American Adventures - free ebook by Julian Street

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American Adventures

Julian Street

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FOREWORD

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

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CHAPTER I ON JOURNEYS THROUGH THE STATES

CHAPTER I ON JOURNEYS THROUGH THE STATES

Had my companion and I never crossed the continent together, had we never gone "abroad at home," I might have curbed my impatience at the beginning of our second voyage. But from the time we returned from our first journey, after having spent some months in trying, as some one put it, to "discover America," I felt the gnawings of excited appetite. The vast sweep of the country continually suggested to me some great delectable repast: a banquet spread for a hundred million guests; and having disc

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CHAPTER II A BALTIMORE EVENING

CHAPTER II A BALTIMORE EVENING

Before I went to Baltimore I had but two definite impressions connected with the place: the first was of a tunnel, filled with coal gas, through which trains pass beneath the city; the second was that when a southbound train left Baltimore the time had come to think of cleaning up, preparatory to reaching Washington. Arriving at Baltimore after dark, one gathers an impression of an adequate though not impressive Union Station from which one emerges to a district of good asphalted streets, the ma

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CHAPTER III WHERE THE CLIMATES MEET

CHAPTER III WHERE THE CLIMATES MEET

Because Baltimore was built, like Rome, on seven hills, and because trains run under it instead of through, the passing traveler sees but little of the city, his view from the train window being restricted first to a suburban district, then to a black tunnel, then to a glimpse upward from the railway cut, in which the station stands. These facts, I think, combine to leave upon his mind an impression which, if not actually unfavorable, is at least negative; for certainly he has obtained no just i

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CHAPTER IV TRIUMPHANT DEFEAT

CHAPTER IV TRIUMPHANT DEFEAT

Following the incorporation of the city, Baltimore grew much as Chicago was destined to grow more than a century later; within less than thirty years, when Chicago was a tiny village, Baltimore had become the third city in the United States: a city of wealthy merchants engaged in an extensive foreign trade; for in those days there was an American merchant marine, and the swift, rakish Baltimore clippers were known the seven seas over. The story of modern Baltimore is entirely unrelated to the ci

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CHAPTER V TERRAPIN AND THINGS

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 car

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CHAPTER VI DOUGHOREGAN MANOR AND THE CARROLLS

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 tr

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CHAPTER VII A RARE OLD TOWN

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

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CHAPTER VIII WE MEET THE HAMPTON GHOST

CHAPTER VIII WE MEET THE HAMPTON GHOST

Hampton is probably the largest of Maryland's old mansions, and the beauty of it is more theatrical than the beauty of Doughoregan Manor; for although the latter is the older of the two, the former is not only spectacular by reason of its spaciousness, the delicacy of its architectural details, and the splendor of its dreamlike terraced gardens, but also for a look of beautiful, dignified, yet somehow tragic age—a look which makes one think of a wonderful old lady; a belle of the days of minuets

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CHAPTER IX ARE WE STANDARDIZED?

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 transcontin

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CHAPTER X HARPER'S FERRY AND JOHN BROWN

CHAPTER X HARPER'S FERRY AND JOHN BROWN

Three States meet at Harper's Ferry, and the line dividing two of them is indicated where it crosses the station platform. If you alight at the rear end of the train, you are in Maryland; at the front, you are in West Virginia. This I like. I have always liked important but invisible boundaries—boundaries of states or, better yet, of countries. When I cross them I am disposed to step high, as though not to trip upon them, and then to pause with one foot in one land and one in another, trying to

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CHAPTER XI THE VIRGINIAS AND THE WASHINGTONS

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 Je

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CHAPTER XII I RIDE A HORSE

CHAPTER XII I RIDE A HORSE

—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 balanc

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CHAPTER XIII INTO THE OLD DOMINION

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

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CHAPTER XIV CHARLOTTESVILLE AND MONTICELLO

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 ho

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CHAPTER XV THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

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 geome

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CHAPTER XVI FOX-HUNTING IN VIRGINIA

