be conceded, however, that those who would canonize John Brown have upon their side a strange and impressive piece of evidence. The jail where he was lodged in Charles Town and the courthouse where he was tried, still stand, and it is the actual fact that, when the snow falls, it always miraculously melts in a path which leads diagonally across the street from the one to the other. That this is true I have unimpeachable testimony. _Snow will not stand on the path by which John Brown crossed back and forth from the jail to the court-house._ There will be snow over all the rest of the street, but not on that path; there you can see it melting. But, as with certain other "miracles," this one is not so difficult to understand if you know how it is brought about. The courthouse is heated from the jail, and the hot pipes run under the pavement. CHAPTER XI THE VIRGINIAS AND THE WASHINGTONS In colonial times, and long thereafter, the present State of West Virginia was a part of Virginia. Virginia, in the old days, used to have no western borders to her most westerly counties, which, in theory, ran out to infinity. As the western part of the State became settled, county lines were drawn, and new counties were started farther back from the coast. For this reason, towns which are now in Jefferson County, West Virginia, used to be in that county of Virginia which lies to the east of Jefferson County, and some towns have been in several different counties in the course of their history. The people in the eastern part of West Virginia are, so far as I am capable of judging, precisely like Virginians. The old houses, when built, were in Virginia, the names of the people are Virginian names, and customs and points of view are Virginian. Until I went there I was not aware how very much this means. I do not know who wrote the school history I studied as a boy, but I do know now that it was written by a lopsided historian, and that his "lop," like that of many another of his kind, led him to enlarge upon American naval and military victories, to minimize American defeats, to give an impression that the all-important early colonies were those of New England, and that the all-important one of them was Massachusetts. From this bias I judge that the historian was a Boston man. It takes a Bostonian to think in that way. They do it still. From my school history I gathered the idea that although Sir Walter Raleigh and Captain John Smith were so foolish as to dally more or less in the remote fastnesses of Virginia, and although there was a little ineffectual settlement at Jamestown, all the important colonizing of this country occurred in New England. I read about Peregrine White, but not about Virginia Dare; I read much of Miles Standish, but nothing of Christopher Newport; I read a great deal of the _Mayflower_, but not a word of the _Susan Constant_. Yet Virginia Dare, if she lived, must have been nearing young ladyhood when Peregrine White was born; Captain Christopher Newport passed the Virginia capes when Miles Standish was hardly more than a youth, in Lancashire; and the _Susan Constant_ landed the Jamestown settlers more than a dozen years before the _Mayflower_ landed her shipload of eminent furniture owners at Plymouth. Even Plymouth itself had been visited years before by John Smith, and it was he, not the Pilgrims, who named the place. I find that some boys, to-day, know these things. But though that fact is encouraging, I am not writing for boys, but for their comparatively ignorant parents. Not only did the first English colony establish itself in Virginia, and the first known tobacco come from there--a point the importance of which cannot be overstated--but the history of the Old Dominion is in every way more romantic and heroic than that of any other State. The first popular government existed there long before the Revolution, and at the time of the break with the mother country Virginia was the most wealthy and populous of the Colonies. Some historians say that slavery was first introduced there when some Dutchmen sold to the colonists a shipload of negroes, but I believe this point is disputed. The Declaration of Independence was, of course, written by a Virginian, and made good by the sword of one. The first President of the United States was a Virginian, and so is the present Chief Executive. The whole of New England has produced but four presidents; Ohio has produced six; but Virginia has given us eight. The first British army to land on this continent (Braddock's) landed in Virginia, and in that State our two greatest wars were terminated by the surrenders of Cornwallis and of Lee. And, last, the gallant Lee himself was a Virginian of the Virginians--a son of the distinguished Henry Lee who said of Washington that he was "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." * * * * * On the pleasant drive of perhaps a dozen miles, from Harper's Ferry to Charles Town, I noticed here and there, at the roadside, pyramidal stones, suggesting monuments, but bearing no inscription save that each had a number. On inquiry I learned that these were indeed Confederate monuments, but that to find out what they marked it was necessary to go to the county courthouse at Charles Town and look up the numbers in a book, of which there is but one copy. These monuments were set out three or four years ago. They appeared suddenly, almost as though they had grown overnight, and many people wondered, as I had, what they meant. "Eloise," one Charles Town young lady asked another, "what's that monument out in front of your house with the number twenty-one on it?" "Oh," replied Eloise, "that's where all my suitors are buried." * * * * * One of the things which gives Jefferson County, West Virginia, its Virginian flavor is the collection of fine old houses which adorn it. Many of these houses are the homes of families bearing the name of Washington, or having in their veins the blood of the Washingtons. It is said that there is more Washington blood in Charles Town (which, by the way, should not be confused with Charleston, capital of the same State), than in any other place, if not in all the rest of the world together. The nearest competitors to Charles Town in this respect are Westmoreland County, Virginia, and the town of Kankakee, Illinois, where resides the Spottswood Augustine Washington family, said to be the only Washington group to have taken the Union side in the Civil War. It is rumored also that all the Washingtons are Democrats, although that fact is hard to reconcile, at the present time, with the statement that, among the five thousand of them, there is but a single Federal officeholder. The settling of the Washingtons in Jefferson County, West Virginia, came about through the fact that George Washington, when a youth of sixteen or seventeen, became acquainted with that part of what was then Virginia, through having gone to survey for Lord Fairfax, who had acquired an enormous tract of land in the neighboring county of Clarke, which is still in the mother State. To this estate, called Greenaway Court, his lordship, it is recorded, came from England to isolate himself because a woman with whom he was in love refused to marry him. In this general neighborhood George Washington lived for three years, and local enthusiasts affirm that to his having drunk the lime-impregnated waters of this valley was due his great stature. The man who informed me of this theory had lived there aways. He was about five feet three inches tall, and had drunk the waters all his life--plain and otherwise. Washington's accounts of the region so interested his brothers that they finally moved there, acquired large tracts of land, and built homes. Charles Town, indeed, was laid out on the land of Charles Washington, and was named for him, and there is evidence that George Washington, who certainly gave the lines for the roads about the place, also laid out the town. Another brother, John Augustine, left a large family, while Samuel, the oldest, described as "a rollicking country squire," was several years short of fifty when he died, but for all that had managed to marry five times and to find, nevertheless, spare moments in which to lay out the historic estate of Harewood, not far from Charles Town. It is said that George Washington was his brother's partner in this enterprise, but excepting in its interior, which is very beautiful, there is no sign, about the building, of his graceful architectural touch. George Washington spent much time at Harewood, Lafayette and his son visited there, and there the sprightly widow, Dolly Todd, married James Madison. This wedding was attended by President Washington and his wife and by many other national figures; the bride made the journey to Harewood in Jefferson's coach, escorted by Madison and a group of his friends on horseback, and history makes mention of a very large and very gay company. This is all very well until you see Harewood; for, substantial though the house is, with its two-foot stone walls, it has but five rooms: two downstairs and three up. Where did they all sleep? The question was put by the practical young lady whom I accompanied to Harewood, but the wife of the farmer to whom the place is rented could only smile and shake her head. The bedroom now occupied by this farmer and his wife has doubtless been occupied also by the first President of the United States and his wife, the fourth President and his wife, by Lafayette, and by a King of France--for Louis-Philippe, and his brothers, the Duc de Montpensier and the Comte de Beaujolais, spent some time at Harewood during their period of exile. Having read in an extract from the Baltimore "Sun" that Harewood, which is still owned in the Washington family, was a place in which all Washingtons took great and proper pride, that it was "the lodestone which draws the wandering Washingtons back to the old haunts," I was greatly shocked on visiting the house to see the shameful state of dilapidation into which it has been allowed to pass. The porches and steps have fallen down, the garden is a disreputable tangle, and the graves in the yard are heaped with tumble-down stones about which the cattle graze. The only parts of the building in good repair are those parts which time has not yet succeeded in destroying. The drawing-room, containing a mantelpiece given to Washington by Lafayette, and the finest wood paneling I have seen in any American house, has held its own fairly well, as has also the old stairway, imported by Washington from England. But that these things are not in ruins, like the porches, is no credit to the Washingtons who own the property to-day, and who, having rented the place, actually leave family portraits hanging on the walls to crack and rot through the cold winter. If there are indeed five thousand Washingtons, and if they are proud of their descent, a good way for them to show it would be to contribute twenty-five cents each to be expended on putting Harewood in respectable condition. The last member of the Washington family to own Mount Vernon was John Augustine Washington, of Charles Town, who sold the former home of his distinguished collateral ancestor. This Mr. Washington was a Confederate officer in the Civil War. He had a son named George, whose widow, if I mistake not, is the Mrs. George Washington of Charles Town, of whom I heard an amusing story. With another Charles Town lady this Mrs. Washington went to the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and the two attended the Fair together on Washington Day. On this occasion Mrs. Washington made a purchase in one of the buildings, and ordered it sent to her home in Charles Town. "What name?" asked the clerk. "Mrs. George Washington." The clerk concluded that she was joking. "I want your _real_ name," he insisted with a smile. "But," plaintively protested the gentle Mrs. Washington, "that is the only name I _have_!" * * * * * One of the most charming of the old houses in the neighborhood of Charles Town, and one of the few which is still occupied by the descendants of its builder, is Piedmont, the residence of the Briscoe family. It is a brick house, nearly a century and a half old, with a lovely old portico, and it contains two of the most interesting relics I saw on my entire journey in the South. The first of these is the wall paper of the drawing-room, upon which is depicted, not in pattern, but in a series of pictures with landscape backgrounds, various scenes representing the adventures of Telemachus on his search for his father. I remember having seen on the walls of the parlor of an old hotel at South Berwick, Maine, some early wall paper of this character, but the pictures on that paper were done in various shades of gray, whereas the Piedmont wall paper is in many colors. The other relic is a letter which Mrs. Briscoe drew from her desk quite as though it had been a note received that morning from a friend. It was written on tough buff-colored paper, and, though the ink was brown with age, the handwriting was clear and legible and the paper was not broken at the folds. It was dated "Odiham, Sept. 1st, 1633," and ran as follows: To Dr. John Briscoe, _Greetings_. Dear Sir: As the Privy Council have decided that I shall not be disturbed or dispossessed of the charter granted by his Majesty--the _Ark_ and Pinnace _Dove_ will sail from Gravesend about the 1st of October, and if you are of the same mind as when I conversed with you, I would be glad to have you join the colony. With high esteem, Your most obedient servant, Cecilius Baltimore. This letter from the second Lord Baltimore refers to the historic voyage which resulted in the first settlement of Maryland, thirteen years after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. As for Dr. Briscoe, to whom the letter was written, he was one of the three hundred original colonists, but after settling in St. Mary's, near the mouth of the Potomac, removed to the place where his descendants still reside. Farther out in Jefferson County the motorist may pass through two curious hamlets which, though not many miles from Charles Town, have the air of being completely removed from the world. One of these was known, many years ago, as Middleway, and later as Smithfield, but is now called Clip--and for a curious reason. When the stagecoaches were running, the town was quite a place, as its several good old houses indicate; but the railroads, when they were built, ignored the town, but killed the stage lines, with the result that the little settlement dried up. Even before this an old plaster-covered house, still standing, became haunted. The witches who resided in it developed the unpleasant custom of flying out at night and cutting pieces from the clothing of passers-by. And that is how the town came to be called Clip. A century or so ago, when the rudeness of the witches had long annoyed the inhabitants of Clip, and had proved very detrimental to their clothing, a Roman Catholic priest came along and told them that if they would give him a certain field, he would rid them of the evil spirits. This struck the worthy citizens of Clip as a good bargain; they gave the priest his field (it is still known as the Priest's Field, and is now used as a place for basket picnics) and forthwith the operations of the witches ceased. So, at least, the story goes. Not far beyond Clip lies the hamlet of Leetown, taking its name from that General Charles Lee who commanded an American army in the Revolutionary War, but who was suspected by Washington of being a traitor, and was finally court-martialed and cashiered from the army. The old stone house which Lee built at Leetown, and in which he lived after his disgrace, still remains. Instead of having partitions in his house the old general lived in one large room, upon the floor of which he made chalk marks to indicate different chambers. Here he dwelt surrounded by innumerable dogs, and here he was frequently visited by Generals Horatio Gates and Adam Stephen, who were neighbors and cronies of his, and met at his house to drink wine and exchange stories. It is said that upon one of these occasions Lee got up and declared: "The county of Berkeley is to be congratulated upon having as citizens three noted generals of the Revolution, each of whom was ignominiously cashiered. You, Stephen, for getting drunk when you should have been sober; you, Gates, for advancing when you should have retreated; and your humble servant for retreating when he should have advanced." Lee was a turbulent, insubordinate, hard-drinking rascal, and nothing could be more characteristic than the will, written in his own handwriting, filed by the old reprobate with the clerk of the Berkeley County Court, and expressing the following sentiments: I desire most earnestly that I may not be buried in any church or churchyard, or within a mile of any Presbyterian or Anabaptist meeting house, for since I have resided in this county I have kept so much bad company when living that I do not desire to continue it when dead. During Lee's life there, Leetown was probably a livelier place than it is to-day. Something of its present state may be gathered from the fact that when a lady of my acquaintance stopped her motor there recently, and asked some men what time it was, they stared blankly at her for a moment, after which one of them said seriously: "We don't know. We don't have time here." CHAPTER XII I RIDE A HORSE And vaulted with such ease into his seat As if an angel dropp'd down from the clouds, To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus And witch the world with noble horsemanship. --KING HENRY IV. Claymont Court, near Charles Town, the house in which my companion and I were so fortunate as to be guests during our visit to this part of the country, is one of the old Washington houses, having been built by Bushrod Corbin Washington, a nephew of the first President. It is a beautiful brick building, with courts at either end, the brick walls of which, connecting with the house, extend its lines with peculiar grace, and tie to the main structure the twin buildings which balance it, according to the delightful fashion of early Virginia architecture. The hexagonal brick tile of the front walk at Claymont Court, and the square stone pavement of the portico, resemble exactly those at Mount Vernon, and are said to have been imported at the same time; and it is believed also that the Claymont box trees were brought over with those growing at Mount Vernon. The estate was sold out of the Washington family in 1870, when it was acquired by a Colonel March, who later sold it to a gentleman whose wild performances at Claymont are not only remembered, but are commemorated in the house. In the cellar, for instance, bricked up in a room barely large enough to hold it, whence it cannot be removed except by tearing down a heavy wall, stands a huge carved sideboard to which the young man took a dislike, and which he therefore caused to be carried to the cellar and immured, despite the protests of his family. It is said that upon another occasion he conceived the picturesque idea of riding his horse upstairs and hitching it to his bedpost; and that he did so is witnessed by definite marks of horseshoes on the oak treads of the stair. Later Frank R. Stockton purchased the place, and there he wrote his story "The Captain of the Toll-Gate," which was published posthumously. But in all its history this glorious old house has never been a happier home, or a more interesting one, than it is to-day. For now it is the residence of four young ladies, sisters, who, because of their divergent tastes and their complete congeniality, continually suggest the fancy that they have stepped out of a novel. One of them is the Efficient Sister, who runs the automobile and the farm of two or three hundred acres, sells the produce, keeps the accounts, and pays off the men; another is the Domestic Sister, who conducts the admirable ménage; another is the Sociological and Artistic Sister, who draws and plays and thinks about the masses; while the fourth is the Sprightly Sister Who Likes to Dance. Never had my companion or I seen a more charming, a more varied household, an establishment more self-contained, more complete in all things from vegetables to brains. No need to leave the place for anything. Yet if one wished to look about the country, there was the motor, and there were the saddle horses in the stable--all of them members of old Virginian families--and there were four equestrian young ladies. "Would you-all like to ride to-day?" one of the sisters asked us at breakfast. To my companion, horseback riding is comparatively a new thing. He had taken it up a year before--partly because of appeals from me, partly because of changes which he had begun to notice in his topography. Compared with him I was a veteran horseman, for it was then a year and three months since I had begun my riding lessons. I said that I would like to ride, but he declared that he must stay behind and make a drawing. Sometimes, in the past, I had thought I would prefer to make my living as a painter or an illustrator than as a writer, but at this juncture it occurred to me that, though the writer's medium of expression is a less agreeable one than that of the graphic artist, it is much pleasanter to ride about with pretty girls than to sit alone and draw a picture of their house. I began to feel sorry for my companion: the thought of our riding gaily off, and leaving him at work, made him seem pathetic. My appeals, however, made no impression upon his inflexible sense of duty, and I soon ceased trying to persuade him to join us, and began to speculate, instead, as to whether all four sisters would accompany me, or whether only two or three of them would go--and if so, which. "What kind of horse do you like?" asked one. Such a question always troubles me. It is embarrassing. Imagine saying to a young lady who likes to ride thoroughbred hunters across fields and over ditches and fences: "I should like a handsome horse, one that will cause me to appear to advantage, one that looks spirited but is in reality tame." Such an admission would be out of character with the whole idea of riding. One could hardly make it to one's most intimate male friend, let alone to a girl who knows all about withers and hocks and pastern joints, and talks about "paneled country," and takes the "Racing Calendar." To such a young lady it is impossible to say: "I have ridden for a little more than a year; the horses with which I am acquainted are benevolent creatures from a riding school near Central Park; they go around the reservoir twice, and return automatically, and they sigh deeply when one mounts and again when one gets off." No; that sort of thing will not do at all; for the horse--besides having been placed in a position more aristocratic than ever, through the philanthropies of Henry Ford--is essentially "sporty." You must be a "sport" or you must keep away from him. You must approach him with dash or you must not approach him at all. And when a young lady inquires what kind of horse you like, there is but one way to reply. "It doesn't matter at all," I answered. "Any horse will do for me." Then, after a little pause, I added, as though it were merely an amusing afterthought: "I suppose I shall be stiff after my ride. I haven't been on a horse in nearly two months." "Then," said the sympathetic young lady, "you'll want an easy ride." "I suppose it _might_ be more sensible," I conceded. "Better give him the black mare," put in the Efficient Sister. "She hasn't been out lately," said the other. "You know how she acts when she hasn't been ridden enough. He might not know just how to take her. I was thinking of giving him 'Dr. Bell.'" "Dr. Bell's too gentle," said the Efficient Sister. "Which horse do you think you'd like?" the other asked me. "Dr. Bell has plenty of life, but he's gentle. The black mare's a little bit flighty at first, but if you can ride her she soon finds it out and settles down." I want to ask: "What happens if she finds out that you _can't_ ride her? What does she do then?" But I refrained. "She's never thrown anybody but a stable boy and a man who came up here to visit--and neither one of them could ride worth a cent," said the Efficient Sister. Meanwhile I had been thinking hard. "What color is Dr. Bell?" I asked. "He's a sorrel." "Then," I said, "I believe I'd rather ride Dr. Bell. I don't like black horses. It is simply one of those peculiar aversions one gets." They seemed to accept this statement, and so the matter was agreeably settled. When, at ten o'clock, I came down dressed for riding, my companion was out in front of the house, making a drawing; the four young ladies were with him, all seemingly enchanted with his work, and none of them in riding habits. "Who's going with me?" I asked as I strolled toward them. They looked at one another inquiringly. Then the Efficient Sister said: "I'd like to go, but this is pay day and I can't leave the place." "I have to go to town for some supplies," said the Domestic Sister. "I want to stay and watch this," said the Sociological and Artistic Sister. (She made a gesture toward my companion, but I think she referred to his drawing.) "I'm going away to a house party," said the Sprightly Sister who Likes to Dance. "I must pack." "You can't get lost," said the Domestic Sister. "Even if you should," put in the Efficient Sister, "Dr. Bell would bring you home." During this conversation my companion did not look up from his work, neither did he speak; yet upon his back there was an expression of derisive glee which made me hope, vindictively, that he would smudge his drawing. However inscrutable his face, I have never known a man with a back so expressive. "Here comes Dr. Bell," remarked the Sociological and Artistic Sister, as a negro groom appeared leading the sorrel steed. "Well," I said, trying to speak debonairely as I started toward the drive, "I'll be going." I wished to leave them where they were and go around to the other side of the house to mount. I had noticed a stone block there and meant to use it if no one but the groom were present; also I intended to tip the groom and ask him a few casual questions about the ways of Dr. Bell. I might have managed this but for a sudden manifestation of interest on the part of my companion. "Come on," he said to the young ladies, "let's go and see him off." It seemed to me that he emphasized the word "off" unpleasantly. However I tried to seem calm as we moved toward the drive. Dr. Bell had a bright brown eye; there was something alert in the gaze with which he watched us moving toward him. However, to my great relief he stood quite still while two of the sisters who preceded me by a few steps, went up and patted him. Evidently he liked to be patted. I decided that I would pat him also. I had approached him from the left and in order to mount I now found it necessary to circle around, in front of him. I was determined that if the horse would but remain stationary I should step up to him, speak to him, give him a quick pat on the neck, gather the reins in my hand, place my foot swiftly in the stirrup, take a good hop, and be on his back before any one had time to notice. Dr. Bell, however, caused me to alter these plans; for though he had stood docile as a dog while the sisters patted him, his manner underwent a change on sight of me. I do not think this change was caused by any personal dislike for me. I believe he would have done the same had any stranger appeared before him in riding boots. The trouble was, probably, that he had expected to be ridden by one of the young ladies, and was shocked by the abrupt discovery that a total stranger was to ride him. This is merely my surmise. I do not claim deep understanding of the mental workings of any horse, for there is no logic about them or their performances. They are like crafty lunatics, reasoning, if they reason at all, in a manner too treacherous and devious for human comprehension. Their very usefulness, the service they render man, is founded on their own folly; were it not for that, man could not even catch them, let alone force them to submit, like weak-minded giants, to his will. The fact is that, excepting barnyard fowls, the horse is the most idiotic of all animals, and, pound for pound, even the miserable hen is his intellectual superior. Indeed, if horses had brains no better than those of hens, but proportionately larger, they would not be drawing wagons, and carrying men upon their backs, but would be lecturing to women's clubs, and holding chairs in universities, and writing essays on the Development of the Short Story in America. Horse lovers, who are among the most prejudiced of all prejudiced people, and who regard horses with an amiable but fatuous admiration such as young parents have for their babies, will try to tell you that these great creatures which they love are not mentally deficient. Ask them why the horse, with his superior strength, submits to man, and they will tell you that the horse's eye magnifies, and that, to the horse, man consequently appears to be two or three times his actual size. Nonsense! There is but one reason for the yielding of the horse: he is an utter fool. Everything proves him a fool. He will charge into battle, he will walk cheerfully beside a precipice, he will break his back pulling a heavy wagon, or break his leg or his neck in jumping a hurdle; yet he will go into a frenzy of fright at the sight of a running child, a roadside rock, or the shadow of a branch across the path, and not even a German chancellor could shy as he will at a scrap of paper. As I passed in front of Dr. Bell he rolled his eyes at me horribly, and rose upon his hind legs, almost upsetting the groom as he went up and barely missing him with his fore feet as he brought them to earth again. "What's the matter with him?" I asked, stopping. "I guess he just feels good," said the Efficient Sister. "Yassuh, tha 's all," said the groom cheerfully. "_He's_ aw' right. Gentle ath a lamb." As he made this statement, I took another step in the direction of the horse, whereat he reared again. "_Well_, now!" said the groom, patting Dr. Bell upon the neck. "Feelin' pretty good 's mawnin', is you? There, there!" Dr. Bell, however, paid little attention to his attendant, but gazed steadily at me with an evil look. "Does he always do like that?" I asked the Domestic Sister. "I never saw him do it before," she said. "Maybe he doesn't admire the cut of your riding breeches," suggested my companion. "Oh, no, suh," protested the groom. "It 's jes' his li'l way tryin' t' tell you he likes de ladies t' ride him better 'n he likes de gemmen." "He means he doesn't want me to ride him?" "Yassuh, da 's jes' his li'l idee 't he 's got _now_. He be all right once you in de saddle." "But how am I to get in the saddle if he keeps doing that?" "I hold 'im all right," said the groom. "You jes' get on 'im, suh. He soon find out who 's boss." "I think he will," said my heartless companion. "Nevvah you feah, suh," the man said to me. "Ah knowed the minute Ah saw yo' laigs 't you was a _horse_man. Yassuh! Ah says t' ole Gawge, Ah says, 'Dat gemman's certain'y been 'n de cava'ry, he has, wid dem fine crooked laigs o' hisn.'" "You should have told that to Dr. Bell, instead," suggested my companion. At this every one laughed. Even the groom laughed a wheezy, cackling negro laugh. The situation was becoming unbearable. Clearly I must try to mount. Perhaps I should not succeed, but I must try. As I was endeavoring to adjust my mind to this unpleasant fact the Efficient Sister spoke. "That horse is going to be ridden," she said firmly, "if I have to go upstairs and dress and ride him myself." That settled it. "Now you hold him down," I said to the groom, and stepped forward. As I did so Dr. Bell reared again, simultaneously drawing back sidewise and turning his flank away from me, but this time the Efficient Sister hit him with a crop she had found somewhere, and he came down hastily, and began to dance a sort of double clog with all four feet. After several efforts I managed to get beside him. Gathering the reins in my left hand I put my foot up swiftly, found the stirrup, and with a hop, managed to board the beast. As I did so, the groom let him go. Both stirrups were short, but it was too late to discuss that, for by the time I was adjusted to my seat we had traveled, at a run, over a considerable part of the lawn and through most of the flowerbeds. The shortness of the stirrups made me bounce, and I had a feeling that I might do better to remove my feet from them entirely, but as I had never ridden without stirrups I hesitated to try it now. Therefore I merely dug my knees desperately into the saddle flaps and awaited what should come, while endeavoring to check the animal. He, however, kept his head down, which not only made it difficult to stop him, but also gave me an unpleasant sense as of riding on the cowcatcher of a locomotive with nothing but space in front of me. Once, with a jerk, I managed to get his head up, but when I did that he reared. I do not care for rearing. To add to my delight, one of the dogs now ran out and began to bark and circle around us, jumping up at the horse's nose and nipping at his heels. This brought on new activities, for now Dr. Bell not only reared but elevated himself suddenly behind, to kick at the dog. However, there was one good result. We stopped running and began to trot rapidly about in circles, dodging the dog, and this finally brought us back toward the house. "My stirrups are too short!" I shouted to the groom. "Ride oveh heah, suh," he called back. I tried to do it, but Dr. Bell continued to move in circles. At last, however, the man managed to catch us by advancing with his hand extended, as though offering a lump of sugar, at the same time talking gently to my steed. Then, while my companion held the bit the negro adjusted the stirrup leathers. I was glad of the breathing spell. I wished that it took longer to adjust stirrups. "You'd better go out by the drive this time," said the Efficient Sister. "I intended to before," I told her, "but he didn't seem to understand the signals." "You've got spurs on. Give him the spur." As a matter of fact, I had hesitated to give him the spur. It seemed to me that he was annoyed with me anyway, and that the spur would only serve to increase his prejudice. I wanted to rule him not by brute force but by kindness. I wished that I could somehow make him know that I was a regular subscriber to the S.P.C.A., that I loved children and animals and all helpless creatures, both great and small, that I used the dumb brutes gently and only asked in return that they do the same by me. But how is one to communicate such humanitarian ideas to a big, stupid, wilful, perverse, diabolical creature like a horse? I was determined that when we started again we should not run over the lawn if I could possibly prevent it. Therefore I had the groom head the horse down the drive, and the moment he released him, I touched Dr. Bell with the spurs. The result was magical. He started on a run but kept in the road where I wanted him to be, giving me, for the moment, a sense of having something almost like control over him. At the foot of the drive was a gate which I knew could be opened without dismounting, by pulling a rope, and as no horse, unless quite out of his mind, will deliberately run into a gate, I had reason to hope that Dr. Bell would stop when he got there. Imagine my feelings, then, when on sight of the gate he not only failed to slacken his pace, but actually dashed at it faster than ever. Within a few feet of the barrier he seemed to pause momentarily, hunching himself in a peculiar and alarming manner: then he arose, sailed through the air like a swallow, came down beyond like a load of trunks falling off from a truck, and galloped down the highway, seemingly quite indifferent to the fact that the stirrups were flapping at his sides and that I had moved from the saddle to a point near the base of his neck. My position at the moment was one of considerable insecurity. By holding on to his mane and wriggling backward I hoped to stay on, provided he did not put down his head. If he did that, I was lost. Fortunately for me, however, Dr. Bell did not realize with what ease he could have dropped me at that moment, and by dint of cautious but eager gymnastics, I managed to regain the saddle and the stirrups, although in doing so I pricked him several times with the spurs, with the result that, though he ran faster than ever for a time, he must have presently concluded that I didn't care how fast he went; at all events, he slackened his pace to a canter, from which, shortly, I managed to draw him down to a trot and then to a walk. I am glad to say that not until now had we met any vehicle. Even while he was running, even while I was engaged in maintaining a precarious seat upon his neck, I had found time to hope fervently that we should not encounter an automobile. I was afraid that he would jump it if we did. Now, however, I saw a motor approaching. Dr. Bell saw it, too, and pricked up his ears. Seizing the reins firmly in one hand, I waved with the other, signalling to the motorist to stop, which he did, pulling out into the ditch. Meanwhile I talked to Dr. Bell, patting him on the neck and telling him to go on and not to be afraid, because it was all right. Dr. Bell did go on. He went up to the front of the motor, past the side of it, and on behind it, without showing the least sign of alarm. He did not mind it at all. But the man in the motor minded. Annoyed with me for having stopped him unnecessarily, he shouted something after me. But I paid no attention to him. Under the circumstances, it seemed the only thing to do. I might have gotten off; I might conceivably have beaten him; but I never could have held the horse while doing it, or have gotten on again. Presently, when I was changing the position of the reins, which were hurting my fingers because I had gripped them so tight, I accidentally shifted the gears in some way, so to speak, sending Dr. Bell off at a pace which was neither a trot nor a canter, but which carried us along at a sort of smooth, rapid glide. At first I took this gait to be a swift trot, and attempted to post to it; then, as that did not work, I sat still in the saddle and, finding the posture comfortable, concluded that Dr. Bell must be single-footing. I had never single-footed before. Just as I was beginning to like it, however, he changed to a trot, then back to single-footing again, and so on, in a curious puzzling manner. Except for the changes of gait, we were now going on rather well, and I had begun, for the first time, to feel a little security, when all of a sudden he swerved off and galloped with me up a driveway leading toward a white house which stood on a hill two or three hundred yards from the road. Again I tried to stop him, but when I pulled on the reins he shook his head savagely from side to side and snorted in a loud and threatening manner. As we neared the house I saw that two ladies were sitting on the porch regarding our approach with interest. I hoped that Dr. Bell would find some way of keeping on past the house and into the fields, but he had no such intention. Instead of going by, he swung around the circle before the porch, and stopped at the steps, upon which the two ladies were sitting. One of them was a white-haired woman of gentle mien; the other was a girl of eighteen or twenty with pretty, mischievous eyes. Both the ladies looked up inquiringly as Dr. Bell and I stopped. I lifted my hat. It was the only thing I could think of to do at the moment. At this they both nodded gravely. Then we sat and stared at one another. "Well?" said the old lady, when the silence had become embarrassing. I felt that I must say something, so I remarked: "This is a very pretty place you have here." At this, though the statement was quite true, they looked perplexed. "Is there any message?" asked the young woman, after another pause. "Oh, no," I answered lightly. "I was riding by and thought I'd take the liberty of coming up and telling you--telling you that although I am a Northerner and a stranger here, I love the South, the quaint old Southern customs, the lovely old houses, the delicious waffles, the--" "That is very gratifying," said she "I am sorry to say we are all out of waffles at present." "Oh, I don't want any now," I replied politely. "Well, if you don't mind my asking, what _do_ you want?" "I want," I said, desperately, "to see your groom for a moment, if possible." "He's gone to town," she replied. "Is there anything I can do? I see that your stirrup leather is twisted." With that she arose, came down, removed my foot from the stirrup, in a businesslike manner, reversed the iron, and put my foot back for me. I thanked her. "Anything else?" she asked, her wicked eye twinkling. "Perhaps," I ventured, "perhaps you know how to make a horse single-foot?" "There are different ways," she said. "With Dr. Bell you might try using the curb gently, working it from side to side." "I will," I said. "Thank you very much." "And," said the girl, "if he ever takes a notion to bolt with you, or to go up to some house where you don't want him to go, just touch him with the curb. That will fix him. He's very soft-bitted." "But I tried that," I protested. She looked at my reins, then shook her head. "No," she said, "you've got your curb rein and your snaffle rein mixed." "I am very much indebted to you," I said, as I changed the position of the reins between my fingers. "Not at all," said she. "I hope you'll get safely back to the Claymont. If you want to jump him, give him his head. He'll take off all right." "Thanks," I returned. "I don't want to jump him." Then lifting my hat and thanking her again, I wiggled the curb gently from side to side, as directed, and departed, singlefooting comfortably. Dr. Bell and I got home very nicely. He wanted to jump the gate again, but I checked him with the curb. After pulling the rope to open the gate I must have got the reins mixed once more, for as I was nearing the house, calm in the feeling that I had mastered the animal, and intent upon cantering up to the porch in fine style, Dr. Bell swerved suddenly off to the stable, went into the door, and, before I could stop him, entered his stall. There I dismounted in absolute privacy. It was quite easy. I had only to climb on to the partition and drop down into the next stall, which, by good fortune, was vacant. With a single exception, this was the only riding I did in the South, and on the one other occasion of which I speak I did not ride alone, but had, surrounding me, the entire Eleventh United States Cavalry. CHAPTER XIII INTO THE OLD DOMINION When two men are traveling together on an equal footing, and it becomes necessary to decide between two rooms in a hotel, how is the decision to be made? Which man is to take the big, bright corner room, and which the little room that faces on the court and is fragrant of the bakery below? Or again, which man shall occupy the lower berth in a Pullman drawing-room, and which shall try to sleep upon the shelf-like couch? Or when there is but one lower left, which shall take the upper? If an extra kit bag be required for the use of both, who shall pay for it and own it at the journey's end? Who shall pay for this meal and who for that? Or yet again, if there be but one cheap heavy overcoat in a shop, and both desire to own that coat, which one shall have the right of purchase? Who shall tip the bell boy for bringing up the bags, or the porter for taking down the trunks? Who shall take home from a dance the girl both want to take, and who shall escort the unattractive one who resides in a remote suburb? Between two able-bodied men there is no uncomfortable complication of politeness in such matters. On