* * * * *

Another correspondent calls my attention to the fact that, in Virginia, hunting is not merely the sport of the rich, but that the farmers are enthusiastic members of the field—sometimes at the expense of their cattle and crops. He relates the following story illustrative of the point of view of the sporting Virginia farmer:

"A man from the Department of Agriculture came down into our section to look over farms and give advice to farmers. He went to see one farmer in my county and found that he had absolutely nothing growing, and that his livestock consisted of three hunters and thirty-two couples of hounds. The agricultural expert was scandalized. He told the farmer he ought to begin at once to raise hogs. 'You can feed them what you feed the dogs,' he said, 'and have good meat for your family aside from what you sell.'

"After hearing his visitor out, the farmer looked off across the country and spat ruminatively.

"'I ain't never seen no hawg that could catch a fox,' he said, and with that turned and went into the barn, evidently regarding the matter as closed. Clearly he did not share the view of the Irishman who dismissed fox hunting with the remark that a fox was 'damned hard to catch and no good when you got him.'"



CHAPTER XVII

"A CERTAIN PARTY"

Kind are her answers, But her performance keeps no day; Breaks time, as dancers From their own music when they stray.

Lost is our freedom When we submit to women so: Why do we need 'em When, in their best, they work our woe?

—THOMAS CAMPION.

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

Dust was over me like a close-fitting gray veil when I reached the railroad station only to find that the train was late. I had a magazine in my bag, but the light in the waiting-room was poor, so I took a place near the stove and gave myself up to anticipations of a bath, a comfortable room, clean clothing, and a good supper with my companion—and another companion much more beautiful.

I tried to picture her as she would look. She would be in evening dress, of course. After thinking over different colors, and trying them upon her in my mind, I decided that her gown should be of a delicate pink, and should be made of some frail, beautiful material which would float about her like gossamer when she moved, and shimmer like the light of dawn upon the dew. You know the sort of gown I mean: one of those gowns upon which a man is afraid to lay his finger-tips lest the material melt away beneath them; a gown which, he feels, was never touched by seamstress of the human species, but was made by fairies out of woven moonlight, star dust, afterglow, and the fragrance of flowers. Such a gown upon a lovely woman is man's proof that woman is indeed the thing which so often he believes her—that she is more goddess than earthly being; for man knows well that he himself is earthly, and that a costume made from such dream stuffs and placed on him, would not last out the hour. He has but to look up at the stars to realize the infinity of space, and, similarly, but to look at her in her evening gown to realize the divinity of woman.

And that is where she has him. For it isn't so!

At last came the train—just the dingy train to stop at such a station. I boarded it, found a seat, and continued to dream dreams as we rattled on toward Washington.

Even when I found myself walking through that great terminal by which all railroads enter the capital, I hardly believed that I was there, nor did I feel entirely myself until I had reached my room in the New Willard.

Having started my bath, I went and knocked upon the door of the near-by room where the clerk had told me I should find my fellow traveler.

"Oh," he said, without enthusiasm as he discovered me. "You're here, are you?"

He looked imposing and severe in his evening dress. I felt correspondingly dirty and humble.

"Yes," I replied meekly. "Any news?"

"None," he replied. "I've reserved a table at Harvey's. They dance there. At first they said there was not a table to be had—Saturday night, you know—but I told them who was to be with us, and they changed their minds."

"Good. I'll be dressed in a little while. Silk hats?"

He nodded. I returned to my own room.

Less than an hour later, my toilet completed, I rejoined him, and together we descended, in full regalia, to the lobby.

"Shall we take a taxi?" he suggested, as we passed out of the side entrance.

"How far away is the theater?"

"I don't know."

We asked the carriage starter. He said it was only two or three blocks.

"Let's walk," I said.

"I don't feel like walking," he returned.

We rode.

The theater was just emptying when we arrived.

"I suppose we'd better let the cab go?" I said. "There'll be quite a while to wait while she's changing."

"Better keep it," he disagreed. "Might not find another."

We kept it.

At the stage door there was confusion. Having completed its week in Washington, the play was about to move elsewhere, and furniture was already coming out into the narrow passage, and being piled up to be taken on wagons to the train. It took us some time to find the doorman, and it took the doorman—as it always does take doormen—a long, long time to depart into the unknown region of dressing rooms, with the cards we gave him, and a still longer time to return.

"Says to wait," he grunted when he came back.

Meanwhile more and more furniture had come out, menacing our shins and our beautifully polished hats in passing, and leaving us less room in which to stand.

We waited.

After ten minutes had passed, I remarked:

"I wish we had let the taxi go."

After twenty minutes I remarked:

"I always feel like an idiot when I have to wait at a stage door."

"I don't see why you do it, then," said he.

"And I hate it worse when I'm in evening dress. I hate the way the actors look at us, when they come out. They think we're a couple of Johnnies."

"And supposing they do?"

I do not know how long this unsatisfactory dialogue might have continued had not some one come to the inside of the stage door and spoken to the doorman, whereat he indicated us with a gesture and said:

"There they are."

At this a woman emerged. The light was dim, but I saw that she wore no hat and had on an apron. As she came toward us we advanced.

"You wait for madame?" she asked, with the accent of a Frenchwoman.

"Yes."

"Madame receive your telegram only this afternoon," she said. "All week, she say, she wait to hear. This morning she have receive a telegram from Mr. Woods that say she mus' come to New York. She think you not coming, so she say 'Yes.' Then she receive your message. She don't know where to reach you. She can do nossing. She is desolated! She mus' fly to the train. She is ver' sorry. She hope that maybe the gentlemans will be in Baltimore nex' week? Yes?"

"You mean she can't come to-night?"

"Yes, monsieur. She cannot. She are fill with regret. She—"

"Perhaps," said my companion, recovering, "we can drive her to the train?"

The maid, however, did not seem to wish to discuss this point. She shook her head and said:

"Madame ver' sorry she cannot come."

"But I say," repeated my companion, "that we shall be delighted to drive her to the train if she wishes."

"She ver' sorry," persisted the maid negatively.

"Oh, I see," he said. "Very well. Please say to her that we are sorry, too."

"Yes, monsieur." The maid retired.

"I want something to eat," I remarked as we passed down the long furniture-piled passage leading to the street.

"So do I. We have that table at Harvey's."

"I know; but—"

"That's a fact," he put in. "I mentioned her name. We can't very well go there without her."

"And all dressed up like a pair of goats."

"No."

"There's always the hotel."

"I don't want to go back there—not now."

"Neither do I. Let's make it the Shoreham," I suggested as we emerged upon the street.

"All right." Then, looking across the sidewalk, he added: "There's that damned taxi!"

"Yes. We'll drive around there in it."

"No," said he, "send it away. I don't feel like riding."

We walked to the Shoreham. The cafe looked cheerful, as it always does. We ordered an extensive supper. It was good. There were pretty women in the room, but we looked at them with the austere eyes of disillusioned men, and talked cynically of life. I cannot recall any of the things we said, though I remember thinking at the time that both of us were being rather brilliant, in an icy way. I suppose it was mainly about women. That was to be expected. Women, indeed! What were women to us? Nothing! And pretty women, least of all. Ah, pretty women! Pretty women!... Yes, yes!

I had ordered fruit to finish off the meal, and I remember that as the dish was set upon the table, it occurred to me that we had made a very pleasant party of it after all.

"Do you know," I said, as I helped myself to some hothouse grapes, "I've had a bully evening. It has been fine to sit here and have a party all to ourselves. I'm not so sorry that she did not come!"

Then I ate a grape or two.

They were very handsome grapes, but they were sour.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE LEGACY OF HATE

... Immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield.

—PARADISE LOST.

The last time I went abroad, a Briton on the boat told me a story about an American tourist who asked an old English gardener how they made such splendid lawns over there.

"First we cut the grass," said the gardener, "and then we roll it. Then we cut it, and then we roll it."

"That's just what we do," said the American.

"Ah," returned the gardener, "but over here we've been doing it five hundred years!"

In Liverpool another Englishman told me the same story. Three or four others told it to me in London. In Kent I heard it twice, and in Sussex five or six times. After going to Oxford and the Thames I lost count.

In the South my companion and I had a similar experience with the story about that daughter of the Confederacy who declared she had always thought "damn Yankee" one word. In Maryland that story amused us, in Virginia it seemed to lose a little of its edge, and we are proud to this day because, in the far southern States, we managed to grin and bear it.

Doubtless the young lady likewise thought that "you-all" was one word. However I refrained from suggesting that, lest it be taken for an attempt at retaliation. And really there was no occasion to retaliate, for the story was always told with good-humored appreciation not only of the dig at "Yankees"—collectively all Northerners are "Yankees" in the South—but also of the sweet absurdity of the "unreconstructed" point of view.

Speaking broadly of the South, I believe that there survives little real bitterness over the Civil War and the destructive and grotesquely named period of "reconstruction." When a southern belle of to-day damns Yankees, she means by it, I judge, about as much, and about as little, as she does by the kisses she gives young men who bear to her the felicitous southern relationship of "kissing cousins."