CHAPTER XVI FOX-HUNTING IN VIRGINIA

It is my impression that the dining-car conductor on the Chesapeake &amp; Ohio train by which we left Charlottesville was puzzled when I asked his name; but if he sees this and remembers the incident he will now know that I did so because I wished here to mention him as a humane citizen. His name is C. 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

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CHAPTER XVII "A CERTAIN PARTY"

CHAPTER XVII "A CERTAIN PARTY"

The motor ride to The Plains was a cold and rough one. I remember that we had to ford a stream or two, and that once, where the mud had been churned up and made deep by the wheels of many vehicles, we almost stuck. Excepting at the fords, the road was dusty, and the dust was kept in circulation by the feet of countless saddle horses, on which men from the country to the south of Upperville were riding home from the races. All the way to The Plains our lights kept picking up these riders, sometim

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CHAPTER XVIII THE LEGACY OF HATE

CHAPTER XVIII THE LEGACY OF HATE

The last time I went abroad, a Briton on the boat told me a story about an American tourist who asked an old English gardener how they made such splendid lawns over there. "First we cut the grass," said the gardener, "and then we roll it. Then we cut it, and then we roll it." "That's just what we do," said the American. "Ah," returned the gardener, "but over here we've been doing it five hundred years!" In Liverpool another Englishman told me the same story. Three or four others told it to me in

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CHAPTER XIX "YOU-ALL" AND OTHER SECTIONAL MISUNDERSTANDINGS

CHAPTER XIX "YOU-ALL" AND OTHER SECTIONAL MISUNDERSTANDINGS

Those who write school histories and wish them adopted by southern schools have to handle the Civil War with gloves. Such words as "rebel" and "rebellion" are resented in the South, and the historian must go softly in discussing slavery, though he may put on the loud pedal in speaking of State Rights, the fact being that the South not only knows now, but, as evidenced by the utterances of her leading men, from Jefferson to Lee, knew long before the war that slavery was a great curse; whereas, on

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CHAPTER XX IDIOMS AND ARISTOCRACY

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 fa

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CHAPTER XXI THE CONFEDERATE CAPITAL

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 doe

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CHAPTER XXII RANDOM RICHMOND NOTES

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

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CHAPTER XXIII JEDGE CRUTCHFIELD'S CO'T

CHAPTER XXIII JEDGE CRUTCHFIELD'S CO'T

My companion and I had not traveled far into the South before we discovered that our comfort was likely to be considerably enhanced if, in hotels, we singled out an intelligent bell boy and, as far as possible, let this one boy serve us. Our mainstay in the Jefferson Hotel was Charles Jackson, No. 144, or, when Charles was "off," his "side partner," whom we knew as Bob. Having one day noticed a negro in convict's stripes, but without a guard, raking up leaves in Capitol Square, I asked Charles a

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CHAPTER XXIV NORFOLK AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD

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 V

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CHAPTER XXV COLONEL TAYLOR AND GENERAL LEE

CHAPTER XXV COLONEL TAYLOR AND GENERAL LEE

Though I had often heard, before going into the South, of the devotion of that section to the memory of General Robert E. Lee, I never fully realized the extent of that devotion until I began to become a little bit acquainted with Virginia. I remember being struck, while in Norfolk, with the fact that portraits of General Lee were to be seen in many offices and homes, much as one might expect, at the present time, to find portraits of Joffre and Nivelle in the homes of France, or of Haig in the

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CHAPTER XXVI RALEIGH AND JOSEPHUS DANIELS

CHAPTER XXVI RALEIGH AND JOSEPHUS DANIELS

Just as it is the fashion in the Middle West to speak jestingly of Kansas, it is the fashion in the South to treat lightly the State of North Carolina. And just as my companion and I, long ago, on another voyage of discovery, were eager to get into Kansas and find out what that fabulous Commonwealth was really like, so we became anxious, as we heard the gossip about the "Old North State," to enter it and form our own conclusions. The great drawback to an attempt to see North Carolina, however, l