a brief journey there might be, but on a long journey the thin veil of factitious courtesy is cast aside; each wants his fair share of what is best and makes no pretense to the contrary. Upon our first long journey together, some years ago, my companion and I established a custom of settling all such questions by matching coins, and we have maintained this habit ever since. Upon the whole it has worked well. We have matched for everything except railroad fares and hotel bills, and though fortune has sometimes favored one or the other for a time, I believe that, had we kept accounts, we should find ourselves to-day practically even. Our system of matching has some correlated customs. Now and then, for instance, when one of us is unlucky and has been "stuck" for a series of meals, the other, in partial reparation, will declare a "party." Birthdays and holidays also call for parties, and sometimes there will be a party for no particular reason other than that we feel like having one. Two of our parties on this journey have been given in the basement café of the Shoreham Hotel in Washington. Both were supper parties. The first I gave in honor of my companion, for the reason that we both like the Shoreham café, and that a party seemed to be about due. That party brought on the other, which occurred a few nights later and was given by us jointly in honor of a very beautiful and talented young actress. And this one, we agree, was, in a way, the most amusing of all the parties we have had together. It was early in the morning, when we were leaving the café after the first party, that we encountered the lady who caused the second one. I had never met her, but I was aware that my companion knew her, for he talked about her in his sleep. She was having supper with a gentleman at a table near the door, and had you seen her it would be unnecessary for me to tell you that my companion stopped to speak to her, and that I hung around until he introduced me. After we had stood beside her, for a time, talking and gazing down into her beautiful world-wise eyes, the gentleman with whom she was supping took pity upon us, and upon the waiters, whose passageway we blocked, and invited us to sit down. It was doubly delightful to meet her there in Washington, for besides being beautiful and celebrated, she had just come from New York and was able to give us news of mutual friends, bringing us up to date on suits for separation, alimony, and alienation of affections, on divorces and remarriages, and all the little items one loses track of when one has been away for a fortnight. "I shall be playing in Washington all this week," she said as we were about to leave. "I hope that we may see each other again." Whom did she mean by "we"? True, she looked at my companion as she spoke, but he was seated at one side of her and I at the other, and even with such eyes as hers, she could not have looked at both of us at once. Certainly the hope she had expressed was shared by me. _I_ hoped that "we" might meet again, and it seemed to me desirable at the moment that she should understand (and that my companion should be reminded) that he and I were as Damon and Pythias, as Castor and Pollux, as Pylades and Orestes, and all that sort of thing. Therefore I leaped quickly at the word "we," and, before my companion had time to answer, replied: "I hope so too." This brought her eyes to me. She looked surprised, I thought, but what of that? Don't women like to be surprised? Don't they like men to be strong, resolute, determined, like heroes in the moving pictures? Don't they like to see a man handle matters with dash? I was determined to be dashing. "We are off to Virginia to-morrow morning," I continued. "We are going to Fredericksburg and Charlottesville, and into the fox-hunting country. If we can get back here Saturday night let's have a party." I spoke of the hunting country debonairely. I did not care what she thought my companion was going to the hunting country for, but I did not wish her to think that I was going only to look on. On the contrary, I desired her to suppose that I should presently be wearing a pair of beautiful, slim-legged riding boots and a pink coat, and leaping a thoroughbred mount over fences and gates. I wished her to believe me a wild, reckless, devil of a fellow, and to worry throughout the week lest I be killed in a fall from my horse, and she never see me more--poor girl! That she felt such emotions I have since had reason to doubt. However, the idea of a party after the play on Saturday night seemed to appeal to her, and it was arranged that my companion and I should endeavor to get back to Washington after the Piedmont Hunt races, which we were to attend on Saturday afternoon, and that if we could get back we should telegraph to her. We kept our agreement--but I shall come to that later. * * * * * Next morning we took train for Fredericksburg. The city manager who runs the town is a good housekeeper; his streets are wide, pretty, and clean; and though there are many historic buildings--including the home of Washington's mother and the house in which Washington became a Mason--there are enough good new ones to give the place a progressive look. In the days of the State's magnificence Fredericksburg was the center for all this part of northeastern Virginia, and particularly for the Rappahannock Valley; and from pre-Revolutionary times, when tobacco was legal tender and ministers got roaring drunk, down to the Civil War, there came rolling into the town the coaches of the great plantation owners of the region, who used Fredericksburg as a headquarters for drinking, gambling, and business. Among these probably the most famous was "King" Carter, who not only owned miles upon miles of land and a thousand slaves, but was the husband of five (successive) Mrs. Carters. Falmouth, a river town a mile above Fredericksburg, where a few scattered houses stand to-day, was in early times a busy place. It is said that the first flour mill in America stood there, and that one Gordon, who made his money by shipping flour and tobacco direct from his wharf to England, and bringing back bricks as ballast for his ships, was the first American millionaire. Besides having known intimately such historic figures as Washington, Monroe, and Robert E. Lee, and having been the scene of sanguinary fighting in the Civil War, the neighborhood of Fredericksburg boasts the birth-place of a man of whom I wish to speak briefly here, for the reason that he was a great man, that he has been partially overlooked by history, and that it is said in the South that the fame which should justly be his has been deliberately withheld by historians and politicians for the sole reason that as a naval officer he espoused the southern cause in the Civil War. Every one who has heard of Robert Fulton, certainly every one who has heard of S.F.B. Morse or Cyrus W. Field, ought also to have heard of Matthew Fontaine Maury. But that is not the case. For myself, I must confess that, until I visited Virginia, I was ignorant of the fact that such a person had existed; nor have northern schoolboys, to whom I have spoken of Maury, so much as heard his name. Yet there is no one living in the United States, or in any civilized country, whose daily life is not affected through the scientific researches and attainments of this man. Maury's claim to fame rests on his eminent services to navigation and meteorology. If Humboldt's work, published in 1817, was the first great contribution to meteorological science, it remained for Maury to make that science exact. While it is perhaps an exaggeration to say that Maury alone laid the foundation for our present Weather Bureau, he certainly shares with Professors Redfield, Espy, Loomis, Joseph Henry, Dr. Increase Lapham, and others, the honor of having been one of the first to suggest the feasibility of our present systematic storm warnings. Maury was born in 1806. When nineteen years of age he secured a midshipman's warrant, and, as there was no naval academy at Annapolis then, was immediately assigned to a man-of-war. Within six years he was master of an American war vessel. Before starting on a voyage to the Pacific he sought information on the winds and currents, and finding that it was not available, determined himself to gather it for general publication. This he did, issuing a book upon the subject. When a broken leg, the result of a stage-coach accident, caused his retirement from active service at sea, he continued his studies, and, in recognition of his services to navigation, was given charge of the Depot of Charts and Instruments at Washington. There he found stored away the log books of American naval vessels, and from the vast number of observations they contained, began the compilation of the Wind and Currents Charts known to all mariners. A monograph on Maury, issued by N.W. Ayer & Son, of Philadelphia, says of these charts: "They were, at first, received with indifference and incredulity. Finally, a Captain Jackson determined to trust the new chart absolutely. As a result he made a round trip to Rio de Janeiro in the time often required for the outward passage alone. Later, four clipper ships started from New York for San Francisco, via Cape Horn. These vessels arrived at their destination in the order determined by the degree of fidelity with which they had followed the directions of Maury's charts. The arrival of these ships in San Francisco marked, likewise, the arrival of Maury's Wind and Currents Charts in the lasting favor of the mariners of the world. The average voyage to San Francisco was reduced, by use of the charts, from one hundred and eighty-three to one hundred and thirty-five days, a saving of forty-eight days. "Soon after this, the ship _San Francisco_, with hundreds of United States troops on board, foundered in an Atlantic hurricane. The rumor reached port that there was need of help. Maury was called upon to indicate her probable location. He set to work to show where the wind and currents would combine to place a helpless wreck, and marked the place with a blue pencil. There the relief was sent, and there the survivors of the wreck were found. From that day to this, Maury's word has been accepted without challenge by the matter-of-fact men of the sea. "These charts, only a few in number, are among the most wonderful and useful productions of the human mind. One of them combined the result of 1,159,353 separate observations on the force and direction of the wind, and upward of 100,000 observations on the height of the barometer, at sea. As the value of such observations was recognized, more of them were made. Through the genius and devotion of one man, Commander Maury, every ship became a floating observatory, keeping careful records of winds, currents, limits of fogs, icebergs, rain areas, temperature, soundings, etc., while every maritime nation of the world coöperated in a work that was to redound to the benefit of commerce and navigation, the increase of knowledge, the good of all. "In 1853, at the instance of Commander Maury, the United States called the celebrated Brussels Conference for the coöperation of nations in matters pertaining to maritime affairs. At this conference, Maury advocated the extension of the system of meteorological observation to the land, thus forming a weather bureau helpful to agriculture. This he urged in papers and addresses to the close of his life. Our present Weather Bureau and Signal Service are largely the outcome of his perception and advocacy." Maury's "Physical Geography of the Sea," the work by which he is best known, was published in 1855. He discovered, among other things, the causes of the Gulf Stream, and the existence of the still-water plateau of the North Atlantic which made possible the laying of the first cable. Cyrus W. Field said, with reference to Maury's work in this connection: "Maury furnished the brains, England gave the money, and I did the work." Maury was decorated by many foreign governments but not by his own. Owing, it is said, to his having taken up the Confederate cause, national honors were withheld from him, not only during the remainder of his life, but until 1916, when one of the large buildings at the Naval Academy--the establishment of which, by the way, Maury was one of the first to advocate--was named for him, and Congress passed a bill appropriating funds for the erection of a monument to the "Pathfinder of the Sea," in Washington. Maury died in 1873, one of the most loved and honored men in the State of Virginia. It is recorded that, near the end, he asked his son: "Am I dragging my anchors?" And when the latter replied in the affirmative, the father gave a brave sailor's answer: "All's well," he said. * * * * * Across the river from Fredericksburg stands Chatham, the old Fitzhugh house, one of the most charming of early Virginian mansions. Chatham was built in 1728, and it is thought that the plans for it were drawn by Sir Christopher Wren at the order of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, and sent by the latter to William Fitzhugh, who had been his classmate at Eton and Oxford. Not only does the name of the house lend color to the tale, but so do its proportions, which are very beautiful, reminding one somewhat of those of Doughoregan Manor. Chatham, however, has the advantage of being (as the Hon. Charles Augustus Murray wrote of it in his quaint "Travels in North America," published in 1839) "situated on an eminence commanding a view of the town, and of the bold, sweeping course of the Rappahannoc." Murray also tells of the beautiful garden, with its great box trees and its huge slave-built terraces, stepping down to the water like a giant's stairway. In this house my companion and I were guests, and as I won the toss for the choice of rooms, mine was the privilege of sleeping in the historic west bedchamber, the principal guest room, and of opening my eyes, in the morning, upon a lovely wall all paneled in white-painted wood. I shall always remember the delightful experience of awakening in that room, so vast, dignified, and beautiful, and of lying there a little drowsy, and thinking of those who had been there before me. This was the room occupied by George and Martha Washington when they stopped for a few days at Chatham on their wedding journey; this was the room occupied by Madison, by Monroe, by Washington Irving, and by Robert E. Lee when he visited Chatham and courted Mary Custis, who became his wife. And, most wonderful of all to me, this was the room occupied by Lincoln when he came to Fredericksburg to review the army, while Chatham was Union headquarters, and the embattled Lee had headquarters in the old house known as Brompton, still standing on Marye's Heights back of the river and the town. It is said that Lee during the siege of Fredericksburg never trained his guns on Chatham, because of his sentiment for the place. As I lay there in the morning I wondered if Lee had been aware, at the time, that Lincoln was under the roof of Chatham, and whether Lincoln knew, when he slept in "my" room, that Washington and Lee had both been there before him. War, I thought, not only makes strange bedfellows, but strange combinations in the histories of bedrooms. Then the maid rapped for the second time upon my door, and though this time I got up at once, my ruminations made me scandalously late for breakfast. After breakfast came the motor, which was to take us to the battlefields, its driver a thin dry-looking, dry-talking man, with the air of one a little tired of the story he told to tourists day in and day out, yet conscientiously resolved to go through with it. Before the huge cemetery which overlooks the site of the most violent fighting that occurred in the bloody and useless Battle of Fredericksburg, he paused briefly; then drove us to the field of Chancellorsville, to that of the Battles of the Wilderness, and finally to the region of Spottsylvania Courthouse; and at each important spot he stopped and told us what had happened there. He knew all about the Civil War, that man, and he had a way of passing out his information with a calm assumption that his hearers knew nothing about it whatever. This irritated my companion, who also knows all about the War, having once passed three days in the neighborhood of a Soldiers' Home. Consequently he kept cutting in, supplying additional details--such, for instance, as that Stonewall Jackson, who died in a house which the driver pointed out, was shot by some of his own men, who took him for a Yankee as he was returning from a reconnaissance. Either one of these competitive historians alone, I could have stood, but the way they picked each other up, fighting the old-time battles over again, got on my nerves. Besides, it was cold, and as I have taken occasion to remark before, I do not like cold motor rides. Indeed, as I think it over, it seems to me I do not like battlefields, either. At all events, I became more and more morose as we traversed that bleak Virginia landscape, and I am afraid that before the day was over I was downright sulky. As we drove back to Fredericksburg and to the train which was to take us to Charlottesville, my companion made remarks of a general character about people who were trivial minded, and who didn't take a proper interest in the scenes of great historical occurrences. When he had continued for some time in this vein, I remarked feebly that I loved to read about battles; but that, far from mitigating his severity, only caused him to change his theme. He said that physical laziness was a terrible thing because it not only made the body soft but by degrees softened the brain, as well. He said that when people didn't want to see battlefields, preferring to lie in bed and read about them, that was a sign of the beginning of the end. On various occasions throughout the week he brought this subject up again, and I was glad indeed when, as the time for our party with the beautiful young actress, in Washington, drew near, he began to forget about my shortcomings and think of more agreeable things. CHAPTER XIV CHARLOTTESVILLE AND MONTICELLO When Virginians speak of "the university," they do not mean Harvard, Princeton, Yale, or even Washington and Lee, but always the University of Virginia, which is at Charlottesville. The city of Charlottesville, in its downtown parts, is no more and no less dingy and dismal than many another town of six or seven thousand inhabitants, be it North or South. It has a long main street, lined with little shops and moving-picture shows, and the theatrical posters which thrill one at first sight with hopes of evening entertainment, prove, on inspection, to have survived long after the "show" they advertise has come and gone, or else to presage the "show" that is coming for one night, week after next. Nor is this scarcity of theatrical entertainment confined alone to small towns of the South. Not all important stars and important theatrical productions visit even the largest cities, for the South is not regarded by theatrical managers as particularly profitable territory. It would be interesting to know whether anćmia of the theater in the South, as well as the falling off generally of theatergoing in lesser American cities--usually attributed to the popularity and cheapness of the "movies"--is not due in large measure to the folly of managers themselves in sending out inferior companies. Any one who has seen a theatrical entertainment in New York and seen it later "on the road" is likely to be struck by the fact that even the larger American cities do not always get the full New York cast, while smaller cities seldom if ever get any part of it. The South suffers particularly in this respect. The little "river shows," which arrive now and then in river towns, and which are more or less characteristic of the South, have the excuse of real picturesqueness, however bad the entertainment given, for the players live and have their theater on flatboats, which tie up at the wharf. But the plain fact about the ordinary little southern "road show" is that it does not deserve to make money. The life of a poor player touring the South must be very wretched, for generally, excepting in large cities, hotels are poor. Before we had gone far upon our way, my companion and I learned to inquire carefully in advance as to the best hotels, and when we found in any small city one which was not a fire trap, and which was clean, we were surprised, while if the service was fairly good, and the meals were not very bad, we considered it a matter for rejoicing. We were advised to stop, in Charlottesville, at the New Gleason, and when we alighted at the dingy old brick railroad station--a station quite as unprepossessing as that at New Haven, Connecticut--we began to feel that all was not for the best. A large gray horse hitched to the hack in which we rode to the Gleason evidently felt the same, for at first he balked, and later tried to run away. The hotel lobby was a perfect example of its kind. There were several drummers writing at the little desks, and several more sitting idly in chairs adjacent to brass cuspidors. All of them looked despondent with a despondency suggesting pie for breakfast. Behind the desk was a sleepy-looking old clerk who, as we arrived, was very busy over a financial transaction involving change of ownership in a two-cent stamp. This enterprise concluded, he assigned us rooms. Never have I wished to win the toss for rooms as I wished it when I saw the two allotted to us, for though the larger one could not by a flight of fancy be termed cheerful, the sight of the lesser chamber filled me with thoughts of madness. Of course I lost. Never shall I forget that room. It was too small to accommodate my trunks with any comfort, so I left them downstairs with the porter, descending, now and then, to get such articles as I required. The furniture, what there was of it, was of yellow pine; the top of the dresser was scarred with the marks of many glasses and many bottles; the lace window curtains were long, hard and of a wiry stiffness, and the wall-paper was of a scrambled pattern all in bilious brown. During the evening I persuaded my companion to walk with me through the town, and once I got him out I kept him going on and on through shadowy streets unknown to us, until, exhausted, he insisted upon returning to our hostelry. I fancy that there are picturesque old houses on the outskirts of the town, but with that wall paper and a terrible nostalgia occupying my mind, I was in no state to judge of what was there. On reaching the hotel my companion went to bed, but I remained until late in the office, writing letters, doing anything rather than go up to my room. When at last I did ascend I planned to read, but the arrangement of the light was bad, so presently I put it out and lay there sleepless and miserable, thinking of foolish things that I have said and done during a life rich with such items, and having chills and fever over each separate recollection. How I drifted off to sleep at last I do not know; all I remember is waking up next morning, leaping out of bed and dressing in frantic haste to get out of my room. There was but one thing in it which did not utterly offend the eye: that was the steam pipe which ascended from floor to ceiling at one corner, and which, being a simple, honest metal tube, was not objectionable. As we passed through the office on our way to breakfast, the bus man entered, and in a loud, retarded chant proclaimed: "Train for the South!" The impressive tones in which this announcement was delivered seemed to call for a sudden stir, a rush for bags and coats, a general exodus, but no one in the office moved, and I remember feeling sorry for the bus man as he turned and went out in the midst of a crushing anti-climax. "I wonder," I said to my companion, "if anybody ever gets up and goes when that man calls out the trains." "I don't believe so," he replied. "I don't think he calls trains for any such purpose. He only warns people so they will expect to hear the train, and not be frightened when it goes through." * * * * * Thomas Jefferson is most widely remembered, I suppose, as the author of the Declaration of Independence, the third President, the purchaser of Louisiana, and the unfortunate individual upon whom the Democratic party casts the blame for its existence, precisely as the Republican party blames itself on Washington and Lincoln--although the lamentable state into which both parties have fallen is actually the fault of living men. It is significant, however, that of this trio of Jeffersonian items, Jefferson himself selected but one to be included in the inscription which he wrote for his tombstone--a modest obelisk on the grounds at Monticello. The inscription mentions but three of his achievements: the authorship of the Declaration, that of the Virginia statute for religious freedom, and the fact that he was "Father of the University of Virginia." Regardless of other accomplishments, the man who built the university and the house at Monticello was great. It is more true of these buildings than of any others I have seen that they are the autobiography, in brick and stone, of their architect. To see them, to see some of the exquisitely margined manuscript in Jefferson's clean handwriting, preserved in the university library, and to read the Declaration, is to gain a grasp of certain sides of Jefferson's nature which can be achieved in no other way. Monticello stands on a lofty hilltop, with vistas, between trees, of neighboring valleys, hills, and mountains. It is a supremely lovely house, unlike any other, and, while it is too much to say that one would recognize it as the house of the writer of the Declaration, it is not too much to say that, once one does know it, one can trace a clear affinity resulting from a common origin--an affinity much more apparent, by the way, than may be traced between the work of Michelangelo on St. Peter's at Rome, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and in his "David." The introductory paragraph to the Declaration ascends into the body of the document as gracefully and as certainly as the wide flights of easy steps ascend to the doors of Monticello; the long and beautifully balanced paragraph which follows, building word upon word and sentence upon sentence into a central statement, has a form as definite and graceful as that of the finely proportioned house; the numbered paragraphs which follow, setting forth separate details, are like rooms within the house, and--I have just come upon the coincidence with a pleasant start such as might be felt by the discoverer of some complex and important cipher--as there are twenty-seven of the numbered paragraphs in the Declaration, so there are twenty-seven rooms in Monticello. Last of all there are two little phrases in the Declaration (the phrases stating that we shall hold our British brethren in future as we hold the rest of mankind--"enemies in war; in peace, friends"), which I would liken to the small twin buildings, one of them Jefferson's office, the other that of the overseer, which stand on either side of the lawn at Monticello, at some distance from the house. These office buildings face, and balance upon each other, and upon the mansion, but they are so much smaller that to put them there required daring, while to make them "compose" (as painters say) with the great house, required the almost superhuman sense of symmetry which Jefferson assuredly possessed. The present owner of Monticello is Mr. Jefferson Monroe Levy, former United States congressman from New York. Mr. Levy is a Democrat and a bachelor, according to the Congressional Directory, which states further that he inherited Monticello from an uncle, Commodore Uriah P. Levy, U.S.N., and that the latter purchased the place in 1830 "at the suggestion of President Jackson." Dorothy Dix, writing in "Good Housekeeping," tells a tale which I have heard repeatedly of the acquisition of Monticello by Uriah Levy. Says Miss Dix: "Monticello was sold to a stranger, and Jefferson's only daughter, Mrs. Randolph, widowed and with eleven children, was left homeless.... A subscription of three thousand dollars was raised ... to buy back the house ... and this money was intrusted to a young relative of the Jeffersons' to convey to Charlottesville. Traveling in the stagecoach with the young man was Captain Uriah P. Levy, to whom he confided his mission. The young man became intoxicated and dallied, but Captain Levy hastened on to Charlottesville, and purchased Monticello for two thousand five hundred dollars. The next day the repentant and sober young man arrived and besought Captain Levy to take the three thousand dollars ... and let Monticello go back to the Jefferson family. Captain Levy refused to part with his bargain, but at his death he willed Monticello to 'the people of the United States to be held as a memorial of Thomas Jefferson'.... The Levy heirs contested the will, and it was finally decided upon a technicality that 'the people of the United States' was too indefinite a term to make the bequest binding, and the estate passed into the hands of the Levys, and so to its present owner...." In a biographical note upon the latter, the Congressional Directory states that the house is "kept open to the public all the year." My companion and I were admitted to the grounds, but were informed that, though the building was unoccupied, no one was permitted to enter. While we were in the vicinity of the house we were attended by one of the men employed on the place, who told us that when people were allowed to roam about at will, there had been much vandalism; ivy had been pulled from the walls, shrubbery broken, pieces of brick chipped out of the steps, and teeth knocked from the heads of the marble lions which flank them. Of recent years there has been on foot a movement, launched, I believe, by Mrs. Martin W. Littleton, of New York, to influence the Government to purchase Monticello from its present owner. It is difficult to see precisely how Mr. Levy could be forced to part with his property, if he did not wish to. Nevertheless public sentiment on this subject has become so strong that he has agreed to let the Government have Monticello "at a price"--so, at least, I was informed in Charlottesville. CHAPTER XV THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA The opening of the University of Virginia was an event of prime importance for the higher education in the whole country, and really marks a new era. --CHARLES FORSTER SMITH. Like Monticello, the buildings of the University of Virginia are those of an intellectual, a classicist, a purist, and, like it, they might have been austere but for the warmth of their red brick and the glow of their white-columned porticos. But they are cheerful buildings, which, individually and as a group, attain a geometrical yet soft perfection, a supreme harmony of form and color. The principal buildings are grouped about a large campus, called the Lawn, which is dominated by the rotunda, suggesting in its outlines the Pantheon at Rome. From the rotunda, at either side, starts a white-columned arcade connecting the various houses which are distributed at graceful intervals along the margins of the rectangular lawn, above which loom the tops of even rows of beautiful old trees. Flanking the buildings of the lawn, and reached by brick walks which pass between the famous serpentine walls (walls but one brick thick which support themselves on the snake-fence principle, by progressing in a series of reverse curves), are the "ranges": solid rows of one-story student dormitories built of brick and fronted by colonnades which command other lawns and other trees. With a single exception, restorations and additions to the university have been made with reverence and taste, and the Brooks Museum, the one architectural horror of the place, fortunately does not stand upon the lawn. Since it is said that beauty could not exist were there not ugliness for contrast, this building may have its uses; certainly, after a glance at it, one looks back with renewed delight at the structures of the central group. Most superb of all, always there hangs at night, above the buildings and the tree-tops, a glorious full moon. At least I suppose it always hangs there, for though it seemed to us very wonderful, every one else seemed used to it. Like Venice, the University of Virginia should first be seen by moonlight. There could not have been a finer moonlit night, I thought, than that cold, crisp one upon which my companion stood for two hours beside the rotunda, gazing at the lawn and drawing it, its frosty grass and trees decked with diamonds, its white columns standing out softly from their shadow backgrounds like phosphorescent ghosts in the luminous blue darkness. Until I was nearly frozen I stayed there with him. That drawing cost him one of the worst colds he ever had. The university ought to have, and has, many traditions, and life there ought to be, and is, different from life in any other college. Jefferson brought from Italy the men who carved the capitals of the columns (the descendants of some of these Italian workmen live in Charlottesville to-day), and when the columns were in place he brought from Europe the professors to form the faculty, creating what was practically a small English university in the United States. Never until, a dozen years ago, Dr. E.A. Alderman became president, had there been such an office; before that time the university had a rector, and the duties of president were performed by a chairman of the faculty, elected by the faculty from among its members. This was the first university to adopt the elective system, permitting the students, as Jefferson wrote, "uncontrolled choice in the lectures they shall attend," instead of prescribing one course of reading for all. No less important, the University of Virginia was the first college to introduce (1842) the honor system, and still has the most complete honor system to be found among American colleges. This system is an outgrowth of the Jeffersonian idea of student self-government; under it each student signs, with examination papers, a pledge that he has neither given nor received assistance. That is found sufficient; students are not watched, nor need they be. With time this system has been extended, so that it now covers not only examinations, but many departments of college life, eliminating professionalism in athletics and plagiarism in literary work, and resulting in a delightful mutual confidence between the student body and the faculty. Madison and Monroe were active members of the university's first board of visitors; the first college Y.M.C.A. was started there; and among many famous men who have attended the university may be mentioned Edgar Allan Poe, Thomas Nelson Page, and Thomas Woodrow Wilson, whose name appears thus upon the "University Magazine" for 1879-80, as one of its three editors. The ill-starred Poe attended the university for only one year, at the end of which time his adopted father, Mr. Allan, of Richmond, withdrew him because of debts he had contracted while acquiring his education in gambling and drinking champagne. Poe's former room, No. 13 West Range, is now the office of the magazine. The clean, lovely manuscript in Jefferson's handwriting, of the first Anglo-Saxon grammar written in the United States, is to be seen in the university library; Jefferson was Vice-President of the United States when he wrote it; he put Anglo-Saxon in the first curriculum of the university, and it has been taught there ever since. In a note which is a part of the manuscript, he advocates the study of Anglo-Saxon as an introduction to modern English on the ground that though about half the words in our present language are derived from Latin and Greek, these being the scholarly words, the other half, the words we use most often, are Anglo-Saxon. Before the war it was not uncommon for students at the university to have their negro body servants with them, and it has occasionally happened since that some young sprig of southern aristocracy has come to college thus attended. Perhaps the most striking and characteristic feature of student life to-day, from the point of view of the stray visitor, is the formal attitude of students toward one another. There is no easy-going casualness between them, no calling back and forth, no "hello," by way of greeting. They pass each other on the walks either without speaking (men have been punished at the university by being ignored by the entire student body), or if they do greet each other the customary salutation is "How are you, sir?" or "How are you, gentlemen?" First-year men are expected to wear hats, and not to speak to upper classmen until they have been spoken to; and, though there is no hazing at the university, woe betide them if they do not heed these rules. In the early days of the university there was an effort to exercise restraint over students, to make them account for their goings and comings, and to prevent their going to taverns or betting upon horse races. Also they were obliged to wear a uniform. The severity was so great that they appealed to Jefferson, who sided with them. He, however, died in the same year, and friction prevailed for perhaps a decade longer, with many student disorders, culminating in the shooting of a professor by a student. In 1840 the students were at last granted full freedom, and two years later the honor system was adopted. During the university's first years young men from the far South, where dueling was especially prevalent, did not come in large numbers to the University of Virginia, but went, as a rule, to the northern colleges, but about the middle of the century, as feeling between North and South over taxation, States' Rights and slavery became more acute, these men began to flock to the college at Charlottesville. Between 1850 and 1860 the university almost doubled in size, and at about the same time there developed a good deal of dueling between students. When the War ended many men who had gone into the Confederate army at sixteen or seventeen years of age came to Charlottesville to complete their education. The hard life of the army had made some of these into a wild lot, and there was a great deal of gambling and drinking during their time, and also after it, for several succeeding generations of students looked up to the ex-soldiers as heroes, and carried on the unfortunate traditions left by them at the university. In the nineties, however, a change came, and though there is still some drinking and gambling, it is doubtful whether such vices are now more prevalent at the University of Virginia than at many other colleges. The honor system has never been extended to cover these points. It is related that, in Poe's time, gambling became such a serious obstacle to discipline and work that the university authorities set the town marshal after a score or so of gambling students, Poe among them, whereupon these students fled to the Ragged Mountains, near by, and remained for two weeks, during which time Poe is said to have mightily entertained them with stories and prophecies, including a forecast of the Civil War, in which, he declared, two of the youths present would fight on opposite sides. The Poe tradition is kept vigorously alive at the university. Not long ago a member of the Raven Society, one of the rather too numerous student organizations, discovered the burial place of Poe's mother, who was an actress, and who died penniless in Richmond at the age of twenty-four and was buried with the destitute. By a happy inspiration a fund was raised among the students for the erection of a monument to her--an example of fine and chivalrous sentiment on the part of these young men, which, one feels, is somehow delicately intertwined with the traditions of the honor system. The Poe professor of English at the university, when we were there, was Dr. C. Alphonso Smith, who has since taken the professorship of English at the United States Naval Academy. By a coincidence which has proved a happy one for those who love the stories of the late Sidney Porter (O. Henry), Dr. Smith grew up as a boy with Porter, in Greensboro, North Carolina. Because of this, and also because of Dr. Smith's own gifts as a writer and an analyst, it is peculiarly fitting that he should have undertaken the work which has occupied him for several years past, the result of which has recently been given to us in the form "The O. Henry Biography." Dr. Smith was Roosevelt exchange professor at the University of Berlin in 1910-11, holding the chair of American History and Institutions. While occupying that professorship he met the Kaiser. "I talked with him twice," he said, "and upon the second occasion under very delightful circumstances, for I was invited to dinner at the Palace at Potsdam, and was the only guest, the Kaiser, Kaiserin, and Princess Victoria Luise being present. "The Kaiser is, of course, a very magnetic man. His eyes are his most remarkable feature. They are very large, brilliant, and sparkling, and he rolls them in a manner most unusual. While he is always the king and the soldier, he can be genial and charming. One might expect a man in his position to be blasé, but that, most of all, is what he is not. He is like a boy in his vitality and vividness, and he has a great and persistent intellectual curiosity. It is this, I think, which used to cause him to be compared with Colonel Roosevelt. Both would like to know all things, and both have had, and have exercised more, perhaps, than any other two living men, the power to bring to themselves the central figures in all manner of world events, and thus learn at first hand, from acknowledged authorities, about the subjects that interest them--which is to say, everything. "He frankly admired America. I don't mean that he said so for the sake of courtesy to me, but that he has--or did have, then--an immense and rather romantic interest in this country. A great many Germans used to resent this trait in him. America held in his mind the same romantic position that the idea of monarchy did in the minds of some of us. I mean that the average American went for romance to stories of monarchy, but that the Kaiser, being used to the monarchial idea, found his romance over here. (I am, of course, speaking of him as he was five or six years ago.) He wished to come to America, but was never able to do so, since German law forbids it. And, perhaps because he could not come, America was the more a sort of dream to him. "He asked me about some of the things in Berlin which I had noticed as being different from things at home, and when I mentioned the way that history was kept alive in the very streets of Berlin, his eyes danced, and he said that was one of the things he had tried to accomplish by the erection of the numerous monuments which have been placed in Berlin during his reign. He told me of other means by which history was kept alive in Germany: among them that every officer has to know in detail the history of his regiment, and that German regiments always celebrate the anniversaries of their great days. "He speaks English without an accent, though we might say that he spoke it with an English accent. He told me that he had learned English before he learned German, and had also caused his children to learn it first. He reads Mark Twain, or had read him, and he enjoyed him, but he said that when he met Mark Twain the latter had little or nothing to say, and that it was only with the greatest difficulty that he got him to talk at all. He subscribed, he told me, to 'Harper's Magazine,' and he was in the habit of reading short stories aloud to his family, in English. He admired the American short story, and I remember that he declared: 'The Americans know how to plunge into a short story. We Germans are too