Even from old Confederate soldiers I heard no expressions of violent feeling. They spoke gently, handsomely and often humorously of the war, but never harshly. Real hate, I think, remains chiefly in one quarter: in the hearts of some old ladies, the wives and widows of Confederate soldiers—for there are but few mothers of the soldiers left. The wonder is that more of the old ladies of the South have not held to their resentment, for, as I have heard many a soldier say, women are the greatest sufferers from war. One veteran said to me: "My arm was shattered and had to be amputated at the shoulder. There was no anesthetic. Of course I suffered, but I never suffered as my mother did when she learned what I had endured."

Be they haters of the North or not, the old ladies of the South are among its chief glories, and it should be added that another of those glories is the appreciation that the South has for the white-haired heroines who are its mothers, grandmothers, and great grandmothers, and the unfailing natural homage that it pays them. I do not mean by this merely that children and grandchildren have been taught to treat their elders with respect. I do not mean merely that they love them. The thing of which I speak is beyond family feeling, beyond the respect of youth for age. It is a strong, superb sentiment, something as great as it is subtle, which floods the South, causing it to love and reverence its old ladies collectively, and with a kind of national spirit, like the love and reverence of a proud people for its flag.

Among young men, I met many who told me, with suitable pride, of the parts played by their fathers and uncles in the war. Of these only one spoke with heat. He was a Georgian, and when I mentioned to him that, in all my inquiries, I had heard of no cases of atrocious attacks upon women by soldiers—such attacks as we heard of at the time of the German invasion of Belgium and France—he replied with a great show of feeling that I had been misinformed, and that many women had been outraged by northern soldiers in the course of Sherman's march to the sea. At this my heart sank, for I had treasured the belief that, despite the roughness of war, unprotected women had generally been safe from the soldiers of North and South alike. What was my relief, then, on later receiving from this same young man a letter in which he declared that he had been mistaken, and that after many inquiries in Georgia he had been unable to learn of a single case of such crime. If it is indeed true that such things did not occur in the Civil War—and I believe confidently that it is true—then we have occasion, in the light of the European War, to revise the popular belief that of all wars civil war is the most horrible.

The attitude of the modern South (the "New South" which, by the way, one Southerner described to me as meaning "northern capital and smoke") toward its own "unreconstructed" citizens, for all its sympathy and tenderness, is not without a glint of gentle humor. More than once, when my companion and I were received in southern homes with a cordiality that precluded any thought of sectional feeling, we were nevertheless warned by members of the younger generation—and their eyes would twinkle as they said it—to "look out for mother; she's unreconstructed." And you may be sure that when we were so warned we did "look out." It was well to do so! For though the mother might be a frail old lady, past seventy, with the face of an angel and the normal demeanor of a saint, we could see her bridle, as we were presented to her, over the thought there here were two Yankees in her home—Yankees!—we could see the light come flashing up into her eyes as they encountered ours, and could feel beneath the veil of her austere civility the dagger points of an eternal enmity. By dint of self-control on her part, and the utmost effort upon ours to be tactful, the presentation ceremony was got over with, and after some formal speeches, resembling those which, one fancies, may be exchanged by opposing generals under a flag of truce, we would be rescued from her, removed from the room, before her forbearance should be strained, by our presence, to the point of breaking. A baleful look would follow us as we withdrew, and we would retire with a better understanding of the flaming spirit which, through that long, bloody conflict against overwhelming odds in wealth, supplies, and men, sustained the South, and which at last enabled it to accept defeat as nobly as it had accepted earlier victories.... How one loves a gentle old lady who can hate like that!

In this chapter, when it appeared originally, in "Collier's Weekly," I made the statement that I had seldom spent an hour in conversation with a Southerner without hearing some mention of the Civil War, and that I had heard other Northerners remark upon this matter, and express surprise at the tenacity with which the war holds its place in the foreground of the southern mind.

This, like many another of my southern observations, brought me letters from readers of "Collier's," residing in the South. A great number of the letters thus elicited, as well as comments made upon these chapters by the southern press, have been of no small interest to me. On at least one subject (the question discussed in the next chapter, as to whether the expression "you-all" is ever used in the singular) my correspondents have convinced me that my earlier statement was an error, while on other subjects they have modified my views, and on still others made my convictions more profound. Where it has been possible, and where it has seemed, for one reason or another, to be worth while, I have endeavored, while revising the story of my southern wanderings for this book, to make note of the other fellow's point of view, especially in cases where he disagrees with me.

The following, then, is from a letter written on the stationery of Washington and Lee University, and applies to certain statements contained in this chapter:

In 1813, Thomas Jefferson wrote to a newspaper publisher: "Were I the publisher of a paper, instead of the usual division into Foreign, Domestic, etc., I think I should distribute everything under the following heads: 1. True. 2. Probable. 3. Wanting confirmation. 4. Lies, and be careful in subsequent papers to correct all errors in preceding ones."

Allow me to suggest that your story might, under Mr. Jefferson's category, be placed under "2." Perhaps you went to see "The Birth of a Nation" before you wrote it. It has been my experience that my acquaintances among the F.F.V.'s have been far more interested in whether Boston or Brooklyn would win the pennant than in discussing the Civil War. By the young men of the South the War was forgotten long ago.

This letter has caused me to wonder whether the frequency with which my companion and I heard the Civil War discussed, may not, perhaps, have been due, at least in part, to our own inquiries, resulting from the consuming interest that we had in hearing of the War from those who lived where it was fought.

Yet, after all, it seems to me most natural that the South should remember, while the North forgets. Not all Northerners were in the war. But all Southerners were; if a boy was big enough to carry a gun, he went. The North almost completely escaped invasion, and upon one occasion when a southern army did march through northern territory, the conduct of the invading troops toward the civilian population (the false Barbara Frietchie legend to the contrary notwithstanding) was so exemplary as to set a record which is probably unequaled in history.[2] The South, upon the other hand, was constantly under invasion, and the record of destruction wrought by northern armies in the valley of the Shenandoah, on the March to the Sea, and in some other instances, is writ in poverty and mourning unto this day.

[2] See chapter on Colonel Taylor and General Lee.

Thus, except politically, the North now feels not the least effect from the war. But the South knew the terrors of invasion and the pangs of conquest, and is only growing strong again after having been ruined—as instanced by the fact, which I came across the other day, that the tax returns from one of the southern States have, for the first time since the Civil War, reached the point at which they stood when it began.

So, very naturally, while the War has begun to take its place in the northern mind along with the Revolutionary War, as something to be studied in school under the heading "United States History," it has not, in southern eyes, become altogether "book history," but is history that lives—in swords hanging upon the walls of many homes, in old faded letters, in sacks of worthless Confederate bills, in the ruins of great houses, in lovingly preserved gray uniforms, in southern battle fields, and in southern burial grounds where rows upon rows of tombstones, drawn up in company front, stand like gray armies forever on parade.

Small wonder if, amid its countless tragic memorials, the South does not forget. The strange thing is that bitterness has gone so soon; that remembering the agonies of war and the abuses of reconstruction, the South does not to-day hate the North as violently as ever. If to err is human, the North has, in its treatment of the South, richly proved its humanness; and if forgiveness is divine, the South has, by the same token, attained something like divinity.

Had the numbskull North understood these things as it should have understood them, there would not now be a solid Democratic South.

Such rancor as remains is, I believe, strongest in the smaller towns in those States which suffered the greatest hardships. I know, for instance, of one lady, from a little city in Virginia, who refused to enter the Massachusetts Building at the Chicago World's Fair, and there are still to be found, in Virginia, ladies who do not leave their houses on the Fourth of July because they prefer not to look upon the Stars and Stripes. The Confederate flag is still, in a sense, the flag of the South. Southerners love it as one loves a pressed flower from a mother's bridal wreath. When the Eleventh Cavalry rode from Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, to Winchester, Virginia, a few years since, they saw many Confederate flags, but only one Union flag, and that in the hands of a negro child. However, war had not then broken out in Europe. It would be different now.

A Virginia lady told me of having gone to a dentist in Winchester, Virginia, and having taken her little niece with her. The child watched the dentist put a rubber dam in her aunt's mouth, and then, childlike, began to ask questions. She was a northern child, and she had evidently heard some one in the town speak of Sheridan's ride.

"Auntie," she said, "was Sheridan a Northerner or a Southerner?"

Owing to the rubber dam the aunt was unable to reply, but the dentist answered for her. "He was a drunken Yankee!" he declared vehemently.

When, later, the rubber dam was removed, the aunt protested.

"Doctor," she reproved, "you should not have said such a thing to my niece. She is from New York."

"Then," returned the unrepentant dentist, "she has heard the truth for once!"

Doubtless this man was an inheritor of hate, like the descendants of one uncompromisingly bitter old Southerner whose will, to be seen among the records of the Hanover County courthouse, in Virginia, bequeaths to his "children and grandchildren and their descendants throughout all future generations, the bitter hatred and everlasting malignity of my heart and soul against the Yankees, including all people north of Mason and Dixon's line."



