"Of course I would!" cried Washburn. "Thank God for a woman who can say what she has to say, and be done with it!"

The sword was returned.

In the Spring of 1863, when Bishop Gailor was a child of about seven years, he accompanied his mother on a journey by wagon from Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi. The only other member of the party was a lady who had driven in the same wagon from Jackson to Kentucky, to get the body of her brother, a Confederate soldier who had been killed there. The coffin containing the remains was carried in the wagon. When it was known in Memphis that Mrs. Gailor was going through the lines, a great many people came to her with letters which they wished to send to friends. Mrs. Gailor sewed many of the letters into the clothing of the little boy. ("I remember it well," said the bishop. "I felt like a mummy.") Also one of Forrest's spies came with important papers, asking if she would undertake to deliver them. Only by very clever manipulation did Mrs. Gailor get the papers through, for everything was carefully searched. After they had passed out of the northern lines they met one of Forrest's pickets. Mrs. Gailor told him that she had papers for the general, and before long Forrest rode up with his staff and received them. Then the two women and the little boy, with their tragic burden in the wagon, drove along on their two-hundred mile journey. And later, when Jackson was bombarded, they were there.

Before the war Major Gailor had been editor of the Memphis "Avalanche," a paper which was suppressed when the Union troops took the town. After the War the "Avalanche" was started up again, and had a stormy time of it, because it criticized a Carpet-bag judge who had come to Memphis. In 1889 the "Avalanche" was consolidated with the "Appeal," another famous ante-bellum journal, surviving to-day in the "Commercial-Appeal," a strong newspaper, edited by one of the ablest journalists in the South, Mr. C.P.J. Mooney.

When Memphis was captured the "Appeal" would have been suppressed, as the "Avalanche" was, had it been there. But when it became evident that Memphis would fall, Mr. S.C. Toof (later a well-known book publisher) who was then connected with the "Appeal," packed up the press and other equipment and shipped them to Grenada, Mississippi, where Mr. B.F. Dill, editor of the paper, continued to bring it out. When Grenada was threatened, a few months later, Mr. Dill moved with his newspaper equipment to Birmingham, where for a second time he resumed publication. His next move was to Atlanta. There, when he could not get news-print, he used wallpaper, or any sort of paper he could lay his hands on. When Sherman took Atlanta the "Appeal" moved again, this time to Columbus, Georgia, where, at last, it was captured, and its press destroyed. Wherever it went it remained the "Memphis Daily Appeal," with correspondents in all southern armies. No wonder a paper with such vitality as that, has survived and become great!

Poor Memphis! After the War she had Reconstruction to contend with; after Reconstruction, financial difficulties; after that, pestilence. In 1873, when the population of the city was about 40,000, and there had been a long period of hard times, yellow fever broke out. The condition of the city was exceedingly unsanitary, and after the pestilence had passed, was allowed to remain so, though at that time the origin of yellow fever was, of course, not known, and it was assumed that the disease resulted from lack of proper sanitation.

In 1878 there was another yellow fever epidemic. The first case developed August 2, but the news was suppressed until the middle of the month, by which time a number of cases had come down. The day after the news became known 22 new cases were reported. Terror spread through the town. Hordes of people tried to flee at once. Families left their houses with the doors wide open and silver standing on the sideboards. People flocked to the trains; when they could not get seats they stood in the aisles or clambered onto the roofs of the cars; if they could not get in at car doors they climbed in through the windows, and sometimes, when the father of a family was refused admittance to a crowded car, he would force a way in for his wife and children at the pistol's point.

In the first week of the panic there were 1,500 cases, with an average of ten deaths daily; in the next week, 3,000 cases with fifty deaths daily, and so on into September during which month there was an average of 8,000 to 10,000 cases with about two hundred deaths a day.

Not every one fled, however. Leading citizens remained, forming a relief committee, and some brave helpers came from outside. Thus the sick and needy were attended to, though of course many of the volunteers contracted the disease and perished.

Added to the epidemic there was, as so often happens in such circumstances, an outbreak of thievery and other crime, which had to be put down. It is related that in the height of the epidemic hardly any one was seen upon the streets save an occasional nurse, doctor, or other member of the relief committee; household pets starved to death or fled the city; among the newspapers the staffs were so reduced that only two or three men were left in each office, and in the case of the "Appeal," but one, that one Colonel J.M. Keating, the proprietor, who stuck to Memphis and for a time wrote, set up and printed the paper without assistance, feeling that refugees must have news from the city.

The next year the epidemic came again, but in less violent form, there being, this time, but 2,000 cases. However the effect was cumulative. Memphis dropped from a city of nearly 50,000 to one of 20,000 and the reputation of the place was such that a bill was proposed in Congress to purchase the ground on which the city stood and utterly destroy it as unfit for human habitation.

Stricken as she was, however, Memphis "came back." A great campaign for sanitation was begun; city sewage-disposal was installed, and after a few years, artesian wells were bored for a new water supply. And though, as we now know, yellow fever does not come from the same sources as typhoid, nevertheless the new sanitary measures did greatly reduce the city's death rate.

Memphis, like all other cities, has her troubles now and then, but since the great pestilence there has never been a real disaster. The city has grown and thriven. Indeed, she had become so used to growing fast that when, in 1910, the Federal census gave her but 131,000, she indignantly demanded a recount, for she had been talking to herself, and had convinced herself that she had a great many more than that number of inhabitants. However, the census was taken again, and the first count proved accurate.



CHAPTER L

MODERN MEMPHIS

To be charmed by the social side of a city, yet to find little to admire in its physical aspect, is like knowing a brilliant and beautiful woman whose housekeeping is not of the neatest. If one were compelled to discuss such a woman, and wished to do so sympathetically but with truth, one might avoid brutal comment on the condition of her rooms by likening them to other rooms elsewhere: rooms which one knew to be untidy, but which the innocent listener might not understand to be so. By this device one may even appear to pay a compliment, while, in reality, indicating the grim truth. In such a case, I, for example, might say that this supposititious lady's rooms reminded me of those I occupied on the second floor of the famous restaurant called Antoine's, in New Orleans; whereupon the reader, knowing the high reputation of Antoine's cuisine, and never having seen the apartments to which I refer, might assume an implication very favorable.

Let me say, then, that Memphis reminds me of St. Louis. Like St. Louis, Memphis has charming society. Like St. Louis she has pretty girls. Like St. Louis she is hospitable. And without particularizing too much, I may say that her streets remind me of St. Louis streets, that many of her houses remind me of St. Louis houses, and that her levee, with its cobbled surface sloping down to the yellow, muddy Mississippi, the bridges in the distance, the strange looking river steamers loading and unloading below, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, is much like the St. Louis levee. So, if the reader happens to be unfamiliar with the physical appearance of St. Louis, he may, at all events, perceive that I have likened Memphis to a much larger city—thus, (it seems fair to suppose) paying Memphis a handsome tribute.

Memphis has a definite self-given advantage over St. Louis in possessing a pretty little park at the heart of the city, overlooking the river; also she has the advantage of lying to the east of the great stream, instead of to the west, so that, in late afternoon, when the sun splashes down into the mysterious deserted reaches of the Arkansas flats, across the way, sending splatterings of furious color across the sky, one may seat oneself on a bench in the park and witness a stupendous natural masterpiece. A sunset over the sea can be no more wonderful than a sunset over this terrible, beautiful, inspiring, enigmatic domineering flood. Or one may see the sunset from the readingroom of the Cossitt Library, with its fine bay window commanding the river almost as though it were the window of a pilot-house.

The Cossitt Library is only one of several free libraries in the city. There is, for example, a free library in connection with the Goodwyn Institute, an establishment having an endowment of half a million dollars, left to Memphis by the late William A. Goodwyn. The Goodwyn Institute provides courses of free lectures, by well-known persons, on a great variety of subjects. The library is designed to add to the educational work. Books are not, however, loaned, as they are from the Cossitt Library, an institution to which I found myself returning more than once; now for a book, now to look at the interesting collection of mound-builder relics contained in an upper room, now merely because it is a place of such reposeful hospitality that I liked to make excuses to go back.

The library, a romanesque building of Michigan red sandstone, is by a southern architect, but is in the style of Richardson, and is one of the few buildings in that style which I have ever liked. It was given to Memphis as a memorial to Frederick H. Cossitt, by his three daughters, Mrs. A.D. Juilliard, Mrs. Thomas Stokes, and Mrs. George E. Dodge, all of New York. Mr. Cossitt was born in Granby, Connecticut, but as a young man moved South and in 1842 adopted Memphis as his home, residing there until 1861. At the outbreak of the Civil War he made an amicable division of his business with his partner, and removed to New York, where he resided until the time of his death. Finding among his papers a memorandum indicating that he had intended to endow a library in Memphis, his daughters carried out his wish.