long-winded.'" When Professor Smith talks about the Kaiser, you say to yourself: "I know that it is growing late, but I cannot bear to leave until I have heard the rest of this"; when he drifts presently to O. Henry, you say the same; and so it is always, no matter what his subject. At last, however, the grandfather's clock in the hall below his study sends up a stern message which is not to be mistaken, whereupon you arise reluctantly from your comfortable chair, spill the cigar ashes out of your lap onto the rug, dust off your clothing, and take your leave. Nor is your regret at departing lessened by the fact that you must go to your bilious-colored bedroom in the New Gleason, and that you will not see the university, or Professor C. Alphonso Smith, or Mrs. Smith again, because you are leaving upon the morrow. So it must always be with the itinerant illustrator and writer. They are forever finding new and lovely scenes only to leave them; forever making new and charming friends only to part with them, faring forth again into the unknown. CHAPTER XVI FOX-HUNTING IN VIRGINIA Better to hunt in fields for health unbought Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught. The wise for cure on exercise depend; God never made his work for man to mend. --DRYDEN. It is my impression that the dining-car conductor on the Chesapeake & Ohio train by which we left Charlottesville was puzzled when I asked his name; but if he sees this and remembers the incident he will now know that I did so because I wished here to mention him as a humane citizen. His name is C.G. Mitchell, and he was so accommodating as to serve a light meal, after hours, when he did not have to, to two hungry men who needed it. If travel has taught my companion and me anything, it has taught us that not all dining-car conductors are like that. Nor, I judge, can all dining-car conductors play the violin, pleasantly, in off hours, as does Mr. Mitchell. Better one merciful dining-car conductor than twenty who wear white carnations at their left lapels, but wear no hearts below them! The road by which we drove from the railroad into the fastnesses of Loudon County, where, near the little settlement of Upperville, the race meet of the Piedmont Hunt was to be held, suggested other times and other manners, for though we rode in a motor car, and though we passed another now and then, machines were far outnumbered by the horses which, under saddle, or hitched to buggies, surreys, and carts of all descriptions, were heading toward the meeting place. On these roads, one felt, the motor was an outsider; this was the kingdom of the horse that we were visiting; soft dirt roads were there for him to trot and gallop on, and fences of wood or stone, free from barbed wire, were everywhere, for him to jump. Throughout the week we had looked forward to this day, and even more, perhaps, to the party which, if we could get back to Washington that night, was to follow it; wherefore the first thing we did on reaching a place where information was obtainable was to inquire about facilities for leaving. Herein my companion had the advantage of me, for there was nothing to prevent his departing immediately after the races, whereas I must remain behind for an hour or two, to learn something of fox-hunting as practised in this region. By motoring immediately after the races to a neighboring town--Bluemont if I remember rightly--and there taking an interurban trolley to some other place, and changing cars, and going without his dinner, my companion found that he could get to Washington by nine o'clock. My case was different. Should I be delayed more than two hours I could not get away at all that night, but must miss the much anticipated party altogether; and, though my companion seemed to view this possibility with perfect equanimity, my memories of the charming lady whom we were to meet at the stage door, after the performance, were too clear to permit of indifference in me. The trolley my companion meant to catch was, however, the last one; my only hope, therefore, was to motor a distance of perhaps a dozen miles, over roads which I was frankly told were "middling to bad," and try to catch a train at The Plains station. If I missed this train, I was lost, and must spend a solitary night in such a room as I might be able to find in a strange village. That possibility did not appeal to me. I began to wish that there was no such thing as fox-hunting, or that, there being such a thing, I had chosen to ignore it. "Now," said my companion cheerfully, "we'll telegraph her." At a telegraph office he seized the pencil and wrote the following message: _Will call for you to-night after performance._ To this he signed his own name. "What about me?" I suggested, after glancing over his shoulder at the message. "Oh, well," said he, "there's no use in going into all that in a telegram. It's sufficient to let her know that one of us is coming." "But I proposed this party." "Well," he gave in, with an air of pained patience, "what shall I say, then? Shall I add that you are unavoidably detained?" "Not by a jugful!" I returned. "Add that I hope to get there too, and will make every effort to do so." He wrote it out, sighing as he did so. Then, by careful cutting, he got it down to fourteen words. By that time the operator couldn't read it, so he wrote it out again--gloomily. This accomplished, we matched coins to see who should pay for the message. He lost. "All right!" he said. "I'll pay for it, but it's all foolishness to send such a long telegram." "No," I returned, as we left the office and got into the machine, "it is not foolishness. If I can make life a little brighter for a beautiful woman, by adding a few words to a telegram, and sticking you for it, I shall do it every time." He looked away over the fields and did not answer me. So we drove on in silence to where stands the beautiful manor house called Huntland, which is the residence of Mr. Joseph B. Thomas, M.F.H. of the Piedmont Hunt. There is, I have been told, no important hunt in the United States in which the master of foxhounds is not the chief financial supporter, the sport being a very costly one. Of American hunts, the Middlesex, in Massachusetts, of which Mr. A. Henry Higginson is M.F.H., has the reputation of being the best appointed. The Piedmont Hunt is, however, one of the half dozen leading organizations of the kind, and it is difficult indeed to imagine a finer. In a well-kept park near Mr. Thomas's house stand extensive English-looking buildings of brick and stucco, which, viewed from a distance, suggest a beautiful country house, and which, visited, teach one that certain favored hounds and horses in this world live much better than certain human beings. One building is given over to the kennels, the other the stables; each has a large sunlit court, and each is as beautiful and as clean as a fine house--a house full of trophies, hunting equipment, and the pleasant smell of well-cared-for saddlery. In a rolling meadow, not far distant, is the race course, all green turf, and here, soon after luncheon, gathered an extraordinary diversified crowd. For the most part the crowd was a fashionable one: men and women of the type whose photographs appear in "Vogue" and "Vanity Fair," and whose costumes were like fashion suggestions for "sport clothes" in those publications. One party was stationed on the top of an old-time mail coach, the boot of which bore the significant initials "F.F.V."--standing, as even benighted Northerners must be aware, for "First Families of Virginia"; others were in a line of motors and heterogeneous horse-drawn vehicles, parked beside the course; and scattered through the gathering, like brushmarks on an impressionist canvas, one saw the brilliant color of pink coats. Handsome hunters were being ridden or led about by negro grooms, and others kept arriving, ridden in by farmers and breeders, while here and there one saw a woman rider, her hair tightly drawn back under a mannish derby hat, her figure slender and graceful in a severely-cut habit coat. Jumbled together in a great green meadow under a sweet autumnal sun, these things made a picture of what, I am persuaded, is the ultimate in extravagant American country life. There was something, too, about this blending of fashionables and farmers, which made me think of the theater; for there is, in truth, a distinct note of histrionism about many of the rich Americans who "go in for" elaborate ruralness, and there is a touch of it very often, also, about "horsey" people. They like to "look the part," and they dress it with no less care than they exercise, at other seasons, in dressing the parts of opera-going cosmopolites, or wealthy loungers at the beaches. In other words, these fashionables had the overtrained New York look all over them, and the local rustics set them off as effectively as the villainous young squire of the Drury Lane melodrama is set off by contrast with honest old Jasper, the miller, who wears a smock, and comes to the Great House to beg the Young Master to "make an honest woman" of poor Rose, the fairest lass in all Hampshire. About the races themselves there was something fascinatingly nonprofessional. They bore the same relation to great races on great tracks that a very fine performance of a play by amateurs might bear to a professional performance. First came a two-mile steeplechase, with brush hurdles. Then, after a couple of minor events, a four-mile point-to-point race for hunters ridden by gentlemen in hunt uniform. This was as stiff a race for both horses and riders as I have ever seen, and it was very picturesque to watch the pink coats careering up hill and down dale, now over a tall stone wall, now over a brook or a snake fence; and when a rider went head over heels, and lay still upon the ground where he fell, while his horse cantered along after the field, in that aimless and pathetic way that riderless horses have, one had a real sensation--which was the pleasanter for knowing, a few minutes later, that the horseman had only broken an arm. Next was run a rollicking race for horses owned by farmers, and others, whose land is hunted over by the Piedmont and Middleburg foxhounds; and last occurred a great comedy event--a mule race, free for all, in which one of the hunting men, in uniform, made such a handsome showing against a rabble of white and colored boys, all of them yelling, all of them beating their long-eared animals with sticks, that he would have won, had he not deliberately pulled his mount and "thrown" the race. The last event was not yet finished when my companion, who had become nervous about his interurban trolley, got into a machine to drive to Bluemont. "Of course," he said as we parted, "we'll miss you to-night." "Oh," I said, "I hope not. I expect to get there." "I don't see how you can make it," said he. "You have a lot of material to gather." "I shall work fast." "Well," said he, trying to speak like the voice of Conscience, "I hope you won't forget your _duty_--that's all." "I proposed this party to-night. It is my duty to be there." "You didn't make any definite engagement," said he, "and, besides, your first duty is to your editors and your readers." Having tossed me this disgusting thought, he departed in a cloud of dust, leaving me sad and alone, but not yet altogether in despair. The last race over, I hastened to Mr. Thomas's house, which, by this time, looked like an old English hunting print come to life, for it was now crowded with pink coats. For most of the technical information contained in this chapter I am indebted to various gentlemen whom I encountered there. In Virginia--which is the oldest fox-hunting State in the Union, the sport having been practised there for nearly two centuries--the words "hunt" or "hunting" never by any chance apply to shooting, but always refer to hunting the fox with horse and hounds. A "hunter" is not a man but a horse; a huntsman is not a member of the hunt but a hunt-servant; the "field" may be the terrain ridden over by the hunt, or it may be the group of riders following the hounds--"hunt followers," "hunting men," and "hunting women." The following items, from "Baily's Hunting Directory," a British annual, give some idea of certain primary formalities and practicalities of hunting: HINTS TO BEGINNERS Buy the best horses you can afford; but remember that a workably sound horse, though blemished or a bit gone in the wind, will give you plenty of fun, if you do not knock him about. Obey the Master's orders without argument; in the field he is supreme. Hold up your hat if you view the fox away; do not halloa. If none of the hunt servants see your uplifted hat, go and tell the nearest of them. Ride fast at water; if hounds clear a brook a horse has a good chance of doing so. Steady your horse and let him take his own pace at big timber. Keep well away from hounds, and down wind of them at a check. The steam from heated horses adds a fresh difficulty to recovery of lost scent. Look out for signs that may indicate the whereabouts or passing of the fox. Huddling sheep, staring cattle, chattering magpies, circling rooks, may mean that they see, or have just seen, the fox. Never lark over fences; it tires your horse needlessly and may cause damage and annoy the farmer. Never take a short cut through a covert that is likely to be drawn during the day; and keep well away from a covert that hounds are drawing if you start for home before the day's sport is over, lest you head the fox. Always await your turn at a gate or gap; do not try and push forward in a crowd. If you follow a pilot, do not "ride in his pocket"; give him plenty of room, say fifteen lengths, at fences, or if he falls you might jump on him. If your horse kicks, tie a knot of red ribbon in his tail. N.B.--Do not be guilty of using this "rogue's badge" for the sake of getting room in a crowd, as some men have been known to do. If a man is down and in danger of being kicked, put your own saddle over his head. HINTS CONCERNING THE HUNTER It should be remembered that in the ordinary routine the horse is fed three or four times a day. On a hunting day he gets one good feed early in the morning and loses one or two feeds. Moreover, he is doing hard work for hours together, with a weight on his back. Carry a couple of forage biscuits in your pocket to give him during the day. Also get off and relieve him of your weight when you can do so. When he is brought home, put him in his stall or box, slack the girths, take off the bridle and give him his gruel at once. Throw a rug over his loins and pull his ears for a minute or two. An old horse needs more clothing than a young one. Condition is a matter of seasons, not of months; a horse in hard condition can take without injury a fall that would disable a soft one for weeks. In old times many of Virginia's country gentlemen kept their own packs, but though some followed the hounds according to the English tradition, there developed a less sportsmanlike style of hunting called "hilltopping," under which the hunting men rode to an elevated point and watched the hounds run the fox, without themselves attempting to follow across country and be in at the kill. As a result, the fox was, if caught, torn to pieces by the hounds, and the brush and head were infrequently saved. Under the traditions of English fox-hunting--traditions the strictness of which can hardly be exaggerated--"hilltopping" is a more than doubtful sport, and, since organized fox-hunting in the United States is taken entirely from the English idea, the practice is tabooed on first-class hunting regions. The origin of hilltopping is, however, easily understood. The old fox-hunters simply did not, as a rule, have horses adequate to negotiate the country, hunters not having been developed to any great extent in America in early times. The perfect type of hunter is of thoroughbred stock. By the term "thoroughbred" horsemen do not mean highly bred horses of any kind, as is sometimes supposed, but only running horses. All such horses come originally of British stock, for it is in Great Britain that the breed has been developed, although it traces back, through a number of centuries, to a foundation of Arabian blood. I am informed that climatic and other conditions in a certain part of Ireland are for some reason peculiarly favorable to the development of hunters and that these conditions are duplicated in the Piedmont section of Virginia, and nowhere else in the whole world. Only the stanchest, bravest, fastest type of horse is suited for hunting in Virginia, and for this reason the more experienced riders to hounds prefer the thoroughbred, though half-bred and three-quarter-bred horses are also used to some extent, the thoroughbred often being too mettlesome, when he becomes excited, for any but the best riders. The finest qualities of a horse are brought out in hunting in the Piedmont section, for the pace here is very fast--much faster than in England, though it should be added that in the English hunting country there are more hedges than over here, and that the jumps are, upon the whole, stiffer. The speed of the Piedmont Hunt and other hunts in Virginia is doubtless due to the use of southern hounds, these being American hounds, smaller and faster than English hounds, from which, however, they were originally bred. The desirable qualities in a pack of hounds are uniformity of type, substance, speed, and color. These points have to do not only with the style of a pack, but also with its hunting quality. Thus in the Piedmont pack they breed for a red hound with white markings, so that the pack may have an individual appearance, but in all packs a great effort is made to secure even speed, for a slow hound lags, while a fast one becomes an individual hunter. The unusual hound is therefore likely to be "drafted" from the pack. There has been a long controversy as to whether the English or American type of hound is best suited for hunting in this country, and the matter seems still to remain one of opinion. Probably the best English pack in the United States is that of Mr. A. Henry Higginson. Some years since, Mr. Higginson and Mr. Harry Worcester Smith, of Worcester, Massachusetts, master of the Grafton pack, made a bet of $5000 a side, each backing his own hounds, the question being that of the general suitability of the American versus the English hound for American country. The trials were made in the Piedmont region of Virginia, and Mr. Smith's American hounds won the wager for him. In the last ten or twenty years hunting in the United States has been organized under the Hunts Committee of the National Steeplechase Association. Practically all the important hunting organizations are members of this association, there being forty of these: eleven in Virginia, nine in Pennsylvania, six in New York, four in Massachusetts, three each in Maryland and New Jersey, and one each in Connecticut, Vermont, Ohio, and Michigan--the Grosse Pointe Hounds, near Detroit, being the most westerly of recognized hunts, although there is some unrecognized hunting near Chicago. An idea of the comparative importance of hunting in the United States and in England may be gathered from the fact that in England and Wales alone there are more than 180 packs of foxhounds, 88 packs of beagles, and 16 packs of staghounds, while Ireland and Scotland have many also. The war, however, has struck hard at hunting in the British Isles. Baily's Hunting Directory for 1915-16, says: "Hunting has given her best, for of those who have gone from the hunting field to join the colors, the masters lead, as they have led in more happy days, with a tale of over 80 per cent. of their number, the hunt secretaries following with over 50 per cent., while the hunt servants show over 30 per cent. No exact data are available to tell of the multitude from the rank and file that has followed this magnificent lead, excepting that from all the hunts there comes the same report, that practically every man fit for service has responded to the call." It is estimated that 17,000 horses were drafted from hunting for the cavalry in England at the beginning of the war; and it is to be noticed that so soon after the outbreak as July, 1915, the "Directory" published a list of names of well-known hunting men killed in action, which occupied more than seven large pages printed in small type. Under the heading "Incidents of the 1914-15 Season" are to be found many items of curious early war-time interest, a few of which I quote: Lady Stalbridge announces willingness to act as field master of the South and West Wilts Hounds during her husband's absence in France. Lieutenant Charles Romer Williams took out to the front a pack of beagles, with which the officers of the Second Cavalry Brigade hoped to hunt Belgian hares. Capt. E.K. Bradbury, a member of the Cahir Harriers, earned the V.C. at Nery, but died from wounds. The Grafton Hounds have seventy-six followers with the colors. Admiral Sir David Beatty, of North Sea fame, has a hunting box at Brooksby Hall, in the Melton Mowbray country. Five members of the Crawley and Horsham Hounds have been killed, three wounded, and two are missing. Quorn fields down to about 30, instead of 300 last season. Captain the Honorable R.B.F. Robertson (Twenty-first Lancers) a prisoner of war. He took over the North Tipperary Hounds in May, and, of course, did not get a chance to have any sport. We now learn that the French authorities have discouraged fox-hunting behind the fighting lines. So did the Germans. One day British hounds took up the scent on their own initiative. The usual followers had bigger game afoot, and were in the thick of an engagement. The Germans gained ground and occupied the kennels. When the hounds returned from their chase and challenged the intruders they were shot down one by one. Such is the lore I had acquired when the motor came for me; whereupon, taking a few sandwiches to sustain me until supper time, I set forth through the night by Ford, for the station at The Plains. * * * * * The publication of the larger part of the foregoing chapter on fox hunting, in "Collier's Weekly," brought me a number of letters containing hunting anecdotes. Mr. J.R. Smith of Martinsville, Virginia, calls my attention to marked difference in character between the red fox and the gray. The red fox, he says, depends upon his legs to elude the hounds, and will sometimes lead the hunt twenty-five miles from the place where he gets up, but the gray fox depends on cunning, and is more prone to run a few miles and "tack." Mr. Smith tells the following story illustrative of the gray fox's amazing artfulness: "We had started a fox on three different occasions," he writes, "running him a warm chase for about four miles and losing him every time in a sheep pasture. Finally we stationed a servant in that pasture to see what became of the fox. We started him again and he took the same route to the pasture. There the mystery was solved. The fox jumped on the back of a large ram, which, in fright, ran off about half a mile. The fox then jumped off and continued his run. When the hounds came up we urged them on to the point where the fox dismounted, and soon had his brush." * * * * * Another correspondent calls my attention to the fact that, in Virginia, hunting is not merely the sport of the rich, but that the farmers are enthusiastic members of the field--sometimes at the expense of their cattle and crops. He relates the following story illustrative of the point of view of the sporting Virginia farmer: "A man from the Department of Agriculture came down into our section to look over farms and give advice to farmers. He went to see one farmer in my county and found that he had absolutely nothing growing, and that his livestock consisted of three hunters and thirty-two couples of hounds. The agricultural expert was scandalized. He told the farmer he ought to begin at once to raise hogs. 'You can feed them what you feed the dogs,' he said, 'and have good meat for your family aside from what you sell.' "After hearing his visitor out, the farmer looked off across the country and spat ruminatively. "'I ain't never seen no hawg that could catch a fox,' he said, and with that turned and went into the barn, evidently regarding the matter as closed. Clearly he did not share the view of the Irishman who dismissed fox hunting with the remark that a fox was 'damned hard to catch and no good when you got him.'" CHAPTER XVII "A CERTAIN PARTY" Kind are her answers, But her performance keeps no day; Breaks time, as dancers From their own music when they stray. Lost is our freedom When we submit to women so: Why do we need 'em When, in their best, they work our woe? --THOMAS CAMPION. The motor ride to The Plains was a cold and rough one. I remember that we had to ford a stream or two, and that once, where the mud had been churned up and made deep by the wheels of many vehicles, we almost stuck. Excepting at the fords, the road was dusty, and the dust was kept in circulation by the feet of countless saddle horses, on which men from the country to the south of Upperville were riding home from the races. All the way to The Plains our lights kept picking up these riders, sometimes alone, sometimes in groups, all of them going our way, we taking their dust until we overhauled them, then giving them ours. Dust was over me like a close-fitting gray veil when I reached the railroad station only to find that the train was late. I had a magazine in my bag, but the light in the waiting-room was poor, so I took a place near the stove and gave myself up to anticipations of a bath, a comfortable room, clean clothing, and a good supper with my companion--and another companion much more beautiful. I tried to picture her as she would look. She would be in evening dress, of course. After thinking over different colors, and trying them upon her in my mind, I decided that her gown should be of a delicate pink, and should be made of some frail, beautiful material which would float about her like gossamer when she moved, and shimmer like the light of dawn upon the dew. You know the sort of gown I mean: one of those gowns upon which a man is afraid to lay his finger-tips lest the material melt away beneath them; a gown which, he feels, was never touched by seamstress of the human species, but was made by fairies out of woven moonlight, star dust, afterglow, and the fragrance of flowers. Such a gown upon a lovely woman is man's proof that woman is indeed the thing which so often he believes her--that she is more goddess than earthly being; for man knows well that he himself is earthly, and that a costume made from such dream stuffs and placed on him, would not last out the hour. He has but to look up at the stars to realize the infinity of space, and, similarly, but to look at her in her evening gown to realize the divinity of woman. And that is where she has him. For it isn't so! At last came the train--just the dingy train to stop at such a station. I boarded it, found a seat, and continued to dream dreams as we rattled on toward Washington. Even when I found myself walking through that great terminal by which all railroads enter the capital, I hardly believed that I was there, nor did I feel entirely myself until I had reached my room in the New Willard. Having started my bath, I went and knocked upon the door of the near-by room where the clerk had told me I should find my fellow traveler. "Oh," he said, without enthusiasm as he discovered me. "You're here, are you?" He looked imposing and severe in his evening dress. I felt correspondingly dirty and humble. "Yes," I replied meekly. "Any news?" "None," he replied. "I've reserved a table at Harvey's. They dance there. At first they said there was not a table to be had--Saturday night, you know--but I told them who was to be with us, and they changed their minds." "Good. I'll be dressed in a little while. Silk hats?" He nodded. I returned to my own room. Less than an hour later, my toilet completed, I rejoined him, and together we descended, in full regalia, to the lobby. "Shall we take a taxi?" he suggested, as we passed out of the side entrance. "How far away is the theater?" "I don't know." We asked the carriage starter. He said it was only two or three blocks. "Let's walk," I said. "I don't feel like walking," he returned. We rode. The theater was just emptying when we arrived. "I suppose we'd better let the cab go?" I said. "There'll be quite a while to wait while she's changing." "Better keep it," he disagreed. "Might not find another." We kept it. At the stage door there was confusion. Having completed its week in Washington, the play was about to move elsewhere, and furniture was already coming out into the narrow passage, and being piled up to be taken on wagons to the train. It took us some time to find the doorman, and it took the doorman--as it always does take doormen--a long, long time to depart into the unknown region of dressing rooms, with the cards we gave him, and a still longer time to return. "Says to wait," he grunted when he came back. Meanwhile more and more furniture had come out, menacing our shins and our beautifully polished hats in passing, and leaving us less room in which to stand. We waited. After ten minutes had passed, I remarked: "I wish we had let the taxi go." After twenty minutes I remarked: "I always feel like an idiot when I have to wait at a stage door." "I don't see why you do it, then," said he. "And I hate it worse when I'm in evening dress. I hate the way the actors look at us, when they come out. They think we're a couple of Johnnies." "And supposing they do?" I do not know how long this unsatisfactory dialogue might have continued had not some one come to the inside of the stage door and spoken to the doorman, whereat he indicated us with a gesture and said: "There they are." At this a woman emerged. The light was dim, but I saw that she wore no hat and had on an apron. As she came toward us we advanced. "You wait for madame?" she asked, with the accent of a Frenchwoman. "Yes." "Madame receive your telegram only this afternoon," she said. "All week, she say, she wait to hear. This morning she have receive a telegram from Mr. Woods that say she mus' come to New York. She think you not coming, so she say 'Yes.' Then she receive your message. She don't know where to reach you. She can do nossing. She is desolated! She mus' fly to the train. She is ver' sorry. She hope that maybe the gentlemans will be in Baltimore nex' week? Yes?" "You mean she can't come to-night?" "Yes, monsieur. She cannot. She are fill with regret. She--" "Perhaps," said my companion, recovering, "we can drive her to the train?" The maid, however, did not seem to wish to discuss this point. She shook her head and said: "Madame ver' sorry she cannot come." "But I say," repeated my companion, "that we shall be delighted to drive her to the train if she wishes." "She ver' sorry," persisted the maid negatively. "Oh, I see," he said. "Very well. Please say to her that we are sorry, too." "Yes, monsieur." The maid retired. "I want something to eat," I remarked as we passed down the long furniture-piled passage leading to the street. "So do I. We have that table at Harvey's." "I know; but--" "That's a fact," he put in. "I mentioned her name. We can't very well go there without her." "And all dressed up like a pair of goats." "No." "There's always the hotel." "I don't want to go back there--not now." "Neither do I. Let's make it the Shoreham," I suggested as we emerged upon the street. "All right." Then, looking across the sidewalk, he added: "There's that damned taxi!" "Yes. We'll drive around there in it." "No," said he, "send it away. I don't feel like riding." We walked to the Shoreham. The café looked cheerful, as it always does. We ordered an extensive supper. It was good. There were pretty women in the room, but we looked at them with the austere eyes of disillusioned men, and talked cynically of life. I cannot recall any of the things we said, though I remember thinking at the time that both of us were being rather brilliant, in an icy way. I suppose it was mainly about women. That was to be expected. Women, indeed! What were women to us? Nothing! And pretty women, least of all. Ah, pretty women! Pretty women!... Yes, yes! I had ordered fruit to finish off the meal, and I remember that as the dish was set upon the table, it occurred to me that we had made a very pleasant party of it after all. "Do you know," I said, as I helped myself to some hothouse grapes, "I've had a bully evening. It has been fine to sit here and have a party all to ourselves. I'm not so sorry that she did not come!" Then I ate a grape or two. They were very handsome grapes, but they were sour. CHAPTER XVIII THE LEGACY OF HATE ... Immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield. --PARADISE LOST. The last time I went abroad, a Briton on the boat told me a story about an American tourist who asked an old English gardener how they made such splendid lawns over there. "First we cut the grass," said the gardener, "and then we roll it. Then we cut it, and then we roll it." "That's just what we do," said the American. "Ah," returned the gardener, "but over here we've been doing it five hundred years!" In Liverpool another Englishman told me the same story. Three or four others told it to me in London. In Kent I heard it twice, and in Sussex five or six times. After going to Oxford and the Thames I lost count. In the South my companion and I had a similar experience with the story about that daughter of the Confederacy who declared she had always thought "damn Yankee" one word. In Maryland that story amused us, in Virginia it seemed to lose a little of its edge, and we are proud to this day because, in the far southern States, we managed to grin and bear it. Doubtless the young lady likewise thought that "you-all" was one word. However I refrained from suggesting that, lest it be taken for an attempt at retaliation. And really there was no occasion to retaliate, for the story was always told with good-humored appreciation not only of the dig at "Yankees"--collectively all Northerners are "Yankees" in the South--but also of the sweet absurdity of the "unreconstructed" point of view. Speaking broadly of the South, I believe that there survives little real bitterness over the Civil War and the destructive and grotesquely named period of "reconstruction." When a southern belle of to-day damns Yankees, she means by it, I judge, about as much, and about as little, as she does by the kisses she gives young men who bear to her the felicitous southern relationship of "kissing cousins." Even from old Confederate soldiers I heard no expressions of violent feeling. They spoke gently, handsomely and often humorously of the war, but never harshly. Real hate, I think, remains chiefly in one quarter: in the hearts of some old ladies, the wives and widows of Confederate soldiers--for there are but few mothers of the soldiers left. The wonder is that more of the old ladies of the South have not held to their resentment, for, as I have heard many a soldier say, women are the greatest sufferers from war. One veteran said to me: "My arm was shattered and had to be amputated at the shoulder. There was no anesthetic. Of course I suffered, but I never suffered as my mother did when she learned what I had endured." Be they haters of the North or not, the old ladies of the South are among its chief glories, and it should be added that another of those glories is the appreciation that the South has for the white-haired heroines who are its mothers, grandmothers, and great grandmothers, and the unfailing natural homage that it pays them. I do not mean by this merely that children and grandchildren have been taught to treat their elders with respect. I do not mean merely that they love them. The thing of which I speak is beyond family feeling, beyond the respect of youth for age. It is a strong, superb sentiment, something as great as it is subtle, which floods the South, causing it to love and reverence its old ladies collectively, and with a kind of national spirit, like the love and reverence of a proud people for its flag. Among young men, I met many who told me, with suitable pride, of the parts played by their fathers and uncles in the war. Of these only one spoke with heat. He was a Georgian, and when I mentioned to him that, in all my inquiries, I had heard of no cases of atrocious attacks upon women by soldiers--such attacks as we heard of at the time of the German invasion of Belgium and France--he replied with a great show of feeling that I had been misinformed, and that many women had been outraged by northern soldiers in the course of Sherman's march to the sea. At this my heart sank, for I had treasured the belief that, despite the roughness of war, unprotected women had generally been safe from the soldiers of North and South alike. What was my relief, then, on later receiving from this same young man a letter in which he declared that he had been mistaken, and that after many inquiries in Georgia he had been unable to learn of a single case of such crime. If it is indeed true that such things did not occur in the Civil War--and I believe confidently that it is true--then we have occasion, in the light of the European War, to revise the popular belief that of all wars civil war is the most horrible. The attitude of the modern South (the "New South" which, by the way, one Southerner described to me as meaning "northern capital and smoke") toward its own "unreconstructed" citizens, for all its sympathy and tenderness, is not without a glint of gentle humor. More than once, when my companion and I were received in southern homes with a cordiality that precluded any thought of sectional feeling, we were nevertheless warned by members of the younger generation--and their eyes would twinkle as they said it--to "look out for mother; she's unreconstructed." And you may be sure that when we were so warned we did "look out." It was well to do so! For though the mother might be a frail old lady, past seventy, with the face of an angel and the normal demeanor of a saint, we could see her bridle, as we were presented to her, over the thought there here were two Yankees in her home--Yankees!--we could see the light come flashing up into her eyes as they encountered ours, and could feel beneath the veil of her austere civility the dagger points of an eternal enmity. By dint of self-control on her part, and the utmost effort upon ours to be tactful, the presentation ceremony was got over with, and after some formal speeches, resembling those which, one fancies, may be exchanged by opposing generals under a flag of truce, we would be rescued from her, removed from the room, before her forbearance should be strained, by our presence, to the point of breaking. A baleful look would follow us as we withdrew, and we would retire with a better understanding of the flaming spirit which, through that long, bloody conflict against overwhelming odds in wealth, supplies, and men, sustained the South, and which at last enabled it to accept defeat as nobly as it had accepted earlier victories.... How one loves a gentle old lady who can hate like that! In this chapter, when it appeared originally, in "Collier's Weekly," I made the statement that I had seldom spent an hour in conversation with a Southerner without hearing some mention of the Civil War, and that I had heard other Northerners remark upon this matter, and express surprise at the tenacity with which the war holds its place in the foreground of the southern mind. This, like many another of my southern observations, brought me letters from readers of "Collier's," residing in the South. A great number of the letters thus elicited, as well as comments made upon these chapters by the southern press, have been of no small interest to me. On at least one subject (the question discussed in the next chapter, as to whether the expression "you-all" is ever used in the singular) my correspondents have convinced me that my earlier statement was an error, while on other subjects they have modified my views, and on still others made my convictions more profound. Where it has been possible, and where it has seemed, for one reason or another, to be worth while, I have endeavored, while revising the story of my southern wanderings for this book, to make note of the other fellow's point of view, especially in cases where he disagrees with me. The following, then, is from a letter written on the stationery of Washington and Lee University, and applies to certain statements contained in this chapter: In 1813, Thomas Jefferson wrote to a newspaper publisher: "Were I the publisher of a paper, instead of the usual division into Foreign, Domestic, etc., I think I should distribute everything under the following heads: 1. True. 2. Probable. 3. Wanting confirmation. 4. Lies, and be careful in subsequent papers to correct all errors in preceding ones." Allow me to suggest that your story might, under Mr. Jefferson's category, be placed under "2." Perhaps you went to see "The Birth of a Nation" before you wrote it. It has been my experience that my acquaintances among the F.F.V.'s have been far more interested in whether Boston or Brooklyn would win the pennant than in discussing the Civil War. By the young men of the South the War was forgotten long ago. This letter has caused me to wonder whether the frequency with which my companion and I heard the Civil War discussed, may not, perhaps, have been due, at least in part, to our own inquiries, resulting from the consuming interest that we had in hearing of the War from those who lived where it was fought. Yet, after all, it seems to me most natural that the South should remember, while the North forgets. Not all Northerners were in the war. But all Southerners were; if a boy was big enough to carry a gun, he went. The North almost completely escaped invasion, and upon one occasion when a southern army did march through northern territory, the conduct of the invading troops toward the civilian population (the false Barbara Frietchie legend to the contrary notwithstanding) was so exemplary as to set a record which is probably unequaled in history.