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OLD SEAPORT TOWNS OF THE SOUTH 
 
Old Seaport Towns 
 of the South 
 
 By 
 
 Mildred Cram 
 
 Drawings by 
 
 Allan G. Cram 
 
 New York 
 Doddy Mead ^ Company 
 

 Copyright, 19 17, 
 By Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc. 
 
 / 
 
 OCT 30 1917 
 
 ©C1.A476814 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Introducing — Ourselves, and the Scope 
 
 OF THE Work i 
 
 II. Lady Baltimore in a Mackintosh, Some- 
 thing ABOUT Annapolis and a Great 
 Deal about Rain 12 
 
 III. Which Contains a Trolley Trip and a 
 
 Laundry Grievance 43 
 
 IV. On to Wilmington, a Wreck, and a Lit- 
 
 tle Dissertation on Pullman Cars 72 
 
 V. Palms and Spanish Moss at Last, and 
 We Make Our Bow to Aristocratic 
 Madame Charleston 99 
 
 VI. A Confession of Laziness in Savannah 
 
 AND A Step Further South to "Jax" 132 
 
 VII. An Afternoon in Old St. Augustine and 
 
 A Chronicle of Tire Trouble . .158 
 
 VIII. Tampa, Spaniards and the Greek Sponge 
 
 Fleet at Tampa 193 
 
 IX. 'Way Down in Pensacola, Seaplanes, 
 Submarines, and Lunch with an Ad- 
 miral, with a Storm as an Anti- 
 climax . . 223 
 
 [v] 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 X. A Day in Mobile and On to New Or- 
 leans Where We Meet a Very Ca- 
 pable Young Woman 257 
 
 XI. Creoles, Pralines and a Little History 289 
 
 XII. Galveston, the Optimist 318 
 
 XIII. Key West at Dawn 332 
 
 XIV. Wind, Waves and Home Again . . . 353 
 
 [vi] 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 A Mirage of the Mediterranean in Florida 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 FACING 
 „ PAGE 
 
 I Held an Umbrella Over Allan While He 
 
 Sketched the Big Transport "Grekland" . 26' 
 
 The One- and Two-storied Houses Reminded 
 
 Us of Clovelly 36 
 
 A Cluster of Small Sailing Boats and Dories . 40 ^ 
 
 The Ferry Slip at Norfolk 50 ' 
 
 The Navy Yard Gate, Portsmouth .... 56 
 
 It Was Still Very Early When the Ferry Drew 
 Away from Norfolk 74' 
 
 Long Hours of Lazy Contemplation . . . icx) 
 
 Charleston Is Caught Into a Dream of the 
 
 Romantic Past no' 
 
 The Beautiful South Portal of St. Philip's 
 Church 118 
 
 The Severity of the Pillared Portico is Relieved 
 
 by Delicate Wrought Iron Railings . . . 128 
 
 Great Ships Come Eighteen Miles from the Sea 
 
 to Savannah's Front Door Step .... 140' 
 
 A Magnificent Avenue of Live Oaks . . . 148' 
 
 [viij 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACING 
 PAGE 
 
 The Spaniards Called Their Fort the Castle 
 
 San Marco i66"' 
 
 We Could Chat Comfortably with the Captain 
 
 without Stirring from Our Garden Bench . 198' 
 
 The Hotel and Its Gardens were Alluring . 210' 
 
 The Greeks Had Said Their Prayers and Were 
 
 at Work Again 220'^ 
 
 A Great Floating Hangar, Truly Magnificent 
 
 in Proportion . ; 240*^ 
 
 Ships from the Mexican Gulf and the Carib- 
 bean 266' 
 
 You Remember Jim Bludso, Don't You? I'll 
 
 Show You His World 284V/ 
 
 This is the Real New Orleans! 292 "^ 
 
 Stuccoed Brick Walls, Arcades and Cool Inner 
 
 Courts 300*^ 
 
 A Grain Elevator, as Grim and Sombre as a 
 Mediaeval Fortress 326 
 
 Dolphins Cavorted at Sunset, Turning Beauti- 
 ful Somersaults 336'' 
 
 The Boisterous Wind Rattled the Cocoa Palms 348"^ 
 
 [viii] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS OF THE SOUTH 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 OF THE SOUTH 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCING— OURSELVES, AND THE SCOPE OF 
 THE WORK 
 
 HILE our taxi hung a moment on 
 the edge of Broadway we peered 
 through the rain-spangled windows 
 and sighed, like true provincial New 
 Yorkers, because we were leaving our city. 
 Broadway cut north and south like a rainbow. 
 Electric signs dripped in liquid sheets or burst 
 into fiery spray. High on the housetops huge 
 figures trod the darkness for an instant and 
 disappeared. Lights blinked, glittered, ex- 
 ploded in multi-coloured pinwheels, ran up and 
 down and dizzily around, shot into the sky, 
 fell in a shower of prismatic sparks. . . . We 
 sighed, for we were leaving New York, and it 
 still had its octopus arms around us. 
 
 Our taxi pranced a little like an impatient 
 [ 1 ] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 carriage horse, the traffic policeman signalled 
 and the city streamed past again. It was like 
 being in a fast undersea boat rushing along 
 the bottom of a luminous ocean. The driver 
 manoeuvred a wide curve at top speed and 
 brought us up to the Pennsylvania Station with 
 a flourish just where a red-capped porter an- 
 gled on the edge of the curb for passengers with 
 suitcases. 
 
 But it wasn't until we were caught in the 
 pie-shaped wedge of travellers at the ticket gate 
 that we realised how irrevocable our going 
 away was. And then we had a chilling sensa- 
 tion of exile, as if we were leaving all the things 
 we liked best — friends, fun, work. New York — 
 and were not going to find anything to take 
 their place. That is the worst of being a New 
 Yorker; like a breathless joy-rider in a scenic 
 railway car, you shut your eyes and shriek, "Oh, 
 isn't it fun! There's nothing like it in the 
 world!" Forgetting that beyond the wall of 
 glittering towers, across the moat of rivers, there 
 are cities and people, great activities and amaz- 
 ing beauty. Not only the ashes of cities and 
 people, but the living heart of them, the "rest 
 of America." 
 
 Waiting for the six o'clock train to Balti- 
 more, we felt a little unsteady, as if the violent 
 
 [ 2 ] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 motion of our familiar world had ceased. We 
 felt, to tell the truth, like sailors ashore. 
 
 We were going to our native South which 
 we left before memory began, and which had 
 come to mean, through parental reminiscences, 
 a place of sun, chivalry, romance and Uncle 
 Remus. Somewhere in our obscure conscious- 
 ness, not altogether wiped out by a New Eng- 
 land childhood, a European youth, and a New 
 York maturity, we bear the impress of a South- 
 ern ancestry — Catholics who came to America 
 with Lord Baltimore, and thanks to a king and 
 queen who were recklessly generous with Mary- 
 land, settled themselves in what is now^ a whole 
 county. Besides bequeathing to us a love of 
 dark churches and incense, a taste for hot- 
 breads and an incurably romantic turn of mind, 
 they left nothing to posterity but their freed 
 slaves who proudly bore and still flaunt the fam- 
 ily name. We are always running across dusky 
 "relatives," even as far north as New York. 
 
 "Lo'd, chile," a cook of ours once said to me, 
 "was yo' maw's name the same as mine? Why, 
 gracious goodness, Miss Mildred, we-all's the 
 same family!" 
 
 It was almost more than I could bear, for 
 she was as black as the ace of spades, as black 
 as a bottle of ink, as black as soot. But she 
 
 [ 3 ] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 fortunately explained, as she stirred the corn- 
 bread batter, "M}^ great gran'paw was yo' gran'- 
 paw's body servant." And you can imagine 
 how gratifying it was to hear that my great 
 grandpa was such a howling dude I Afterwards 
 I used the bit of information to overawe the 
 cook, just as I can twist any Irish maid around 
 my finger by informing her with an exalted and 
 fanatic gleam in my eyes that I was blessed by 
 Pius X and kissed the hand of Pope Benedict 
 when he was a Cardinal. That and a piece of 
 lucky coral from Naples (for use on Italians) 
 work wonders in settling domestic problems, 
 and domestics. While I thought about my 
 Southern ancestors and wondered whether they 
 would help me to love the South, the ticket gate 
 opened and we squeezed through to our train. 
 "New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore." As 
 Hewlett would say, "God, what a traverse!" 
 
 The way to Baltimore lies across flat coun- 
 try. After the train plunges under the river, 
 where certain sensitive travellers stop up their 
 ears as if they were in the SImplon, It goes hand 
 in hand with suburban "locals" for miles be- 
 fore it can make up its mind to start off alone 
 to Philadelphia. From your Pullman, where 
 you lounge with the hatless, permanent languor 
 which means "I am an adventurer; I am going 
 
 [ 4 ] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 far," you can look into the brilliantly lighted, 
 crowded suburban trains and pity the rows of 
 tired business men screened by pink evening 
 papers. But there is nothing spectacular about 
 the scenery. Even when we pressed our noses 
 against the rain-spattered windows and stared 
 out, we could see nothing but long strings of 
 electric lights linking town to town. It was 
 more fun to lean back in our chairs and stare 
 at the people in the car. Most of them were 
 school children returning to school after the 
 Christmas holidays, the girls full of funny lit- 
 tle affectations, the boys steeped in a perfectly 
 transparent and artificial melancholy. They 
 were having such a good time, each with his 
 soul-satisfying egoism! Watching them, we 
 were envious a little, and then we began to see 
 how funny they were and didn't want their 
 youth but simply blessed them for it. And our 
 thoughts turned to the South again. 
 
 "I am going there with my mind as blank as 
 a wax-coated phonograph record," I thought, 
 "ready to receive the myriad impressions that 
 will carve little hair-lines all over my receptive 
 brain, recording colours and voices, the smell 
 of the sea, the drift of clouds and the sun on a 
 garden wall. Perhaps, when they put me be- 
 tween the covers of a book, I shall sing! After 
 
 [ 5 ] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 all," I went on, shutting my eyes, "an Italian 
 wrote the best book of American travel I have 
 ever read. He saw us not only as others see us, 
 but as we are. That was because he didn't un- 
 derstand us at all. Out of the unfamiliar, like 
 a magician drawing yards of ribbon from the 
 crown of a silk hat, he evoked the picturesque. 
 A negro was as strange and colourful to him 
 as an East Indian, and a Cherokee burial 
 mound was as suggestive as an Etruscan tomb. 
 If he didn't like something about us, he trod 
 gaily on our toes. If he thought Brownsville, 
 Idaho, an ugly, dirty, sun-baked wilderness, he 
 said so because by no possible chance did his 
 mother's third cousin live there. On one page 
 he treated us with devastating ridicule and on 
 the next he took us to his heart for something 
 we are ashamed of. . . . Out of the whole 
 here emerged a composite American, energetic, 
 inventive and provincial, with a voice like a 
 rasp and a sentimental interior, taciturn about 
 everything except business, turning his back on 
 sunsets and dawns to read a newspaper, the 
 builder of a new world, of all the men on earth 
 (the only one who is engaged in creating a civi- 
 lisation. After all, an epic hero in ill-fitting 
 clothes, Ulysses in peg-tops and stub-toed 
 boots." 
 
 [ 6 ] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 I opened my eyes again and rubbed the 
 blurred windows to look out. The train was 
 rushing across a dark plain. All I could see 
 was a smudge of black smoke full of rocketing 
 sparks; and my mind turned to our trip again. 
 . . . We were going to travel fast, by train and 
 by boat, all the way down the South Atlantic 
 Coast, around the Gulf of Mexico to Galves- 
 ton. We were going to see the myriad activi- 
 ties of nineteen seaports. I wondered whether 
 it would be possible to follow the advice of the 
 up-to-date slogan, "Keep your eye on the 
 South!" It was, after all, a fairly large slice 
 of the world to focus on. There is the old 
 South and the new, as different as night and 
 day. One is a place of gardens and sunshine, 
 golden jessamine and honeysuckle, and the 
 melancholy beauty of dignified decay. The 
 other is a place of factories and harbours, active, 
 vigorous and purposeful. "Keep your eye on 
 the South!" I would try. 
 
 "The spectacle of force," I thought, "is with- 
 in our optic capabilities, but a true conception 
 of force comes through a more complicated 
 sensible faculty. The might of machinery, the 
 movement of railways and ships, digging down 
 in the earth and building up in the sky are all 
 manifestations of material force — majestic, su- 
 
 [ 7 ] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 perb, visible manifestations of that hidden inner 
 force which is the imperishable urge of the 
 living spirit to creation. The force of a single 
 spirit is as great as the force of the whole uni- 
 verse. Behind the birth and growth of a city, the 
 building of a factory or a railway, the dredg- 
 ing of a harbour, there are countless human 
 dreams. What a pity that the immeasurable 
 power in material creation cannot be turned 
 partially into artistic creation! If one-third of 
 the energy which goes into modern commercial 
 achievement could be applied to the plastic, 
 George Moore would have no need to bewail 
 the death of art. But beauty is, after all, a mat- 
 ter of individual conception. The modern artist 
 is surrounded by factories, an intricate tangle of 
 railroad tracks, dry docks, furnaces, kilns, 
 gashes in the face of the earth, warehouses, 
 steel shops, iron tubes, steam, straining truck 
 horses, sweating labourers, grain elevators and 
 whalebacks, bridges, trestles, dredges, the 
 smooth-thrusting piston and rod, white-hot 
 furnaces, murky tunnels, crowds dressed all alike 
 in sombre clothes, a vast and immeasurable con- 
 centration of millions of people upon material 
 things. 
 
 "Out of this, life as it is, he must weave an 
 imaginative fabric of his own. This is the 
 
 [ 8 ] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 source of his Inspiration, the most suggestive, 
 the most majestic, the surest source of inspira- 
 tion for art since art began. Not the soft hills 
 and the pale skies of Greece, of course; not the 
 emotional, ardent life of the Renaissance at 
 Florence; not the poetry of old England or the 
 tenderness of old France, but steel and fire and 
 swarming labourers! Who could watch the 
 godlike activity of a ship's engine room, the 
 graceful reachings and retreats, the smooth pre- 
 cision, the leashed virility of the thrusting steel 
 rods, without being sure that here is art?" 
 
 This thought took me back to studios in New 
 York where men I know are covering canvases 
 with squares, patches and whirligigs in imita- 
 tion, they say, of contemporary life. They call 
 themselves modernists and say that life to-day 
 has no form. Chaotic colour, a shattering of 
 sounds — sensation! And they splash rainbows 
 in interpretation, achieving nothing but a con- 
 tortion of past art, rehashing El Greco, the 
 Egyptians, the Etruscans and the Byzantine. 
 They put their hands over their eyes and groan 
 when you speak of form. 
 
 "The world," they say, "is chaotic — we paint 
 what we see." Marinetti, the arch-priest (or 
 is he arch-fiend?) of modernism, taught them 
 to do that. And yet, to focus our mind myopic- 
 
 f 9] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 ally, the whole of America is absorbed in one 
 vast struggle for power and still more power, 
 bigness and still more bigness, riches and still 
 more riches, with a unity of purpose which 
 makes the building of the Pyramids look like 
 child's play, and the trade of Phoenicia a min- 
 iature game of chess with ships as pawns. If 
 the voyage of Ulysses was epic, if Hannibal's 
 crossing of the Alps was heroic, if the activity 
 of Venice was inspiring, if mediaeval Italy was 
 poetic, then America, to-day, is all of these. 
 When Ghirlandaio painted his Florentine street 
 scenes across the chapel wall of Santa Maria 
 Novella, he was painting a homely common- 
 place. There is no reason why Brangwyn's 
 nude workmen should not some day take on 
 the quality of aloofness, the allurement of the 
 unfamiliar which make Giovanna and Tito 
 creatures of poetic fancy. 
 
 I asked Allan, who was flattening his lovely 
 nose against the window, if he didn't agree with 
 me that longshoremen are as picturesque as me- 
 diaeval saints. 
 
 "I'm not saying they aren't," he answered, 
 looking bewildered. He had been thinking 
 about aeroplanes, and saints took him a little 
 
 by surprise. 
 
 r io 1 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 "That makes me think of a story," I said. 
 ''There were two darkies who met on the road. 
 One of them said to the other, *I heah you-all 
 is married, Sam.' 
 
 " 'Well,' said Sam, scratching his head, *I 
 ain't sayin' I ain't.' 
 
 "The first darkey lost his temper. 'I ain't 
 askin' you is you ain't,' he yelled. 'I'se askin' 
 you ain't you is!' " 
 
 "There is a better one than that," Allan said. 
 "A darkey was on trial for shooting at another 
 darkey. 
 
 " 'Amos,' said the judge who was trying the 
 case, 'what provocation did Moses give you for 
 attempting to kill him?' 
 
 " 'Jedge,' said Amos, 'what would you-all do 
 if a man done called you a nappy-headed, black 
 houn' and a damn fool?' 
 
 " 'Well, Amos,' said the judge, 'no one ever 
 called me such things. I'm not a hound, nor 
 am I a nappy-headed damn fool.' 
 
 " 'Well, Jedge,' cried Amos desperately, 
 'what would you do if you was called jest 
 whichever kind of a damn fool you is!' " 
 
 I was still wondering when the train drew 
 into Baltimore and another angling red-cap 
 landed us neatly and led us, like a magnet lur- 
 ing pins, to a taxi-cab. 
 
 [H] 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 LADY BALTIMORE IN A MACKINTOSH, SOMETHING 
 
 ABOUT ANNAPOLIS AND A GREAT DEAL ABOUT 
 
 RAIN 
 
 AM afraid that this chapter will be 
 mostly about rain. It was raining 
 when the Baltimore taxi, a very live- 
 ly taxi indeed, skidded through miles 
 of lovely residential streets to the Hotel Ren- 
 nert. It was still raining when I looked out of 
 my window for the last time before going to 
 bed. And I could see nothing of Baltimore ex- 
 cept a tall, thin office building illuminated, like 
 a comic opera star, by a cluster of searchlights. 
 I crawled into an enormously wide bed and sank 
 down on the fat pillows with a groan of pleas- 
 ure. I was tired; I hadn't believed that leav- 
 ing New York could tire me so. I had rather 
 believed that going away just as things got tre- 
 mendously interesting might act as a rest-cure. 
 Absurd provincial! The rest of the world, so 
 far, had been just as exciting as my own fifty 
 square blocks of Gotham. The taxi had nosed 
 
 [12] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 through traffic in Baltimore with the sickening 
 speed we thought we had left behind when wc 
 dismissed our "black and white" at the Penn- 
 sylvania Station. The lobby of the Rennert 
 had been as crowded as a New York lobby; 
 page boys wandered up and down singing 
 ''Mees-ter Brown, Mees-ter Krinsky, M^^j-ter 
 Trum" in nasal voices. Negroes with nasal 
 voices where I had expected to hear Uncle Re- 
 mus cadences! Other page boys spun the re- 
 volving doors and made futile grabs for the 
 valises of departing and arriving travelling 
 salesmen. New York again! "Bother," I 
 thought, "this isn't the South." But the ele- 
 vator was lazy and the little cakes of soap in 
 the bathroom were stamped with the sure 
 enough name, Baltimore — Baltimore! 
 
 It was still raining in staccato patterings 
 when I went to sleep. And I was lulled further 
 by a chorus of men's voices, coming through a 
 radiator from some dining-room or banquet hall 
 downstairs, singing "Good night, ladies" in 
 close harmony. It must have been a boys' 
 "frat" party (the boys aged fifty-three or there- 
 abouts), for no one sings "Good night, ladies" 
 in this day and generation. "Merrily we roll 
 along, roll along, roll along," they sang, as I 
 sank down into the fat pillows and closed my 
 
 [IS] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 eyes, ''Merrily we roll along, o-o-o-ver the dark 
 blue seas. . . ." 
 
 It was still raining when I woke. The spot- 
 light had been turned off and the giddy office 
 building thrust its head into scudding black 
 clouds. We had brought all sorts of things to 
 wear in warm weather — Palm Beach suits (to 
 be worn under overcoats!), straw hats and cool 
 silks. I had pictured myself, before starting, 
 in what the railroad posters call "sunny climes," 
 cavorting on white beaches, being wheeled about 
 n bicycle chairs under palms and moss-draped 
 oaks; I had even contemplated, further south, 
 a helmet and white linen sport things. B Jt 
 one by one, all the way to Key West, I shipped 
 my trunks full of summer finery back to New 
 York. Packages of winter flannels, furs, muf- 
 flers and felt hats, packed in a frantic hurry 
 by my puzzled family, caught up with me at 
 Norfolk, Savannah, Pensacola and New Or- 
 leans. It was an extraordinary winter, they say. 
 But then it always is extraordinary — disagree- 
 ably so, of course — when I travel. If I should 
 go to Greenland, the mercury would climb out 
 of the top of the thermometer. Local colour 
 skips before me like an elusive flea, so that when 
 I write travel articles I always have to put my- 
 self down as a liar or else take all my facts 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 from the penny guide books and trust to luck. 
 The South may be warm, and it may possibly 
 be sunny, but if I let either word creep into 
 this book you will know that I was writing 
 through the top of my hat and holding the ink- 
 well up my sleeve. It rained in Baltimore; I 
 opened my eyes to a sodden and soaked Balti- 
 more, I left a sodden and soaked Baltimore a 
 week later. Allan and I introduced ourselves 
 to the Monument City by starting out in a frigid 
 drizzle of fine rain to buy rubbers. The boy in 
 charge of the revolving doors, overjoyed to 
 have something conversational to do, explained 
 that we could find a shoe store "one block to 
 the right and then down," where he believed 
 we could buy a right good pair of gums. Then 
 he tucked us into the revolving door and sent 
 us spinning out into Baltimore. 
 
 But we lost ourselves at the corner and had 
 to ask directions of a policeman who was stand- 
 ing under an umbrella and bawling at traffic 
 from behind a mud-guard, as secure from the 
 splashings of passing motors as a lady in a 
 limousine. 
 
 "One block to the left and then on," said he, 
 in a tone so languid that I fancy they spoil their 
 policemen in Baltimore. 
 
 After all, it doesn't matter how you introduce 
 
 [15] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 yourself to a city. You may make elaborate 
 preparations to have the meeting propitious, 
 and then find that you have shaken hands form- 
 ally and have forgotten to look into the city's 
 eyes. You may blindfold yourself and have 
 yourself taken to the top of the tallest build- 
 ing, so that when the bandage is removed you 
 will be struck dumb with amazement and sur- 
 prise. Or you may walk around the corner on 
 a rainy day and run bang into the city wearing 
 her prettiest gown and smiling her most cordial 
 smile. And she may, just because you look 
 bedraggled and forlorn, ask you to tea. For 
 cities are like people — they are at their best 
 when you expect the least of them. 
 
 Baltimore was beautiful in the rain, and buy- 
 ing overshoes was as good as any other way to 
 introduce ourselves to her. With my muddy 
 shoes on the knees of a shoe clerk in the first 
 shop we came to, I learned how to find my way 
 about the city. The shoe clerk was a sort of 
 audible civic map with a bump of locality so 
 highly developed that, like a homing pigeon, 
 he could have been blindfolded in Baltimore, 
 led to Hong Kong and started back again with 
 nothing but a pocket compass and a pen-knife. 
 He explained Baltimore while he fitted enor- 
 mous rubbers on my not so enormous shoes. 
 
 [16] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 Charles Street runs north and south, Baltimore 
 Street runs east and west, and from them the 
 other streets are numbered east and west, north 
 and south, on a very orderly plan that holds 
 good everywhere except in the centre of the 
 city, where there is a hopeless confusion of di- 
 rections and intentions and a perfect maelstrom 
 of ways. Even the shoe clerk became slightly 
 confused when he tried to explain the shop- 
 ping district. You are likely to go 'round and 
 'round the same block like a child starting out 
 to stick a paper tail on a paper donkey and 
 sticking it, instead, on the piano stool. Before 
 you can get your sense of direction in hand and 
 start off confidently east or west, north or south, 
 you behave as I did when I first went to Lon- 
 don and circled Piccadilly four times before 
 I could determine on Regent Street. 
 
 To be sure that he had made it explicit, the 
 shoe clerk went with us to the shop door and 
 did the whole thing over again, in pantomime, 
 on the sidewalk. 
 
 "Now remember, Charles Street runs north 
 and south, Baltimore east and west." 
 
 "All that for two pairs of gums," I said to 
 Allan, as we splashed off hopefully. 
 
 "You are in the South," Allan answered. 
 
 Of course we were. I had forgotten, because 
 [17] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 no one had said "cy-ah" for car and no one had 
 said "I reckon" for "I guess," and no one had 
 called Allan "Colonel" and the negroes had said 
 "Sure" instead of "Yessah." The South? Well, 
 perhaps, but not the South I had been led to 
 expect. We set out to look for the Charles- 
 Baltimore axis so that we could revolve on it 
 with the familiarity of old residents. In our 
 pursuit we crossed both of the streets a dozen 
 times, but we never did find out where they 
 crossed each other. Still, one chimera is as 
 good as another, and we saw Baltimore while 
 we were playing hide-and-seek with this one. 
 The city seemed to me a little like Genoa, sub- 
 stantial, rich, massive architecturally, with its 
 feet in the water and its head in the clouds, 
 pompous, very orderly and always flavoured 
 with the heady smell of wharves and ships. 
 Like Genoa, it spills steeply down-hill to the 
 harbour. And the business streets, where dig- 
 nified merchants rub elbows with sea captains, 
 stevedores and sailors, are only a block or two 
 away from the wharves. And yet Baltimore 
 had a narrow escape from being an inland city. 
 It is over two hundred miles from the Atlantic 
 Ocean, and only the obliging width and depth 
 of Chesapeake Bay make it possible for Balti- 
 more to call herself a great seaport. Big ships 
 
 [18] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 and little ships, any sort of ships at all, sail up 
 the broad Chesapeake, through Patapsco Bay to 
 the very front door of the city. Some of them 
 anchor within sight of the domed tower of the 
 City Hall and the Post Office campanile, so 
 close to the heart of the city that ships' bells 
 can be set by the B. & O. clock. 
 
 While I should have hunted up the Board of 
 Trade to find out all I could about exports and 
 imports and how many million dollars' worth 
 of business floats up and down Chesapeake Bay 
 in a year, I played truant and went with Allan 
 to the water-front. It was more fun to splash 
 up and down the docks than to collect statistics, 
 percentages, estimates, pamphlets, prophecies 
 and Board of Trade superlatives. I could see 
 for myself that Baltimore is rich, important and 
 powerful, and that her municipal wharves en- 
 tertain the biggest and the littlest ships that float. 
 I could see for myself what the magnificent 
 future, "after the war," holds for Baltimore in 
 the way of great and greater commercial power. 
 All the ravings of her inspired press agents, 
 and she has many, every citizen from the oldest 
 living inhabitant to the youngest pickaninny 
 combining to blow the civic iiorn, could not 
 have added to my admiration. So if you ex- 
 pect to find out how many tins of canned oysters 
 
 [19] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 are shipped in a week from Baltimore to oyster- 
 less Middle West cities, you need not turn an- 
 other page. I know that Baltimore is rich and 
 successful, but she is also aristocratic and she 
 resents the shoutings of her voluntary press 
 agents. She has always lived in fine houses, 
 she has always worn rich silks and rare laces; 
 it is in her blood to entertain beautifully and 
 lavishly and to be gracious, proud and incon- 
 spicuous. Baltimore is the impeccable matron 
 of American cities, and I am not sure which of 
 the two, Baltimore or her distinguished grand- 
 mother, Charleston, is the most perfect example 
 of American aristocracy. And to go on with 
 the allegory — Boston is Charleston's unmarried, 
 middle-aged daughter, a trifle more austere than 
 her married sister, Baltimore, opinionated, 
 scrupulous, intelligent and dowdy. New York 
 is a free-lance person of whom none of them 
 approve, but they steal away to visit her now 
 and then, to smoke one of her cigarettes, sip at 
 one of her cocktails and admire her gowns. St. 
 Louis. St. Paul, Detroit, Jacksonville and Chi- 
 cago are all "young things"; they haven't de- 
 cided whether to take after Baltimore or Bos- 
 ton, or to follow in the unholy footsteps of the 
 wicked and fascinating and altogether too gay 
 New York. In the meantime, they wear very 
 
 [20] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 short skirts and are openly proud of being rich; 
 they drive fast automobiles, and dance and talk 
 at the top of their voices and spend a great deal 
 of money. 
 
 I wouldn't dream of talking about Balti- 
 more's bank account. It has been accumulating 
 during two hundred years of peace and pros- 
 perity. Even since the Barons of Baltimore, 
 those likable Irishmen from County Longford, 
 established the town, its lucky star has burned 
 unfalteringly. Baltimore seemed to have been 
 blest with a happy destiny. It was not attacked 
 during the Revolutionary War, all of the fight- 
 ing being done with sticks and stones and the 
 vituperative tongues of its mob leaders. Dur- 
 ing the War of 1812, although England attacked 
 by land and sea, Baltimore slapped the enemy 
 so soundly that he never returned to ofTer the 
 other cheek. Francis Scott Key was so elated 
 by the American victory that he wrote "The 
 Star-Spangled Banner" in celebration of the 
 tattered flag that still floated above Fort Mc- 
 Henry after an all-night bombardment by the 
 British. Hats off to Key, who could rhyme in 
 the midst of battle, but why, oh, why are his 
 verses so hard to remember and so horribly 
 hard to sing? "What so prou-oudly we hay-il" 
 
 [21] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 is one of the poetic jaw-breakers that make na- 
 tional anthems sore trials. 
 
 Baltimore recovered from the War of 1812 
 with the short convalescence of the victorious. 
 And during the Civil War, while the people 
 of Baltimore were torn between North and 
 South, the city itself was outside the war zone 
 and did not share in the Southern tragedy of 
 destruction and financial ruin. It was not until 
 11904 that the lucky star blinked out for a mo- 
 ment and a voracious and implacable fire de- 
 stroyed over a thousand buildings in the com- 
 mercial part of the city. I am awfully tempted 
 to say something about that famous phoenix 
 which has risen, in literature, so many millions 
 of times from the ashes. But this is what really 
 happened. Baltimore looked at the smoulder- 
 ing ruins of herself, said, "Oh, bother!" and 
 put on a new dress. Where the rows and rows 
 of red brick houses and red brick warehouses 
 and red brick office buildings had been, an im- 
 pressive stone and granite district appeared 
 miraculously. The lucky star came out from 
 behind the obscuring cloud and has been shin- 
 ing ever since. 
 
 The rest of Baltimore's history seems to be a 
 recital of achievements, as if the inhabitants 
 had had an overwhelming ambition to be first in 
 
 [22] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 war, first in peace, and first in everything else: 
 the first gas company, the first railroad, the 
 first locomotive, the first balloon ascension, the 
 first telegraph message, the first electric railway. 
 One has a mental picture of the whole popu- 
 lation absorbed in invention. It is even dan- 
 gerous to launch a bon mot without taking out 
 a patent. Everything clever and modern and 
 indispensable seems to have originated in Bal- 
 timore. But if you should ask a Baltimorean 
 what his city's chief source of fame is, he will 
 probably answer "Whiskey" or "Beautiful wo- 
 men," or, if he is blind to the other two virtues, 
 "Monuments." And if he happens to be a 
 gourmet, he will shut his eyes and answer, 
 "Chicken a la Maryland and oysters." Balti- 
 more is that sort of city; you love her for her 
 infinite variety. 
 
 I loved her for her dignity and because at 
 the end of her teeming business streets there is 
 always a glimpse of tangled masts and spars 
 and slanting funnels. Time that should have 
 been given to Walter's Art Museum, to Millet 
 and Meissonier and Rosa Bonheur, I gave to 
 the water-front streets and to staring into the 
 dusty windows of ship chandlers' shops at an- 
 chors and chains, gasolene motors, tarred rope, 
 compasses and rubber boots. Hours that I 
 
 [23] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 should have given to the modern frescoes by 
 Blashfield, Turner and La Farge in the Court 
 House I gave to the fish market. I was not as 
 mad, perhaps, as I seemed to be, for the fish 
 market was a place of striking beauty. There 
 were heaps and mounds of silver fish, irides- 
 cent, white-bellied, glistening; the market floor 
 was wet and shiny, the high-arched roof was 
 full of shadows, and everywhere, in groups of 
 two and three, buyers and sellers bargained 
 over the dead fish, lifting them up, tossing 
 them back again so that there were silver flashes 
 from hand to hand. 
 
 When Allan and I were children we were 
 never in doubt as to what we were "going to 
 be" when we grew up. We were sailors from 
 the time we were old enough to know the dif- 
 ference between a ship and a cradle. We sailed 
 .around the world three times before we were 
 nine — in the dining-room table turned upside 
 down. Even in those nursery days we had a 
 Conradian taste for sandy shoals and deep jun- 
 gles, although where we could have formed the 
 taste is a mystery, unless it came to us through 
 hereditary memory. When we were nearer 
 twelve we really sailed down the sea, not in the 
 dining-room table but in a dory rigged some- 
 how with a top-heavy sail made of a linen sheet. 
 
 [24] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 We had all of Buzzard's Bay as our ocean, and 
 sailed so far out into it in our absurd cockle- 
 shell that on two different occasions we lost 
 sight of land altogether. This was a risky 
 business for children, but it was glorious fun, 
 and with the adventure, the wind, the salt spray, 
 the nearness and adorable fearfulness of the 
 sea we were dedicated to a lifelong worship. 
 We prance at the very sight of a ship, and if 
 we could afford it we would spend our live? 
 making 'round-the-world trips in tramp steam- 
 ers and leisurely sailing vessels bound from 
 New York to Hong Kong and return. We are 
 happiest when we are leaning on a ship's ra^l 
 in some blazing hot southern port; we are most 
 ecstatic when we are aboard a steamer outward 
 bound, when crowded life drops behind the 
 horizon with the towers and pinnacles of New 
 York and there is nothing on the rim of the 
 round, round world but clouds and the long, 
 black streamers of smoke rolling back from the 
 ship's funnels. 
 
 So in Baltimore we gravitated naturally to- 
 ward Light Street and the Pratt Street wharves, 
 not only because the town slopes that way and 
 we followed the line of least resistance, but be- 
 cause we were lured that way by the smell of 
 the sea. The produce fleet held us for hours. 
 
 [25] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 The little schooners and weather-beaten iuggers 
 come to town at the crack of dawn, bringing 
 fruits and vegetables or staggering under 
 mounds of fresh oysters, and we liked to watch 
 the confusion of the landing and unloading. A 
 swarm of hucksters and itinerant dealers ap- 
 peared on the wharves, and there was always 
 a tangle of delivery wagons and trucks standing 
 wheel to wheel along the water-front. We 
 liked to follow the morning's supplies over to 
 the Lexington Market, where they were sorted 
 and arranged to catch Lady Baltimore's eye 
 when she did her shopping later in the morn- 
 ing. 
 
 The famous Baltimore ^'clipper" has vanished 
 from the seas together with America's suprem- 
 acy in fast sailing craft. The wide-winged, 
 narrow clippers used to fly from port to port 
 with incredible speed, Yankee ships and Yankee 
 crews writing the story of American courage 
 and seamanship in big letters across the most 
 romantic page in maritime history. Ocean lin- 
 ers and ungainly, weather-beaten transports and 
 tramps have taken their place. We saw several 
 of the plucky blockade-runners at Baltimore, 
 some of them emblazoned with huge neutral 
 Bags for the information of U-boat captains 
 who do not alwavs respect their neutrality, some 
 
 [26] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 of them as grim and sombre and businesslike 
 as battle cruisers. I held an umbrella over 
 Allan, like an attendant slave, while he sketched 
 the big transport Grekland. The ship herself 
 was indifferent to our homage for she was re- 
 ceiving a cargo of grain for some hunger-pinch- 
 ed European nation, but the swarm of painters 
 who were covering her battered plates with 
 checkerboard squares of red, craved immortal- 
 ity. They caught sight of Allan and shouted 
 their utter willingness to pose indefinitely. 
 
 "Hey! Put me in, Mister!" 
 
 "Hi, you! Don't forget me!" 
 