Having already spoken of a number of Memphis' interesting citizens, I find myself left with an ill-assorted trio of names yet to be mentioned, because, different as they are, each of the three supplies a definite part of the character of the city. First, then, Memphis has the honor of possessing what not many of our cities possess: a man who stands high among the world's artist-bookbinders. This gentleman is Mr. Otto Zahn, executive head of the publishing house of S.C. Toof & Co. Mr. Zahn himself has done some famous bindings, and books bound by him are to be found in some of the finest private libraries in the land. Until a few years ago he conducted an art-bindery in connection with the Toof company's business, but it was unprofitable and finally had to be given up.

Second, to descend to a more popular form of art, but one from which the revenue is far more certain, Memphis has, in W.C. Handy, a negro ragtime composer whose dance tunes are widely known. Among his compositions may be mentioned the "Memphis Blues," the "St. Louis Blues," "Mr. Crump," and "Joe Turner." "Mr. Crump" is named in honor of a former mayor of Memphis who was ousted for refusing to enforce the prohibition law; "Joe Turner" is the name of a negro pianist who plays for Memphis to dance—as Handy also does. Most of Handy's tunes are negro "rags" in fox-trot time, and they are so effective that Memphis dances them generally in preference to the one step.

My third celebrity is of a more astounding type. While in Memphis I called aboard the river steamer Grand, and had a talk with Mrs. Nettie Johnson, who is captain of that craft. Some one told me that Mrs. Johnson was the only woman steamboat captain in the world, but she informed me that at Helena, Arkansas, there lives another Mrs. Johnson—no relative of hers—who follows the same calling.

The steamer Grand is almost entirely a Johnson family affair. Mrs. Johnson is captain; her husband, I.S. Johnson is pilot (though Mrs. Johnson has, in addition to her master's license, a pilot's license, and often takes the wheel); her elder son, Emery, is clerk; Emery's wife is assistant clerk, while Arthur, the captain's younger son, is engineer. Russell Johnson, Mrs. Johnson's grandson, is the only member of the family I saw aboard the boat who does not take part in running it. Russell was five years old when I met him, but that was nearly a year ago, and by now he is probably chief steward, boatswain, or ship's carpenter.

The regular route of the Grand is from Memphis to Mhoon's Landing, on the Arkansas River, a round trip of 120 miles, with thirty landings.

I asked Mrs. Johnson if she had ever been shipwrecked. Indeed she had! Her former ship, the Nettie Johnson, struck thin ice one night in the Arkansas River and went down.

"What did you do?" I asked.

"I reached after an iron ring," she replied, "and clumb on up into the rigging. She went down about four-thirty A.M. and we stayed on her till daylight; then we all swum ashore. I tell you it was cold! There was icicles on my dress; my son Emery put his arms around me to keep me warm, and his clothes froze onto mine."

"How long a swim was it to shore?" I asked.

"Oh," put in her husband, "it didn't amount to nothing. She was only swimming about two minutes."

This statement, however, was repudiated by the captain. "Two minutes, my foot!" she flung back at her spouse. "It was more than that, all right!"

Mrs. Johnson has done flood rescue work for the Government, with the Grand. In the spring previous to our visit she rescued sixty families from one plantation, besides towing barge-loads of provisions to various points on the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers.

Captaining and piloting a river boat are clearly good for the health. Mrs. Johnson looks too young to be a grandmother. Her skin is clear, her cheeks are rosy, her brown eyes flash and twinkle, her voice, somewhat hoarse from shouting commands, is deep and strong, and her laugh is like the hearty laugh of a big man.

"Are you a suffragist?" I asked her.

"Not on your life!" was her reply.

"Now, what do you want to talk like that for?" objected her husband. "You know women ought to be allowed to vote."

"I don't think so," she returned firmly.

At that her daughter-in-law, the assistant clerk of the Grand, took up the cudgels.

"Of course they ought to vote!" she insisted. "You know you can do just as good as a man can do!"

"No," asseverated Captain Nettie. "Women ought to stay home and tend to their families."

"As you do?" I suggested, mischievously.

"That's all right!" she flung back. "I stayed home and raised my family until it was big enough to do its own navigating. Then I started in steamboating. I had to have something to do."

But the daughter-in-law did not intend to let the woman suffrage issue drop.

"Do you mean to say," she demanded of Captain Nettie, "that you think women haven't got as much sense as men?"

"Sure I do!" the captain tossed back. "There never was a woman on earth that had as much sense as the men. Take it from me, that's so. I know what I'm talking about—and that's more than a half of these other women do!"

Then, as it was about time for the Grand to cast off, Captain Nettie terminated the interview by blowing the whistle; whereupon my companion and I went ashore.

One of the best boats on the river is the Kate Adams and one of the most delightful two-days' outings I can imagine would be to make the round trip with her from Memphis to Arkansas City. But if I were seeking rest I should not take the trip at the time when it is taken by a score or more of Memphis young men and women, who, with their chaperones, and with Handy to play their dance-music, make the Kate Adams an extremely lively craft on one round trip each year.

Apropos of Arkansas, I am reminded that Memphis is not only the metropolis of Tennessee, but is the big city of Arkansas and Mississippi, as well. The Peabody Hotel in Memphis, a somewhat old-fashioned hostelry, is a sort of Arkansas political headquarters, and is sometimes humorously referred to as "Peabody township, Arkansas." It is also used to a considerable extent by Mississippi politicians, as well as by the local breed. The Peabody grill has a considerable reputation for good cookery, and the Peabody bar, though it still looks like a bar, serves only soft drinks, which are dispensed by female "bartenders." The Gayoso hotel, named for the Spanish governor who intruded upon Memphis territory for a time, stands where stood the old Gayoso, which figured in Forrest's raid. The Gayoso made me think a little of the old Victoria, in New York, torn down some years ago. The newest hotel in town, at the time of our visit, was the Chicsa, an establishment having a large and rather flamboyant office, and considerably used, we were told, as a place for conventions. If I were to go again to Memphis I should have a room at the Gayoso and go to the Peabody for meals.

The axis of the earth, which Oliver Wendell Holmes declared, "sticks out visibly through the center of each and every town or city," sticks out in Memphis at Court Square, which the good red Baedeker dismisses briefly with the remark that it "contains a bust of General Andrew Jackson and innumerable squirrels." This is not meant to indicate that the squirrels are a part of the bust of Jackson. The two are separate and distinct. So are the pigeons which alight on friendly hands and shoulders as do other confident pigeons on Boston Common, and in the Piazza San Marco, in Venice.

I am always disposed to like the people of a city in which pigeons and squirrels are tame. Every day, at noon, an old policeman, a former Confederate soldier I believe he is, comes into the square with a basket of corn. When he arrives all the pigeons see him and rush toward him in a great flapping cloud, brushing past your face if you happen to be walking across the square at the time. Nor is he the only one to feed them. Numbers of citizens go at midday to the square, where they buy popcorn and peanuts for the squirrels and pigeons—which, by the way, are all members of old Memphis families, being descendants of other squirrels and pigeons which lived in this same place before the Civil War. One might suppose that the pigeons, being able to fly up to the seventeenth floor windowsills of the Merchants' Exchange Building, where men of the grain and hay bureau of the exchange are in the habit of leaving corn for them, would prosper more than the squirrels, but that is not the case for—and I regret to have to report such immorality—the squirrels are in the habit of adding to the stores of peanuts which are thrown to them, by thievery. Like rascally urchins they will watch the peanut venders, and when their backs are turned, will make swift dashes at the peanut stands, seizing nuts and scampering away again. Sometimes the venders detect them, and give chase for a few steps, but that is dangerous, for the minute the vender goes after one squirrel, others rush up and steal more. It is saddening to find that even squirrels are corrupted by metropolitan life!

In reviewing my visit to Memphis I find myself, for once, kindly disposed toward a Chamber of Commerce and Business Men's Club. I like the Business Men's Club because, besides issuing pamphlets shrieking the glory of the city, it has found time to do things much more worth while—notably to bring to Memphis some of the great American orchestras.

A pamphlet issued by these organizations tells me that Memphis is the largest cotton market in the country, the largest hardwood producing market, the third largest grocery and jobbing market.

Cotton is, indeed, much in evidence in the city. The streets in some sections are full of strange little two-wheel drays, upon which three bales are carried, and which display, in combination, those three southern things having such perfect artistic affinity: the negro, the mule, and the cotton bale. The vast modern cotton warehouses on the outskirts of the city cover many acres of ground, and with their gravity system of distribution for cotton bales, and their hydraulic compresses in which the bales are squeezed to minimum size, to the accompaniment of negro chants, are exceedingly interesting.

The same pamphlet speaks also of the unusually large proportion of the city's area which is given over to parks and playgrounds, and it seems worth adding that though Memphis follows the general southern custom of barring negroes—excepting, of course, nursemaids in charge of children—from her parks, she has been so just as to provide a park for negroes only. In this she stands ahead of most other southern cities.

Memphis has the only bridge crossing the Mississippi below the mouth of the Ohio. At the time of our visit a new bridge was being built very near the old one, and an interesting experience of our trip was our visit to this bridge, under the guidance of Mr. M.B. Case, a young engineer in charge.