[2] The South, upon the other hand, was constantly under invasion, and the record of destruction wrought by northern armies in the valley of the Shenandoah, on the March to the Sea, and in some other instances, is writ in poverty and mourning unto this day. [2] See chapter on Colonel Taylor and General Lee. Thus, except politically, the North now feels not the least effect from the war. But the South knew the terrors of invasion and the pangs of conquest, and is only growing strong again after having been ruined--as instanced by the fact, which I came across the other day, that the tax returns from one of the southern States have, for the first time since the Civil War, reached the point at which they stood when it began. So, very naturally, while the War has begun to take its place in the northern mind along with the Revolutionary War, as something to be studied in school under the heading "United States History," it has not, in southern eyes, become altogether "book history," but is history that lives--in swords hanging upon the walls of many homes, in old faded letters, in sacks of worthless Confederate bills, in the ruins of great houses, in lovingly preserved gray uniforms, in southern battle fields, and in southern burial grounds where rows upon rows of tombstones, drawn up in company front, stand like gray armies forever on parade. Small wonder if, amid its countless tragic memorials, the South does not forget. The strange thing is that bitterness has gone so soon; that remembering the agonies of war and the abuses of reconstruction, the South does not to-day hate the North as violently as ever. If to err is human, the North has, in its treatment of the South, richly proved its humanness; and if forgiveness is divine, the South has, by the same token, attained something like divinity. Had the numbskull North understood these things as it should have understood them, there would not now be a solid Democratic South. Such rancor as remains is, I believe, strongest in the smaller towns in those States which suffered the greatest hardships. I know, for instance, of one lady, from a little city in Virginia, who refused to enter the Massachusetts Building at the Chicago World's Fair, and there are still to be found, in Virginia, ladies who do not leave their houses on the Fourth of July because they prefer not to look upon the Stars and Stripes. The Confederate flag is still, in a sense, the flag of the South. Southerners love it as one loves a pressed flower from a mother's bridal wreath. When the Eleventh Cavalry rode from Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, to Winchester, Virginia, a few years since, they saw many Confederate flags, but only one Union flag, and that in the hands of a negro child. However, war had not then broken out in Europe. It would be different now. A Virginia lady told me of having gone to a dentist in Winchester, Virginia, and having taken her little niece with her. The child watched the dentist put a rubber dam in her aunt's mouth, and then, childlike, began to ask questions. She was a northern child, and she had evidently heard some one in the town speak of Sheridan's ride. "Auntie," she said, "was Sheridan a Northerner or a Southerner?" Owing to the rubber dam the aunt was unable to reply, but the dentist answered for her. "He was a drunken Yankee!" he declared vehemently. When, later, the rubber dam was removed, the aunt protested. "Doctor," she reproved, "you should not have said such a thing to my niece. She is from New York." "Then," returned the unrepentant dentist, "she has heard the truth for once!" Doubtless this man was an inheritor of hate, like the descendants of one uncompromisingly bitter old Southerner whose will, to be seen among the records of the Hanover County courthouse, in Virginia, bequeaths to his "children and grandchildren and their descendants throughout all future generations, the bitter hatred and everlasting malignity of my heart and soul against the Yankees, including all people north of Mason and Dixon's line." CHAPTER XIX "YOU-ALL" AND OTHER SECTIONAL MISUNDERSTANDINGS Let us make an honorable retreat. --AS YOU LIKE IT. Those who write school histories and wish them adopted by southern schools have to handle the Civil War with gloves. Such words as "rebel" and "rebellion" are resented in the South, and the historian must go softly in discussing slavery, though he may put on the loud pedal in speaking of State Rights, the fact being that the South not only knows now, but, as evidenced by the utterances of her leading men, from Jefferson to Lee, knew long before the war that slavery was a great curse; whereas, on the question of State Rights, including the theoretical right to secede from the Union--this being the actual question over which the South took up arms--there is much to be said on the southern side. Colonel Robert Bingham, superintendent of the Bingham School, Asheville, North Carolina, has made an exhaustive study of the question of secession, and has set forth his findings in several scholarly and temperately written booklets. Colonel Bingham proves absolutely, by quotation of their own words, that the framers of the Constitution regarded that document as a _compact_ between the several States. He shows that three of the States (Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island) joined in this compact _conditionally_, with the clear purpose of resuming their independent sovereignty as States, should the general government use its power for the oppression of the States; that up to the time of the Mexican War the New England States contended for, not against, the right to secede; that John Quincy Adams went so far as to negotiate with England with a view to the secession of the New England States, because of Jefferson's Embargo Act, and moreover that up to 1840 the United States Government used as a textbook for cadets at West Point, Rawle's "View of the Constitution," a book which teaches that the Union is dissoluble. Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, were, therefore, in all probability, given this book as students at West Point, and consequently, if we would have honest history, we must face the astonishing fact that there is evidence to show _that they learned the doctrine of secession at the United States Military Academy_. Colonel Bingham, who, it may be remarked, served with distinction in the Confederate Army, has very kindly supplemented, in a letter to me, his published statements. He writes: Secession was legal _theoretically_, but practically the conditions on which the thirteen Independent Republics, covering a little strip on the Atlantic coast, came to an agreement, could not possibly be applied to the great inter-Oceanic Empire into which these thirteen Independent Republics had developed. "Theory is a good horse in the stable, but may make an arrant jade on the journey"--to paraphrase Goldsmith--and the only way in which these irreconcilable differences could be settled was by bullet and bayonet, which settled them right and finally. Once such matters as these are fully understood in the North, there will be left but one grave issue between North and South, that issue being over the question of whether or not Southerners, under any circumstances, use the phrase "you-all" in the singular. "Whatever you write of the South," said our hostess at a dinner party in Virginia, "don't make the mistake of representing any one from this paht of the country, white oh black, educated oh ignorant, as saying 'you-all' meaning one person only." When I remarked mildly that it seemed to me I had often seen the phrase so used in books, and heard it in plays, eight or ten southern ladies and gentlemen at the table pounced upon me, all at once. "Yes!" they agreed, with a kind of polite violence, "books and plays by Yankees!" "If," one of the gentlemen explained, "you write to a friend who has a family, and say, according to the northern practice, 'I hope to see you when you come to my town,' you write something which is really ambiguous, since the word 'you' may refer only to your friend, or may refer also to his family. Our southern 'you-all' makes it explicit." I told him that in the North we also used the word "all" in connection with "you," though we accented the two evenly, and did not compound them, but he seemed to believe that "you" followed by "all" belonged exclusively to the South. The argument continued almost constantly throughout the meal. Not until coffee was served did the subject seem to be exhausted. But it was not, for after pouring a demi-tasse our hostess lifted a lump of sugar in the tongs, and looking me directly in the eye inquired: "Do you-all take sugah?" Undoubtedly it would have been wiser, and politer, to let this pass, but the discussion had filled me with curiosity, not only because of my interest in the localism, but also because of the amazing intensity with which it had been discussed. "But," I exclaimed, "you just said 'you-all,' apparently addressing me. Didn't you use it in the singular?" No sooner had I spoken than I was sorry. Every one looked disconcerted. There was silence for a moment. I was very much ashamed. "Oh, no," she said at last. "When I said 'you-all' I meant you and Mr. Morgan." (She pronounced it "Moh-gan," with a lovely drawl.) As she made this statement, she blushed, poor lady! Being to blame for her discomfiture, I could not bear to see her blush, and looked away, but only to catch the eye of my companion, and to read in its evil gleam the thought: "Of course they use it in the singular. But aren't you ashamed of having tripped up such a pretty creature on a point of dialect?" Though my interest in the southern idiom had caused me to forget about the sugar, my hostess had not forgotten. "Well," she said, still balancing the lump above the cup, and continuing gamely to put the question in the same form, and to me: "Do you-all take sugah, oh not?" I had no idea how my companion took his coffee, but it seemed to me that tardy politeness now demanded that I tacitly--or at least demi-tacitly--accede to the alleged plural intent of the question. Therefore, I replied: "Mr. Morgan takes two lumps. I don't take any, thanks." Late that night as we were returning to our hotel, my companion said to me somewhat tartly: "In case such a thing comes up again, I wish you would remember that sugar in my coffee makes me ill." "Well, why didn't you say so?" "Because," he returned, "I thought that you-all ought to do the answering. It seemed best for me-all to keep quiet and try to look plural under the singular conditions." * * * * * No single thing I ever wrote has brought to me so many letters, nor letters so uniform in sentiment (albeit widely different in expression), as the foregoing, seemingly unimportant tale, printed originally in "Collier's Weekly." Some one has pointed out that various communities have "fighting words," and as the letters poured in I began to realize that in discussing "you-all" I had inadvertently hit upon a term which aroused the ire of the South--or rather, that I had aroused ire by implying that the expression is sometimes used in the singular--the Solid South to the contrary notwithstanding. Never, upon any subject, have I known people to agree as my southern correspondents did on this. The unanimity of their dissent was an impressive thing. So was the violence some of them displayed. For a time, indeed, the heat with which they wrote, obscured the issue. That is to say, most of them instead of explaining merely denied, and added comments, more or less unflattering, concerning me. Wrote a lady from Lexington, Kentucky: I have lived in Kentucky all of my life, and have never yet heard "you-all" used in the singular, not even among the negroes. My grandparents and friends say they have never heard it, either. It was needless for you to tell your Virginia hostess that "you-all" (meaning you and your friend) were Yankees. The fact that you criticized her language proved it. Southern people pride themselves on their tact, and no doubt, at the time, she was struggling to conceal a smile because of some of your own localisms. Many of the letters were more severe than this one, and most of them made the point that I had been impolite to my hostess, and that, in all probability, when she looked at me and asked, "Do you-all take sugah?" she was playing a joke upon me, apropos the discussion which had preceded the question. For example, this, from a gentleman of Pell City, Alabama: My wife is the residuary legatee of Virginia's language, inherited, acquired and affected varieties, including the vanishing _y_; annihilated _g_; long-distance _a_, and irresistible drawl. To quell the unfortunate tumult that has arisen in our household as a result of your last article in "Collier's" I am commanded to advise you that the use of "you-all" in the singular is absodamnlutely _non est factum_ in Virginia, save, perhaps, among the hill people of the Blue Ridge. Also, take notice that when your hostess, with apparent inadvertence, used the expression in connection with sugar in your demi-tasse, the subsequent blush was due to your failure to catch her witticism, ignorantly mistaking it for a lapse of hers. My wife was going to write to you herself, but I managed to divert this cruel determination by promising to uphold the honor of the Old Dominion. There is already too much blood being shed in the world without spilling that of non-combatants as would have been "you-all's" fate had she gone after you with a weapon more mighty than the sword when in the hands of Mr. Wilson or an outraged woman. In face of all this and much more, however, my conviction was unshaken. I talked it over with my companion. He remembered the episode of the dinner table exactly as I did. Moreover, I still had my notes, made in the hotel that night. The lady looked at me. My companion was several places removed from her at the other side of the table. How could she have meant to include him? And how could she have expected me to say how he took his after-dinner coffee? At last, to reassure myself, I wrote to the wisest, cleverest, most trustworthy lady in the South, and asked her what it all meant. "Well," she wrote back from Atlanta, "I will tell you, but I am not sure that you will understand me. The answer is: _She did, but she didn't_. She looked at and spoke to you and, of course, by all rules of logic she could not have been intending to make you Morg's keeper in the matter of coffee dressing. _But_ she never would have said 'you-all' if Morg had not been in her mind as joined with you. The response, according to her thought-connotation, would have been from you _and_ from him." This was disconcerting. So was a letter, received in the same mail, from a gentleman in Charleston: It is as plain as the nose on your face that you are not yet convinced that we in the South _never_ use "you-all" with reference to one person. The case you mentioned proves nothing at all. The very fact that there were _two_ strangers present justified the use of the expression; we continually use the expression in that way, and in such cases we expect an answer from _both_ persons so addressed. To illustrate: just a few days ago I "carried" two girls into an "ice-cream parlor." After we were seated, I looked at the one nearest me, and said: "Well, what will you-all have?" Physically we are so constructed that unless a person is cross-eyed it is impossible to look at two persons at once; the mere fact that I looked at the one nearest me did not mean that I was not addressing both. I expected an answer from both, and I got it, too (as is generally the case where ice-cream is concerned). The subject is one to which I have devoted the most careful attention for many years. I have been so interested in it that almost unconsciously, whenever I myself use the expression "you-all," or hear any one else use it, I note whether it is intended to refer to one or to more than one person. I have heard thousands of persons, white, black and indifferent, use the expression, and the only ones I have ever heard use it incorrectly are what we might call "professional Southerners." For instance, last week I went to a vaudeville show, and part of the performance was given by two "black-face" comedians, calling themselves "The Georgia Blossoms." Their dialect was excellent, with the single exception that one of them _twice_ used the expression "you-all" where it could not _possibly_ have meant more than one person. And I no sooner heard it than I said to myself: "There is _one_ blossom that never bloomed in Georgia!" Another instance is the following: I was once approached by a beggar in Atlanta, who saluted me thus: "Say, mister, can't you-all give me a nickel?" Had I been accompanied it would have been all right, but I was alone, and there was no other person near me except the hobo. Did I give him the nickel? I should say not! I said to myself: "He is a damned Yankee trying to pass himself off for a Southerner." Horrid glimmerings began to filter dimly through. And yet-- Next day came a letter calling my attention to an article, written years ago by Joel Chandler Harris and Thomas Nelson Page, jointly, in which they plead with northern writers not to misuse the disputed expression by applying it in the singular. That was another shock. I felt conviction tottering.... But she _did_ look at me.... She _didn't_ expect an answer from my companion.... And then behold! a missive from Mr. H.E. Jones, a member--and a worthy one--of the Tallapoosa County Board of Education, and a resident of Dadeville, Alabama. Mr. Jones' educational activities reach far beyond Tallapoosa County, and far beyond the confines of his State, for he has educated me. He has made me see the light. "I want to straighten you out," he wrote, kindly. "We never use 'you-all' in the singular. Not even the most ignorant do so. But, as you know," (Ah, that was mercifully said!) "there are some peculiar, almost unexplainable, shades of meaning in local idioms of speech, which are not easy for a stranger to understand. I have a friend who was reared in Milwaukee and is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, who tells me he would have argued the 'you-all' point with all comers for some years following his taking up his residence here, but he is at this time as ready as I to deny the allegation and 'chaw the alligator.' "When your young lady, in Virginia, asked, 'Do you-all take sugar?' she mentally included Mr. Morgan, and perhaps all other Yankees. I would ask my local grocer, 'Will you-all sell me some sugar this morning?' meaning his establishment, collectively, although I addressed him personally; but I would _not_ ask my only servant, 'Have you-all milked the cow?'" And that is the exact truth. I was absolutely wrong. And though, having printed the ghastly falsehood in my original article, I can hardly hope now for absolution from the outraged South, I can at least retract, as I hereby do, and can, moreover, thank Mr. H.E. Jones, of Tallapoosa County, Alabama, for having saved me from a double sin; for had he not given me the simple illustration of the grocery store, I might have repeated, now, my earlier misstatement. CHAPTER XX IDIOMS AND ARISTOCRACY Southerners have told me that they can tell from what part of the South a person comes, by his speech, just as an Easterner can distinguish, by the same means a New Englander, a New Yorker, a Middle-Westerner, and a Brooklynite. I cannot pretend to have become an authority upon southern dialect, but it is obvious to me that the speech of New Orleans is unlike that of Charleston, and that of Charleston unlike that of Virginia. The chief characteristic of the Virginian dialect is the famous and fascinating localism which Professor C. Alphonso Smith has called the "vanishing _y_"--a _y_ sound which causes words like "car" and "garden" to be pronounced "cyar" and "gyarden"--or, as Professor Smith prefers to indicate it: "C^{y}ar" and "g^{y}arden." I am told that in years gone by the "vanishing _y_" was common to all Virginians, but though it is still common enough among members of the old generation, and is used also by some young people--particularly, I fancy, young ladies, who realize its fetching quality--there can be no doubt that it is, in both senses, vanishing, and that not half the Virginians of the present day pronounce "cigar" as "segyar," "carpet" as "cya´pet," and "Carter," as "Cyahtah." In Virginia and many other parts of the South one hears such words as "aunt" correctly pronounced with the broad _a_, and such words as "tube" and "new" properly given the full _u_ sound (instead of "toobe," and "noo," as in some parts of the North); but, on the other hand, while the South gives the short _o_ sound in such words as "log" and "fog," it invariably calls a dog a "dawg." "Your" is often pronounced "yore," "sure" as "shore," and, not infrequently, "to" as "toe." The South also uses the word "carry" in a way that strikes Northerners as strange. If a Southerner offers to "carry" you to the station, or over his plantation, he does not signify that he intends to transport you by means of physical strength, but that he will escort you. If he "carries you to the run" you will find that the "run" is what Northerners call a creek; if to the "branch," or "dreen," that is what we call a brook. This use of the word "carry," far from being a corruption, is pure old English, and is used in the Bible, and by Smollett, though it is amusing to note that the "Georgia Gazetteer" for 1837, mentions as a lamentable provincialism such an application of the word as "to _carry_ (instead of _lead_) a horse to water." If the "Gazetteer" were indeed correct in this, then the Book of Genesis contains an American provincialism. The customary use of the word in the North, as "to _carry_ a cane, or a bag," is equally but no more correct than the southern usage. I am informed by Mr. W.T. Hall, Editor of the Dothan (Alabama) "Eagle," that the word used in his part of the country, as signifying "to bear on the back, or shoulder," is "tote." "Tote" is a word not altogether unknown in the North, and it has recently found its way into some dictionaries, though the old "Georgia Gazetteer" disapproved of it. Even this word has some excuse for being, in that it is a deformed member of a good family, having come from the Latin, _tollit_, been transformed into the early English "tolt," and thus into what I believe to be a purely American word. Other expressions which struck me as being characteristic of the South are "stop by," as for instance, "I will stop by for you," meaning, "I will call for you in passing"; "don't guess," as "I don't guess I'll come"; and "Yes indeedy!" which seems to be a kind of emphatic "Yes indeed." "As I look back over the old South," said one white-haired Virginian, "there were two things it was above. One was accounts and the other was grammar. Tradesmen in prosperous neighborhoods were always in distress because of the long credits, though gambling debts were, of course, always punctiliously paid. As to the English spoken in old Virginia--and indeed in the whole South--there is absolutely no doubt that its softness and its peculiarities in pronunciation are due to the influence of the negro voice and speech on the white race. Some of the young people seem to wish to dispute this, but we older ones used to take the view--half humorously, of course--that if a Southerner spoke perfect English, it showed he wasn't a gentleman; "that he hadn't been raised with niggers around him."" "Oh, you shouldn't tell him that!" broke in a lady who was present. "Why not?" demanded the old gentleman. "He'll print it!" she said. "Well," he answered, "ain't it true? What's the harm in it?" "There!" she exclaimed. "You said '_ain't_.' He'll print that Virginians say 'ain't'!" "Well," he answered, "I reckon we do, don't we?" She laughed and gave up. "I remember," she told me, "the very spot on the turnpike going out to Ripon, where I made up my mind to break myself of saying 'ain't.' But I want to tell you that we are talking much better English than we used to. Even the negroes are. You don't hear many white people saying 'gwine' for 'going' any more, for instance, and the young people don't say 'set' for 'sit' and 'git' for 'get,' as their fathers did." "I've heard folks say, though," put in the old gentleman, "that they'd ruther speak like a Virginian than speak correctly. The old talk was pretty nice, after all. I don't hold to all these new improvements. They've been going too far in this Commonwealth." "What have they been doing?" I asked. "Doing!" he returned, "Why, they're gradually taking the cuspidors out of the church pews!" Before the question of dialect is dropped, it should be said that those who do not believe the soft southern pronunciation is derived from negroes, can make out an interesting case. If, they ask, the negro has corrupted the English of the South, why is it that he has not also corrupted the language of the West Indies--British and French? French negroes speak like French persons of white blood, and British West Indian negroes often speak the cockney dialect, without a trace of "nigger." Moreover, it is pointed out that in southern countries, the world over, there is a tendency to soften the harsh sounds of language, to elide, and drop out consonants. The Andalusians speak a Spanish comparable in many of its peculiarities with the English of our own South, and the south-Italians exhibit similar dialectic traits. Nor do the parallels between the north and south of Spain and Italy, and of the United States, end there. The north-Italians and north-Spaniards are the "Yankees" of their respective countries--the shrewd, cold business people--whereas the south-Italians and south-Spaniards are more poetic, more dashing, more temperamental. The merchants are of the north of Spain, but the dancers and bull-fighters are Andalusians. And just as our Americans of the North admire the lazy dialect of the South, so the north-Spaniards admire the dialect of Andalusia, and even imitate it because they think it has a fashionable sound--quite as British fashionables cultivate the habit of dropping final _g_'s, as in "huntin'" for "hunting." Virginia, more than any other State I know of, feels its entity as a State. If you meet a Virginian traveling outside his State, and ask where he is from, he will not mention the name of the city in which he resides, but will reply: "I'm from Va'ginia." If, on the other hand, you are in Virginia, and ask him the same question, he will proudly reply: "I'm from Fauquier," or "I'm from Westmoreland," or whatever the name of his county may be. The chances are, also, that his trunks and traveling bags will be marked with his initials, followed not by the name of his town, but by the abbreviation, "Va." I was told of one old unreconstructed Virginian who had to go to Boston on business. The gentleman he went to see there was exceedingly polite to him, asking him to his house, putting him up at his club, and showing him innumerable courtesies. The old Confederate, writing to his wife, indicated his amazement: "Although he is not a Virginian," he declared, "I must confess that he lives like a gentleman." The name of his Bostonian acquaintance was John Quincy Adams. I heard this story from a northern lady who has a country place near a small town in Virginia. In the North this lady's family is far from being unknown, but in Virginia, she assured me, all persons originating outside the State are looked upon as vague beings without "family." "They seem to think," she said, "that Northerners have no parents--that they are made chemically." This does not imply, however, that well-bred Northerners are excluded from society. Even if they are well off they may get into society; for though money does not count in one's favor in such a town, it does not count against one. The social requirement of the place is simple. If people are "nice people," that is enough. Of course, however, it is one thing to be admitted to Virginia society and another to belong to it by right. A case in point is that of a lady visiting in a Virginia city who, while calling at the house of some "F.F.V's," was asked by a little girl, the daughter of the house, where she had been born. "Mawtha," said the little girl's mother, after the caller had departed, "you must not ask people where they were bo'n. If they were bo'n in Va'ginia they will tell you so without asking, and if they weren't bo'n in Va'ginia it's very embarrassing." Some of the old families of the inner circle are in a tragic state of decay, owing to inbreeding; others, in a more wholesome physical and mental condition, are perpetually wrestling with the heritage of poverty left over from the War--"too proud to whitewash and too poor to paint"--clinging desperately to the old acres, and to the old houses which are like beautiful, tired ancestral ghosts. Until a few years ago the one resource of Virginian gentlewomen in need of funds was to take boarders, but more lately the daughters of distinguished but poverty-stricken families have found that they may work in offices. Thus, in the town of which I speak, several ladies who are very much "in society," support themselves by entertaining "paying guests," while others are stenographers. The former, I was told, by the way, make it a practice to avoid first-hand business contacts with their guests by sending them their bills through the mail, and requiring that response be made by means of the same impersonal channel. CHAPTER XXI THE CONFEDERATE CAPITAL The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city. --OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. Richmond is the Boston of Virginia; Norfolk its New York. The comparison does not, of course, hold in all particulars, Richmond being, for instance, larger than Norfolk, and not a seaport. Yet, on the other hand, Boston manages, more than any seaport that I know of, to conceal from the visitor the signs of its maritime life; wherefore Richmond looks about as much like a port as does the familiar part of Boston. The houses on the principal residence streets of Richmond are not built in such close ranks as Boston houses; they have more elbow-room; numbers of them have yards and gardens; and there is not about Richmond houses the Bostonian insistence upon red brick; nevertheless many houses of both cities give off the same suggestion of having long been lived in by the descendants of their builders. So, too, though the Capitol at Richmond has little architectural resemblance to Boston's gold-domed State House--the former having been copied by Thomas Jefferson from the Maison Carrée at Nîmes, and being a better building than the Massachusetts State House, and better placed--the two do, nevertheless, suggest each other in their gray granite solidity. It is perhaps in the quality of solidity--architectural, commercial, social, even spiritual--that Richmond and Boston are most alike. Substantialness, conservatism, tradition, and prosperity rest like gray mantles over both. Broad Street in Richmond is two or three times as wide as Granby Street, Norfolk's chief shopping street, and for this reason, doubtless, its traffic seems less, though I believe it is in fact greater. A fine street to look upon at night, with its long, even rows of clustered boulevard lights, and its bright windows, Broad Street in the daytime is a disappointment, because, for all its fine spaciousness, it lacks good buildings. I must confess, too, that I was disappointed in the appearance of the women in the shopping crowds on Broad Street; for, as every one knows, Richmond has been famous for its beauties. In vain I looked for young women fitted to inherit the débutante mantles of such nationally celebrated beauties as Miss Irene Langhorne (Mrs. Charles Dana Gibson), Miss May Handy (Mrs. James Brown Potter), Miss Lizzie Bridges (Mrs. Hobson), and Miss Sally Bruce (Mrs. Arthur B. Kinsolving). In the ten years between 1900 and 1910 the population of Richmond increased 50 per cent. Her population by the last census was about 130,000, of which a third is colored. Norfolk's population is about 70,000, with approximately the same percentage of negroes. In both cities there is much new building--offices downtown, and pretty new brick homes in outlying suburban tracts. Likewise, in both, the charming signs of other days are here and there to be seen. Richmond is again like its ancient enemy, Boston, in the wealth of its historical associations, and I know of no city which gives the respectful heed to its own history that Richmond does, and no State which in this matter equals the State of Virginia. If Richmond was the center of the South during the Civil War, Capitol Square was, as it is to-day, the center of that center. In this square, in the shadow of Jefferson's beautiful classic capitol building, which has the glowing gray tone of one of those water colors done on tinted paper by Jules Guérin, Confederate soldiers were mustered into service under Lee and Jackson. Within the old building the Confederate Congress met, Aaron Burr was tried for treason, and George Washington saw, in its present position, his own statue by Houdon. Across the way from the square, where the post office now stands, was the Treasury Building of the Confederate States, and there Jefferson Davis appeared seven times, to be tried for treason, only to have his case postponed by the Federal Government, and finally dismissed. East of the square is the State Library, containing a remarkable collection of portraits and documents, including likenesses of all governors of Virginia from John Smith to Tyler, a portrait of Pocahontas, and the bail bond of Jefferson Davis, signed by Horace Greeley, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Gerrit Smith, and seventeen other distinguished men of the day. To the west of the square is old St. Paul's Church, with the pews of Lee and Davis. It was while attending service in this church, on Sunday, April 2, 1865, that Davis received Lee's telegram from Petersburg, saying that Richmond must be evacuated. A block or two west of the church, in East Franklin Street, is a former residence of Lee. It was given by the late Mrs. Joseph Bryan and her sisters to the Virginia Historical Society, and is now, appropriately enough, the home of that organization. In the old drawing room, now the office of the Historical Society, I found Mr. William G. Stanard, the corresponding secretary, and from him heard something of Lee's life there immediately after the War. By the Northerners in Richmond at that time, including the Federal troops stationed in the city, Lee was of course respected and admired, while by the whole South he was, and is to-day, adored. As for his own ex-soldiers, they could not see him without emotion, and because of the demonstrations which invariably attended his appearance on the Richmond streets, he went out but little, passing much time upon the back porch of the house. Here most of the familiar Brady photographs of him were taken. Brady sent a young photographer to Richmond to get the photographs. Lee was at first disposed to refuse to be taken, but his family persuaded him to submit, on the ground that if there were any impertinence in the request it was not the fault of the young man, and that the latter might lose his position if he failed to obtain the desired pictures. Finding the continued attention of the crowds too much for him, the general left Richmond after two months, removing to a small house in Cumberland County, on the James, and it was there that he was residing when called to the presidency of Washington College--now Washington and Lee University--at Lexington, Virginia. As is well known, he accepted this offer, built up the institution, remained its president until the time of his death, and now lies buried in the university chapel. To Mr. Stanard I am also indebted for the following information regarding John Smith and Pocahontas: About a mile below Richmond, in what is now the brickyard region, there used to stand the residence of the Mayo family, a place known as Powhatan. This place has long been pointed out as the scene of the saving of Smith by the Indian girl, but late research indicates that, though Smith did come up the James to the present site of Richmond, his capture by the Indians did not occur here, but in the vicinity of Jamestown. Then Indians took him first to one of their villages on York River, near the present site of West Point, Virginia, and thence to a place, on the same stream, in the county of Gloucester, where the tribal chief resided. I was under the impression that this worthy's name was Powhatan, but Mr. Stanard declared "powhatan" was not a proper name, but an Indian word meaning "chief." The Virginia Historical Society is satisfied that Smith was rescued by Pocahontas at a point about nine miles from Williamsburg on the west side of York River, but there are historians who contend that the whole story of the rescue is a fiction. One of these is Dr. Albert Bushnell Hart, of Harvard, who lists Smith among "Historical Liars." Virginians, who regard Smith as one of their proudest historical possessions, are somewhat disposed to resent this view, but it appears to me that there is at least some ground for it. Matthew Page Andrews, another historian, himself a Virginian, points out that many of our ideas of the Jamestown colony have been obtained from Smith's history of the settlement, which he wrote in England, some years after leaving Virginia. "From these accounts," says Mr. Andrews, "we get an unfavorable impression of Smith's associates in the colony and of the management of the men composing the popular or people's party in the London Company. As we now know that this party in the London Company was composed of very able and patriotic Englishmen, we are inclined to think that Captain Smith not only overrated his achievement, but was very unjust to his fellow-colonists and the Company." The story of the rescue of Smith by Pocahontas, with the strong implication that the Indian girl was in love with him, comes to us from Smith himself. We know that when Pocahontas was nineteen years of age (seven years after the Smith rescue is said to have occurred), she married John Rolfe--the first Englishman to begin the cultivation of the tobacco plant. We know that she was taken to England, that she was welcomed at court as a princess, that she had a son born in England, and that she herself died there in 1617. We know also that her son, Thomas Rolfe, settled in Virginia, and that through him a number of Virginians trace descent from Pocahontas. (Mr. Andrews points out that in 1915 one of these descendants became the wife of the President of the United States.) But we know also that John Smith, brave and daring though he was, was not above twisting and embroidering a tale to his own glorification. While, therefore, it is too much to affirm that his rescue story is false, it is well to remember that Pocahontas was but twelve years old when the rescue is said to have occurred, and that Smith waited until after she had become famous, and had died, to promulgate his romantic story. * * * * * Immediately to the north of Capitol Square stands the City Hall, an ugly building, in the cellar of which is the Police Court presided over by the celebrated and highly entertaining Judge Crutchfield, otherwise known as "One John" and "the Cadi"--of whom more presently. A few blocks beyond the City Hall, in the old mansion at the corner of East Clay and Twelfth Streets, which was the "White House of the Confederacy," the official residence of Jefferson Davis during the war, is the Confederate Museum--one of the most fascinating museums I ever visited. Not the least part of the charm of this museum is the fact that it is not of great size, and that one may consequently visit it without fatigue; but the chief fascination of the place is the dramatic personalness of its exhibits. To me there is always something peculiarly engaging about intimate relics of historic figures, and it is of such relics that the greater part of the collection of the Confederate Museum consists. In one show case, for example, are the saddle and bridle of General Lee, and the uniform he wore when he surrendered. The effects of General Joseph E. Johnston are shown in another case, and in still another those of the picturesque J.E.B. Stuart, who, as here one may see, loved the little touch of individuality and dash which came of wearing a feather in a campaign hat. So also one learns something of Stonewall Jackson when one sees in the cabinet, along with his old blue hat and other possessions, the gold spurs which were given to him by the ladies of Baltimore, beside the steel spurs that he _wore_. All Jackson's personal effects were very simple. One of the most striking relics in the museum is the Great Seal of the Confederacy, which was only returned to Richmond within the last few years, after having been lost track of for nearly half a century--a strange chapter in the annals of the Civil War. Records in the Library of Congress, including the Confederate state papers purchased by the United States Government in 1872, of William J. Bromwell, formerly a clerk in the Confederate State Department, brought to light, a few years ago, the fact that the seal was in the possession of Rear Admiral Thomas O. Selfridge, U.S.N., retired. At the time of the evacuation of Richmond, Bromwell carried off a number of the Confederate state papers, and Mrs. Bromwell took charge of the seal, transporting it through the lines in her bustle. When later, through Colonel John T. Pickett, Bromwell sold the papers to the Government, Rear Admiral Selfridge--then a captain--was the officer assigned to go to Hamilton, Ontario, to inventory and receive them. It is said that Pickett gave the seal to Selfridge at about this time, first, however, having a duplicate made. This duplicate, or a copy of it, was later offered for sale as the original, but was found to be spurious. When examination of the Pickett papers by Gaillard Hunt, of the Library of Congress, finally traced the original seal to Rear Admiral Selfridge, an effort was made to buy it back. In 1912 three Richmond gentlemen, Messrs. Eppa Hunton, Jr., William H. White and Thomas P. Bryan, purchased the Seal of the admiral for three thousand dollars, subject to proof of its authenticity. Mr. St. George Bryan and Mr. William Gray, of Richmond, then took the seal to London, where the makers are still well-known engravers. Here, by means of hall marks, the identification was made complete. No less appealing than the relics of the deceased government and great generals who are gone, are some of the humbler items connected with the deaths of privates in the ranks of North and South alike. One of the most pathetic was a small daguerreotype of a beautiful young girl. On a card, beside the picture, is the story of it, so far as that story is ever likely to be known: Picture found on the dead body of an unidentified Federal soldier. Presented by C.C. Calvert, Upperville, Va. "We have always hoped," said Miss Susan B. Harrison, house regent of the museum, "that some day some one would come in and recognize this little picture, and that it would find its way back to those who ought to have it, and who might by this means at last discover what became of the soldier who was dear to them." An even more tragic souvenir is a letter addressed to A.V. Montgomery, Camden, Madison County, Mississippi, in which a mortally wounded soldier of Confederacy bids a last good-by to his father. The letter was originally inclosed with one from Lieutenant Ethelbert Fairfax, C.S.A., informing the father that his son passed away soon after he had written. The text, pitiful and heroic as it is, can give but the faintest idea of the original, with its feeble, laborious writing, and the dark-brown spots dappling the three sheets of paper where blood from the boy's mangled shoulder dripped upon them while he wrote: Spotsylvania County, Va. May 10, 1864. Dear Father: This is my last letter to you. I went into battle this evening as courier for Gen'l Heth. I have been struck by a piece of shell and my right shoulder is horribly mangled & I know death is inevitable. I am very weak but I write to you because I know you would be delighted to read a word from your dying son. I know death is near, that I will die far from home and friends of my early youth, but I have friends here, too, who are kind to me. My Friend Fairfax will write you at my request and give you the particulars of my death. My grave will be marked so that you may visit it if you desire to do so, but it is optionary with you whether you let my remains rest here or in Mississippi. I would like to rest in the graveyard with my dear mother and brothers, but it is a matter of minor importance. Let us all try to reunite in heaven. I pray my God to forgive my sins & I feel that his promises are true, that he will forgive me and save me. Give my love to all my friends. My strength fails me. My horse & my equipments will be left for you. Again a long farewell to you. May we meet in heaven. Your Dying Son, J.R. Montgomery. CHAPTER XXII RANDOM RICHMOND NOTES Richmond may again be likened to Boston as a literary center. In an article published some years ago in "Book News" Alice M. Tyler refers to Colonel William Byrd, who founded Richmond in 1733, as the sprightliest and most genial native American writer before Franklin. In the time of Chief Justice Marshall, Richmond had a