 And when the sketch was finished they 
 hoisted themselves up to the Grekland's deck, 
 like agile monkeys shinnying up a stick, and 
 came running ashore to see themselves as 
 "ithers" saw them. Allan had to make a dash 
 for it, for he hadn't put the painters in at all, 
 and he couldn't have told them that they "clut- 
 tered up the composition." If he had, the 
 painters might have cluttered up the artist, the 
 sketch portfolio and the attendant slave. So we 
 ran at top speed toward Light Street, splatter- 
 ing ourselves with the mud of many puddles. 
 
 It rained and it rained. Wherever we went 
 we advanced under that dripping umbrella, 
 and since Allan tops me by a foot, I caught all 
 
 [27] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 the drippings on my hat brim, whence they 
 seeped down my coat collar and into my shoes 
 again; my skirts were soggy, my muff looked 
 like an immersed Angora kitten. And it was 
 cold! But for one thing I was grateful — Bal- 
 timore traffic is light. We dashed from side- 
 walk to sidewalk only to find that the nearest 
 automobile was a block away, while the traffic 
 policemen leaned on their mud-guards and 
 shouted with laughter. So we learned our les- 
 son and sauntered sedately in front of street 
 cars, trusting to Southern chivalry, even in in- 
 animate things, to save us. 
 
 The streets are as well-paved as the promised 
 golden paths of Paradise, and laid with a va- 
 ried assortment of brick, asphalt, wood-block and 
 macadam. Baltimore thoroughfares begin with 
 one colour and end with another; they start out 
 paved with smooth cobbles and wind up with 
 an artless design done in pink brick. The re- 
 sult rivals the famous coat of the Biblical Jo- 
 seph for kaleidoscopic variety, and makes one 
 wonder whether a futurist effect in tinted as- 
 phalt might not give Fifth Avenue a decided. 
 cachet! 
 
 But in spite of its frivolous paving stones, 
 Baltimore is always discreet. Even on the out- 
 skirts of the city there is more or less dignity. 
 
 [28] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 I did not see any tenements at all, only rows and 
 rows of little red brick houses, each with its 
 short flight of white steps leading to the front 
 door. And I discovered that the middle-class 
 women of Baltimore spend their lives in a futile 
 effort to keep those eternal rows of white steps 
 clean. They scrub in the morning, they scrub 
 in the afternoon, they are still scrubbing when 
 night falls. And as soon as the steps are clean, 
 the dirty boots of "mere man" tramp over 
 them again. If I were a Baltimore housewife, 
 I would buy a set of iron doorsteps and use the 
 white wooden ones for firewood. Or else I 
 would attach a lawn sprinkler to the top step 
 and fold my hands. Hoopla! 
 
 We passed miles and miles of those decent, 
 white-trimmed, very respectable brick houses 
 on the way to Fort McHenry. The stuffy street 
 car, bearing white and black passengers in more 
 or less close proximity, left us at the Fort gate 
 and went back to the city. I don't know what 
 impulse started us on the mad pilgrimage, for 
 historic battlegrounds and forts are never im- 
 pressive. In fifty years, even Champagne will 
 cease to afTect us as it should. We were the 
 only tourists who had dared to venture into 
 Fort McHenry that day, and we battled our 
 way around the ramparts, slipping and sliding 
 
 [29] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 lover the frost-encrusted grass, in the teeth of a 
 bitter gale. Armistead, done in bronze, faces 
 Patapsco Bay from the walls he defended so 
 magnificently in 1814. And behind him, where 
 Key saw the star-spangled banner fluttering 
 travely on that famous dawn, a tattered flag, 
 very stained and forlorn, whipped and rattled in 
 the cold wind. We skirted the Fort and rushed 
 back to the stuffy street car, very depressed. 
 
 There are no baroque excrescences in Balti- 
 more's architecture, and, except for the startling 
 onion-towers of the Cathedral, the whole city 
 seems to have made up its mind to be as con- 
 strained as a modern emotional actress. The 
 Cathedral is a wild combination of the classic 
 and the Oriental, the only Catholic church I 
 have ever been in that has not made me regret 
 that I do not belong to the old faith. There was 
 no mystery in its shadows, no sombre flickering 
 of candles, no faint odour of incense. It seemed 
 to us that Baltimore could never mean to Amer- 
 ica what Rome means to Europe, for one would 
 not make a pilgrimage to its Cathedral as one 
 journeys to St. Peter's. We should expect ex- 
 alted architecture in our cathedrals — lacy fan 
 vaultings, frescoed choirs, windows that smoul- 
 der like the fires of an ardent heart, rich chap- 
 els, shadows, silence and beauty. For why 
 
 [30] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 should we dedicate anything to God that is not 
 the best we have to give? 
 
 The rest of Baltimore pays strict attention to 
 beauty, and there is something in the city's phy- 
 siognomy not unlike the studied elegance of 
 Paris and Munich. Automobiles are parked 
 in an orderly way and are sternly warned not to 
 stand at street crossings; disfiguring telephone 
 and lighting wires are buried underground, like 
 family skeletons, and there are parks and neat 
 grass plots everywhere. We splashed through 
 street after street of fine old red brick houses 
 with simple doorways and wide windows cur- 
 tained with mathematical precision, veiled just 
 so far and no further. We wondered how the 
 exact position of the window curtains was de- 
 termined — by popular vote, by a tacit under- 
 standing as binding as a sworn pledge, or 
 simply because of an inherited sense of the 
 proprieties! Civic pride in Baltimore permits 
 itself only one exuberance. Statues and monu- 
 ments fill the landscape and clog the public 
 squares — there are statues to the heroes of 1814, 
 Civil War monuments, Columbus monuments, 
 a delicate column in memory of those Mary- 
 landers who fought during the Revolution, and 
 an impressive shaft topped by a statue of Wash- 
 ington. Was it my imagination, or does the 
 
 [511 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 Washington monument smack of those Roman 
 columns (there is one in the Piazza Colonna, I 
 remember) which have been deprived of their 
 pagan heroes and supplied with saints? Is it 
 my imagination, or has Washington lost his 
 martial air? He stretches out his hand as if he 
 were bestowing a blessing on Baltimore, and he 
 is so far away that he might be St. Peter or St. 
 Paul. He only lacks a halo to fit into the Cath- 
 olic atmosphere of the locality, a gigantic St. 
 George facing the Cathedral. 
 
 On either side of the monument there are 
 neat, well-clipped little parks, Charles and Mon- 
 ument Streets obligingly becoming Washing- 
 ton Place and Mount Vernon Place in honour 
 of the aloof hero, and decking themselves out 
 with pleasant fountains and trees for several 
 blocks. In Washington Place, not at all 
 dwarfed by the great shaft but holding their 
 own through sheer perfection, there are a half 
 dozen bronzes by the French master Barye, 
 coloured by rain and sun, snow and fog, with a 
 beauty as rare as the opalescent magic of Cel- 
 lini's Perseus. We stood in the rain and blessed 
 it for treating bronze as it does, and blessed 
 Baltimore for putting Barye's bronzes where 
 the rain can get at them. 
 
 Somehow the wicket gate of a museum, click- 
 [32] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 ing me into a shrine of art, deprives me of en- 
 thusiasms; lam tired before I am fairly inside. 
 I don't like to see intimate masterpieces hung 
 in rows like dead fishermen's trophies. I don't 
 care for statues placed side by side in cold, 
 whitely illuminated halls, like bloodless corpses 
 in a marble morgue. I want to see pictures in 
 houses and statues in gardens and jewelry worn 
 against the living flesh and books on library 
 shelves. I would walk miles to see a half-for- 
 gotten Madonna in a dim and dusty church or 
 to hold a silver altar lamp in my hands while an 
 untruthful sexton babbles its fabulous and whol- 
 ly imaginary history. There is a Lorenzetto in a 
 baptistery at Siena that is more precious to me 
 than all the masterpieces in the Uffizi, simply be- 
 cause I saw it by the light of a flickering wax 
 taper one blue twilight a long time ago. The 
 Baryes in Washington Place in Baltimore have 
 just the same quiet w^ay of saying, "You don't 
 have to look at us if you don't want to. You 
 don't have to whisper in our presence. We are 
 not in a gallery. Here we are, passerby, for 
 your delectation." 
 
 We were disappointed because we did not 
 see any of Baltimore's famous beauties; I had 
 wanted to make comparisons, and Allan — well, 
 he was disappointed anyway. I couldn't find 
 
 [33] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 out where Baltimore beauties stay when it rains, 
 for certainly they do not risk their loveliness 
 out of doors. Ever since Miss Betsy Patterson 
 of Baltimore enraptured Jerome Bonaparte and 
 married him, Maryland beauty is supposed to 
 have been of the blighting, death-dealing va- 
 riety. Virginia argues the claim because one of 
 the royal Murats of Naples married a Virgin- 
 ian and "lived happily ever after" in Talla- 
 hassee. So that to-day skittish young men avoid 
 Maryland and Virginia as they would the 
 plague, remembering what happened to two 
 princes a long time ago when young men were 
 braver in love. 
 
 The street crowds in Baltimore were like 
 street crowds the world over, or at least, the 
 Occidental world over! There were distinctive 
 American differences — the men wore felt hats 
 turned up in the back and down in the front, 
 they carried their unlighted cigars fixed immov- 
 ably in the corner of their mouths, and they 
 hurried prodigiously. The women looked like 
 New Yorkers, but I detected a slight variation 
 in the angle of their hats. Not a damnable 
 variation like the Swedish, which puts milli- 
 nery atop hair-dressing as if a hat were a boat 
 and a bang a wave (I have no double inten- 
 tions), nor the English variation which places 
 
 [34] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 headgear on the shoulder blades. The Balti- 
 more variation is a slight surrender to the mode. 
 "Let me see from under my hat," says Lady 
 Baltimore, and sees whether it is fashionable or 
 not. New York's baleful influence in high 
 white kid shoes, run over at the heel, had spread 
 like the measles, and there were samples of that 
 remarkable New York product, the "young 
 thing," short-waisted and fragile, anaemic and 
 bored, powdered beyond belief on the tip of 
 the nose, gum-chewing, independent, and sophis- 
 ticated. She had the balm, in Baltimore, of 
 a slightly softer speech, although you must go 
 further south to hear "gy-aden" for garden. 
 The rest of the crowd was made up of negroes 
 and sea-going men, the negroes all inconceiv- 
 ably forlorn and tattered, the sea-going men 
 wearing those blue jerseys, a little too short in 
 the sleeves, and the visored caps which seem to 
 be a part of their traditional makeup. The most 
 respectable and self-respecting darkies lurked 
 in the dining-rooms of the Rennert, where they 
 murmured suggestions or swayed from the kit- 
 chens to the serving tables bearing enormous 
 trays on the pink palms of their hands. They 
 seemed to enjoy the luxury of their surround- 
 ings, their white waistcoats and the pleasant un- 
 certainty of tips. 
 
 [S5^ 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 We encountered the other variety of negro 
 on the way to Annapolis, when a deputy sheriff 
 boarded the electric car with two black prison- 
 ers. Just before the car started, a police patrol 
 brought the wretched fellows at a gallop; they 
 were shoved, pushed, pulled and jostled through 
 the crowd and put aboard the car with scant 
 ceremony. Shackled to the sheriff's wrists, they 
 rode nearly the whole way to Annapolis, spoil- 
 ing the landscape, for me at least. They were 
 pitiful and revolting, criminally insane, the 
 sheriff said, and although they were big enough 
 to have strangled their sandy-haired Irish cap- 
 tor with one hand, they sat facing him in a 
 wretched, dumb silence, their huge shackled 
 hands hanging limply together. We had not 
 crossed the Mason-Dixon line, but the dark 
 Strain was already dominant in the discordant 
 national symphony. As we went further south 
 we were to hear it grow louder and louder, in 
 a crescendo of intensity, reaching its climax at 
 Savannah and dwindling again in Texas to 
 minor melody. It seemed to us that the negroes 
 were shabbiest in Baltimore and Charleston, 
 that they were most likable in Norfolk, that 
 they were most offensive at Savannah and most 
 picturesque in New Orleans and St. Augustine. 
 The upstart type has crept further and further 
 
 [S6] 
 
Till': ONK- AND r\V()-ST()KJi:i) IIUL'SES AND COBBLED 
 
 STREiyis ri:mindi:i) is of clovellv 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 into the South, to the great disadvanage of the 
 self-respecting, infinitely better class that has 
 not forgotten how to say "Yessah" and "Yes'm." 
 A Virginian said to me, "We could not do with- 
 out the darkies. They are better labour, for us 
 who understand them, than Italians." And he 
 added, "You Northerners don't know how to 
 manage 'em. A nice combination of the au- 
 thoritative and the paternal does the trick. But 
 you have to be born to it." I do not pretend to 
 know whether he was right, but I do know that 
 the jaunty, overdressed, impudent and self-as- 
 sertive negro cannot possibly be the result of a 
 paternal authority. Some one is to blame, per- 
 haps, who was not, to quote the Virginian, 
 "born to it." 
 
 For an hour the two ragged black wretches 
 stared at the floor and let the bleak landscape 
 race past without once turning their heads to 
 glance at it. Patches of snow were still lying 
 in the hollows, and spitting clouds raced close 
 to the earth, almost touching the pointed tips 
 of the black cypress pines. The approach to 
 Annapolis, like Annapolis itself, is not spectac- 
 ular. The electric car jangles into the town 
 and puts you down at the door of the State 
 House, or, more exactly, a short block away 
 from it, with as little ostentation as possible. 
 
 C 37 ] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 Annapolis was sound asleep when we were 
 there. The Capitol dozed on its hilltop, the lit- 
 tle rows of quaint and ramshackled houses 
 snoozed gently, the enormous Academy build- 
 ings snored outright in profound slumber. I 
 don't know whether the town was indulging in 
 a daily siesta or whether the entire population 
 had gone to Baltimore for the afternoon, for 
 Annapolis, like Washington, is a suburb of the 
 Monument City! The only living things we 
 encountered in our wanderings were the sentry 
 at the Academy gates, a priest, two erect cadets 
 and a nigger's hound! 
 
 Annapolis is the oldest chartered city in 
 America, a very small city indeed to stagger un- 
 der such an honour. It is besides the capital of 
 Maryland, and I was so sentimentally afifected 
 by the precious soil under my feet that I 
 hummed "Maryland, my Maryland" with great 
 stress, for even nomads thrill to the feel of na- 
 tive earth. I could remember the tune, but I 
 confess to my everlasting shame that Randall's 
 poetry was beyond me. 
 
 The old town is splendidly picturesque. The 
 one and two-storied houses and the cobbled 
 streets, dipping steeply down to the water- 
 front, reminded us of Clovelly, Clovelly of 
 blessed Devonshire memory! For Annapolis is 
 
 [38] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 first and last an English town, a town of red 
 brick and high garden walls, quaint corners, 
 tidy shops and an air of great decorum and 
 friendliness. Queen Anne and the Georges 
 left a characteristic architecture, beautified by 
 its colonial transplanting into something rare 
 and distinguished. The Brice house shows 
 what America, plus an English heritage, can do 
 architecturally. If America would only go on 
 doing it! 
 
 The Naval Academy buildings are a sore 
 disappointment, for you must pass the dignified 
 and aquiline State House, where Washington 
 surrendered his commission in 1783, and where 
 the First Constitutional Convention was held 
 three years later, on your way to the Academy 
 close. The gaunt ugliness of the College build- 
 ings is softened by wide-spreading lawns, 
 clipped like a German pate, and by groups of 
 magnificent trees. But it is perfectly apparent 
 that since its foundation in 1845 the Naval 
 Academy has been accumulating ponderous and 
 hideous buildings, reaching a sort of hysterical 
 climax in the new chapel, whic'h rises like a 
 gilded and frosted sugar birthday cake over the 
 body of John Paul Jones. If Jones could see his 
 sepulchre he would beg pitifully to be taken 
 
 [39] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 back to France and re-entombed in his obscure 
 and well-nigh forgotten French grave. 
 
 Down on the shore of the little Severn River, 
 where we had wandered to recover from our 
 architectural tirade, we encountered the negro 
 hound. I don't mean that he was a black hound 
 — far from it. He was, or had been before he 
 rolled in acres of thick Maryland mud, as white 
 as the driven snow. We knew he was a negro 
 hound by the humble look in his eyes, the 
 ashamed droop of his thick tail. He wouldn't 
 come to us, although I whistled and crooned 
 and begged. All the while Allan was drawing 
 a cluster of small sailing boats and dories, I 
 wooed the hound. He wagged, he rolled his 
 eyes at me and lolled out his tongue in a wide 
 grin, but he was as bashful as a pickaninny. He 
 knew better than to take the caresses of a white 
 hand; he knew I was mistaken; he apologised 
 and tried to explain that he was poor and hum- 
 ble, and that he had dedicated his love to an- 
 other race. He struggled to tell me that he 
 knew his place and that he had so far for- 
 gotten his past that he had tried to change his 
 colour by rolling in the mud; if he had achieved 
 a mulatto complexion, he was not to blame. 
 Would I excuse him? I would and did. I 
 stopped my clucking and said, in a stern voice, 
 
 [40] 
 
A CLUSTER OF SMALL SAILING BOATS AND DORIKS 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 smiling broadly, "You run right along home. 
 D'you heah me, you good-fo'-nothing houn'?" 
 And he leaped for joy and trotted away, enor- 
 mously relieved. 
 
 The oyster boats cluster like barnacles along 
 the water-front, so close-packed that you can 
 walk from one to the other for blocks without 
 taking a single long step. They were the only 
 craft we saw, although only a half a mile away 
 our future admirals were learning the super-art 
 of seamanship. A thick mist had obligingly fol- 
 lowed us down from Baltimore and hung like 
 a blanket over Annapolis, obscuring the bay en- 
 tirely. So we climbed back into the town, pur- 
 suing beautiful architecture as long as there 
 was a vestige of the pale twilight left. The two 
 erect cadets, laced into their jackets to the burst- 
 ing point and very shy, as all real seamen are 
 when they are ashore, directed us to the electric 
 car's starting place. But we lost it again, since 
 Annapolis streets take their own sweet way and 
 ramble on as inconsequentially as Confederate 
 veterans. We had to be set right, very appro- 
 priately, by a benign priest who was pacing up 
 and down a garden path on the other side of a 
 low brick wall. Allan looked over the top and 
 lifted his hat, breaking in on the evening's medi- 
 tation with a subdued and gentle question. 
 
 [11] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 "Straight ahead," was the priest's answer. 
 
 So we turned humbly away, set at last on the 
 right path, and determined, come what would, 
 to keep going straight ahead. 
 
 [42] 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 WHICH CONTAINS A TROLLY TRIP AND A 
 LAUNDRY GRIEVANCE 
 
 NLAND steamers are the pariahs of 
 the ship world. They are neither 
 fish, flesh nor fowl. River, lake and 
 bay steamers, sound and harbour 
 steamers, channel and canal steamers — they are 
 all alike, with their excursion manner, their 
 cramped deck space, their red carpets and velvet 
 lounge chairs, their piles of folded and dingy 
 camp stools, and, in America, their horribly 
 sleepy coloured stewards in crumpled white 
 coats. When the porter at the Rennert advised 
 us to go on to Norfolk by water, we knew what 
 we were being let in for. But we bought our 
 tickets because we hoped that the fog would lift 
 before morning and disclose the pageant of Nor- 
 folk harbour and Hampton Roads. Vain hope! 
 Smug and credulous N.authoress and Nillustra- 
 torl We should not have expected miracles of 
 a Chesapeake Bay fog! 
 We permitted the positive porter to transfer 
 
 [43] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 us from the hotel to the dock while we were 
 still under the spell of his eloquence and before 
 we could convince him, or each other, that it 
 was bound to be a foggy night and that we might 
 just as well wait another day. It was too late to 
 turn back when the taxi drew up at the dock, for 
 an army of stewards fell on our luggage (one 
 for each suitcase and two for each trunk), and 
 escorted us to our staterooms. Allan tipped six 
 of them for service and eight more for moral 
 assistance, and after reading the framed warn- 
 ings to lock the door, to watch out for thieves, 
 to look under the berth for life-preservers, and 
 to turn out the light, we went on deck, pro- 
 foundly depressed. 
 
 The interior of an excursion steamer always 
 reminds me of a varnished and upholstered 
 columbarium. The restless passengers pop in 
 and out of their tomb doors like lively ghosts 
 or sit, first a passenger, then a nickel spittoon, in 
 neat regularity, the entire length of the pro- 
 digious corridors. The typical excursionist 
 resists fresh air with an almost fanatical vio- 
 lence; he stays in the red-velvet saloons, reading 
 highly-coloured magazines and only venturing 
 on deck for a hurried smoke. He is impervious 
 to sunsets and dawns, to the beauty of passing 
 ships and the mystery of the sea. 
 
 [4.4] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 The Norfolk steamer left Baltimore at dusk 
 with the casual and leisurely farewell of a ferry- 
 boat. The pallid passengers, already seasick, 
 had taken to their staterooms or to their velvet 
 lounges, the stew^ards had fallen permanently 
 asleep, and Allan and I were alone on the wet, 
 slippery stern deck where we could feel the 
 violent shiverings of the screw as the steamer 
 churned and backed out of the slip into the 
 harbour. Baltimore glittered behind us in a 
 subdued, well-bred way — discreet as always! 
 Only one electric sign, shrieking Coca-Cola in 
 letters six feet high, dripped and blinked in 
 liquid sheets of light, and in the heart of the city 
 a huge illuminated clock face explained that it 
 was half-past six. 
 
 The steamer edged into the wider channel and 
 swung around, kicking up foam like a young- 
 ster learning how to swim. Then we faced 
 Patapsco Bay, Baltimore apparently shifting to 
 the wrong side of the horizon with our turning 
 and dropping rapidly behind like a conflagra- 
 tion snufifed out by the sea. On both banks of 
 the bay long strings of light rimmed the water's 
 edge; factory chimneys flared in dramatic out- 
 bursts against the gathering darkness of the sky. 
 Tugs crossed our bow trailing fiery reflections, 
 launches tossed in our wake a moment like 
 
 [ 4..^ ] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 bobbing corks and then disappeared; schooners 
 drifted by, incredibly remote and mysterious. 
 And always, from the surface of the water, mist 
 wreaths rose, twisted, tore loose and curled up- 
 ward, drifting across the deck and powdering 
 our cheeks and hair with iridescent sequins. 
 
 ''Dirty weather," I said in a professional tone. 
 
 "Very thick," Allan agreed solemnly. 
 
 We stood mournfully by the rail, the mist 
 stinging our faces, and exchanged reminiscences 
 of fogs at sea. This is a trick we have when we 
 want to test each other's courage. Of course no 
 one ever wins the game for it would not be 
 cricket to exhibit frazzled nerves. And unless 
 Allan should happen to read this book (which 
 is wholly improbable), he will never know that 
 I am desperately afraid of encountering fogs in 
 narrow channels. 
 
 The fog that enveloped us that night blotted 
 out the world completely before we had left 
 Patapsco Bay; in Chesapeake Bay it became a 
 blanket, impenetrable, as tangible as a wall, as 
 terrifying as an atrocious nightmare which wipes 
 out sense and sensibility and leaves nothing but 
 uncertainty and terror. But I turned my coat 
 collar up around my ears, paraded back and 
 forth across the tiny deck and pretended that I 
 liked it. 
 
 [46] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 Inside, where the hermetically-sealed excur- 
 sionists read Hearst literature and chewed gum, 
 a musical sailor played syncopated melodies on 
 the toneless piano; "Ragging the Scale" floated 
 out to us, making strange discords with the 
 lugubrious croakings of the foghorn. 
 
 All night long the shivering blasts shook the 
 steamer like an ague chill while we tossed in our 
 narrow berths and put the hard pillows now 
 under one cheek, now under the other in a futile 
 struggle to sleep. Fainter, groaning horns al- 
 ways answered, now to starboard, now to port, 
 now dead ahead, like the melancholy wails of 
 lost souls. I was alert and active all night, 
 hopping out of bed to look into the impenetrable 
 fog, seeing nothing but my own shadow drift- 
 ing, grotesquely projected against the compact 
 mist. Like the nervous motorist who drives an 
 automobile from the back seat by concentrating 
 unselfishly on the road, I navigated the tortuous 
 channels of Chesapeake Bay by standing in the 
 open window of my stateroom and giving my 
 whole attention to the elusive foghorns. Like 
 will-o'-the-wisps they skipped from side to side 
 of the bay, tormenting pilots and upsetting 
 steamer schedules. My watchfulness must have 
 done some good, for towards morning a sleepy 
 steward rapped at my door and said that we 
 
 [47] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 were comin' into Ole Point Comfo't presently 
 and that the gen'mun in numbah fo'ty-fo' wanted 
 me to come out on deck. 
 
 Apparently Allan still hoped for an eleventh- 
 hour miracle and a glimpse of Hampton Roads 
 and Norfolk Harbor at dawn. I locked my door 
 and tiptoed down a snoring corridor, past stew- 
 ards and stewardesses asleep in abandoned atti- 
 tudes under the full glare of many electric 
 lights, past the musical sailor stretched full 
 length on a red velvet divan with his round cap 
 over his face, past sleepy watchmen and yawn- 
 ing deckhands. The rest of the passengers slept 
 soundly in their columbarium roosts, sceptical 
 or initiated or perhaps forewarned that the 
 steamer would be late. I found Allan on the 
 forward deck, gazing hopefully into a dripping 
 wall of fog. 
 
 ''Did you sleep?" I asked. 
 
 "Yes, like a top," he lied. 
 
 And I echoed, trying to open my eyes wide 
 and to look brisk, "So did I! Like a top!" 
 
 The steamer and the fog were playing an ex- 
 citing game of hide-and-seek. The fog laid 
 traps, becoming at once opaque and impene- 
 trable, parting suddenly to show us the stern 
 lights of a schooner just ahead, then blotting out 
 the vision forever. The steamer advanced cau- 
 
 [48] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 tiously, slowing down so that the revolutions 
 of the screw ceased altogether and there was no 
 sound but the slight hissing of the water along 
 the sides, then leaping ahead again at top speed 
 like a hunting dog that has picked up its quarry's 
 scent. Bell buoys, light buoys, the pilot and 
 Providence got us safely into Old Point Com- 
 fort. 
 
 We heard voices before the pier loomed out 
 of the shadows at all. Then we saw electric 
 lights, blurring round holes in the fog, and the 
 steamer churned and splashed sideways toward 
 them. As soon as she was made fast a swarm of 
 negro stevedores rushed aboard, trundling bar- 
 rows and trucks back and forth like toiling 
 demon ghosts. 
 
 Dawn overtook us there, a steel-blue dawn 
 that only deepened the confusing mystery of the 
 fog. Imperceptibly, the piles and shedding of 
 the wharf appeared, we saw a motor car stand- 
 ing apparently on the top of the water, long 
 bands of light like prodigious antennae stabbing 
 the darkness before it. And suddenly, as if an 
 obscuring veil had been whisked away, we saw 
 the famous towers of the Hotel Chamberlain, 
 then the enormous fagade and a few scattered 
 lights blotted and indistinct. 
 
 Gibraltar wears a Prudential face for most 
 
 [49] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 of us, and the Hotel Chamberlain — quick, what 
 does it mean to you? A gay scene, of course — 
 a foreground of warships, white duck officers 
 and ladies with parasols, a background filled 
 with the biggest hotel in the world! Advertis- 
 ing has made the Chamberlain the most famous 
 hotel in America — its picture is as familiar to 
 us as Mennen's celebrated ugliness, Phoebe 
 Snow and the bearded Smith Brothers. I was 
 shocked to find that the Chamberlain, like Mark 
 Twain's woolliest dog, wasn't so "dinged" big, 
 after all! It is a large hotel, but years of adver- 
 tising have created an imaginative colossus, a 
 sort of wooden Louvre where gay ladies and im- 
 maculate officers dance from morning to night. 
 Negro stevedores where I had pictured admirals 
 and generals! I felt that somehow I had been 
 cheated. 
 
 Nor was I the only one who expected gaiety 
 and leisure. A coloured person of imagination 
 was leaning against one of the trucks down on 
 the wharf doing nothing very well. 
 
 "Look heah," one of the labouring stevedores 
 yelled at him, "why don't you get to work, you 
 good-fo'-nothin' nigger?" 
 
 The victim of Hotel Chamberlain advertis- 
 ing methods leaned more cozily against the 
 truck. "Ah ain' lookin' fo' work, boss," said he, 
 
 [50] 
 
TMi: I F.RK\ SLIP AT NORIXH.K. 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 "s'long as Ah can find anything better to do." 
 We crossed to Norfolk between a double row 
 of anchored ships all pathetically anxious to 
 make themselves seen and heard. If we had 
 been conquering heroes we could not have been 
 given a more vociferous greeting — horns, bells, 
 wailing battleship sirens, and whistling buoys 
 warned us to keep to the channel, the whole crew 
 of a small schooner standing on deck to pound on 
 kitchen utensils until we were out of sight. So, 
 triumphantly, we came to Norfolk. 
 
 Norfolk announces itself to the traveller by 
 a huge sign advertising Anheuser-Busch, but 
 Virginia has gone dry; Virginia, the land of 
 mint juleps and convivial F. F. V. colonels, has 
 gone bone dry! The head waiter at the Monti- 
 cello informed us of the State's tragedy at break- 
 fast, as if he were afraid that we might be in the 
 New York habit of drinking cocktails at nine 
 o'clock in the morning. The hotel dining- 
 rooms are on the eighth floor, possibly to coun- 
 teract the low spirits caused by this sudden 
 abstinence. And, indeed, if anything could make 
 one forget the lack of the stimulating toddy, 
 the view from the Monticello windows ought to. 
 Prohibition struck a hard blow at some of the 
 Virginian hotels, and of course it put some very 
 prosperous "pubs" out of business altogether, 
 
 [51] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 but it Is a comforting fact that being alco- 
 holically dry lias not hurt the State financially. 
 The Monticello, which is the largest and most 
 pretentious hotel in Norfolk, has balanced its 
 deficit to a certain extent by charging ten cents 
 an order for bread and butter. If it had done 
 the same thing a year ago, the management 
 would have netted something like fifteen thou- 
 sand dollars on bread and butter alone. So there 
 is a balm for every wound — even prohibition! 
 I could not find out how the negroes feel about 
 their loss. There used to be a bar in the col- 
 oured quarter in Norfolk where fourteen bar- 
 tenders, each with a cash register before him, 
 served drinks to thirsty Ethiopians from dawn 
 to dawn. The thirty-five thousand negroes of 
 the quarter must have been as insatiable as the 
 ladies of Whitechapel. Now they are reduced 
 to their legal quart obtainable only once in so 
 often, delivered by express and as sweet to their 
 thirsty tongues as dew in the parching desert. 
 In Norfolk they tell the story of the unfortunate 
 darkey who went to the express oflice for his 
 quart a week before Christmas. As he was com- 
 ing out again with the precious bottle tucked 
 under His arm, he slipped on the icy pavement, 
 lost his footing and fell headlong, smashing his 
 
 [52] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 treasure into fragments. He sat up and con- 
 templated the ruins. 
 
 "Oh, Gawd," he said bitterly, "oh. Gawd, 
 Christmas am done come and gone!" 
 
 The negro quarter is in the centre of Norfolk, 
 but it does not encroach upon the white district; 
 black does not mix with white in the city, each 
 tide of humanity flowing side by side like the 
 waters of the Rhone and the Arve, unmingling 
 and distinct. Nor do the negroes seem to over- 
 flow even as pedestrians into the rest of the town ; 
 they stay in their own few square blocks, attend 
 their own theatres and stare in at our own shop 
 windows. They are for the most part unskilled 
 labourers and do not work together with white 
 men. 
 
 But even without a preponderance of African 
 duskiness the streets of Norfolk are colourful 
 enough. At night, when the festive strings of 
 sputtering arc lamps and electric bulbs are 
 lighted, making a brilliant arch over the 
 shopping streets, Norfolk is amazingly gay. 
 Sailors and marines from Portsmouth, soldiers 
 from Fortress Monroe and aviators from New- 
 port News give a martial touch to the street 
 crowds that is not at all usual in a country where 
 there is no universal passion for uniforms. We 
 heard many English voices as we wandered up 
 
 [53] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 and down Granby Street, for there is a brisk 
 horse-transport between Norfolk, Newport 
 News and Bristol and London which brings an 
 increasing number of British ships to Virginia. 
 
 Very little ammunition leaves the port for 
 Europe, for which I should think the Virginians 
 must be profoundly grateful. They have left 
 that grave responsibility to New York because 
 the Empire State is nearer the base of supplies. 
 But it would have been a strange analogy if 
 Virginia had sent shells for use against Eng- 
 land's enemies in return for Lord Dunmore's 
 cannon balls, fired in 1776 into the little city of 
 Norfolk! 
 
 One of the balls is hidden in the English brick 
 walls of St. Paul's church, but I did not see it 
 for I am trying to forget old rancours now that 
 America and England have become flesh and 
 blood allies in the great struggle for democracy. 
 And Norfolk, except for the crumbling walls 
 of old St. Stephen's, was entirely destroyed by 
 Dunmore when he turned the frigate Liver- 
 pool's guns on the rebel town and reduced 
 everything except the inhabitants' courage to 
 dust. Up to that time, Norfolk had been loyally 
 English. It was established on fifty acres of 
 ground bought from a certain Nicholas Wise, 
 who must have been an inveterate smoker or 
 
 [54] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 else a shrewd judge of the future, for he ac- 
 cepted ten thousand pounds of tobacco in ex- 
 change for his land. And this was in 1680, be- 
 fore the United States Tobacco Company 
 dreamed of existing! Anglomania was still 
 rampant in 1746, when the men of Norfolk car- 
 ried an effigy of the Pretender, Charles Edward 
 Stuart, through the streets of the town and then 
 hanged and burned it. This was "strafing" with 
 a vengeance, and it did not seem possible that 
 even such an arbitrary measure as the detested 
 Stamp Act could shift public opinion and set an 
 American Hymn of Hate ringing 'round the 
 world. 
 
 Ever since the Revolution the Virginia Pen- 
 insula has had its thumb in the war-pie. Great 
 and decisive battles were fought over the his- 
 toric ground during the War of 1812 and again 
 during the Civil War. And to-day one passes 
 from the monuments of the historic dead to the 
 feverish activities of the patriotic living by 
 simply crossing the Elizabeth River to the Ports- 
 mouth Navy Yard in one direction, and Hamp- 
 ton Roads to Fortress Monroe and the Curtiss 
 Flying School in the other. For Nature 
 planned a great destiny for Virginia when she 
 arranged that Chesapeake Bay, Hampton Roads, 
 the James and the York rivers and Norfolk 
 
 [55] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 Harbor should be within a stone's throw of 
 each other. Captain John Smith, who began to 
 advertise Old Point Comfort in 1607, three hun- 
 dred years before the publicity machinery of 
 the Hotel Chamberlain was set in motion, wrote 
 an ecstatic description of the peninsula. Smith 
 was the Theodore Roosevelt of his day — an 
 ardent explorer, an adventurous spirit, strenu- 
 ous, enthusiastic and indefatigable. His account 
 of the Virginian settlement sounds like Roose- 
 velt turned right about face and transplanted 
 into the seventeenth century. 
 
 "There is but one entrance into this country, 
 and that is at the mouth of a goodly bay eighteen 
 or twenty miles broad. The cape on the south 
 is called Cape Henry, in honour of our most 
 noble Prince; the north cape is called Cape 
 Charles, in honour of the worthy Duke of 
 York. The isles before are called Smith 
 Isles, by the name of the discoverer. Within 
 is a country that may have the prerogatives 
 over the most pleasant places known, for 
 earth and heaven never agreed better to frame 
 a place for man's habitation. The mildness of 
 the air, the fertility of the soil, and the situation 
 of the rivers are so propitious to the use of man, 
 as no place is more convenient for pleasure, 
 profit, and man's sustenance under any latitude 
 
 [56] 
 
THK NA\V YARD GATE, P(JR 1 SMOT 1 11 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 or climate. So then, here is a place, a nurse for 
 soldiers, a practice for mariners, a trade for 
 merchants, a reward for the good, and that 
 which is most of all, a business (most acceptable 
 to God) to bring such poor infidels to the 
 knowledge of God and His Holy Gospel." 
 