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CHAPTER XXVII ITEMS FROM "THE OLD NORTH STATE"

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 Hen

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CHAPTER XXVIII UNDER ST. MICHAEL'S CHIMES

CHAPTER XXVIII UNDER ST. MICHAEL'S CHIMES

It has been said—by Mrs. T. P. O'Connor, I think—that whereas twenty-five letters of introduction for New York may produce one invitation to dinner, one letter of introduction for Charleston will produce twenty-five dinner invitations. If this be an exaggeration it is, at least, exaggeration in the right direction; that is, along the lines of truth. For though Charleston's famed "exclusiveness" is very real, making letters of introduction very necessary to strangers desiring to see something of

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CHAPTER XXIX HISTORY AND ARISTOCRACY

CHAPTER XXIX HISTORY AND ARISTOCRACY

Just now, when we are being unpleasantly awakened to the fact that our vaunted American melting-pot has not been doing its work; when some of us are perhaps wondering whether the quality of metal produced by the crucible will ever be of the best; it is comforting to reflect that a city whose history, traditions and great names are so completely involved with Americanism in its highest forms, a city we think of as ultra-American, is peculiarly a melting-pot product. The original Charleston coloni

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CHAPTER XXX POLITICS, A NEWSPAPER AND ST. CECILIA

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 individuali

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CHAPTER XXXI "GULLA" AND THE BACK COUNTRY

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 kn

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CHAPTER XXXII OUT OF THE PAST

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

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CHAPTER XXXIII ALIVE ATLANTA

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

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CHAPTER XXXIV GEORGIA JOURNALISM

CHAPTER XXXIV GEORGIA JOURNALISM

In journalism Atlanta is far in advance of many cities of her size, North or South. The Atlanta "Constitution," founded nearly half a century ago, is one of the country's most distinguished newspapers. The "Constitution" came into its greatest fame in the early eighties, when Captain Evan P. Howell—the same Captain Howell who commanded a battery at the battle of Peachtree Creek, in the defense of Atlanta, and who later called, with his son, on General Sherman, as already recorded—became its edit

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CHAPTER XXXV SOME ATLANTA INSTITUTIONS

CHAPTER XXXV SOME ATLANTA INSTITUTIONS

There has been great rejoicing in Atlanta over the raising of funds for the establishment there of two new universities, Emory and Oglethorpe. Emory was founded in 1914, as the result of a feud which developed in Vanderbilt University, located at Nashville, Tennessee, over the question as to whether the institution should be controlled by the Board of Bishops of the southern Methodist Episcopal Church, or by the University trustees, who were not so much interested in the development of the secta

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CHAPTER XXXVI A BIT OF RURAL GEORGIA

CHAPTER XXXVI A BIT OF RURAL GEORGIA

A man I know studies as a hobby something which he calls "graphics"—the term denoting the reaction of the mind to certain words. One of the words he used in an experiment with me was "winter." When he said "winter" there instantly came to me the picture of a snowstorm in Quebec. I saw the front of the Hotel Frontenac at dusk through a mist of driving snow. There were lights in the windows. A heavy wind was blowing and as I leaned against it the front of my overcoat was plastered with sticky whit

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CHAPTER XXXVII A YOUNG METROPOLIS

CHAPTER XXXVII A YOUNG METROPOLIS

An observer approaching a strange city should be "neutral even in thought." He may listen to what is said of the city, but he must not permit his opinions to take form in advance; for, like other gossip, gossip about cities is unreliable, and the casual stranger's estimate of cities is not always founded upon broad appreciations. But though it is unwise to judge of cities by what is said of them, it is perhaps worth remarking that one may often judge of men by what they say of cities. I remember

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CHAPTER XXXVIII BUSY BIRMINGHAM

CHAPTER XXXVIII BUSY BIRMINGHAM

The fact that a man may shut off his motor and coast downhill from his home to his office in the lower part of Birmingham, is not without symbolism. Birmingham is all business. If I were to personify the place, it would be in the likeness of a man I know—a big, powerful fellow with an honest blue eye and an expression in which self-confidence, ambition, and power are blended. Like Birmingham, this man is a little more than forty years of age. Like Birmingham, he has built up a large business of