considerable group of novelists, historians and essayists, but the great literary name connected with the place is that of Edgar Allan Poe, who spent much of his boyhood in the city and later edited the "Southern Literary Messenger." Matthew Fontaine Maury, the great scientist, mentioned in an earlier chapter, was, at another time, editor of the same periodical, as was also John Reuben Thompson, "Poet of the Confederacy," who wrote, among other poems, "Music in Camp," and who translated Gustave Nadaud's familiar poem, "Carcassonne." Thomas Nelson Page made his home in Richmond for thirty years; Amélie Rives was born there and still maintains her residence in Albemarle County, Virginia, while among other writers of the present time connected with the city either by birth or long association are, Henry Sydnor Harrison, Mary Johnston, Ellen Glasgow, Marion Harland, Kate Langley Bosher, James Branch Cabell, Edward Peple, dramatist, J.H. Whitty, biographer of Poe, and Colonel W. Gordon McCabe, soldier, historian, essayist, and local character--a gentleman upon whose shoulders such imported expressions as _littérateur_, _bon viveur_, and _raconteur_ alight as naturally as doves on friendly shoulders. Colonel McCabe is a link between present-day Richmond and the traditions and associations of England. He was the friend of Lord Roberts, he introduced Lord Tennyson to Bull Durham tobacco, and, as is fitting under the circumstances, he speaks and writes of a hotel as "_an_ hotel." Henry Sydnor Harrison did his first writing as book reviewer on the Richmond "Times-Dispatch," of which paper he later became paragrapher and daily poet, and still later editor in chief. It is commonly reported in Richmond that the characters in his novel "Queed," the scenes of which are laid in Richmond, were "drawn from life." I asked Mr. Harrison about this. "When the book appeared," he said, "I was much embarrassed by the disposition of Richmond people--human and natural, I suppose, when you 'know the author'--to identify all the imaginary persons with various local characters. Some characteristics of the political boss in my story were in a degree suggested by a local celebrity; Stewart Bryan is indicated, in passing, as Stewart Byrd; and the bare bones of a historic case, altered at will, were employed in another connection. But I think I am stating the literal truth when I say that no figure in the book is borrowed from life." * * * * * The recent residential development in Richmond has been to the west of the city in the neighborhood of Monument Avenue, a fine double drive, with a parked center, lined with substantial new homes, and having at intervals monuments to southern heroes: Lee, Davis, and J.E.B. Stuart. The parks are on the outskirts of the city and, as in most other cities, it is in these outlying regions that new homes are springing up, thanks in no small degree to the automobile. The Country Club of Virginia is out to the west of the town, in what is known as Westhampton, and is one of the most charming clubs of its kind in the South or, indeed, in the country. Richmond has one of the most beautiful and several of the most curious cemeteries I have ever seen. Hollywood Cemetery stands upon rolling bluffs overlooking the James, and under its majestic trees are the tombs of many famous men, including James Monroe, John Tyler, Jefferson Davis and Fitzhugh Lee. An inscription on the Davis monument, which was erected by the widow and daughter of the President of the Confederacy, describes him as "an American soldier and defender of the Constitution." At the back of the pedestal is another inscription: PRESIDENT OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA 1861-1865. FAITHFUL TO ALL TRUSTS, A MARTYR TO PRINCIPLE. HE LIVED AND DIED THE MOST CONSISTENT OF AMERICAN SOLDIERS AND STATESMEN. It occasionally happens that, instead of having monuments because in life they were famous, men are made famous after death, by the inscriptions placed upon their tombstones. Such is the case with James E. Valentine, a locomotive engineer killed in a collision many years ago. The Valentine monument in Hollywood Cemetery is almost as well known as the monuments erected in memory of the great, the reason for this being embodied in the following verse adorning the stone: Until the brakes are turned on Time, Life's throttle valve shut down, He wakes to pilot in the crew That wear the martyr's crown. On schedule time on upper grade Along the homeward section, He lands his train at God's roundhouse The morn of resurrection. His time all full, no wages docked; His name on God's pay roll. And transportation through to Heaven, A free pass for his soul. In the burial ground of old St. John's Church--the building in which Patrick Henry delivered his "Give me Liberty or give me Death" oration--are a number of old gravestones bearing strange inscriptions which appeal to the imagination, and also, alas! elicit sad thoughts concerning those who wrote the old-time gravestone doggerel. The custodian of the church is glad to indicate the interesting stones, but is much more taken up with his own gift of oratory, as displayed when, on getting visitors inside the church, he takes his place on the spot where Patrick Henry stood, and delivers the famous oration. Having done this to us--or perhaps it would seem more generous to say _for_ us--the caretaker told us that many persons who had heard him had declared that Patrick Henry himself would have had a hard time doing it better. But when he threatened, for contrast, to deliver the oration as a less gifted elocutionist might speak it, my companion, in whom I had already observed signs of restlessness, interrupted with the statement that we were late for an engagement, and fled from the place, followed by me. * * * * * In certain parts of the city, often at a considerable distance from the warehouse and factory sections, one may occasionally catch upon the breeze the faint, spicy fragrance of tobacco; and should one trace these pleasant scents to their sources, one would come to a region of factories in which rich brown leaves are transformed into pipe tobacco, plug tobacco, or cigarettes. In the simpler processes of this work, negro men and women are employed, and these with their natural picturesqueness of pose and costume, and their singing, in the setting of an old shadowy loft, make a tobacco factory a fascinating place. In one loft you will see negro men and boys handling the tobacco leaves with pitchforks, much as farm hands handle hay; in another, negro women squatting upon boxes, stemming the leaves, or "pulling up ends," their black faces blending mysteriously with the dark shadows of beams and rafters. Here the air is laden not only with the sweet tobacco smell, mixed with a faint scent of licorice and of fruit, but is freighted also with a fine brown dust which is revealed where bars of sunlight strike in through the windows, and which seems, as it shifts and sparkles, to be a visible expression of the smell. In the busy season "street niggers" are generally used for stemming, which is, perhaps, the leading part of the tobacco industry in Richmond, and these "street niggers," a wild yet childlike lot, who lead a hand-to-mouth existence all year round, bring to the tobacco trade a wealth of semi-barbaric color. To give us an idea of the character of a Richmond "street nigger" the gentleman who took my companion and me through the factory told us of having wanted a piece of light work done, and having asked one of these negroes: "Want to earn a quarter?" To which the latter replied without moving from his comfortable place beside a sun-baked brick wall: "No, boss, Ah _got_ a quahtah." The singing of the negroes is a great feature of the stemming department in a tobacco factory. Some of the singers become locally famous; also, I was told by the superintendent, they become independent, and for that reason have frequently to be dismissed. The wonderful part of this singing, aside from the fascinating harmonies made by the sweet, untrained negro voices, is the utter lack of prearrangement that there is about it. Now there will be silence in the loft; then there will come a strange, half-savage cry from some dark corner, musical, yet seemingly meaningless; soon a faint humming will begin, and will be taken up by men and women all over the loft; the humming will swell into a chant to which the workers rock as their black hands travel swiftly among the brown leaves; then, presently, it will die away, and there will be silence until they are again moved to song. From shadowy room to shadowy room, past great dark bins filled with the leaves, past big black steaming vats, oozing sweet-smelling substances, past moist fragrant barrels, always among the almost spectral forms of negroes, treading out leaves with bare feet, working over great wicker baskets stained to tobacco color, piling up wooden frames, or operating the powerful hydraulic presses which convert the soft tobacco into plugs of concrete hardness--so one goes on through the factory. The browns and blacks of these interiors are the browns and blacks of etchings; the color of the leaves, the old dark timbers, the black faces and hands, and the ragged clothing, combined with the humming of negro voices, the tobacco fragrance, and the golden dust upon the air, make an indescribably complete harmony of shade, sound, and scent. The department in which the pipe tobacco is packed in tins is a very different sort of place; here white labor is employed: a great many girls seated side by side at benches working with great digital dexterity: measuring out the tobacco, folding wax paper cartons, filling them, and slipping them into the narrow tins, all at a rate of speed so great as to defy the sight, giving a sense of fingers flickering above the bench with a strange, almost supernatural sureness, like the fingers of a magician who makes things disappear before your eyes; or like the pictures in which post-impressionist and cubist painters attempt to express motion. "May I speak to one of them?" I asked the superintendent. "Sure," said he. I went up to a young woman who was working, if anything, more rapidly than the other girls at the same bench. "Can you think, while you are doing this?" I asked. "Yes," she replied, without looking up, while her fingers flashed on ceaselessly. "About other things?" "Certainly." "How many cans do you fill in a day?" "About thirty-four to thirty-five hundred on the average." "May I ask your name?" She gave it. I took up one of the small identification slips which she put into each package, and wrote her name upon the back of it. The number on the slip--for the purpose of identifying the girl who packed the tin--was 220. Let the reader, therefore, be informed that if he smokes Edgeworth Ready Rubbed, and finds in a tin a slip bearing that number, he has been served by no less a person than Miss Katie Wise, of the astonishingly speedy fingers. CHAPTER XXIII JEDGE CRUTCHFIELD'S CO'T Dar's a pow'ful rassle 'twix de Good en de Bad, En de Bad's got de all-under holt; En w'en de wuss come, she come i'on-clad, En you hatter holt yo' bref fer de jolt. --UNCLE REMUS. My companion and I had not traveled far into the South before we discovered that our comfort was likely to be considerably enhanced if, in hotels, we singled out an intelligent bell boy and, as far as possible, let this one boy serve us. Our mainstay in the Jefferson Hotel was Charles Jackson, No. 144, or, when Charles was "off," his "side partner," whom we knew as Bob. Having one day noticed a negro in convict's stripes, but without a guard, raking up leaves in Capitol Square, I asked Charles about the matter. "Do they let the convicts go around unguarded?" I inquired. "They 's some of 'em can," said he. "Those is trustees." This talk of "trustees" led to other things and finally to a strong recommendation, by Charles, of the Richmond Police Court, as a place of entertainment. "Is it interesting?" I asked. "Inter-_resting_? Yes, _suh_! Judge Crutchfield he suttinly _is_. He done chahge me twenty-six dollahs and fo'ty cents. My brothah, he got in fight down street, heah. Some niggers set on him. I went to he'p him an' p'leeceman got me. He say I was resistin' p'leece. I ain't resisted no p'leece! No, _suh_! Not _me_! But Judge Crutchfield, you can't tell him nothin'. 'Tain't no use to have a lawyer, nuther. Judge Crutchfield don't want no lawyers in his co't. Like 's not he cha'ge you _mo'_ fo' _havin'_ lawyer. Then you got pay lawyer, too. "Friend mine name Billy. One night Billy he wake up and heah some one come pushin' in his house. He hollah: 'Who thar?' "Othah nigger he kep' pushin' on in. He say: 'This Gawge.' "Billy, he say: 'Git on out heah, niggah! Ain't no Gawge live heah!' "Othah niggah, he say: 'Don't make no diff'unce Gawge live heah o' not. He sure comin' right in! Ain't nobody heah kin stop ol' Gawge! He eat 'em alive, Gawge do! He de boss of Jackson Ward. Bettah say yo' prayehs, niggah, fo' yo' time--has--come!' "Billy he don't want hit nobody, but this-heah Gawge he drunk, an' Billy _have_ t' hit 'im. Well, suh, what you think this Gawge done? He go have Billy 'rested. _Yes_, suh! But you can't tell Judge Crutchfield nothin'. Next mo'nin' in p'leece co't he say to Billy: 'I fine you twenty-five dollahs, fo' hittin' this old gray-haihed man.' Yes, _suh_! 'at 's a way Judge Crutchfield is. Can't tell _him_ nothin'. He jes' set up theh on de bench, an' he chaw tobacco, an' he heah de cases, an' he spit, an' evvy time he spit he spit a fine. Yes, _suh_! He spit like dis: 'Pfst! Five dollahs!'--'Pfst! Ten dollahs!'--'Pfst! Fifteen dollahs!'--just how he feel. He suttinly is some judge, 'at man." Encouraged by this account of police court justice as meted out to the Richmond negro, my companion and I did visit Justice Crutchfield's court. The room in the basement of the City Hall was crowded. All the benches were occupied and many persons, white and black, were standing up. Among the members of the audience--for the performance is more like a vaudeville show with the judge as headliner than like a serious tribunal--I noticed several actors and actresses from a company which was playing in Richmond at the time--these doubtless drawn to the place by the fact that Walter C. Kelly, billed in vaudeville as "The Virginia Judge," is commonly reported to have taken Judge Crutchfield as a model for his exceedingly amusing monologue. Mr. Kelly himself has, however, told me that his inspiration came from hearing the late Judge J.D.G. Brown, of Newport News, hold court. At the back of the room, in what appeared to be a sort of steel cage, were assembled the prisoners, all of them, on this occasion, negroes; while at the head of the chamber behind the usual police-court bulwark, sat the judge--a white-haired, hook-nosed man of more than seventy, peering over the top of his eyeglasses with a look of shrewd, merciless divination. "William Taylor!" calls a court officer. A negro is brought from the cage to the bar of justice. He is a sad spectacle, his face adorned with a long strip of surgeon's plaster. The judge looks at him over his glasses. The hearing proceeds as follows: COURT OFFICER (to prisoner)--Get over there! (Prisoner obeys.) JUDGE CRUTCHFIELD--Sunday drunk--Five dollars. It is over. The next prisoner is already on his way to the bar. He is a short, wide negro, very black and tattered. A large black negress, evidently his consort, arises as witness against him. The case goes as follows: JUDGE CRUTCHFIELD--Drunk? THE WIFE (looking contemptuously at her spouse)--Drunk? Yass, Jedge, drunk. _Always_ drunk. THE PRISONER (meekly)--I ain't been drunk, Jedge. THE JUDGE--Yes, you have. I can see you've got your sign up this morning. (Looking toward cage at back of room): Make them niggers stop talkin' back there! (To the wife): What did he do, Mandy? THE WIFE (angrily)--Jedge, he come bustin' in, and he come so fast he untook the do' off'n de hinges; den 'e begins-- THE JUDGE (to the prisoner, sarcastically)--You wasn't drunk, eh? THE PRISONER (weakly)--I might of had a drink oh two. THE JUDGE (severely)--Was--you--_drunk_? THE PRISONER--No, suh, Jedge. Ah wasn't drunk. Ah don't think no man's drunk s' long 's he can navigate, Jedge. I don't-- THE JUDGE--Oh, yes, he can be! He can navigate and navigate mighty mean!--Ten dollars. (At this point an officer speaks in a low tone to the judge, evidently interceding for the prisoner.) THE JUDGE (loudly)--No. That fine's very small. If it ain't worth ten dollars to get drunk, it ain't worth nothing at all. Next case! (While the next prisoner is being brought up, the judge entertains his audience with one of the humorous monologues for which he is famous, and which, together with the summary "justice" he metes out, keeps ripples of laughter running through the room): I'm going to get drunk myself, some day, and see what it does to me. [Laughter.] Mebbe I'll take a little cocaine, too. A NEGRO VOICE (from back of room, deep bass, and very fervent)--Oh, _no-o-o_! Don't do dat, Jedge! [More laughter.] THE JUDGE--Where's that prisoner? If he was a Baptist, he wouldn't be so slow. (The prisoner, a yellow negro, is brought to the bar. His trousers are mended with a large safety pin and his other equipment is to match.) THE JUDGE (inspecting the prisoner sharply)--You ain't a Richmond nigger. I can tell that to look at you. THE PRISONER--No, suh, Jedge. That's right. THE JUDGE--Where you from? You're from No'th Ca'lina, ain't you? THE PRISONER--Yas, suh, Jedge. THE JUDGE--Six months! (A great laugh rises from the courtroom at this. On inquiry we learn that the "joke" depends upon the judge's well-known aversion for negroes from North Carolina.) Only recently I have heard Walter C. Kelly as "The Virginia Judge." Save for a certain gentle side which Mr. Kelly indicates, and of which I saw no signs in Judge Crutchfield, I should say that, even though Judge Crutchfield is not his model, the suggestion of him is strongly there. Two of Mr. Kelly's "cases" are particularly reminiscent of the Richmond Police Court. One is as follows: THE JUDGE--First case--Sadie Anderson. THE PRISONER--Yassir! That's me! THE JUDGE--Thirty days in jail. That's me! Next case. The other: THE JUDGE--What's your name? THE PRISONER--Sam Williams. THE JUDGE--How old are you, Sam? THE PRISONER--Just twenty-four. THE JUDGE--You'll be just twenty-five when you get out. Next case! CHAPTER XXIV NORFOLK AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD Just as New York looks newer than Boston, but is actually older, Norfolk looks newer than Richmond. Business and population grow in Richmond, but you do not feel them growing as you do in Norfolk. You feel that Richmond business men already have money, whereas in Norfolk there is less old wealth and a great deal more scrambling for new dollars. Also you feel that law and order count for more in Richmond than in Norfolk, and that the strict prohibition law which not long ago became effective in Virginia will be more easily enforced in the capital than in the seaport. Norfolk, in short, likes the things New York likes. It likes tall office buildings, and it dotes on the signs of commercial activity by day and social activity by night. Furthermore, from the tops of some of the high buildings the place actually looks like a miniature New York: the Elizabeth River masquerading as the East River; Portsmouth, with its navy yard, pretending to be Brooklyn, while some old-time New York ferryboats, running between the two cities, assist in completing the illusion. In the neighboring city of Newport News, Norfolk has its equivalent for Jersey City and Hoboken, while Willoughby Spit protrudes into Hampton Roads like Sandy Hook reduced to miniature. The principal shopping streets of Norfolk and Richmond are as unlike as possible. Broad Street, Richmond, is very wide, and is never overcrowded, whereas Granby Street, Norfolk (advertised by local enthusiasts as "the livest street in Virginia," and appropriately spanned, at close intervals, by arches of incandescent lights), is none too wide for the traffic it carries, with the result that, during the afternoon and evening, it is truly very much alive. To look upon it at the crowded hours is to get a suggestion of a much larger city than Norfolk actually is--a suggestion which is in part accounted for by the fact that Norfolk's spending population, drawn from surrounding towns and cities, is much greater than the number of its inhabitants. Norfolk's extraordinary growth in the last two or three decades may be traced to several causes: to the fertility of the soil of the surrounding region, which, intensively cultivated, produces rich market-garden crops, making Norfolk a great shipping point for "truck"; to the development of the trade in peanuts, which are grown in large quantities in this corner of Virginia; to a great trade in oysters and other sea-food, and to the continually increasing importance of the Norfolk navy yard. In connection with the navy Norfolk has always figured prominently, Hampton Roads having been a favorite naval rendezvous since the early days of the American fleet. Now, however, it is announced that the cry of our navy for a real naval base--something we have never had, though all other important navies have them, Britain alone having three--has been heard in Washington, and that Norfolk has been selected as the site for a base. This is an important event not only for the Virginia seaport, but for the United States. Farmers who think they are in a poor business will do well to investigate Norfolk's recent history. The "trucking" industry of Norfolk is said to amount in the aggregate to twelve or fourteen million dollars annually, and many fortunes have been made from it. The pioneer "trucker" of the region was Mr. Richard Cox. A good many years ago Mr. Cox employed a German boy, a blacksmith by trade, named Henry Kern. Kern finally branched out for himself. When, in 1915, he died, his real estate holdings in Norfolk and Portsmouth were valued at two million dollars, all of which had been made from garden truck. He was but one of a considerable class of wealthy men whose fortunes have sprung from the same source. Many of the truck farms have access to the water. The farmers bring their produce to the city in their own boats, giving the port a picturesque note. At Norfolk it is transferred to steamers which carry it to New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Providence, Baltimore and Washington. Lately a considerable amount of truck has been shipped west by rail, as well. Hundreds of acres of ground in the vicinity of the city are under glass and large crops of winter vegetables are raised. Kale and spinach are being grown and harvested throughout the cold months; strawberries, potatoes, beans, peas, cucumbers, cabbage, lettuce and other vegetables follow through the spring and summer, running on into the fall, when the corn crop becomes important. Corn is raised chiefly by the peanut farmer, whose peanuts grow between his corn-rows. While the banks are "carrying" the peanut farmers, pending their fall harvest, the activities of the "truckers" are at their height, so that the money loaned to one class of agriculturist is replaced by the deposits of the other class; and by the same token, of course, the peanut farmers are depositing money in the banks when the "truckers" want to borrow. This situation, one judges, is not found objectionable by Norfolk and Portsmouth bankers, and I have been told that, as a corollary, these banks have never been forced, even in times of dire panic, to issue clearing house certificates, but have always paid cash. Norfolk has grown so fast and has so rapidly replaced the old with the new, that the visitor must keep his eyes open if he would not miss entirely such lovely souvenirs of an earlier and easier life, as still remain. Who would imagine, seeing it to-day, that busy Granby Street had ever been a street of fine residences? Yet a very few years have passed since the old Newton, Tazwell, Dickson and Taylor residences surrendered to advancing commerce and gave place to stores and office buildings--the two last mentioned having been replaced by the Dickson Building and the Taylor Building, erected less than fifteen years ago. Freemason Street is the highway which, more than any other, tells of olden times. For though the downtown end of this lovely old thoroughfare has lapsed into decay, many beautiful mansions, dating from long ago, are to be seen a few blocks out from the busier portion of the city. Among these should be mentioned the Whittle house, the H.N. Castle house, and particularly the exquisite ivy-covered residence of Mr. Barton Myers, at the corner of Bank Street. The city of Norfolk ought, I think, to attempt to acquire this house and preserve it (using it perhaps as a memorial museum to contain historical relics) to show what has been, in Norfolk, as against what is, and to preach a silent sermon on the high estate of beauty from which a fine old city may fall, in the name of progress and commercial growth. To the credit of Norfolk be it said that old St. Paul's Church, with its picturesque churchyard and tombs, is excellently cared for and properly valued as a pre-Revolutionary relic. The church was built in 1730, and was struck by a British cannon-ball when Lord Dunmore bombarded the place in 1776. Baedeker tells me, however, that the cannon-ball now resting in the indentation in the wall of the church is "not the original." When I say that St. Paul's is properly valued I mean that many citizens told my companion and me to be sure to visit. I observe, however--and I take it as a sign of the times in Norfolk--that an extensive, well-printed and much illustrated book on Norfolk, issued by the Chamber of Commerce, contains pictures of banks, docks, breweries, mills, office buildings, truck farms, peanut farms, battleships, clubhouses, hotels, hospitals, factories, and innumerable new residences, but no picture of the church, or of the lovely old homes of Freemason Street. Nor do I find in the booklet any mention of the history of the city or the surrounding region--although that region includes places of the greatest beauty and interest: among them the glorious old manor houses of the James River; the ancient and charming town of Williamsburg, second capital of the Virginia colony, and seat of William and Mary College, the oldest college in the United States excepting Harvard; Yorktown, "Waterloo of the Revolution"; many important battlefields of the Civil War; Hampton Institute, the famous negro industrial school at Hampton, nearby; the lovely stretch of water on which the _Monitor_ met the _Merrimac_[3]; the site of the first English settlement in America at Jamestown, and, for mystery and desolation, the Dismal Swamp with Lake Drummond at its heart. But then, I suppose it is natural that the Chamber of Commerce mind should thrust aside such things in favor of the mighty "goober," which is a thing of to-day, a thing for which Norfolk is said to be the greatest of all markets. For is not history dead, and is not the man who made a fortune out of a device for shelling peanuts without causing the nuts to drop in two, still living? [3] The _Merrimac_, originally a Federal vessel of wooden construction, was sunk by the Union forces when they abandoned Norfolk. A Confederate captain, John M. Brooke, raised her, equipped her with a ram, and covered her with boiler plate and railroad rails. She is called the first ironclad. While she was being reconstructed John Ericsson was building his _Monitor_ in New York. The turret was first used on this vessel. It is worth noting that at the time of the engagement between these two ships the _Monitor_ was not the property of the Federal Government, but belonged to C.S. Bushnell, of New Haven, who built her at his own expense, in spite of the opposition of the Navy Department of that day. The Government paid for her long after the fight. It should also be noted that the _Merrimac_ did not fight under that name, but as a Confederate ship had been rechristened _Virginia_. The patriotic action of Mr. Bushnell is recalled by the fact that, only recently, Mr. Godfrey L. Cabot, of Boston, has agreed to furnish funds to build the torpedoplane designed by Admiral Fiske as a weapon wherewith to attack the German fleet within its defenses at Kiel. And yet the modernness on which Norfolk so evidently prides herself is not something to be lightly valued. Fine schools, fine churches and miles of pleasant, recently built homes are things for any American city to rejoice in. Therefore Norfolk rejoices in Ghent, her chief modern residence district, which is penetrated by arms of the Elizabeth River, so that many of the houses in this part of the city look out upon pretty lagoons, dotted over with all manner of pleasure craft. Less than twenty years ago, the whole of what is now Ghent was a farm, and there are other suburban settlements, such as Edgewater, Larchmont, Winona and Lochhaven, out in the direction of Hampton Roads, which have grown up in the last six or eight years. The Country Club of Norfolk, with a very pleasing club-house on the water, and an eighteen-hole golf course, is at Lochhaven, and the new naval base is, I believe, to be located somewhat farther out, on the site of the Jamestown Exposition. Norfolk is well provided with nearby seaside recreation places, of which probably the most attractive is Virginia Beach, facing the ocean. Ocean View, so called, is on Chesapeake Bay, and there are summer cottage colonies at Willoughby Spit and Cape Henry. On the bay side of Cape Henry is Lynnhaven Inlet connecting Lynnhaven Bay and River with Chesapeake Bay. From Lynnhaven Bay come the famous oysters of that name, now to be had in most of the large cities of the East, but which seemed to me to taste a little better at the Virginia Club, in Norfolk, than oysters ever tasted anywhere. Perhaps that was because they were real Lynnhavens, just as the Virginia Club's Smithfield ham is real Smithfield ham from the little town of Smithfield, Virginia, a few miles distant. On the bank of the Lynnhaven River is situated the Old Donation farm with a ruined church, and an ancient dwelling house which was used as the first courthouse in Princess Anne County; and not far distant from this place is Witch Duck Point, where Grace Sherwood, after having been three times tried, and finally convicted as a witch, was thrown into the river. The several waterside places I have mentioned are more or less local in character, but there is nothing local about Fortress Monroe, on Old Point Comfort, just across Hampton Roads, which has for many years been one of the most beautiful and highly individualized idling places on the Atlantic Coast. The old moated fortress, the interior of which is more like some lovely garden of the last century than a military post, remains an important coast artillery station, and is a no less lovely spot now than when our grandparents went there on their wedding journeys, stopping at the old Hygiea Hotel, long since gone the way of old hotels. The huge Chamberlin Hotel, however, remains apparently unchanged, and is to-day as spacious, comfortable and homelike as when our fathers and mothers, or perhaps we ourselves, stopped there years ago. The Chamberlin, indeed, seems to have the gift of perennial youth. I remember a ball which was given there in honor of Admiral Sampson and the officers of his fleet, after the Spanish War. The ballroom was so full of naval and military uniforms that I, in my somber civilian clothing, felt wan and lonely. Most of the evening I passed in modest retirement, looking out upon the brilliant scene from behind a potted palm. And yet, when my companion and I, now in our dotage, recently visited the Chamberlin, there stood the same potted palm in the same place. Or if it was not the same, it was one exactly like it. The Chamberlin is of course a great headquarters for army and navy people, and we observed, moreover, that honeymooning couples continue to infest it--for Fortress Monroe has long ranked with Washington and Niagara Falls as a scene to be visited upon the wedding journey. There they all were, as of old: the young husband scowling behind his newspaper and pretending to read and not to be thinking of his pretty little wife across the breakfast table; the fat blonde bride being continually photographed by her adoring mate--now leaning against a pile on the pier, now seated on a wall, with her feet crossed, now standing under a live-oak within the fortress; also there was the inevitable young pair who simply couldn't keep their hands off from each other; we came upon them constantly--in the sun-parlor, where she would be seated on the arm of his chair, running her hand through his hair; wandering in the eventide along the shore, with arms about each other, or going in to meals, she leading him down the long corridor by his "ickle finger". * * * * * I recall that it was as we were going back to Norfolk from Old Point Comfort, having dinner on a most excellent large steamer, running to Norfolk and Cape Charles, that my companion remarked to me, out of a clear sky, that he had made up his mind, once for all, that, come what might, he would never, never, never get married. No, never! CHAPTER XXV COLONEL TAYLOR AND GENERAL LEE Forth from its scabbard all in vain Bright flashed the sword of Lee; 'Tis shrouded now in its sheath again, It sleeps the sleep of our noble slain, Defeated, yet without a stain, Proudly and peacefully. --ABRAM J. RYAN. Though I had often heard, before going into the South, of the devotion of that section to the memory of General Robert E. Lee, I never fully realized the extent of that devotion until I began to become a little bit acquainted with Virginia. I remember being struck, while in Norfolk, with the fact that portraits of General Lee were to be seen in many offices and homes, much as one might expect, at the present time, to find portraits of Joffre and Nivelle in the homes of France, or of Haig in the homes of Britain. It is not enough to say that the memory of Lee is to the South like that of Napoleon I to France, for it is more. The feeling of France for Napoleon is one of admiration, of delight in a national military genius, of hero-worship, but there is not intermingled with it the quality of pure affection which fully justifies the use of the word _love_, in characterizing the feeling of the South for its great military leader--the man of whom Lord Wolseley said: "He was a being apart and superior to all others in every way; a man with whom none I ever knew, and very few of whom I ever read are worthy to be compared; a man who was cast in a grander mould and made of finer metal than all other men." Nor is this love surprising, for whereas Napoleon was a self-seeking man, and one whose personal character was not altogether admirable in other respects, and whereas he could hardly be said to typify France's ideal of everything a gentleman should be, Lee sought nothing for himself, was a man of great nobility of character, and was in perfection a Virginia gentleman. At the end, moreover, where Napoleon's defeat was that of an aspirant to conquest, glory and empire, Lee's defeat was that of a cause, and the cause was regarded in the entire South as almost holy, so that, in defeat, the South felt itself martyred, and came to look upon its great general with a love and veneration unequaled in history, and much more resembling the feeling of France for the canonized Joan of Arc, than for the ambitious Corsican. When, therefore, my companion and I heard, while in Norfolk, that Colonel Walter H. Taylor, president of the Marine Bank of that city, had served through the Civil War on General Lee's staff, we naturally became very anxious to meet him; and I am glad to say that Colonel Taylor, though at the time indisposed and confined to his home, was so kind as to receive us. He was seated in a large chair in his library, on the second floor of his residence, a pleasant old-fashioned brick house at the corner of York and Yarmouth Streets--a slender man, not very tall, I judged (though I did not see him standing), not very strong at the moment, but with nothing of the decrepitude of old age about him, for all his seventy-seven years. Upon the contrary he was, in appearance and manner, delightfully alert, with the sort of alertness which lends to some men and women, regardless of their years, a suggestion of perpetual youthfulness. Such alertness, in those who have lived a long time, is most often the result of persistent intellectual activity, and the sign of it is usually to be read in the eyes. Colonel Taylor's keen, dark, observant, yet kindly eyes, were perhaps his finest feature, though, indeed, all his features were fine, and his head, with its well-trimmed white hair and mustache, was one of great distinction. Mrs. Taylor (of whom we had previously been warned to beware, because she had not yet forgiven the "Yankees" for their sins) was also present: a beautiful old lady of unquenchable spirit, in whose manner, though she received us with politeness, we detected lurking danger. And why not? Do not women remember some things longer than men remember them? Do not the sweethearts who stayed at home remember the continual dull dread they suffered while the men they loved faced danger, whereas the absent lovers were at least in part compensated for the risks they ran, by the continual sense of high adventure and achievement? Mrs. Taylor was Miss Elizabeth Selden Saunders, daughter of Captain John L. Saunders of Virginia, who died in 1860, in the service of his country, a commander in the United States Navy. When the war broke out Miss Saunders, wishing to serve the Confederate Government, became a clerk in the Surgeon General's office, at Richmond, and there she remained while Colonel Taylor, whose training at the Virginia Military Institute, coupled with his native ability, made him valuable as an officer, followed the fortunes of General Lee, part of the time as the general's aide-de-camp, and the rest of the time as adjutant-general and chief of staff of the Army of Northern Virginia, in which capacities he was present at all general engagements of the army, under Lee. On April 2, 1865, when Lee's gallant but fast dwindling army, short of supplies, and so reduced in numbers as to be no longer able to stand against the powerful forces of Grant, was evacuating its lines at Petersburg, when it was evident that the capital of the Confederacy was about to fall, and the orders for retreat had been despatched by Colonel Taylor, in his capacity as adjutant--then the colonel went to his commander and asked for leave of absence over night, for the purpose of going to Richmond and being married. He tells the story in his exceedingly interesting and valuable book, "General Lee--His Campaigns in Virginia": At the close of the day's work, when all was in readiness for the evacuation of our lines under cover of the darkness of night, I asked permission of General Lee to ride over to Richmond and to rejoin him early the next morning, telling him that my mother and sisters were in Richmond and that I would like to say good-by to them, and that my sweetheart was there, and we had arranged, if practicable, to be married that night. He expressed some surprise at my entertaining such a purpose at that time, but when I explained to him that the home of my bride-elect was in the enemy's lines, that she was alone in Richmond and employed in one of the departments of the government, and wished to follow the fortunes of the Confederacy should our lines be reëstablished farther South, he promptly gave his assent to my plans. I galloped to the railroad station, then at Dunlops, on the north side of the river, where I found a locomotive and several cars, constituting the "ambulance train," designed to carry to Richmond the last of the wounded of our army requiring hospital treatment. I asked the agent if he had another engine, when, pointing to one rapidly receding in the direction of Richmond, he replied, "Yonder goes the only locomotive we have besides the one attached to this train." Turning my horse over to the courier who accompanied me, with directions to join me in Richmond as soon as he could, I mounted the locomotive in waiting, directed the engineer to detach it from the cars and to proceed to overtake the engine ahead of us. It was what the sailors call a stern chase and a long one. We did not overtake the other locomotive until it had reached Falling Creek, about three-fourths of the distance, when I transferred to it and sent the other back to Petersburg. I reached Richmond without further incident, and soon after midnight I was married to Elizabeth Selden Saunders.... As will be readily understood, the occasion was not one of great hilarity, though I was very happy; my eyes were the only dry ones in the company.... The people of Richmond were greatly excited and in despair in the contemplation of the abandonment of their beautiful city by our troops. General Lee had for so long a time thwarted the designs of his powerful adversaries for the capture of the city, and seemed so unfailing and resourceful in his efforts to hold them at bay, that the good people found it difficult to realize that he was compelled at last to give way. There was universal gloom and despair at the thought that at the next rising of the sun the detested Federal soldiers would take possession of the city and occupy its streets. The transportation companies were busily engaged in arranging for the removal of the public stores and of the archives of the government. A fire in the lower part of the city was fiercely raging, and added greatly to the excitement. Somewhere near four o'clock on the morning of the 3d of April I bade farewell to all my dear ones, and in company with my brother-in-law, Colonel John S. Saunders, proceeded toward Mayo's Bridge, which we crossed to the south side of the James, in the lurid glare of the fire, and within the sound of several heavy explosions that we took to be the final scene in the career of the Confederate navy, then disappearing in smoke on the James River, near Rockets. Before we departed from the colonel's library, which we felt obliged to do much sooner than we wished to, owing to the condition of his health, he called our attention to an oil portrait of his old commander, which occupied the place of honor above the mantelpiece, and asked his daughters to let us see his scrap-book, containing personal letters from General Lee, Jefferson Davis, and other distinguished men, as well as various war documents of unusual interest. We felt it a great privilege to handle these old letters and to read them, and the charm of them was the greater for the affection in which the general held Colonel Taylor, as evidenced by the tone in which he wrote. To us it was a wonderful evening.... And it still seems to me wonderful to think that I have met and talked with a man who issued Lee's orders, who rode forth with Lee when he went to meet Grant in conference at Appomattox, just before the surrender, who once slept under the same blanket with Lee, who knew Lee as well perhaps as one man can know another, and under conditions calculated to try men to the utmost. As adjutant, Colonel Taylor took an active part in arranging details of surrender and parole. He says: Each officer and soldier was furnished for his protection from arrest or annoyance with a slip of paper containing his parole, signed by his commander and countersigned by an officer of the Federal army. I signed these paroles for all members of the staff, and when my own case was reached I requested General Lee to sign mine, which I have retained to the present time. This document, with Colonel Taylor's name and title in his own handwriting, and the signature of General Lee, I am able