 Like Roosevelt, who replied cryptically to 
 those questioners of the River of Doubt, "It is 
 still there," Captain Smith let posterity decide 
 whether or not the Virginia Peninsula was worth 
 discovering. He dubbed its furthermost tip Old 
 Point Comfort, although the name is more ap- 
 propriate now than it could have been in those 
 early days of suffering and discouragement when 
 America w^as in the larva state and none of the 
 wretched settlers knew what would emerge from 
 the chrysalis — a grub, a butterfly, or an eagle. 
 It is decidedly a comforting and comfortable 
 Old Point to-day, for the powerful batteries of 
 Fortress Monroe and Fort Wool, "Rip Raps," 
 face the entrance to Chesapeake Bay, giving a 
 pleasant sense of security to the Virginians, 
 while the sun parlours and medicinal baths and 
 wide porches of the Chamberlain attend to the 
 creature comforts of hordes of tourists. The 
 Government does not put too much faith in the 
 thick walls and batteries of the two forts on 
 Smith's Point, perhaps because the fall of Liege 
 
 [57] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 went a long way to prove that even the thickest 
 walls crumble under modern guns. A new fort 
 is being built at Cape Henry, on the opposite 
 side of Chesapeake Bay, just where the first Eng- 
 lish settlers landed in 1607. 
 
 We had been so baffled by the fog on the morn- 
 ing of our arrival at Norfolk that we went back 
 to Old Point Comfort as soon as the sky had 
 cleared and a pale winter sun had come out, 
 crossing by ferry from Willoughby Spit. We 
 walked around the high ramparts of Fortress 
 Monroe, meeting with nothing more military 
 than a lone bugler who was practising reveille 
 and taps, very much ofif the key. We accosted 
 him, as much to put a stop to the excruciating 
 melody as to find out how to get out of the fort 
 again, and as he walked with us across the 
 pleasant enclosure, past barracks and officers' 
 quarters to the main gate, he confided to us that 
 a soldier's life is a dog's life and that he wanted 
 to "get back to Jersey City." Apparently brass 
 buttons and a brand-new bugle could not com- 
 pensate for military restrictions. The confiding 
 young bugler enjoyed life at Fortress Monroe 
 as little perhaps as President Jefferson Davis did 
 when he was confined there after the Civil War. 
 The disillusioned president spent the year and 
 a half of his imprisonment in Casement No. 2, 
 
 [58] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 which is nothing more or less than an under- 
 ground cell in spite of a pretence at windows 
 and a pillared entrance. But Jefferson's confine- 
 ment was no more restricted than the Pope's, 
 and like the Pope he had the balm of beautiful 
 trees, the thick shade of clustering live oaks, 
 well-clipped lawns, flowers and a view from the 
 high walls of his prison across incomparable 
 country. 
 
 We were the proud possessors of a letter of 
 introduction written by a very distinguished 
 army officer to another very distinguished army 
 officer who was stationed at Fortress Monroe, 
 but we did not present it for fear that the whole 
 military order of the day might be upset; two 
 years in Germany had taught us a wholesome re- 
 spect for gold braid. I remember sprinting 
 through the English Gardens in Munich at top 
 speed to get ahead of the swift-running Iser, for 
 I had thrown the wrappings of a cake of Peters' 
 Chocolate into the stream — and it was verboten. 
 With the piece of chocolate in my hand and the 
 wrapping paper sailing down the stream before 
 me, the chain of damning evidence was com- 
 plete. But what police officer could arrest a 
 young lady with a piece of chocolate pursued 
 by its wrappings? So I reasoned, and so I ran. 
 Military rule had snatched hatpins out of my 
 
 [59] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 unoffending hats. I had learned not to do this 
 and not to do that, and to always step aside at 
 the approach of a high-collared officer. In Ger- 
 many one does instinctively what one is ex- 
 pected to do, like a well-disciplined automat. I 
 had learned by heart the terrible story of the 
 Berliner who was drowned, although he was a 
 champion swimmer, because he had accidentally 
 fallen into a river where it was verboten to 
 swim! The military atmosphere of Fortress 
 Monroe set in motion my slumbering awe, and it 
 was not until we had poked our inquisitive noses 
 into every corner of the impressive pile that I 
 realised that it was not "forbidden" to walk on 
 the grass, to pick the flowers, to stare at the bat- 
 teries, to photograph the moat, to lounge under 
 the trees or to engage the sentry in conversation. 
 Military rule in America means spick-and-span 
 order, brisk obedience and good behaviour, but 
 it goes on the principle that we are all well- 
 behaved until we prove, by blowing up the fort 
 and stepping on the flag, that we are not. No 
 one base enough to betray such trust had ap- 
 peared in the vicinity of Fortress Monroe when 
 we were there, for a brave flag rattled crisply 
 over the ramparts. The huge disappearing guns 
 looked formidable enough to have shattered any 
 enemy, but we gazed at them with dubious en- 
 
 [60] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 thusiasm, knowing that the inventors of verboien 
 and hate were concentrating on still larger and 
 more powerful guns. 
 
 The towering Hotel Chamberlain would 
 make an excellent target, and no camouflage in 
 the world could disguise its pinnacles and sun 
 parlours as a mountain or as an innocent forest 
 of young trees. So it is written in the contract 
 which permitted the building of so conspicuous 
 a landmark within a stone's throw of a great fort, 
 that in case a hostile fleet should approach the 
 Virginia coast the Chamberlain must be de- 
 stroyed. Then the fat ladies in rockers and the 
 sweet young girls and the white-duck officers 
 must vacate for a stern necessity, and there will 
 vanish from our leading magazines a familiar, 
 gay advertisement and the ravings of an inspired 
 press agent. 
 
 We did not stop to have lunch at the Cham- 
 berlain, but boarded an electric trolley and rode 
 decorously, in spite of warnings to "keep head 
 and limbs inside of car," to Newport News. I 
 can not understand why the Newport News 
 Electric Railway Company should be so suspi- 
 cious of the self-control of its passengers. As 
 far as I know, it is not the usual thing anywhere 
 in America to ride with one's limbs (the deli- 
 cacy of it!) dangling from trolley car windows! 
 
 [61] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 Our progress lay across historic ground, so 
 that when I try to chronicle the advance of the 
 electric car and the sequence of dates, I feel that 
 it would be an easier matter to write the history 
 of the United States, and be done with it. For 
 we passed through Hampton, Kecoughtan of 
 the seventeenth century, where John Smith and 
 the hungry idealists who had ventured into the 
 wilderness with him received hospitality at the 
 hands of the "terrible savage." A son of the 
 famous chief Powhatan was the host on that 
 occasion. When one considers the matter in 
 the light of a neutral mind, the Indians always 
 were hospitable until the white men took ad- 
 vantage of their simplicity; that, as the Irish- 
 woman said, was how the fight began. When- 
 ever I feel that I have caught the national habit 
 and am screaming in imitation of an American 
 eagle, when I feel that my spirit needs chasten- 
 ing and my pride needs chastisement, I con- 
 sider the American Indian. The story of his 
 destruction is as terrible as the tragedy of Israel. 
 Kecoughtan, the hospitable settlement on the 
 banks of the Hampton River, was attacked by 
 Lieutenant General Gates in 1610 to avenge the 
 death of a colonist. Fourteen of the unsuspect- 
 ing Indian inhabitants were killed, and Gates 
 saw to it that the survivors abandoned their vil- 
 
 [62] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 lage. This was the punishment inflicted upon 
 the very Indians who had saved the first English 
 settlers from starvation only three years before! 
 The law of compensation is sometimes en- 
 forced, by destiny, by nature or by man. If 
 Chief Pochins' people could have foreseen that 
 a great Indian and Negro college would rise 
 from the ashes of their wigwams, their bitter- 
 ness might have been less poignant. The white 
 man made restitution in 1868, two hundred and 
 fifty years later, when General Samuel Arm- 
 strong established Hampton Institute. We 
 should have left the decorous trolley car to pay 
 our respects to an institution that has given the 
 hand of encouragement and practical aid to over 
 a thousand Indians and to more than eight thou- 
 sand negroes. We are ashamed of ourselves 
 now for not stopping, since the gate was open 
 and the mere passing through it would have 
 been a simple pilgrimage compared to some that 
 have been made to Hampton from the far ends 
 of America and Africa by Indians and negroes, 
 poor, uneducated and racially at a disadvantage, 
 who have somehow heard that there is help for 
 them there. But we caught only a glimpse of 
 the Institute buildings, buildings which were 
 built and "sung up" by the hands and the planta- 
 tion voices of the students. We remembered the 
 
 [63] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 Hampton Jubilee Singers, those short and tall, 
 fat and lean, sombre and good-natured darkies 
 who sang beautiful negro songs, camp meeting 
 "revivals" and heart-touching plantation melo- 
 dies in the summer hotels and boarding-houses 
 of ten years ago. Their sweet singing built Vir- 
 ginia Hall at Hampton Institute just as the songs 
 they sang may some day build the characteristic 
 music of America. 
 
 The trolley car passed so many interesting 
 things on the way to Newport News that while 
 I had no desire to swing my feet out of the win- 
 dow, I was tempted to hang my head out, like 
 the Wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, "all the 
 better to see with, my dear." The military at- 
 mosphere still prevailed, Civil War veterans 
 decorating each street corner and proving by 
 their brisk bearing that you can be a very young 
 fellow at seventy-five. Older people of twenty 
 or forty or thereabouts passed, carrying strings 
 of fish. Indeed the whole atmosphere of Hamp- 
 ton and Phoebus is flavoured, commercially and 
 atmospherically, with fish. The tourist who 
 dines for pleasure and not simply for nourish- 
 ment can satisfy his fastidious appetite anywhere 
 along the peninsula with porgies and pompano, 
 hogfish, mackerel and delicate butterfish, and if 
 he likes oysters and is enough of a connoisseur 
 
 [64] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 to know the difference between "just an oyster" 
 and a Virginia oyster, he will make loving pil- 
 grimages from restaurant to restaurant to sample 
 the delicious Lynnhaven, the succulent Mobjack 
 Bay, the juicy York River and the tender James 
 River, Nor does he have to consult his calendar 
 before he begins his feasting to make sure that 
 there is a letter "r" tucked away in the name of 
 the month, for he can buy oysters fresh from the 
 oyster beds, shucked at Hampton and as innocu- 
 ous as morning dew. The crab factories along 
 the water-front are going to be responsible in 
 the dim future for some strange archaeological 
 mistakes, since the mounds of discarded crab 
 shells are rising higher and higher, veritable 
 skeleton pyramids which will baffle the future 
 professor into making the absurd statement that 
 the Virginians of the twentieth century lived en- 
 tirely upon the meat of crabs and built their 
 cities atop the refuse of their feasts. 
 
 The puritanical trolley turned aside at Hamp- 
 ton and followed the line of the shore all the way 
 to Newport News, passing rows and rows of 
 suburban cottages built on a geometric plan that 
 makes the neighbourhood about as picturesque 
 and appealing as a concentration camp. We 
 turned away from the hideous procession of art 
 nouveau villas and looked out at the smiting blue 
 
 [65] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 of Hampton Roads, as calm and unruffled as if 
 the Monitor and Merrimac had never blazed 
 away at each other and settled the destiny of a 
 nation on its placid surface. The two prehis- 
 toric ironclads met just off Sewall's Point and 
 pursued each other like spitting dragons from 
 their starting place to Old Point Comfort, and 
 then battled furiously all the way back to New- 
 port News again, crowds of people following 
 them along the shore, like English rowing en- 
 thusiasts pursuing two racing shells along the 
 banks of the Thames. And at the end, although 
 the Merrimac was perhaps technically victori- 
 ous, the fight was a draw. The Monitor won a 
 moral victory for the Union, and the evacuation 
 of Norfolk before McClellan's advancing army 
 soon followed. 
 
 At Newport News we tried to break into the 
 Newport News Shipbuilding Company's pre- 
 cincts, finding open hostility and undisguised 
 distrust at the gates. It was Saturday afternoon 
 and the workmen had left the yards, but we ex- 
 plained to the gentleman who acted as sentry for 
 the company that we wanted to "wander about 
 and watch the sun go down." If we had said 
 that we wanted to place a ton of high explosives 
 under the enormous hull of the nearly com- 
 pleted Mississippi, he could not have been 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 more sceptical of our intentions. We had to 
 produce letters from our publisher and the dis- 
 tinguished army officer's introduction, fortu- 
 nately preserved for just such an emergency, be- 
 fore he would let us in. And he explained, 
 rather peevishly, that he was ''tired anyway," 
 for the men had been paid off that day, and one 
 hundred thousand dollars had passed from the 
 money-till of the Newport News Shipbuilding 
 Company into the pockets of its seven thousand 
 employes between noon and a quarter to one 
 o'clock. 
 
 "I take it on my own shoulders," the weary 
 person said as he opened the office door and 
 waved us toward the yard, "to let you look at the 
 ounset from these premises. You have strange 
 tastes. If you do any harm, I shall blow out 
 my brains." 
 
 "We wore him down," I said triumphantly, 
 as we hurried away. 
 
 "Wore him down!" Allan shouted. "Nothing 
 of the sort. He was worn down already." 
 
 But I insisted that we had won a triumph over 
 authority, for the great yards were deserted and 
 the prodigious hull of the U. S. S. Mississippi, 
 scarlet and magnificent, towered directly over 
 our heads. We had paused to read Hunting- 
 
 [67] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 ton's pledge, written on a bronze tablet at the 
 yard entrance: 
 
 "We shall build good ships 
 At a profit if we can 
 At a loss if we must 
 But always good ships." 
 
 And the Mississippi seems to have been as 
 good as his word, for when she was launched a 
 month later she was a sight to warm the cockles 
 of any shipbuilder's heart. The sun set oblig- 
 ingly just behind her, and we lingered through 
 a long twilight in the deserted yards where the 
 clatter and roar of machinery had given way to 
 a profound silence, where only our small voices 
 echoed faintly, where the swarming labourers' 
 tools had been laid down, as if forever, where 
 the great unfinished ships were caught in a mesh 
 of steel girders and wooden beams, where the 
 furnaces and forges glowed dimly and the high 
 roofs of the machine shops were filling slowly 
 with shadows, where there was a mysterious 
 cessation of violent activity, a hush, as if the 
 building of the world had been delayed and the 
 builders had been called away to some tranquil- 
 lity, some peace, some rest from the gigantic 
 labour, following the sun down the other side of 
 the globe. 
 
 [68] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 We returned to Norfolk in a swift packet, 
 crossing the wide stretch of tranquil water 
 through a splendid flood of moonlight that filled 
 the bowl of the world with quicksilver. We 
 were alone on deck except for a mysterious and 
 romantic young woman who looked like an F. 
 F. V. and was dressed in rags. Bareheaded, she 
 stood by the rail, looking into the face of the 
 white moon, and she was so pathetically lovely 
 and forlorn that Allan grew preoccupied and 
 sighed like a furnace. I thought of offering her 
 my extra coat, but the impulse died when I saw 
 the haughty tilt of her fine head. One would 
 as soon have thought of offering an undershirt 
 to the Queen of England. We pitied her, Allan 
 for her tattered beauty, I for her proximity to 
 pneumonia, all the way back to Norfolk. 
 
 When we got to the Monticello we went to 
 our rooms to wash away the disturbing memory. 
 My laundry, which I had entrusted to the hotel 
 with entreaties written on the list to "return 
 positively Saturday night" had kept its promise 
 and was lying on my bed, done up in paper 
 wrappings and packed in a box as if it were 
 priceless raiment laundered by a modern Sans- 
 Gene. 
 
 "Hello!" I called into the next room to Allan. 
 [69] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 "Here's the laundry. We can go on to Wilming- 
 ton to-morrow, if you say." 
 
 "Hurrah!" Allan sang, appearing in the door 
 with his hair standing on end and most of his 
 face buried in a towel. "Now I can have a clean 
 shirt. I'll dress for dinner." 
 
 I opened the box, and there in mounds of pink 
 tissue I saw what had been my linen and Allan's, 
 mutilated, transformed, stiffened beyond sem- 
 blance to any earthly thing, blue as a cloudless 
 sky, degraded. The ribbons had become ropes, 
 the lace had taken on the horrible quality of 
 chenille curtains, the buttons were flattened into 
 oblivion. They cracked as I lifted them out — 
 shirtwaists, petticoats, silk shirts, stockings — 
 
 "All ruined!" I wailed, suddenly falling in a 
 heap on the bed; "all ruined, and I have so — 
 little!" 
 
 Allan put his hand on my shoulder and patted 
 sympathetically. 
 
 "I'll buy more." 
 
 "You can't. They're ruined. They've been 
 run under a steam roller." I tossed a shower 
 of pink tissue wrappings up in the air. "Tissue 
 paper — string — pins — and four pounds of starch 
 — I could kill somebody!" 
 
 Allan raised his eyes and I saw a memory in 
 [70] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 them. '^Suppose you were in rags," he began. 
 "Suppose — " 
 
 But I had jumped up and was already pow- 
 dering my nose. "Fleaven save us," I gasped 
 through my tears; "vv^ho's complaining?" 
 
 [711 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 ON TO WILMINGTON, A WRECK, AND A LITTLE 
 DISSERTATION ON PULLMAN CARS 
 
 E had breakfast at half-past six with the 
 mistaken intention of being on time 
 for an eight o'clock train to Wilming- 
 ton. From the dining-room windows 
 of the Monticello, while a sleepy waiter served 
 us coffee 'n rolls, we saw the moon set and the sun 
 rise over Norfolk Harbor. It was all very 
 beautiful and rather an adventure for me for I 
 almost never see a sunrise. 
 
 Allan had carefully paid the bill while I was 
 dressing, so there was no excuse to unburden my 
 laundry grievance to the night-clerk. Besides, 
 there was small hope of redress, as I was wear- 
 ing one of the shirtwaists. I had carefully con- 
 cealed it under my coat, but its appalling starchi- 
 ness gave me a pouter pigeon expression. Every 
 time I moved my degraded and transformed 
 lingerie cracked like a pistol shot. So I left the 
 Monticello with black looks, forgetting how 
 much I had liked the coffee, the orchestra and 
 my comfortable bed. 
 
 [72] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 We were ferried over to our train in a barge 
 drawn, or rather nosed ahead, by a tug. The 
 mysterious lady who had puzzled us so the night 
 before crossed with us. She was still bare- 
 headed and wore the thinnest sort of a meagre 
 black jacket which was too long in the waist 
 and too short in the sleeves. And this time she 
 carried a book and a travelling bag, although 
 what on earth she could have put in it baffled me 
 utterly. She sat very quietly while we admired 
 the tilt of her fine head and her really beauti- 
 ful profile. She seemed to be perfectly indififer- 
 ent to the stares of the men and the curiosity of 
 the women as if it were the usual thing for young 
 beauties with white hands and threadbare 
 clothes to go about alone, hatless, and stagger- 
 ing under a heavy travelling bag. 
 
 "She is either a fanatic, a criminal or an 
 actress," Allan decided after a long stare. 
 
 But I thought secretly that she was more prob- 
 ably a young person with "ideas," one of those 
 heroic Joans of modern society who believe in 
 turning the conventions inside out. I knew that 
 if I should ask her why she affected a flutter of 
 rags at the elbows she would answer quietly, 
 "Because I am a free spirit," or some utter rot 
 like that. We can be as eccentric as we like as 
 long as our eccentricity is invisible. It is not 
 
 [73] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 generally understood that the invisible kind of 
 eccentricity is dangerous. No one would think 
 of staring at a sober, unobtrusive passerby whose 
 brain, nicely hidden from public scrutiny, is 
 plotting the overthrow of a government or the 
 assassination of a king. But let us go harmlessly 
 barefoot, or take a naive fancy to walking 
 backward, and we become objects of suspicion 
 and aversion. The mysterious lady, I felt cer- 
 tain, was neither a criminal, a fanatic or an 
 actress, and she was probably reading "Elsie 
 Dinsmore." 
 
 It was still very early when the ferry drew 
 away from Norfolk and, poked by the energetic 
 little tug, edged across the harbour to the wharf 
 where our train was waiting for us. The light 
 was crisp and brilliant; it gilded the breasts and 
 wings of wheeling gulls that followed us, and 
 turned our wake into a churning froth of gold. 
 We crossed the bow of a big, grey naval collier 
 coming down from the Yard at Portsmouth on 
 her way to sea. I don't suppose she is the tallest 
 ship in the world, but she towered over us like 
 a thin-sliced skyscraper, the sun glinting along 
 her sides and rimming the sails and spars with a 
 fiery glitter. How beautiful everything was! 
 Fresh, boisterous, golden morning, the sparkle 
 of the sea and the heady swell of it! Looking 
 
 [74] 
 

 IT WAS STILL \LRV KARLV WTIKN THE FERKV DREW 
 AWAY FROM NORFOLK 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 back, we had a last glimpse of Norfolk and the 
 familiar Anheuser-Busch sign which must be 
 such a source of misery and bitter suggestion to 
 the wet voters of Virginia. 
 
 The mysterious lady and her travelling bag 
 followed us into our Pullman and aroused the 
 porter to a frenzy of curiosity by looking like 
 a waif and behaving like a languid princess. 
 She read and yawned delicately and read again, 
 with her tattered shoes displayed on a cushion, 
 and the porter was so stunned that he offered 
 her a paper bag for the hat that she didn't have. 
 I thought of bribing him to find out what she 
 was reading, but I was so afraid that it might 
 be Schopenhauer and not "Elsie Dinsmore" that 
 I hesitated too long. 
 
 At a small way-station not far from Norfolk 
 she got off, and walked straight into the arms 
 of a good-looking boy who was waiting for her 
 on the station platform. He was dressed for all 
 the world like a 
 
 *'Ah do declare!" chortled the porter, who 
 had pressed his nose flatter than ever against the 
 window-pane. "Foh de Lo'd's sake!" 
 
 "Movies!" I said. 
 
 "Ah do declare," snickered the porter, "he's 
 done dress' up like a cowboy. Jes' foh all de 
 world like one, yessah. Foh de Lo'd's sake!" 
 
 [75] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 "Movies," said Allan disgustedly. 
 
 Perhaps. But I would rather believe that 
 she had travelled the world over, hatless, to kiss 
 him in the shadow of his sombrero, for it was 
 big enough for two. 
 
 After that we edged around the Dismal 
 Swamp for miles. The trees are gaunt and bone- 
 grey as skeletons, but they spread tenaciously at 
 the roots, like giants with their feet spread wide 
 apart, and get a foothold in the shallow water. 
 I had expected to see Spanish moss swinging 
 like witches' hair from the branches, but 
 there was none. Festooned and looping vines 
 hung in tangled confusion, and the dropsical 
 trunks of the pallid trees were grotesque and 
 melancholy, but it was not the lush and tropic 
 forest I had pictured. I could not believe that 
 the Virginia soil was productive, or conceive of 
 the inhabitants being anything but web-footed, 
 if all the rest of the State was like this — an end- 
 less chain of puddles and tangled swamps laced 
 with vines and clogged with bush growth. 
 
 But there are fourteen millionaire farmers in 
 Norfolk County, Virginia, and farmers can't 
 become millionaires without farms. (Unless 
 they go into munitions — but that, of course, is 
 outside my contention !) The eight o'clock train 
 to Wilmington must make a point of avoiding 
 
 [76] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 the fertile miles of Norfolk County's famous 
 truck-farms. Simply because Tom Moore and 
 Longfellow wrote ballads about the Dismal 
 Swamp, tourists are supposed to hanker for a 
 glimpse of its ashen desolation. I, for one, 
 would have preferred to see the checkerboard 
 landscape where the fruits and vegetables we 
 buy in New York at the early morning market 
 are picked "the day before." 
 
 The Virginia farmer has every facility for 
 selling his crops; he has an elaborate network of 
 railways at his disposal and a great port at his 
 very front door. North, South, East and West 
 are open to him and his is the most spectacular 
 market-place in the world. The next time I go 
 to market (I don't go now, for I am raising my 
 own vegetables in the tennis-court) , I shall re- 
 member the sunny beauty of a Virginian day 
 and perhaps marketing will take on romance 
 from the memory. Who knows, if I am lucky 
 I may buy one of Upton's potatoes! Upton is 
 the Virginian potato king. He supplies the local 
 farmers with fertiliser and seed; he sells the 
 crop and divides the profit. It has been darkly 
 but perhaps not truthfully hinted that by stor- 
 ing the potatoes in his warehouses at Norfolk 
 he has "cornered" the local potato market. At 
 any rate, potatoes are making him rich, and I 
 
 [77] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 could not help feeling chagrined that the value 
 of a potato is higher than the value of a word! 
 Another Norfolk man, Mr. Thomas Rowland, 
 turned back the rich Virginia soil and discov- 
 ered an agricultural gold nugget in the humble 
 peanut. He staked out the first claims a long 
 time ago when peanuts were popularly despised 
 as nigger-food. Although the African slaves 
 had for years planted their own peanut fields, 
 no one except Mr. Rowland realised that there 
 was any commercial value in the little "hard- 
 shelled potatoes." Mr. Rowland was a man 
 with a vision, and like most visionaries he was 
 misunderstood. He believed in peanuts and 
 eventually became the little father of the indus- 
 try. I wonder whether he dreamed of peanut 
 brittle and peanut butter and a thousand and 
 one other peanut delicacies? I wonder whether 
 he foresaw the amazing popularity of the corner 
 peanut stand and heard the chirruping steam 
 whistle, the thin, persistent note which has come 
 to mean "hot-roasted peanuts" all over the 
 world? If you are sentimental about such 
 things, doff your hat to Mr. Rowland ! I did not 
 know until I was decidedly grown up that pea- 
 nuts grow under ground, and it was still more 
 surprising to discover that the vines are cut and 
 stacked around poles for all the world like 
 
 [78] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 miniature copies of those Austrian hay-mounds 
 one sees in Karnten and sometimes in the Tyrol. 
 
 The train to Wihnington ambled along like a 
 Virginia creeper as far as Eura and there it 
 came to a dead stop for an hour. The porter 
 and the conductor disappeared, and save for one 
 other traveller, who was mercifully sound 
 asleep, we were left alone in the Pullman. A 
 drowsy, stupefying calm settled down on us. We 
 read our newspapers because there was nothing 
 to see at Eura except the station hogs, and they 
 had so little regard for their own lives, or so 
 great a faith in our permanence, that they runted 
 under the car wheels. At first we were sustained 
 by the thought that we were waiting on a switch 
 for some thundering express train to pass on its 
 way to Norfolk. When that hope died, I began 
 to wonder whether we hadn't perhaps been 
 ''slipped." I remembered the horrible occasion 
 in England when I had fancied that I was going 
 from Liverpool to London and had had the poor 
 luck to be in the Warwick car. The express 
 had roared on and the "slipped" car, unhooked 
 in the great steel comet's full flight, had clicked 
 into the Warwick station all on its own. 
 
 "Warwick, madam." 
 
 And a leisurely person opened the compart- 
 ment door and took my bags. 
 
 [79] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 "But I'm on the London Express!" 
 
 "I beg your pardon, madam. This is the slip 
 carriage for Warwick." 
 
 On the platform I stared wildly about for the 
 rest of the train. A puff of smoke on the horizon 
 showed me where it was. 
 
 "Slip carriage — " I began feebly. 
 
 "Yes, madam." 
 
 "It was, what d'you say, slipped on purpose?" 
 
 The leisurely person had looked at me with a 
 faint suspicion of pity. 
 
 "Oh, you were going to London?" He al- 
 lowed himself to smile. "It's 'ard, it is that, for 
 foreigners to find their way ab'at. If you spoke 
 English now — it wouldn't 'ave happened." 
 
 He picked up the last aitch with care and 
 turned his back on me. . . . 
 
 "Have we been slipped?" I asked Allan, when 
 Eura had become a fixture. 
 
 The other passenger, who turned out later to 
 be a lumber merchant from Norfolk, woke out 
 of an uncomfortable and crumpled slumber and 
 glanced at his watch. 
 
 "It must be a wreck," he said. "There usually 
 is one." 
 
 "Usually!" 
 
 "Well, nearly always. I'll go out and see." 
 
 He had a nice smile and endeared himself to 
 
 [80] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 us at once by using it. "You just watch that 
 razor-back hog stroppin' himself on the fence 
 until I come back," he said. 
 
 We waited, while the hog stropped. And sure 
 enough, it was a wreck. 
 
 "I hope you brought your lunch," our fellow- 
 traveller said, appearmg in the doorway again 
 with his engaging smile in action, "for we are 
 going to be six hours late. There are eight 
 freight cars off the track, all smashed to a tinder, 
 up yonder a mile or so. I don't reckon we'll 
 move on for some time. Would you like to walk 
 ahead and see the wreck?" 
 
 Apparently no one could tell us anything more 
 definite. The conductor, whom every one called 
 Captain Clarke or, popularly, "Cap," was sitting 
 on the station steps with his thumbs hooked 
 under his suspenders, his hat on the back of his 
 head and a cheery smile for every one. The 
 engineer was taking a nap on the cow-catcher, 
 the engine puffed slowly with a thin whistle, 
 like a snoring old man, and the Pullman porter 
 was flirting with some very dark ladies in the 
 Jim-Crow car. So we started on foot to see the 
 wreck. 
 
 All the inhabitants of Eura, white and black, 
 had decided to do the same thing and the rail- 
 road track looked like a promenade. There 
 
 [81] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 were tall, lanky tar-heels in snuff-coloured 
 jackets and mud-caked shoes, spitting and chew- 
 ing rhythmically; there were inconceivably 
 ragged negroes, tiny, barefooted pickaninnies 
 with rolling eyes and infectious grins, black 
 women with babies in their arms striding along 
 the tracks with the curiously free gait of the 
 African; there were farmers, hunters, and some 
 solemn white boys in city shoes who had ap- 
 parently come from Norfolk on our train, and, 
 bringing up the rear, Allan, the lumber mer- 
 chant and I. We all trudged toward a puff of 
 white smoke a mile and a half away. The air 
 was delicious, full of a delicate, heady pine 
 smell, resinous and fresh, and the sun was so 
 warm where it struck across my shoulders that 
 I had to take off my fur and finally my coat. 
 On both sides of the track a forest of short-leaf 
 pine fringed the top of a low embankment. We 
 were still on the skirts of the Dismal Swamp, a 
 sandy oasis in the endless stretches of water- 
 soaked land between Norfolk and Savannah. 
 
 For the first time I saw cotton growing. 
 "Only a po' little bunch," our Pullman acquaint- 
 ance apologised. But he groped through a wire 
 fence and picked a stalk of the pretty, snowy 
 stuff for me to wear as a bouquet. It was 
 thrilling to see a whole field of cotton, even if 
 
 [82] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 it was a po' little bunch. It was just as moving 
 to come on a field of cotton as it was to come face 
 to face with the Coliseum for the first time. 
 Cotton means the South, the romantic and allur- 
 ing South, just as the Coliseum means old Rome 
 and bloody gladiators and rows of virgins with 
 their thumbs turned down. It was just as mov- 
 ing to hold a stalk of cotton, dazzling white, be- 
 tween my fingers as it was to find an asphodel in 
 the Campagna. And I shall be sorry if the time 
 ever comes when there is nothing I will not have 
 seen that can make me feel that way! 
 
 A broken shoe on the driving wheel, what- 
 ever that is, had caused the accident, and as the 
 engineer said, it was some smash! He was 
 sitting on the bank near the track, looking shaken 
 and pale and contemplating the wreckage with 
 an almost malicious pleasure. He had been in 
 a wreck, he had saved his skin, and, believe him, 
 it was some smash. 
 
 "God was kind to the live stock," he said 
 morosely. 
 
 And God had been kind. The engine had 
 ploughed up three hundred feet of track into a 
 maize of twisted rail and tinder-wood, but it 
 still stood upright, sunken to its knees in sand 
 and wreckage. Right behind it there was a box- 
 car full of live-stock, miraculously right-side up, 
 
 [83] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 too. Behind that the eight smashed cars lay 
 sideways, tipped on end, spilled into the ditch, 
 split open, cracked, splintered and pulverised. 
 
 "If you don't call that Providence," the en- 
 gineer demanded, "what on earth do you call 
 it?" 
 
 We went up close to peer between the slats at 
 the huddled cows, the grunting pigs, the 
 stricken, shivering little calves, and tried to 
 reach their soft, moist noses with handfuls of 
 grass. I began to wonder why they had been 
 saved at all since they were on their way to 
 Norfolk to be slaughtered. There is a story, 
 you remember, about a man who was being 
 rushed to the hospital — rushed so fast, in fact, 
 that the ambulance collided with a fire en- 
 gine. . . . 
 
 Providence had been generous. No one was 
 hurt from the engineer and fireman to the small- 
 est, terrified pink and black pig. But the solemn 
 crowds that stood along the track contemplating 
 the spectacular cataclysm would have had a 
 much better time if some one had been obliging 
 enough to break his head. Even mildly exciting 
 human wreckage, a smashed leg or an arm, 
 would have cheered them up. It was too blood- 
 less. Otherwise it was a fine wreck. Vaguely 
 disappointed, armies of small boys pressed 
 
 [84] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 around the engineer and probed for particu- 
 lars. 
 
 "Wa'nt you scairt?" 
 
 "Didn't it bump awful?" 
 
 "Did you git time to put on the brakes?" 
 
 The engineer glowered at them. "I told you," 
 he said, "it was a smash. I didn't know nothin', 
 I just jumped." 
 
 One small boy, freckled beyond recognition, 
 bare-footed and wild-eyed, had more imagina- 
 tion than any of us. He offered a sop to our 
 thirst for horrors. 
 
 "I guess," he said slowly, "I guess there's 
 plenty of dead men under them cars — all 
 smashed to pieces, I guess." 
 
 We left the crowd still staring and trudged 
 back the long, hot mile and a half to Eura again. 
 Captain Clarke was sitting where we had left 
 him on the station steps, but he had a dinner- 
 plate on his knees, and oh. Lord, how good his 
 dinner looked! He waved a fork at us. 
 
 "You'd better go over yonder and have din- 
 ner — that farmhouse behind the picket fence, 
 just where you see the white hog. They'll give 
 you something, I reckon. We're waiting for 
 the wrecking train. I'll call you when they let 
 us by. Scat now!" 
 
 [85] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 "Can you give us dinner?" we asked at the 
 farmhouse. 
 
 And heaven be praised they reckoned they 
 could. We were shown into the parlour to wait 
 until something was "warmed up" for us. It 
 was a parlour out of a story book, and we sat 
 in silence trying to control our expressions. We 
 had not believed that such parlours existed be- 
 low the Mason-Dixon line. There were rows 
 of pink conch shells on the mantel shelf. There 
 was an organ. And a framed "What is Home 
 Without Mother." Yes, really! And crayon 
 portraits of grandfather and grandmother, 
 grandfather whiskered and grandmother terri- 
 fied. While we waited a young man with red 
 hair and protruding teeth came in to entertain 
 us. He hoped we were all well and remarked 
 that the mud was unusually bad, even for that 
 time of year. And I noticed, mentally putting 
 my hand over grandfather's whiskers, that in 
 twenty years the red-headed lisper would look 
 exactly like the crayon portrait. A dejected 
 white hound with a ponderous and very plebeian 
 tail sat in the middle of the floor and whacked 
 in a politely bored manner while we discussed 
 the unseasonable mud. 
 
 Dinner was served in a long shed behind the 
 house, and you are not obliged to believe me 
 
 [86] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 when I tell you what we had to eat, although it 
 is the gospel truth. We had smothered chicken, 
 roast beef and corned beef, fresh pork and 
 corned pork; we had turnip salad and hot, 
 mashed turnip; we had potatoes and biscuits, 
 soused hog's head, cheese, corn-bread, spoon- 
 bread, pickled peaches, beef stew, preserved 
 fruit, pound cake and chowchow, tea, coflfee 
 and milk, beans and bacon. We began in the 
 middle and ate outward. In my eagerness and 
 confusion I put peaches and hog's head on the 
 same plate and sugared my spoon-bread. The 
 chicken was cold and jellied; in time I aban- 
 doned the hog's head to sample it, and was then 
 so intrigued by the corned pork that I left every- 
 thing, even a small beginning in beef stew, for 
 pork and more pork. 
 