CHAPTER XIX

"YOU-ALL" AND OTHER SECTIONAL MISUNDERSTANDINGS

Let us make an honorable retreat.

—AS YOU LIKE IT.

Those who write school histories and wish them adopted by southern schools have to handle the Civil War with gloves. Such words as "rebel" and "rebellion" are resented in the South, and the historian must go softly in discussing slavery, though he may put on the loud pedal in speaking of State Rights, the fact being that the South not only knows now, but, as evidenced by the utterances of her leading men, from Jefferson to Lee, knew long before the war that slavery was a great curse; whereas, on the question of State Rights, including the theoretical right to secede from the Union—this being the actual question over which the South took up arms—there is much to be said on the southern side. Colonel Robert Bingham, superintendent of the Bingham School, Asheville, North Carolina, has made an exhaustive study of the question of secession, and has set forth his findings in several scholarly and temperately written booklets.

Colonel Bingham proves absolutely, by quotation of their own words, that the framers of the Constitution regarded that document as a compact between the several States. He shows that three of the States (Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island) joined in this compact conditionally, with the clear purpose of resuming their independent sovereignty as States, should the general government use its power for the oppression of the States; that up to the time of the Mexican War the New England States contended for, not against, the right to secede; that John Quincy Adams went so far as to negotiate with England with a view to the secession of the New England States, because of Jefferson's Embargo Act, and moreover that up to 1840 the United States Government used as a textbook for cadets at West Point, Rawle's "View of the Constitution," a book which teaches that the Union is dissoluble. Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, were, therefore, in all probability, given this book as students at West Point, and consequently, if we would have honest history, we must face the astonishing fact that there is evidence to show that they learned the doctrine of secession at the United States Military Academy.

Colonel Bingham, who, it may be remarked, served with distinction in the Confederate Army, has very kindly supplemented, in a letter to me, his published statements. He writes:

Secession was legal theoretically, but practically the conditions on which the thirteen Independent Republics, covering a little strip on the Atlantic coast, came to an agreement, could not possibly be applied to the great inter-Oceanic Empire into which these thirteen Independent Republics had developed.

"Theory is a good horse in the stable, but may make an arrant jade on the journey"—to paraphrase Goldsmith—and the only way in which these irreconcilable differences could be settled was by bullet and bayonet, which settled them right and finally.

Once such matters as these are fully understood in the North, there will be left but one grave issue between North and South, that issue being over the question of whether or not Southerners, under any circumstances, use the phrase "you-all" in the singular.

"Whatever you write of the South," said our hostess at a dinner party in Virginia, "don't make the mistake of representing any one from this paht of the country, white oh black, educated oh ignorant, as saying 'you-all' meaning one person only."

When I remarked mildly that it seemed to me I had often seen the phrase so used in books, and heard it in plays, eight or ten southern ladies and gentlemen at the table pounced upon me, all at once. "Yes!" they agreed, with a kind of polite violence, "books and plays by Yankees!"

"If," one of the gentlemen explained, "you write to a friend who has a family, and say, according to the northern practice, 'I hope to see you when you come to my town,' you write something which is really ambiguous, since the word 'you' may refer only to your friend, or may refer also to his family. Our southern 'you-all' makes it explicit."

I told him that in the North we also used the word "all" in connection with "you," though we accented the two evenly, and did not compound them, but he seemed to believe that "you" followed by "all" belonged exclusively to the South.

The argument continued almost constantly throughout the meal. Not until coffee was served did the subject seem to be exhausted. But it was not, for after pouring a demi-tasse our hostess lifted a lump of sugar in the tongs, and looking me directly in the eye inquired: "Do you-all take sugah?"

Undoubtedly it would have been wiser, and politer, to let this pass, but the discussion had filled me with curiosity, not only because of my interest in the localism, but also because of the amazing intensity with which it had been discussed.

"But," I exclaimed, "you just said 'you-all,' apparently addressing me. Didn't you use it in the singular?"

No sooner had I spoken than I was sorry. Every one looked disconcerted. There was silence for a moment. I was very much ashamed.

"Oh, no," she said at last. "When I said 'you-all' I meant you and Mr. Morgan." (She pronounced it "Moh-gan," with a lovely drawl.) As she made this statement, she blushed, poor lady!

Being to blame for her discomfiture, I could not bear to see her blush, and looked away, but only to catch the eye of my companion, and to read in its evil gleam the thought: "Of course they use it in the singular. But aren't you ashamed of having tripped up such a pretty creature on a point of dialect?"

Though my interest in the southern idiom had caused me to forget about the sugar, my hostess had not forgotten.

"Well," she said, still balancing the lump above the cup, and continuing gamely to put the question in the same form, and to me: "Do you-all take sugah, oh not?"

I had no idea how my companion took his coffee, but it seemed to me that tardy politeness now demanded that I tacitly—or at least demi-tacitly—accede to the alleged plural intent of the question. Therefore, I replied: "Mr. Morgan takes two lumps. I don't take any, thanks."

Late that night as we were returning to our hotel, my companion said to me somewhat tartly: "In case such a thing comes up again, I wish you would remember that sugar in my coffee makes me ill."

"Well, why didn't you say so?"

"Because," he returned, "I thought that you-all ought to do the answering. It seemed best for me-all to keep quiet and try to look plural under the singular conditions."

* * * * *

No single thing I ever wrote has brought to me so many letters, nor letters so uniform in sentiment (albeit widely different in expression), as the foregoing, seemingly unimportant tale, printed originally in "Collier's Weekly."

Some one has pointed out that various communities have "fighting words," and as the letters poured in I began to realize that in discussing "you-all" I had inadvertently hit upon a term which aroused the ire of the South—or rather, that I had aroused ire by implying that the expression is sometimes used in the singular—the Solid South to the contrary notwithstanding.

Never, upon any subject, have I known people to agree as my southern correspondents did on this. The unanimity of their dissent was an impressive thing. So was the violence some of them displayed.

For a time, indeed, the heat with which they wrote, obscured the issue. That is to say, most of them instead of explaining merely denied, and added comments, more or less unflattering, concerning me.

Wrote a lady from Lexington, Kentucky:

I have lived in Kentucky all of my life, and have never yet heard "you-all" used in the singular, not even among the negroes. My grandparents and friends say they have never heard it, either.

It was needless for you to tell your Virginia hostess that "you-all" (meaning you and your friend) were Yankees. The fact that you criticized her language proved it. Southern people pride themselves on their tact, and no doubt, at the time, she was struggling to conceal a smile because of some of your own localisms.

Many of the letters were more severe than this one, and most of them made the point that I had been impolite to my hostess, and that, in all probability, when she looked at me and asked, "Do you-all take sugah?" she was playing a joke upon me, apropos the discussion which had preceded the question. For example, this, from a gentleman of Pell City, Alabama:

My wife is the residuary legatee of Virginia's language, inherited, acquired and affected varieties, including the vanishing y; annihilated g; long-distance a, and irresistible drawl.

To quell the unfortunate tumult that has arisen in our household as a result of your last article in "Collier's" I am commanded to advise you that the use of "you-all" in the singular is absodamnlutely non est factum in Virginia, save, perhaps, among the hill people of the Blue Ridge.

Also, take notice that when your hostess, with apparent inadvertence, used the expression in connection with sugar in your demi-tasse, the subsequent blush was due to your failure to catch her witticism, ignorantly mistaking it for a lapse of hers.

My wife was going to write to you herself, but I managed to divert this cruel determination by promising to uphold the honor of the Old Dominion. There is already too much blood being shed in the world without spilling that of non-combatants as would have been "you-all's" fate had she gone after you with a weapon more mighty than the sword when in the hands of Mr. Wilson or an outraged woman.

In face of all this and much more, however, my conviction was unshaken. I talked it over with my companion. He remembered the episode of the dinner table exactly as I did. Moreover, I still had my notes, made in the hotel that night. The lady looked at me. My companion was several places removed from her at the other side of the table. How could she have meant to include him? And how could she have expected me to say how he took his after-dinner coffee?

At last, to reassure myself, I wrote to the wisest, cleverest, most trustworthy lady in the South, and asked her what it all meant.

"Well," she wrote back from Atlanta, "I will tell you, but I am not sure that you will understand me. The answer is: She did, but she didn't. She looked at and spoke to you and, of course, by all rules of logic she could not have been intending to make you Morg's keeper in the matter of coffee dressing. But she never would have said 'you-all' if Morg had not been in her mind as joined with you. The response, according to her thought-connotation, would have been from you and from him."

This was disconcerting. So was a letter, received in the same mail, from a gentleman in Charleston:

It is as plain as the nose on your face that you are not yet convinced that we in the South never use "you-all" with reference to one person. The case you mentioned proves nothing at all. The very fact that there were two strangers present justified the use of the expression; we continually use the expression in that way, and in such cases we expect an answer from both persons so addressed. To illustrate: just a few days ago I "carried" two girls into an "ice-cream parlor." After we were seated, I looked at the one nearest me, and said: "Well, what will you-all have?"