to reproduce here through the courtesy of the colonel's daughters, Mrs. William B. Baldwin and Miss Taylor, of Norfolk. It is the only parole which was signed personally by General Lee. [Illustration] On the back of the little slip, which is of about the size of a bank check, is the countersignature of George H. Sharpe, Assistant Provost Marshal general: [Illustration] Following his parole Colonel Taylor rode with General Lee to Richmond. The general seemed to be in a philosophical frame of mind, but thought much of the future. The subject of the surrender and its consequences was about exhausted. The Colonel tells of one incident: On the route General Lee stopped for the night near the residence of his brother, Mr. Carter Lee, in Powhatan County; and although importuned by his brother to pass the night under his roof, the general persisted in pitching his tent by the side of the road and going into camp as usual. This continued self-denial can only be explained upon the hypothesis that he desired to have his men know that he shared their privations to the very last. This was perfectly in character with Lee. Throughout the War, we learn from Colonel Taylor's book, the general used the army ration, and lived the army life. He would not take up his quarters in a house, because he wished to share the lot of his men, and also because he feared that, in the event of the house falling into the hands of the enemy, the very fact of its having been occupied by him might possibly cause its destruction. It was only during the last year of the War, when his health was somewhat impaired, that he consented sometimes to vary this rule. Lee's chivalrous nature is well shown forth in his famous General Orders, No. 73, issued at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, a few days before Gettysburg. After congratulating the troops on their good conduct the general continued as follows: There have, however, been instances of forgetfulness on the part of some that they have in keeping the yet unsullied reputation of the army, and that the duties exacted of us by civilization and Christianity are not less obligatory in the country of the enemy than in our own. The commanding general considers that no greater disgrace could befall the army, and through it our whole people, than the perpetration of the barbarous outrages upon the unarmed and defenseless, and the wanton destruction of private property, that have marked the course of the enemy in our own country. Such proceedings not only degrade the perpetrators and all connected with them, but are subversive to the discipline and efficiency of the army, and destructive of the ends of our present movement. It must be remembered that we make war only upon armed men, and that we cannot take vengeance for the wrongs our people have suffered without lowering ourselves in the eyes of all whose abhorrence has been excited by the atrocities of our enemies, and offending against Him to whom vengeance belongeth, without whose favor and support our efforts must all prove in vain. The commanding general, therefore, earnestly exhorts the troops to abstain with most scrupulous care from unnecessary or wanton injury to private property, and he enjoins upon all officers to arrest and bring to summary punishment all who shall in any way offend against the orders on this subject. R.E. Lee, General. Truly, a document to serve as a model for warriors of all future generations, albeit one showing an utter lack of "Kultur"! Said Charles Francis Adams, of Massachusetts: "I doubt if a hostile force ever advanced into an enemy's country, or fell back from it in retreat, leaving behind it less cause of hate and bitterness than did the Army of Northern Virginia in that memorable campaign." After the war, Colonel Taylor and his wife settled in Norfolk, where, within a very short time, a United States grand jury indicted Jefferson Davis and General Lee for treason--this, in the case of Lee, being in direct violation of the terms of surrender. When Grant learned of the shameful action of the grand jury he complained to Washington and caused the proceedings against Lee to be dropped. In Colonel Taylor's scrap-book I found a letter written by Lee before the indictment had been quashed, referring to the subject: Richmond, Va. June 17, 1865. My dear Colonel: I am very much obliged to you for your letter of the 13th. I had heard of the indictment by the grand jury at Norfolk, and made up my mind to let the authorities take their course. I have no wish to avoid any trial the government may order, and cannot flee. I hope others may be unmolested, and that you at least may be undisturbed. I am sorry to hear that our returned soldiers cannot obtain employment. Tell them they must all set to work, and if they cannot do what they prefer, do what they can. Virginia wants all their aid, all their support, and the presence of all her sons to sustain and recuperate her. They must therefore put themselves in a position to take part in her government, and not be deterred by obstacles in their way. There is much to be done which they only can do. Very truly yours, R.E. Lee. As time went on, and the more gaping wounds began to heal, Colonel Taylor's letters from the general took in many cases a lighter and happier tone. After some years, when four daughters had been born to Colonel and Mrs. Taylor, while yet they had no son, the general chaffed them gently on the subject: "Give my congratulations to Mrs. Taylor," he wrote. "Tell her I hope that when her fancy for girls is satisfied (mine is exorbitant) she will begin upon the boys. We must have somebody to work for them." One of the colonel's sons was present when I came upon this letter. "And you see," he smiled, "my father obeyed his old commander to the last, for the next baby was a boy, and the next, and the next, and the next, until there were as many boys as girls in our family." * * * * * Colonel Taylor died at his home in Norfolk, March 1, 1916, and on the subsequent June 15, was followed by his wife. His death leaves but three members of Lee's staff surviving, namely, Rev. Giles B. Cooke, of Portsmouth, Virginia, Inspector General; Major Henry E. Young, of Charleston, South Carolina, Judge Advocate General; and Colonel T.M.R. Talcott, of Richmond, Virginia, Aide-de-Camp. Of these officers only the first two surrendered with General Lee, Colonel Talcott having left the staff by promotion in 1863. Yes, two of them surrendered, but if we are to believe Charles Francis Adams we cannot say that Lee and his forces were actually vanquished, for as the Massachusetts soldier-author put it: "Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia never sustained defeat. Finally succumbing to exhaustion, to the end they were not overthrown in fight." THE HEART OF THE SOUTH CHAPTER XXVI RALEIGH AND JOSEPHUS DANIELS Jedge Crutchfield give de No'th Ca'lina nigger frown; De mahkets says ouh tehapin am secon'-rate, An' Mistuh Daniels, he call Raleigh his hum town. --I wondah what kin be de mattuh wid ouh State? Just as it is the fashion in the Middle West to speak jestingly of Kansas, it is the fashion in the South to treat lightly the State of North Carolina. And just as my companion and I, long ago, on another voyage of discovery, were eager to get into Kansas and find out what that fabulous Commonwealth was really like, so we became anxious, as we heard the gossip about the "Old North State," to enter it and form our own conclusions. The great drawback to an attempt to see North Carolina, however, lies in the fact that North Carolina is, so to speak, spread very thin. It has no great solid central city occupying a place in its thoughts and its affairs corresponding to that occupied by Richmond, in its relation to Virginia. Like Mississippi, it is a State of small towns and small cities. Its metropolis, Charlotte, had, by the 1910 census, less than 35,000 inhabitants; its seaport, Wilmington, a little more than 25,000; its capital, Raleigh, less than 20,000; its beautiful mountain resort, Asheville, fourth city in the State, less than 19,000. I hasten to add that the next census will undoubtedly show considerable growth in all these cities. In Raleigh I found every one insistent on this point. The town is growing; it is a going place; a great deal of new building is in progress; and when you ask about the population, progressive citizens are prepared to do much better by their city than the census takers did, some years ago. They talk thirty thousand, instead of twenty, and they are ready with astonishing statistics about the number of students in the schools and colleges as compared with the total population of the city--statistics showing that though Raleigh is not large she is progressive. Which is quite true. I recollect that Judge Francis D. Winston, former Lieutenant Governor of the State, United States District Attorney, and the most engaging raconteur in the Carolinas, contributed a story to a discussion of Raleigh's population, which occurred, one evening, at a dinner at the Country Club. "A promoter," he said, "was once trying to borrow money on a boom town. He went to a banker and showed him a map, not of what the town was, but of what he claimed it was going to be. 'Here,' he said, 'is where the town hall will stand. In this lot will be the opera house. Over here we are going to have a beautiful park. And on this corner we are going to erect a tall granite office building.' "'But,' said the banker, coldly, 'we lend money only on the basis of population.' "'That's all right,' returned the promoter. 'Measured by any known standard except an actual _count_, we have a population of two hundred thousand.'" I shall not attempt to point this tale more than to recommend it to the attention of the secretary of the Chamber of Commerce in every city in the United States. * * * * * Raleigh is situated within seven miles of the exact center of North Carolina. The land on which the city stands was purchased by the State, in 1792, from a man named Joel Lane, whose former house still stands. The town was then laid out in a one mile square, with the site selected for the State Capitol directly at the center of it, and lots were sold off by the State to individuals, the proceeds of these sales being used to build the Capitol. As a result the parks, streets and sidewalks of the original old town still belong to the State of North Carolina, and the city has jurisdiction over them only by courtesy of the State government. Raleigh has, of course, much outgrown its original dimensions, and the government of the town, outside the original square mile at the center, is as in other towns. While Raleigh has not the look of age which characterizes many old southern cities, causing them to delight the eye and the imagination, its broad streets have here and there a building old enough to remove from the town any air of raw newness, and to make it a homelike looking place. The sidewalks are wide; when we were in Raleigh those of the principal streets were paved largely with soft-colored old red bricks, which, however, were being taken up and replaced with cement. Not being a resident of Raleigh, and consequently not having been obliged to tread the rough brick pavements daily, I was sorry to witness this victory of utility over beauty. One of the pleasant old buildings is the Yarborough Hotel, at which my companion and I stayed. The Yarborough is an exceedingly good hotel for a city of the size of Raleigh, especially, it may be added, when that city is in the South. The Capitol, standing among trees in a small park, also gathers a fine flavor from age. In one of the many simple dignified apartments of this building my companion and I were introduced to the gentleman who was governor of the State at the time of our visit. It seemed to me that he had a look both worn and apprehensive, and that, while we talked, he was waiting for something. I don't know how I gathered this impression, but it came to me definitely. After we had departed from the executive chamber I asked the gentleman who had taken us there if the governor was ill. "No," he replied. "All our governors look like that after they have been in office for a while." "From overwork?" "No, from an overworked jest--the jest about 'what the Governor of North Carolina said to the Governor of South Carolina.' Every one who meets the governor thinks of that joke and believes confidently that no one has ever before thought of this application of it. So they all pull it on him. For the first few months our governors stand it pretty well, but after that they begin to break down. They feel they ought to smile, but they can't. They begin to dread meeting strangers, and to show it in their bearing. When in private life our governor had a very pleasant expression, but like all the others, he has acquired, in office, the expression of an iron dog." Raleigh's most widely-known citizen is Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, and publisher of the Raleigh "News and Observer." This paper, published in the morning, and the "Times," a rival paper, published in the afternoon, are, I believe, the only dailies in the city. Mr. Daniels has been so much discussed that I was greatly interested in hearing what Raleigh had to say of him. Every one knew him personally. The men on his paper seemed to be very fond of him; others held various opinions. In 1894 Mr. Daniels came from Washington, D.C., where he had been chief clerk in the Department of the Interior, when Hoke Smith was Secretary, and acquired the newspaper of which he has since been proprietor. In its first years under Mr. Daniels, the paper is said to have gone through severe financial struggles, and there is an amusing story current, about the way the payroll was met upon one occasion. According to this tale, the business manager of the paper came to Mr. Daniels, one day, and informed him that he needed sixty dollars more to make the payroll, and didn't know where he was going to get it. The only ready asset in sight, it is related, was several cases of a patent medicine known as "Mrs. Joe Persons' Remedy," which had been taken by the "News and Observer" in payment for advertising space. Mr. Daniels had a few dollars, and his business manager had a railroad pass. With these resources the latter went out on the road and sold the patent medicine for enough to make up the deficit. Until Mr. Daniels was appointed Secretary of the Navy he seems to have been regarded by many citizens of Raleigh, as a good, earnest, hard-working man, possessed of considerable personal magnetism and a good political nose--a man who could scent how the pack was running, take a short-cut, and presently appear to be leading. In other words an opportunist. Though he has not much education, and though as a writer he is far from polished, it is said that he has written powerful editorials. "When his editorials have been good," said one gentleman, "it is because he has been stirred up over something, and because he manages sometimes to get into his writing the intensity of his own personality." His office used to be, and still is, when he is in Raleigh, a sort of political headquarters, and he used to be able to write editorials while half a dozen politicians were sitting around his desk, talking. With his paper he has done much good in the State, notably by fighting consistently for prohibition and for greater public educational advantages. The strong educational movement in North Carolina began with a group of men chief among whom were the late Governor Charles B. Aycock, called "the educational governor"; Dr. E.A. Alderman, who, though president of the University of Virginia, is a North Carolinian and was formerly president of the University of that State; Dr. Charles D. McKeever who committed the State to the principle of higher education for women, and other men of similar high purpose. A gentleman who was far from an unqualified admirer of Mr. Daniels, told me that without his aid the great educational advance which the state has certainly made of recent years could hardly have been accomplished, and that the same thing applies in the case of prohibition--which has been adopted in North Carolina. "What sort of man is he?" I asked this gentleman. "He is the old type of Methodist," he said. "He is the kind of man who believes that the whale swallowed Jonah. He has the same concept of religion that he had as a child. I differ with his policies, his politics, his mental methods, but I don't think anybody here doubts that he is trying, not only to do the moral thing himself, but to force others to adopt, as rules for public conduct, the exact code in which he personally believes, and which he certainly follows. His mental processes are often crude, yet he has much native shrewdness and the ability to grasp situations as they arise. "He does not come of the aristocratic class, which probably accounts for his failure, when he first became secretary, to perceive the necessity for discipline in the navy, and the benefits of naval tradition. "He was an ardent follower--I might say swallower--of Bryan, gobbling whole all of the "Great Commoner's" vagaries. It has been said, more or less humorously, but doubtless with a foundation of fact, that he was "Secretary of War in all of Bryan's cabinets." That shows where Bryan placed him. Yet when Bryan broke with Wilson and made his exit from the Cabinet, Daniels found it perfectly simple, apparently, to drop the Bryanism which had, hitherto, been the very essence of his life, and become a no less ardent supporter of the President. "When he was first taken into the cabinet he evidently regarded the finer social amenities as matters of no consequence, or even as effeminacies. He had but little sense of the fitness of things, and was, in consequence, continually making _faux pas_; but he is observant; he has learned a great deal in the course of his life as a cabinet member, both as to his work in the Department, and as to the niceties of formal social life." At the time of our visit to Raleigh I had not met Mr. Daniels, nor heard him speak. Since that time I have heard him several times and have talked with him. Also I have talked of him with a number of men who have been thrown more or less closely in contact with him. As is well known, naval officers detested him with peculiar unanimity. This was true up to the time of our entering the War. Whether matters have changed greatly since then I am unable to say. One officer, well known in the navy, said to me quite seriously that he believed the navy would be better off without its two best dreadnoughts if in losing them it could also lose Mr. Daniels. Such sentiments were peculiarly unanimous among officers. On the other hand, however, a high officer, who has been quite close to the Secretary, informs me that it is indeed true that he has improved as experience has come to him. This officer stated that when Mr. Daniels first took office he seemed to be definitely antagonistic to officers of the navy. "He appeared to suspect them of pulling political wires and working in their own interests. That was in the days when he seemed almost to encourage insubordination among the enlisted men, by his attitude toward them, in contrast to his attitude towards their superiors. Of course it was demoralizing to the service. But there has been a marked change in the Secretary since Bryan left the Cabinet." From several sources I have heard the same evidence. I never heard any one say that Mr. Daniels was really an able Secretary of the Navy, but I have heard many say that he improved. Personally he is a very likable man. His face is kind and gentle; his features are interestingly irregular and there are heavy wrinkles about his mouth and eyes--the former adding something to the already humorous twinkle of the eyes. His voice has a _timbre_ reminding me of George M. Cohan's voice. He is hardly an orator in the sense that Bryan is, yet he is not without simple oratorical tricks--as for example a tremolo, as of emotion, which I have heard him use in uttering such a phrase as "the grea-_a-a-at_ Daniel _Web_-ster!" Also, he wears a low turnover collar and a black string tie--a fact which would not be worth noting did these not form a part of what amounts almost to a uniform worn by politicians of more or less the Bryan type. Almost invariably there seems to be something of the minister and something of the actor in such men. Once I asked one of the famous Washington correspondents what manner of man Mr. Daniels was. "He's a man," he said, "that you'd like to go with on a hunting trip in his native North Carolina. He would be a good companion and would have a lot of funny stories. He is full of kind intentions. Had you known him before the War, and had he liked you, and had you wished to take a ride upon a battleship, he would be disposed to order up a battleship and send you for a ride, even if, by doing so, he muddled up the fleet a little. That would be in line with his fixing it for moving picture people to act scenes on a battleship's deck--which he permitted. He saw no reason why that was not proper, and the kind of people who admire him most are those who, likewise, see no reason why it was not proper. The great lack in his nature is that of personal dignity--or even the dignity which should be his because of his position. If you are sitting beside him and he is amiably disposed toward you, he may throw his arm over your shoulder, or massage your knee while talking with you. "But if some friend of his were to go to him and convince him that he lacked dignity, he is the kind of man who, in my judgment, would become so much the worse. That is, if he attempted to attain dignity he would not achieve it, but would merely grow arbitrary. That, to my mind, shows his great ineradicable weakness, for it not only reveals him as a man too little for his job, but prevents his comprehending the basic thing upon which naval discipline is founded. Nevertheless, as a man you like him. It is as Secretary of the Navy, and particularly as a War Secretary, that you very definitely don't." Some time after our visit to Raleigh my companion and I heard Secretary Daniels speak in Charleston. He told a funny story and talked generalities about the navy. That was before the United States entered the War. I do not know what he meant the speech for, but what it actually was, was a speech against preparedness. So was the speech made on the same occasion by Lemuel P. Padgett, chairman of the House Committee on Naval Affairs. It was a disingenuous speech, a speech to lull the country into confidence, a speech which, alone, should have been sufficient to prove Mr. Padgett's unfitness to serve on that committee. Mr. Daniels argued that "Germany's preparedness had not kept Germany out of war"; that seemed enough, but there was one thing he said which utterly dumbfounded me. It was this: "_The Southern statesman who serves his section best, serves the country best._" Let the reader reflect for a moment upon such an utterance. Carried a little farther what would it mean? Would it not be equally logical to say that the man who serves himself best serves the country best? It is the theory of narrow sectionalism, and by implication, at least, the theory of individualism as well. And sectionalism and individualism are two of the great curses of the United States. Compare with Mr. Daniels' words those of John Hay who, veiling fine patriotism beneath a web of delicate humor, said: "_In my bewilderment of origin and experience I can only put on an aspect of deep humility in any gathering of favorite sons, and confess that I am nothing but an American._" Or again, compare with them the famous words of Patrick Henry: "_I am not a Virginian, but an American._" Clearly, one point of view or the other is wrong. Perhaps Mr. Daniels has more light on sectional questions than had Patrick Henry or John Hay. At all events, the Charleston audience applauded. CHAPTER XXVII ITEMS FROM "THE OLD NORTH STATE" Two of the most interesting things we saw in Raleigh were the model jail on the top floor of the new County Court House, where a lot of very honest looking rustics were confined to await trial for making "blockade" (otherwise moonshine) whisky, and the North Carolina Hall of History, which occupies a floor in the fine new State Administration Building, opposite the Capitol. At the head of the first stair landing in the Administration Building is a memorial tablet to William Sidney Porter ("O Henry"), who was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, with a bust of the author, in relief, by Lorado Taft. Porter, it may be mentioned, was a connection of Worth Bagley, the young ensign who was the only American naval officer killed in the Spanish-American War. Bagley was a brother of Mrs. Josephus Daniels. A monument to him stands in the park before the Capitol. Aside from Porter, the only author well known in our time whom I heard mentioned in connection with North Carolina, was the Rev. Thomas Dixon, whose name is most familiar, perhaps, in connection with the moving-picture called "The Birth of a Nation," taken from one of his novels. Mr. Dixon was born in the town of Shelby, North Carolina, and was for some years pastor of the Tabernacle Baptist Church, Raleigh. The Hall of History, containing a great variety of State relics, is one of the most fascinating museums I ever visited. Too much praise cannot be given Colonel Fred A. Olds and Mr. Marshall De Lancey Haywood, of the North Carolina Historical Society, for making it what it is. As with the Confederate Museum in Richmond, so, here, it is impossible to give more than a faint idea of the interest of the museum's contents. Among the exhibits of which I made note, I shall, however, mention a few. There was a letter written from Paris in the handwriting of John Paul Jones, requesting a copy of the Constitution of North Carolina; there was the Ku Klux warning issued to one Ben Turner of Northampton County; and there was an old newspaper advertisement signed by James J. Selby, a tailor, dated at Raleigh, June 24, 1824, offering a reward of ten dollars for the capture and return of two runaways: "apprentice boys, legally bound, named William and Andrew Johnson." The last named boy was the same Andrew Johnson who later became a distinctly second-rate President of the United States. Also there was a peculiarly tragic Civil War memento, consisting of a note which was found clasped in the dead hand of Colonel Isaac Avery, of the 6th North Carolina Regiment, who was killed while commanding a brigade on the second day at Gettysburg. _Tell my father I died with my face to the enemy._ These words were written by the fallen officer with his left hand, his right arm having been rendered useless by his mortal wound. For ink he used his own life blood. Also in the museum may be seen the chart-book of Blackbeard, the pirate, who, one of the curators of the museum informed me, was the same person as Edward Teach. Blackbeard, who is commemorated in the name of Blackbeard's Island, off the coast of South Georgia, met his fate when he encountered a cruiser fitted out by Governor Spotswood of Virginia and commanded by Lieutenant Maynard. Maynard found Blackbeard's ship at Okracoke Inlet, on the North Carolina coast. Before he and his men could board the pirate vessel the pirates came and boarded them. Severe fighting ensued, but the pirates were defeated, Maynard himself killing Blackbeard in single combat with swords. The legend around Okracoke is that Blackbeard's bad fortune on this occasion came to him because of the unlucky number of his matrimonial adventures, the story being that he had thirteen wives. It is said also that his vanquishers cut off his head and hung it at the yard-arm of their ship, throwing his body into the sea, and that as soon as the body struck the water the head began to call, "Come on, Edward!" whereupon the headless body swam three times around the ship. Personally I think there may be some slight doubt about the authenticity of this part of the story. For, while from one point of view we might say that to swim about in such aimless fashion would be the very thing a man without a head might do, yet from another point of view the question arises: Would a man whose head had just been severed from his body feel like taking such a long swim? And what a rich lot of other historic treasures! Did you know, for instance, that Flora Macdonald, the Scottish heroine, who helped Prince Charles Edward to escape, dressed as a maidservant, after the Battle of Culloden, in 1746, came to America with her husband and many relatives just before the Revolutionary War and settled at Cross Creek (now Fayetteville), North Carolina? When General Donald Macdonald raised the Royal standard at the time of the Revolution, her husband and many of her kinsmen joined him, and these were later captured at the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge, in 1776, and taken as prisoners to Philadelphia. Yes; and Flora Macdonald's garter-buckles are now in the museum at Raleigh. A portrait of Captain James J. Waddell, C.S.N., who was a member of a famous North Carolina family, recalls the story of his post-bellum cruise, in command of the _Shenandoah_, when, not knowing that the War was over, he preyed for months on Federal commerce in the South Seas. The museum of course contains many uniforms worn by distinguished soldiers of the Confederacy and many old flags, among them one said to be the original flag of the Confederacy. This flag was designed by Orren R. Smith of Louisburg, North Carolina, and was made in that town. The journals of the Confederate Congress show that countless designs for a flag were submitted, that the Committee on a Flag reported that all designs had been rejected and returned, the committee having adopted one of its own; nevertheless Mr. Smith's claim to have designed the flag finally adopted is so well supported that the Confederate Veterans, at their General Reunion held in Richmond in 1915, passed a resolution endorsing it. Also in the museum is the shot-riddled smokestack of the Confederate ram _Albemarle_, which was built on the farm of Peter E. Smith, on Roanoke River, and is said to have been the first vessel ever launched sidewise. The _Albemarle_, after a glorious career, was sunk by Lieutenant Cushing, U.S.N., in his famous exploit with a torpedo carried on a pole at the bow of a launch. It will be remembered that the launch was sunk by the shock and that only Cushing and one member of his crew survived, swimming away under fire. North Carolina also claims--and not without some justice--that the first English settlement on this continent was not that at Jamestown, but the one made by Sir Walter Raleigh's expedition, under Amadas and Barlowe, which landed at Roanoke Island, August 4, 1584, and remained there for some weeks. The Jamestown Colony, say the North Carolinians, was merely the first to _stick_. Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, across the sound from Roanoke Island, is the site of the first flight of a man in an aeroplane, the Wright brothers having tried out their first crude plane there, among the Kill-Devil sand dunes. A part of the original plane is preserved in the museum. Nor must I leave the museum without mentioning the bullet-riddled hat of General W.R. Cox, and his gray military coat, with a blood-stained gash in front, where a solid shell ripped across. General Cox's son, Mr. Albert Cox, was with us in the museum when we stopped to look at this grim souvenir. "It tore father open in front," he said, "spoiled a coat which had cost him $550, Confederate, and damaged his watchchain. Nevertheless he lived to take part in the last charge at Appomattox, and the watchchain wasn't so badly spoiled but what, with the addition of some new links, it could be worn." And he showed us where the chain, which he himself was wearing at the time, had been repaired. I must say something, also, of the North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, an institution doing splendid work, and doing it efficiently, both in its own buildings and through extension courses. Fifty-two per cent. of the students at this college earn their way through, either wholly or in part. And better yet, eighty-three per cent. of the graduates stick to the practical work afterwards--an unusually high record. The president of the college, Dr. D.H. Hill, is a son of the Confederate general of the same name, who has been called "the Ironsides of the South." There are a number of other important educational institutions in and about Raleigh, and there is one which, if not important, is at all events, a curio. This is "Latta University," consisting of a few flimsy shacks in the negro village of Oberlin, on the outskirts of Raleigh. "Professor" Latta is one of the rare negroes who combines the habit with white folks of the old fashioned southern darky, and the astuteness of the "new issue" in high finance. Years ago he conceived the idea of establishing a negro school near Raleigh, to which he gave the above mentioned name. He had no funds, no credit and little or no education. Nevertheless he had ideas, the central one of which was that New England was the land of plenty. With the "university" in his head, and with a miscellaneous collection of photographs, he managed to make a tour of northern cities, and came back with his pockets lined. As a result he procured a little land, put up frame buildings, gathered a few youths about him, and was fully launched on his career as a university president. So long as the money held out, Latta was content to drift along with his school. When he came to the bottom of the bag he invested the last of his savings in another ticket north and, armed with his title of "president," made addresses to northern audiences and replenished his finances with their contributions. Finally, as the great act of his career, Latta managed to get passage to Europe and was gone for several months. When he came back he had added a manuscript to his possessions: "The History of My Life and Work," which he published, and which is one of the most curious volumes I have ever seen. It is illustrated--largely with photographs of the author. One of the pictures is entitled, "Rev. M.L. Latta when he first commenced to build Latta University." This shows Latta with the tips of his fingers resting on a small table. Another picture shows him posed with one hand raised and the other resting on what is unmistakably the same little table. The latter picture, however, has the caption, "Rev. M.L. Latta making a speech in Pawtucket, R.I., at Y.M.C.A." Both pictures were all too clearly taken in a photographer's studio. Another page shows us, "Rev. M.L. Latta and three of his Admirable Presidents." In this case Latta merely takes for himself the upper right-hand corner, the other eminent persons pictured being ex-Presidents Roosevelt, McKinley and Cleveland. The star illustration, however, is a "made up" picture, in which a photograph of Latta, looking spick-and-span, has been pasted onto what is very obviously a painted picture of a hall full of people in evening dress, all of them gazing at Latta, who stands upon the stage, dignified, suave, impressive, and all dressed-up by the brush of the "re-toucher." This picture is called: "In the Auditorium at London, in 1894." Similar artfulness is shown in pictures of the "university" buildings, where the same frame structure, photographed from opposite ends, appears in one case as, "Young Ladies' Dormitory," and in the other as, "Chapel and Young Men's Dormitory." In his autobiography, Latta tells how, in the course of getting his own schooling, he raised money by teaching a district school during vacation. He says: After paying my expenses, I had nearly a hundred dollars to return to school with. When I returned I was able to dress very neatly indeed, and the young ladies received me very cordially on the green during social hour. Before I taught school it was a common saying among the young ladies and young men "Latta"; but after I returned with a hundred dollars it was "Mr. Latta" all over the campus. I would hear the young ladies saying among themselves, "I bet Mr. Latta will not go with you--he will correspond with me this afternoon." I paid no attention to it. I said to myself, "Don't you see what a hundred dollars will do?" In another place the Professor reveals how he came to write his book: "Professor King, one of the teachers at Latta University said to me, 'If I had done what you have done I would have wrote a history of my life several years ago.'" The best part of the book, however, gives us Latta's account of his doings in London: Just before I left the city of London I was invited by a distinguished friend, a close relation to Queen Victoria, to make a speech. He told me there would be a meeting in one of the large halls in that city. I can't just think of the name of the hall. He invited me to be present. The distinguished friend that I have just mentioned presided over the meeting. There was an immense audience present. If memory serves me right, I was the only Negro in the hall. The gentleman came to me and asked if I would make a speech. I told him I had already delivered one address, besides several sermons I had preached, and I thought that I would not speak again during my stay. I accepted the invitation, however, and spoke. The Professor then tells how he was introduced as one whose addresses were "among the ablest ever delivered in London." Also he gives his speech in full. Great events followed. His distinguished unnamed friend, the "close relation of the Queen," came to him soon after, he says, and asked him if he had "ever been to the palace." Continues Latta: He said to me, "If you will come over before you leave the city, and call to see me, I will take you to the palace with me and introduce you to the Queen." I told him I would do so, that I had heard a good deal about the royal throne, and I would be very much interested to see the palace. He said he thought I would, because the government was very different from ours. I called at his residence as I had promised, and he went with me to the palace. The Queen knew him, of course. He was received very cordially. Everything shined so much like gold in the palace that I had to stop and think where I was. He introduced me to the Queen, and told her I was from North America. He told her that I spoke at a meeting he presided over, and he enjoyed my speech very much. He told her we had an immense audience, and all the people were well pleased with the speech. The Queen said she was more than glad to meet me, and she would have liked very much to have been present, and heard the speech that her cousin said I made.... She told me she hoped that would not be the last visit I would make to their city. I shook hands with her and bade her good-bye. The distinguished friend carried me and showed me the different departments of the palace, and I bade him good-bye. In Raleigh, I think, they rather like Latta. It amuses them to see him go north and get money, and it is said that he appreciates the situation himself. He ought to. Not many southern negroes have such comfortable homes as "Latta University's" best kept-up building--the residence of the President. CHAPTER XXVIII UNDER ST. MICHAEL'S CHIMES And where St. Michael's chimes The fragrant hours exquisitely tell, Making the world one loveliness, like a true poet's rhymes. --RICHARD WATSON GILDER. It has been said--by Mrs. T.P. O'Connor, I think--that whereas twenty-five letters of introduction for New York may produce one invitation to dinner, one letter of introduction for Charleston will produce twenty-five dinner invitations. If this be an exaggeration it is, at least, exaggeration in the right direction; that is, along the lines of truth. For though Charleston's famed "exclusiveness" is very real, making letters of introduction very necessary to strangers desiring to see something of the city's social life, such letters produce, in Charleston, as Mrs. O'Connor suggests, results definite and delightful. Immediately upon our arrival, my companion and I sent out several letters we had brought with us, and presently calling cards began to arrive for us at the hotel. Also there came courteous little notes, delivered in most cases by hand, according to the old Charleston custom--a custom surviving pleasantly from times when there were no postal arrangements, but plenty of slaves to run errands. Even to this day, I am told, invitations to Charleston's famous St. Cecilia balls are delivered by hand. One of the notes we received revealed to us a characteristic custom of the city. It contained an invitation to occupy places in the pew of a distinguished family, at St. Michael's Church, on the approaching Sunday morning. In order to realize the significance of such an invitation one must understand that St. Michael's is to Charleston, socially, what St. George's, Hanover Square, is to London. A beautiful old building, surrounded by a historic burial ground and surmounted by a delicate white spire containing fine chimes, it strongly suggests the architectural touch of Sir Christopher Wren; but it is not by Wren, for he died a number of years before 1752, when the cornerstone of St. Michael's was laid. When the British left Charleston--or Charles Town, as the name of the place stands in the early records--after occupying it during the Revolutionary War, they took with them, to the horror of the city, the bells of St. Michael's, and the church books. The silver, however, was saved, having been concealed on a plantation some miles from Charleston. Later the bells were returned. Pre-Revolutionary Charleston was divided into two parishes: St. Michael's below Broad Street, and St. Philip's above. Under governmental regulation citizens were not allowed to hold pews in both churches unless they owned houses in both parishes. St. Michael's, being nearer the battery, in which region are the finest old houses, had, perhaps, the wealthier congregation, but St. Philip's is, to my mind, the more beautiful church of the two, largely because of the open space before it, and the graceful outward bend of Church Street in deference to the projecting portico. When the Civil War broke out St. Philip's bells were melted and made into cannon, but those of St. Michael's were left in place until cannonballs from the blockading fleet struck the church, when they were taken down and sent, together with the silver plate, to Columbia, South Carolina, for safe-keeping. But Columbia was, as matters turned out, the worst place to which they could have been sent. The silver was looted by troops under Sherman, and the bells were destroyed when the city was burned. The fragments were, however, collected and sent to England, whence the bells originally came, and there they were recast. Their music--perhaps the most characteristic of all the city's characteristic sounds--has been called "the voice of Charleston." Of the silver only a few fragments have been returned. One piece was found in a pawn shop in New York, and another in a small town in Ohio. _Mais que voulez-vous? C'est la guerre!