 "Oh, Lord," I said devoutly, putting down my 
 knife and fork long enough to utter thanks, 
 "give me time to finish!" 
 
 But a lanky and terrifically whiskered indi- 
 vidual sent at top speed by Cap' Clarke arrived 
 in a breathless condition to warn us that the 
 wreckers had come and that our train was going 
 to "move on up" to the wreck. 
 
 Allan rose with a groan, and somewhat im- 
 peded by a mouthful of soused hog's head, asked 
 "How much?" of our hostess. 
 
 [87] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 For such a Rabelaisian feast we rather ex- 
 pected to pay dearly. But our prodigal hostess 
 dropped her eyes and explained that fifty cents 
 was what she usually got. We didn't wait to 
 discover whether she considered us usual or un- 
 usual guests, but paid her and ran through the 
 ankle-deep mud to our train. 
 
 Captain Clarke, with his watch in his hand 
 and one foot on the cow-catcher in an attitude 
 reminiscent of Du Maurier's "Trilby," waited 
 until we had swung aboard (very figuratively 
 speaking), and then, with dramatic wiggle-wag- 
 gles, signalled to the engineer to "move on up" 
 to the wreck. 
 
 With our engine's nose touching the wrecked 
 engine's nose so that they looked for all the 
 world like a pair of friendly dogs, we came to a 
 final halt and were transferred — on foot, of 
 course — to another train which had been sent 
 up from Rockymount for us. Small, wobbly 
 bridges were laid across the most impassable 
 parts of the journey, and train hands were sta- 
 tioned every few yards to see that the exhausted 
 passengers reached the emergency train. And 
 by this time it was hot, hot! Allan and the per- 
 spiring porter staggered under two of our suit- 
 cases; I manoeuvred the third. First I bore it 
 with my left hand; then I set it down, wiped 
 
 [88] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 my brow, and picked it up -again with my right 
 hand. Then I stumbled forward, struggling to 
 lift the beastly thing with both hands. And 
 finally when strength had ebbed, I put it on the 
 ground and rolled it before me like a stevedore 
 rolling a barrel. The wrecked train was at least 
 a mile long; it curled like a snake around an 
 almost Imperceptible bend in the tracks which 
 the porter assured us was the most dangerous 
 curve between Norfolk and Wilmington. 
 
 "We gets wrecked just heah right along," he 
 said. 
 
 And when pressed for details, he added non- 
 chalantly, "Oh, most every week," which did not 
 tend to cheer us. 
 
 Judging from what I saw of the negroes in the 
 South, they move about like the nomad tribes of 
 Egypt. I cannot imagine how they are able to 
 afford the dubious luxury of Southern travel, 
 for the distances are enormous, and in spite of 
 mileage books, which are supposed to reduce the 
 expense of long journeys, the three-cent miles 
 are ticked off at an alarming speed. When we 
 were planning our trip we spoke of "running 
 over to Tampa from Jacksonville," or, blithely, 
 of "stopping of¥ at Georgetown for a few hours 
 on our way from Wilmington to Charleston." 
 But a day-time journey between any of the 
 
 [89] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 Southern seaports is an all-day journey, and at 
 the end of our tour we found that we had spent 
 exactly twelve days in Pullman cars and a week 
 at sea! Connections were dubious, trains were 
 late, and time and time again we found it im- 
 possible to buy parlour-car reservations before 
 actually boarding our train, when we had to wait 
 anxiously until the porter had satisfied himself 
 that there were, or were not, two vacancies. All 
 of the express trains came from the North, 
 ''booked through" to the resorts of Southern 
 Florida, and we usually made our entrance into 
 a Pullman already crowded with Northern 
 tourists who had settled themselves, in any chair 
 at all, to play cards, to sleep or to knit. Our ar- 
 rival always created a feeling of aversion, more 
 or less openly expressed. We felt like social 
 outcasts while the spirited and determined 
 home-towners were being removed, card tables, 
 knitting, fruit baskets, newspapers and all, from 
 chairs not legally their own and deposited in 
 others to make way for us. When a Pullman 
 "sleeper" is made up for the day there is no room 
 for luggage; there are no racks to accommodate 
 it, and it is next to impossible to squeeze a suit- 
 case under the heavily-cushioned chairs. The 
 system makes one long for the European com- 
 partment car which is provided with a corridor 
 
 [90] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 where cramped and weary passengers can stretch 
 themselves, and even indulge in a brisk little 
 promenade without having to reel up and down 
 an aisle which is cluttered with travelling bags, 
 fat cushions and an intricate confusion of human 
 legs and feet. I would rather sit up all night 
 than undress behind the revealing curtains of a 
 lower berth, not to speak of attempting the acro- 
 batic contortions necessary to an upper-berth 
 disrobing! Is anything saved by the system ex- 
 cept perhaps a surrender to the aesthetic needs 
 of travellers? There is nothing more humiliat- 
 ing than trying to manage hooks and eyes when 
 you are wrapped in a green curtain and tangled 
 in sheets and pillow cases. There is nothing 
 more damnable than washing and combing be- 
 fore a mirror which is coveted by twenty-five 
 other women. Why isn't the compartment night- 
 coach possible in America? We boast of the 
 speed, efficiency, dustlessness and safety of our 
 railroads, but travelling at night in the United 
 States is made a degrading and tortuous ex- 
 perience. 
 
 The special train which had come from 
 Rockymount had no Pullman at all. The ne- 
 groes were herded into one car. We were 
 herded into another to languish in the fetid at- 
 mosphere of po' white trash, orange peels, pea- 
 
 [91] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 nut shells and babies. The windows were 
 hermetically sealed and resisted the apoplectic 
 efiforts of Allan and the lumber merchant. We 
 had been delayed for five hours, and should have 
 been nearing the end of our journey if Fate, or 
 that dangerous curve, had not arranged that we 
 should travel through North Carolina in the aft- 
 ernoon instead of the morning. As the hot sun 
 slanted lower and lower into the West, it rimmed 
 the endless forests of short-leaf pine with gold 
 and cast long shadows, grotesque and contorted, 
 across the shrub. Now and then the monotony 
 of the pine forests gave way to groves of green 
 trees or to wide fields of cotton, and because I 
 had been taught to recognise the leguminous 
 peanut, I saw whole acres given over to its culti- 
 vation. 
 
 In Rockymount we were in the centre of a 
 great tobacco-growing country. We were told 
 by a polite but uncertain young man at the sta- 
 tion that we could get a train on to Wilmington 
 "somewhere around ten o'clock," so we had sup- 
 per at the nearest hotel, which lived up to our 
 idea of what a Southern hotel should look like 
 by carrying its portico several stories high and 
 holding it aloft with slender, white pillars. The 
 dining-room was cool and clean and apparently 
 patronised exclusively by fat travelling sales- 
 
 [92] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 men. The young waitresses wore pretty blue 
 linen dresses and seemed possessed of a fierce 
 respectability. The lumber merchant, who was 
 still with us, smiled his engaging smile and de- 
 scribed in eloquent Virginian the state of our 
 appetites. If he had been offering to elope with 
 the haughty blue-linen waitress, her scorn and 
 indifference could not have been surpassed. She 
 dropped her eyes, passed one limp, white hand 
 over the amazing smoothness of her pompadour 
 and ignored the jest. 
 
 ''Will you have your chicken fried," she 
 asked, in a cold voice, "or boiled?" 
 
 "Boiled," said the lumber merchant briefly. 
 And his smile died like the sun going behind a 
 cloud. 
 
 After dinner we walked through the quiet, 
 well-paved streets of the little city. A white 
 moon sailed high behind fleecy clouds, caught 
 in an enormous hoop of opalescent light. The 
 night was mild and still, with scarcely a flicker 
 of wind to stir the tops of the trees. There is 
 something fascinating about such a transient 
 hour in a strange city. There is a strong sense 
 of unreality in the brief pause among things only 
 half seen, among people whose lives are wholly 
 mysterious. The lighted windows of the houses 
 mean nothing friendly or inviting. The names 
 
 [93] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 of the streets are ciphers. There is no direction, 
 no purpose, no familiarity. You walk through 
 a little world forever alien to you and sniff an 
 atmosphere "between two trains." All I remem- 
 ber of Rockymount is a lighted church before 
 whose open door we paused a moment to watch 
 a minister thundering inaudibly at a patient con- 
 gregation. And, again, the shadowy outlines 
 of a big tobacco warehouse, where the tobacco 
 leaves are brought to be assorted, graded and 
 labelled, and then sold at auction to buyers from 
 all over the world. With tobacco selling as 
 high as twenty cents a pound, I could imagine 
 some lively bidding under the wide-spreading 
 roofs of those Rockymount warehouses! I re- 
 member, too, a broad shopping street inconven- 
 iently divided by a network of railroad tracks. 
 And I remember that I began to notice for the 
 first time a broadcast politeness everywhere, 
 soft voices, gentle manners and a bland good 
 humour. 
 
 "We must be really in the South," I said to 
 Allan, "for all the men, middle class and upper 
 class, say 'yessir' to each other." 
 
 "Yessir," agreed the lumber merchant, "they 
 do!" 
 
 And while we all laughed, we had to agree 
 that Southern manners are as good as they are 
 
 [94] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 famous. Everywhere we met gentle, courteous 
 people. No one ever seemed to be in too great 
 a hurry to answer our questions or to set us on 
 the right path when our tourist feet had sadly 
 gone astray, or to give us helpful advice. If 
 the Mason-Dixon line has not been wholly 
 erased, it is not likely that North and South will 
 ever again trip over it. Our differences have 
 resolved into family spats — in the vital issues 
 we will stand together. England and America 
 have been quarrelling for years over the proper, 
 decent and civilised way to eat eggs. England 
 took a stand and said, "Eggs shall be eaten in 
 the shell." America, hurt to the quick, took a 
 stand and said, "Eggs shall be eaten in a cup." 
 For years the resentment alternately smouldered 
 and flared. And now we have witnessed the 
 miracle of Americans eating eggs in the shell 
 and Englishmen scraping eggs out of a cup. 
 Allies! Hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, 
 eggs any way you say, brother! So it goes. , . . 
 Hate dies more easily than love and it is hard 
 to remember an old pain. Wherever we went 
 in the South the moving-picture theatres were 
 showing the most incendiary and poignant Civil 
 War story that has ever been told — "The Birth 
 of a Nation." Posters of Grant and Lee clasp- 
 ing hands were displayed everywhere; the Ku- 
 
 [95] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 Klux Klan thundered across every signboard; 
 all the bitterness and tragedy of the Reconstruc- 
 tion was enacted night after night in the flicker- 
 ing darkness of the Cinemas to crowded houses. 
 It seems that we have become dispassionate, and 
 that hate and rancour have been buried with 
 another generation. Only the Southerner says, 
 very apologetically, "Allies! You may eat fried 
 chicken and hominy. But please excuse me, 
 brother, from pork and beans!" 
 
 The lumber merchant escorted us to our train 
 where we had a joyous reunion with Captain 
 Clarke, who was finishing out his run to Wil- 
 mington on a special train run either for our 
 benefit or else for the purely mathematical pur- 
 pose of meeting Captain Clarke's professional 
 schedule. For we were the only passengers. 
 And at four in the morning, just as the first faint 
 blueness of dawn was pulsing in the east, we 
 staggered into Wilmington and startled the 
 sleeping night clerk of the Orton Hotel by 
 pounding on the front door. It hardly seemed 
 worth while to go to bed, but we went with 
 enthusiasm, drawing the shades to shut out the 
 deepening light and falling to sleep before our 
 soot-grimed cheeks touched the pillows. 
 
 I woke with a terrifying sense of unfamiliar- 
 ity. Which was the door and which was the 
 
 [96] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 window? Was it moonlight or sunlight that 
 fell in a dazzling band across my eyes? I sat 
 bolt upright, and shrieked in a panic, "Allan! 
 What's this?" 
 
 "What's what?" came his reassuring voice 
 from the next room. 
 
 "This place?" 
 
 "Wilmington." A pause, then a long sigh. 
 "Isn't it?" 
 
 "North Carolina?" 
 
 "I reckon so." 
 
 "Oh, for heaven's sake, you're not going to 
 cultivate a Southern accent, are you?" I wailed, 
 and fell flat on my pillows again. 
 
 Suddenly there was a terrific shout. Allan 
 appeared in the doorway, wrapped in bedclothes 
 like the ghost in "Hamlet" and brandishing his 
 watch with violent and hysterical gestures. "Do 
 you know what time it is?" he roared. 
 
 "No," I said, in a thin, small voice. 
 
 "It's three o'clock!" 
 
 "Morning or afternoon?" 
 
 "Three o'clock," he repeated, biting ofif each 
 word with the intensity of a Booth-Barrett tra- 
 gedian, "in the afternoon." 
 
 I tried to brush the offending streak of sun- 
 light out of my eyes. "Wilmington, North Caro- 
 lina," I said dreamily, "three o'clock in the aft- 
 
 [97] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 ernoon. . . . Telephone down to the office and 
 ask them to send breakfast up — at once." 
 
 ''And when," Allan asked in a tragic voice, 
 "do you expect to have dinner?" 
 
 [98] 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 PALMS AND SPANISH MOSS AT LAST, AND WE 
 
 MAKE OUR BOW TO ARISTOCRATIC 
 
 MADAME CHARLESTON 
 
 E were undoubtedly in the South at 
 last for the air was mild and the sun, 
 when it shone at all, was deliciously 
 warm. We knew we were in the 
 South because we saw palms growing out of 
 doors — not the potted variety so popular at 
 weddings, funerals and Tammany Hall recep- 
 tions, but tall, crisp palms actually thriving in 
 the open air in mid-winter. It filled us with 
 delight when we realised that we had at last 
 attained a climate where palms would grow out 
 of doors, yet with characteristic impatience wc 
 were not content to witness one miracle but de- 
 manded another. 
 
 Was there any Spanish moss in Wilmington? 
 We stopped at the first drugstore and asked the 
 burning question of a startled clerk who ex- 
 pected a demand for bicarbonate of soda or cold 
 cream and had to pull himself together before 
 
 [^9] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 he could answer. Spanish moss? Well, he 
 reckoned so — had we tried Greenfield Park? 
 
 We had not. The clerk followed us to the 
 door and explained the trolley system of Wil- 
 mington in detail, confusing us to such an extent 
 that we decided to walk to Greenfield Park. 
 Alas! for our over-zealous enthusiasm! The 
 road was thick with white dust and led us 
 through Wilmington and into its forlorn and 
 dismal suburbs. We had heard, to quote a 
 proud citizen of Wilmington, that "no buzzard 
 had set foot in the city for over three years," 
 and although we did not know whether the black 
 scavengers had a tacit understanding with the 
 city authorities, it is perfectly true that the only 
 buzzards we saw lingered morosely in the sub- 
 urbs. We admired the big birds for their leis- 
 urely manners and for the upward tilt of their 
 wide wings. Like darkies, they seemed to en- 
 joy warm, sunny places, long hours of sleepy 
 contemplation and 'most anything to eat. 
 
 Greenfield proved to be an ungarnished wil- 
 derness of pines and live oaks, the summer para- 
 dise of merry-making Wilmington. The pavil- 
 ions and the restaurants were closed and the 
 piers and bath-houses that fringe the lake were 
 deserted. But there was moss — lots and lots of 
 it — hanging in bedraggled festoons from the 
 
 [100] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 branches of a row of decaying trees that rose out 
 of the centre of the lake like drenched skeletons. 
 We stood on the shore and contemplated the 
 spectacle as we would have stared for the first 
 time at the pyramids of Egypt. Allan strove for 
 enthusiasm, but his voice was hollow. He said 
 that the ghostly trees, the ashen, pendant moss, 
 the dull blackness of the water, reminded him of 
 the fantastic illustrations of Dulac and Kay 
 Nielsen. But I knew that Spanish moss had 
 been a terrible disappointment, for he made no 
 move to open his pochade box or to settle down 
 on the water's edge for an hour of enthusiastic 
 work. 
 
 We were very polite to each other as we 
 skirted the lake, avoiding any mention of Span- 
 ish moss as if we had created an egregious social 
 error in not liking it. It was as if we had come 
 face to face with a source of universal enthusi- 
 asm, like the Sphinx, and had felt no emotion 
 at all. We avoided the issue by striking up a 
 conversation with a small boy who had been 
 fishing in the lake and was tying his boat with 
 vicious jerks to one of the tumble-down recrea- 
 tion piers. 
 
 ''Any fish in the lake?" we asked. 
 
 "Yep. Bass." 
 
 "Any luck to-day?" 
 
 [101] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 The small boy scowled. ''Nope. Caught one, 
 but he slipped through a crack in the boat." 
 
 "Oh I Is it nice here in summer?" 
 
 "Yep. There's a band." 
 
 You must admit that we were rather pathetic 
 about it. We followed the small fisherman as 
 far as the edge of the park, and when he turned 
 aside there, we boarded a convenient trolley car 
 because we were afraid to be left alone. It was 
 an absorbing trolley car and occupied our whole 
 attention because the motorman "doubled his 
 role" and took the conductor's part, dashing 
 from the front of the car to the rear and dis- 
 playing such feverish energy that we wondered 
 whether he drew double pay, like a protean 
 actor, for the feat. 
 
 But such speculation could not forever put off 
 the question of Spanish moss. Back in Wilming- 
 ton again, the truth came out. "I don't like it," 
 I whispered to Allan. "Do I dare say so in the 
 book?" 
 
 Allan confessed that he would as soon slander 
 his great grandmother as to blacken the reputa- 
 tion of Spanish moss. "It is the mainstay of the 
 Southern landscape," he said, "the prop, the 
 keystone." And he added solemnly, "They 
 won't read another page." 
 
 But you will, won't you, if I declare myself 
 
 [102] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 here and now a profound lover of other South- 
 ern specialties — golden jessamine and roses, 
 honeysuckle, fragrant box hedges, nightingales 
 and mocking birds, plantation voices, good man- 
 ners and beautiful architecture? These things 
 are not fallacies south of the Mason-Dixon line, 
 they are adorable realities. Only I cannot write 
 myself down, being a sort of feminine George 
 Washington when it comes to my likes and dis- 
 likes, as an open-mouthed worshipper of an ash- 
 en, destructive parasite which destroys beautiful 
 trees and, if given a good start, thinks so little 
 of its environment that it will grow, and flourish, 
 on a telegraph wire! Spanish moss takes its be- 
 ing and its sustenance from the air, like slander 
 and evil, and thrives, like slander and evil, on 
 the death of something beautiful. I would tear 
 its thick webs down from the gnarled branches 
 of the beautiful oaks and give the trees life again, 
 nor would I shed a tear for the over-advertised 
 parasite, since I have shed them all for its vic- 
 tims. 
 
 Wilmmgton is so far from the sea that it might 
 never have been a port at all if a wide stretch 
 of water had not decided to enter the land by 
 way of Cape Fear, bringing commerce to Wil- 
 mington to-day just as it brought pirates and 
 privateers a hundred years ago. The pirates 
 
 [103] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 have long since been sent where pirates ought 
 to go, but commerce still comes to Wilmington 
 in spite of the fact that the city's chief import 
 has no way of getting out of war-locked Ger- 
 many. Two of the last German ships to bring 
 fertiliser chemicals to Wilmington are interned 
 in the harbour to-day, a striking proof that Bri- 
 tannia still rules the waves. Chile supplies the 
 deficit and Wilmington, undeterred by war, 
 sends ship after ship loaded with cotton down 
 through Cape Fear to the sea. 
 
 Cape Fear's dark history attracted us and all 
 through one merry morning we went in pursuit 
 of it, going from bookstore to bookstore only to 
 be met with polite regrets and the assurance that 
 if we could "get hold" of Mr. James Sprunk 
 we could learn all there is to know about Cape 
 Fear. Mr. Sprunk had written a book called 
 "Cape Fear Legends," stories of buccaneers and 
 ghosts and pleasant adventurers, and while no 
 one in Wilmington possessed a copy every one 
 had heard of Mr. Sprunk's knowledge of the 
 North Carolina legends. We finally went to 
 Mr. Sprunk's ofiice, lured by the growing fame 
 of his book, and made our embarrassed plea to a 
 positive clerk who told us that Mr. Sprunk was 
 "in conference" and would we please write down 
 our reasons for calling. He thrust a pad of 
 
 [104] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 paper and a pencil through his wicker cage and 
 we fled, feeling that by no possible stretch of 
 newsgatherer's impudence could we send word 
 to Mr. Sprunk "in conference" that we wanted 
 to read his '^Cape Fear Legends." We went 
 back to the Orton Hotel, and after a conference 
 of our own decided upon the cowardly expedient 
 of calling Mr. Sprunk on the telephone. In a 
 thin, small voice I gave the number to the Wil- 
 mington exchange while Allan hovered in the 
 background with one hand on the door-knob 
 ready for flight. 
 
 "Hello!" 
 
 The die was cast. "Is this Mr. Sprunk?" said 
 I. 
 
 "No, this is Mr. Sprunk's secretary. Mr. 
 Sprunk is in conference " 
 
 "Good Lord," I whispered hoarsely to Allan, 
 "he is still " 
 
 "I beg your pardon? Who is this, please?" 
 
 I confessed in a panic, "Miss Cram," and 
 halted miserably. Allan opened the door and 
 balanced on the threshold. 
 
 "Miss Cram?" 
 
 "Yes — I, well, you see, I want to find out 
 something about the Cape Fear legends — pirates, 
 Indians and all that sort of thing." 
 
 The voice at the other end of the 'phone grew 
 
 [105] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 querulous. ''I can't hear a word you say. 
 Louder, please!" 
 
 Louder, please! 
 
 "Here," I shrieked at Allan, ''you explain 
 
 But he was gone, calling over his shoulder as 
 he ran, "Ring off, you fool!" 
 
 I rang off, unable to bear the spluttering and 
 justifiable rage that burned the wires across Wil- 
 mington. I went down stairs, still blushing 
 hotly to the rim of my hat, and found Allan in 
 cozy conversation with the hotel clerk. "Here's 
 a man who can help us," Allan shouted, as if 
 jaunty nonchalance could efface the memory of 
 his cowardice. "Mr. Gregson here says to call 
 on the Star/' 
 
 "Mr. Gregson here" did not intend to be po- 
 litely sardonic for it was not his intention to 
 insinuate that we had hitched our wagon to a 
 comet. Like every one else in the South he was 
 kind to tourists in distress, and he meant the 
 morning newspaper when he advised our calling 
 on the Star, The Star was at home and received 
 us, in the genial person of Mr. Claussen, in the 
 editorial rooms in an atmosphere endearingly 
 familiar to me of proof-sheets and ink, clippings, 
 glue, encyclopaedias and waste-paper baskets. 
 Mr. Claussen is an enthusiastic believer in the 
 
 [106] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 new South, the inventor of its commercial slogan, 
 and one of its most brilliant editors. He would 
 not tell us about Cape Fear. "You must see Mr. 
 Sprunk for that," he said, and our hearts dropped 
 into our boots. But he did tell us about North 
 Carolina in the "Indian days," when the Chero- 
 kee and Tacawbe nations were still to be reck- 
 oned with as enemies of the white planter. The 
 early settlers were repeatedly massacred by the 
 Indians, the white women were carried away by 
 them and there was more than one instance of 
 "lost settlements" when whole groups of colo- 
 nists disappeared mysteriously and were never 
 seen or heard of again. South Carolina suffered 
 the same fate, for the Yemasses were encouraged 
 by the Spaniards of St. Augustine to attack the 
 English at Charleston and the Tuscaroras were 
 implacable enemies. Mrs. Ravenel in her de- 
 lightful book, "Charleston, the Place and the 
 People," says that "on the family tree of the 
 Bulls, opposite the name of John, youngest son 
 of the emigrant Stephen, stands 'first wife carried 
 ofif by Indians 1715.' They lived at Bulls near 
 Coosaw Island, just above St. Helena, and were 
 in the very track of the storm. He, too, became 
 an 'Indian fighter.' Another woman, Mrs. Bur- 
 rows, was taken by a 'scalping party' and car- 
 ried with her child to St. Augustine. The child 
 
 [107] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 cried and was instantly killed, and she was 
 ordered, under pain of death, not to weep for 
 him! After being kept a prisoner for several 
 years, she was allowed to return to Charles- 
 ton, where she told the governor that the 
 'Huspah King' who had captured her had told 
 her that his orders from Spain were to kill every 
 white man and bring every negro alive to St. 
 Augustine and that rewards were given for such 
 services." 
 
 So were the Indians made the dupes of un- 
 scrupulous white men and so were the harassed 
 colonists tried sorely in their efforts to settle the 
 wilderness of America. To-day the Cherokees 
 and Tacawbes of North Carolina are practically 
 extinct; a few of them live on reservations in 
 the interior of the State, a broken and dying 
 remnant of a great people. It will not be long 
 before all memory of them will be lost forever, 
 and like the mysterious Etruscans of Italy only 
 their burial mounds and broken fragments of 
 beautiful pottery, arrow heads, primitive battle 
 axes and agricultural implements will tell the 
 story of their amazing and brief existence. Mr. 
 Claussen told us that when he was a boy the 
 Indians picked cotton on his father's plantation, 
 doing that menial work on the site of an ancient 
 Indian battlefield where every turn of the 
 
 [108] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 plough unearthed some trophy of their heroic 
 past. The Indians despised the negroes and the 
 negroes were horribly afraid of the redmen, but 
 the simple and anything but belligerent slaves 
 gradually outnumbered the warriors, winning a 
 racial victory that may have simplified a great 
 many things for the white man. An equal ratio 
 of increase might have presented some embar- 
 rassing problems. 
 
 To-day the negroes of Wilmington rest secure 
 in their victory and the proud and lonely Ta- 
 cawbe who occasionally comes to town must 
 wonder at the obscure methods of destiny. All 
 along the waterfront the conquerors sit in som- 
 nolent groups, swinging their feet over the 
 water, their shoulders hunched, their battered 
 hats over their eyes, watching a fish-hook at- 
 tached to a piece of twine and lowered more as 
 an excuse for sitting still than as a lure for pass- 
 ing fish. The sun beats down on them, the sky 
 is blue over them and the lazy days are made 
 for much song, much sleep and a little work. 
 
 Mr. Claussen remembered a story, popularly 
 believed in Wilmington, of President Wilson's 
 boyhood, and it is worth repeating, I think, to 
 prove my theory that great men must be aware 
 of their destiny while they are still in knicker- 
 bockers. The Cherry Tree incident could only 
 
 [109] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 have been arranged with one eye on future gen- 
 erations of hero-worshipping little liars. Lincoln 
 and the sum in arithmetic on a shingle could 
 only have been an inspired forethought. Wil- 
 son's story is not generally known, but it is a 
 classic and deserves to be taught in our public 
 schools. The future coiner of "Too proud to 
 fight" set the scene for his infant prodigiousness, 
 if I may put it that way, at the old swimming- 
 hole in Wilmington. The town bullies, all big- 
 ger and stronger than the young Wilson, had set 
 upon a little pickaninny. They were pelting 
 their victim with sharp stones when the future 
 president made his entrance. Peace without 
 victory did not enter the prodigy's mind; he at- 
 tacked all of the bullies at once, vanquished them 
 and then, with his arm around the rescued picka- 
 ninny, delivered his first ultimatum to a ruth- 
 less enemy. "Never," said he, in a clear voice 
 calculated to ring through the ages, "never hit 
 a feller when he's down." 
 
 The story is true because the little pickaninny 
 grew up the proud possessor of a scar and a 
 long memory. When Wilson fulfilled his essen- 
 tial destiny and entered the White House, he re- 
 ceived a letter from the co-protagonist of his 
 first public appearance. He answered it, and 
 there is one glorified black man in Wilmington 
 
 [110] 
 
CHARLESTON IS CAUGHT INTO A DREAM OF THE 
 ROMANTIC PAST 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 to-day who boasts of having in his possession a 
 personal letter from the President of the United 
 States. 
 
 We were so charmed by the tale that we for- 
 got for the moment our pursuit of Mr. Sprunk 
 and his Cape Fear legends. The Cape Fear 
 River used to be the stronghold of those roving, 
 free-living and free-spending gentlemen of the 
 skull and crossbones. They made Cape Fear 
 and its convenient shelter a hiding place whence 
 they swooped down on merchantmen from the 
 North and South, and rid as many Spanish gal- 
 leons as possible of their rich cargoes. We felt 
 that Mr. Sprunk had some valuable material 
 for his book because trans-Atlantic travel was as 
 ticklish a business in the eighteenth century as it 
 is in the enlightened present, and Cape Fear was 
 infested, not with U-boats, but with pirates. An 
 amazing number of ships were captured along 
 the coast, nor were matters improved by king's 
 pardons and the glamour of romance. Even 
 gentlemen took to piracy and called themselves 
 illicit traders, which fooled no one. The most 
 appealing of those fashionable adventurers was 
 Stede Bonnet, who had been a major in the army 
 and a man of wealth and position. He aban- 
 doned society for life under the Jolly Roger, not 
 an impossible transfer when one considers the 
 
 [111] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 nature of the society. His destiny is interwoven 
 with that of Wilmington, for he was captured 
 at the mouth of the Cape Fear River by Colonel 
 Rhett, who came up from Charleston with two 
 sloops and bagged the fastidious pirate in his 
 den. 
 
 Bonnet escaped from Charleston in women's 
 clothes and led the English a merry chase before 
 he was recaptured and finally hanged by the neck 
 and buried (we hope for good) where the Bat- 
 tery gardens are to-day. Mrs. Ravenel says that 
 Bonnet, who was a sort of pirate Raffles, plead 
 for his own life with elegance and piety, and 
 that Chief Justice Trott, who tried him by an 
 old statute of Henry VHI, answered with 
 exalted sarcasm: "You being a Gentleman and 
 a Man of letters I believe it will be needless 
 for me to explain to you the nature of Repent- 
 ance and faith in Christ. Considering the course 
 of your life and actions I have reason to fear 
 that the principles of Religion that have been 
 instilled into you by your Education have been 
 at least corrupted if not entirely defaced by the 
 scepticism and infidelity of this wicked Age." 
 
 So there were eloquent criminals, impression- 
 able juries, bitter prosecuting attorneys and a 
 conviction of the wickedness of the age even 
 
 [112] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 then! Is it possible that the same things will 
 exist two hundred years from now? 
 
 We hurried on to Charleston because we 
 knew that we would never "get hold" of Mr. 
 Sprunk and that while there was some slight 
 comfort in being shown around the cotton ware- 
 houses and the fertiliser plants, nothing but 
 "Cape Fear Legends" could fill the gaping void 
 in our visit to Wilmington. While we were 
 paying our bill at the Orton Hotel, nice Mr. 
 Gregson, who was in a civic panic (if there is 
 such a thing) over our abrupt departure, had a 
 sudden inspiration and declared that the Cap- 
 tain of the Cape Fear steamer was just bound to 
 have a copy. We brightened. Where was the 
 Captain? He would be back in the morning 
 . . . would we wait? 
 
 We shook our heads sadly and departed, un- 
 able to bear another disappointment. And as if 
 depressed by our failure, the country between 
 Wilmington and Charleston was inconceivably 
 desolate and forlorn. I held my little notebook 
 open and a pencil poised just over the clean and 
 inviting page, hoping to find something delec- 
 table to write about. But the untidy landscape 
 spun out behind us in an endless procession of 
 dried tobacco fields, withered rows of shabby 
 cotton, dirty villages, mud, swamps and sand. 
 
 [113] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 But Charleston was true to herself and saw to 
 it that our welcome wiped out the memory of 
 the noteless trip. It was dark when we arrived 
 and the little open carriage that took us from 
 the station to the Charleston Hotel seemed to 
 us to rattle and clop through a cobbled city of 
 dreams. A pale moon, widely hooped and 
 courted by a whole heavenful of languid stars, 
 lighted the way, for Charleston is so much a 
 city of the past and of the old world that she 
 still permits you to see the moon and does not 
 attempt to dazzle your eyes with garish street 
 lamps and electric signs. The coloured driver 
 clucked softly to his leisurely horse, and al- 
 though it was late and we were tired and hun- 
 gry we could have jogged on indefinitely, for 
 the air was spicy with box, the aromatic dust 
 of old walls and the tempered saltiness of the 
 distant sea, and we caught glimpses of tangled 
 gardens and wrought iron fences, pillared houses 
 glowing whitely in the moonlight, exquisite 
 doorways, churches and open squares and cob- 
 bled streets, narrow alleys that turned abruptly 
 aside and led the pursuing fancy into mysterious 
 shadows. We sensed antiquity all about us, the 
 rare charm of historic ground, for Charleston is 
 like a beautiful house that has been lived in for 
 countless generations, taking on a rare and very 
 
 [114] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 personal quality, a patina, an inimitable lustre. 
 Charleston's charm is two-thirds atmospheric 
 and one-third physical. It is as bewitchingly 
 aristocratic as Bath, a most Bourbon city, ex- 
 clusive, experienced and very simple as all true 
 aristocrats are. There is a wistfulness about 
 Charleston that is very appealing; like a delight- 
 ful old chatelaine who has lived richly, suf- 
 fered much and loved dearly, Charleston has 
 become fragile and delicate, infinitely tender 
 and most rarely sweet. 
 
 To understand the peculiar charm of Charles- 
 ton as it is to-day one must consider the infinite 
 variety of people that went into the making of 
 the modern Carolinian. Virginia was settled by 
 adventurous Cavaliers, Maryland was first estab- 
 lished by the Catholics who followed Lord Bal- 
 timore, Pennsylvania fell to the Quakers and 
 New England to the Puritans. But Charles- 
 ton was laid upon a heterogeneous racial 
 foundation and held together by English gover- 
 nors and administrators. Dissenters from Scot- 
 land, England and Ireland mingled with Eng- 
 lish churchmen, and there were a certain num- 
 ber of Dutch, Swiss, Belgians and Quakers be- 
 sides the Huguenots, who came, four hundred 
 and fifty strong, between 1680 and 1688. The 
 aristocracy which grew out of this astounding 
 
 [115] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 assortment of peoples was an aristocracy of 
 planters and merchants. Rice was the chief 
 product of the Carolinas until 1865, and Mrs. 
 Ravenel says that its planters were the 'domi- 
 nant class of Charleston, socially and politi- 
 cally." The country gentleman was at his best 
 in Carolina; he was a man of breeding, educa- 
 tion and wealth; he lived on great plantations 
 in the centre of vast-spreading rice fields, he 
 was a slave owner, his children were educated 
 abroad, and while his life was never lazy or 
 exaggeratedl}^ luxurious, he lived well, with a 
 certain amount of state and formality. As time 
 passed and the first hardships of settling the new 
 colony lessened, life in Charleston patterned it- 
 self more and more after that of England. A 
 city of beautiful houses took the place of the first 
 primitive settlement, a very individual and suc- 
 cessful architecture appeared, gardens were laid 
 out and such luxuries as silver, pewter, jewelry, 
 fine furniture, laces, satins, mirrors, china and 
 rare wines were imported from Europe. There 
 were horse races, theatres, dinners and balls for 
 the amusement of the upper classes. The races 
 took place at the New Market course not far 
 from the city, and while the fashionable planter 
 and his family went in great style, countrymen 
 of the "cracker" type from the District and all 
 
 [116] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 of the slaves thronged to the race, too, on foot 
 or in primitive carts and wagons. 
 
 Dinners, balls and receptions, under the aris- 
 tocratic administration of the English governors, 
 were formal and probably a very good imita- 
 tion of English functions. The planter did not 
 want the mother-country to look down her criti- 
 cal nose at him, but of course she did. The snug 
 little island was as contemptuous of her prov- 
 inces then as she is to-day — or, rather, as she 
 was until recently. The world w^ar brought 
 Canada and Australia and New Zealand very 
 close to snobbish England's heart and she may 
 no longer ignore them. But when Charleston 
 was an English colony she suffered under the 
 criticisms of her Lords Proprietors. When 
 James Glenn came out from England to be gov- 
 ernor of the province he wrote back to the Lords 
 of Trade that he could not help expressing his 
 surprise and concern to find that there were 
 "annually imported into this Province consider- 
 able quantities of Fine Flanders lace, the Finest 
 Dutch Linens and French Cambricks, Chintz, 
 Hyson Tea and other East India Goods, Silks, 
 Gold and Silver Laces, etc." "The quantity is 
 too great," he wrote, "and the quality too fine 
 and ill calculated for the circumstances of an 
 Infant Colony." 
 