Physically we are so constructed that unless a person is cross-eyed it is impossible to look at two persons at once; the mere fact that I looked at the one nearest me did not mean that I was not addressing both. I expected an answer from both, and I got it, too (as is generally the case where ice-cream is concerned).

The subject is one to which I have devoted the most careful attention for many years. I have been so interested in it that almost unconsciously, whenever I myself use the expression "you-all," or hear any one else use it, I note whether it is intended to refer to one or to more than one person. I have heard thousands of persons, white, black and indifferent, use the expression, and the only ones I have ever heard use it incorrectly are what we might call "professional Southerners." For instance, last week I went to a vaudeville show, and part of the performance was given by two "black-face" comedians, calling themselves "The Georgia Blossoms." Their dialect was excellent, with the single exception that one of them twice used the expression "you-all" where it could not possibly have meant more than one person. And I no sooner heard it than I said to myself: "There is one blossom that never bloomed in Georgia!"

Another instance is the following: I was once approached by a beggar in Atlanta, who saluted me thus: "Say, mister, can't you-all give me a nickel?" Had I been accompanied it would have been all right, but I was alone, and there was no other person near me except the hobo. Did I give him the nickel? I should say not! I said to myself: "He is a damned Yankee trying to pass himself off for a Southerner."

Horrid glimmerings began to filter dimly through. And yet—

Next day came a letter calling my attention to an article, written years ago by Joel Chandler Harris and Thomas Nelson Page, jointly, in which they plead with northern writers not to misuse the disputed expression by applying it in the singular.

That was another shock. I felt conviction tottering.... But she did look at me.... She didn't expect an answer from my companion....

And then behold! a missive from Mr. H.E. Jones, a member—and a worthy one—of the Tallapoosa County Board of Education, and a resident of Dadeville, Alabama. Mr. Jones' educational activities reach far beyond Tallapoosa County, and far beyond the confines of his State, for he has educated me. He has made me see the light.

"I want to straighten you out," he wrote, kindly. "We never use 'you-all' in the singular. Not even the most ignorant do so. But, as you know," (Ah, that was mercifully said!) "there are some peculiar, almost unexplainable, shades of meaning in local idioms of speech, which are not easy for a stranger to understand. I have a friend who was reared in Milwaukee and is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, who tells me he would have argued the 'you-all' point with all comers for some years following his taking up his residence here, but he is at this time as ready as I to deny the allegation and 'chaw the alligator.'

"When your young lady, in Virginia, asked, 'Do you-all take sugar?' she mentally included Mr. Morgan, and perhaps all other Yankees. I would ask my local grocer, 'Will you-all sell me some sugar this morning?' meaning his establishment, collectively, although I addressed him personally; but I would not ask my only servant, 'Have you-all milked the cow?'"

And that is the exact truth.

I was absolutely wrong. And though, having printed the ghastly falsehood in my original article, I can hardly hope now for absolution from the outraged South, I can at least retract, as I hereby do, and can, moreover, thank Mr. H.E. Jones, of Tallapoosa County, Alabama, for having saved me from a double sin; for had he not given me the simple illustration of the grocery store, I might have repeated, now, my earlier misstatement.



CHAPTER XX

IDIOMS AND ARISTOCRACY

Southerners have told me that they can tell from what part of the South a person comes, by his speech, just as an Easterner can distinguish, by the same means a New Englander, a New Yorker, a Middle-Westerner, and a Brooklynite. I cannot pretend to have become an authority upon southern dialect, but it is obvious to me that the speech of New Orleans is unlike that of Charleston, and that of Charleston unlike that of Virginia.

The chief characteristic of the Virginian dialect is the famous and fascinating localism which Professor C. Alphonso Smith has called the "vanishing y"—a y sound which causes words like "car" and "garden" to be pronounced "cyar" and "gyarden"—or, as Professor Smith prefers to indicate it: "C^{y}ar" and "g^{y}arden." I am told that in years gone by the "vanishing y" was common to all Virginians, but though it is still common enough among members of the old generation, and is used also by some young people—particularly, I fancy, young ladies, who realize its fetching quality—there can be no doubt that it is, in both senses, vanishing, and that not half the Virginians of the present day pronounce "cigar" as "segyar," "carpet" as "cya'pet," and "Carter," as "Cyahtah."

In Virginia and many other parts of the South one hears such words as "aunt" correctly pronounced with the broad a, and such words as "tube" and "new" properly given the full u sound (instead of "toobe," and "noo," as in some parts of the North); but, on the other hand, while the South gives the short o sound in such words as "log" and "fog," it invariably calls a dog a "dawg." "Your" is often pronounced "yore," "sure" as "shore," and, not infrequently, "to" as "toe."

The South also uses the word "carry" in a way that strikes Northerners as strange. If a Southerner offers to "carry" you to the station, or over his plantation, he does not signify that he intends to transport you by means of physical strength, but that he will escort you. If he "carries you to the run" you will find that the "run" is what Northerners call a creek; if to the "branch," or "dreen," that is what we call a brook.

This use of the word "carry," far from being a corruption, is pure old English, and is used in the Bible, and by Smollett, though it is amusing to note that the "Georgia Gazetteer" for 1837, mentions as a lamentable provincialism such an application of the word as "to carry (instead of lead) a horse to water." If the "Gazetteer" were indeed correct in this, then the Book of Genesis contains an American provincialism.

The customary use of the word in the North, as "to carry a cane, or a bag," is equally but no more correct than the southern usage. I am informed by Mr. W.T. Hall, Editor of the Dothan (Alabama) "Eagle," that the word used in his part of the country, as signifying "to bear on the back, or shoulder," is "tote." "Tote" is a word not altogether unknown in the North, and it has recently found its way into some dictionaries, though the old "Georgia Gazetteer" disapproved of it. Even this word has some excuse for being, in that it is a deformed member of a good family, having come from the Latin, tollit, been transformed into the early English "tolt," and thus into what I believe to be a purely American word.

Other expressions which struck me as being characteristic of the South are "stop by," as for instance, "I will stop by for you," meaning, "I will call for you in passing"; "don't guess," as "I don't guess I'll come"; and "Yes indeedy!" which seems to be a kind of emphatic "Yes indeed."

"As I look back over the old South," said one white-haired Virginian, "there were two things it was above. One was accounts and the other was grammar. Tradesmen in prosperous neighborhoods were always in distress because of the long credits, though gambling debts were, of course, always punctiliously paid. As to the English spoken in old Virginia—and indeed in the whole South—there is absolutely no doubt that its softness and its peculiarities in pronunciation are due to the influence of the negro voice and speech on the white race. Some of the young people seem to wish to dispute this, but we older ones used to take the view—half humorously, of course—that if a Southerner spoke perfect English, it showed he wasn't a gentleman; "that he hadn't been raised with niggers around him.""

"Oh, you shouldn't tell him that!" broke in a lady who was present.

"Why not?" demanded the old gentleman.

"He'll print it!" she said.

"Well," he answered, "ain't it true? What's the harm in it?"

"There!" she exclaimed. "You said 'ain't.' He'll print that Virginians say 'ain't'!"

"Well," he answered, "I reckon we do, don't we?"

She laughed and gave up. "I remember," she told me, "the very spot on the turnpike going out to Ripon, where I made up my mind to break myself of saying 'ain't.' But I want to tell you that we are talking much better English than we used to. Even the negroes are. You don't hear many white people saying 'gwine' for 'going' any more, for instance, and the young people don't say 'set' for 'sit' and 'git' for 'get,' as their fathers did."

"I've heard folks say, though," put in the old gentleman, "that they'd ruther speak like a Virginian than speak correctly. The old talk was pretty nice, after all. I don't hold to all these new improvements. They've been going too far in this Commonwealth."

"What have they been doing?" I asked.

"Doing!" he returned, "Why, they're gradually taking the cuspidors out of the church pews!"

Before the question of dialect is dropped, it should be said that those who do not believe the soft southern pronunciation is derived from negroes, can make out an interesting case. If, they ask, the negro has corrupted the English of the South, why is it that he has not also corrupted the language of the West Indies—British and French? French negroes speak like French persons of white blood, and British West Indian negroes often speak the cockney dialect, without a trace of "nigger." Moreover, it is pointed out that in southern countries, the world over, there is a tendency to soften the harsh sounds of language, to elide, and drop out consonants. The Andalusians speak a Spanish comparable in many of its peculiarities with the English of our own South, and the south-Italians exhibit similar dialectic traits. Nor do the parallels between the north and south of Spain and Italy, and of the United States, end there. The north-Italians and north-Spaniards are the "Yankees" of their respective countries—the shrewd, cold business people—whereas the south-Italians and south-Spaniards are more poetic, more dashing, more temperamental. The merchants are of the north of Spain, but the dancers and bull-fighters are Andalusians. And just as our Americans of the North admire the lazy dialect of the South, so the north-Spaniards admire the dialect of Andalusia, and even imitate it because they think it has a fashionable sound—quite as British fashionables cultivate the habit of dropping final g's, as in "huntin'" for "hunting."