_ In mentioning Charleston churches one becomes involved in a large matter. In 1801, when St. Mary's, the first Roman Catholic church in the city, was erected, there were already eighteen churches in existence, among them the present Huguenot Church, at the corner of Church and Queen Streets, which, though a very old building, is nevertheless the second Huguenot Church to occupy the same site, the first, built in 1687, having been destroyed in the great conflagration of 1796, which very nearly destroyed St. Philip's, as well. A number of the old Huguenot families long ago became Episcopalians, and the descendants of many of the early French settlers of Charleston, buried in the Huguenot churchyard, are now parishioners of St. Michael's and St. Philip's. The Huguenot Church in Charleston is the only church of this denomination in America; its liturgy is translated from the French, and services are held in French on the third Sunday of November, January and March. A Unitarian Church was established in 1817, as an offshoot of the Scotch Presbyterian Church, the old White Meeting House of which (built 1685, used by the British as a granary, during the Revolution, and torn down 1806) gave Meeting Street its name. Early in the history of the Unitarian Church, the home of which was a former Presbyterian Church building, in Archdale Street, Dr. Samuel Gilman, a young minister from Gloucester, Massachusetts, became its pastor. This was the same Dr. Gilman who wrote "Fair Harvard." * * * * * In only one instance did the letters of introduction we sent out produce a response of the kind one would not be surprised at receiving in some rushing city of the North: a telephone call. A lady, not a native Charlestonian, but one who has lived actively about the world, rang us up, bade us welcome, and invited us to dinner. But she was a very modern sort of lady, as witness not only her use of the telephone--an instrument which seems in Charleston almost an anachronism; as, for that matter, the automobile does, too--but her dinner hour, which was eight o'clock. Very few Charleston families dine at night. Dinner invitations are usually for three, or perhaps half-past three or four, in the afternoon, and there is a light supper in the evening. I judge that this custom holds also in some other cities of the region, for I remember calling at the office of a large investment company in Wilmington, North Carolina, to find it wearing, at three in the afternoon, the deserted look of a New York office between twelve and one o'clock. Every one had gone home to dinner. Mr. W.D. Howells, in his charming essay on Charleston, makes mention of this matter: "The place," he says, "has its own laws and usages, and does not trouble itself to conform to those of other aristocracies. In London the best society dines at eight o'clock, and in Madrid at nine, but in Charleston it dines at four.... It makes morning calls as well as afternoon calls, but as the summer approaches the midday heat must invite rather to the airy leisure of the verandas, and the cool quiescence of interiors darkened against the fly in the morning and the mosquito at night-fall." The household fly is a year-round resident of Charleston, by grace of a climate which permits--barely permits, at its coldest--the use of the open surrey as a public vehicle in all seasons. Sometimes, during a winter cold-snap, when a ride in a surrey is not a pleasant thing to contemplate, when residents of old mansions have shut themselves into a room or two heated by grate fires, then the fly seems to have disappeared, but let the cold abate a little and out he comes again like some rogue who, after brief and spurious penance, resumes the evil of his ways. The stranger going to a humble Charleston house will find on the gate a coiled spring at the end of which hangs a bell. By touching the spring and causing the bell to jingle he makes his presence known. The larger houses have upon their gates bell-pulls or buttons which cause bells to ring within. This is true of all houses which have front gardens. The garden gate constitutes, by custom, a barrier comparable in a degree with the front door of a Northern house; a usage arising, doubtless, out of the fact that almost all important Charleston houses have not only gardens, but first and second story galleries, and that in hot weather these galleries become, as it were, exterior rooms, in which no small part of the family life goes on. Many Charleston houses have their gardens to the rear, and themselves abut upon the sidewalk. Calling at such houses, you ring at what seems to be an ordinary front door, but when the door is opened you find yourself entering not upon a hall, but upon an exterior gallery running to the full depth of the house, down which you walk to the actual house door. In still other houses--and this is true of some of the most notable mansions of the city, including the Pringle, Huger, and Rhett houses--admittance is by a street door of the normal sort, opening upon a hall, and the galleries and gardens are at the side or back, the position of the galleries in relation to the house depending upon what point of the compass the house faces, the desirable thing being to get the breezes which are prevalently from the southwest and the westward. * * * * * Charleston is very definitely two things: It is old, and it is a city. There is the story of a young lady who asked a stranger if he did not consider it a unique town. He agreed that it was, and inquired whether she knew the derivation of the word "unique." When she replied negatively he informed her that the word came from the Latin _unus_, meaning "one," and _equus_, meaning "a horse"; otherwise "a one-horse town." This tale, however, is a libel, for despite the general superstition of chambers of commerce to the contrary, the estate of cityhood is not necessarily a matter of population nor yet of commerce. That is one of the things which, if we were unaware of it before, we may learn from Charleston. Charleston is not great in population; it is not very great, as seaports go, in trade. Were cities able to talk with one another as men can, and as foolishly as men often do, I have no doubt that many a hustling middle-western city would patronize Charleston, precisely as a parvenue might patronize a professor of astronomy; nevertheless, Charleston has a stronger, deeper-rooted city entity than all the cities of the Middle West rolled into one. This is no exaggeration. Where modern American cities strive to be like one another, Charleston strives to be like nothing whatsoever. She does not have to strive to _be_ something. She _is_ something. She understands what most other American cities do not understand, and what, in view of our almost unrestricted immigration laws, it seems the National Government cannot be made to understand: namely, that mere numbers do not count for everything; that there is the matter of quality of population to be considered. Therefore, though Charleston's white population is no greater than that of many a place which would own itself frankly a small town, Charleston knows that by reason of the character of its population it is a great city. And that is precisely the case. Charleston people are city people _par excellence_. They have the virtues of city people, the vices of city people, and the civilization and sophistication of those who reside in the most aristocratic capitals. For that is another thing that Charleston is; it is unqualifiedly the aristocratic capital of the United States; the last stronghold of a unified American upper class; the last remaining American city in which Madeira and Port and _noblesse oblige_ are fully and widely understood, and are employed according to the best traditions. I have been told of a lady who remarked that Charleston was "the biggest little place" she ever saw. I say the same. The littleness of the place, it is sometimes pointed out, is expressed by the "vast cousinship" which constitutes Charleston society, but it is to my mind expressed much better in the way bicyclists leave their machines leaning against the curb at the busiest parts of main shopping streets. Its bigness, upon the other hand, is expressed by the homes from which some of those bicyclists come, by the cultivation which exists in those homes, and has existed there for generations, by the amenities of life as they are comprehended and observed, by the wealth of the city's tradition and the richness of its background. Nor is that background a mere arras of recollection. It exists everywhere in the wood and brick and stone of ancient and beautiful buildings, in iron grilles and balconies absolutely unrivaled in any other American city, and equaled only in European cities most famous for their artistry in wrought iron. It exists also in venerable institutions--the first orphanage established in the United States; the William Enston Home; the Public Library, one of the first and now one of the best libraries in the country; the art museum, the St. Cecilia Society, and various old clubs. More intimately it exists within innumerable old homes, which are treasure-houses of fine old English and early American furniture and of portraits--portraits by Sir Joshua, by Stuart, Copley, Trumbull, and most of the other portrait painters who painted from the time the Colonies began to become civilized to the time of the Civil War--among them S.F.B. Morse, who, I believe it is not generally known, made a considerable reputation as a portrait painter, in Charleston, before he made himself a world figure by inventing the telegraph. Even without seeing these private treasures the visitor to Charleston will see enough to convince him that Charleston is indeed "unique"--though not in the sense implied in the story--that it is the most intimately beautiful city upon the American continent. To call Charleston "unique," and immediately thereafter to liken it to other places may seem paradoxical. These likenesses are, however, evanescent. It is not that Charleston is actually like other places, but that here in a church building, there in an old tile roof, wrought iron gate, or narrow cobbled street, the visitor will find himself delicately reminded of Old World towns and cities. Mr. Howells, for example, found on the East Battery a faint suggestion of Venetian palaces, and in the doorway and gates of the Smyth house, in Legaré Street, I was struck, also, with a Venetian suggestion so strange and subtle that I could not quite account for it. At night some of the old narrow streets, between Meeting Street and Bay, made me think of streets in the old part of Paris, on the left bank of the Seine; or again I would stop before an ancient brick house which was Flemish, or which--in the case of houses diagonally opposite St. Philip's Church--exampled the rude architecture of an old French village, stucco walls colored and chipped, red tile roof and all. The busy part of King Street, on a Saturday night when the fleet was in, made me think of Havana, and the bluejackets seemed to me, for the moment, to be American sailors in a foreign port; and once, on the same evening's walk, when I chanced to look to the westward across Marion Square, I found myself transported to the central _place_ of a Belgian city, with a slope-shouldered church across the way masquerading as a _hôtel de ville_, and the sidewalk lights at either side figuring in my imagination as those of pleasant terrace cafés. So it was always. The very hotel in which we stayed--the Charleston--is like no other hotel in the United States, though it has about it something which caused me to think of the old Southern, in St. Louis. Still, it is not like the Southern. It is more like some old hotel in a provincial city of France--large and white, with a pleasing unevenness of floor, and, best of all, a great inner court which, in provincial France, might be a _remise_, but is here a garden. If I mistake not, carriages and coaches did in earlier times drive through the arched entrance, now the main doorway, and into this courtyard, where passengers alighted and baggage was taken down. The Planter's Hotel, now a ruin, opposite the Huguenot Church, antedates all others in the city, and used to be the fashionable gathering place for wealthy Carolinians and their families who came to Charleston annually for the racing season. The fact that Charleston has a rather important art museum and that its library is one of the four oldest town libraries in the country, no less than the fact that the city was, in its day, a great racing center, contribute to an understanding of the spirit of the place. The present Charleston Library is not the first public library started in the city. Not by any means! For it was founded as late as 1748, and the original public library of Charleston was the first one of the kind in the country, having been started about the beginning of the 18th century. Old records of this library still exist, showing that citizens voted so many skins to its support. Probably the most valuable possession of the present library are its files of Charleston newspapers, dating from 1732 to the present time, including three files covering the War of 1812, and two covering the Civil War. These files are consulted by persons from all over the United States, for historical material. The library has recently moved into a good modern building. In the old building there was a separate entrance at the back for ladies, and it is only lately that ladies have been allowed full membership in the Library Society, and have entered by the front door. The former custom, I suppose, represented certain old-school sentiments as to "woman's place" such as I find expressed in "Reminiscences of Charleston," by Charles Fraser, published in 1854. Declares Mr. Fraser: The ambition for literary distinction is now very prevalent with the sex. But without any disposition to undervalue their claims, whenever I hear of a female traveler clambering the Alps, or describing the classic grounds of Greece and Italy, publishing her musings in the holy land, or revealing the mysteries of the harem, I cannot but think that for every success obtained some appropriate duty has been neglected. I except the poetess, for hers are the effusions of the heart and the imagination, prompted by nature and uttered because they are irrepressible. Many females travel for the purpose of writing and publishing books--whilst Mrs. Heman's, Mrs. Osgood's, and Mrs. Sigourney's volumes may be regarded as grateful offerings to the muse in return for her inspiration. It is hard not to be irritated, even now, with the man who wrote that, especially in view of the fact that the two most interesting books to come out of the Carolinas of recent years are both by women: one of them being "Charleston--the Place and the People," by Mrs. St. Julien Ravenel, a volume any chapter of which is worth the whole of Mr. Fraser's "Reminiscences," and the other "A Woman Rice-Planter," by "Patience Pennington," otherwise Mrs. John Julius Pringle (née Alston), who lives on her plantation near Georgetown, South Carolina. The Carolina Jockey Club subscribed regularly to the support of the library, and now that that club is no more, its chief memorial may be said to rest there. This club was probably the first racing club in the country, and it is interesting to note that the old cement pillars from the Washington Race Course at Charleston were taken, when that course was abandoned, and set up at the Belmont Park course, near New York. The turf history of Carolina began (according to the "South Carolina Gazette," dated February 1, 1734) in that same year, on the first Tuesday in February. One of the prizes was a saddle and bridle valued at Ł20. The riders were white men and the course was a green at Charleston Neck, near where the lower depot of the South Carolina Railroad now stands. In a "History of the Turf in South Carolina," which I found in the library, I learned that Mr. Daniel Ravenel bred fine horses on his plantation, Wantoot, in St. John's Parish, as early as 1761, that Mr. Frank Huger had imported an Arabian horse, and that many other gentlemen were importing British running horses, and were engaged in breeding. The book refers to the old York Course, later called the New Market Course. A long search did not, however, enable me to establish the date on which the Jockey Club was founded. It was clearly a going institution in 1792, for under date of Wednesday, February 15, in that year, I found the record of a race for the Jockey Club Purse--"four mile-heats--weight for age--won by Mr. Lynch's _Foxhunter_, after a well contested race of four heats, beating Mr. Sumter's _Ugly_, who won the first heat; Col. Washington's _Rosetta_, who won the second heat; Capt. Alston's _Betsy Baker_," etc., etc. The Civil War practically ended the Jockey Club, though a feeble effort was, for a time, made to carry it on. In 1900 the club properties and the funds remaining in the club treasury were transferred as an endowment to the Charleston Library Society. The proceeds from this endowment add to the library's income by about two thousand dollars annually. Other items of interest in connection with the Carolina Jockey Club are that Episcopal Church conventions used to be held in Charleston during the racing season, so that the attending parsons might take in the races; that the Jockey Club Ball used to be the great ball of the Charleston season, as the second St. Cecilia Ball became later and now is; that the Charleston Club, a most delightful club, founded in 1852, was an outgrowth of the Jockey Club; and that the Jockey Club's old Sherries, Ports and Madeiras went to New York where they were purchased by Delmonico--among them a Calderon de la Barca Madeira of 1848, and a Peter Domecq Sherry of 1818. Mr. S.A. Nies, one of the old employees of Delmonico's, tells me that the Calderon de la Barca of the above mentioned year is all gone, but that Delmonico's still has a few bottles of the same wine of the vintage of 1851. "This wine," Mr. Nies said, "is listed on our wine card at $6.00 per bottle. It is not the best Madeira that we have, although it is a very fine one. Recently we served a bottle of Thompson's Auction Madeira, of which the year is not recognizable on the label, but which to my knowledge was an old wine forty years ago. This wine brought $25.00 a bottle and was worth it. "The Peter Domecq Sherry of 1818 does not figure on our wine list as we have but a few bottles left. It is $20.00 a bottle. "The prices brought to-day by old Madeiras and Sherries do not represent their real values. One has but to look at the compound interest of savings banks to realize that these wines should be selling at four times the price they are; but unfortunately, since the advent of Scotch whisky in the American market, the American palate seems to have deteriorated, and if the wines were listed at the price they ought to bring, we could not sell them. As it is, the demand for the very rare old wines is irregular and infrequent. We keep them principally to preserve our reputation; not for the money there is in it." CHAPTER XXIX HISTORY AND ARISTOCRACY The cool shade of aristocracy.... --SIR W.F.P. NAPIER. Just now, when we are being unpleasantly awakened to the fact that our vaunted American melting-pot has not been doing its work; when some of us are perhaps wondering whether the quality of metal produced by the crucible will ever be of the best; it is comforting to reflect that a city whose history, traditions and great names are so completely involved with Americanism in its highest forms, a city we think of as ultra-American, is peculiarly a melting-pot product. The original Charleston colonists were English and Irish, sent out under Colonel Sayle, in 1669, by the Lords Proprietors, to whom Charles II had granted a tract of land in the New World, embracing the present States of Georgia and North and South Carolina. These colonists touched at Port Royal--where the Marine Barracks now are (and ought not to be)--but settled on the west side of the Ashley River, across from where Charleston stands. It was not until 1680 that they transferred their settlement to the present site of the city, naming the place Charles Town in honor of the King. In 1671 the colony contained 263 men able to bear arms, 69 women and 59 children. In 1674, when New York was taken by the English from the Dutch, a number of the latter moved down to the Carolina colony. French Protestants had, at that time, already begun to arrive, and more came after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685. In 1680 Germans came. By 1684 there were four Huguenot settlements in Carolina. In 1696 a Quaker was governor for a short time, and in the same year a body of New Englanders arrived from Dorchester, Massachusetts, establishing a town which they called Dorchester, near the present town of Summerville, a few miles from Charleston. At that time a number of Scottish immigrants had already arrived, though more came in 1715 and 1745, after the defeat of the Highlanders. From 1730 to 1750 new colonists came from Switzerland, Holland and Germany. As early as 1740 there were several Jewish families in Charleston, and some of the oldest and most respected Jewish families in the United States still reside there. Also, when the English drove the Acadians from Canada in 1755, twelve hundred of them immigrated to Carolina. By 1790, then, the city had a population of a little more than 15,000, which was about half the number of inhabitants then contained in the city of New York. In the case of Charleston, however, more than one half her people, at that time, were negroes, slavery having been introduced by Sir John Yeamans, an early British governor. By 1850 the city had about 20,000 white citizens and 23,000 blacks, and by 1880 some 7,500 more, of which additional number two thirds were negroes. The present population is estimated at 65,000, which makes Charleston a place of about the size of Rockford, Illinois, Sioux City, Iowa, or Covington, Kentucky; but as, in the case of Charleston, more than half this number is colored, Charleston is, if the white population only is considered, a place of approximately 30,000 inhabitants, or, roughly speaking, about the size of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., or Colorado Springs, Colorado. In area, also, Charleston is small, covering less than four square miles. This is due to the position of the city on a peninsula formed by the convergence and confluence of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers, which meet at Charleston's beautiful Battery precisely as the Hudson River and the East River meet at the Battery in New York. The shape of Charleston, indeed, greatly resembles that of Manhattan Island, and though her harbor and her rivers are neither so large nor so deep as those of the port of New York, they are altogether adequate to a considerable maritime activity. The Charleston Chamber of Commerce (which, like everything else in Charleston dates from long ago, having been founded in 1748) quotes President Taft as calling this port the most convenient one to Panama--a statement which the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce is in position to dispute. The fact remains, however, that Charleston's position on the map justifies the Chamber of Commerce's alliterative designation of the place as "The Plumb-line Port to Panama." This is so true that if Charleston should one day be shaken loose from its moorings by an earthquake--something not unknown there--and should fall due south upon the map, it would choke up the mouth of the Canal, were not Cuba interposed, to catch the debris. Before the Civil War, Charleston was the greatest cotton shipping port of the country, and it still handles large amounts of cotton and rice. Until a few years ago South Carolina was the chief rice producing State in the Union, and history records that the first rice planted in the Carolinas, if not in the country, was secured and sown by an early governor of Carolina, Thomas Smith, who died in 1694. It may be noted in passing that this Thomas Smith bore the title "Landgrave," the Lords Proprietors, in their plan of government for the colony--which, by the way, was drawn up by the philosopher Locke--having provided for a colonial nobility with titles. The titles "Baron" and "Landgrave" were hereditary in several Charleston families, and constitute, so far as I know, the only purely American titles of nobility that ever existed. Descendants of the old Landgraves still reside in Charleston, and in at least one instance continue to use the word "Landgrave" in connection with the family name. The prosperity of Charleston since the Civil War has depended more, perhaps, than on any other single product, upon the trade in phosphate, large deposits of which underlie this region. The real wonder of Charleston, the importance of the place among American cities, cannot, however, be said to have resulted primarily from commerce (though her commerce is growing), or from greatness of population (though Charleston is the metropolis of the Carolinas), but is involved with matters of history, tradition and beauty. The mantle of greatness was assumed by this city in colonial times, and has never been laid aside. Among the most distinguished early Americans were many Charlestonians, and in not a few instances the old blood still endures there, and even the old names: such names as Washington, Pinckney, Bull, Pringle, Rutledge, Middleton, Drayton, Alston, Huger, Agassiz, Ravenel, Izard, Gadsden, Rhett, Calhoun, Read, De Saussure, Lamar and Brawley, to mention but a few. * * * * * Charleston's early history is rich in pirate stories of the most thrilling moving-picture variety. Blackbeard, Stede Bonnet and other disciples of the Jolly Roger preyed upon Charleston shipping. Bonnet once held a Mr. Samuel Wragg of Charleston prisoner aboard his ship threatening to send his head to the city unless the unfortunate man should be ransomed--the demand being for medicines of various kinds. Colonel Rhett, of Charleston, captured Bonnet and his ship after a savage fight, but Bonnet soon after escaped from the city in woman's clothing. Still later he was retaken, hanged, as he deserved to be, and buried along with forty of his band at a point now covered by the Battery Garden, that exquisite little park at the tip of the city, which is the favorite promenade of Charlestonians. In another fight which occurred just off Charleston bar, a crew of citizens under Governor Robert Johnson defeated the pirate Richard Worley, who was killed in the action, and captured his ship, which, when the hatches were opened proved to be full of prisoners, thirty-six of them women. Even as late as the period of the War of 1812--a war which did not affect Charleston save in the way of destroying her shipping and causing poverty and distress--a case of brutal piracy is recorded. The daughter of Aaron Burr, Theodosia by name, was married to Governor Joseph Alston. After her father's trial for high treason, when he was disgraced and broken, she tried to comfort him, for the two were peculiarly devoted. Intending to visit him she set sail from Charleston for New York in a ship which was never heard from again. Somewhere I have read a description of the distraught father's long vigils at New York, where he would stand gazing out to sea long after all hope had been abandoned by others. Mrs. St. Julien Ravenel tells us in her charming book, that thirty years later an old sailor, dying in a village of the North Carolina coast, confessed that he had been one of a pirate crew which had captured the ship and compelled the passengers to walk the plank. This story is also given by Charles Gayarré, who says the pirate chief was none other than Dominick You, who fought under Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans, and is buried in that city. The husband and father of Mrs. Alston were spared the ghastly tale, Mrs. Ravenel says, since both were already in their graves when the sailor's deathbed confession solved the mystery. In the Revolution, Charleston played an important part. Men of Charleston were, of course, among the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, who gave us the immortal maxim: "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!" who was on Washington's staff, was later Ambassador to France and president-general of the Sons of the Cincinnati, was a Charlestonian of the Charlestonians, and lies buried in St. Michael's. Such Revolutionary names as Marion, Laurens, William Washington, Greene, Hampton, Moultrie and Sumter are associated with the place, and two of these are reëchoed in the names of those famous forts in Charleston harbor on which attention was fixed at the outbreak of the Civil War: Moultrie and Sumter--the latter, target for the first shot fired in the conflict. Nearly thirty years before the Civil War, Charleston had distinguished herself in the arts of peace by producing the first locomotive tried in the United States, and by constructing the first consecutive hundred miles of railroad ever built in the world, and now, with the War, she distinguished herself by initiating other mechanical devices of very different character--a semi-submersible torpedo boat and the first submarine to torpedo a hostile war vessel. True, David Bushnell of Connecticut did construct a crude sort of submarine during the Revolutionary War, and succeeded in getting under a British ship with the machine, but he was unable to fasten his charge of powder and his effort consequently failed. Robert Fulton also experimented with submarines, or "plunging boats" as he called them, and was encouraged for a time by Napoleon I. The little _David_ of the Confederate navy is sometimes referred to as the first submarine but the _David_ was not actually an underwater boat, but a torpedo boat which could run awash, with her funnels and upper works slightly out of water. She was a cigar-shaped vessel thirty-three feet long, built of wood, propelled by steam, and carrying her torpedo on a pole, forward. Dr. St. Julien Ravenel of Charleston and Captain Theodore Stoney devised the craft, and she was built by funds subscribed by Charleston merchants. In command of Lieutenant W.T. Glassell, C.S.N., and with three other men aboard, she torpedoed the United States ship _New Ironsides_, flagship of the fleet blockading Charleston. The _New Ironsides_ was crippled, but not lost. After this United States vessels blockading Charleston protected themselves with booms. This resulted in the construction of an actual undersea torpedo boat, the _Hunley_. This extraordinary vessel has been spoken of as having had the appearance of a huge iron coffin, as well as the attributes of one, for she proved a death-trap for successive crews on three trial trips. As there were no electric motors or gasoline engines in those days, she was run by hand, eight men crowded together turning a crank-shaft which operated her propeller. After repeated sinkings, she was raised, manned by new men, and sent forth again. Finally, in Charleston harbor she succeeded in destroying the United States man-o'-war _Housatonic_, but at the same time went down, herself, drowning or suffocating all on board. A memorial drinking fountain on the Battery, at the foot of Meeting Street, commemorates "the men of the Confederate Army and Navy, first in marine warfare to employ torpedo boats--1863-1865." On this memorial are given the names of sixteen men who perished in torpedo attacks on the blockading fleet, among them Horace L. Hunley, set down as inventor of the submarine boat. The names of fourteen others who were lost are unknown. * * * * * Lord William Campbell, younger son of the Duke of Argyll, was British governor at Charleston when the Revolution broke out. He had married a Miss Izard, of Charleston, who brought him a dowry of fifty thousand pounds, a large sum in those times. Their home was in a famous old house which stands on Meeting Street, and it was from the back yard of this house that Lord William fled in a rowboat to a British man-o'-war, when it became evident that Charleston was no longer hospitable to representatives of the Crown. Later his wife followed him to Great Britain, where they remained. The Pringle House, as it is now called, formerly the Brewton house, perhaps the most superb old residence in the city, was the headquarters of General Sir Henry Clinton, after he had captured Charleston, and was the residence of Lord Rawdon, the unpleasant British commander who succeeded Clinton. Cornwallis lived outside the town at Drayton Hall, which still stands, on the Ashley River. After his capture Cornwallis was exchanged for Henry Laurens, a distinguished Charlestonian, who, though he wept over the Declaration of Independence, was before long president of the Continental Congress, and later went to France, where he was associated with Benjamin Franklin, John Jay and John Adams in negotiating the treaty of peace and independence for America. Mrs. Ravenel says in her book that Sherman destroyed all but one of the superb old houses on the Ashley River, and when we consider that Sherman's troops invested Charleston just before the end of the War, and reflect upon the general's notorious "carelessness with fire," we have cause for national rejoicing that Charleston, with its unmatched buildings and their splendid contents, was not laid in ashes, as were Atlanta and Columbia. Had Sherman burned Charleston it would be hard for even a Yankee to forgive him. Even without the aid of the Northern general, the city has been able to furnish disastrous conflagrations of her own, over a period of two centuries and more, and I find in the quaint reminiscences of Charles Fraser, already alluded to, a lamentation that, because of fires, many of the old landmarks have disappeared, and the city is "losing its look of picturesque antiquity." To make matters worse, there came, in 1886, an earthquake, rendering seven eighths of the houses uninhabitable until repairs aggregating some millions of dollars had been made. Up to the time of the earthquake the old mansion from which Lord William Campbell fled at the beginning of the Revolution, was adorned by a battlemented roof. It is recorded that when the shock came, an Englishman was in the house, and that in his eagerness to get outdoors he pushed others aside. As he reached the front steps, however, the battlements came crashing down. He was the one person from that house who perished, and his only monument is the patch of comparatively new stone where the broken steps have been repaired. * * * * * My companion and I achieved entrance to one of the famous old Charleston houses which we had been particularly anxious to see, through the kindness of a lady to whom we had a letter of introduction, who happened to be a relative of the owner of the house. It seems necessary to explain, at this juncture, that in Charleston, many proper names of foreign origin have been corrupted in pronunciation. A few examples will suffice: The Dutch name Vanderhorst, conspicuous in the early annals of the city, has come to be pronounced "Van-Dross"; Legaré, the name of another distinguished old family, commemorated in the name of Legaré Street, is pronounced "Legree"; De Saussure has become "Dess-a-sore," with the accent on the first syllable, and Prioleau is called "Pray-low." I was unaware of these matters when my companion and I visited the ancient house I speak of. Though I had heard the name of the proprietor of the mansion spoken many times, and recognized it as a distinguished Charleston name, I had never seen it written; however, without having given the matter much thought, I had, unfortunately, reached my own conclusions as to how it was spelled. Still more unfortunately, while I was delighting in the drawing-room of that wonderful old house, with the portraits of ladies in powdered hair and men in cocked hats and periwigs looking down upon me from the walls, I was impelled to reassure myself as to the spelling of the name. Let us assume that the name sounded like "Bowfee." That was not it but it will suffice for illustration. "I suppose," I said to our charming cicerone, "that the family name is spelled 'B-o-w-f-e-e'?" I had no sooner spoken than I realized, with a sudden access of horror what I had done. In guessing I had sinned, but in guessing wrong I had ruined myself. All this came to me instantly and positively, as by a psychic message of unparalleled definiteness from the dead ancestors whose portraits hung upon the paneling. It was as though they had joined in a great ghostly shout of execration, which was the more awful because it was a silent shout that jarred upon the senses rather than the ear drums. Then, before the lady replied, while the sound of my own voice saying "B-o-w-f-e-e" seemed to reverberate through the apartment, I suddenly comprehended the spirit of Charleston: understood that, compared with Charleston, Boston is as a rough mining camp, while New York hardly exists at all, being a mere miasma of vulgarity. There was a long silence, in which the lady to whom I had spoken gazed from the window at the rainy twilight. Her silence, I am persuaded, was not intended to rebuke me; she was not desirous of crushing me; she was merely stunned. Indeed, when at last she spoke, there was in her tone something of gentleness. "The name," she said, "is Beaufoy--B-e-a-u-f-o-y. It is of Huguenot origin." Passionately I wished for an earthquake--one that might cause the floor to open beneath me, or the roof to fall through and blot me from her sight. How to get away?--that was my one thought. To cover my embarrassment, I tried to make small-talk about a medallion of an Emperor of France, which hung upon the paneling. The lady said it had been given to an ancestor of the Beaufoys by the Emperor himself. That, for some reason, seemed to make things rather worse. I wished I had not dragged the Emperor into the conversation. "It is getting dark," I said. "It is time we were going." This the lady did not dispute. Of our actual farewells and exit from that house, I remember not a detail, save that, as we departed, I knew that we should never see this lady again; that for her I no longer existed, and that in my downfall I had dragged my companion with me. The next thing I definitely recollect is walking swiftly up Meeting Street beside him, in the rain and darkness of late afternoon. All the way back to the hotel we strode side by side in pregnant silence; neither did we speak as we ascended to our rooms. Some time later, while I was dressing for dinner, he entered my bedchamber. At the moment, as it happened, I was putting cuff-links into a dress shirt. With this task I busied myself, dreading to look up. In the meantime I felt his eyes fixed upon me. When the links were in, I delayed meeting his gaze by buttoning the little button in one sleeve-vent, above the cuff. "Do you mean to say you button those idiotic little buttons?" he demanded. "I didn't know that anybody ever did that!" "I don't always," I answered apologetically. "I should hope not!" he returned. Then he continued: "Do you remember where we are to be taken to-morrow?" "Yes," I said. "To the Pringle house." "Well," said he, "I just came in to ask you, as a favor, not to get off any fanciful ideas that you may have thought up, about the way to spell Pringle." CHAPTER XXX POLITICS, A NEWSPAPER AND ST. CECILIA Charleston is very definitely a part of South Carolina. That is not always the case with a State and its chief city. It is not the case with the State and the City of New York. New York City has about the same relation to New York State as a goldpiece has to a large table-top on one corner of which it lies. Charleston, on the other hand, harmonizes into its state setting, as a beautiful ancient vase harmonizes into the setting afforded by some rare old cabinet. Moreover, Charleston's individuality amongst cities is more or less duplicated in South Carolina's individuality amongst States. South Carolina is a State as definitely marked--though in altogether different ways--as Kansas or California. It is a State that does nothing by halves. It has rattlesnakes larger and more venomous than other rattlesnakes, and it has twice had the disgraceful Cole Blease, otherwise "To-hell-with-the-Constitution" Blease, as governor. For senator it has the old war-horse Tillman, a man so admired for his power that, in our easy-going way, we almost forgive his dives into the pork-barrel. Tillman has been to South Carolina more or less what the late Senator Hale was to his section of New England. Hale grabbed a navy yard for Kittery, Maine (the Portsmouth yard), where there never should have been a navy yard; Tillman performed a like service, under like circumstances, for Charleston. Both are purely political yards. Naval officers opposed them, but were overridden by politicians, as so often happens. For in time of peace the army and the navy are political footballs, and it is only when war comes that the politicians cease kicking them about and cry: "Now, football, turn into a cannon-ball, and save your country and your country's flag!" For obviously, if the flag cannot be saved, the politicians will be without a "starry banner" to gesture at and roar about. Now, of course, with war upon us, any navy yard is a blessing, and the Charleston yard is being used, as it should be, to the utmost. But in time of peace the yard comes in for much criticism from the navy, the contention being that it is not favorably located from a strategic point of view, and that, owing to bars in the Cooper River, up which it is situated, it cannot be entered by large ships. The point is also made that while labor is cheaper at this yard than at any other, skilled metal-workers are hard to get. Friends of the yard contend, upon the other hand, that it is desirable because of its convenience to the Caribbean Sea, where, according to naval theory, this country will some day have to fight a battle in defense of the Panama Canal. The Pensacola yard, it is pointed out, is exposed and can be bombarded, whereas the Charleston yard is far enough inland to be safe from sea attack. As to the channel, it is navigable for destroyers and other small craft--though whether it would be so to a large destroyer which had been injured and was drawing more water than usual, I do not know. The practical situation of the navy, with regard to this and some of the other political yards, is like that of some man who has been left a lot of heterogeneous houses, scattered about town, none of them suited to his purposes, and who is obliged to scatter his family amongst them as best he can, or else abandon them and build a new house. We have been following the former course, and are only now preparing to adopt the latter, by establishing a naval base at Norfolk, as mentioned in an earlier chapter. Charleston politics have been peculiar. Until a few years ago the government of the city had long rested in the hands of a few old families, among them the Gadsdens and the Rhetts. The overthrow of this ancient and aristocratic rule by the election to the mayoralty of John P. Grace, an alleged "friend of the people," was spoken of by the New York "Sun," as being not a mere change in municipal government, but the fall of a dynasty which had controlled the city politically, financially and socially for a century and a half. Mr. Grace may be dismissed with the remark that he supported Blease and that he is editor of the recently founded Charleston "American," which I have heard called a Hearst newspaper, and which certainly wears the Hearst look about it. On January 19, 1917, this newspaper printed a full account of the ball of the St. Cecilia Society, Charleston's most sacred social organization. Never before in the history of the St. Cecilia Society, covering a period of a century and a half, had an account of one of its balls, and the names of those attending, been printed. The publication caused a great stir in the city and resulted in an editorial, said to have been written by Grace, which appeared next day, and which reveals something of Charleston tradition and something of Grace, as well. It was headed "The Saint Cecilia Ball," and ran as follows: We carried on yesterday a full account of the famous Saint Cecilia Ball. From the foundation of Charleston until the present moment it has been regarded as an unwritten law that the annual events of this ancient society shall not be touched upon. Of course it was permissible for the thirty-five thousand poor white people of Charleston