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CHAPTER XXXIX AN ALLEGORY OF ACHIEVEMENT

CHAPTER XXXIX AN ALLEGORY OF ACHIEVEMENT

To visit Birmingham without seeing an iron and steel plant would be like visiting Rome without seeing the Forum. Consequently my companion and I made application for permission to go through the Tennessee Coal, Iron, &amp; Railroad Company's plant, at Ensley, on the outskirts of the city. When the permission was refused us we attacked from another angle—using influence—and were refused again. Next we called upon a high official of the company, and (as we had, of course, done in making our pr

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CHAPTER XL THE ROAD TO ARCADY

CHAPTER XL THE ROAD TO ARCADY

Before we saw the train which was to take us from Birmingham to Columbus, Mississippi, we began to sense its quality. When we attempted to purchase parlor car seats of the ticket agent at the Union Station and were informed by him that our train carried no parlor car, it seemed to us that his manner was touched with cynicism, and this impression was confirmed by his reply to our further timid inquiry as to a dining car: "Where do you gentlemen reckon you're a-goin' to, anyhow?" Presently we pass

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CHAPTER XLI A MISSISSIPPI TOWN

CHAPTER XLI A MISSISSIPPI TOWN

It was dark when, after a journey of one hundred and twenty miles at the rate of twenty miles an hour, we reached Columbus, a city which was never intended to be a metropolis and which will never be one. Columbus is situated upon a bluff on the east bank of the Tombigbee River, to the west of which is a very fertile lowland region, filled with plantations, the owners of which, a century ago, founded the town in order that their families might have churches, schools, and the advantages of social

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CHAPTER XLII OLD TALES AND A NEW GAME

CHAPTER XLII OLD TALES AND A NEW GAME

Mrs. Eichelberger supplied us merely with a place to sleep. For meals she referred us to a lady who lived a few doors up the street. But when in the morning we went, full of hunger and of hope, to the house of this lady, we were coldly informed that breakfast was over, and were recommended to the Bell Café, downtown. My companion and I are not of that robust breed which enjoys a bracing walk before its morning coffee, and the fact that the streets of Columbus charmed us, as we now saw them for t

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CHAPTER XLIII OUT OF THE LONG AGO

CHAPTER XLIII OUT OF THE LONG AGO

While local historians attempt to tangle up the exploration of De Soto with the early history of this region, saying that De Soto "entered the State of Mississippi near the site of Columbus," and that "he probably crossed the Tombigbee River at this point," their conclusions are largely the result of guesswork. But it is not guesswork to say that when the Kentucky and Tennessee volunteers, going to the aid of Andrew Jackson, at New Orleans, in 1814, cut a military road from Tuscumbia, Alabama, t

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CHAPTER XLIV THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND HIM

CHAPTER XLIV THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND HIM

On our second evening in Columbus my companion and I returned to the house, near our domicile, to which we had been sent by Mrs. Eichelberger for our meals; but owing to a misunderstanding as to the dinner hour we found ourselves again too late. The family, and the teachers from the I. I. and C. who took meals there, were already coming out from dinner to sit and chat on the steps in the twilight. We were disappointed, for we were tired of restaurants, and had counted on a home meal that night;

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CHAPTER XLV VICKSBURG OLD AND NEW

CHAPTER XLV VICKSBURG OLD AND NEW

I should advise the traveler who is interested in cities not to enter Vicksburg by the Alabama &amp; Vicksburg Railroad, which has a dingy little station in a sort of gulch, but by the Yazoo &amp; Mississippi Valley Railroad—a branch of the Illinois Central—which skirts the river bank and flashes a large first impression of the city before the eyes of alighting passengers. The station itself is a pretty brick colonial building, backed by a neat if tiny park maintained by the railroad com

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CHAPTER XLVI SHREDS AND PATCHES