Virginia, more than any other State I know of, feels its entity as a State. If you meet a Virginian traveling outside his State, and ask where he is from, he will not mention the name of the city in which he resides, but will reply: "I'm from Va'ginia." If, on the other hand, you are in Virginia, and ask him the same question, he will proudly reply: "I'm from Fauquier," or "I'm from Westmoreland," or whatever the name of his county may be. The chances are, also, that his trunks and traveling bags will be marked with his initials, followed not by the name of his town, but by the abbreviation, "Va."

I was told of one old unreconstructed Virginian who had to go to Boston on business. The gentleman he went to see there was exceedingly polite to him, asking him to his house, putting him up at his club, and showing him innumerable courtesies. The old Confederate, writing to his wife, indicated his amazement: "Although he is not a Virginian," he declared, "I must confess that he lives like a gentleman."

The name of his Bostonian acquaintance was John Quincy Adams.

I heard this story from a northern lady who has a country place near a small town in Virginia. In the North this lady's family is far from being unknown, but in Virginia, she assured me, all persons originating outside the State are looked upon as vague beings without "family."

"They seem to think," she said, "that Northerners have no parents—that they are made chemically."

This does not imply, however, that well-bred Northerners are excluded from society. Even if they are well off they may get into society; for though money does not count in one's favor in such a town, it does not count against one. The social requirement of the place is simple. If people are "nice people," that is enough.

Of course, however, it is one thing to be admitted to Virginia society and another to belong to it by right. A case in point is that of a lady visiting in a Virginia city who, while calling at the house of some "F.F.V's," was asked by a little girl, the daughter of the house, where she had been born.

"Mawtha," said the little girl's mother, after the caller had departed, "you must not ask people where they were bo'n. If they were bo'n in Va'ginia they will tell you so without asking, and if they weren't bo'n in Va'ginia it's very embarrassing."

Some of the old families of the inner circle are in a tragic state of decay, owing to inbreeding; others, in a more wholesome physical and mental condition, are perpetually wrestling with the heritage of poverty left over from the War—"too proud to whitewash and too poor to paint"—clinging desperately to the old acres, and to the old houses which are like beautiful, tired ancestral ghosts.

Until a few years ago the one resource of Virginian gentlewomen in need of funds was to take boarders, but more lately the daughters of distinguished but poverty-stricken families have found that they may work in offices. Thus, in the town of which I speak, several ladies who are very much "in society," support themselves by entertaining "paying guests," while others are stenographers. The former, I was told, by the way, make it a practice to avoid first-hand business contacts with their guests by sending them their bills through the mail, and requiring that response be made by means of the same impersonal channel.



CHAPTER XXI

THE CONFEDERATE CAPITAL

The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city.

—OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

Richmond is the Boston of Virginia; Norfolk its New York. The comparison does not, of course, hold in all particulars, Richmond being, for instance, larger than Norfolk, and not a seaport. Yet, on the other hand, Boston manages, more than any seaport that I know of, to conceal from the visitor the signs of its maritime life; wherefore Richmond looks about as much like a port as does the familiar part of Boston.

The houses on the principal residence streets of Richmond are not built in such close ranks as Boston houses; they have more elbow-room; numbers of them have yards and gardens; and there is not about Richmond houses the Bostonian insistence upon red brick; nevertheless many houses of both cities give off the same suggestion of having long been lived in by the descendants of their builders. So, too, though the Capitol at Richmond has little architectural resemblance to Boston's gold-domed State House—the former having been copied by Thomas Jefferson from the Maison Carree at Nimes, and being a better building than the Massachusetts State House, and better placed—the two do, nevertheless, suggest each other in their gray granite solidity.

It is perhaps in the quality of solidity—architectural, commercial, social, even spiritual—that Richmond and Boston are most alike. Substantialness, conservatism, tradition, and prosperity rest like gray mantles over both.

Broad Street in Richmond is two or three times as wide as Granby Street, Norfolk's chief shopping street, and for this reason, doubtless, its traffic seems less, though I believe it is in fact greater. A fine street to look upon at night, with its long, even rows of clustered boulevard lights, and its bright windows, Broad Street in the daytime is a disappointment, because, for all its fine spaciousness, it lacks good buildings. I must confess, too, that I was disappointed in the appearance of the women in the shopping crowds on Broad Street; for, as every one knows, Richmond has been famous for its beauties. In vain I looked for young women fitted to inherit the debutante mantles of such nationally celebrated beauties as Miss Irene Langhorne (Mrs. Charles Dana Gibson), Miss May Handy (Mrs. James Brown Potter), Miss Lizzie Bridges (Mrs. Hobson), and Miss Sally Bruce (Mrs. Arthur B. Kinsolving).

In the ten years between 1900 and 1910 the population of Richmond increased 50 per cent. Her population by the last census was about 130,000, of which a third is colored. Norfolk's population is about 70,000, with approximately the same percentage of negroes. In both cities there is much new building—offices downtown, and pretty new brick homes in outlying suburban tracts. Likewise, in both, the charming signs of other days are here and there to be seen.

Richmond is again like its ancient enemy, Boston, in the wealth of its historical associations, and I know of no city which gives the respectful heed to its own history that Richmond does, and no State which in this matter equals the State of Virginia. If Richmond was the center of the South during the Civil War, Capitol Square was, as it is to-day, the center of that center. In this square, in the shadow of Jefferson's beautiful classic capitol building, which has the glowing gray tone of one of those water colors done on tinted paper by Jules Guerin, Confederate soldiers were mustered into service under Lee and Jackson. Within the old building the Confederate Congress met, Aaron Burr was tried for treason, and George Washington saw, in its present position, his own statue by Houdon. Across the way from the square, where the post office now stands, was the Treasury Building of the Confederate States, and there Jefferson Davis appeared seven times, to be tried for treason, only to have his case postponed by the Federal Government, and finally dismissed. East of the square is the State Library, containing a remarkable collection of portraits and documents, including likenesses of all governors of Virginia from John Smith to Tyler, a portrait of Pocahontas, and the bail bond of Jefferson Davis, signed by Horace Greeley, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Gerrit Smith, and seventeen other distinguished men of the day. To the west of the square is old St. Paul's Church, with the pews of Lee and Davis. It was while attending service in this church, on Sunday, April 2, 1865, that Davis received Lee's telegram from Petersburg, saying that Richmond must be evacuated. A block or two west of the church, in East Franklin Street, is a former residence of Lee. It was given by the late Mrs. Joseph Bryan and her sisters to the Virginia Historical Society, and is now, appropriately enough, the home of that organization.

In the old drawing room, now the office of the Historical Society, I found Mr. William G. Stanard, the corresponding secretary, and from him heard something of Lee's life there immediately after the War.

By the Northerners in Richmond at that time, including the Federal troops stationed in the city, Lee was of course respected and admired, while by the whole South he was, and is to-day, adored. As for his own ex-soldiers, they could not see him without emotion, and because of the demonstrations which invariably attended his appearance on the Richmond streets, he went out but little, passing much time upon the back porch of the house. Here most of the familiar Brady photographs of him were taken. Brady sent a young photographer to Richmond to get the photographs. Lee was at first disposed to refuse to be taken, but his family persuaded him to submit, on the ground that if there were any impertinence in the request it was not the fault of the young man, and that the latter might lose his position if he failed to obtain the desired pictures.

Finding the continued attention of the crowds too much for him, the general left Richmond after two months, removing to a small house in Cumberland County, on the James, and it was there that he was residing when called to the presidency of Washington College—now Washington and Lee University—at Lexington, Virginia. As is well known, he accepted this offer, built up the institution, remained its president until the time of his death, and now lies buried in the university chapel.

To Mr. Stanard I am also indebted for the following information regarding John Smith and Pocahontas:

About a mile below Richmond, in what is now the brickyard region, there used to stand the residence of the Mayo family, a place known as Powhatan. This place has long been pointed out as the scene of the saving of Smith by the Indian girl, but late research indicates that, though Smith did come up the James to the present site of Richmond, his capture by the Indians did not occur here, but in the vicinity of Jamestown. Then Indians took him first to one of their villages on York River, near the present site of West Point, Virginia, and thence to a place, on the same stream, in the county of Gloucester, where the tribal chief resided. I was under the impression that this worthy's name was Powhatan, but Mr. Stanard declared "powhatan" was not a proper name, but an Indian word meaning "chief."

The Virginia Historical Society is satisfied that Smith was rescued by Pocahontas at a point about nine miles from Williamsburg on the west side of York River, but there are historians who contend that the whole story of the rescue is a fiction. One of these is Dr. Albert Bushnell Hart, of Harvard, who lists Smith among "Historical Liars." Virginians, who regard Smith as one of their proudest historical possessions, are somewhat disposed to resent this view, but it appears to me that there is at least some ground for it. Matthew Page Andrews, another historian, himself a Virginian, points out that many of our ideas of the Jamestown colony have been obtained from Smith's history of the settlement, which he wrote in England, some years after leaving Virginia.