to talk about the Saint Cecilia, and to indulge in the thrilling sensation that comes to the proverbial cat when she looks at a queen. Some of them, moved by curiosity, even ventured within half a block of the Hibernian Hall to observe from afar the gay festivities. The press being forbidden to cover Saint Cecilia events, there grew up in the vulgar mind weird stories of what went on behind the scenes. While the Saint Cecilia has enjoyed the happy privilege of journalistic silence, it has, therefore, correspondingly suffered on the tongue of gossip. The truth is that we always knew that the Saint Cecilia was just about the same as every other social collection of human beings--a little gaiety flavored with a little frivolity; nothing more, nothing less. There was a time when this society was the extreme limit of social exclusiveness. It was an anachronism on American soil, a matter of pure heredity, the right to membership in which was as fixed as Median law, but transcendently above the median line. Now, however, since the society, in keeping with the spirit of the age, has relaxed its rules to admit from year to year (if, indeed, only a few now and then) members whose blood is far from indigo, we think it perfectly legitimate for the newspaper, which represents ALL classes of people, to invade the quondam sanctity of its functions which are now being OPENED to all classes. Following this, the editorial quoted from Don Seitz's book, telling how the elder James Gordon Bennett was in the habit of mocking "events to which he was not invited," and how, in 1840, he managed to get one of his reporters into "Henry I Brevoort's fancy dress ball, the social event of the period." The quotation from Mr. Seitz's book ends with the following: "A far cry from this to 1894, when Ward McAlister, arbiter of the '400' at Mrs. Astor's famous ball, became a leader on social topics for the New York 'World.' It took many years for this umbrage at the reporting of social events to wear off and make the reporter welcome. Indeed, there is one place yet on the map where it is not even now permitted to record a social event, though the editors and owners of papers may be among those present. That is Charleston, South Carolina...." The Charleston editor then resumes his own reflections in this wise: We regret to say, and it is the regret of our life, that we were not one of the editors present at the Saint Cecilia. This, therefore, relieves us of the implied condition to adhere any longer to this silly and absurd custom which, in the language of this great newspaper man, has made its last stand "on the map" at Charleston. We are glad that we have forever nailed, in the opinion of one hundred million ordinary people who make the American nation, the absurdity that there is any social event so sacred, any people so DIFFERENT from the rest of us poor human beings, that we dare not speak of them. Just why private social events should be, as Mr. Grace seems to assume, particularly the property of the press, it is somewhat difficult to explain, unless we do so by accepting as fundamental the theory that the press is justified in invading personal privacy purely in order to pander, on the one hand to the new breed of vulgar rich which thrives on "publicity," and on the other, to the breed of vulgar poor which enjoys reading that supremest of American inanities, the "society page." What Mr. Seitz said in his book as to the reticence of Charleston newspapers, where society is concerned, is, however, generally true--amazingly so to one who has become hardened to the attitude of the metropolitan press elsewhere. The society columns of Charleston papers hardly ever print the names of the city's real aristocrats, and in the past they have gone much farther than this, for they have been known to suppress important news stories in which prominent citizens were unpleasantly involved. It may be added that earthquakes are evidently classed as members of the aristocracy, since occasional tremors felt in the city are pointedly ignored by the press. Whether or not the paper edited by the fearless Mr. Grace ignores these manifestations I am unable to say. One can easily fancy his taking a courageous stand on such a subject as well as upon social matters. Indeed, with a few slight changes, his editorial upon the St. Cecilia ball, might be made to serve equally well after an earthquake shock. He might say: The press being forbidden to cover earthquakes, there grew up in the vulgar mind weird stories of what went on behind the scenes. While the earthquakes have enjoyed the happy privilege of journalistic silence, they have, therefore, correspondingly suffered on the tongue of gossip. He could also make the point that since, "in keeping with the spirit of the age," the earthquake shakes people "(if indeed only a few of them now and then), whose blood is far from indigo, we think it perfectly legitimate for the newspaper, which represents ALL classes of people, to invade the quondam sanctity of its functions which are now being OPENED to all classes." But of course, where the editor of such a paper is concerned, there is always the element of natural delicacy and nicety of feeling to be considered. Mr. Grace felt that because he was not present at the St. Cecilia ball, he was free to print things about it. An earthquake would not be like the St. Cecilia Society--it would not draw the line at Mr. Grace. At a Charleston earthquake he would undoubtedly be present. The question therefore arises: Having been PRESENT, might his AMOUR PROPRE make him feel that to REPORT the event would not be altogether in GOOD TASTE? The St. Cecilia Society began in 1737 with a concert given on St. Cecilia's day, and continued for many years to give concerts at which the musicians were both amateurs and professionals. Josiah Quincy, in his "Journal," tells of having attended one of these concerts in 1773, and speaks of the richness of the men's apparel, noting that there were "many with swords on." When, in 1819, difficulty was experienced in obtaining performers, it was proposed that a ball be held in place of a concert, and by 1822 the society was definitely transformed from a musical to a dancing organization, which it has remained ever since. The statement in the "American" editorial that St. Cecilia balls have been the subject of scandalous gossip is, I believe, quite false, as is also the statement that the balls are now "being opened to all classes." Mrs. Ravenel in her book tells how the organization is run. Members are elected, and all are men, though the names of the ladies of a member's household are placed on the club list. "Only death or removal from the city erases them--change of fortune affects them not at all." A man whose progenitors have belonged to the society is almost certain of election, though there have been cases in which undesirables of good family have been blackballed. Two blackballs are sufficient to cause the rejection of a candidate. Men who are not of old Charleston stock are carefully investigated before they can be elected, but of late years not a few such, having been considered desirable, have become members. The members elect officers and a board of managers, and these have entire control of the society. Three balls are given each year, one in January and two in February. Until a few years ago the hall in which the balls are given was lighted by innumerable candelabra; only lately has electricity been used. The society owns its own plate, damask, china and glassware, and used to own a good stock of wines. Of late years, I believe, wines have not been served, the beverage of the evening consisting of coffee, hot and iced. The greatest decorum is observed at the balls. Young ladies go invariably with chaperones; following each dance there is a brief promenade, whereafter the young ladies are returned to their duennas--who, if they be Charleston dowagers in perfection, usually carry turkey-feather fans. Cards are filled months in advance. As lately as the year 1912 every other dance was a square dance; since then, however, I believe that square dances have gone the way of candle-light. The society has an endowment and membership is inexpensive, costing but fifteen dollars a year, including the three balls. This enables young men starting in life to be members without going into extravagance, and is in accord with the best social tradition of Charleston, where the difference between an aristocracy and a plutocracy is well understood. Most of the rules of the organization are unwritten. One is that men shall not smoke on the premises during a ball; another is that divorced persons shall not be members or guests of the society. In this respect the St. Cecilia Society may be said, in effect, to be applying, socially, the South Carolina law; for South Carolina is the only State in the Union in which divorces are not granted for any cause whatsoever. This reminds me that the State has an anti-tipping law. The Pullman porter is required to hang up copies of the law in his car when it enters South Carolina, and copies of it are displayed on the doors of hotel bedrooms. The penalty for giving or receiving a tip is a fine of from ten to one hundred dollars, or thirty days in jail. Perhaps the law is observed. I know, at least, that no one offered me a tip while I was in that State. * * * * * The old grandees of Charleston were usually sent to Oxford or Cambridge for an education and English tradition still remains, I fancy, the foundation for what Charleston social life is to-day. I thought at first that Charlestonians spoke like the English, but later came to the conclusion that there is in the pronunciation of some of them a quality resembling a very faint brogue--a brogue such as might be possessed by a cultivated Irishman who had moved to England in his boyhood, and had been educated there. The "vanishing _y_" of tidewater Virginia is also used by some Charlestonians, I am told, though I do not remember hearing it. Generalizations on the subject of dialectic peculiarities are dangerous, as I have good reason to know. Naturally, not all Charlestonians speak alike. I should say, however, that the first _a_ in the words "Papa" and "Mama" is frequently given a short sound, as _a_ in "hat"; also that many one-syllable words are strung out into two. For instance, "eight" is heard as "ay-et" ("ay" as in "gray"); "where" as "whey-uh," or "way-uh," and "hair" as "hay-uh." "Why?" sometimes sounds like "Woi?" Such words as "calm" and "palm" are sometimes given the short _a_: "cam" and "pam"--which, of course, occurs elsewhere, too. The name "Ralph" is pronounced as "Rafe" (_a_ as in "rate")--which I believe is Old English; and the names "Saunders" and "Sanders" are pronounced exactly alike, both being called "Sanders." Tomatoes are sometimes called "tomatters." Two dishes I never heard of before are "Hopping John," which is rice cooked with peas, and "Limping Kate," which is some other rice combination. What we, in the North, call an "ice-cream freezer" becomes in Charleston an "ice-cream _churn_." "Good morning" is the salutation up to three P.M., whereas in other parts of the South "Good evening" is said for the Northern "Good afternoon." Charlestonians speak of being "parrot-toed"--not "pigeon-toed." Where, in the North, we would ask a friend, "How are things out your way?" a Charlestonian may inquire, "How are things out your _side_?" The expression "going out" means to go to St. Cecilia Balls, and I have been told that it is never used in any other way. That is, if a lady is asked: "Are you going out this winter?" it means definitely, "Are you going to the St. Cecilia balls?" If you heard it said that some one was "_on_ Mount Pleasant," you might suppose that Mount Pleasant was an island; but it is not; it is a village on the mainland across the Cooper River. And what is to me one of the most curious expressions I ever heard is "do don't," as when a lady called to her daughter, "Martha, _do_ don't slam that door again!" How generally these peculiarities crop out in the speech of Charleston I cannot say. It occurs to me, however, that, assembled and catalogued in this way, they may create the idea that slovenly English is generally spoken in the city. If so they give an impression which I should not wish to convey, since Charleston has no more peculiarities of language than New York or Boston, and not nearly so many as a number of other cities. Cultivated Charlestonians have, moreover, the finest voices I have heard in any American city. CHAPTER XXXI "GULLA" AND THE BACK COUNTRY The most extraordinary negro dialect I know of is the "gulla" (sometimes spelled "gullah") of the rice plantation negroes of South Carolina and of the islands off the South Carolina and Georgia coast. I believe that the region of Charleston is headquarters for "gulla niggers," though I have heard the argot spoken as far south as Sepeloe Island, off the town of Darien, Georgia, near the Florida line. Gulla is such an extreme dialect as to be almost a language by itself. Whence it came I do not know, but I judge that it is a combination of English with the primitive tongues of African tribes, just as the dialect of old Creole negroes, in Louisiana, is a combination of African tribal tongues with French. A Charleston lady tells me that negroes on different rice plantations--even on adjoining plantations--speak dialects which differ somewhat, and I know of my own knowledge that thick gulla is almost incomprehensible to white persons who have not learned, by long practice, to understand it. A lady sent a gulla negro with a message to a friend. This is the message as it was delivered: "Missis seh all dem turrah folk done come shum. Enty you duh gwine come shum?" (To get the gulla effect the sounds should be uttered very rapidly.) Translated, this means: "Mistress says all them other folks have come to see her. Aren't you coming to see her?" "Shum" is a good gulla word. It means all kinds of things having to do with seeing--_to see her_, _to see him_, _to see it_. Thus, "You shum, enty?" may mean, _You see him_--_her_--or _it_? or _You see what he_--_she_--or _it_--_is doing_, or _has done_? For gulla has no genders and no tenses. "Enty" is a general question: _Aren't you? Didn't you? Isn't it?_ etc. Another common gulla word is "Buckra" which means _a white man of the upper class_, in contradistinction to a poor white. I have known a negro to refer to "de frame o' de bud," meaning the carcass, or frame, of a fowl. "Ay ain' day" means "They aren't (ain't) there." A friend of mine who resided at Bluffton, South Carolina, has told me of an old gulla fisherman who spoke in parables. A lady would ask him: "Have you any fish to-day?" To which, if replying affirmatively, he would answer: "Missis, de gate open"; meaning, "The door (of the 'car,' or fish-box) is open to you." If he had no fish he would reply: "Missis, ebb-tide done tack (take) crick"; signifying: "The tide has turned and it is too late to go to catch fish." This old man called whisky "muhgundy smash," the term evidently derived from some idea of the word "burgundy" combined with the word "mash." Here is a gulla dialect story, with a line-for-line translation. A train has killed a cow, and a negro witness is being examined by a justice of the peace: JUSTICE--Uncle John, did you see what killed Sam's cow? NEGRO--Co'ose Uh shum. (Of) course I saw him. JUSTICE--What was it, Uncle John? NEGRO--Dat black debble you-all (It was) that black devil you-all runnin' tru we lan'. Nigga duh (are) running through our land. (A) nigger (fireman) he stan' deh, duh po' coal stands there (and) he pours coal in eh stomach. into its stomach. Buckra duh sit up on eh seat, (A) white man (engineer) he sits up on his seat. duh smoke eh cigah, an' ebry (and) he smokes his cigar, and every tahme eh twis' eh tail eh run fasteh. time he twists its (engine's) tail it An' runs faster. And eh screams dis lak uh pantuh. Eben it screams just like a panther. Even w'en eh git tuh de station, eh stan' when it gets to the station, it stands tuh de station an' seh: "_Kyan_-stop! at the station and says: "_Can't_-stop! _Kyan_-stop! _Kyan_-stop!" _Can't_-stop! _Can't_-stop!" Sam cow binna browse down deh Sam's cow was browsing down there tuh Bull Head Crick. Eh ram eh to (at) Bull Head Creek. It (engine) rammed its nose innum, an' eh bussum wahde nose into it (the cow), and it busted him wide loose. Eh t'row eh intrus on de loose (open). It threw its entrails on the reyel on de cross-tie, an' clean-up rails, on the cross-ties, and clean up on de tele_gram_ pole. on the telegraph pole. Mrs. Leiding (Harriette Kershaw Leiding), of Charleston, has done a fine service to lovers of Old Charleston, and its ways, in collecting and publishing in pamphlet form a number of the cries of the negro street vendors. Of these I shall rob Mrs. Leiding's booklet of but one example--the cry of a little negro boy, a peddler of shrimp ("swimp"), who stood under a window in the early morning and sang: [Music: An' a Daw-try Daw! an' a swimp-y raw! an' a Daw-try Daw-try Daw-try Raw Swimp.] While on the subject of the Charleston negro I must not neglect two of his superstitions. One is his belief that a two-dollar bill is unlucky. The curse may be removed only by tearing off a corner of the bill. The other is that it is unlucky to hand any one a pin. A Charleston lady told me that when she was motoring and wished to pin her hat or her veil, she could never get her negro chauffeur to hand her pins. Instead he would stick them in the laprobe, or in the sleeve of his coat, whence she could pick them out herself. Another lady told me of the case of an old black slave who lived years ago on a plantation on the Santee River, owned by her family. This slave, who was a very powerful, taciturn and high-tempered man, had a curious habit of disappearing for about half an hour each day. He would go into the swamp, and for many years no one ever followed him, the other negroes being afraid to do so because of his temper and his strength. At last, however, they did spy upon him and discovered that in the swamp there stood a cypress tree on which were strange rude carvings, before which he prostrated himself. No one ever learned the exact significance of this, but it was assumed that the man practised some barbaric form of worship, brought from Africa. * * * * * The country back of Charleston is very lovely and is rich in interest, even though most of the houses on the old estates have been destroyed. Drayton Hall, however, stands, and the old Drayton estate, Magnolia, not far distant from the Hall (which was on another estate), has one of the most famous gardens in the world. Seven persons touching fingertips can barely encircle the trunks of some of the live-oaks at Magnolia; there are camellias more than twenty feet high, and a rose tree nearly as large, but the great glory of the garden is its huge azaleas--ninety-two varieties, it is said--which, when they blossom in the spring, are so wonderful that people make long journeys for no other purpose than to see them. In "Harper's Magazine" for December, 1875, I find an account of the gardens which were, at that time, far from new. The azaleas were then twelve and thirteen feet tall; now, I am told, they reach to a height of more than twenty feet, with a corresponding spread. "It is almost impossible," says the anonymous writer of the article, "to give a Northerner any idea of the affluence of color in this garden when its flowers are in bloom. Imagine a long walk with the moss-draped live-oaks overhead, a fairy lake and a bridge in the distance, and on each side the great fluffy masses of rose and pink and crimson, reaching far above your head, thousands upon tens of thousands of blossoms packed close together, with no green to mar the intensity of their color, rounding out in swelling curves of bloom down to the turf below, not pausing a few inches above it and showing bare stems or trunk, but spreading over the velvet, and trailing out like the rich robes of an empress. Stand on one side and look across the lawn; it is like a mad artist's dream of hues; it is like the Arabian nights; eyes that have never had color enough find here a full feast, and go away satisfied at last. And with all their gorgeousness, the hues are delicately mingled; the magic effect is produced not by unbroken banks of crude reds, but by blended shades, like the rich Oriental patterns of India shawls, which the European designers, with all their efforts, can never imitate." Another remarkable garden, though not the equal of Magnolia, is at Middleton Place, not many miles away, and still another is at the pleasant winter resort town of Summerville, something more than twenty miles above Charleston. The latter, called the Pinehurst Tea Garden, is said to be the only tea garden in the United States. It is asserted that the teas produced here are better than those of China and Japan, and are equal to those of India. The Government is coöperating with the owners of this garden with a view to introducing tea planting in the country in a large way. The finest grade of tea raised here is known as "Shelter Tea," and is sold only at the gardens, the price being five dollars per pound. It is a tea of the Assam species grown under shelters of wire mesh and pine straw. This type of tea is known in Japan, where it originated, as "sugar tea," because, owing to the fact that it is grown in the shade, the sap of the bush, which is of starchy quality, is turned chemically into sugar, giving the leaf an exceedingly delicate flavor. From the superintendent in charge of the gardens I learned something of the bare facts of the tea growing industry. I had always been under the impression that the name "pekoe" referred to a certain type of tea, but he told me that the word is Chinese for "eyelash," and came to be used because the tip leaves of tea bushes, when rolled and dried, resemble eyelashes. These leaves--"pekoe tips"--make the most choice tea. The second leaves make the tea called "orange pekoe," while the third leaves produce a grade of tea called simply "pekoe." In China it is customary to send three groups of children, successively, to pick the leaves, the first group picking only the tips, the second group the second leaves, and the third group the plain pekoe leaves. At the Pinehurst Tea Gardens the picking is done by colored children, ranging from eight to fifteen years of age. All the leaves are picked together and are later separated by machinery. Summerville itself seems a lovely lazy town. It is the kind of place to which I should like to retire in the winter if I had a book to write. One could be very comfortable, and there would be no radical distractions--unless one chanced to see the Most Beautiful Girl in the World, who has been known to spend winters at that place. On the way from Charleston to Summerville, if you go by motor, you pass The Oaks, an estate with a new colonial house standing where an ancient mansion used to stand. A long avenue bordered by enormous live-oaks, leading to this house, gives the place its name, and affords a truly noble approach. Here, in Revolutionary times, Marion, "the Swamp Fox," used to camp. Not far distant from the old gate at The Oaks is Goose Creek Church--the most interesting church I have ever seen. The Parish of St. James, Goose Creek, was established by act of the Assembly, November 30, 1706, and the present church, a brick building of crudely simple architecture, was built about 1713. The interior of the church, though in good condition, is the oldest looking thing, I think, in the United States. The memorial tablets in the walls, with their foreign names and antique lettering, the curious old box pews, the odd little gallery at the back, the tall pulpit, with its winding stair, above all the Royal Arms of Great Britain done in relief on the chancel wall and brilliantly colored--all these make Goose Creek Church more like some little Norman church in England, than like anything one might reasonably expect to find on this side of the world. Countless items of curious interest hang about the church and parish. Michaux, the French botanist who came to this country in 1786, lived for a time at Goose Creek. He brought with him the first four camellias seen in the United States, planting them at Middleton Place above Drayton Hall, where, I believe, they still stand, having reached a great height. A British officer known as Mad Archy Campbell was married at Goose Creek Church during the Revolution, under romantic circumstances. Miss Paulina Phelps, a young lady of the parish, was a great beauty and a great coquette, who amused herself alike with American and British officers. Campbell met and fell desperately in love with her, and it is said that she encouraged him, though without serious intent. One day he induced her to go horseback-riding with him and on the ride made love to her so vehemently that she was "intimidated into accepting him." They rode to the rectory, and Campbell, meeting the rector, demanded that he should marry them at once. The dominie replied that he would do so "with the consent of the young lady and her mother," but Campbell proposed to await no such formalities. Drawing his pistol he gave the minister the choice of performing the ceremony then and there, or perishing. This argument proved conclusive and the two were promptly wed. When Goose Creek was within the British lines it is said that the minister proceeded, upon one occasion, to utter the prayer for the King of England, in the Litany. At the end of the prayer there were no "Amens," the congregation having been composed almost entirely, as the story goes, of believers in American independence. Into the awkward pause after the prayer one voice from the congregation was at last injected. It was the voice of old Ralph Izard, saying heartily, not "Amen," but "Good Lord, deliver us!" There is a tablet in the church to the memory of this worthy. The story is told, also, of an old gentleman, a member of the congregation in Revolutionary times, who informed the minister that if he again read the prayer for the King he would throw his prayer-book at his head. The minister took this for a jest, but when he began to read the prayer on the following Sunday, he found that it was not, for sure enough the prayer-book came hurtling through the air. Prayer-books were heavier then than they are now, and it is said that as a result of this episode, the minister refused to hold service thereafter. The church is not now used regularly, an occasional memorial service only being held there. * * * * * Charleston is a hard place to leave. Wherever one may be going from there, the change is likely to be for the worse. Nevertheless, it is impossible to stay forever; so at last you muster up your resignation and your resources, buy tickets, and reluctantly prepare to leave. If you depart as we did, you go by rail, driving to the station in the venerable bus of the Charleston Transfer Company--a conveyance which, one judges, may be coeval with the city's oldest mansions. Little as we wished to leave Charleston we did not wish to defer our departure through any such banality as the unnecessary missing of a train. Therefore as we waited for the bus, on the night of leaving, and as train time drew nearer and nearer, with no sign of the lumbering old vehicle, we became somewhat concerned. When the bus did come at last there was little time to spare; nevertheless the conductor, an easygoing man of great volubility, consumed some precious minutes in gossiping with the hotel porter, and then with arranging and rearranging the baggage on the roof of the bus. His manner was that of an amateur bus conductor, trying a new experiment. After watching his performances for a time, looking occasionally at my watch, by way of giving him a hint, I broke out into expostulation at the unnecessary delay. "What's the matter?" asked the man in a gentle, almost grieved tone. "There's very little time!" I returned. "We don't wish to miss the train." "Oh, all right," said the bus conductor, making more haste, as though the information I had given him put a different face on matters generally. Presently we started. After a time he collected our fares. I have forgotten whether the amount was twenty-five or fifty cents. At all events, as he took the money from my hand he said to me reassuringly: "Don't you worry, sir! If I don't get you to the train I'll give you this money back. That's fair, ain't it?" CHAPTER XXXII OUT OF THE PAST By no means all the leading citizens of Atlanta were in a frame of mind to welcome General Sherman when, ten or a dozen years after the Civil War, he revisited the city. Captain Evan P. Howell, a former Confederate officer, then publisher of the Atlanta "Constitution," was, however, not one of the Atlantans who ignored the general's visit. Taking his young son, Clark, he called upon the general at the old Kimball House (later destroyed by fire), and had an interesting talk with him. Clark Howell, who has since succeeded his father as publisher of the "Constitution," was born while the latter was fighting at Chickamauga, and was consequently old enough, at the time of the call on Sherman, to remember much of what was said. He heard the general tell Captain Howell why he had made such a point of taking Atlanta, and as Sherman's military reasons for desiring possession of the Georgia city explain, to a large extent, Atlanta's subsequent development, I shall quote them as Clark Howell gave them to me. First however, it is perhaps worth while to remind the reader of the bare circumstances preceding the fall of Atlanta. After the defeat of the Confederate forces at Chattanooga, General Joseph E. Johnston's army fell back slowly on Atlanta, much as the French fell back on Paris at the beginning of the European War, shortening their own lines of communication while those of the advancing Germans were being continually attenuated. As the Germans kept after the French, Sherman kept after Johnston; and as Joffre was beginning to be criticized for failing to make a stand against the enemy, so was Johnston criticized as he continued to retire without giving battle. One of the chief differences between Joffre's retirement and Johnston's lies, however, in the length of time consumed; for whereas the French retreat on Paris covered a few days only, the Confederate retreat on Atlanta covered weeks and months, giving the Confederate Government time to become impatient with Johnston and finally to remove him from command before the time arrived when, in his judgment, the stand against Sherman should be made. Nor is it inconceivable that, had the French retreat lasted as long as Johnston's, Joffre would have been removed and would have lost the opportunity to justify his Fabian policy, as he did so gloriously at the Battle of the Marne. Though Atlanta was, at the time of the war, a city of less than 10,000 inhabitants, it was the chief base of supply for men and munitions in the Far South. "When my father asked him why all his effort and power had been centered, after Chickamauga, on the capture of Atlanta," said Clark Howell, "I remember that General Sherman extended one hand with the fingers spread apart, explaining the strategic situation by imagining Atlanta as occupying a position where the wrist joins the hand, while the thumb and fingers represented, successively, New Orleans, Mobile, Savannah, Charleston, and Norfolk. 'If I held Atlanta,' he said, 'I was only one day's journey from these chief cities of the South.'" In spite, therefore, of the assertion, which I have heard made, that the prosperity of Atlanta is "founded on insurance premiums, coca-cola, and hot air," it seems to me that it is founded on something very much more solid. Nor do I refer to the layer of granite which underlies the city. The prosperity of Atlanta is based upon the very feature which made its capture seem to Sherman so desirable: its strategic position as a central point in the Far South. Neither in Atlanta nor in any other part of Georgia is General Sherman remembered with a feeling that can properly be described as affectionate, though it may be added that Atlanta has good reason for remembering him warmly. The burning of Atlanta by Sherman did not, however, prove an unalloyed disaster, for the war came to an end soon after, and the rebuilding of the city supplied work for thousands of former Confederate soldiers, and also drew to Atlanta many of the strong men who played leading parts in the subsequent commercial upbuilding of the place: such men as the late General Alfred Austell, Captain James W. English, and the three Inman brothers, Samuel, John, and Hugh--to mention but a few names. The First National Bank, established by General Austell, is, I believe, Atlanta's largest bank to-day, and was literally the first national bank established in Georgia, if not in the whole South, after the war. Woodrow Wilson was admitted to the bar in Atlanta, and, if I mistake not, practised law in an office not far from that meeting place of highways called Five Points. Here, at Five Points, two important trails crossed, long before there was any Atlanta: the north-and-south trail between Savannah and Ross's Landing, and the east-and-west trail, which followed the old Indian trails between Charleston and New Orleans. When people from this part of the country wished to go to Ohio, Indiana, or the Mississippi Valley, they would take the old north-and-south trail to Ross's Landing, follow the Tennessee River to where it empties into the Ohio, near Paducah, Kentucky, and proceed thence to Mississippi. In the thirties, Atlanta--or rather the site of Atlanta, for the city was not founded until 1840--was on the border of white civilization in northern Georgia, all the country to the north of the Chattahoochee River, which flows a few miles distant from the city, having belonged to the Cherokee Indians, who had been moved there from Florida. Even in those times the Cherokees were civilized, as Indians go, for they lived in huts and practised agriculture. Of course, however, their civilization was not comparable with that of the white man. If they had been as civilized as he, they might have driven him out of Florida, instead of having been themselves driven out, and they might have driven him out of Georgia, too, instead of having been pushed on, as they were, to the Indian Territory--eighteen thousand of them, under military supervision, on boats from Ross's Landing--leaving the beautiful white Cherokee rose, which grows wild and in great profusion, in the spring, as almost their sole memorial on Georgia soil. As Georgia became settled the trails developed into wagon and stage routes, and later they were followed, approximately, by the railroads. After three railroads had reached Atlanta, the State of Georgia engaged in what may have been the first adventure, in this country, along the lines of government-owned railroads: namely, the building of the Western & Atlantic, from Atlanta to Chattanooga, to form a link between the lower South and the rapidly developing West. This road was built in the forties, and it was along its line that Johnston retreated before Sherman, from Chattanooga to Atlanta. Though it is now leased and operated by the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railroad Company, it is still owned by the State of Georgia. The lease, however, expires soon, and (an interesting fact in view of the continued agitation in other parts of the country for government ownership of corporations) there is a strong sentiment in Georgia in favor of selling the railroad; for it is estimated that, at a fair price, it would yield a sum sufficient not only to wipe out the entire bonded indebtedness of the State ($7,000,000), but to leave ten or twelve millions clear in the State treasury. * * * * * At Roswell, Georgia, a sleepy little hamlet in the hills, not many miles from Atlanta, stands Bulloch Hall, where Martha ("Mittie") Bulloch, later Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, mother of the President, was born. Roswell was originally settled, long ago, by people from Savannah, Darien, and other towns of the flat, hot country near the coast, who drove there in their carriages and remained during the summer. After a time, however, three prosperous families--the Bullochs, Dunwoodys, and Barrington Kings--made their permanent homes at Roswell. Bulloch Hall is one of those old white southern colonial houses the whole front of which consists of a great pillared portico, in the Greek style, giving a look of dignity and hospitality. Almost all such houses are, as they should be, surrounded by fine old trees; those at Bulloch Hall are especially fine: tall cedars, ancient white oaks, giant osage oranges, and a pair of holly trees, one at either side of the walk near the front door. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., and Mittie Bulloch met here when they were respectively seventeen and fifteen years of age. A half sister of Miss Mittie had married a relative of the Roosevelts and gone from Roswell to live in Philadelphia, and it was while visiting at her home that young Roosevelt, hearing a great deal of the South, conceived a desire to go there. This resulted in his first visit to Bulloch Hall, and his meeting with Mittie Bulloch. On his return to the North he was sent abroad, but two or three years later when he went again to visit his relatives in Philadelphia, Miss Mittie was also a guest at their house, and this time the two became engaged. Save that the Bulloch furniture is no longer there, the interior of the old Georgia residence stands practically as it was when Theodore Roosevelt and Mittie Bulloch were married in the dining room. Through the center, from front to back, runs a wide hall, on either side of which is a pair of spacious square rooms, each with a fireplace, each with large windows looking out over the beautiful hilly country which spreads all about. It is a lovely house in a lovely setting, and, though the Bullochs reside there no longer, Miss Mittie Bulloch is not forgotten in Roswell, for one of her bridesmaids, Miss Evelyn King, now Mrs. Baker, still resides in Barrington Hall, not far distant from the old Bulloch homestead. CHAPTER XXXIII ALIVE ATLANTA An army officer, a man of broad sympathies, familiar with the whole United States, warned me before I went south that I must not judge the South by northern standards. "On the side of picturesqueness and charm," he said, "the South can more than hold its own against the rest of the country; likewise on the side of office-holding and flowery oratory; but you must not expect southern cities to have the energy you are accustomed to in the North." As to the picturesqueness, charm, officeholding, and oratory, I found his judgments substantially correct, but though I did perceive a certain lack of energy in some small cities, I should not call that trait a leading one in the larger southern cities to-day. On the contrary, I was impressed, in almost every large center that I visited, with the fact that, in the South more, perhaps, than in any other part of the country, a great awakening is in progress. The dormant period of the South is past, and all manner of developments are everywhere in progress. Nor do I know of any city which better exemplifies southern growth and progress than Atlanta. My Baedeker, dated 1909, opens its description of Atlanta with the statement that the German consul there is Dr. E. Zoepffel. I doubt it--but let us pass over that. It describes Atlanta as "a prosperous commercial and industrial city and an important railroad center, well situated, 1030-1175 feet above the sea, enjoying a healthy and bracing climate." That is true. Atlanta is, if I mistake not, the highest important city east of Denver, and I believe her climate is in part responsible for her energy, as it is also for the fact that her vegetation is more like that of a northern than a southern city, elms and maples rather than magnolias, being the trees of the Atlanta streets. Baedeker gave Atlanta about 90,000 inhabitants in 1909, but the census of 1910 jumped her up to more than 150,000, while the estimate of 1917 in the "World Almanac" credits her with about 180,000. Moreover, in the almanac's list of the largest cities of the earth, Atlanta comes twentieth from the top. It is my duty, perhaps, to add that the list is arranged alphabetically--which reminds me that some cynic has suggested that there may have been an alphabetical arrangement of names, also, in the celebrated list in which Abou Ben Adhem's "name led all the rest." Nevertheless, it may be stated that, according to the almanac's population figures, Atlanta is larger than the much more ancient city of Athens (I refer to Athens, Greece; not Athens, Georgia), as well as such considerable cities as Bari, Bochum, Graz, Kokand, and Omsk. Atlanta is, in short, a city of about the size of Goteborg, and if she has not yet achieved the dimensions of Baku, Belem, Changsha, Tashkent, or West Ham, she is growing rapidly, and may some day surpass them all; yes, and even that thriving metropolis, Yekaterinoslav. As to the "healthy and bracing climate," I know that Atlanta is cool and lovely in the spring, and I am told that her prosperous families do not make it a practice to absent themselves from home during the summer, according to the custom of the corresponding class in many other cities, northern as well as southern. Atlanta is one of the few large inland cities located neither upon a river nor a lake. When the city was founded, the customs of life in Georgia were such that no one ever dreamed that the State might some day go dry. Having plenty of other things to drink, the early settlers gave no thought to water. But, as time went on, and prohibition became a more and more important issue, the citizens of Atlanta began to perceive that, in emergency, the Chattahoochee River might, after all, have its uses. Water was, consequently, piped from the river to the city, and is now generally--albeit in some quarters mournfully--used. Though I am informed by an expert in Indian languages that the Cherokee word "chattahoochee" is short for "muddy," the water is filtered before it reaches the city pipes, and is thoroughly palatable, whether taken plain or mixed. Well-off though Atlanta is, she would esteem herself better off, in a material sense at least, had she a navigable stream; for her chief industrial drawback consists in railroad freight rates unmodified by water competition. She has, to be sure, a number of factories, including a Ford automobile plant, but she has not so many factories as her strategic position, stated by General Sherman, would seem to justify, or as her own industrial ambitions cause her to desire. For does not every progressive American city yearn to bristle with factory chimneys, even as a summer resort folder bristles with exclamation points? And is not soot a measure of success? Atlanta's line of business is largely office business; many great corporations have their headquarters or their general southern branches in the city; one of the twelve Federal Reserve Banks is there, and there are many strong banks. Indeed, I suppose Atlanta has more bankers, in proportion to her population, than any other city in the United States. Some of these bankers are active citizens and permanent residents of the city; others have given up banking for the time being and are in temporary residence at the Federal Penitentiary. The character of commerce carried on, naturally brings to Atlanta large numbers of prosperous and able men--corporation officials, branch managers, manufacturers' agents, and the like--who, with their families, give Atlanta a somewhat individual social flavor. This class of population also accounts for the fact that the enterprisingness so characteristic of Atlanta is not the me