CHAPTER XLVI SHREDS AND PATCHES

It was Marse Harris Dickson who showed us the battlefield. As we were driving along in the motor we overtook an old trudging negro, very picturesque in his ragged clothing and battered soft hat. My companion said that he would like to take a picture of this wayfarer, and asked Marse Harris, who, as author of the "Old Reliable" stories, seemed best fitted for the task, to arrange the matter. The automobile, having passed the negro, was stopped to wait for him to catch up. Presently, as he came by

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CHAPTER XLVII THE BAFFLING MISSISSIPPI

CHAPTER XLVII THE BAFFLING MISSISSIPPI

As inevitably as water flows down the hills of Vicksburg to the river, the visitor's thoughts flow down always to the great spectacular, historic, mischievous, dominating stream. Mark Twain, in that glorious book, "Life on the Mississippi," declared, in speaking of the eternal problems of the Mississippi, that as there are not enough citizens of Louisiana to take care of all the theories about the river at the rate of one theory per individual, each citizen has two theories. That is the case to-

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CHAPTER XLVIII OLD RIVER DAYS

CHAPTER XLVIII OLD RIVER DAYS

Among the honored citizens of Vicksburg, at the time of our visit, were a number of old steamboat men who knew the river in its golden days; among them, Captain "Mose" Smith, Captain Tom Young, Captain W. S. ("Billy") Jones, and Captain S. H. Parisot—the latter probably the oldest surviving Mississippi River captain. We were sent to see Captain Parisot at his house, where he received us kindly, entertained us for an hour or more with reminiscences, and showed us a most interesting collection of

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CHAPTER XLIX WHAT MEMPHIS HAS ENDURED

CHAPTER XLIX WHAT MEMPHIS HAS ENDURED

An article on Memphis, published in the year 1855, gives the population of the place as about 13,000 (one quarter of the number slaves), and calls Memphis "the most promising town in the Southwest." It predicts that a railroad will some day connect Memphis with Little Rock, Arkansas, and that a direct line between Memphis and Cincinnati may even be constructed. This article begins the history of Memphis in the year 1820, when the place had 50 inhabitants. In 1840 the settlement had grown to 1,70

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CHAPTER L MODERN MEMPHIS

CHAPTER L MODERN MEMPHIS

To be charmed by the social side of a city, yet to find little to admire in its physical aspect, is like knowing a brilliant and beautiful woman whose housekeeping is not of the neatest. If one were compelled to discuss such a woman, and wished to do so sympathetically but with truth, one might avoid brutal comment on the condition of her rooms by likening them to other rooms elsewhere: rooms which one knew to be untidy, but which the innocent listener might not understand to be so. By this devi

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CHAPTER LI BEAUTIFUL SAVANNAH

CHAPTER LI BEAUTIFUL SAVANNAH

How often it occurs that the great work a man set out originally to accomplish, is lost sight of, by future generations, in contemplation of other achievements of that man, which he himself regarded as of secondary importance. In 1733, the year in which General Oglethorpe started his Georgia colony, there were more than a hundred offenses for which a person might be hanged in England; Oglethorpe's primary idea in founding the colony was to provide a means of freeing debtors from prison, and givi

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CHAPTER LII MISS "JAX" AND SOME FLORIDA GOSSIP

CHAPTER LII MISS "JAX" AND SOME FLORIDA GOSSIP

It is the boast of Jacksonville (known locally by the convenient abbreviation "Jax") that it stands as the "Gate to Florida." But the fact that a gate is something through which people pass—usually without stopping—causes some anguish to an active Chamber of Commerce, which has been known to send bands to the railway station to serenade tourists in the hope of enticing them to alight. If I were to personify Jacksonville, it would be, I think, as an amiable young woman, member of a domestic famil

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CHAPTER LIII PASSIONATE PALM BEACH