On a great undertaking, such as this one, where the total cost mounts into millions, the first work done is not on the proposed bridge itself, but on the plant and equipment to be used in construction—derricks, barges, concrete-mixers, air compressors for the caissons, small engines, dump-cars and all manner of like things. This preparatory work consumes some months. Caissons are then sunk far down beneath the river bed. Caisson work is dangerous, and the insurance rate on "sand hogs"—the men who work in the caissons—is very high. The scale of wages, and of time, varies in proportion to the risk, which is according to the depth at which work is being done. On this enterprise, for example, men working from mean level to a depth of 50 feet received $3 for an eight-hour day. From 50 to 70 feet they worked but six hours and received $3.75. From 90 to 105 feet they worked in three shifts of one hour each, and received $4.25. And while they were placing concrete to seal the working chamber there was an additional allowance of fifty cents a day.

The chief danger of caisson work is the "bends," or "caisson disease." In the caisson a man works under high air pressure. When he comes out, the pressure on the fluids of the body is reduced, and this sometimes causes the formation of a gas bubble in the vascular system. If this bubble reaches a nerve-center it causes severe pain, similar to neuralgia; if it gets to the brain it causes paralysis. Day after day men will go into the caisson and come out without trouble, but sooner or later from 2 to 8 per cent. of caisson workers are affected. Of 320 "sand-hogs" who labored in the caissons of this bridge, three died of paralysis, and of course a number of others had slight attacks of the "bends," in one form or another.

The bridge, when we visited it, was more than half completed. On the Memphis side the approaches were almost ready, and the steel framework of the bridge reached from the shore across the front pier, and was being built out far beyond the pier, on the cantilever principle, hanging in the air above the middle of the stream. By walking out on the old bridge we could survey the extreme end of the new one, which was being extended farther and farther, daily, by the addition of new steel sections. There were then about 100 journeymen bridgemen on the work—these being workmen of the class that erects steel skyscraper frames—with some fifty apprentices and carpenters, and about twenty common laborers. Bridgemen are among the highest paid of all workmen. In New York, at that time, their wage was $6 for eight hours' work. Here it was $4.50. Very few of the men had families with them in Memphis. They are the soldiers of fortune among wage-earners, a wild, reckless, fine looking lot of fellows, with good complexions like those of men in training, and eyes like the eyes of aviators. No class of men in the world, I suppose, have steadier nerves, think quicker, or react more rapidly from stimulus to action, whether through sight or sound. They have to be like that. For where other workmen pay for a mistake by loss of a job, these men pay with life. Yet they will tell you that their work is not dangerous. It is "just as safe as any other kind of job"—that, although four of their number had already been lost from this bridge alone. One went off the end of the structure with a derrick, the boom of which he lowered before the anchor-bolts had been placed. Two others fell. A fourth was struck by a falling timber.

Once, while we were watching the men scrambling about upon the steel members of the uncompleted cantilever arm, one of them thought something was about to fall, and ran swiftly in, over a steel beam, toward the body of the structure; whereafter, as nothing did fall, he was unmercifully twitted by his fellow workers for having shown timidity.

Many of the men working on this bridge had worked on the older structure paralleling it. This was true not only of the laboring men, but of the engineers. Ralph Modjeski, the consulting engineer at the head of the work (he is, by the way, a son of Madame Modjeska), was chief draughtsman when the earlier structure was designed; W.E. Angier, assistant chief engineer in the present work, was a field engineer on the first bridge, and it is interesting to know that, in constructing the approach to the old bridge he unearthed a Spanish halbert which, it is thought, may date from the time of De Soto. These bridge engineers and bridgebuilders move in a large orbit. Their last job may have been in Mexico, in the far West, or in India; their next may be in France. Many of the men here, worked on the Blackwell's Island bridge, on the Quebec bridge (which fell), on the Thebes bridge over the Mississippi, twenty miles above Cairo, on the Vancouver and Portland bridges over the Columbia and Willamette rivers, and on the great Oregon Trunk Railway bridges.

After standing for a time on the old bridge watching work on the new, and shuddering, often enough, at the squirrel-like way in which the men scampered about up there, so far above the water, we walked in and moved out again upon the partially completed floor of the new bridge. Here it was necessary to walk on railroad ties, with gaps, six or eight inches wide, between them. Even had one tried, one could hardly have managed to squeeze one's body through these chinks; to fall through was impossible; nevertheless it gave me an uncomfortable feeling in the region of the stomach to walk out there, seeing the river all the time between the interstices. When we had progressed for some distance we came to a gap where, for perhaps a yard, there were no ties—just open space, with the muddy water shining cold and cruel below. The opening was only about as wide as the hall of a small New York flat, and heaven knows that to step across such a hall is easy enough. But this was not so easy. When we came to the gap I stopped. Mr. Case, the young engineer, who loved all bridges with a sort of holy passion, and loved this bridge in particular, was talking as we went along. I liked to hear him talk. He had been telling us how a thing that is to be strong ought to look strong, too, and from that had got somehow to the topic of expansion and contraction in bridges, with variations of temperature. "It isn't only the steel bridges that do it," he said. "Stone arch bridges do it, too. The crown of the arch rises and falls. The Greeks and Romans and Egyptians knew that expansion and contraction occurred. They—"

While talking he had gone across the gap, stepping lightly upon a stringpiece probably a foot wide, and proceeding over the ties. Now, however, he ceased speaking and looked back, for I was no longer beside him. At the gap I had stopped. I intended to step across, but I did not propose to do so without giving the matter the attention it seemed to me to deserve.

Mr. Case did not laugh at me. He came back and stood on the string-piece where it crossed the opening, telling me to put my hand on his shoulder. But I did not want to do that. I wanted to cross alone—when I got ready. It took me perhaps two minutes to get ready. Then I stepped over. It was, of course, absurdly easy. I had known it would be. But as we walked along I kept thinking to myself: "I shall have to cross that beastly place again when we come back," and I marveled the more at the amazing steadiness of eye and mind and nerve that enables some men to go continually prancing about over emptiness infinitely more engulfing than that which had troubled and was troubling me.

Returning I stepped across without physical hesitation. But after I had crossed I continued to hate that gap. I hated it as I drove back to the hotel, that afternoon, as I ate dinner that night, as I went to bed, and in my dreams I continued to cross it, and to see the river waiting for me, seeming to look up and leer and beckon. I woke up hating the gap in the bridge as much as ever; I hated it down into the State of Mississippi, and over into Georgia; and wherever I have gone since, I have continued to hate it. Of course there isn't any gap there now. It was covered long ago. Yet for me it still exists, like some obnoxious person who, though actually dead, lives on in the minds of those who knew him.



FARTHEST SOUTH



CHAPTER LI

BEAUTIFUL SAVANNAH

How often it occurs that the great work a man set out originally to accomplish, is lost sight of, by future generations, in contemplation of other achievements of that man, which he himself regarded as of secondary importance.

In 1733, the year in which General Oglethorpe started his Georgia colony, there were more than a hundred offenses for which a person might be hanged in England; Oglethorpe's primary idea in founding the colony was to provide a means of freeing debtors from prison, and giving them a fresh start in life; yet it is as the man responsible for the laying out of the beautiful city of Savannah, that Oglethorpe is probably most widely remembered to-day.

Oglethorpe was a first-rate soldier. He defeated a superior Spanish force from Florida, and successfully resisted attacks from the Indians. Also, he was a man whose ethical sense was in advance of his period. He did not permit slavery in Georgia, and it was not adopted there until he went back to England. In planning Savannah he was assisted by a Charleston engineer named Bull, for whom the chief street of Savannah is named. The place is laid out very simply; it has rectangular blocks and wide roads, with small parks, or squares, at regular intervals. There are some two dozen of these small parks, aside from one or two larger parks, a parade ground, and numerous boulevards with double roadways and parked centers, and the abundance of semi-tropical foliage and of airy spaces, in Savannah, gives the city its most distinctive and charming quality—the quality which differentiates it from all other American cities. Originally these parks were used as market-places and rallying points in case of Indian attack; now they serve the equally utilitarian purposes of this age, having become charming public gardens and playgrounds. One of them—not the most important one—is named Oglethorpe Square; but the monument to Oglethorpe is placed elsewhere.

Madison Square, Savannah, is relatively about as important as Madison Square, New York, and though smaller than the latter, is much prettier. It contains a monument to Sergeant Jasper, the Revolutionary hero who, when the flag was shot down from Fort Moultrie, off Charleston, by the British, flung it to the breeze again, under fire. Jasper was later killed with the flag in his arms, in the French-American attempt to take Savannah from the British. Monterey Square has a statue of Count Pulaski, who also fell at the siege of Savannah. Another Revolutionary hero remembered with a monument is General Nathanael Greene who, though born in Rhode Island, moved after the war to Georgia where, in recognition of his services, he was given an estate not far from Savannah. "Mad" Anthony Wayne, a Pennsylvanian by birth, also accepted an estate in Georgia and resided there after the Revolution.