 [117] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 But the planters and merchants of Charleston 
 were not rebuked to the extent of putting aside 
 their harmless little luxuries. Dinners were 
 served by negro servants at long tables spread 
 with fine linen and set with rare china and cut 
 glass. Dances were given in the large drawing 
 rooms; the floors were polished like mirrors, 
 the crystal chandeliers glittered and blinked like 
 fairy cobwebs and candles flickerdd in the 
 sconces on the walls. It must have been far 
 lovelier than anything we can do nowadays in 
 the way of dinners and dances, in spite of elec- 
 tric lights and tango orchestras and exhaustless 
 debutantes, all arms and tulle, giving their frag- 
 ile lives to gaiety! The most expensive modern 
 caterers could scarcely equal the dishes con- 
 cocted by the negro cooks of the period, who 
 brought West Indian recipes from the Islands 
 and laid the foundations for the fame of South- 
 ern cooking — turtle and fresh-water terrapin, 
 rice and chicken, soups and fish, all sorts of 
 sweets and cakes to be eaten with Madeira wine 
 and punch and thin glasses of port! 
 
 But life was not made up of pretty pleasures. 
 The Carolinian planter had to manage his es- 
 tates, discipline and guide his slaves, attend to 
 the manifold details of a large establishment — 
 the crops, the stables, the negro quarters — and 
 
 [118] 
 
Till': BKAIIIILL SUITH PURIAL OF Si. FillLiF" S 
 CHURCH 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 be father, judge, confessor and farmer all in 
 one. He had, besides, to cope with the Indians, 
 with the dangers and difficulties of the Revolu- 
 tionary War, with epidemic sicknesses and with 
 the elements. Charleston seems to be in the 
 path of cyclones and^hurricanes and to lie with- 
 in the earthquake zone, for time and time again 
 the city has been blown to smithereens and 
 rocked to its foundations and burned to the 
 ground. There could have been no lack of ex- 
 citement in the Carolinian planter's life! 
 
 The last earthquake, which took place an un- 
 comfortably short time ago, in 1886, drove the 
 sixty thousand inhabitants of the city out of their 
 houses and was only prevented from destroying 
 everything by some trick of an obscure and un- 
 stable Providence. Walls were strained and 
 cracked to the breaking point but still stood 
 upright; roofs sagged, towers leaned precari- 
 ously, chimneys toppled over — but Charleston 
 was saved. And those of us who care more for 
 architecture than for anything which comes out 
 of the brain and the heart of man, ought to stand 
 at the corner of Meeting and Broad Streets and 
 cheer three times — once for the merciful earth- 
 quake, once for Charleston and once for St. 
 Michaers Church, miraculously spared for our 
 delectation. 
 
 [119] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 When the earthquake "happened" (one 
 wouldn't say "quaked," would one?) Charleston 
 was already unnerved by the cyclone of the year 
 before which had unroofed houses, destroyed 
 the water-front and flooded the whole city. The 
 earthquake came "with a terrible roar, like an 
 express train thundering through a valley," and 
 for a few minutes Charleston reeled drunkenly. 
 The negroes thought that the end of the world 
 had come and rushed into the churches, the 
 worst possible place for them, to shriek and pray. 
 The tower of St. Michael's sank twenty inches, 
 the whole foundation of the beautiful structure 
 dropping fearfully as the earth shifted beneath 
 it. And while its tilting is not as evident as that 
 of the Garisenda and Asinella of Bologna, it is 
 still quite visible from the street. We stood be- 
 neath it and lifted our hats (this is quite figura- 
 tive, of course) for having preserved its balance 
 so long. 
 
 Christopher Wren had his hand in the build- 
 ing of St. Michael's. The steeple is as surely 
 Sir Christopher's as the tower of the old church 
 at York Harbor in Maine. Like St. Martin's- 
 in-the-Fields, the church has a pillared portico 
 and the splendid steeple shoots above it, dazzling 
 white like a tall lily, visible for miles and domi- 
 nating Charleston as surely as Giotto's tower 
 
 [120] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 dominates Florence. During the Civil War the 
 Northerners fired at it from Morris Island, 
 throwing shell after shell at the steeple with 
 such poor marksmanship that no damage was 
 done at all except to the body of the church. 
 I should like to believe that the guardian saint 
 of beautiful architecture, so conspicuously ab- 
 sent at Rheims, directed the fire of the Federals 
 on that occasion. 
 
 We went to the vestry door and asked to be 
 admitted, making our first pilgrimage in 
 Charleston, as one always does, to St. Michael's. 
 The vestryman admitted us with enthusiasm, but 
 let us out again with reluctance. We learned 
 from him that George Washington occupied 
 one of the well-w^orn chairs in the Governor's 
 pew, and that the present organist of St. 
 Michael's is a direct descendant, six generations 
 removed, of the man who installed the organ 
 in the church. Possessed of that information, 
 we moved toward the vestry door again followed 
 by a little knot of New England tourists who 
 had caught the same pearls of wisdom as they 
 dropped from the vestryman's lips. But the ves- 
 try door was securely locked and it stayed locked 
 while the canny vestryman sought to dispose of 
 guide books and post cards. There is nothing 
 more antagonistic than being "held up" in the 
 
 [121] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 name of charity. Fifty cents for a guide book 
 of Charleston was little enough, but we set our 
 lips, closed our hands tightly on our purses and 
 resisted pressure. We all blushed, not out of 
 shame for our own penuriousness but for the 
 persistence of the vestryman. One of the New 
 England tourists rattled the door, another turned 
 her back and awaited release in stolid silence. 
 And to the bitter end, when the infuriated ves- 
 tryman produced the key and let us out again, 
 there was not a single clink of silver coins. I 
 am possibly prejudiced but I think the Italian 
 custode's method more artless; he blesses you 
 and your grandmother, mentions the weather, 
 smiles and holds out his hand. . . . 
 
 We paused at John Rutledge's grave in the 
 churchyard, wishing that we could have broken 
 his quiet sleep long enough to thank him for 
 having brought Charleston through the danger- 
 ous period of the break with England and for 
 having steered the cockleshell Ship of State to 
 safety while all of Charleston was divided be- 
 tween Whigs and Tories. The "shot heard 
 'round the world" was indeed heard at Charles- 
 ton, although the Carolinians might still have 
 made peace with tax-mad England if England 
 had listened to reason. The crisis, like all great 
 national crises, produced men who were equal 
 
 [122] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 to the emergency — Francis Marion, Moultrie, 
 Jasper, Haynes, Laurens, Rutledge — heroic 
 names, all of them! Rutledge kept the torch 
 of liberty burning at home while ''Marion's 
 men" harassed the British troops, lying in am- 
 bush in the swamps and forests, kept alive by 
 the gifts of the devoted Whigs, subsisting on 
 little or nothing at all and, under the inspired 
 leadership of the fiery Huguenot, sweeping 
 down on the unsuspecting English for fierce and 
 generally victorious encounters and then disap- 
 pearing again into the wilderness. 
 
 If Pitt could have plead the colony's cause a 
 little longer, the overseas empire might not have 
 been disintegrated. Certainly South Carolina 
 would have waited longer to make the break. 
 But Pitt was dead and England had so far for- 
 gotten his warnings that an English cannon ball 
 struck the statue of the statesman that grateful 
 Charleson had set up in the centre of the town 
 and carried away one of the arms. To-day, the 
 humiliated Pitt, like a male Venus de Milo, 
 decorates Washington Square. The baroque 
 statue has a nice air of antiquity, but Pitt is 
 wrapped in draperies and looks as if he had just 
 jumped out of bed, tangled in sheets and quilts. 
 His eloauent gestures have dislocated his right 
 
 [123] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 arm and he trips on his entangling bedclothes 
 like a wild-eyed somnambulist. 
 
 Charleston is open to attack to-day as it was 
 during the Revolution. Standing on the Battery 
 and looking out between Fort Moultrie, on Sul- 
 livan's Island, and Fort Sumter to the open sea, 
 we shuddered to think of the fate of the city in 
 case of a bombardment by enemy ships. The 
 two forts face each other across a narrow strip 
 of water, and it must have been exciting work 
 for the Federals and Confederates when they 
 hurled shot and shell at each other for forty 
 hours. The first battle of the Civil War was 
 won by the Confederate garrison of Fort Moul- 
 trie, but the fiery Secessionists did not for long 
 have the upper hand. Charleston was bom- 
 barded by the Northern army for five hundred 
 and eighty-six days, suffering a martyrdom as 
 severe as that of the cities of Northern France. 
 The people moved back from the water-front or 
 lived in cellars or took chances in the unpro- 
 tected streets, growing as careless as the sorely 
 tried French under fire. It is a miracle that 
 any of the public buildings and residences of the 
 city escaped, but they did. Charleston rose out 
 of the ruin and desolation, out of the humilia- 
 tion of defeat, the anguish of the Reconstruction, 
 political corruption, financial collapse and social 
 
 [124] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 disintegration. The city to-day is slightly wist- 
 ful, serene and extraordinarily proud. Owen 
 Wister painted a perfect picture of the exclusive 
 society of modern Charleston in "Lady Balti- 
 more." He opened the stately doors of the old 
 houses along the Battery and took us into the 
 panelled drawing rooms so fragrant with the 
 delicate aroma of the past; he permitted us to 
 see behind the veil so jealously drawn across 
 that unique little world of aristocrats. 
 
 Charleston belongs to the past and will until 
 the last house crumbles to dust and the last proud 
 Tory is laid to rest in the churchyard of St. 
 Philip's or St. Michael's. Charleston is perhaps 
 the only city in America that has slammed its 
 front door in Progress's face and resisted the 
 modern with fiery determination. There are no 
 skyscrapers, no blighting factory chimneys, no 
 glaring electric signs. Even the street cars pro- 
 ceed decorously, and one-horse cabs are more 
 popular than taxis. Society stays behind closed 
 doors or ventures out in state to ride or drive, 
 and there is no preponderance of cheap and 
 noisy po' white trash in the streets. Everything 
 is leisurely and sleepy and mysteriously remi- 
 niscent. One hears the soft chatter of the am- 
 bling, ragged blacks, the twitter of birds, the 
 clop of a lazy horse. Charleston is caught into 
 
 [125] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 a dream of the romantic past. She sits quietly 
 in her panelled drawing room, surrounded by 
 beautiful things, and listens to dead voices with 
 a beating heart. 
 
 For Charleston is the personification of the 
 most fugitive and intangible thing in the world. 
 Charleston is a work of art. Like San Gimig- 
 nano and Siena, Rothenburg and Mont St. 
 Michel, it belongs in its entirety to a vanished 
 past. It is a "museum piece" among cities, and 
 there should be a wicket gate at the railroad 
 station and a guard to warn you not "to touch, 
 break or otherwise deface" the masterpiece. We 
 hurried through the streets, whispering instinc- 
 tively. 
 
 In New England one comes upon Colonial 
 architecture sandwiched in between Early and 
 Late Victorian jigsaw atrocities. A gabled roof 
 is often dwarfed by a showy Mansard, a fine 
 brick chimney is spoiled by its field-stone neigh- 
 bour, a fan doorway is lost in a wilderness of 
 plate glass and walnut portals. But in Charles- 
 ton the pursuit of beauty is simplified. Fine old 
 buildings are displayed side by side, and one 
 has only to advance crab fashion along the 
 streets with Mrs. Ravencl's book in one hand 
 and a map of the city in the other, to see the dis- 
 tinctive architecture of South Carolina at its 
 
 [126] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 best and (to be Irish), at its anything but bad 
 worst! 
 
 "Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!" we sang at 
 every turning. And our song w^as like a fugue, 
 or a litany, for one "beautiful" tripped on the 
 heels of the other wherever we went. 
 
 I can always find something to say about 
 things I don't like, but face to face with perfec- 
 tion, I am mute. I have stood in the gardens 
 of the convent of the Blue Nuns at Fiesole and, 
 gazing down across the olives and cypresses at 
 Florence set like a jewel in the burnished shield 
 of the Val d' Arno, I have said "Beautiful" and 
 nothing more. Yet I have been comforted by 
 just such speechlessness in really eloquent souls. 
 Kipling looked down from Fiesole at the same 
 miracle and while I gaped at him, expecting a 
 torrent of superlatives — "Beautiful," he said! 
 So I am in good company, like the cur that 
 trotted under the king's carriage. 
 
 "Beautiful," I said before the old Market at 
 Charleston. It is set upon a deep basement like 
 a Roman temple; a double flight of steps leads 
 to the portico and a simple cornice is thrust 
 aloft by four columns. There are many other 
 examples of this domesticated classicism in the 
 city — the Charleston Hotel, the Custom House, 
 Gabriel Manigault's City Hall, the Pringle 
 
 [127] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 House in King Street, the beautiful south portal 
 of St. Philip's Church and Charleston College. 
 The severity of the pillared porticoes is relieved 
 by delicate w^rought iron railings, and the glar- 
 ing whiteness of the columns has been tempered 
 by w^ind and rain and sun. Age, which is so un- 
 becoming to people, has made Charleston a place 
 of rare beauty. Heaven grant that the City 
 Fathers will never attempt to paint the f-aded 
 walls, repair the peeling stucco and the rusted 
 railings and weed the gardens! Only new cities 
 need be kept in spick-and-span condition. 
 Charleston, like an old civilisation, has won the 
 right to be careless. St. Paul, on the other hand, 
 has not! For cities are like people — only dukes 
 know how to wear weather-beaten tweeds, only 
 queens dare combine dowdy bonnets and dia- 
 monds, only kings are regal in grey derbies and 
 fawn-coloured cutaways, and only very old cities 
 can afford to let grass grow in their streets and 
 to torment the soles (and the souls) of their 
 citizens with cobble-stones. 
 
 Mr. Howells had put a literary bee in our 
 bonnets and had set us in fevered pursuit of 
 gates. And since Charleston is a city of gates 
 we could not see them all. The famous brick 
 gates of General William Washington's house 
 on the Battery were easy to identify and we 
 
 [128] 
 
*i2:r,|» J 
 
 ^.> -- <J 
 
 THE SEVERITY OF THE PILLAKKl) HOKIICO IS RELIEVED 
 BY DELICATE WROlGllI IRON RAILINGS 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 paused many times to peer through the Simon- 
 ton gateway in Legare Street with its wrought 
 iron lantern and the long walk beyond thickly 
 shadowed by a compact arch of trees. But the 
 [amazingly delicate and graceful gates of St. 
 Michael's and St. Philip's held us longest. 
 
 Carhoun is buried in the churchyard of St. 
 Philip's. Like Pitt, he died too soon for Amer- 
 ica's good. We came upon his simple tomb in 
 the western churchyard after we had vainly 
 searched for it nearer St. Philip's. I have 
 avoided graveyards scrupulously since Edgar 
 Lee Masters discovered that every epitaph con- 
 ceals a tragedy. I used to believe all the glow- 
 ing tributes and heartbreaking laments, and 
 thought that every crumbling, moss-grown slab 
 [concealed an angel until Mr. Masters happened 
 along and unearthed the corruption beneath my 
 feet. If Gray had read the "Spoon River An- 
 thology," could he h^ave written the "Elegy"? 
 I wonderl 
 
 I had no sooner set foot in St. Philip's church- 
 yard than I stumbled on a tragedy, a grim little 
 tragedy! I give it to you for elaboration: 
 
 "Died the 22nd of August 1799 
 Joseph Jones of Milford 
 State of Massachusetts 
 [129] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 In the 62nd year of his Age 
 After three Days of an 
 Epidemic Sickness." 
 
 Alas, that poets should open our eyes to such 
 realism! We hurried out of the picturesque 
 churchyard and forgot Joseph Jones' three days 
 of epidemic sickness in peeping through 
 wrought iron gates and over high walls at the 
 lovelier epitaphs of two charming Charleston- 
 ians, Dr. Garden and Mr. Poinsett, who named 
 the gardenia and the gorgeous poinsettia and 
 immortalised themselves in the petals of flowers. 
 Charleston hides its gardens behind high walls 
 and in courtyards, but every balcony is hung 
 with vines, the polished leaves of the magnolias 
 and palms thrust above the highest walls, and in 
 the spring the whole city is fragrant with the 
 perfume of mimosa and jessamine, violets and 
 roses. The gardens were closed to us; we could 
 only press our faces against the gates and stare 
 wistfully in at their tangled loveliness, but the 
 Battery was open to every one with no annoying 
 "Keep off the grass" signs and lots of comfort- 
 able benches in cool, shadowy places. I will 
 leave you there, pacing up and down under the 
 wide-spreading live oaks with the wind from the 
 sea blowing freshly against you and Mrs. Rav- 
 enel's book, newly cut, under your arm. For I 
 
 [ISO] 
 
OF 'THE SOUTH 
 
 have told you all I know (but not all I feel) 
 about Charleston. Perhaps, when you have fin- 
 ished the book, you will have dinner with us — 
 we have ordered Edisto Island oysters, Mallard 
 duck from Georgetown, a salad, a Southern 
 sweet and coffee. . . „ 
 
 [131] 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 A CONFESSION OF LAZINESS IN SAVANNAH AND A 
 STEP FURTHER SOUTH TO "jAX" 
 
 BELIEVE Allan was tired of being 
 addressed as ^'Cap" by bellboys and 
 Pullman porters. Because he bears 
 his thirty years seriously he aspired 
 to "Colonel," remembering the story our father 
 tells of the rural newspaper correspondent who 
 misinterpreted his hieroglyphic signature and 
 announced that "Colonel W. D. Wam" was "in 
 our midst." Allan had always longed to be 
 called "Colonel" on his own account, so before 
 we left Charleston he went in search of a hatter 
 and bought a broad-brimmed felt hat. The 
 clerk who sold the disguise confided to us that 
 he was "bored to death with Charleston," but 
 that he was "just in love with Savannah." When 
 pressed for reasons, he explained that Savannah 
 was a "right lively town with lots of parks and 
 all lit up at night." 
 
 "I certainly do envy you-all going there," he 
 said pathetically. 
 
 [132] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 Allan, already wearing his Cy-arter of Cy- 
 artersville hat and influenced by the subtle asso- 
 ciation, craved the gaiety of this "lit up" Savan- 
 nah. We took leave of the hat clerk and hurried 
 back to the hotel agency to buy our tickets. 
 
 "You can sit in the parks," Allan remarked 
 suddenly, becoming audible after a long and 
 pleasant contemplation. 
 
 And I chortled angrily: "The hat clerk did 
 not mean what you think he meant. He meant 
 street lights, not mint-julep illumination. Parks 
 indeed!" 
 
 The ticket agent thought that we could catch 
 the train to Savannah without any trouble. He 
 wasn't quite sure when it would get into 
 Charleston, for it was three and a half hours 
 late. 
 
 "Late?" 
 
 The ticket agent seemed slightly embarrassed. 
 "Yes'm. You see," he explained, casting madly 
 about for reasons, it's a through train from the 
 North, and they're having mighty cold weather 
 in New York. Paper says it's down below zero." 
 
 "I suppose you mean that Southern trains suf- 
 fer from the cold." 
 
 "Yes'm." The clerk giggled and rubbed his 
 hands. "That's it. You'll want two tickets to 
 Savannah, then?" 
 
 [133] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 "If you are sure that the train is going to 
 pass through Charleston at all to-day." 
 
 The clerk became discreetly hysterical. He 
 considered us great wags. He stamped the two 
 tickets and shuffled them as if he were playing a 
 hand at poker. 
 
 "Can't you give us Pullman reservations?" 
 Allan always asked this question, although he 
 knew the answer by heart. 
 
 "No, sir." The agent was positive. "You can 
 get them on the train." 
 
 But when the train finally ambled into 
 Charleston, four hours late, every seat in the 
 Pullman cars was occupied. A personally con- 
 ducted "tower" of very old New England ladies 
 was on its way to Florida, and had settled itself, 
 apparently for life, in every available chair. 
 So Allan was banished in lonely glory to the 
 smoker, while a place was made for me beside 
 an old lady Who surrendered to my being there 
 rather through weakness than because of any 
 charitable instinct. The "tower" was very, very 
 tired and crumpled and bored. Their Personal 
 Conductor had disappeared, probably to the rear 
 platform to think of a new answer to the un- 
 answerable question, "Why are Southern trains 
 always late?" I daresay the inspired Charleston 
 ticket agent's excuse had never occurred to him, 
 
 [134] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 although zero weather in New York was as good 
 
 a reason as any other 
 
 I sat rigidly at the New England spinster's 
 side, trying to make myself as small as possible 
 and staring out of the window at an endless 
 panorama of swamps, at forests of ghostly trees 
 dead in the suffocating embrace of hairy moss, 
 at forlorn and untidy villages, at rice fields and 
 tumble-down negro cabins, at whitewashed 
 farm-houses set within corrals, at swamps and 
 more swamps, until the spinning landscape be- 
 came merely a repetition of itself. Whenever 
 the train stopped, as it did very often (probably 
 because of the cold up North), I went out to 
 stand on the platform and to get a whiff of fresh 
 air, for the old ladies apparently "towered" her- 
 metically sealed against atmospheric contamina- 
 tion. There always rose to me an ardent odour 
 of pigs, pine trees, moss and evergreens, the 
 characteristic flavour of the rural South. Little 
 knots of people watched the arrival of the train 
 at all of these small stations, and one or two 
 country wagons, covered with mud and drawn 
 by lazy, dozing horses, waited for possible pas- 
 sengers or for a purely hypothetical freight. As 
 the sun went down we entered timber lands, 
 splendid forests of pine and cypress, blackly out- 
 
 [135] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 lined against the magnificent conflagration in the 
 west. 
 
 Through it all the old ladies yawned and 
 stifled little moans of weariness. One of them, 
 outrageously fat, lay full length on one of the 
 chairs, her ridiculously small feet held aloft on 
 a pillow, her fat hand waving a palm leaf fan. 
 She had been to Florida before on a half-for- 
 gotten and wholly glorified honeymoon with 
 "dear Mr. Hemingway, my first husband." She 
 spoke with awe-inspiring familiarity of the 
 "Pawnee de Leeon" at St. Augustine. She had 
 never travelled in a personally conducted party 
 before — they were vulgar and crowded and hur- 
 ried. . . . Her voice, as acute as a buzz-saw, 
 rasped the old ladies beyond endurance. One 
 by one, as dusk fell, they put their little "trav- 
 elling pillows" behind their aching heads and 
 pretended to go to sleep. 
 
 It seemed to us that the forests and tangled 
 swamps gave way to civilisation and to paving 
 stones at the very gates of the city, for Savannah 
 was not heralded by any suburbs; the train 
 passed out of the darkness of the open country 
 into the station with no more warning than a 
 few scattered houses and a straggling proces- 
 sion of rural street lamps. 
 
 Three soot-grimed travelling salesmen got into 
 
 [136] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 the Savannah Hotel 'bus with us. They had ap- 
 parently been travelling and selling in small 
 country towns, and the longing for sidewalks 
 and asphalt, street cars, shops, bright lights and 
 noise obsessed them, for they were New York- 
 ers to the last "woid" in their vocabularies. As 
 the 'bus rattled through Savannah they burst into 
 hymns of joy. A live town! Look at the lights 
 — clusters of 'em — and electric signs and sky- 
 scrapers! It was not native soil, but to them it 
 was flavoured with the essence of civilisation; it 
 reflected New York and sent shivers of happi- 
 ness through them. B rough ton Street was not 
 Broadway — there is only one Broadway — but it 
 was at least crowded with people, ablaze with 
 light, draped in the shreds of their true god- 
 dess's raiment. The sooty travelling salesmen 
 were like pilgrims come upon a glimpse of 
 Mecca. As we drew up at the door of the hotel 
 and a crowd of bellboys and porters pounced 
 on the luggage like buzzards, the three sales- 
 men sighed profoundly. 
 
 "A live town," they said, "at last!" 
 Others of their genial class filled the gilt and 
 marble lobby to suffocation and rejoiced openly 
 in their native atmosphere of smoke, palms, 
 page-boys, brass spittoons and leather lounge 
 chairs. 
 
 [137] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 The hotel graciously admitted having received 
 our telegram and summoned a bellboy to show 
 us the way to our rooms. We bewailed the cor- 
 dial host of the past who offered the traveller 
 not only shelter but hospitality. The clerk of a 
 modern skyscraper hotel has no time for niceties ; 
 he cannot build a fire on the hearth for you or 
 attend himself to your dinner or gossip pleas- 
 antly. He spins a huge key across the top of 
 his desk, glances at your signature and raises 
 two fingers, w4th the Pope's gesture, to summon 
 a bellboy who will do the honours. We have 
 often encountered darkies who, entrusted with 
 this duty, felt the solemnity of the occasion. 
 Many a coloured bellboy has swung wide our 
 doors, and while waiting in delightful embar- 
 rassment for his tip has wished us a "sho' enuff 
 good time." Most darkies like formality and 
 little courtesies; they respond to luxurious sur- 
 roundings, to eloquence and to good breeding. 
 They are children and actors, and their sim- 
 plicity may be their ultimate salvation. 
 
 But the bellboy who escorted us to our rooms 
 in the Hotel Savannah was not a playboy of the 
 Southern world, for he did not seem to think 
 that the responsibility of our welcome rested 
 on his shoulders. He put our suitcases down, 
 deposited his tip and departed whistling "Un- 
 
 [138] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 derneath the Stars." The Savannah had another 
 way of meeting its duties as host, for the rooms 
 were plastered with warnings, advice, sugges- 
 tions and threats, all neatly printed on cardboard 
 placards and affixed to the wall where they 
 would be most likely to catch the guest's eye. 
 I read some of the paternal notices aloud, while 
 Allan unstrapped the suitcases. 
 
 " 'To our friends,' " the first one ran, disarm- 
 ing resentment very coyly. " 'If you leave your 
 windows open, please turn oflF radiator. We 
 should not be expected to heat the outside of our 
 building.' " 
 
 "Good advice," Allan thought. 
 
 "Yes," I agreed, "but offensive, just the same. 
 Here's another. Listen to this one! 'Office 
 buildings are opposite this room. If you desire 
 privacy, lower your shades.' " 
 
 Allan shouted with laughter. "Of all the in- 
 fernal impudence! Go on — what else do they 
 expect of us?" 
 
 "Oh, the next one is harmless enough. "If 
 you do not wish to be disturbed, please place 
 this card on outside of door and remove when 
 leaving room.' " 
 
 "Thanks! What else?" 
 
 " 'We do not have a half-day rate; when room 
 
 [139] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 is assigned to any one we will collect for full 
 day; " 
 
 "It sounds like a model prison. Go on." 
 
 " 'Turkish baths in basement,' " I read, "and 
 here is another, attached to the telephone, which 
 says, Tlease use the pad and spare the walls.' " 
 
 We tried to meet all the requirements, and 
 although it was very late went down to dinner, 
 fearful of meeting with more printed warnings 
 on the way. The dining room was not crowded, 
 but it was "lit up" just as the hat-clerk in 
 Charleston had said all of Savannah would be, 
 and as an added attraction a whole series ©f 
 bells, attached to the wainscoting and operated 
 by electricity, played popular tunes to drown 
 out the crasih of crockery and the weaker efforts 
 of the hotel orchestra. We reverted to type and 
 abandoned chicken for steak, the best steak I 
 have ever tasted, North or South. And the 
 chronicle of the evening might ihave been a 
 gourmet's pleasure if a page-boy had not come 
 into the dining room shouting aloud for "Major 
 General Leonard Wood." 
 
 Every one started and turned to stare at the 
 erect, handsome man who called the page-boy to 
 his table, and our waiter, creeping very close to 
 whisper, told us that it was the General Wood 
 who had been dining so inconspicuously just 
 
 [140] 
 
-GRKAr SHIPS COME EIGHTKKX MILES FROM THE SEA 
 TO SAVANNAETS FRONT DOOR-STEP 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 across the room. We had seen Raymond Hitch- 
 cock at the Monticello in Norfolk, Sarah Bern- 
 hardt had appeared for a moment on the plat- 
 form of her private car, the "Mayflower," when 
 we were waiting in the Charleston station for 
 our train, and here was America's greatest gen- 
 eral not ten feet away! We tried not to stare, 
 but I found several excuses to turn my head in 
 his direction. 
 
 After dinner we went out into crowded 
 Broughton Street to look for a book store, and 
 possibly to find a guide that would set our tour- 
 ist feet on the right paths. We discovered a 
 bookseller, but he had no guide book to offer 
 us, shrugging his shoulders at our preposterous 
 assumption that the history of Savannah could 
 be reduced to a few paragraphs and sold to lazy 
 trippers for a quarter. He led me into the back 
 of his shop and pointed to a revolving bookcase 
 full of heavy, thick, dust-powdered volumes, 
 and as he wheeled the bulging shelves for my in- 
 spection he ran his finger over the titles. There 
 were histories of Georgia in three ponderous 
 volumes, histories of Savannah's settlement, its 
 Revolutionary struggles, its great men ; there 
 were stories of John Wesley, who preached for 
 the first time in America on the spot where the 
 Savannah Custom House now stands; there were 
 
 [141] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 bulky Civil War histories, memoirs and biog- 
 raphies, harbour reports, trade statistics. At 
 each revolution of the bookcase I beheld new 
 histories — illustrated histories bound frivolously 
 to attract the sluggish traveller's eye; fat, busi- 
 nesslike histories bursting with dates and infor- 
 mation. "Life of Oglethorpe," "Life of Wes- 
 ley," "Life of Aaron Burr," "Life of Jefiferson 
 Davis," "Life of Lafayette," "The Civil War," 
 "The Reconstruction." . . » 
 
 "All Georgiana," said the bookseller, giving 
 the bookcase another twist and blowing away 
 the dust that had settled on the gilt-edged pages 
 of a history of the American Revolution. 
 
 All Georgiana! 
 
 I turned in a panic to Allan. "I am going 
 back to New York," I threatened. "I cannot 
 write the history of Savannah in a chapter lim- 
 ited, by contract, to five thousand words. It isn't 
 fair," I wailed, becoming tearful, "to expect it 
 of me." 
 
 We stared at the groaning bookcase in morose 
 silence, while the bookseller, suddenly sympa- 
 thetic, looked over the top of his spectacles and 
 asked, "Are you goin' to write a book?" in the 
 tone of voice which implies "Are you thinking 
 of jumping over the moon, by any chance?" 
 
 [142] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 "No," I retorted, turning on my heel, "I've 
 given up all thought of it." 
 
 Outside in Broughton Street again I gave way 
 to a violent attack of nerves. "You will have to 
 take me to the movies," I said pitifully, "where 
 I can forget Georgiana. I think Savannah must 
 be the most historically complicated city in the 
 world." 
 
 "You can skip it in the book," Allan said. He 
 really believed I could, for he only sketches 
 what interests him and I have to manoeuvre, un- 
 til the machinery of my literary style creaks, to 
 write paragraphs that can be used as captions 
 for his drawings. "You ought to be able to do 
 something about it," he said, as we hurried up 
 Broughton Street in search of a cinema. "Touch 
 lightly on Savannah and bear down heavily on 
 St. Augustine." 
 
 Vaguely comforted but not convinced, I fol- 
 lowed him into an Arabian Nights' theatre, an 
 Orientalised nightmare place made of card- 
 board, coloured electric lights, gilt and pink 
 paint. A very sallow young man stood in the 
 lobby and sprayed cheap perfume over us as we 
 passed into the pitch darkness of the theatre, 
 whether as a prevention or as a compliment we 
 could not discover. Reeking, we stumbled into 
 our seats and glanced up at the screen just in 
 
 [143] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 time to see Theda Bara strangled. Behind us, 
 row after row of people, reeking, too, surged up- 
 ward in a huge amphitheatre, so that the last 
 row of white faces, glowing like a string of 
 phosphorescent moons in the strange gloom, 
 hung just below the gilded ceiling. The organ 
 wheezed and groaned and there was a constant 
 procession of people going in and out, as un- 
 affected by th-e Bara's death agonies as if the 
 shadow on the screen were only the ghost of 
 a bad dream, forgotten instantly and wholly un- 
 important. I wonder whether the motion pic- 
 ture, in giving the public horrors as a sort of 
 after-dinner relish, has not dulled our sensibili- 
 ties so that we could watch a murder or a hang- 
 ing or the "shooting up" of an entire town with 
 no other interest except a purely soulless one in 
 the photographic possibilities of the crime? We 
 were driven to the movies for entertainment, 
 not only because they served to drive great anxie- 
 ties (such as the history of Savannah) out of 
 my mind, but because there were very few 
 flesh and blood players in the South. The divine 
 Sarah followed us all the way down the Atlantic 
 Coast, giving two one-act plays while her little 
 company bore the heavier burden of acting in 
 French before audiences that waited only to 
 glimpse the most famous and the most heroic 
 
 [144] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 actress of her time. Cyril Maude, playing in 
 "Grumpy," which I had seen on both sides of 
 the ocean, appeared wherever the magnificent 
 and weary Sarah had decided not to stop. I 
 was profoundly sorry for both of them, for I 
 could imagine the combined mental and phys- 
 ical strain of travelling all day, playing an ex- 
 acting role at night and, in Bernhardt's case, 
 sleeping, or trying to sleep, in a private car, 
 lulled by the hissing of engines, the clamour of 
 bells, the shouts of trainmen and the fiendish 
 clatter of baggage trucks. While we could be 
 pitiful of the two distinguished strollers, we 
 could not watch them play every night, and our 
 schedule seemed to tally exactly. And because 
 the theatre, in any form at all, is essential to our 
 winter evenings, we haunted the flickering dark- 
 ness of the cinema caverns, often finding igno- 
 rance and vulgarity, sometimes happening upon 
 the rare seed of art. 
 
 '^Besides," Allan whispered, as soon as Theda 
 Bara had been decently buried, and that divine 
 mountebank Charlie had shuffled out of the 
 shadows and had stirred laughter in the tiers 
 of people that was like the rustle and roar of a 
 rising wind, "and besides, no one likes history. 
 I shouldn't think of going in for dates and all 
 that sort of thing. People hate to be told any- 
 
 [145] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 thing. Just arrange some sort of an explanation 
 of my illustrations and skip lightly over Savan- 
 nah." 
 
 I nudged him fiercely. "Look at Charlie," I 
 said between my teeth. "Don't tempt me." 
 
 But we skipped lightly over Savannah the 
 next day in an automobile, driving very fast 
 when we came to historic ground and "just creep- 
 ing" when there was nothing to learn. The orig- 
 inal city laid out by General James Oglethorpe 
 in 1733 is still the heart of Savannah, so that the 
 view from our windows covered all of the col- 
 onists' fortified settlement and the towers and 
 spires of the modern city. We could see the river, 
 shining like a broad band of platinum where it 
 skirted the city, a river deep enough to allow 
 great ships to come the eighteen miles from the 
 sea to Savannah's front doorstep. The morning 
 paper informed us that eight million dollars' 
 worth of exports had made the "below average" 
 record for the month of December, so that we 
 looked down upon the beautiful city from our 
 lofty windows with modern admiration for her 
 thrift, her success. Like a man who has "come 
 back" from ruin and disaster. Savannah has sur- 
 vived the terror and the destruction of two great 
 wars. During the Revolution, first the English 
 and then the American troops held a line of en- 
 
 [146] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 trenchments that girdled the city like a strang- 
 ling noose. During the Civil War, the Confed- 
 erate trenches faced the Union trenches within 
 what are to-day the city limits. Out of the bit- 
 terness of defeat and the terrible period of recon- 
 struction the modern Savannah has emerged, one 
 of the best reasons for the commercial slogan, 
 'Keep your eye on the South." 
 
 The indescribably hoarse bell of Christ 
 Church woke us to a wide panorama of this mir- 
 acle, and as soon as possible after breakfast we 
 set out to explore by motor what had looked so 
 enticing from the fifth floor of the Hotel Savan- 
 nah. The chaufifeur was a chocolate-coloured 
 "boy who was so in love with his own hue that he 
 had duplicated it in his clothes, achieving a 
 camouflage which must have made him invisi-ble 
 on the shady side of the street. He was averse 
 to being polite, as if good manners were in some 
 mysterious way a surrender to the superiority of 
 the white race. We told him to skip lightly over 
 Savannah and left him to his own devices. And 
 while I cannot believe that he was being inten- 
 tionally subtle when he turned out of the city 
 and took us to the old Hermitage plantation, it 
 is true that he let us see all that is left of the 
 tragic past of his people. 
 