CHAPTER LIII PASSIONATE PALM BEACH

Like all places in which idlers try to avoid finding out that they are idle, Palm Beach has very definite customs as to where to go, and at what time to go there. Excepting in its hours for going to bed and getting up, it runs on schedule. The official day begins with the bathing hour—half past eleven to half past twelve—when the two or three thousand people from the pair of vast hotels assemble before the casino on the beach. Golfers will, of course, be upon the links before this hour; fisherme

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CHAPTER LIV ASSORTED AND RESORTED FLORIDA

CHAPTER LIV ASSORTED AND RESORTED FLORIDA

Florida in winter comes near to being all things to all men. To all she offers amusement plus her climate, and in no one section is the contrast in what amusement constitutes, and costs, set forth more sharply than where, on the west coast of the State, Belleair and St. Petersburg are situated, side by side. The Hotel Belleview at Belleair compares favorably with any in the State, and is peopled, during the cold months, with affluent golf maniacs, for whom two fine courses have been laid out. Wh

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CHAPTER LV A DAY IN MONTGOMERY

CHAPTER LV A DAY IN MONTGOMERY

As I have remarked before, it is a long haul from the peninsula of Florida to New Orleans. There are two ways to go. The route by way of Pensacola, following the Gulf Coast, looks shorter on the map but is, I believe, in point of time consumed, the longer way. My companion and I were advised to go by way of Montgomery, Alabama—a long way around it looked—where we were to change trains, catching a New Orleans-bound express from the North. It was nearly midnight when, after a long tiresome journey

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CHAPTER LVI THE CITY OF THE CREOLE

CHAPTER LVI THE CITY OF THE CREOLE

When a poet, a painter, or a sculptor wishes to personify a city, why does he invariably give it the feminine gender? Why is this so, even though the city be named for a man, or for a masculine saint? And why is it so in the case of commonplace cities, commercial cities, and ugly, sordid cities? It is not difficult to understand why a beautiful, sparkling city, like Washington or Paris, suggests a handsome woman, richly gowned and bedecked with jewels, but it is hard to understand why some other

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CHAPTER LVII HISTORY, THE CREOLE, AND HIS DUELS

CHAPTER LVII HISTORY, THE CREOLE, AND HIS DUELS

Canal Street is to New Orleans much more than Main Street is to Buffalo, much more than Broad Street is to Philadelphia, much more than Broadway and Fifth Avenue are to New York, for Canal Street divides New Orleans as no other street divides an American city. It divides New Orleans as the Seine divides Paris, and there is not more difference between the right bank of the Seine and the Latin Quarter than between American New Orleans and Creole New Orleans: between the newer part of the city and

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CHAPTER LVIII FROM ANTIQUES TO PIRATES

CHAPTER LVIII FROM ANTIQUES TO PIRATES

The numerous antique shops of the French quarter, with their gray, undulating floors and their piled-up, dusty litter of old furniture, plate, glass, and china, and the equally numerous old book stores, with their piles of French publications, their shadowy corners, their pleasant ancient bindings and their stale smell, are peculiarly reminiscent of similar establishments in Paris. That Eugene Field knew these shops well we have reason to know by at least two of his poems. In one, "The Discreet

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CHAPTER LIX ANTOINE'S AND MARDI GRAS

CHAPTER LIX ANTOINE'S AND MARDI GRAS

Antoine's is to me one of the four or five most satisfactory restaurants in the United States,—two of the others being the Louisiane and Galatoire's. But one has one's slight preferences in these things; and just as I have a feeling that the cuisine of the Hotel St. Regis in New York surpasses, just a little bit, that of any other eating place in the city, I have a feeling about Antoine's in New Orleans. This is not, perhaps, with me, altogether a culinary matter, for whereas I remember delightf

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CHAPTER LX FINALE

CHAPTER LX FINALE

It is good to look about the world; but always there comes a time when the restless creature, man, having yielded to the call of the seas and the stars and the sky, and gone a-journeying, begins to think of home again. Even were home a less satisfactory, a less happy place than it is, he would be bound to think of it after so long a journey as that upon which my companion and I had spent so many months. For, just as it is necessary for a locomotive to go every so often for an overhauling, so it

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