An interesting story attaches to Greene's settlement in Georgia. The estate given to him was that known as Mulberry Grove, above the city, on the Savannah River. The property had previously belonged to Lieutenant-governor John Graham, but was confiscated because Graham was a loyalist. Along with the property, Greene apparently took over the Graham vault in Colonial Cemetery—now a city park, and a very interesting one because of the old tombs and gravestones—and there he was himself buried. After a while people forgot where Greene's remains lay, and later, when it was decided to erect a monument to his memory in Johnson Square, they couldn't find any Greene to put under it. However, they went ahead and made the monument, and Lafayette laid the cornerstone, when he visited Savannah in March, 1825. Greene's remains were lost for 114 years. They did not come to light until 1902, when some one thought of opening the Graham vault. Thereupon they were removed and reinterred in their proper resting place beneath the monument which had so long awaited them. That monument, by the way, was not erected by Savannah people, or even by Southerners, but was paid for by the legislature of the general's native Rhode Island. When the remains were discovered, Rhode Island asked for them, but Savannah, which had lost them, also wanted them. The matter was settled by a vote of Greene's known descendants, who decided almost unanimously to leave his remains in Savannah.

The foundation of the general's former home at Mulberry Grove may still be seen. It was in this house that Eli Whitney invented the cotton-gin. Whitney was a tutor in the Greene family after the general's death, and it was at the suggestion of Mrs. Greene that he started to try and make "a machine to pick the seed out of cotton." It is said that Whitney's first machine would do, in five hours, work which, if done by hand, would take one man two years. This was, of course, an epoch-making invention and caused enormous commercial growth in the South, where cotton-gins are as common things as restaurants in the city of New York. Which reminds me of a story.

A northern man was visiting Mr. W.D. Pender, at Tarboro, North Carolina. On the day of the guest's arrival Mr. Pender spoke to his cook, a negro woman of the old order, telling her to hurry up the dinner, because he wished to take his friend down to see the cotton-gin. "You know," he explained, "this gentleman has never seen a cotton-gin."

The cook looked at him in amazement.

"Lor'! Mistuh Penduh," she exclaimed. "An' dat man look like he was edjacated!"

* * * * *

Another item in Savannah history is that John Wesley came over about the middle of the eighteenth century to convert the Indians to Christianity. It was not until after this attempt, when he returned to England, that he began the great religious movement which led to the founding of the Methodist Church. George Whitfield also preached in Savannah. Evidently Wesley did not get very far with the savages who, it may be imagined, were more responsive to the kind of "conversion" attempted in South Carolina, by a French dancing-master, who went out from Charleston in the early days and taught them the steps of the stately minuet.

Another great event in Savannah history was the departure from that port, in 1819, of the City of Savannah, the first steamship to cross the Atlantic. If I may make a suggestion to the city, it is that the centennial of this event be celebrated, and that a memorial be erected. Inspiration for such a memorial might perhaps be found in the simple and charming monument, crowned by a galleon in bronze, which has been erected in San Francisco, in memory of Robert Louis Stevenson. A ship in bronze can be a glorious thing—which is more than can be said of a bronze statesman in modern pantaloons.

* * * * *

More lately Savannah initiated another world-improvement: she was the first city to abolish horses entirely from her fire department, replacing them with automobile engines, hook-and-ladders, and hose-carts. That is in line with what one would expect of Savannah, for she is not only a progressive city, but is a great automobile city, having several times been the scene of important international automobile road races, including the Grand Prize and the Vanderbilt Cup.

Nor is there want of other history. The Savannah Theater, though gutted by fire and rebuilt, is the same theater that Joseph Jefferson owned and managed for a time, in the fifties; in the house on Lafayette Square, now occupied by Judge W.W. Lambdin, Robert E. Lee once stayed, and Thackeray is said to have written there a part of "The Virginians."

A sad thing was happening in Savannah when we were there. The Habersham house, one of the loveliest old mansions of the city, was being torn down to make room for a municipal auditorium.

The first Habersham in America was a Royal Governor of Georgia. He had three sons one of whom, Joseph, had, by the outbreak of the Revolution, become a good enough American to join a band of young patriots who took prisoner the British governor, Sir James Wright. The governor's house was situated where the Telfair Academy now is. He was placed under parole, but nevertheless fled to Bonaventure, the Tabnall estate, not far from the city, where he was protected by friends until he could escape to the British fleet, which then lay off Tybee Island at the mouth of the Savannah River, some eighteen miles below the city. This same Joseph Habersham, it is said, led a party which went out in 1775 in skiffs—called bateaux along this part of the coast—boarded the British ship Hinchenbroke, lying at anchor in the river, and captured her in a hand-to-hand conflict. Mr. Neyle Colquitt of Savannah, a descendant of the Habershams, tells me that the powder taken from the Hinchenbroke was used at the Battle of Bunker Hill. After the war, in which Joseph Habersham commanded a regiment of regulars, he was made Postmaster General of the United States. The old house itself was built by Archibald Bulloch, a progenitor of that Miss "Mittie" Bulloch who later became Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., mother of the President. It was designed by an English architect named Jay, who did a number of the fine old houses of Savannah, which are almost without exception of the Georgian period. Archibald Bulloch bought the lot on which he built the house from Matthew McAllister, great-grandfather of Ward McAllister. When sold by Bulloch it passed through several hands and finally came into the possession of Robert Habersham, a son of Joseph.

The old house was spacious and its interiors had a fine formality about them. The staircase, fireplace and chandeliers were handsome, and there was at the rear a charming oval room, the heavy mahogany doors of which were curved to conform to the shape of the walls. To tear down such a house was sacrilege—also it was a sacrilege hard to commit, for some of the basement walls were fifteen feet thick, and of solid brick straight through.

Sherman's headquarters were on the Square, just south of the De Soto Hotel, in the battlemented brick mansion which is the residence of General Peter W. Meldrim, ex-president of the American Bar Association, and former Mayor of Savannah.

Among other old houses characteristic of Savannah, are the Scarborough house, the Mackay house, the Thomas house in Franklin Square (also known as the Owens house), in which Lafayette was entertained, and the Telfair house, now the Telfair Academy. The Telfair and Thomas houses were built by the architect who built the Habersham house, and it is to be hoped that they will never go the way of the latter mansion.

In 1810, about the time these houses were built, Savannah had 5,000 inhabitants; by 1850 the population had trebled, and 1890 found it a place of more than 40,000. Since then the city has grown with wholesome rapidity, and attractive suburban districts have been developed. The 1910 census gives the population as 65,000, but the city talks exuberantly of 90,000. Well, perhaps that is not an exaggerated claim. Certainly it is a city to attract those who are free to live where they please. In fall, winter and spring it leaves little to be desired. I have been there three times, and I have never walked up Bull Street without looking forward to the day when I could go there, rent an old house full of beautiful mahogany, and pass a winter. Not even New Orleans made me feel like that. I feel about New Orleans that it is a place to visit rather than to settle down in. I want to go back to New Orleans, but I do not want to stay more than a few weeks. I want to see some people that I know, prowl about the French quarter, and have Jules Alciatore turn me out a dinner; then I want to go away. So, too, I want to go back to Atlanta—just to see some people. I want to stay there a week or two. Also I want to go to St. Augustine when cold weather comes, and bask in the warm sun, and breathe the soft air full of gold dust, and feel indolent and happy as I watch the activities about the excellent Ponce de Leon Hotel; but there are two cities in the South that I dream of going to for a quiet happy winter of domesticity and work, in a rented house—it must be the right house, too—and those cities are, first Charleston; then Savannah.

The Telfair Academy in the old Telfair mansion was left, by a member of the family, to the city, to be used as a museum. Being somewhat skeptical about museums in cities of the size of Savannah, not to say much larger cities, especially when they are art museums, I very nearly omitted a visit to this one. Had I done so I would have missed seeing not only a number of exceedingly interesting historic treasures, but what I believe to be the best public art collection contained in any southern city.

The museum does, to be sure, contain a number of old "tight" paintings of the kind with which the country was deluged at the time of the Chicago World's Fair, but upstairs there is a surprise in shape of an exhibition of modern American paintings (the best paintings being produced in the world to-day) showing brilliant selection. I was utterly amazed when I found this collection. There were excellent canvases by Childe Hassam, Ernest Lawson, George Bellows, and other living American painters whose work, while it is becoming more and more widely appreciated each year, is still beyond all but the most advanced and discriminating buyers of paintings. I went into ecstasies over this collection, and I said to myself: "Away down here in Savannah there is some one buying better paintings for a little museum than the heads of many of the big museums in the country have had sense enough or courage enough to buy. This man ought to be 'discovered' and taken to some big museum where his appreciation will be put to the greatest use." With that I rushed downstairs, sought out the curator, and asked who had purchased the modern American pictures. And then my bubble was pricked, for who had they had, down there, buying their pictures for them, but Gari Melchers! Naturally the pictures were good!

In one room of the building, on the ground floor, is a collection of fine old furniture, etc., which belonged to the Telfair family, including two beautiful mantelpieces of black and white marble, some cabinets, and a very curious and fascinating extension dining-table, built of mahogany. The table is perfectly round, and the leaves, instead of being added in the middle, are curved pieces, fitting around the outer edge in two series, so that when extended to its full capacity the table is still round. I have never seen another such table.