 Tragic — yes, and incomparably romantic. The 
 [1*7] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 approach to the Hermitage plantation is su- 
 premely beautiful; melancholy because it be- 
 longs to an age that is irrevocably lost, exquisite 
 with the shadowy imprint of the legendary 
 South, the South of magnificent distinction, 
 beauty, pride, the art of living and the essence of 
 good breeding. The Hermitage seemed to us the 
 realisation of a literary dream, the picture of that 
 vanished past which has come to be so real to us 
 through the novels of Gilmore Simms, Cable, 
 Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mrs. Southworth, and 
 the splendid stories of Miss Johnson, Winston 
 Churchill, James Lane Allen, Joel Chandler 
 Harris and Thomas Nelson Page — great spin- 
 ners of adorable yarns, painstaking explorers in- 
 to the rich fable-lore of the South, who have re- 
 created the most romantic page in American his- 
 tory. The Hermitage plantation at Savannah 
 satisfied our longings, stirred up memories of all 
 the dreams we had ever dreamed of the South, 
 filled us with satisfaction, as if the chimera we 
 had been pursuing all the way from New York 
 were captured at last, like a rare and elusive but- 
 terfly. It was all that a plantation should be. We 
 spun toward the Big House along a magnificent 
 avenue of live oaks that sprang from gnarled and 
 twisted roots and arched overhead with the 
 beautiful intricacy of Leonardo da Vinci's fres- 
 
 [148] 
 

 
 ^^^ 
 
 I 1 '''#1^^^' 
 
 -y'^'s- 
 
 A MAtiXIFICENT AVENUE OF LIVE OAKS 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 coed branches on the ceiling of the Sforza palace 
 at Milan. The leaves lay one over the other, in 
 an exact and bewildering pattern, shutting out 
 the pale sunlight so that we ran through a tun- 
 nel of green shadows — a place for fairies and 
 pretty ghosts. The road was sandy and weed- 
 grown, but one had only to half close one's eyes 
 to vision ladies and gentlemen on horseback gal- 
 loping toward the House, moving down the cool 
 and leafy avenue like men and women in a Gas- 
 ton La Touche canvas. One had only to shut 
 away the purring of the big motor to hear the 
 more beautiful sound of laughter. . . . 
 
 There were the rows of slave huts, just as we 
 had dreamed they should be, whitewashed, their 
 roofs green with moss, their broad brick chim- 
 neys crumbling and tipped! No spirals of 
 sweet-smelling smoke rose from the cabin 
 hearths, but we had only to shut our eyes to vi- 
 sion the crackling pine logs lighting the single 
 room of each simple dwelling, and to see the 
 doorways crowded with rollicking pickaninnies. 
 The sun, striking through openings in the dense 
 foliage of the live oaks, fell across the road in 
 bands of gold, like the light from clerestory win- 
 dows. 
 
 The chocolate chaufifeur stopped the car be- 
 
 [149] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 fore one of the cabins and called, loudly and in- 
 sistently, for some one within. 
 
 "Molly," he cried, "come on out heah; some 
 one wants to talk to you." 
 
 We had never heard of Molly, so we were nat- 
 urally curious, and as we watched the door of 
 the crumbling cabin, expecting any miracle of 
 such a miraculous place, an old negress emerged 
 from the shadows and came slowly toward us. 
 She was as bent and as gaunt as a witch, a myriad 
 wrinkles puckered her black skin, she wore a 
 scarlet bandana twisted around her head and 
 tied with a knot in front like the tignon of Louis- 
 iana. She hobbled over to us and made a feeble 
 pretence at a curtsey, and then, in a cracked and 
 faltering voice she wished us "good day." She 
 was the oldest woman we had ever seen, older 
 than any living thing on the face of the earth, 
 a cinder, a handful of black dust, a prehistoric 
 mummy kept alive by some invisible, smoulder- 
 ing spark, a creature who had outlasted the past, 
 projected into the twentieth century by some 
 astounding freak of nature. 
 
 "Who is she?" I whispered. 
 
 "She was a slave," the chocolate chauffeur an- 
 swered, lighting a cigarette. "Molly, tell us 
 about the ole times — befo' the wah." 
 
 The ancient negress shook her head and spoke 
 
 [150] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 again in her remote and quavering voice. "Ah'vc 
 got a fever," she said. *'Ah'm dyin'." 
 
 The chauffeur laughed. "She always says 
 that," he explained. "Give her a qua'tah and 
 she'll find her tongue." 
 
 I held out the coin and the old woman's 
 smooth, cold fingers closed over mine like a mon- 
 key's paw. "How old are you?" I asked. 
 
 "Mo'n a hundred," the chauffeur answered. 
 "Ain't you, Molly? She's the oldest col'ud lady 
 in Savannah. Lived right heah in this cabin for 
 seventy yeahs. Ain't that right, Molly?" 
 
 But the old woman would not answer. She 
 held the quarter in the bright pink palm of her 
 shrivelled hand and gazed at it fixedly like an 
 ancient ape fascinated by the flash of silver. We 
 drove on to the Big House, fearful lest it might 
 not be as beautiful as we had dreamed it would 
 be and that the magnificent avenue of oaks led 
 only to disappointment. 
 
 But the Big House, spared miraculously to 
 delight the hearts of just such foolish pilgrims 
 as Allan and I, brought a shout of joy from us 
 both. The gardens were weed-grown, the por- 
 tico and the doorway were dilapidated and de- 
 cayed, the windows were dusty, the wide roof 
 sagged — but it was the Big House all the same! 
 Ladies in ballooning hoop skirts had lived there, 
 
 [151] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 all the fiery heroes of "befo' the wah" literature 
 had loved and fought and lived happily ever 
 after in that very house, negro potentates in liv- 
 ery had served wonderful dinners in the great 
 dining room, and dancing masters, quaint and 
 graceful, had pranced and pirouetted across the 
 polished floor of the drawing room. 
 
 While we stared at the perfect stage setting for 
 the pageant of Southern romance, a howling 
 mob of tattered, barefooted pickaninnies dashed 
 across the ruined garden and surrounded us. 
 Their rags fluttered, their indescribably round 
 eyes rolled prodigiously. ''Dance fo' the gen'- 
 mun," they shouted, "dance fo' the lady! Ten 
 cents!" And they flapped their bare feet and 
 snapped their fingers and slapped their ragged 
 knees, raising a clo-ud of pumpkin-coloured dust. 
 'Dance fo' the gen-mun ! Ten cents ! Tam-an-y !" 
 They danced like furious dervishes with shrill 
 screams, rolling their bright eyes sideways at us, 
 pawing the ground. "Tam-an-y," they sang, 
 grinning and gasping, "Tam-an-y!" 
 
 Allan tossed a quarter to them and they fell 
 on it in a tangled, writhing heap, the pink soles 
 of their bare feet waving in the air, their faces 
 buried in the dust. A young woman with a baby 
 in her arms, who had followed them, shifted 
 her corn-cob pipe long enough to ask us for 
 
 [152] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 money, and I shall never forget the strangeness 
 of the tiny, black baby hand that closed over my 
 fingers and the pennies. "At least," I thought, 
 "you were not born in slavery, you poor little 
 baby." But there were tears in my eyes. The 
 ragged heap on the ground disentangled itself 
 and became ten shrieking pickaninnies again. 
 "Dance fo' the gen-mun," they began, bursting 
 
 into song, "dance fo' the lady " 
 
 But the chocolate chauffeur, apparently dis- 
 gusted, turned the car away and hurried back 
 through the avenue of oaks to Savannah, cover- 
 ing the five miles as quickly as the law allows 
 because he wanted us to see the new negro quar- 
 ter of Savannah, rows and rows of neat frame 
 and brick houses that have taken the place of 
 the one-room cabins of ante-bellum days. He 
 wanted us to see what freedom and ambition 
 have done for him and for others like him. He 
 was ridiculously proud of young negresses in 
 white shoes, and tipped his hat to them as we 
 passed; he ran slowly through the narrow streets 
 of the quarter so that we might see pickaninnies, 
 in sailor suits and socks, riding Kiddy-Kars 
 along the sidewalks. . , . For how could he 
 have known that rags are picturesque, that songs 
 touch the heart, that simplicity is lovable, that 
 the martyrdom of his race had touched our imag- 
 
 [153] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 ination as its progress In neat houses, white shoes 
 and Kiddy- Kars never will? We forgave him 
 everything, for we realised suddenly that we 
 were wrong and that the chocolate chauffeur was 
 right. We had been demanding an eternal rag- 
 gedness and poverty and picturesque ignorance 
 for our own purely aesthetic enjoyment. Prog- 
 ress is not beautiful in its material aspect unless 
 we realise the urge of the spirit behind it, the 
 imperceptible but powerful lift of the ugly 
 sprout, pushing its way through dingy mud to- 
 ward the imperishable light of realisation. 
 
 We skipped over the rest of Savannah, very 
 humble in spirit, finding at every turn of the 
 wheel that the impassioned hat-clerk in Charles- 
 ton was right about the parks. Savannah was 
 given the wrong^^nickname, for City of Packs 
 would fit her more exactly, to-day at least, than 
 Forest City. A whole series of squares and lit- 
 tle greens, running from the river southward 
 through the city, is the chain upon which Savan- 
 nah has strung her most beautiful buildings, 
 clubs, residences and monuments. We counted 
 each bead on this long rosary of loveliness, dis- 
 covering that Savannah is not the sort of city 
 that pays cash for its fireworks and dodges its 
 taxes. Savannah dips down into her capacious 
 
 [154] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 and bulging pocketbook and spends money lav- 
 ishly to beautify herself. 
 
 At the Bonaventure Cemetery, just outside the 
 city, we saw Spanish moss swinging from great 
 trees in long, silver-grey streamers that brushed 
 against our faces as we drove up and down the 
 broad avenues. It was infinitely soft to the touch, 
 like a fine seaweed, and swayed rhythmically in 
 every pufif of wind. I cannot tell you why these 
 enormous streamers should have seemed beauti- 
 ful to us when the strangling growth had every- 
 where else been repulsive and disfiguring in our 
 eyes. Perhaps the very luxuriance of the growth, 
 the prodigious festoons, endeared those particu- 
 lar avenues of moss-draped oaks to us. People 
 moved about among the swaying pennants, ap- 
 pearing and disappearing like dancers seen 
 against same forest background by Gordon 
 Craig, a fantastic stage setting of the modern 
 school. 
 
 We were supposed to catch a train that left 
 Savannah for Jacksonville at twenty minutes af- 
 ter two, so we hurried through the ceremony of 
 "checking" the Golf Club, the Yacht Club, the 
 giant skeleton structure of the new Georgia Ho- 
 tel, a few geometric suburbs blossoming with 
 red-roofed villas arni avenues of palms like 
 forced gardens producing orchids out of the des- 
 
 [155] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 ert sands, and hurried back to the hotel, con- 
 vinced, in a confused way, that Savannah is rich 
 and jolly, fond of sport, up-to-date, hospitable, 
 self-sufficient and alert. Like all other cities, 
 she hides her fashionable face from the gaze of 
 tourists. Elegance rides in a motor or sits snugly 
 behind the plate glass windows of a club or dines 
 discreetly at home. Fashion speaks the same 
 language the world over, in Paris, Cairo, Vien- 
 na, London, New York and — Savannah. 
 
 The train to Jacksonville left at five forty-five 
 — the weather obstinately interfering with sched- 
 ules — and it was not until very late that evening 
 that we found ourselves in ^'Jax," the affectionate 
 diminutive of an afifectionate population for the 
 gay city on the banks of the St. John's River. 
 We found ourselves in an atmosphere of pea- 
 soup fog, Florida tourists and a mysteriously 
 ;transplanted Broadway, for all of theatrical 
 New York had apparently answered the resist- 
 less call of the Jacksonville motion picture stu- 
 dios. We dined in the midst of a conflagration 
 of stars, a glittering constellation of personali- 
 ties. The Lambs' Club promenaded the lobby 
 of the hotel while we sat in an obscure corner 
 and did mental multiplication tables of their 
 combined salaries. 
 
 I was very tired. I stared in pathetic wonder 
 
 [156] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 at the beautiful actresses who contrived to look 
 so rested. 
 
 "Did I skip too lightly over Savannah?" I 
 asked, fearful of the answer before I was half- 
 way through the question. 
 
 Allan, with his eyes fixed on Madame Petrova 
 as she swayed (actresses always do sway, don't 
 they?) down the lobby, answered positively, 
 ''We saw everything there was to see." 
 
 "I wonder," I vs^ispered. Then I added in a 
 savage voice, "I wish I were an actress." 
 
 I went to bed haunted by my inefficiency and 
 a growing determination to "study up" Savan- 
 nah as soon as I got back to New York. I re- 
 membered having seen Sherman's headquarters 
 in Madison Square — what had he to do with 
 Savannah? "Sherman's March to the Sea" ran 
 through my mind like the refrain of a popular 
 song, but I could not remember the way of his 
 marching. My dreams were of Madame Pet- 
 rova founding a colony on the Savannah River 
 in 1733 and naming it Oglethorpe after the hero 
 of the play. . . . 
 
 [157] 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 AN AFTERNOON IN OLD ST. AUGUSTINE AND A 
 CHRONICLE OF TIRE TROUBLE 
 
 DO not know why there should be a 
 mysterious affinity between long, 
 black moustaches and yachting-caps, 
 but it is true that men who wear the 
 one inevitably affect the other. We encountered 
 the combination on the morning of our last day 
 in Jacksonville. The fellow had a motor that 
 he was willing to rent to any one who was foolish 
 enough to rent it from him, and he captured us 
 on the very doorstep of our hotel. 
 
 We had started out immediately after break- 
 fast, lured by a growing determination to visit 
 St. Augustine whether it rained or not, and be- 
 cause the newspapers had invited us, every day 
 for a week, to cross the river. "Take your fairy 
 across the ferry" was Jax's morning reminder 
 that Spanish St. Augustine, the crumbling and 
 dreamy old-world city, could be reached in an 
 hour or two by motor. 
 
 Everything conspired to our miserable down- 
 
 [158] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 fall. "Mr. Foster's" amanuensis was hemmed 
 in by tourists when we approached her desk, 
 and we did not wait to ask questions about St. 
 Augustine because she was in the middle of a 
 detailed explanation, patiently given to an in- 
 attentive old lady, of how one goes from Jack- 
 sonville to El Paso in the quickest possible time. 
 When we turned away the old lady was saying, 
 in a positive tone, "Now, tell me how to get 
 from Jacksonville to Portsmouth, New Hamp- 
 shire." We knew that "Mr. Foster's" human 
 time-table was quite likely to be creating sched- 
 ules for the old lady until noon. So we had wan- 
 dered out of doors, hoping to fall on some easy 
 way to get to St. Augustine, and had fallen, on 
 the very doorstep, upon the gentleman of the 
 mustachios and the yachting-cap. His motor 
 was for hire. He offered it, with the driver, for 
 a ridiculously low price. He waylaid us, hesi- 
 tating in the doorway, scented our uncertainty, 
 divined our desire, and with a few dramatic and 
 misleading words, he visualised a trip to St. 
 Augustine, in his motor, which would be the 
 crowning experience (I am using his phrase) 
 of our Floridian days. 
 
 He looked like a rural interpretation of the 
 villain in melodrama; his dyed moustaches 
 drooped fiercely, his yachting-cap was vaguely 
 
 [159] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 distinguished, his watch chain glittered. And 
 we were charmed. Finally, of course, like hyp- 
 notised rabbits, we stepped into the car and 
 agreed to pay the fellow's price. He whisked 
 away the "Car for Hire" sign which adorned 
 the tonneau, waved his long, white hand, bowed 
 to us, and before we had had time to look at our 
 bargain we had rattled briskly up the street on 
 the way to St. Augustine. 
 
 The sun had come out tentatively, not as if 
 it wished to really gladden the hearts of the 
 sneezing, grippe-convalescent Northern hordes 
 seeking warmth in Florida, but rather as if it 
 were trying its hand at Spring weather and not 
 quite succeeding. There were gusts of sharp 
 wind and spatters of rain, varied now and then 
 by whole half-hours of calm and sunny beauty 
 when even the fruit trees might have been fooled 
 into blooming before the next spilling cloud 
 nipped the ambitious buds. When the sun shone 
 at all it shone magnificently. The sky cleared 
 like magic, the puddles dried and the whole 
 countryside was fragrant with the peculiar sweet- 
 ness of a freshly-washed world. We stopped 
 at each burst of hot sunlight and lowered the 
 top of the car, only to be caught in another flurry 
 of rain before we were fairly on our way again. 
 Finally we gave up trying to protect ourselves 
 
 [160] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 and rode uncovered through sun and rain alike. 
 
 The ferry crossing was enlivened by a ear- 
 ful of movie-players in sulphurish make-up who 
 were on their way to some "location" across the 
 river. I think they enjoyed our curiosity fully 
 as much as we enjoyed their nearness; movie- 
 players have so few flesh and blood audiences, 
 and I don't suppose that they differ from the 
 other sort of player in that they like to be ad- 
 mired. 
 
 The road to St. Augustine is for the most part 
 made of brick; it is laid as neatly and as exactly 
 as a garden path, a warm red in colour, not in- 
 harmonious with the landscape but certainly not 
 as beautiful as the white-shell-road. We had 
 soon passed the forlorn and undignified suburbs 
 of Jacksonville and could run more quickly. 
 That is, we started out by running quickly. The 
 rural villain's motor was a 1900 model ; it rattled 
 loosely as if it were made principally of tin and 
 chains. Behind the young driver's back, Allan 
 and I exchanged furious glances. I blamed him 
 for the bargain, he blamed me for not having 
 saved him from it. But we sat in silence, a si- 
 lence full of tense control, and listened to the 
 grunts, the spittings, the spasmodic and hyster- 
 ical explosions of the motor. The brick road 
 
 [161] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 acted as a sounding-board and increased the rat- 
 tlings and reverberations to a perfect fury of 
 noise. We would have been greeted and shamedi 
 by small boy hoots of "Ice wagon!" in the 
 North. But small boys in the South are too 
 polite to notice a vehicle as repulsive as ours. 
 "I told you so" trembled in the air. 
 
 For a mile or so the car went forward gin- 
 gerly like an ancient clock making a final effort 
 to round ofif an hour before breaking down. And 
 the driver, who was profoundly ashamed of the 
 whole transaction, urged the wheezing motor up 
 to forty-five and put off the inevitable disgrace 
 by letting us believe that we would be in St. 
 Augustine in time for lunch. 
 
 The way led through sandy country over- 
 grown with palmetto scrub or tall, spindling 
 pines. The scrub was ornamental but the pines 
 had been slashed and hideously scarred in the 
 interests of the turpentine industry. Each one 
 wore a tin cup, like a blind beggar. Set well 
 back from the road there were ramshackle cot- 
 tages, negro shanties, where an effort had been 
 made to lure a few vegetables and flowers from 
 the sandy soil. But the scrub and the pine dom- 
 inated the landscape, as they had done all the 
 way from North Carolina, through South Caro- 
 lina, Georgia and into Florida. The sameness 
 
 [162] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 of the Southern landscape creates a feeling of 
 drowsiness in me; everything is grey-green or 
 silver-grey — a procession of two tones that fi- 
 nally lulls me to sleep. If one comes from the 
 more colourful and varied North, one has to ad- 
 just one's sense of beauty to the neutral quality 
 of the Southern landscape. I remember that 
 when I used to leave the Austrian Tyrol in the 
 autumn and go down into Italy, I had to adjust 
 my eyes to the cindery grey of the upper Apen- 
 nines and teach myself not to underestimate the 
 beauty of the volcanic slopes above Pistoja be- 
 cause I had learned to love the glorious vitality, 
 the rich greenness, the hardy pine growth of 
 Karnten. The American South has a sunny and 
 gentle beauty of its own, a delicacy of colour, 
 an endearing and elusive charm. The unique 
 appeal of the country lies rather in its small cit- 
 ies and in the wide stretches of sparsely settled 
 land than in the featureless ugliness of its large 
 modern cities. 
 
 The South is romantic, and its romance is both 
 historical and climatic. There is a gentleness in 
 its skies, a softness in the landscape, a leisurely, 
 unkempt grace and fascination in its gardens. 
 The tragedy of the past rests lightly on the 
 South; now and then one happens upon wist- 
 ful reminders of a dead and gone magnificence 
 
 [163] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 — a crumbling plantation house, a weedy gar- 
 den, a stately mansion given over to official uses 
 or sunken into poverty and decay. But while 
 its beauty is reminiscent, the South is not melan- 
 choly. The love of it deepens in one as the 
 Spring advances. With the slow flowering of 
 the fruit trees, the fresh putting out of bright 
 new leaves against the polished and thickly clus- 
 tered foliage of the oaks, with the blossoming 
 of violets, climbing honeysuckle, jessamine, dog- 
 wood and starry Cherokee roses, with the com- 
 ing of camellias and magnolias, with the deep- 
 ening warmth of the fragrant days your affec- 
 tions are ensnared, you linger, and in the end 
 the drowsy South holds its own against the virile 
 and boisterous North. 
 
 ''Bang!" 
 
 "It's a tire," the driver explained. 
 
 We stopped while he repaired the damage, 
 and we got out to "shake a leg" over a quarter of 
 a mile of the John Anderson Brick Highway. 
 There was nothing to sketch but a very shabby 
 cow who was lipping at the stiff grass on the 
 side of the road, so Allan photographed me 
 standing by the car, standing in the car, seated 
 magnificently in the tonneau and staring off at 
 Florida, helping the driver, not helping the dri- 
 ver, and posed nonchalantly near the cow. The 
 
 [164] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 driver laboured, his face scarlet with humilia- 
 tion. He knelt in the road with streams of per- 
 spiration dripping off the end of his nose. I 
 have never seen a man who perspired more reck- 
 lessly or more completely. I pitied him, sitting 
 coolly in the lofty tin automobile. 
 
 "There," he said, pausing for the first time 
 to mop his streaming face, "that one's fixed. 
 Now we'll try to get into St. Augustine on the 
 others." 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "Them tires," he explained, "is rotten." 
 
 Rotten! We went on a few miles further. 
 The sun came out and scorched the brick road 
 and beat on the tops of our heads. Bang! This 
 time we had to have a new inner tube. The dri- 
 ver descended, a whole kitful of tools was spread 
 up and down the road, the car was jacked up, 
 the wheel came off, the driver began to perspire 
 again. An hour passed. Other cars rolled 
 smoothly by on the way to St. Augustine, blow- 
 ing up clouds of dust that settled slowly down 
 on us. A puddle formed under the driver's nose. 
 The inner tube behaved like a jack-in-the-box, 
 and leaped out of the casing at one end while 
 the driver and Allan squeezed it in at the other. 
 The iron rim, in some inexplicable manner, had 
 expanded, and no human power could make the 
 
 [165] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 tire fit it again. We hammered, we tugged. The 
 driver gave gallons of perspiration to the task. 
 I v^andered away into a pine thicket to let pro- 
 fanity help the situation. Another hour passed. 
 And all the while, cool carfuls of fashionable, 
 veiled ladies shot past on their way to St. Augus- 
 tine and lunch. I came back pitifully to ex- 
 plain that all my life I had longed to see St. 
 Augustine, that it was the city of my dreams; 
 I said that I was going to Tampa on the mor- 
 row (''on the morrow" suited my state of mind 
 much better than an undramatic "to-morrow") 
 and that I was being subjected to an unmerited 
 humiliation. 
 
 The driver looked up at me through a maze 
 of moisture and explained that he was doing his 
 best. Between us we eventually stuffed the live- 
 ly inner tube into the tire and fitted the tire it- 
 self over the mysterious elastic iron rim. Then 
 we started out again, and because all three of 
 us were young we wiped out the memory of the 
 wasted two hours and spoke buoyantly of lunch. 
 
 Bang! 
 
 But this time it didn't really matter. We were 
 at the gates of Spanish St. Augustine. We sent 
 the humiliated driver and the tin automobile 
 ahead in search of a garage and, God willing, 
 convalescence, while we passed through the fa- 
 
 [166] 
 
^•i^-^v 
 
 
 ■V 
 
 17'^' 
 
 II- 
 
 wa*-^' 
 
 
 THE SPANIARDS CALLED THEIR FORT TEiE CASTLE SAX 
 
 NLARCO 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 mous old gates on foot. Lunch could wait, for 
 here was beauty. I cannot imagine a nobler 
 portal to romance and antiquity. Directly be- 
 yond, facing the wide blue of Matanzas Bay, the 
 great fort lay across our path. Behind us, Jack- 
 sonville and the Twentieth Century, noise, ugli- 
 ness and the commonplace — 
 
 We crossed the wide green to the fort, and 
 not waiting to examine the wide moat or the 
 dungeons, went at once to the terreplein where 
 we could see the whole magnificent sweep of 
 white beaches and dunes, the marshlands, the 
 Bay, Anastasia Island with its curious, Christ- 
 mas-candy lighthouse, and the roofs and towers 
 of St. Augustine. 
 
 The fortress rises superbly in the centre of a 
 broad open space and it is near the sea, so that 
 its massive coquina walls are stained by storm 
 and wind with all the pearly opalescence of an 
 oyster shell. It is woefully misnamed Fort Ma- 
 rion after a Revolutionary general who had noth- 
 ing to do, as far as I could discover, with the 
 history of the fortress. The Spaniards, who 
 ruled St. Augustine uninterruptedly (save for a 
 twenty years' British occupation) from 1565 un- 
 til 1821, called their fort the Castle San Marco. 
 And San Marco it should be to-day; the softer 
 
 [167] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 Latin name suits the essentially Spanish pile as 
 its patriotic misnomer never could. 
 
 Although Ponce de Leon landed near St. Au- 
 gustine in 15 13 and was inspired to name his 
 discovery Florida, he did not find the fountain 
 of youth he had set out for, and returned to Spain 
 without having established a colony. The 
 Huguenots came next, seeking refuge from reli- 
 gious persecution in what must have seemed to 
 them a problematical world, a mirage; they 
 crossed the ocean in two ships under Captain 
 Jean Ribaut and landed not far from St. Au- 
 gustine on what proved to be very tangible 
 ground. But Ribaut had to go back to France 
 for a larger company and for supplies; he sailed 
 away, leaving twenty-five of his men in Florida 
 to hold the beautiful mirage in the name of God 
 and France. 
 
 The twenty-five held on until their provisions 
 had given out, until hope had died, until their 
 beautiful mirage seemed only a hateful and atro- 
 cious prison. For Ribaut did not return. He 
 was in France trying to raise money, a feat that 
 was as hard to accomplish in 1563 as it is now, 
 when rich citizens clap their hands over their 
 purses at the mere approach of an idealist. Ri- 
 baut begged while the twenty-five stranded Hu- 
 guenots starved in Florida. And finally, when 
 
 [168] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 they had given up all hope of him, they tried to 
 cross the ocean in a fragile cockleshell of their 
 own construction. At sea their supplies gave 
 out altogether and the desperate Huguenots 
 faced a hideous problem. They cast lots — and 
 the gruesome game was played with who knows 
 what deadly seriousness or atrocious playfulness 
 ■ — for the life of one man who should sacrifice 
 himself for the others. One of the twenty-five 
 lost and gave himself in an appalling martyr- 
 dom. The rest were rescued by an English 
 ship and played no further part in St. Augus- 
 tine's history. 
 
 De Laudonniere, another Huguenot of vast 
 courage and superb credulity, landed in St. Aug- 
 ustine the following year. He did not settle 
 there, but with the help of friendly Indians built 
 a fort on the James River. The tardy Ribaut 
 arrived in time to reinforce De Laudonniere, 
 and St. Augustine and its vicinity might have 
 become Huguenot if Philip H of Spain had not 
 chanced to hear that the little band of heretics 
 had settled themselves in Florida, thereby en- 
 croaching on Spanish North America and de- 
 filing a Catholic hemisphere. 
 
 Pedro Menendez de Avilas was sent on the 
 pious mission of destruction. He so burned to 
 destroy the detested Lutherans that he spent his 
 
 [169] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 entire fortune in equipping an expedition of two 
 thousand six hundred people. Nor did he for- 
 get to include in his company twenty-six priests 
 who were to save the soul of any Huguenot who 
 might repent or who might remember, in his ex- 
 treme moment, that he belonged to the old faith. 
 Bloodshed and salvation, cruelty and religion, 
 the most ferocious hatred and the most exalted 
 fanaticism brought the first permanent settlers 
 to America fifty-five years before the Pilgrims 
 set foot on Plymouth Rock. The Spaniards es- 
 tablished themselves at St. Augustine and turned 
 their attention immediately to the extermination 
 of the Huguenots. Ribaut, who attempted to re- 
 taliate from the sea, was shipwrecked, and Lau- 
 donniere with the few survivors of the James 
 River colony fled back to France. 
 
 Ribaut's shipwrecked crew surrendered to the 
 mercy of Menendez. They would better have 
 taken refuge with the Indians for the conscien- 
 tious Hidalgo had no pity, although there was 
 perhaps a shadow of gentlemanly consideration 
 in his soul. He had his miserable captives led 
 out of sight of their comrades with bound hands. 
 And then he had them stabbed, ten at a time, in 
 the back. Two hundred died the first day; the 
 rest, one hundred and fifty, in batches of ten 
 were stabbed with true mediaeval courtesy on the 
 
 [170] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 following day. Nor "by the grace of God" did 
 iRibaut escape. 
 
 Apparently Menendez had no quarrel with 
 his victims, but insisted that he had killed them, 
 "not as Frenchmen but as Lutherans," as if blot- 
 ting out a Huguenot soul was as unimportant as 
 stepping on a beetle. The white sands of St. 
 Augustine were consecrated by the blood of the 
 heroic Frenchmen who had surrendered them- 
 selves in all good faith to a "merciful" enemy. 
 They were avenged three years later by De 
 Gourges, who captured one of Menendez' gar- 
 risons when the Spaniard was away and hanged 
 the defenders to the very trees where so many 
 Huguenots had swung. He was a complete 
 avenger with a nice sense of humour, for he 
 placarded the hanged Spaniards with a neat 
 parody on Menendez' apology: "I do this not 
 as unto Spaniards, nor as outcasts, but as traitors, 
 thieves and murderers." The confusion of the 
 grammar detracted nothing from the straightfor- 
 wardness of De Gourges' intentions; he was pos- 
 sibly overwrought when he penned the thrust. 
 But Menendez saw, and while he parsed the jest 
 he reviewed his own soul. He established mis- 
 sions as far north as Chesapeake Bay and as far 
 south as Cape Florida, and then feeling that his 
 military and spiritual duty had been done, he 
 
 [171] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 returned to Spain. To console you, in case you 
 feel that De Gourges' vengeance lacked com- 
 pleteness, I will write Menendez' epitaph. He 
 died of a fever, when only fifty years of age, 
 "somewhere in Spain." 
 
 He had at least won Florida for Spain with 
 comparatively little bloodshed. When one 
 thinks what Alsace and Lorraine have cost 
 France, what the winning back of the Trentino 
 has cost Italy, the murder of a handful of 
 Huguenots seems a merciful matter. St. Augus- 
 tine remained under Spanish rule for nearly 
 three centuries. The history of the place was 
 lively enough to have satisfied the most ad- 
 venture-loving settlers of those adventurous 
 days. There were massacres, Indian raids, 
 fights with buccaneers and raiders, bitter 
 quarrels with the English settlers of the Caro- 
 linas. And all the while, in spite of the 
 reluctance of the kings of Spain to send funds 
 for the building of a fort which cost thirty mil- 
 lion dollars, San Marco rose stone by stone on 
 the outskirts of St. Augustine. Slaves and In- 
 dian prisoners did the greatest part of the work, 
 carrying the blocks of coquina from the quar- 
 ries, two miles below Anastasia lighthouse, to 
 the bay, where they were loaded on barges and 
 ferried across to the Castle. The fortress was 
 
 [172] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 begun in 1665, but it was not until 1765 that the 
 Spanish coat-of-arms was finally placed over the 
 great entrance together with the inscription in 
 Spanish which says that ^'Don Fernandez the 
 Sixth being King of Spain, and Field Marshal 
 Don Alonzo Fernandez de Herreda Governor 
 and Captain-General of the city of St. Augus- 
 tine, Florida, and its province, this fortress was 
 finished in the year 1765. The works were di- 
 rected by the Captain-Engineer, Don Pedro de 
 Brazas y Garay." 
 
 Long before Don Pedro de Brazas y Garay 
 took the glory of the building for himself, San 
 Marco had had its baptism of fire. Governor 
 Moore of Carolina had made no impression on 
 its massive walls, but he had succeeded in hold- 
 ing the inhabitants of St. Augustine barricaded 
 in the fortress for three months. Thirteen years 
 later Governor Oglethorpe came down from 
 Carolina and threw one hundred and fifty shells 
 into the fort and the town. He might have suc- 
 ceeded in starving out the besieged Spaniards 
 if he had not been driven away by clouds of poi- 
 sonous mosquitoes. His bitten and outraged sol- 
 diers refused to endure the humiliating torment 
 and Oglethorpe had to return empty-handed to 
 Carolina. 
 
 During the British occupation, St. Augustine, 
 [173] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 which had been nothing but a military post, be- 
 came an active seaport, and there was a lively 
 coming and going of schooners and square-rig- 
 gers in the broad, beach-fringed bay. Ships 
 from London and Liverpool, New York and 
 Charleston put in at St. Augustine with supplies ; 
 some of them brought negro slaves. They set 
 sail again with full cargoes of indigo and naval 
 stores. To-day there are no traces of this ac- 
 tivity. Matanzas Bay is a gentle sheet of water, 
 ideal for the leisurely houseboat or for an oc- 
 casional pleasure steamer bearing tourists to St. 
 Augustine from Jacksonville, or from St. Aug- 
 ustine to the bathing-beaches of the more north- 
 ern shore. Where the great square-rigged ships 
 rode magnificently there are now noisy, explos- 
 ive launches skimming back and forth, cutting 
 a threadlike wake across the polished surface of 
 the water. 
 
 At the close of the Revolution England ceded 
 the valuable province back to Spain, but it is 
 not known how many of the Spaniards who had 
 fled British dominion returned to St. Augustine. 
 The town had not fully taken on its Spanish im- 
 print when the United States paid five million 
 dollars for Florida and got themselves in for a 
 trouble which had been brewing for years — 
 the Seminole War. 
 
 [174] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 We wondered, looking down the steep sides 
 of San Marco, how it could have withstood its 
 past, solid and impregnable as it is. The sentry- 
 boxes and the watch-tower are still standing, and 
 the combined efforts of all the besiegers have 
 only succeeded in peppering the thick walls. 
 Yet I suppose that one shell dropped into San 
 Marco from a modern warship would powder 
 its mediaeval curtains, those "curtains and bas- 
 tions made of solid silver" which swallowed up 
 so many galleon loads of Spanish riches, into a 
 scattered and obliterated dust-heap. The cen- 
 tury of toil, the long procession of negroes and 
 captive Indians bearing coquina blocks, have 
 built a seventh wonder of the New World, a 
 tourist treasure house where home-towners, with 
 their wives and their daughters, come to gape 
 at an architecture which is beyond their under- 
 standing, and to be touched, perhaps for the first 
 time, by a beauty which is both romantic and 
 historical. 
 
 Tribes of desperate tourists, generaled by a 
 guide, pursued us around the terreplein and fi- 
 nally drove me headlong into the watch-tower. 
 I fled upwards in a spiral and was knocked on 
 top of my head by a cross-beam which drove my 
 hat over my ears and deprived me of sight, hear- 
 ing and the power of speech. So that when the 
 
 [175] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 tourist horde arrived, instead of being in ex- 
 clusive and aristocratic possession of the watch- 
 tower, I was sitting in a dazed state half-way 
 up the staircase, brushing stars out of my eyes. 
 