"From these accounts," says Mr. Andrews, "we get an unfavorable impression of Smith's associates in the colony and of the management of the men composing the popular or people's party in the London Company. As we now know that this party in the London Company was composed of very able and patriotic Englishmen, we are inclined to think that Captain Smith not only overrated his achievement, but was very unjust to his fellow-colonists and the Company."

The story of the rescue of Smith by Pocahontas, with the strong implication that the Indian girl was in love with him, comes to us from Smith himself. We know that when Pocahontas was nineteen years of age (seven years after the Smith rescue is said to have occurred), she married John Rolfe—the first Englishman to begin the cultivation of the tobacco plant. We know that she was taken to England, that she was welcomed at court as a princess, that she had a son born in England, and that she herself died there in 1617. We know also that her son, Thomas Rolfe, settled in Virginia, and that through him a number of Virginians trace descent from Pocahontas. (Mr. Andrews points out that in 1915 one of these descendants became the wife of the President of the United States.)

But we know also that John Smith, brave and daring though he was, was not above twisting and embroidering a tale to his own glorification. While, therefore, it is too much to affirm that his rescue story is false, it is well to remember that Pocahontas was but twelve years old when the rescue is said to have occurred, and that Smith waited until after she had become famous, and had died, to promulgate his romantic story.

* * * * *

Immediately to the north of Capitol Square stands the City Hall, an ugly building, in the cellar of which is the Police Court presided over by the celebrated and highly entertaining Judge Crutchfield, otherwise known as "One John" and "the Cadi"—of whom more presently. A few blocks beyond the City Hall, in the old mansion at the corner of East Clay and Twelfth Streets, which was the "White House of the Confederacy," the official residence of Jefferson Davis during the war, is the Confederate Museum—one of the most fascinating museums I ever visited.

Not the least part of the charm of this museum is the fact that it is not of great size, and that one may consequently visit it without fatigue; but the chief fascination of the place is the dramatic personalness of its exhibits. To me there is always something peculiarly engaging about intimate relics of historic figures, and it is of such relics that the greater part of the collection of the Confederate Museum consists. In one show case, for example, are the saddle and bridle of General Lee, and the uniform he wore when he surrendered. The effects of General Joseph E. Johnston are shown in another case, and in still another those of the picturesque J.E.B. Stuart, who, as here one may see, loved the little touch of individuality and dash which came of wearing a feather in a campaign hat. So also one learns something of Stonewall Jackson when one sees in the cabinet, along with his old blue hat and other possessions, the gold spurs which were given to him by the ladies of Baltimore, beside the steel spurs that he wore. All Jackson's personal effects were very simple.

One of the most striking relics in the museum is the Great Seal of the Confederacy, which was only returned to Richmond within the last few years, after having been lost track of for nearly half a century—a strange chapter in the annals of the Civil War.

Records in the Library of Congress, including the Confederate state papers purchased by the United States Government in 1872, of William J. Bromwell, formerly a clerk in the Confederate State Department, brought to light, a few years ago, the fact that the seal was in the possession of Rear Admiral Thomas O. Selfridge, U.S.N., retired.

At the time of the evacuation of Richmond, Bromwell carried off a number of the Confederate state papers, and Mrs. Bromwell took charge of the seal, transporting it through the lines in her bustle. When later, through Colonel John T. Pickett, Bromwell sold the papers to the Government, Rear Admiral Selfridge—then a captain—was the officer assigned to go to Hamilton, Ontario, to inventory and receive them. It is said that Pickett gave the seal to Selfridge at about this time, first, however, having a duplicate made. This duplicate, or a copy of it, was later offered for sale as the original, but was found to be spurious. When examination of the Pickett papers by Gaillard Hunt, of the Library of Congress, finally traced the original seal to Rear Admiral Selfridge, an effort was made to buy it back. In 1912 three Richmond gentlemen, Messrs. Eppa Hunton, Jr., William H. White and Thomas P. Bryan, purchased the Seal of the admiral for three thousand dollars, subject to proof of its authenticity. Mr. St. George Bryan and Mr. William Gray, of Richmond, then took the seal to London, where the makers are still well-known engravers. Here, by means of hall marks, the identification was made complete.

No less appealing than the relics of the deceased government and great generals who are gone, are some of the humbler items connected with the deaths of privates in the ranks of North and South alike. One of the most pathetic was a small daguerreotype of a beautiful young girl. On a card, beside the picture, is the story of it, so far as that story is ever likely to be known:

Picture found on the dead body of an unidentified Federal soldier.

Presented by C.C. Calvert, Upperville, Va.

"We have always hoped," said Miss Susan B. Harrison, house regent of the museum, "that some day some one would come in and recognize this little picture, and that it would find its way back to those who ought to have it, and who might by this means at last discover what became of the soldier who was dear to them."

An even more tragic souvenir is a letter addressed to A.V. Montgomery, Camden, Madison County, Mississippi, in which a mortally wounded soldier of Confederacy bids a last good-by to his father. The letter was originally inclosed with one from Lieutenant Ethelbert Fairfax, C.S.A., informing the father that his son passed away soon after he had written. The text, pitiful and heroic as it is, can give but the faintest idea of the original, with its feeble, laborious writing, and the dark-brown spots dappling the three sheets of paper where blood from the boy's mangled shoulder dripped upon them while he wrote:

Spotsylvania County, Va. May 10, 1864.

Dear Father:

This is my last letter to you. I went into battle this evening as courier for Gen'l Heth. I have been struck by a piece of shell and my right shoulder is horribly mangled & I know death is inevitable. I am very weak but I write to you because I know you would be delighted to read a word from your dying son. I know death is near, that I will die far from home and friends of my early youth, but I have friends here, too, who are kind to me. My Friend Fairfax will write you at my request and give you the particulars of my death. My grave will be marked so that you may visit it if you desire to do so, but it is optionary with you whether you let my remains rest here or in Mississippi. I would like to rest in the graveyard with my dear mother and brothers, but it is a matter of minor importance. Let us all try to reunite in heaven. I pray my God to forgive my sins & I feel that his promises are true, that he will forgive me and save me. Give my love to all my friends. My strength fails me. My horse & my equipments will be left for you. Again a long farewell to you. May we meet in heaven.

Your Dying Son, J.R. Montgomery.



CHAPTER XXII

RANDOM RICHMOND NOTES

Richmond may again be likened to Boston as a literary center. In an article published some years ago in "Book News" Alice M. Tyler refers to Colonel William Byrd, who founded Richmond in 1733, as the sprightliest and most genial native American writer before Franklin. In the time of Chief Justice Marshall, Richmond had a considerable group of novelists, historians and essayists, but the great literary name connected with the place is that of Edgar Allan Poe, who spent much of his boyhood in the city and later edited the "Southern Literary Messenger." Matthew Fontaine Maury, the great scientist, mentioned in an earlier chapter, was, at another time, editor of the same periodical, as was also John Reuben Thompson, "Poet of the Confederacy," who wrote, among other poems, "Music in Camp," and who translated Gustave Nadaud's familiar poem, "Carcassonne."

Thomas Nelson Page made his home in Richmond for thirty years; Amelie Rives was born there and still maintains her residence in Albemarle County, Virginia, while among other writers of the present time connected with the city either by birth or long association are, Henry Sydnor Harrison, Mary Johnston, Ellen Glasgow, Marion Harland, Kate Langley Bosher, James Branch Cabell, Edward Peple, dramatist, J.H. Whitty, biographer of Poe, and Colonel W. Gordon McCabe, soldier, historian, essayist, and local character—a gentleman upon whose shoulders such imported expressions as litterateur, bon viveur, and raconteur alight as naturally as doves on friendly shoulders.

Colonel McCabe is a link between present-day Richmond and the traditions and associations of England. He was the friend of Lord Roberts, he introduced Lord Tennyson to Bull Durham tobacco, and, as is fitting under the circumstances, he speaks and writes of a hotel as "an hotel."

Henry Sydnor Harrison did his first writing as book reviewer on the Richmond "Times-Dispatch," of which paper he later became paragrapher and daily poet, and still later editor in chief. It is commonly reported in Richmond that the characters in his novel "Queed," the scenes of which are laid in Richmond, were "drawn from life." I asked Mr. Harrison about this.

"When the book appeared," he said, "I was much embarrassed by the disposition of Richmond people—human and natural, I suppose, when you 'know the author'—to identify all the imaginary persons with various local characters. Some characteristics of the political boss in my story were in a degree suggested by a local celebrity; Stewart Bryan is indicated, in passing, as Stewart Byrd; and the bare bones of a historic case, altered at will, were employed in another connection. But I think I am stating the literal truth when I say that no figure in the book is borrowed from life."

* * * * *

The recent residential development in Richmond has been to the west of the city in the neighborhood of Monument Avenue, a fine double drive, with a parked center, lined with substantial new homes, and having at intervals monuments to southern heroes: Lee, Davis, and J.E.B. Stuart.