Also I found many interesting old books and papers passed down from the Telfairs. One of these was a ledger with records of slave sales.

In a sale held Friday, October 14, 1774, Sir James Wright, the same British governor who was presently put to flight, purchased four men, five women, nine boys, and one girl, at a total cost of L820, or about $3,280. Sir Patrick Houston bought two women at L90, or $450. The whole day's sale disposed of thirty-five men, seventeen women, twenty-seven boys and ten girls, at a grand total of L3206, or roughly between nine and ten thousand dollars.

The Telfairs were great planters. Among the papers was one headed "Rules and Directions to be strictly attended to by all overseers at Thorn Island Plantation." This plantation was on the North Carolina side of the river, and was owned by Alexander Telfair, a brother of Miss Mary Telfair who gave the Academy to the city. Dates which occur in the papers stamp them as having been issued some time prior to 1837. Here are some of the regulations:

The allowance for every grown negro, let him or her be old and good for nothing, and every young one that works in the field, is a peck of corn a week and a pint of salt and a piece of meat not exceeding fourteen pounds per month.

No negro to have more than forty lashes, no matter what his crime.

The suckling children and all small ones who do not work in the field draw a half allowance of corn and salt.

Any negro can have a ticket to go about the neighborhood, but cannot leave it without a pass. No strangers allowed to come on the place without a pass.

The negroes to be tasked when the work allows it. I require a reasonable day's work well done. The task to be regulated by the state of the ground and the strength of the negro.

All visiting between the Georgia plantation to be refused. [The Telfairs owned another plantation on the Georgia side of the river.] No one to get husbands or wives across the river. No night meeting or preaching allowed on the place except on Saturday or Sunday morning.

If there is any fighting on the place whip all engaged in it, no matter what may be the cause it may be covered with.

In extreme cases of sickness employ a physician. After a dose of castor oil is given, a dose of calomel, and blister applied, if no relief, then send.

My negroes are not allowed to plant cotton for themselves. Everything else they may plant. Give them ticket to sell what they make.

I have no Driver (slave-driver). You are to task the negroes yourself. They are responsible to you alone for work.

Certain negroes are mentioned by name:

Many persons are indebted to Elsey for attending upon their negroes. I wish you to see them or send to them for the money.

If Dolly is unable to return to cooking she must take charge of all the little negroes.

Pay Free Moses two dollars and a half for taking care of things left at his landing.

Bull Street, the fashionable street of the city, is a gem of a street, despite the incursions made at not infrequent intervals, by comparatively new, and often very ugly buildings. Every few blocks Bull Street has to turn out of its course and make the circuit of one of the small parks of which I have spoken, and this gives it charm and variety. On this street stands the De Soto Hotel, which, when I first went to Savannah, years ago, was by all odds the leading hostelry of the city. It is one of those great rambling buildings with a big porch out in front, an open court in back, and everything about it, including the bedchambers, very spacious and rather old fashioned. Lately the Savannah Hotel has been erected down at the business end of Bull Street. It is a modern hotel of the more conventional commercial type. But even down there, near the business part of town, it is not confronted by congested cobbled streets and clanging trolley cars, but looks out upon one of the squares, filled with magnolias, oaks and palms. But another time I think I shall go back to the De Soto.

The building of the Independent Presbyterian Church, on Bull Street, is one of the most beautiful of its kind in the country, inside and out. It reminds one of the old churches in Charleston, and it is gratifying to know that though the old church which stood on this site (dedicated in 1819) burned in 1889, the congregation did not seize the opportunity to replace it with a hideosity in lemon-yellow brick, but had the rare good sense to duplicate the old church exactly, with the result that, though a new building, it has all the dignity and simple beauty of an old one.

Broughton Street, the shopping street, crosses Bull Street in the downtown section, and looks ashamed of itself as it does so, for it is about as commonplace a looking street as one may see. There is simply nothing about it of distinction save its rather handsome name.

Elsewhere, however, there are several skyscrapers, most of them good looking buildings. It seemed to me also that I had never seen so many banks as in Savannah, and I am told that it is, indeed, a great banking city, and that the record of the Savannah banks for weathering financial storms is very fine. On a good many corners where there are not banks there are clubs, and some of these clubs are delightful and thoroughly metropolitan in character. I know of no city in the North, having a population corresponding to that of Charleston or of Savannah, which has clubs comparable with the best clubs of these cities, or of New Orleans. When it is considered that of the population of these southern cities approximately one half, representing negroes, must be deducted in considering the population from which eligibles must be drawn, the excellence of southern clubs becomes remarkable in the extreme. Savannah, by the way, holds one national record in the matter of clubs. It had the first golf club founded in America. Exactly when the club was founded I cannot say, but Mr. H.H. Bruen, of Savannah, has in his possession an invitation to a golf club ball held in the old City Hall in the year 1811.

The commercial ascendancy of Savannah over Charleston is due largely to natural causes. The port of Savannah drains exports from a larger and richer territory than is tapped by Charleston, though new railroads are greatly improving Charleston's situation in this respect. Savannah is a shipping port for cotton from a vast part of the lower and central South, and is also a great port for lumber, and the greatest port in the world for "naval stores." I did not know what naval stores were when I went to Savannah. The term conjured up in my mind pictures of piles of rope, pulleys and anchors. But those are not naval stores. Naval stores are gum products, such as resin and turpentine, which are obtained from the long-leafed pines of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Florida. The traveler through these States cannot have failed to notice gashes on the tree-trunks along the way. From these the resinous sap exudes and is caught in cups, after which it is boiled, there in the woods, and thus separated into turpentine, resin and pitch. Vast quantities of these materials are stored on the great modern docks of Savannah. It is said that owing to wasteful methods, the long-leafed pine forests are being rapidly destroyed, and that this industry will die out before very long because the eager grabbers of to-day's dollars, having no thought for the future, fail to practise scientific forestry.

All about Savannah, within easy reach by trolley, motor or boat, lie pleasant retreats and interesting things to see. The roads of the region, built by convict labor, are of the finest, and the convict prison camps are worth a visit. In the Brown Farm camp, living conditions are certainly more sanitary than in ninety nine out of a hundred negro homes. The place fairly shines with cleanliness, and there are many cases in which "regulars" at this camp are no sooner released than they offend again with the deliberate purpose of carrying out what may be termed a "back to the farm" movement. The color line is drawn in southern jails and convict camps as elsewhere. White prisoners occupy one barracks; negroes another. The food and accommodations for both is the same. The only race discrimination I could discover was that when white prisoners are punished by flogging, they are flogged with their clothes on, whereas, with negroes, the back is exposed. The men in this camp are minor offenders and wear khaki overalls in place of the stripes in which the worse criminals, quartered in another camp, are dressed. Strict discipline is maintained, but the life is wholesome. The men are marched to work in the morning and back at night escorted by guards who carry loaded shotguns, and who always have with them a pack of ugly bloodhounds to be used in case escape is attempted.

* * * * *

All the drives in this region are extremely picturesque, for the live-oak grows here at its best, and is to be seen everywhere, its trunk often twenty or more feet in circumference, its wide-spreading branches reaching out their tips to meet those of other trees of the same species, so that sometimes the whole world seems to have a groined ceiling of foliage, a ceiling which inevitably suggests a great shadowy cathedral from whose airy arches hang long gray pennons of Spanish moss, like faded, tattered battle-flags.

On country roads you will come, now and then, upon a negro burial ground of very curious character. There may be such negro cemeteries in the upper Southern States, but if so I have never seen them. In this portion of Georgia they are numerous, and their distinguishing mark consists in the little piles of household effects with which every grave is covered. I do not know whether this is done to propitiate ghosts and devils (generally believed to "hant" these graveyards), or whether it is the idea that the deceased can still find use for the assortment of pitchers, bowls, cups, saucers, knives, forks, spoons, statuettes, alarm-clocks, and heaven only knows what else, which were his treasured earthly possessions.

In Savannah, I have heard Commodore Tatnall, who used to live at Bonaventure, credited with having originated the saying "Blood is thicker than water," but I am inclined to believe that the Commodore merely made apposite use of an old formula. The story is told of one of the old Tatnalls that in the midst of a large dinner-party which he was giving at his mansion at Bonaventure plantation, a servant entered and informed him that the house was on fire. Whereupon the old thoroughbred, instead of turning fireman, persisted in his role of host, ordering the full dining-room equipment to be moved out upon the lawn, where the company remained at dinner while the house burned down.

Most of the old houses of the plantations on the river have long since been destroyed. That at Whitehall was burned by the negroes when Sherman's army came by, but the old trees and gardens still endure, including a tall hedge of holly which is remarkable even in this florescent region. The old plantation house at the Hermitage, approached by a handsome avenue of live-oaks, is, I believe, the only one of those ancient mansions which still stands, and it does not stand very strongly, for, beautiful though it is in its abandonment and decay, it is like some noble old gentleman dying alone in an attic, of age, poverty and starvation—dying proudly as poor Charles Gayarre did in New Orleans.