 They clustered about me while their guide 
 explained the watch-tower, like the fellow in 
 Madame Tussaud's Wax Works, with a total 
 disregard for punctuation. I assumed the part 
 of a scalped settler — done in wax — and escaped 
 attention. The guide explained in a nasal voice, 
 acute and toneless, with erratic pauses for 
 breath : 
 
 "The fort has four nearly equal bastions 
 known as St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Augustine and 
 St. Charles and four (pause for breath) con- 
 necting walls called curtains ladies and gentle- 
 men you will kindly notice that there are sentry 
 towers on three of the (pause for breath) bas- 
 tions while you are now looking at a tower which 
 commands a view of both land and sea." He 
 might have added, "also of a young woman who 
 has banged her head on a cross-beam and is in a 
 state of semi-consciousness," but he didn't. He 
 went on, with a dramatic gesture and no 
 commas : "The walls are twelve feet thick at the 
 base nine at the top and twenty-five feet high 
 ladies and gentlemen you will (pause for breath) 
 now follow me and I will lead you into the inner 
 
 [176] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 court or plaza which is one hundred feet square." 
 The home-towners, with a blank expression, 
 turned as one man and trotted at his heels. 
 
 "That fellow knows a lot," Allan remarked 
 with admiration and respect. "I'm going to fol- 
 low him. That's an easy way to get history." 
 
 He had joined the home-towners before I 
 could protest, and I had to reel in pursuit down 
 the steep ramp (which I vaguely remembered 
 as having been used as the background for count- 
 less movie dramas and where I had seen my 
 favourite hero fight a magnificent duel) , down to 
 the plaza and into the cool darkness of the dun- 
 geon. Through all that maze of passageways, 
 court rooms, council chambers and casemates 
 there is an intoxicating odour of antiquity, a 
 delicious combining of crumbling stone and 
 musty, sunbaked walls, an odour of mould that 
 is like the ghost of incense and old books. It 
 took me by the nose and by the soul, that rare 
 sweet smell of ancient wood and ancient stone, 
 the faintly aromatic dust of centuries. Outside, 
 the sanded courtyard of the fortress blazed like 
 a mirror in the hot, white sunlight, little knots 
 of tourists crossing and recrossing it kicking 
 up spirals of dust. It must have looked the same 
 to Osceola when he was confined in the court- 
 room after his capture by General Hernandez. 
 
 [177] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 He carved shallow niches in the coquina walls 
 of his prison so that he could lift himself up to 
 the grating and stare out at the patch of sun- 
 flooded courtyard that was all he could see of the 
 world. The guide's voice echoed around the 
 room where the great Chief spent nearly a year, 
 while the home-towners gaped at the pathetic 
 niches or scratched furtive signatures on the 
 walls, wanting, for some obscure and inexpli- 
 cable reason, to associate themselves with the 
 tragic and heroic dead. 
 
 The story of Osceola is bitter and humiliating 
 in perspective. The Seminoles, like so many 
 of the Indian nations of North America, inter- 
 fered with the white settlers' scheme of things. 
 It was suggested that they move south of the 
 Withlacooche or west of the Mississippi ; there 
 were threatenings and cruelties, deceptions and 
 treaties which bore a pathetic resemblance to a 
 certain famous "scrap of paper." If the Semi- 
 noles could have been erased from the face of 
 the earth, the Americans would have wiped the 
 slate clean with a clear conscience. But it is 
 not easy to dispose of five thousand people, hard- 
 er still to deprive them of their hereditary farm- 
 lands, their homes and their hunting grounds. 
 The inevitable war began with the massacre 
 of Major Dade's men and lasted for seven years. 
 
 [178] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 Osceola was the Petain of the Seminoles, a fear- 
 less, expert, keenly intelligent chief, a danger- 
 ous enemy and a man of extraordinary honesty. 
 The story of his capture makes bitter reading 
 and I will not repeat it here. I would like to 
 believe that it was the only instance in American 
 history of the violation of a truce, and that when 
 General Jessup and General Hernandez cap- 
 tured the unarmed and unsuspecting chief they 
 were influenced in some nameless and inexpli- 
 cable way by the tragic atmosphere of San Mar- 
 co; I would like to believe that their spirits were 
 tinged by an alien treachery, changed mysteri- 
 ously, inbued with the hates, the deceits, the in- 
 stabilities, of a mediaeval and Latin past. 
 
 Osceola was taken seven miles from St. Aug- 
 ustine and was imprisoned in San Marco with 
 two other Seminoles, King Philip's son Coa- 
 choochee and Hadjo the medicine man. Coa- 
 choochee and Hadjo dug niches in the steep 
 walls of the court-room and climbed eighteen 
 feet to the ventilator, where they somehow man- 
 aged to squeeze through the iron bars and 
 drop into the moat. Coachoochee had torn 
 his blankets into strips and was able to break his 
 fall by sliding down the improvised rope; but 
 Hadjo tumbled twenty-five feet into the moat, 
 landing like a cat, apparently, on his feet. He 
 
 [179] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 escaped, and history says nothing of his bruises. 
 
 Osceola stayed, strangely steadfast considering 
 the manner of his capture. Of his people, only 
 a few hundred remained, and his own martyr- 
 dom lasted scarcely a year. The guide, point- 
 ing to a hideous painted effigy of the great Semi- 
 nole, swung into a comma-less eulogy delivered 
 at top speed, as if he were afraid that the inner 
 workings of his speechmaking were on the verge 
 of breaking down. And all the while his eye ap- 
 praised the home-towners, his attentive ear heard 
 the tentative clinkings of quarters and dimes. 
 ... I felt as ashamed as if the unhappy ghost 
 were hovering over my head, appraising my vul- 
 gar curiosity, the blank stares of the home-town- 
 ers, the weariness of the guide. . „ . I fled, leav- 
 ing Allan to pay, not for elemosine, but for punc- 
 tuation. 
 
 Lunch lay somewhere in the centre of the 
 town, over by that cluster of Andalusian towers 
 and roofs which rose above the simple one and 
 two-storied houses of the residential and business 
 quarters like the high-flung, scarlet peaks of the 
 Certosa di Pavia. An ancient darkey, encount- 
 ered on the green before San Marco, pointed out 
 the way. He had "lucky beans" for sale in ex- 
 change for information, which seemed to me a 
 polite and supremely well-bred way to earn a 
 
 [180] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 living. You simply get in the way of confused 
 strangers, put them on the right path, and then 
 suggest in a winsome voice that a lucky bean, 
 worn in the sole of the shoe, is a counter-irritant 
 for blue devils. If the confused stranger hap- 
 pens to be a sport, and a surprising number of 
 people are, he falls for the bean — and the infor- 
 mation. (Wallingford please notice!) This is 
 better stuff than blind and dumb beggary, far, 
 far better stuff than the antics of the postcard 
 pest; it smacks of honesty and good breeding. 
 Allan bought two beans, and feeling that the 
 war ought to encourage thrift, I asked another 
 question. 
 
 "Where is the fountain of youth. Uncle?" 
 
 The ancient darkey was no more certain of 
 the life-giving spring than poor Ponce de Leon 
 had been. He scratched his head and answered 
 sadly, "Ah disremember." 
 
 "Why, you ought to know," I said, and he 
 beamed at the compliment. 
 
 "Ah disremember," he insisted. "Ah never 
 can seem to recollect whichever fountain it is. 
 Seems like it moves. Yes, m'am, it moves ! When 
 Ah was a I'il boy it was over yonder. Nex' time 
 Ah come to look fob it, it was down yonder. 
 And now Ah've disremembered where they've 
 
 [181] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 done put it. Yessah, that fountain of youth don' 
 stay whar it belongs mo'n a yeah at a time." 
 
 Allan whispered fiercely in my ear, as fiercely 
 as it is possible to whisper, "Don't ask him an- 
 other question. I haven't any change!" 
 
 So I fell into the historical habit and aban- 
 doned the quest. It doesn't matter about youth, 
 anyway, when one is young. It is only after- 
 ward, when the precious gift is lost, that one 
 would like to find the crystal source and drink 
 long and deep. If we could only have youth 
 after age! Youth is so often tragic in its igno- 
 rance, its profligacy, its unawareness, if I can 
 put it that way ! I've often wished that the whole 
 scheme of things could be reversed ; that we 
 could be born old, wise, disciplined, weary, 
 rheumatic and world-seasoned, and that we 
 could pass with the years into a glorious, con- 
 scious youth. My idea of heaven is not com- 
 plex — we shall be old-young, we shall walk with 
 the free gait of children, we shall leap and rol- 
 lick, climb and prance; we shall be sturdy, beau- 
 tiful and invincibly unafraid, and we shall be as 
 old as the old world. 
 
 St. Augustine has learned the secret of young 
 old age. The crumbling walls of the unpreten- 
 tious houses are stained ochre and blue and rose 
 after the Latin fashion so prevalent in Spain and 
 
 [182] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 in Southern Italy; the doors open out directly 
 on the street and invite friendliness; there are 
 pleasant gardens, sometimes set behind walls 
 and not seldom blooming in the very dooryards 
 or brightening a business street with staccato 
 poinsettias and flowering bushes. Wherever the 
 disastrous fire of I9i4has spared the wooden and 
 coquina houses of the old Spanish period, there 
 are delightful jutting balconies shadowed by 
 steeply sloping roofs and often hung with big- 
 nonia vines or thick curtains of ivy. The town 
 is sparsely built over a wide area in the leisurely 
 manner of the past, and even the intrusion of 
 modern "villas" and frame houses designed to 
 meet the home-towners' "rooming" needs has 
 failed to spoil the beauty of the narrow streets. 
 
 St. Augustine has fallen into a gentle and 
 wholly delightful shabbiness since the passing of 
 its climax of prosperity. The "Great Freeze" 
 drove the more fashionable Northerners further 
 south, to the gay, made-to-order resorts. Palm 
 Beach and Miami, where they are willing to de- 
 posit a "guarantee" of their spending capacity 
 in exchange for the dubious pleasure of paying 
 four times what everything they buy is really 
 worth. St. Augustine has been left on the fringe 
 of the fashionable tide of Southern travel; its 
 great hotels catch eddies of the stream early in 
 
 [183] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 the season, when a few travellers break the long 
 journey there; and again in the spring the re- 
 turning rush drifts in and around the old Span- 
 ish town before it finally faces North again. Bui: 
 it is no longer chic to take a house in St. Augus- 
 tine for the entire season. Fashion pursued the 
 fox-trot, the Hawaiian orchestra, the high cost 
 of living and publicity to a warmer climate, and 
 left St. Augustine to drift year by year into a lov- 
 able seediness, an endearing informality, so that 
 it has become itself again after a period of ex- 
 citement and ostentation. The greatest number 
 of its winter visitors are from the Middle West. 
 They are not fashionable and they are easily 
 amused. St. Augustine can be herself with them ; 
 she does not have to make her sandy, meandering 
 driveways into boulevards or trim her neglected 
 gardens or go into business or pretend to be a 
 modern city. The home-towners are a comfort- 
 able lot, not over-imaginative; they will never 
 notice that St. Augustine is getting to be a little 
 out of style and that Flagler's second sweetheart, 
 Palm Beach (the hussy!) , has walked away with 
 most of her admirers. The home-towner loves 
 St. Augustine. 
 
 We encountered him all the way across St. 
 George Street, sauntering in the warm sunlight 
 (for the sun had come out for good) with his 
 
 [184] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 home-town paper in his pocket and an air of 
 purposeful holiday-making about him. The 
 postcard shops were doing a lively business, and 
 I daresay that the evening post to the Middle 
 West went burdened with coloured views of San 
 Marco and the Anastasia lighthouse and many 
 harmlessly exaggerated accounts of "tropic" 
 Florida, palms, flowers, oysters and alligators. 
 
 The only alligator we saw in Florida occu- 
 pied a stone bathtub in the Plaza, and we paused 
 on our way across the square to hang on the rim 
 of his prison and admire the few bumpy bits of 
 his anatomy that showed above the brackish 
 water. His eyes were closed and he wore a ter- 
 rible smile, like the fixed grin of a prehistoric 
 mummy. He was loathsome and as immovable 
 as a stone, and although we would have liked to 
 join the circle of small boys who had attached 
 themselves to the railing in a hopeless passion 
 for the inscrutable reptile, we really had to have 
 lunch. 
 
 We had fixed on the Ponce de Leon as the 
 ideal place for that ceremony, but when we stood 
 in King Street between Hastings' two master- 
 pieces, the Ponce de Leon and the newer Alca- 
 zar, we decided in favour of the less famous of 
 the two. The Ponce de Leon's terra cotta tow- 
 ers and wide-flung roofs are perhaps too magnifi- 
 
 [185] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 cent for a town as architecturally simple as St. 
 Augustine. We turned into the Alcazar because 
 we liked its beautiful facade and the truly Span- 
 ish courtyard filled with the splash and tinkle of 
 fountain jets and blazing with flowers. Here, 
 we were in the fashionable atmosphere again. 
 Young men in white flannels lounged in the cor- 
 ridors, discreet children rolled hoops along the 
 garden walks and very modern young women sat 
 decoratively about in summer gowns. Outside, 
 in the streets of simple St. Augustine, the natives 
 were wearing overcoats and furs, and complain- 
 ing bitterly of the cold. Fashion said, "This is 
 a winter resort; it is supposed to be warm," and 
 wore white. The same thing happened in Cairo 
 and Palermo, Biskra and Monte Carlo before 
 the war. One shivered, but tradition kept win- 
 ter flannels under lock and key. 
 
 We had lunch to the tune of the fountain jets, 
 with a glimpse through an open door of the sun- 
 ny cortile and a shower of purple bougainvillea 
 that poured down from the second story and 
 sprayed its fallen petals over the garden walks. 
 
 "This is Spain," I said. 
 
 "M'am?" The waiter had thrust the menu 
 under my nose and thought — heaven knows what 
 he thought. 
 
 [186] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 "This is Spain," I said again, trying to catch 
 Allan's eye. 
 
 "Yes, m'am," the waiter answered. "Will 
 you have some soup? The chicken soup is very 
 nice, now? Or perhaps an hors-d'oeuvres?" 
 
 "This," I whispered weakly, "is Spain. . . . 
 Bring me a large sirloin steak, potatoes O'Brien 
 — that's a Spanish name! — artichokes and after- 
 wards a salad." 
 
 Allan looked up as the waiter rushed away. 
 "If it is Spain," he said bitterly, "I can't afford 
 a Rabelaisian feast like that! Ham and eggs 
 cost two dollars and a half, my dear." 
 
 When Allan says "My dear," his afifection is 
 at a low ebb. I choked over the steak although 
 it was fearfully good. The waiter was an artful 
 creature. He knew the trick of making you feel 
 that the poverty of your order pained him deep- 
 ly. He suggested, by his raised eyebrows, that 
 he had always waited on financially unbridled 
 people. He hovered, murmuring that the as- 
 paragus was very good, that we might like mush- 
 rooms, that he could bring us, if we only give 
 him the word, food worth twenty dollars. He 
 deplored our plebeian steak in his very manner 
 of serving it. In the end, of course, Allan suc- 
 cumbed to his blandishments and, avoiding my 
 
 [187] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 eye, ordered an elaborately indigestible dessert 
 which neither of us wanted. 
 
 Instantly, as if his purpose were accomplished 
 and he had no further use for us, the waiter be- 
 came haughty and aloof; while we tackled the 
 expensive pastry, he joined one of his co-fiends 
 and gossiped softly. Nor did our bill impress 
 him; he tucked it carelessly, upside down to 
 spare my feelings and to foil my curiosity, under 
 Allan's plate, and then bore away a ten dollar 
 bill for mutilation with the indifiference of a 
 bank clerk. 
 
 But we recovered our self-respect as soon as 
 we reached the sunny Plaza again. We sat 
 there through a drowsy hour, watching the life 
 of the little city as it ebbed and flowed through 
 the square. The flecked shadows of the oaks and 
 cedars and splendid palms made fantastic pat- 
 terns on the walks and on the greensward. Every 
 passerby of possibly Spanish complexion, and 
 they were many, stirred us to lively discussions. 
 Were they really descendants of the first Spanish 
 settlers or of those romantic Minorcans whose 
 history is so tragically woven into the complex 
 story of St. Augustine? You probably remem- 
 ber, unless you "always skip the historical para- 
 graphs" (I do, except when I have to write 
 them!) that when Florida was ceded to England 
 
 [188] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 in 1763, the outraged Spaniards fled St. Augus- 
 tine bag and baggage and took their hurt feelings 
 to Cuba. 
 
 The Minorcans were brought over not long 
 after the change of rule by an English planter, 
 Nicholas Turnbull, who put the simple and un- 
 suspecting people to work on his indigo farms 
 at New Smyrna and then virtually enslaved 
 them. They were too guileless, or too intimi- 
 dated, to know that Turnbull had no legal right 
 to force them to pay for their passage in terms 
 of servitude, and they had endured this intoler- 
 able martyrdom nine years before one of them, 
 learning somehow that there was an English 
 governor at St. Augustine, escaped and took the 
 story of his people's humiliation to an English 
 court. And since the liberated Minorcans 
 settled at St. Augustine, leaving Nicholas Turn- 
 bull high and dry on his labourless indigo farm, 
 it is probably Minorcan and not Spanish blood 
 which darkens the eyes and cheeks of those olive- 
 skinned and beautiful St. Augustinians who 
 passed us in the Plaza. 
 
 We were caught into the spirit of the siesta 
 hour, too lazy to go into the Catholic cathedral 
 which faces the Plaza on its northern side. We 
 sat, instead, on the comfortable garden bench 
 and looked at the beautiful simplicity of the 
 
 [189] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 facade, unbroken save by a statue of a saint set 
 justly in a niche, and by a triune belfry and a 
 cross. Children scampered by, knots of gos- 
 siping and laughing negroes ambled past on 
 their own mysterious and leisurely business, 
 flower sellers displaying neat little bouquets of 
 gardenias and camellias on wooden trays mean- 
 dered up and down making picturesque figures 
 of themselves, and everywhere the home-towners 
 rattled newspapers and shifted with the sun from 
 bench to bench. The old stone obelisk reminded 
 us of a certain little fountain in the Cascine gar- 
 dens at Florence ; if you have been there you will 
 remember the dedication to Narcissus and the 
 shallow bowl of clear water and the emerald 
 shadows of the ancient grove of oaks. 
 
 The tin automobile, making hideous sounds, 
 roused us from our gentle laziness. The driver 
 spied us from the street and we went back to the 
 car reluctantly, like victims going to certain tor- 
 ture. The garage had done its utmost for the 
 tin ruin. The tires were bandaged and plastered 
 and trepanned and stuffed to the bursting point 
 with oxygen. And the driver, still copiously be- 
 dewed and almost invisible under a coat of 
 grease and mud, assured us on his oath that he 
 could "make forty all the way back to Jax." 
 
 It was sunset when we left the town, for we 
 [190] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 were beguiled into an "oldest house" which 
 proved to be the wrong one and where we saw 
 nothing but a mildewed print of Osceola, a chair 
 made of elephant's tusks and some other mid- 
 Victorian curios that had nothing to do with St. 
 Augustine or antiquity. While it cost us noth- 
 ing to view these exhilarating horrors, it cost a 
 quarter to take leave of them! 
 
 When we swung (oh, yes, we were swinging 
 when we started) out of the old gates, the sky 
 was quite magnificent and the wide Bay had 
 taken on a deep and luminous blue. We hur- 
 ried through a long avenue of moss-draped oaks 
 where I shut my eyes because I don't like moss, 
 particularly when it is choking splendid old 
 trees in a death embrace and hiding the rich 
 green of leaves with its drab, bone-hued ugli- 
 ness. Twilight found us rattling swiftly 
 
 Bang! 
 
 We descended; we patched, we spoke hope- 
 fully of its being the last time. Then on. 
 
 Bang! 
 
 The struggle all over again. Then on. 
 
 Bang! 
 
 Terrible curses from the driver. All the tires 
 were gone now. And it was dark. And we were 
 ten miles from Jacksonville. We stopped. 
 The lights went out and refused to burn again. 
 
 [191] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 It was chilly and lonely. A white mist drifted 
 close to the ground, but overhead a conflagration 
 of stars burned remotely. Frogs cheeped, trilled 
 and whistled liquid, bubbling whistles. Again 
 the driver knelt and probably perspired. I 
 didn't care. I hoped that some dashing motor- 
 ist would happen along and offer to take me — 
 not Allan or the driver — ^^back to Jacksonville. 
 But no one happened along except an inconceiv- 
 ably ragged negro who rose out of the swamps 
 and squatted near us to stare dumbly. 
 
 "It's no use," the driver admitted in a dull 
 voice, rising from his knees and clapping his 
 dusty hands together. "We'll have to go in on 
 the rims." 
 
 And we did. Ten miles — on the rims — it 
 surpasses description. At eleven o'clock we 
 drove up to the door of the Seminole in what 
 was left of the tin automobile. And there on 
 the doorstep was a smiling gentleman with mous- 
 tachios and a yachting cap. He bowed and extri- 
 cated us from the wreck with tender murmurs. 
 
 "I trust," he said, "that you enjoyed the trip." 
 
 Can you, now can you, beat that? If I had 
 had the strength I would have tweaked his nose. 
 As it was, I watched Allan count out seventeen 
 one dollar bills into the creature's hand. Then, 
 I think, I fainted. 
 
 [192] 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 . TAMPA, SPANIARDS AND THE GREEK SPONGE 
 FLEET AT TARPON 
 
 LL we saw of Tampa, to begin with, 
 was the enormous Tampa Bay Hotel. 
 As usual, our train was late — three 
 hours and a half late, this time — and 
 we had stumbled into the first taxi-cab, too dog- 
 tired to even glance at the city on our way 
 through it. When we got to the hotel we won- 
 dered whether we should ever see anything of 
 Tampa beyond the endless halls and drawing- 
 rooms, lobbies and porches of that prodigious 
 hostelry. A jaunty Northern coon snapped his 
 fingers and rattled the keys of number five hun- 
 dred and ninety-six and five hundred and ninety- 
 seven, as we panted at his heels past miles of 
 doors, across acres of red carpet, down a cor- 
 ridor that went on like a nightmare — 
 
 ''Dinner at seven," he said. And added with 
 a broad Boston accent, "It's half-past eight 
 
 now." 
 
 The insinuation was so plain that we scarcely 
 
 [193] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 waited to brush off the accumulation of white 
 Florida dust which had settled on our clothes, 
 but started out to dinner like people with a 
 vision, pursuing the promise of food down mo- 
 notonous miles and miles of red-carpeted corri- 
 dors. The dining-room, when we finally got 
 there, was like an Orientalised Pantheon, so 
 astounding in its proportions that we entered it 
 with awe and our tiptoeing echoed around the 
 great dome like the thunder of an army. We 
 hurried through our dinner because it required 
 at least three thousand electric bulbs to light our 
 solitary repast, and the head waiter stood with 
 his hand on the switch which controlled the il- 
 lumination, depressed, I think, by the prodigal 
 wasting of so much brilliance. Dinner came 
 from a far-distant kitchen and, in spite of pre- 
 cautionary covers and wrappings, arrived cold. 
 But the delicious oranges which we had for des- 
 sert were picked in the hotel gardens, and we 
 fancied that they were still warm from the after- 
 noon sun. 
 
 We went to bed overwhelmed by our sur- 
 roundings. It was like being in the Alhambra, 
 if you can imagine the Alhambra comfortably 
 furnished in the late-Victorian manner. In 
 spite of "hot and cold running water in 
 
 [194] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 every room," you looked instinctively for a bell- 
 rope. 
 
 It was breathlessly hot — as unlike January as 
 January on the Riviera. We put out the lights, 
 and with the windows wide open leaned on the 
 sill and breathed deeply of the moist night air, 
 fragrant with the spice of flowering bushes and 
 trees. And for the first time we felt that we 
 were really in the romantic South we had been 
 pursuing all the way from Maryland through 
 snow, sleet and dripping fog. Overhead the 
 arch of the sky was luminous with swarming 
 stars, little ones twinkling, big ones very steady 
 and blue, a wide path where the Milky Way 
 flowed through them all from the top of the 
 heavens down into the tangled darkness of the 
 garden. We could see the closely-packed foli- 
 age of the wide-spreading oaks, a spray of 
 ghostly, feathery bamboo, a tall palm with a 
 cluster of leaves atop like a Japanese baby's 
 hair-cut, and, shooting starward, a minaret with 
 a silver crescent balanced sideways on its tip. 
 
 The morning was even lovelier. The dining- 
 room was less like the Tomb of Napoleon (or 
 did I say the Pantheon?) when it was full of 
 people, and there was an animated bustle of 
 New England waitresses and mannered head- 
 waiters. The coffee, brought at a dog-trot by a 
 
 [195] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 conscientious waitress, survived the journey from 
 the kitchens and was still steaming when we 
 poured it into our cups. It is easy to see why 
 the hotel management chooses its employes from 
 Puritan stock! 
 
 We saw lots of nice, comfortable old ladies, 
 *'Not chic," I whispered to Allan, "but Chi- 
 cago." There were a few old gentlemen ad- 
 vertising by their knickerbockers that they in- 
 tended to play golf. There was a dangerously 
 lovely female and a handful of exuberant Span- 
 iards chattering about the price of tobacco as 
 if it were lyric poetry. And of course the inevi- 
 table hotel "undesirable," the pathetic, snubbed 
 little man who looks like a Portuguese Jew, 
 wears white flannels, turns his feet out, flashes a 
 diamond ring, and is eager in a dumb, doglike 
 way, to meet some one who will talk to him, 
 and who never does, and who smiles and smiles. 
 ... It was amazingly like the Riviera before 
 the war. I felt a reminiscent thrill because the 
 women all "marcelled" their hair and wore 
 pearls to breakfast. The world of war and suf- 
 fering was forgotten. This was the dining-room 
 of some Hotel des Anglais or Grand Hotel de 
 New York as long ago as the spring of 1914, 
 when Americans still rushed to Europe for the 
 sort of lazy and purposeless enjoyment they are 
 
 [196] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 now seeking in Florida. Ttiere was perhaps 
 not so much turning of the morning paper to 
 the Society and Dramatic columns, but rather 
 an ostentatious and dutiful scanning of the first 
 page. Yet I felt that the poignant anguish of 
 Europe was far removed from the leisurely well- 
 to-do Americans who were sunning their well- 
 nourished, comfortable bones in the South. We 
 thought we had detected a flaw in the local col- 
 our until we discovered a roulette outfit at the 
 cigar-stand, where you could play for a "smoke." 
 It was not petits chevaux, of course, but what 
 do you expect? After breakfast Allan played 
 forty cents and won a nickel cigar, and, puffed 
 with victory, we went out into a trembling, joy- 
 ous day ablaze with sunshine. 
 
 The hotel faces the Hillsborough River and 
 the city across a wide strip of tropical garden. 
 Along its prodigious facade eight minaret-like 
 towers, steely blue in colour, thrust against the 
 sky and glitter quite magnificently. There are 
 all sorts of intriguing and delightful African 
 doorways and Moorish windows, fretted balco- 
 nies and arched porches. A motion-picture di- 
 rector in search of local colour would find exotic 
 backgrounds in the gardens of the Tampa Bay 
 Hotel ready-made and guaranteed to fit. Al- 
 geria, Naples, Monte Carlo, Biskra, Tunis — - 
 
 [197] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 they are all there! Little squads of tourists 
 were being piloted over the grounds and through 
 the hotel by the jaunty and supercilious bell- 
 boys, whose greatest climax was reached when 
 they announced crisply that all the "trimmings" 
 of the hotel were made of steel, and to prove it 
 rapped sharply on the railings or on one of the 
 pillars of the porch. The tourists whispered 
 among themselves and rapped, too, producing 
 a metallic clatter. 
 
 We followed a path which led to the river's 
 edge. The ground was still wet with the night 
 mist, the grass drenched and fragrant in the 
 shadows. There were clusters of bamboo trem- 
 bling slightly in the steady, warm wind, and 
 lines of cabbage palms and patches of shiny- 
 leaved bushes — ^magnolia, orange, gardenia and 
 holly, with here and there the fresh, green foli- 
 age and beautiful shade of an old live oak. 
 There were blazing poinsettias everjrwhere, gor- 
 geous purple bougainvilleas and the orange 
 flame of the bignonia vine. Camellias and aza- 
 leas starred the garden walks. It was pleasant 
 to wander slowly through the checkered sun- 
 light, admiring the polished leaves of the sweep- 
 ing palm branches. There were palms that 
 sprayed like fountains and palms that grew in 
 symmetrical clusters, squat palms and very tall 
 
 [198] 
 

 
 
 WE COULD CHAT COMFORTABLY Willi ITIK CAPTAIN 
 WITHOUT STIRRING FROM OUR GARDEN BENC H 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 ones, and big patches of palmetto scrub rustling 
 crisply like a lady's fan. The benches were al- 
 ready filled with less fashionable tourists and 
 roomers, the easily-pleased home-towners al- 
 ready encountered in St. Augustine, who had 
 brought their morning papers or their knitting, 
 and had settled themselves comfortably with 
 their backs to the sun for the whole morning. 
 Tampa owns the Tampa Bay Hotel, and its gar- 
 dens are thrown open to the public. 
 
 At the river's edge we found a small sailing- 
 boat anchored so close to shore that we could 
 chat comfortably with her captain without stir- 
 ring from our garden bench. She was called 
 the Sir Francis and had come all the way down 
 from Seattle, through the Panama Canal and 
 up the Florida Coast. 
 
 "How long did it take you to do it?" Allan 
 wanted to know. 
 
 "I was eighteen months in the doin' of it, sir," 
 the Captain told us, "and I 'ad as fine a time as 
 ever a man 'ad." 
 
 We judged he was English. 
 
 "Yes, sir! Born in Tilbury. That's a coun- 
 try!" 
 
 He spat rhythmically into the water while wc 
 discussed the war. 
 
 "England always wins," the Captain said. He 
 [199] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 had a short memory, or else English history- 
 books don't make much of 1776. But when he 
 said with great violence, "You watch 'er! When 
 England gets through, there won't be a 'Un in 
 Germany," we cheered from our garden bench. 
 
 "Come aboard," he invited us, feeling that we 
 were sympathetic. "I've got a tidy little ship, 
 I 'ave." 
 
 So we got into the rickety tender and went out 
 to the Sir Francis to pay a call. Her cabin was 
 not quite high enough for us to stand erect in, 
 but roomy enough, the Captain assured us, "for 
 little fellers" like him. There was an iron stove, 
 a bunk which folded up and became a bench 
 by day, a table, and, of all things, an electric 
 light to read by! No New York bachelor keep- 
 ing house in an uptown flat could possibly be 
 more comfortable. 
 
 "I'm going on to the Bahamas to-morrow," 
 the Captain told us, rhyming Bahamas with ba- 
 nanas somehow. "All alone I am, too. And 
 I've seen some queer things." 
 
 No doubt. He had pink-lipped shells from 
 far-away beaches, huge conches fluted and sing- 
 ing, a pearl-like fragment as multi-hued as the 
 tropic sea where he found it, dried sea-porcu- 
 pines strung like lanterns from the cabin roof, 
 lace-bark from South America, and the funniest 
 
 [200] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 collection of stones and broken crockery I have 
 even seen. He was a travelled man and a ro- 
 mantic man. He was doing what nine men out 
 of ten, once in their lives at least, long to do, 
 and for me he was tinged by all the dreams I 
 have heard dreamed aloud. But he was per- 
 fectly unaware of being romantic. He peeled 
 potatoes for his lunch and spat over the rail. 
 
 "Tampa's a fine place," he said. "Better go 
 ashore and look her over. If I didn't 'ave to 
 be getting on to the Bahamas, I'd stay a month. 
 Glad you came aboard. Not at all, sir. 
 Thanks!" 
 
 So we left him, and following his advice went 
 to look Tampa over. I'll tell you what we 
 found, that day and many other days of warm 
 wind and white sun. 
 
 There is an office in Tampa where you are 
 bound to hear talk of the sea. You can find it, 
 if you search, in a new office building which 
 overlooks both the harbour and the city. Be- 
 fore the war, sea-going men from all over the 
 world used to climb up there for a smoke and 
 a chat whenever their ships called at Tampa. 
 And it was our privilege to talk about Tampa 
 with the genial Italian agent who had played 
 host to so many travellers. From his window 
 he pointed out the little square which was all 
 
 [201] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 of Tampa twenty-five years ago, and then swept 
 his hand toward the new city with a simple 
 gesture which meant, "Still growing!" Behind 
 a row of modern skyscrapers, some of them ten 
 or twelve stories high, the big factory chimneys 
 of Ybor City and West Tampa belched black 
 smoke-plumes against the immaculate blue of 
 the sky. 
 
 Then the agent turned back toward the har- 
 bour and pointed out the Government dredges 
 at work in the channel and the site of the pro- 
 posed estuary, where he said there would some 
 day be municipal docks large enough for "fifty 
 steamers to load and unload at the same time." 
 He brought maps and showed us how Tampa 
 Bay cuts northward into Florida for thirty miles, 
 splitting into two natural harbours at its further- 
 most tip. He pointed out Gasparilla Island, 
 where La Fitte's rebel pirate held his orgies. 
 He dealt in facts and in visions, tracing with his 
 finger the present-day harbour and the infinitely 
 larger, deeper port of the future. 
 
 "There was no Tampa thirty years ago," he 
 told us. "When I came here from the Abruzzi, 
 Tampa was a little cluster of rude houses on the 
 bank of the Hillsborough River — you could 
 have put it all in the crown of your hat. H. B. 
 Plant had just built his railway through to Port 
 
 [202] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 Tampa — here it is on the map, ten miles from 
 here, d'you see? Plant was the Flagler of the 
 Florida West Coast, and he dreamed of a great 
 seaport town on Tampa Bay. Of the two har- 
 bours he chose, not this, but the other, and for 
 a while it looked as if Tampa were going to 
 disappear in the new glory of Port Tampa. But 
 certain independent business men, who were 
 crowded out by exorbitant freight rates and the 
 soaring price of real estate, moved away from 
 Plant's city and settled here." He shrugged 
 his shoulders. "Have you been in Port Tampa? 
 To-day it is deserted and forlorn; grass grows 
 in the centre of the streets; the houses are crum- 
 bling away. Now look out of the window at 
 Tampa! You see, the capitalist's vision of a 
 seaport town on Tampa Bay has come true, but 
 it is not just where he dreamed it would be." 
 
 The agent went with us to the waterfront, 
 and we had the unique pleasure of walking 
 across the sandy stretches where "some day" the 
 municipal docks will entertain those fifty steam- 
 ers. It was late in the afternoon and the har- 
 bour glittered magnificently, catching the fiery 
 reflection of the setting sun. A lonely interned 
 Austrian lay just outside, her rusty sides blazing. 
 Closer in, a steamer was loading phosphate un- 
 der the towering phosphate elevators of the Sea- 
 
 [203] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 board Air Line. Judging from modern stand- 
 ards, most of the ships we saw were small, and 
 the agent told us that the European war had 
 greatly reduced the activity of the port. Near 
 us, a schooner was being loaded with lumber; 
 a score of negroes rushed the cargo aboard, sing- 
 ing as they worked. One of them chanted a 
 verse in a thin falsetto, and the rest followed 
 him, full throated and joyous. There is a catch 
 in the negro voice, like the Swiss yodle, which 
 always squeezes something in my heart. It is 
 perhaps because they sing folk-music, piercingly 
 sweet, poignantly sad and universal in its beauty. 
 
 The big schooner belonged to the agent. He 
 confided to us, as we watched the simian antics 
 of the negro workmen, that the ship had had a 
 lurid past. 
 
 "I found her out in the Gulf," he told us, 
 "floating bottom-side up. It was the third time, 
 mind you, that she had turned turtle and killed 
 her whole crew! I hauled her in, made her 
 over, rechristened her the Charles Wiebe for 
 luck, killed all the little hoodoos and sent her to 
 sea again. She carries lumber to Havana." 
 
 "An incorrigible murderess," I said, thinking 
 of Conrad's story. 
 
 "Oh, no," he answered, smiling, "she has re- 
 formed!" 
 