The parks are on the outskirts of the city and, as in most other cities, it is in these outlying regions that new homes are springing up, thanks in no small degree to the automobile. The Country Club of Virginia is out to the west of the town, in what is known as Westhampton, and is one of the most charming clubs of its kind in the South or, indeed, in the country.

Richmond has one of the most beautiful and several of the most curious cemeteries I have ever seen. Hollywood Cemetery stands upon rolling bluffs overlooking the James, and under its majestic trees are the tombs of many famous men, including James Monroe, John Tyler, Jefferson Davis and Fitzhugh Lee. An inscription on the Davis monument, which was erected by the widow and daughter of the President of the Confederacy, describes him as "an American soldier and defender of the Constitution." At the back of the pedestal is another inscription:

PRESIDENT OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA 1861-1865. FAITHFUL TO ALL TRUSTS, A MARTYR TO PRINCIPLE. HE LIVED AND DIED THE MOST CONSISTENT OF AMERICAN SOLDIERS AND STATESMEN.

It occasionally happens that, instead of having monuments because in life they were famous, men are made famous after death, by the inscriptions placed upon their tombstones. Such is the case with James E. Valentine, a locomotive engineer killed in a collision many years ago. The Valentine monument in Hollywood Cemetery is almost as well known as the monuments erected in memory of the great, the reason for this being embodied in the following verse adorning the stone:

Until the brakes are turned on Time, Life's throttle valve shut down, He wakes to pilot in the crew That wear the martyr's crown.

On schedule time on upper grade Along the homeward section, He lands his train at God's roundhouse The morn of resurrection.

His time all full, no wages docked; His name on God's pay roll. And transportation through to Heaven, A free pass for his soul.

In the burial ground of old St. John's Church—the building in which Patrick Henry delivered his "Give me Liberty or give me Death" oration—are a number of old gravestones bearing strange inscriptions which appeal to the imagination, and also, alas! elicit sad thoughts concerning those who wrote the old-time gravestone doggerel.

The custodian of the church is glad to indicate the interesting stones, but is much more taken up with his own gift of oratory, as displayed when, on getting visitors inside the church, he takes his place on the spot where Patrick Henry stood, and delivers the famous oration. Having done this to us—or perhaps it would seem more generous to say for us—the caretaker told us that many persons who had heard him had declared that Patrick Henry himself would have had a hard time doing it better. But when he threatened, for contrast, to deliver the oration as a less gifted elocutionist might speak it, my companion, in whom I had already observed signs of restlessness, interrupted with the statement that we were late for an engagement, and fled from the place, followed by me.

* * * * *

In certain parts of the city, often at a considerable distance from the warehouse and factory sections, one may occasionally catch upon the breeze the faint, spicy fragrance of tobacco; and should one trace these pleasant scents to their sources, one would come to a region of factories in which rich brown leaves are transformed into pipe tobacco, plug tobacco, or cigarettes. In the simpler processes of this work, negro men and women are employed, and these with their natural picturesqueness of pose and costume, and their singing, in the setting of an old shadowy loft, make a tobacco factory a fascinating place. In one loft you will see negro men and boys handling the tobacco leaves with pitchforks, much as farm hands handle hay; in another, negro women squatting upon boxes, stemming the leaves, or "pulling up ends," their black faces blending mysteriously with the dark shadows of beams and rafters. Here the air is laden not only with the sweet tobacco smell, mixed with a faint scent of licorice and of fruit, but is freighted also with a fine brown dust which is revealed where bars of sunlight strike in through the windows, and which seems, as it shifts and sparkles, to be a visible expression of the smell.

In the busy season "street niggers" are generally used for stemming, which is, perhaps, the leading part of the tobacco industry in Richmond, and these "street niggers," a wild yet childlike lot, who lead a hand-to-mouth existence all year round, bring to the tobacco trade a wealth of semi-barbaric color. To give us an idea of the character of a Richmond "street nigger" the gentleman who took my companion and me through the factory told us of having wanted a piece of light work done, and having asked one of these negroes: "Want to earn a quarter?"

To which the latter replied without moving from his comfortable place beside a sun-baked brick wall: "No, boss, Ah got a quahtah."

The singing of the negroes is a great feature of the stemming department in a tobacco factory. Some of the singers become locally famous; also, I was told by the superintendent, they become independent, and for that reason have frequently to be dismissed. The wonderful part of this singing, aside from the fascinating harmonies made by the sweet, untrained negro voices, is the utter lack of prearrangement that there is about it. Now there will be silence in the loft; then there will come a strange, half-savage cry from some dark corner, musical, yet seemingly meaningless; soon a faint humming will begin, and will be taken up by men and women all over the loft; the humming will swell into a chant to which the workers rock as their black hands travel swiftly among the brown leaves; then, presently, it will die away, and there will be silence until they are again moved to song.

From shadowy room to shadowy room, past great dark bins filled with the leaves, past big black steaming vats, oozing sweet-smelling substances, past moist fragrant barrels, always among the almost spectral forms of negroes, treading out leaves with bare feet, working over great wicker baskets stained to tobacco color, piling up wooden frames, or operating the powerful hydraulic presses which convert the soft tobacco into plugs of concrete hardness—so one goes on through the factory. The browns and blacks of these interiors are the browns and blacks of etchings; the color of the leaves, the old dark timbers, the black faces and hands, and the ragged clothing, combined with the humming of negro voices, the tobacco fragrance, and the golden dust upon the air, make an indescribably complete harmony of shade, sound, and scent.

The department in which the pipe tobacco is packed in tins is a very different sort of place; here white labor is employed: a great many girls seated side by side at benches working with great digital dexterity: measuring out the tobacco, folding wax paper cartons, filling them, and slipping them into the narrow tins, all at a rate of speed so great as to defy the sight, giving a sense of fingers flickering above the bench with a strange, almost supernatural sureness, like the fingers of a magician who makes things disappear before your eyes; or like the pictures in which post-impressionist and cubist painters attempt to express motion.

"May I speak to one of them?" I asked the superintendent.

"Sure," said he.

I went up to a young woman who was working, if anything, more rapidly than the other girls at the same bench.

"Can you think, while you are doing this?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied, without looking up, while her fingers flashed on ceaselessly.

"About other things?"

"Certainly."

"How many cans do you fill in a day?"

"About thirty-four to thirty-five hundred on the average."

"May I ask your name?" She gave it.

I took up one of the small identification slips which she put into each package, and wrote her name upon the back of it. The number on the slip—for the purpose of identifying the girl who packed the tin—was 220. Let the reader, therefore, be informed that if he smokes Edgeworth Ready Rubbed, and finds in a tin a slip bearing that number, he has been served by no less a person than Miss Katie Wise, of the astonishingly speedy fingers.



CHAPTER XXIII

JEDGE CRUTCHFIELD'S CO'T

Dar's a pow'ful rassle 'twix de Good en de Bad, En de Bad's got de all-under holt; En w'en de wuss come, she come i'on-clad, En you hatter holt yo' bref fer de jolt.

—UNCLE REMUS.

My companion and I had not traveled far into the South before we discovered that our comfort was likely to be considerably enhanced if, in hotels, we singled out an intelligent bell boy and, as far as possible, let this one boy serve us. Our mainstay in the Jefferson Hotel was Charles Jackson, No. 144, or, when Charles was "off," his "side partner," whom we knew as Bob.

Having one day noticed a negro in convict's stripes, but without a guard, raking up leaves in Capitol Square, I asked Charles about the matter.

"Do they let the convicts go around unguarded?" I inquired.

"They 's some of 'em can," said he. "Those is trustees."

This talk of "trustees" led to other things and finally to a strong recommendation, by Charles, of the Richmond Police Court, as a place of entertainment.

"Is it interesting?" I asked.

"Inter-resting? Yes, suh! Judge Crutchfield he suttinly is. He done chahge me twenty-six dollahs and fo'ty cents. My brothah, he got in fight down street, heah. Some niggers set on him. I went to he'p him an' p'leeceman got me. He say I was resistin' p'leece. I ain't resisted no p'leece! No, suh! Not me! But Judge Crutchfield, you can't tell him nothin'. 'Tain't no use to have a lawyer, nuther. Judge Crutchfield don't want no lawyers in his co't. Like 's not he cha'ge you mo' fo' havin' lawyer. Then you got pay lawyer, too.

"Friend mine name Billy. One night Billy he wake up and heah some one come pushin' in his house. He hollah: 'Who thar?'

"Othah nigger he kep' pushin' on in. He say: 'This Gawge.'

"Billy, he say: 'Git on out heah, niggah! Ain't no Gawge live heah!'

"Othah niggah, he say: 'Don't make no diff'unce Gawge live heah o' not. He sure comin' right in! Ain't nobody heah kin stop ol' Gawge! He eat 'em alive, Gawge do! He de boss of Jackson Ward. Bettah say yo' prayehs, niggah, fo' yo' time—has—come!'