The Hermitage has, I believe, no great history save what is written in its old chipped walls of stucco-covered brick, and the slave-cabins which still form a background for it. It is a story of baronial decay, resulting, doubtless, from the termination of slavery. Hordes of negroes of the "new issue" infest the old slave-cabins and on sight of visitors rush out with almost violent demands for money, in return for which they wish to sing. Their singing is, however, the poorest negro singing I have ever heard. All the spontaneity, all the relish, all the vividness which makes negro singing wonderful, has been removed, here, by the fixed idea that singing is not a form of expression but a mere noise to be given vent to for the purpose of extracting backsheesh. It is saddening to witness the degradation, through what may be called professionalism, of any great racial quality. These negroes, half mendicant, half traders on the reputation of their race, express professionalism in its lowest form. They are more pitiful than the professional tarantella dancers who await the arrival of tourists, in certain parts of southern Italy, as spiders await flies.



CHAPTER LII

MISS "JAX" AND SOME FLORIDA GOSSIP

"Or mebbe you 're intendin' of Investments? Orange-plantin'? Pine? Hotel? or Sanitarium? What above This yea'th can be your line?..."

SIDNEY LANIER ("A FLORIDA GHOST.")

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

If I were to personify Jacksonville, it would be, I think, as an amiable young woman, member of a domestic family, whose papa and mama had moved to Florida from somewhere else—for it is as hard to find a native of Jacksonville in that city as to find a native New Yorker in New York. Miss Jacksonville's papa, as I conceive it, has prospered while daughter has been growing up, and has bought for her a fine large house on a main corner, where many people pass. Having reached maturity Miss Jacksonville wishes to be in Florida society—to give, as it were, house parties, like those of her neighbors, the other winter resorts. She sees people passing her doors all winter long, and she says to herself: "I must get some of these people to come in."

To this end she brushes off the walk, lays a carpet on the steps, puts flowers in the vases, orders up a lot of fancy food and drink (from the very admirable Hotel Mason), turns on the lights and the Victor, leaves the front door invitingly open, and hopes for the best. Soon people begin to come in, but as she meets them she discovers that most of them have come to see papa on business; only a few have come on her account. They help themselves to sandwiches, look about the room, and listen to what Miss Jacksonville has to say.

Time passes. Nothing happens. She asks how they like the chairs.

"Very comfortable," they assure her.

"Do have some more to eat and drink," says she.

"What is your history?" a guest asks her presently.

"I haven't much history to speak of," she replies. "They tell me Andrew Jackson had his territorial government about where my house stands, but I don't know much about it. We don't care much about history in our family."

"What do you do with yourself?"

"Oh, I keep house, and go occasionally to the Woman's Club, and in the evenings father tells me about his business."

"Very nice," says one guest, whom we shall picture as a desirable and wealthy young man from the North. "Now let's do something. Do you play or sing? Are you athletic? Do you go boating on the St. John's River? Do you gamble? Can you make love?"

"I dance a little and play a little golf out at the Florida Country Club," she says, with but small signs of enthusiasm. "The thing I'm really most interested in, though, is father's business. He lost a lot of money in the fire of 1901, but he's made it all back and a lot more besides."

"What about surf-bathing?" asks the pleasure-seeking visitor, stifling a yawn.

"There's Atlantic Beach only eighteen miles from here. It's a wonderful beach. Father's putting a million in improvements out there, but there's no time to go there just now. However, if you'd like to, I can take you down and show you the new docks he has built."

"Oh, no, thanks," says the guest. "I don't care for docks—not, that is, unless we can go boating."

"I'm afraid we can't do that," says Miss Jacksonville. "We don't use the river much for pleasure. I can't say just why, unless it is that every one is too busy.... But please eat something more, and do have something to drink. There's plenty for every one."

"I must be running along," says the visitor. "I've been invited to call at some other houses down the block. By the way, what is the name of your neighbor next door?"

"St. Augustine," says Jacksonville, with a little reluctance. "She is of Spanish descent and sets great store by it. If you call there she'll show you a lot of interesting old relics she has, but I assure you that when it comes to commercial success her family isn't one-two-three with papa."

"Thanks," says the visitor, "but just at the moment commerce doesn't appeal to me. Who lives beyond her?"

Miss Jacksonville sighs. "There are some pleasant, rather attractive people named Ormonde, beyond," she says, "and a lively family named Daytona next door to them. Neither family is in business, like papa. They just play all the time. Then come a number of modest places, and after them, in the big yellow and white house with the palm trees all around it—but I'd advise you to keep away from there! Yes, you'd better go by that house. On the other side of it, in another lovely house, live some nicer, simpler people named Miami. Or if you like fishing, you might drop in on Mrs. Long-Key—she's wholesome and sweet, and goes out every day to catch tarpon. Or, again, you might—"

"What's the matter with the people in the big yellow and white house surrounded by palm trees? Why shouldn't I go there?" asks the guest.

"A young widow lives there," says Miss Jacksonville primly. "I don't know much about her history, but she looks to me as though she had been on the stage. She's frightfully frivolous—not at all one of our representative people."

"Ah!" says the visitor. "Is she pretty?"

"Well," admits Miss Jacksonville, "I suppose she is—in a fast way. But she's all rouged and she overdresses. Her bathing suits are too short at the bottom and her evening gowns are too short at the top. Yes, and even at that, she has a trick of letting the shoulder straps slip off and pretending she doesn't know it has happened."

"What's her name?"

"Mrs. Palm-Beach."

"Oh," says the visitor. "I've heard of her. She's always getting into the papers. Tell me more."

Miss Jacksonville purses her lips and raises her eyebrows. "Really," she says, "I don't like to talk scandal."

"Oh, come on! Do!" pleads the visitor. "Is she bad—bad and beautiful and alluring?"

"Judge for yourself," says Miss Jacksonville sharply. "She keeps that enormous place of hers shut up except for about two months or so in the winter, when she comes down gorgeously dressed, with more jewelry than is worn by the rest of the neighborhood put together. Few Southerners go to her house. It's full of rich people from all over the North."

"Is she rich?"

"You'd think so to look at her—especially if you didn't know where she got her money. But she really hasn't much of her own. She's a grafter."

"How does she manage it?"

"Men give her money."

"But why?"

"Because she knows how to please the rich. She understands them. She makes herself beautiful for them. She plays, and drinks, and gambles, and dances with them, and goes riding with them in wheel chairs by moonlight, and sits with them by the sea, and holds their hands, and gets them sentimental. There's some scent she uses that is very seductive—none of the rest of us have been able to find out exactly what it is."

"But how does she get their money?"

"She never tells a hard-luck story—you can't get money out of the kind she goes with, that way. She takes the other tack. She whispers to them, and laughs with them, and fondles them, and makes them love her, and when they love her she says: 'But dearie, be reasonable! Think how many people love me! I like to have you here, you fat old darling with the gold jingling in your pockets! but I can't let you sit with me unless you pay. Yes, I'm expensive, I admit. But don't you love this scent I wear? Don't you adore my tropical winter sea, my gardens, my palm trees, my moonlight, and my music? They are all for you, dearie—so why shouldn't you pay? Don't I take you from the northern cold and slush? Haven't I built a siding for your private car, and made an anchorage for your yacht? Don't I let you do as you please? Don't I keep you amused? Don't you love to look at me? Don't I put my warm red lips to yours? Well, then, dearie, what is all your money for?' ... That is her way of talking to them! That is the sort of creature that she is!"

"Shocking!" says the visitor, rising and looking for his hat "You say hers is the third large house from here?"

"Yes. Remember, she's as mercenary as can be!"

"Thanks. I can take care of myself. If she's amusing that suits me. Good-by."

In the vestibule he pauses to count his money.

"Jacksonville seems to be a nice girl," he says to himself as he hastens down the block. "I imagine she might make a good wife and mother, and that she'd help her husband on in business. However, I'm not thinking of getting married and settling down in Florida. I'm out for some fun. I think I'll run in and call upon Mrs. Palm-Beach."



CHAPTER LIII

PASSIONATE PALM BEACH

A very merry, dancing, drinking, Laughing, quaffing and unthinking time.

—DRYDEN.

Like all places in which idlers try to avoid finding out that they are idle, Palm Beach has very definite customs as to where to go, and at what time to go there. Excepting in its hours for going to bed and getting up, it runs on schedule. The official day begins with the bathing hour—half past eleven to half past twelve—when the two or three thousand people from the pair of vast hotels assemble before the casino on the beach. Golfers will, of course, be upon the links before this hour; fishermen will be casting from the pier or will be out in boats searching the sail fish—that being the "fashionable" fish at the present time; ladies of excessive circumference will be panting rapidly along the walks, their eyes holding that look of dreamy determination which painters put into the eyes of martyrs, and which a fixed intention to lose twenty pounds puts into the eyes of banting women. So, too, certain gentlemen of swarthy skin make their way to the casino sun parlor, where they disrobe and bake until the bathing hour. The object of this practice is to acquire, as nearly as a white man may, the complexion of a mulatto, and it is surprising to see how closely the skins of some more ardent members of the "Browning Club," as this group is called, match those of their chair boys. The underlying theory of the "Browning Club" is that a triple-plated coat of tan, taken north in March, advertises the wearer as having been at Palm Beach during the entire winter, thus establishing him as a man not merely of means, but of great endurance.

The women of Palm Beach seem to be divided into two distinct schools of thought on the subject of tanning. While none of them compete with the radicals of the "Browning Club," one may nevertheless observe that, in evening dress, many young ladies reveal upon their necks, shoulders, and arms, stenciled outlines of the upper margins of their bathing suits. Ladies of the opposing school, upon the contrary, guard the whiteness of their skins as jealously as the men of the "Browning Club" guard their blackness. Rather than be touched with tan, many ladies of the latter group deny themselves the pleasures of the surf. The parasols beneath which they arrive upon the sands are not lowered until they are safely seated beneath the green and blue striped canvas tops of their beach chairs, and it may be observed that even then they are additionally fortified against the light, by wide black hats and thick dark veils draped to mask their faces up to the eyes; "harem" veils, they call them—the name, however, signifying nothing polygamous.

A pleasant diversion at the beginning of the bathing hour occurs when some mere one-horse millionaire from a Middle-Western town appears on the beach with his family. He is newly arrived and is under the fond delusion that he is as good as anybody else and that his money is as good as any other person's money. Seeing the inviting rows of beach chairs, he and his family plump into several of them. They are hardly settled, however, when the man who attends to the beach chairs comes and asks them to get out, saying that the chairs are reserved.

The other thinks the man is lying like a head waiter, and demands to know for whom the chairs are reserved.

In reply the beach-chair man mentions, with suitable deference, the name of Mrs. Hopkinson Skipkinson Jumpkinson-Jones.

"Well," cries the Middle-Westerner, "Mrs. Jones isn't here yet, is she? She can't use the chairs now, can she, if she isn't here?"

Even without this evidence that he does not grasp at all, the seriousness of the beach-chair situation, the fact that the uncouth stranger has referred to Mrs. H.S. Jumpkinson-Jones merely as "Mrs. Jones," brands him among the Palm Beach "regulars" who have overheard him, as a barbarian of the barbarians. People in neighboring chairs at once turn their backs upon him and glance at each other knowingly with raised eyebrows. At this juncture, let us hope, the daughter of the intruder manages to pry him loose; let us hope also that she takes him aside and tells him what everybody ought to know: namely, that Mrs. H.S. Jumpkinson-Jones has been a society leader ever since the "Journal" published the full-page Sunday story about her having gold fillings put in her Boston terrier's teeth. That was away back in 1913, just before she was allowed to get her divorce from Royal Tewksbury Johnson III of Paris, Newport, and New York. The day after the divorce she married her present husband, and up to last year, when the respective wives of a munitions millionaire and a moving-picture millionaire began to cut in on her, no one thought of denying her claim to be the most wasteful woman in Palm Beach.

True, she may not come down to the beach to-day, but in that case it is obviously proper that her chairs—including those of her dog and her husband—remain magnificently vacant throughout the bathing hour.

The lady is, however, likely to appear. She will be wearing one of the seventy hats which, we have learned by the papers, she brought with her, and a pint or so of her lesser pearls. Her dog—which is sometimes served beside her at table at the Beach Club, and whose diet is the same as her own, even to strawberries and cream followed by a demi tasse—will be in attendance; and her husband, whose diet is even richer, may also appear if he has recovered from his matutinal headache. Here she will sit through the hour, gossiping with her friends, watching the antics of several beautiful, dubious women, camp followers of the rich, who add undoubted interest to the place; calling languidly to her dog: "Viens, Tou-tou! Viens vite!" above all waiting patiently, with crossed knees, for news-service photographers to come and take her picture—a picture which, when we see it presently in "Vogue," "Vanity Fair," or a Sunday newspaper, will present indisputable proof that Mrs. H.S. Jumpkinson-Jones and the ladies sitting near her (also with legs crossed) refrained from wearing bathing suits neither through excessive modesty nor for fear of revealing deformity of limb.

Many a Mrs. H.S. Jumpkinson-Jones has beaten her way to glory by the Palm Beach route. Many of the names which sound vaguely familiar when you read them in connection with the story of a jewel robbery, in lists of "those present," or in an insinuating paragraph in the tattered copy of "Town Topics" which you pick up, in lieu of reading matter, from the table in your dentist's waiting room, first broke into the paradise of the society column by way of this resort. For a woman with money and the press-agent type of mind it is not a difficult thing to accomplish. One must think of sensational things to do—invent a new fad in dress, or send one's dog riding each day in a special wheel chair, or bring down one's own private dancing instructor or golf instructor at $5,000 for the season. Above all, one must be nice to the correspondents of newspapers. Never must one forget to do that. Never must one imagine oneself so securely placed in society columns that one may forget the reporters who gave one that place.

One lady who, for several seasons, figured extensively in the news from Palm Beach, fell into this error. She thought herself safe, and altered her manner toward newspaper folk. But, alas! thereupon they altered their manner toward her. The press clippings sent by the bureau to which she subscribed became fewer and fewer. Her sensational feats went unnoticed. At last came a ball—one of the three big balls of the season; a New York paper printed a list of names of persons who went to the ball; a column of names in very small type. Lying in bed a few mornings later she read through the names and came to the end without finding her own. Thinking that she must have skipped it, she read the names over again with great care. Then she sent for her husband, and he read them. When it was clear to them both that her name was actually not there, it is said she went into hysterics. At all events, her husband came down in a rage and complained to the hotel management. But what could the management do? What can they do? The woman is doomed. The Palm Beach correspondents who "made" her have been snubbed by her and have unanimously declared "thumbs down." It is theirs to give, but let no climber be unmindful of the fact that it is also theirs to take away!

As Mrs. H.S. Jumpkinson-Jones looks over the top of her harem veil she may see a great glistening steam yacht, with rakish masts and funnel, lying off the pier-head; and down on the sand she may see the young master and mistress of that yacht: a modest, attractive pair, possessors of one of the world's great fortunes, yet not nearly so elaborately dressed, nor so insistent upon their "position," as the Jumpkinson-Joneses. By raising the brim of her hat a trifle Mrs. H.S. Jumpkinson-Jones may see, sweeping in glorious circles above the yacht, the hydroplane which, when it left the edge of the beach a few minutes since, blew back with its propeller a stinging storm of sand, and caused skirts to snap like flags in a hundred-mile-an-hour hurricane; and in that hydroplane she knows there is another multimillionaire.

Near by, sitting disconsolately upon the sand, are the one-horse Middle-Western millionaire with his wife and daughter—the three who were ousted from her seats by the beach-chair man. Mrs. H.S. Jumpkinson-Jones, like every one who has spent a season, let alone half a dozen seasons, at Palm Beach, immediately recognizes the type.

Father is the leading merchant of his town; mother the social arbiter; daughter the regnant belle. Father definitely didn't wish to come here, nor was mother anxious to, but daughter made them. Often she has read the lists of prominent arrivals at Palm Beach and seen alluring pictures of them taken on the sand. She has dreamed of the place, and in her dreams has seemed to hear the call of Destiny. Who knows? may it not be at Palm Beach that she will meet him?—the beautiful and wealthy scion of a noble house who (so the fortune teller at the Elks' Club bazaar told her) will rescue her from the narrow life at home, and transport her, as his bride, into a world of wonder and delight, and footmen in knee-breeches. Daughter insisted on Palm Beach. So mother got a lot of pretty clothes for daughter, and father purchased several yards of green and yellow railroad tickets, and off they went. They arrived at Palm Beach. They walked the miles of green carpeted corridor. They were dazed—as every one must be who sees them for the first time—at the stunning size of the hotels. They looked upon the endless promenade of other visitors. They went to the beach at bathing hour, to the cocoanut grove at the time for tea and dancing, in wheel chairs through the jungle trail and Reve d'Ete, to the waiters' cake walk in the Poinciana dining room, to the concert at the Breakers, to the palm room, and to the sea by moonlight; everywhere they went they saw people, people, people: richly dressed people, gay people, people who knew quantities of other people; yet among them all was not one single being that they had ever seen before. After several days of this, father met a man he knew—a business friend from Akron. A precious lot of good that did! Why didn't father know the two young men who sat last night at the next table in the dining room? Even those two would have done just now. Clearly they had been mad to know her too, for they were likewise feeling desolate. Perhaps mother can get father to scrape up an acquaintance with them. But alas, before this plan can be set in motion, the two young men have formed their own conclusions as to what Palm Beach is like when you do not know anybody in the place. They have departed. Next day, when mother enters daughter's room to say good night, she finds her weeping; and next day, to father's infinite relief, they start for home. So it has gone with many a bush-league belle.

Even the Mrs. Jumpkinson-Joneses, satiated though they be with private cars, press notices, and Palm Beach, can hardly fail to be sensible to the almost delirious beauty of the scene at bathing hour.