"Billy he don't want hit nobody, but this-heah Gawge he drunk, an' Billy have t' hit 'im. Well, suh, what you think this Gawge done? He go have Billy 'rested. Yes, suh! But you can't tell Judge Crutchfield nothin'. Next mo'nin' in p'leece co't he say to Billy: 'I fine you twenty-five dollahs, fo' hittin' this old gray-haihed man.' Yes, suh! 'at 's a way Judge Crutchfield is. Can't tell him nothin'. He jes' set up theh on de bench, an' he chaw tobacco, an' he heah de cases, an' he spit, an' evvy time he spit he spit a fine. Yes, suh! He spit like dis: 'Pfst! Five dollahs!'—'Pfst! Ten dollahs!'—'Pfst! Fifteen dollahs!'—just how he feel. He suttinly is some judge, 'at man."

Encouraged by this account of police court justice as meted out to the Richmond negro, my companion and I did visit Justice Crutchfield's court.

The room in the basement of the City Hall was crowded. All the benches were occupied and many persons, white and black, were standing up. Among the members of the audience—for the performance is more like a vaudeville show with the judge as headliner than like a serious tribunal—I noticed several actors and actresses from a company which was playing in Richmond at the time—these doubtless drawn to the place by the fact that Walter C. Kelly, billed in vaudeville as "The Virginia Judge," is commonly reported to have taken Judge Crutchfield as a model for his exceedingly amusing monologue. Mr. Kelly himself has, however, told me that his inspiration came from hearing the late Judge J.D.G. Brown, of Newport News, hold court.

At the back of the room, in what appeared to be a sort of steel cage, were assembled the prisoners, all of them, on this occasion, negroes; while at the head of the chamber behind the usual police-court bulwark, sat the judge—a white-haired, hook-nosed man of more than seventy, peering over the top of his eyeglasses with a look of shrewd, merciless divination.

"William Taylor!" calls a court officer.

A negro is brought from the cage to the bar of justice. He is a sad spectacle, his face adorned with a long strip of surgeon's plaster. The judge looks at him over his glasses. The hearing proceeds as follows:

COURT OFFICER (to prisoner)—Get over there! (Prisoner obeys.)

JUDGE CRUTCHFIELD—Sunday drunk—Five dollars.

It is over.

The next prisoner is already on his way to the bar. He is a short, wide negro, very black and tattered. A large black negress, evidently his consort, arises as witness against him. The case goes as follows:

JUDGE CRUTCHFIELD—Drunk?

THE WIFE (looking contemptuously at her spouse)—Drunk? Yass, Jedge, drunk. Always drunk.

THE PRISONER (meekly)—I ain't been drunk, Jedge.

THE JUDGE—Yes, you have. I can see you've got your sign up this morning. (Looking toward cage at back of room): Make them niggers stop talkin' back there! (To the wife): What did he do, Mandy?

THE WIFE (angrily)—Jedge, he come bustin' in, and he come so fast he untook the do' off'n de hinges; den 'e begins—

THE JUDGE (to the prisoner, sarcastically)—You wasn't drunk, eh?

THE PRISONER (weakly)—I might of had a drink oh two.

THE JUDGE (severely)—Was—you—drunk?

THE PRISONER—No, suh, Jedge. Ah wasn't drunk. Ah don't think no man's drunk s' long 's he can navigate, Jedge. I don't—

THE JUDGE—Oh, yes, he can be! He can navigate and navigate mighty mean!—Ten dollars.

(At this point an officer speaks in a low tone to the judge, evidently interceding for the prisoner.)

THE JUDGE (loudly)—No. That fine's very small. If it ain't worth ten dollars to get drunk, it ain't worth nothing at all. Next case!

(While the next prisoner is being brought up, the judge entertains his audience with one of the humorous monologues for which he is famous, and which, together with the summary "justice" he metes out, keeps ripples of laughter running through the room): I'm going to get drunk myself, some day, and see what it does to me. [Laughter.] Mebbe I'll take a little cocaine, too.

A NEGRO VOICE (from back of room, deep bass, and very fervent)—Oh, no-o-o! Don't do dat, Jedge! [More laughter.]

THE JUDGE—Where's that prisoner? If he was a Baptist, he wouldn't be so slow.

(The prisoner, a yellow negro, is brought to the bar. His trousers are mended with a large safety pin and his other equipment is to match.)

THE JUDGE (inspecting the prisoner sharply)—You ain't a Richmond nigger. I can tell that to look at you.

THE PRISONER—No, suh, Jedge. That's right.

THE JUDGE—Where you from? You're from No'th Ca'lina, ain't you?

THE PRISONER—Yas, suh, Jedge.

THE JUDGE—Six months!

(A great laugh rises from the courtroom at this. On inquiry we learn that the "joke" depends upon the judge's well-known aversion for negroes from North Carolina.)

Only recently I have heard Walter C. Kelly as "The Virginia Judge." Save for a certain gentle side which Mr. Kelly indicates, and of which I saw no signs in Judge Crutchfield, I should say that, even though Judge Crutchfield is not his model, the suggestion of him is strongly there. Two of Mr. Kelly's "cases" are particularly reminiscent of the Richmond Police Court. One is as follows:

THE JUDGE—First case—Sadie Anderson.

THE PRISONER—Yassir! That's me!

THE JUDGE—Thirty days in jail. That's me! Next case.

The other:

THE JUDGE—What's your name?

THE PRISONER—Sam Williams.

THE JUDGE—How old are you, Sam?

THE PRISONER—Just twenty-four.

THE JUDGE—You'll be just twenty-five when you get out. Next case!



CHAPTER XXIV

NORFOLK AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD

Just as New York looks newer than Boston, but is actually older, Norfolk looks newer than Richmond. Business and population grow in Richmond, but you do not feel them growing as you do in Norfolk. You feel that Richmond business men already have money, whereas in Norfolk there is less old wealth and a great deal more scrambling for new dollars. Also you feel that law and order count for more in Richmond than in Norfolk, and that the strict prohibition law which not long ago became effective in Virginia will be more easily enforced in the capital than in the seaport. Norfolk, in short, likes the things New York likes. It likes tall office buildings, and it dotes on the signs of commercial activity by day and social activity by night. Furthermore, from the tops of some of the high buildings the place actually looks like a miniature New York: the Elizabeth River masquerading as the East River; Portsmouth, with its navy yard, pretending to be Brooklyn, while some old-time New York ferryboats, running between the two cities, assist in completing the illusion. In the neighboring city of Newport News, Norfolk has its equivalent for Jersey City and Hoboken, while Willoughby Spit protrudes into Hampton Roads like Sandy Hook reduced to miniature.

The principal shopping streets of Norfolk and Richmond are as unlike as possible. Broad Street, Richmond, is very wide, and is never overcrowded, whereas Granby Street, Norfolk (advertised by local enthusiasts as "the livest street in Virginia," and appropriately spanned, at close intervals, by arches of incandescent lights), is none too wide for the traffic it carries, with the result that, during the afternoon and evening, it is truly very much alive. To look upon it at the crowded hours is to get a suggestion of a much larger city than Norfolk actually is—a suggestion which is in part accounted for by the fact that Norfolk's spending population, drawn from surrounding towns and cities, is much greater than the number of its inhabitants.

Norfolk's extraordinary growth in the last two or three decades may be traced to several causes: to the fertility of the soil of the surrounding region, which, intensively cultivated, produces rich market-garden crops, making Norfolk a great shipping point for "truck"; to the development of the trade in peanuts, which are grown in large quantities in this corner of Virginia; to a great trade in oysters and other sea-food, and to the continually increasing importance of the Norfolk navy yard.

In connection with the navy Norfolk has always figured prominently, Hampton Roads having been a favorite naval rendezvous since the early days of the American fleet. Now, however, it is announced that the cry of our navy for a real naval base—something we have never had, though all other important navies have them, Britain alone having three—has been heard in Washington, and that Norfolk has been selected as the site for a base. This is an important event not only for the Virginia seaport, but for the United States.

Farmers who think they are in a poor business will do well to investigate Norfolk's recent history. The "trucking" industry of Norfolk is said to amount in the aggregate to twelve or fourteen million dollars annually, and many fortunes have been made from it. The pioneer "trucker" of the region was Mr. Richard Cox. A good many years ago Mr. Cox employed a German boy, a blacksmith by trade, named Henry Kern. Kern finally branched out for himself. When, in 1915, he died, his real estate holdings in Norfolk and Portsmouth were valued at two million dollars, all of which had been made from garden truck. He was but one of a considerable class of wealthy men whose fortunes have sprung from the same source.

Many of the truck farms have access to the water. The farmers bring their produce to the city in their own boats, giving the port a picturesque note. At Norfolk it is transferred to steamers which carry it to New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Providence, Baltimore and Washington. Lately a considerable amount of truck has been shipped west by rail, as well.

Hundreds of acres of ground in the vicinity of the city are under glass and large crops of winter vegetables are raised. Kale and spinach are being grown and harvested throughout the cold months; strawberries, potatoes, beans, peas, cucumbers, cabbage, lettuce and other vegetables follow through the spring and summer, running on into the fall, when the corn crop becomes important. Corn is raised chiefly by the peanut farmer, whose peanuts grow between his corn-rows.