Nowhere is the sand more like a deep, warm dust of yellow gold; nowhere is there a margin of the earth so splashed with spots of brilliant color: sweaters, parasols, bathing suits, canvas shelters—blue, green, purple, pink, yellow, orange, scarlet—vibrating together in the sharp sunlight like brush marks on a high-keyed canvas by Sorolla; nowhere has flesh such living, glittering beauty as the flesh of long, white, lovely arms which flash out, cold and dripping, from the sea; nowhere does water appear less like water, more like a flowing waste of liquid emeralds and sapphires, held perpetually in cool solution and edged with a thousand gleaming, flouncing strings of pearls.

Over the beach lies a layer of people, formed in groups, some of them costumed for the water, some for the shore; some of them known to the great lady, many of them unknown to her. The groups are forever shifting as their members rise and run down to the sea, or come back shiny and dripping, to fling themselves again upon the warm sand, roll in it, or stretch out in lazy comfort while their friends shovel it over them with their hands. Now one group, or another, will rise and form a grinning row while a snap-shot is taken; now they recline again; now they scamper down to see the hydroplane come in; now they return, drop to the sand, and idly watch women bathers tripping past them toward the water. Here comes a girl in silken knickerbockers, with cuffs buttoning over her stockings like the cuffs of riding breeches. Heads turn simultaneously as she goes by. Here is a tomboy in a jockey cap; here two women wearing over their bathing suits brilliant colored satin wraps which flutter revealingly in the warm, fresh fragrant breeze. And now comes the slender, aristocratic, foreign-looking beauty who wears high-heeled slippers with her bathing costume, and steps gracefully to the water's edge under the shade of a bright colored Japanese parasol. It seems that every one must now be on the beach. But no! Here come the three most wonderful of all: the three most watched, most talked about, most spoiled, most coveted young women at Palm Beach. Their bathing suits are charming: very short, high waisted, and cut at the top like Empire evening gowns, showing lovely arms and shoulders. Hovering about them, like flies about a box of sweets, yet also with something of the jealous guardianship of watchdogs, is their usual escort of young men—for though they know none of the fashionable women, their beauty gives them a power of wide selection as to masculine society.

One is a show girl, famous in the way such girls become famous in a New York season, vastly prosperous (if one may judge by appearances), yet with a prosperity founded upon the capitalization of youth and amazing loveliness of person. The other two, less advertised, but hardly less striking in appearance, have been nicknamed, for the convenience of the gossips, "The Queen of Sheba," and "The Queen of the May." They too suggest, somehow, association with the trivial stage, but it is said that one of them—the slender wonderfully rounded one—has never had the footlights in her face, but has been (in some respects, at least), a model.

Like the climbers, like the bush league belle, these girls, we judge, brought definite ambitions with them to Palm Beach. Partly, no doubt, they came for pleasure, but also one hears stories of successful ventures made by men, on their behalf, at Beach Club tables, and of costly rings and brooches which they now possess, although they did not bring them with them. But after all, the sources from which come their jeweled trinkets may only be surmised, whereas, to the success of their desire for fun, the eyes and ears of the entire smiling beach bear witness. Watch them as they clasp hands and run down to the water's edge; see them prancing playfully where the waves die on the sand, while devoted swains launch the floating mattress upon which it is their custom to bask so picturesquely; see them now as they rush into the green waves and mount the softly rocking thing; observe the gleam of their white arms as, idly, they splash and paddle; note the languid grace of their recumbence: chins on hands, heels waving lazily in air; hear them squeal in inharmonious unison, as a young member of the "Browning Club," makes as though to splatter them, or mischievously threatens to overturn their unwieldy couchlike craft. Free from the restriction of ideas about "society," about the "tradition" of Palm Beach, about "convention," they seem to detect no difference between this resort and certain summer beaches, more familiar to them, and at the same time more used to boisterousness and cachinnation. They go everywhere, these girls. You will see them having big cocktails, in a little while, on the porch of the Breakers; you will see them having tea, and dancing under the dry rustling palm fronds of the cocoanut grove, when the colored electric lights begin to glow in the luminous semi-tropical twilight; and you will see them, resplendent, at the Beach Club, dining, or playing at the green-topped tables.

The Beach Club has been for some time, I suppose, the last redoubt held in this country by the forces of open, or semi-open gambling. Every now and then one hears a rumor that it is to be stormed and taken by the hosts of legislative piety, yet on it goes, upon its gilded way—a place, it should be said, of orderly, spectacular distinction. The Beach Club occupies a plain white house, low-spreading and unpretentious, but fitted most agreeably within, and boasting a superb cuisine. Not every one is admitted. Members have cards, and must be vouched for, formally, by persons known to those who operate the place. Many of the quiet pleasant people who, leading their own lives regardless of the splurging going on about them, form the background of Palm Beach life—much as "walking ladies and gentlemen" form the crowd in a spectacular theatrical production—have never seen the inside of the Beach Club; and I have little doubt that many visitors who drop in at Palm Beach for a few days never so much as hear of it. It is not run for them, nor for the "piker," nor for the needy clerk, but for the furious spenders.

Let us therefore view the Beach Club only as an interesting adjunct to Palm Beach life, and let us admit that, as such, it is altogether in the picture. Let us, in short, seek, upon this brief excursion, not only to recover from our case of grippe, but to recover also that sense of the purely esthetic, without regard to moral issues, which we used to enjoy some years ago, before our legislatures legislated virtue into us. Let us soar, upon the wings of our checkbook, in one final flight to the realms of unalloyed beauty. Let us, in considering this most extravagantly passionate and passionately extravagant of American resorts, be great artists, who are above morals. Let us refuse pointblank to consider morals at all. For by so doing we may avoid giving ourselves away.

* * * * *

The season wanes. Crowds on the beach grow thinner. Millionaires begin to move their private cars from Palm Beach sidings, and depart for other fashionable places farther north. Croupiers at the Beach Club stand idle for an hour at a time, though ready to spin the wheel, invitingly, for any one who saunters in. The shops hold cut-price sales. And we, regarding somewhat sadly our white trousers, perceive that there does not remain a single spotless pair. The girl in Mr. Foster's fruit store has more leisure, now, and smiles agreeably as we pass upon our way to the hotel dining-room. The waiter, likewise, is not pressed for time.

"They was seven-hunduhd an' twe've folks heah yestahday," he says. "On'y six-fohty-three to-day. Ah reckon they a-goin' t' close the Breakuhs day aftuh t'-mo'w."

Still the flowers bloom; still the place is beautiful; still the weather is not uncomfortably warm. Nevertheless the season dies. And so it comes about that we depart.

The ride through Florida is tedious. The miles of palmettoes, with leaves glittering like racks of bared cutlasses in the sun, the miles of dark swamp, in which the cypresses seem to wade like dismal club-footed men, the miles of live-oak strung with their sad tattered curtains of Spanish moss, the miles of sandy waste, of pineapple and orange groves, of pines with feathery palm-like tops, above all the sifting of fine Florida dust, which covers everything inside the car as with a coat of flour—these make you wish that you were North again.

The train stops at a station. You get off to walk upon the platform. The row of hackmen and hotel porters stand there, in gloomy silent defiance of the rapidly approaching end of things, each holding a sign bearing the name of some hotel. In another week the railway company may, if it wishes, lift the ban on shouting hotel runners. Let them shout. There will be nobody to hear.

You buy a newspaper.

Ah! What is this? "Great Blizzard in New York—Trains Late—Wires Down."

You know what New York blizzards are. You picture the scenes being enacted there to-day. You see the icy streets with horses falling down. You see cyclonic clouds of snow whirl savagely around the corners of high buildings, pelting the homegoing hoards, whirling them about, throwing women down upon street crossings. You have a vision of the muddy, slushy subway steps, and slimy platforms, packed with people, their clothing caked with wet white spangles. You see them wedged, cross and damp, into the trains, and hear them coughing into one another's necks. You see emaciated tramps, pausing to gaze wanly into bakery windows: men without overcoats, their collars turned up, their hands deep in the pockets of their trousers, their heads bent against the storm; you see them walk on to keep from freezing. You remember Roscoe Conkling. That sort of thing can happen in a New York blizzard! Little tattered newsboys, thinly clad, will die to-night upon cold corners. Poor widows, lacking money to buy coal, are shuddering even now in squalid tenements, and covering their wailing little ones with shoddy blankets.

"Horrible!" you say, sighing upon the balmy air. Then, with the sweetly resigned philosophy of Palm Beach, you add:

"Oh, well, what does it matter? I'm in Florida anyhow. After all it is a pretty good old world!"



CHAPTER LIV

ASSORTED AND RESORTED FLORIDA

"Some year or more ago, I s'pose, I roamed from Maine to Floridy, And,—see where them Palmettoes grows? I bought that little key...."

—SIDNEY LANIER ("A FLORIDA GHOST.")

Florida in winter comes near to being all things to all men. To all she offers amusement plus her climate, and in no one section is the contrast in what amusement constitutes, and costs, set forth more sharply than where, on the west coast of the State, Belleair and St. Petersburg are situated, side by side.