 [204] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 You would like Tampa for the I don't know 
 what of the foreign in its atmosphere, something 
 intangible and exuberant which the ten thou- 
 sand Cubans and Spaniards who live there have 
 charged the air with, perhaps! One sees Span- 
 iards everywhere, some of them still untouched 
 by that process of Americanisation which puts 
 peg-tops on a Castilian and teaches him how to 
 say "Sure!" We saw some splendid old fellows, 
 seamed and leathery, wearing the broad, black 
 felt hat and the flopping trousers of the Spanish 
 peasant, and swarthy young men who were the 
 living embodiment of Zuloaga's canvases. Their 
 quarters — street after street of whitewashed 
 shanties — are near the big red-brick factories of 
 the Cuesta-Rey, the Perfecto, the Principe de 
 Gales and a half dozen other cigar manufac- 
 tories at West Tampa. Here and there a patch 
 of garden has been scratched enough to nourish 
 a feeble poinsettia or a rosebush. Spanish 
 women smile from the doorsteps and Spanish 
 babies roUic in the gutters. On Sunday and 
 festa days, the girls promenade arm in arm, gig- 
 gling and flirting, the men swagger and smile, 
 the old people look on from the cool shadow 
 of the doorways — it is Spain transplanted. And 
 ever5rwhere there is a fragrant odour of tobacco, 
 
 [205] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 as if some one had just opened a huge cigar- 
 box! 
 
 In Tampa the sidewali^^s are shaded by per- 
 manent awnings and there is the same play of 
 light and shadow which you find in an arcad- 
 ed town — the street flooded with sun, a smash- 
 ing riot of colour and movement, the sidewalks 
 cool and shadowy. At night, Main Street was 
 crowded; the shops, with their display windows 
 brilliantly lighted, were all open, and for the 
 first time since we left New York we saw pretty 
 girls. They strolled up and down the arcaded 
 streets or sat on high stools before marble soda- 
 water shrines, sipping pink drinks through a 
 straw, and Allan was so enraptured that I had 
 to steer him into a Movie Theatre to shift his 
 attention. 
 
 The ^'movies"! The histrionic intoxication 
 of the modern wayfarer, a shadowy substitute 
 for the strolling players, the marionettes and 
 circuses of Gautier's day! We joined an audi- 
 ence of tender little children who were watch- 
 ing a Brieuxesque drama which would have sent 
 shivers of horror down an Apache's spine. The 
 tender little boys and girls chewed gum and 
 stared solemnly and — sat through it again ! They 
 were still there, chewing and staring, when we 
 
 [206] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 escaped. Poor, funny little Tampa-ites! And 
 we were denied Ivanhoe at their age. . . . 
 
 More than anything else, Tampa delighted 
 us because it was clean. I don't know why I 
 profess myself so loudly a lover of the spick and 
 span. I relish the ardent flavour of cheese and 
 sausage in the Borgognissanti at Florence and 
 that inexplicable odour which takes you by the 
 nose and by the soul over behind the Venetian 
 fish-market; I like the mud at Tivoli and the 
 dripping walls at Assisi, plastered with the filth 
 of a thousand years; nor do I hold my nose in 
 dainty horror at Santa Lucia. But a puddle in 
 a modern American city offends me, and an eddy 
 of dirty newspapers in the gutter arouses all my 
 civic ire. It has always seemed to me that since 
 Newness is the symbol of our youth, and be- 
 cause there has been no time for mellow decay, 
 we ought to be intolerant of neglect. Tampa did 
 not let the post office and the court house carry 
 off all the civic honours, in the slovenly manner 
 of so many American cities. Everywhere there 
 were substantial houses, many of them built in 
 the Spanish style which is so perfectly harmoni- 
 ous under the Florida sky. And there were at- 
 tractive clubs, parks, boulevards and avenues 
 of palms and live oaks. Even the drawbridge 
 had felt the need to be beautiful. It opened in 
 
 [207] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 the middle like a pair of scissors and kept its 
 machinery hidden under a frivolous little pavil- 
 ion! 
 
 Handbills were being distributed in the 
 streets announcing pinkly that at the Teatro 
 Centra Astruriano, Esfa noche Sabado, Enero 
 20, a las 8 en punto, there would be a perform- 
 ance of Rigoletto, Gran Opera en 4 (ictos del 
 celebre Maestro G. Verdi. 
 
 I went, hoping to hear something frightful so 
 that I could be funny about it. But the Mancini 
 Company disappointed me by giving a really 
 good performance of Rigoletto. It was the sort 
 of singing and the sort of audience we have 
 long ceased to hope for in New York. Between 
 the acts all the young men paced up and down 
 the lobby, making vociferous gestures and pre- 
 tending that they knew everything about style 
 and tradition. Tampa? America? We had to 
 pinch ourselves to drive out the hallucination 
 that somehow we had stumbled into Spain. 
 
 Later in the week, as a very particular treat 
 for the American tourists, a Gran Funcion Ex- 
 traordinaria, grand opera moved across the 
 Hillsborough River to the Tampa Bay Hotel 
 Casino and Trovatore was sung to an almost 
 invisible audience. We stood near the stage 
 door and heard the outraged impresario curse 
 
 [208] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 the whole tourist tribe in seven ardent tongues. 
 
 "They are unmusical dogs," he roared, "fit 
 for nothing but hand-organ symphonies!" 
 
 We went back to the hotel very saddened, and 
 found that tourists do like music, after all! The 
 lobby resounded with ragtime, and a lonely hall- 
 boy was flapping an ecstatic one-step, on his way 
 somewhere with a pitcher of ice water. Every 
 one else had "gone to dance," he told us. He was 
 a Boston bellboy, but he couldn't keep his feet 
 still. We, too, went to dance. A drum, a sob- 
 bing saxaphone, a whining ukelele, a piano and 
 a violin made music in the ballroom. Turn, 
 tum, tumity tum, click, click, clickity bing! Zip, 
 zip, zipity smash/ Bang, bang, bimbledy bang! 
 
 "Oh, isn't it great?" 
 
 They skipped and slid and swaggered and 
 minced, old ones and young ones. They whirled 
 and stepped and walked like jerky automatons; 
 they clutched and clung and spun on their toes. 
 Zing, zing, zingityzing! 
 
 We stepped out on the polished floor and in- 
 stantly forgot all about Trovatore. Zipity zip! 
 What is American music coming to, anyway? 
 Has any one ever stopped to think that this sort 
 of thing is wilder than a Hungarian spasm? 
 Has any one — choo choo, chiggity choo — ever 
 stopped to think that there never has been a 
 
 [209] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 symphony all in ragtime? Or an American 
 rhapsody? I wonder — 
 
 "For heaven's sake, stop wondering," Allan 
 said, "and dance." 
 
 So we danced. 
 
 The hotel and its gardens were alluring, but 
 the time had come when we had to decide to 
 spend the rest of our winter vacation in Tampa 
 or go on at once towards New Orleans. And 
 Tarpon Springs was marked on our itinerary 
 in large letters and "double-starred" according 
 to Baedeker's helpful system. So we devoted 
 our last day in Tampa to the rounding out of 
 our schedule. Tarpon is twenty-five miles north 
 of Tampa; we could do little more than check 
 it off our list and then boast forever afterwards, 
 like the Yankee tripper who "does" Venice in 
 an hour, that we had been there. The hotel 
 advertised motors for hire and held out the 
 promise of "chauffeurs in uniform," But they 
 cheated us — or else I am under a misapprehen- 
 sion as to what a uniform is. For the driver of 
 the car we hired for the trip to Tarpon was 
 wearing a plaid cap (a Scotch plaid which had 
 undergone a sea-change), a pea-green overcoat 
 and yellow shoes. A very broad smile and a 
 lovely Southern accent went w^th the uniform. 
 I would have gone miles to hear him say 
 
 [210] 
 
THE HOTEL AND ITS GARDENS WERE ALLURING 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 "gy-arden" and "cyah." He warned us that 
 there was a "powerful bad piece of road" to 
 negotiate on the way to Tarpon; the main road 
 was under repair and a detour of a mile and a 
 half had been cut around it through the woods. 
 He wasn't perfectly sure that we could get 
 through, but he was "spo't" enough to try. So 
 we left early in the morning when Tampa and 
 the alluring gardens were still wrapped in a 
 thick mist. 
 
 For a long time spatters of rain stung our 
 cheeks. But the driver assured us that it would 
 clear, partly because he was an optimist and 
 partly because he was in deadly fear that we 
 would turn back. His spo'ting instinct yearned 
 to tackle the detour. 
 
 Promptly at ten o'clock, as if a mysterious 
 stage manager had rung up the curtain on the 
 pageant of Florida, the fog broke away before 
 the sun and retreated helter-skelter, in platoons 
 and brigades of little clouds, down behind the 
 horizon. We were left under an arch of trans- 
 parent sky, immaculately blue and clear. The 
 shell road was so flat and flawless that we began 
 to doubt that "powerful bad" stretch further on. 
 It ran as straight as the Appian Way, narrow- 
 ing in perspective as far as the eye could reach 
 through a sparse forest of long-leaf pine. The 
 
 [211] 
 
, OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 air was fragrant with the smoke of little fires 
 that burned slowly through the underbrush, and 
 a blue haze drifted close to the ground like a 
 veil flung across the vivid green of the palmetto 
 scrub. We passed groups of negroes who rolled 
 their eyes at us as we flashed by; occasionally 
 a white farmer in a one-horse buggy trotted past 
 on his way to town. But most of the road was 
 deserted save for a scurrying quail or a lonely 
 cow standing knee-deep in the swampy ditches, 
 or a majestic, wide-winged buzzard hanging 
 motionless just over our heads. Apparently no 
 one else was going to Tarpon Springs. We soon 
 discovered why. 
 
 The road stopped and an impudent sign 
 labelled ^'Detour" directed us into what looked 
 like an impassable bog. The driver turned to 
 us with a beaming smile. "Hold on," he said, 
 with a spo'ting light in his eye, "for I reckon 
 you'll need to." 
 
 We plunged into a ditch, roared up a bank 
 on the other side and leaped headlong into a 
 swamp. The car, taken by surprise, coughed 
 and spluttered and careened like a ship in mid- 
 channel. We slithered and skidded in mud, 
 climbed over logs, wriggled under fallen trees. 
 The back of the driver's neck got a shade redder, 
 but he whistled courageously. Allan and I 
 
 [212] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 clung on with both hands and were racked bone 
 by bone like heretics in a torture chamber; my 
 hat blew off, my hair came down and there was 
 a pool of hairpins in my lap. In the midst of 
 the ordeal, when the only endurable alternative 
 seemed to be unconsciousness, we came out into 
 a wide clearing. 
 
 "This is Oldsmar," the driver explained, and 
 added, with a touch of awe in his voice, "the 
 Oldsmobile man's Oldsmar." 
 
 The automobile man had bought a large slice 
 of land bet\veen Tampa and Tarpon Springs and 
 had planned an agricultural "community." 
 Work in the new town was going on at top speed 
 when we were there. They were building a 
 hotel for imaginary tourists, a garage for vision- 
 ary automobiles, and stores for merchants who 
 may and may not occupy them. Plots were be- 
 ing staked off in the cleared spaces for future 
 householders, farms were being apportioned and 
 engines were already puffing up and down the 
 single-track railway, busy and important, blow- 
 ing big steam rings up above the green tops of 
 the tranquil pines. We passed through Madison 
 Avenue and State Street, both more or less ob- 
 structed by bottomless puddles, tree stumps and 
 tenacious weeds, and somewhere on one of Olds- 
 mar's spacious boulevards the car became so 
 
 [213] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 discouraged that the rear wheel refused to go 
 around. The driver made a gingerly decent 
 and lured us forward again by plucking a hand- 
 ful of palmetto and strewing it before the car 
 like Sir Walter spreading his cloak before Eliza- 
 beth. 
 
 How would it feel, I wonder, to own a slice 
 of Florida and, like a genii rubbing a magic 
 lamp, to say: "This shall be a town. These for- 
 ests shall be fields. Here a house. There an 
 orchard." And when it has all sprung into 
 existence, to stock the farms with pigs, horses, 
 chickens and cows. Presto! An orange tree 
 in bloom, a garden already springing through 
 the rich earth, perhaps a kettle on the hearth. 
 How would it feel, I wonder, to say: "Here is 
 your farm, you homeseeker — wherever you 
 are. For so much and so much, you may buy 
 this little Arcadia, ready made and guaranteed 
 to fit." 
 
 We were glad that the detour had led us 
 through the miracle. The asphalt pavement in 
 the heart of the pine forest was poignant because 
 it was put there for hypothetical passers-by who 
 might never pass. Speculating in communities! 
 For that, Mr. Olds, you prove that there is still 
 a faint belief in men's heart, enough hankering 
 for the El Dorado to gamble on. 
 
 [214] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 We finally bounced out of the detour and re- 
 joined the road — oh, the lovely, smooth white 
 road! And then it was straight-away to Tar- 
 pon, breezy and fast, with the motor purring and 
 the highway unfurling like a ribbon. The for- 
 est thinned; we came to clearings and to orange 
 and grapefruit groves — globes of gold that bore 
 the branches down to the ground. For the first 
 time we saw the Gulf of Mexico scalloping into 
 the land with an endless pattern of little bays 
 and inlets, shallow water glittering under the 
 high sun and lapping the sandy shore with myr- 
 iad, exact ripples, fluted and exhaustless. It 
 was like a setting for a Conrad story, very re- 
 mote and tropical, suggestive of the grim strug- 
 gles of the spirit that go on against a background 
 of cloudless sky, breathless heat, and lonely, 
 palm-fringed beaches. 
 
 A golf-links and some very fashionable peo- 
 ple, tweeded and caddied, warned us that we 
 were drawing near Tarpon Springs. So we 
 stopped, while I retrieved some of the hairpins, 
 tucked up my bang and put on my hat. The 
 friendly driver was so frankly interested in my 
 vanity-box that I stopped short with the powder 
 puff in mid-air and ordered him to go on, and 
 we roared into Tarpon with the puff in action, 
 to the vociferous astonishment of some pickanin- 
 
 [215] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 nies on a fence who had never seen a lady "whit- 
 ening" herself. 
 
 People who go to Tarpon Springs go there 
 to fish, or to play golf, or to sail, or to be sim- 
 ply dreamy, for there is a lazy enchantment 
 about the place which is very insidious. A few 
 of them, like us, make the sponge-fleet an ex- 
 cuse. We left the pretty bungalows and the 
 neat main street of the town, and went at once 
 to Greek Town on the Anclote River. 
 
 Sponge fishermen, for some inexplicable rea- 
 son that I am unable to explain, are always 
 Greeks. Off the coast of Tripoli, in British 
 Honduras, in Key West and here at Tarpon 
 Springs, Greeks, and only Greeks, pursue the 
 tenacious sponge. Their calling, like the Mur- 
 ano glass-blowers', may be handed down from 
 father to son, a sort of hereditary talent. At any 
 rate, the fleet at Tarpon is manned entirely by 
 Greeks, although the "catch" is sold to Amer- 
 ican buyers. And Greeks colour the place as 
 distinctively as the Spaniards tinge Tampa with 
 their fiery Latinism. The Greek language is 
 spoken everywhere in the streets and decorates 
 shop-signs, bill-boards and restaurant bills-of- 
 fare. 
 
 The fleet leaves port for cruises which last 
 from two to five months, according to the weath- 
 
 [216] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 er and the size of the "catch." "Over a mil- 
 lion dollars' worth of business a year" is the re- 
 markable record of the sponge industry at Tar- 
 pon Springs. It used to be the custom to grap- 
 ple for the sponges with long poles, pronged at 
 the tip like a pitchfork. But to-day every 
 sponge-boat carries one or two expert divers 
 who go down in very deep water, often to the 
 depth of a hundred and twenty feet, and tear 
 the tenacious growth away from the rocks. Each 
 schooner is accompanied by a smaller diving- 
 boat which is moored alongside like a baby 
 snuggling against its mother. The divers make 
 their descents from the low, broad decks of the 
 smaller boats, carrying a net and the three- 
 pronged grappler and wearing the ponderous 
 and grotesque helmet and the unwieldy suit of 
 a deep-sea diver. Their life is spent in the 
 flickering half-light of that weird world at the 
 bottom of the ocean. They struggle against the 
 treacherous currents and implacable tides; they 
 walk in coral gardens, through groves of feath- 
 ery sea-weed and tall grass which waves rhythm- 
 ically to the pulse of the sea; they know all the 
 mysteries of the ocean — bulbous fish, ogling and 
 wide-lipped sharks, the hideous octopus, jelly- 
 fish, transparent, opalescent and motionless. The 
 treasure they are in search of clings to the coral 
 
 [217] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 formations, to rocks, to the fluted sand-bottom. 
 Some of the sponges are as flat and widespread as 
 geranium leaves, some of them grow in fat clus- 
 ters like gigantic golden grapes, some of them 
 are shaped like fungi, and as porous as a honey- 
 comb. The diver, bracing himself against the 
 tugging currents, pries the growth loose with 
 his grappler and fills his net. It is dangerous 
 and exhausting work. We saw several men along 
 the waterfront at Tarpon who walked with the 
 utmost difficulty, dragging their legs and twist- 
 ing grotesquely in their efforts to put one foot 
 before the other. They told us that they had 
 been attacked by "diver's paralysis." They still 
 made descents, and they assured us that they 
 could walk without any difficulty under water, 
 which is, after all, their accustomed element. 
 Free of the enormous pressure and safe and dry 
 on land, they suffered like gasping fish. 
 
 The fishermen were an exuberant, cheerful 
 lot, well-built and handsome, brown of skin, 
 black-haired, blue-eyed and sturdy. They 
 walked with a swagger, swaying from the hips. 
 Some of them were barefooted but none of them 
 was bareheaded — they crowned the classicism of 
 their Greek profiles with checkered caps and 
 battered straw hats. One of them, like a glori- 
 fied Charlie Chaplin, had a number two derby 
 
 [218] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 atop a wild mop of black curls. Sartorially 
 they ran to gaudy shirts and screaming neckties 
 — and we blessed them just for that. 
 
 "Photograph" is the international esperanto 
 for friendliness. Wherever we pointed the cam- 
 era a dozen Greeks leaped to get into the picture. 
 They posed for us like self-conscious effigies, all 
 in a row with cast-iron grins, their feet turned 
 out and a curl of black hair pulled down across 
 their eyes like a Coster's forelock 
 
 I was glad that they had given their boats 
 Greek names for the most part. Although 
 "Charm" and "Kilkis" and "Three Brothers" 
 do very well for Gloucester fishermen, the Greek 
 alphabet, when it spells XAAKH decorates a 
 prow as delicately as a scroll of flowers. Could 
 anything be lovelier than Ar. TEOPros.? 
 
 The Greeks had their own coffee-houses 
 and restaurants all along the water-front, and 
 there w^ere one or two shops where you could 
 buy sponge fragments, shells, alligator's teeth, 
 coral branches, frail sea anemones, delicate star- 
 fish, postcards or a bunch of green bananas and 
 a package of Zu-Zus! 
 
 A young Greek hailed us from the porch of 
 one of the coffee-houses. 
 
 "Hey, you!" he shouted, with a flashing smile. 
 "Take my picture with this here pipe." 
 
 [219] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 This here — or should I say that there? — pipe 
 was a large hubble-bubble. He had curled his 
 bare toes around the bottle, the long tube was 
 in his mouth and clouds of blue smoke rocketed 
 skyward. We took the photograph, even though 
 the young Greek was sitting in a Stygian shadow. 
 Nothing appeared on the developed film but a 
 bottle and ten toes. Instead of a peaceful genre, 
 we had photographed what looked like the fe- 
 vered imaginings of a spiritual seance. There 
 were the disembodied pedal extremities of a 
 Greek grasping a crystal sphere — and nothing 
 else I 
 
 But the sunny wharves and the dazzling fleet 
 held us outside. It was like the Marina Grande 
 at Capri, Palermo and Trieste and rolled into 
 one. It was gaudy, it was theatrical, it was 
 amazingly beautiful! Wouldn't you have been 
 bewildered if you had come upon a mirage of 
 the Mediterranean in Florida — only right-side 
 up and tangible? 
 
 The Greeks had had their "Cross day" or 
 Epiphany celebration the day before; the whole 
 fleet was in port and all the streets were deco- 
 rated with flowers, bunting, and the Greek and 
 American flags intertwined. There had been a 
 three-hour service at the Greek Church which 
 we had missed and can never forgive ourselves 
 
 [220] 
 
rHK GREEKS HAD SAID TlIi;iR PRAYERS AND WERE AT 
 WORK Ac; A IX 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 for missing. There had been prayer, songs and 
 incense. Fifteen hundred Greeks had crowded 
 the little church at Tarpon to stand during the 
 whole impressive service from eight o'clock un- 
 til eleven. A great basin of water had been 
 blessed and there had been a mad scramble to dip 
 it up in cups, pitchers, jugs and bottles, and to 
 carry a drop or two away. There had been a 
 solemn procession through the streets to the wa- 
 ter's edge at Spring Bayou, where the priest, 
 standing under a canopy, had prayed and then, 
 with all his strength, had flung a cross out into 
 the water. Dozens of young Greeks had plunged 
 in after it. One of them, stronger, pluckier, more 
 desirous perhaps than the rest, had come up with 
 the glittering cross in his hands. He had held it 
 high above his head for the crowd on the bank to 
 see. They had cheered him and his heart had 
 been bursting with pride and happiness. ... It 
 was bad enough to have missed it, but to be told 
 about it heaped coals of regret on my head. 
 
 Now, in the blazing white morning, the ships 
 lay side by side in an intricate confusion, some 
 in the river, some drawn up on the beach, others 
 lifted high and dry on land and propped up with 
 blocks and beams. The Greeks had said their 
 prayers and were at work again, coiling ropes, 
 mending nets, painting, staggering aboard their 
 
 [221] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 little schooners under heavy boxes of provisions, 
 sorting sponges. . . . Greeks, praise God, love 
 blue! Along the wharves that glittering morn- 
 ing there were ships painted blue from stern to 
 bow, ships with blue masts, ships with blue bow- 
 sprits. They had scarlet keels and decorative 
 friezes painted on their sides in orange and 
 black — crude designs of extraordinary beauty. 
 Their blunt noses were piled with sponges, 
 fruits, tawny sails, anchors, coils of rope, div- 
 ers' helmets and vegetables. Spar and chains, 
 bowsprits and masts tangled everywhere. It was 
 the most dazzling confusion, the most magnifi- 
 cent bedlam! 
 
 We stayed until the sun slanted low across the 
 river, rimming the myriad tipping masts with a 
 fiery glitter. Then we turned reluctantly away 
 to the hired motor because the friendly driver 
 had warned us for the tenth time that it was 
 growing late and that there was a "powerful bad 
 piece of road. . . ." 
 
 [222J 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 'WAY DOWN IN PENSACOLA, SEAPLANES, SUB- 
 MARINES, AND LUNCH WITH AN ADMIRAL, 
 WITH A STORM AS AN ANTI-CLIMAX 
 
 LL I knew about Pensacola, before I 
 went there, was gleaned from a mus- 
 ical comedy song: 
 
 'Way down in Pensacola 
 We'll wander where the palms grow. 
 You'll find there's nothing to do 
 But fool those Florida ladies! 
 
 Not poetry, of course — but illuminating his- 
 tory! Nothing to do but fool the ladies! I was 
 still in knee-skirts when I heard the song, but 
 I can remember the chorus girl who sang it, 
 greatly assisted by her ankles, against a blazing 
 stage-setting of palms and unnaturally blue sky. 
 From that moment, if I thought of Pensacola 
 at all, I thought of it as a tropical rest-cure 
 where tired sailors did nothing all day long but 
 fool Florida ladies. And somehow I could not 
 shake off the conviction. When we arrived 
 
 [223] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 there after a hot, dusty journey from Jackson- 
 ville, I expected to find myself in a great grove 
 of cocoanut palms. I expected to see hammocks 
 swinging lazily in a steady trade v^ind and sail- 
 ors in white duck snuggling up to dusky belles. 
 I expected to see Urbanesque cannibals sporting 
 on glittering beaches and Winter Garden chorus 
 girls fox-trotting in the calcium moonlight. 
 
 Instead, I found a busy little city which 
 looked, at first glance, like any other little city — 
 but no taxi-cabs. We stood on the sidewalk with 
 our luggage piled around us and hailed noctur- 
 nal Ford riders with no success. They bounced 
 on and ignored our frantic signals, while all the 
 other travellers who had come to Pensacola on 
 our train shouldered their own baggage and 
 went away on foot. We might have been wait- 
 ing there now if a policeman hadn't offered to 
 "step down to the corner" and telephone for a 
 taxi. I found myself wondering what would 
 happen to me if, in a moment of abstraction, I 
 should ask a New York policeman to kindly step 
 into the nearest pay-station and "call me a black 
 and white." The obliging Pensacolan officer, 
 who looked like an admiral in his long coat and 
 acres of gold braid, hurried briskly away on his 
 charitable errand as if being a knight to travel- 
 lers in distress was one of his accustomed duties. 
 
 [224] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 The taxi-cab, summoned by the law and ar- 
 riving in a frantic hurry on two wheels, took us 
 along a neat boulevard to an overgrown hotej 
 on Palafox Street. It is known as the San Car- 
 los and has a slightly Waldorfian manner, going 
 in rather too extravagantly for marble pillars, 
 palms, gold and gilt, steam heat, page boys, tele- 
 phone girls, lounges, cigar stands, express ele- 
 vators, and sky-scraper proportions. It did not 
 seem possible that there could be a great enough 
 floating population in Pensacola to warrant the 
 magnificence of its hotel. It was built, we were 
 told, during Pensacola's "boom," ten or twelve 
 years ago, when the inhabitants of the little 
 "deep-water city" were shouting themselves 
 hoarse about her miraculous growth and equally 
 miraculous future. At that time superlatives 
 ceased to be conversational olives and got to be 
 the bread and butter of daily speech. A "rea- 
 sonable amount" of hotel wouldn't do for a city 
 that was destined to be a "largest port," a naval 
 station, a manufacturing centre and a fashion- 
 able resort all rolled into one. So the towering 
 San Carlos rose above Pensacola like a lonely 
 mountain peak in the centre of a desert, a target 
 for v^'indstorms and a symbol of the future. For- 
 tunately for Pensacola, the "boom" gradually 
 lost strength, like a petted kitten expiring under 
 
 [225] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 indiscriminate caresses, and the city escaped that 
 devastating ''bigness" which would have trans- 
 formed her from a lovable town into a belching 
 monster, blighted by factories, disfigured by sky- 
 scrapers and utterly spoiled by riches. 
 
 We opened our windows as soon as a sleepy 
 bellboy had deposited our luggage and had 
 gleaned a quarter for his pains. Then we hung 
 on the window-sill and sniffed the moist night 
 air, and stared down into the foreshortened street 
 five stories below. Little Ford cars, like busy, 
 shiny beetles, bustled up and down, squawking 
 and pretending that Main — excuse me, I mean 
 Palafox Street — was Broadway. Bustle and 
 hurry, a sort of showy and Northern progressive- 
 ness, had stamped itself on the town. The shops 
 blazed, a Movie Theatre ejected a black stream 
 of chattering "fans," trolley-cars clattered back 
 and forth. And yet the wind was indescribably 
 sweet and soft, and came straight from the Gulf 
 across the tasselled tips of the encroaching pine 
 forest. We felt the lazy enchantment of the 
 Southern night and wondered at the liveliness of 
 the Pensacolans in the street. 
 
 Long after we had gone to bed the noisy crowd 
 kept us awake. A knot of negro loungers on the 
 corner talked until three o'clock. Their bub- 
 
 [226] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 bling laughter and the incessant Ford squawks 
 were my lullaby. 
 
 Yet I suppose it is only reasonable that the in- 
 habitants of a city which has passed thirteen 
 times from one government to another should be 
 restless, volatile and animated. They have never 
 been allowed to settle down long enough to be- 
 come inoculated by the Florida languor, and 
 now it is too 'ate to begin. One wouldn't inherit 
 a languid temperament from ancestors who 
 changed flags as glibly as wg change collars and 
 who alternately succumbed to French, Spanish 
 and British rule, adopting a new nationality so 
 often that, with the chameleon who was put on 
 a piece of Scotch plaid, they must have "busted" 
 more than once with the effort of taking on so 
 many colours. The Pensacolans have just begun 
 to breathe again after a reckless and unstable 
 history. No wonder that having survived such 
 a past, they throw out their chests and tell the 
 stranger that Pensacola is a miniature Paradise 
 — the deepest harbour, the best climate, the 
 purest water, the boldest men, the finest women, 
 and, mind you, the oldest citv in the United 
 States! 
 
 "How's that?" you say, pricking up your ears, 
 because you think you've caught me. "Doesn't 
 St. Augustine wear that crown?" 
 
 [227] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 Not at all! Pensacola was discovered by Don 
 Tristan de Luna four years before St. Augustine, 
 with malicious intention, first began to be the 
 oldest city and to beguile the lives of settlers 
 and the dollars of tourists. You probably won- 
 der why Pensacola has neglected to advertise 
 her distinction, scattering pamphlets broadcast 
 to lure the tripper who can't pursue antiquity in 
 Europe and has begun to search desperately for 
 it nearer home. 
 
 There is a reason for Pensacola's reticence, a 
 fly in the ointment, a blot on the 'scutcheon. St. 
 Augustine, first settled in 1565, was permanently 
 established and its history has been in the mak- 
 ing ever since. But de Luna abandoned Pensa- 
 cola, its deep harbour and snow-white beaches 
 two years after his landing there, and it was not 
 until d'Ariola appeared, one hundred and fifty 
 years later, that a permanent colony was estab- 
 lished. It remained Spanish until the ambitious 
 overlords of New Orleans, Iberville and Bien- 
 ville, caught sight of it, and then for forty-four 
 years Pensacola changed hands like a thieves' 
 booty. The inhabitants saluted the French flag 
 at sunset and pulled a humble forelock to the 
 Spanish flag at dawn. It was inconvenient and 
 confusing, but no one could complain of a lack 
 of variety in life! 
 
 [228] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 Then the British, who have a neat habit of 
 getting between belligerents and in settling a 
 quarrel obtaining the cause of it, captured 
 Pensacola for their own and made it the capital 
 of British West Florida. It became very 
 fashionable and the headquarters of a flourish- 
 ing Indian trade under the direction of the 
 shrewd and intelligent half-breed, Alexander 
 McGillivray, who was chief of the Creeks. 
 As far north as the Tennessee River and 
 as far east as England and Scotland, the 
 threads of Pensacola's commerce linked her 
 with the rest of the world. Rich Mr. Panton, 
 a London merchant, built a trading post and 
 a mansion in the town, and for a while the man- 
 ners and fancies of England were aped by the 
 settlers. The village, which consisted of "40 
 huts, thatched with palmetto leaves" when the 
 British took possession, was enlarged and 
 squared off into streets and boulevards, forts 
 were built, and the inhabitants were beginning 
 to believe that the Union Jack was their honest- 
 to-goodness symbol of authority when Galvez, 
 the Governor of Spanish Louisiana, snatched the 
 town back again for Spain. The Pensacolans 
 probably dug up their Spanish grammars and 
 forgot English — at least in public. It is easy to 
 see why all the streets were rechristened. 
 
 [229] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 George street became Palafox, and other Anglo- 
 Saxon names gave way to Saragossa, Baylen 
 Romana, Barcelona and Tarragona, putting a 
 Spanish imprint on what is, after all, a British 
 town. 
 
 Andrew Jackson was the last to dip his finger 
 into this international mince-pie, and falling into 
 the historical habit, he dipped it in, not once, 
 but twice. First he drove out the British who 
 were profiting by the lax Spanish rule to incite 
 the Indians against the brand-new United States 
 up north; then, with divine Yankee impartiality 
 he turned about and disciplined the Spaniards 
 for doing the same thing. And finally, when 
 Florida was ceded to the United States in 1821, 
 Pensacola became the seat of the provisional 
 military government for ten months, and wound 
 up her checkered career in a blaze of rather 
 temporary but dazzling glory. 
 
 Is it any wonder that excitement and novelty 
 have become a habit? I hope that Pensacolans 
 will forgive me, but it seemed to me that they 
 are fond of a good time, and it would be a pity 
 if they were ashamed of the nicest thing about 
 them. They like to dance, they like to play 
 golf, sail, sv'im and fish ; they like to flirt and to 
 go up in ifoplanes. The women are well- 
 dressed, for heaven knows there is an audience 
 
 [230] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 for them! I was dazzled, on going down to 
 dinner at the San Carlos, to see ornamental 
 ladies slippered in silver and gold, diaphanous 
 with tulle, coiffed with imagination, and bearing 
 no single earmark of the provincial. They were 
 brides, most of them. Army and Navy brides. 
 Their red-cheeked, clean-cut young husbands 
 were either attached to the submarine flotilla or 
 stationed at Fort Pickens or in training at the 
 Naval Aeronautic Station. 
 
 Their presence explained why Hudson Max- 
 im's "Defenseless America" has taken the place 
 of Gideon's Bibles in every room in the San 
 Carlos Hotel! There is no danger of a pacifist 
 going to bed in Pensacola with Christian ideas 
 of unpreparedness obstructing his intelligence. 
 Pensacola has a navy yard, a flying school and a 
 fort, and there is a purposeful concentration on 
 the black and whiteness of our national unpre- 
 paredness — the black to stand for what has not 
 been done yet, the white to mean what is being 
 done and will be done, in spite of a nation lulled 
 to pacifism by waiting too long to fight, in spite 
 of the devilish obtuseness of authorities, in spite 
 of delays, discouragements and rebuffs. The 
 pacifist at the San Carlos who looks for his 
 comforting Bible, hoping to misinterpret it be- 
 fore he lays him down to sleep, finds "Defense- 
 
 [231] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 less America" bound in red, terrifying, disturb- 
 ing and prophetic, to throw him into night- 
 marish slumber. I have never seen a Gideon 
 Bible which looked as if it might have been 
 read, but the Hudson Maxim high explosive in 
 my room was thumbed threadbare. (If you 
 can mix metaphors like that!) I think the 
 revelation shook my faith in spirituality a trifle, 
 but it cheered me to think that perhaps a few 
 sparks of high purpose had been struck in the 
 turning of those pages. At any rate, the book 
 was the first indication we had that the peace- 
 dove is unpopular at Pensacola. The bird 
 which draws all eyes, down there, is a man- 
 made monster, lighter than a breath, wide- 
 winged. . . . 
 
 But before we glance up into the unnatural 
 blue of the Florida sky (I say that instinctively, 
 for the sky was not blue at all, but glaring white 
 like the inside of a crystal goblet!) — before we 
 glance up, I say, at the war-birds, let us focus 
 on Pensacola herself. 
 
 With Julian Street, Theophile Gautier, 
 Arthur Symons and other delightful celebrities 
 who set the fashion in similes, I always think of 
 cities as ladies — languorous ladies or bold ones 
 or merely stupid wenches with no beauty and no 
 brains. Pensacola is the most dangerous sort of 
 
 [232] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 flirt. She basks in the warm sun and gentle 
 wind for months at a time; fogs drift in from 
 the Gulf and veil her bewitchingly ; she is tender 
 and sleepy by starlight, frivolous in the morning 
 — but always she is lovable. Nearly always! 
 She will turn like a fury and smash and destroy 
 and annihilate when it pleases her. Then vio- 
 lent winds sweep across the city, lifting off roofs, 
 snapping trees in two and, as one Pensacolan 
 said to me, "scaring the tar out of everybody!" 
 A city whose parlour tricks are so maliciously 
 unexpected is tinged, for me, at least, with some- 
 thing sinister and untrustworthy. When she is 
 doing her best to bewitch me, I keep my eye on 
 the rosy-hued cumuli banking low on the 
 horizon and building towers and pinnacles that 
 may rise and obscure the smiling sun. When 
 the palm-fronds hang limp and still in the 
 breathless quiet of the hot afternoons, I think 
 of them torn by the wind into writhing pin- 
 wheels, lashed, tortured and drenched. Some- 
 where in my subconscious mind, I am suspicious 
 and watchful. 
 
 So the Pensacolans must be, for they have 
 built their houses as close to the ground as pos- 
 sible. The frail wooden shacks along the water- 
 front look as if they could be flipped away by 
 the wind as easily as a pedestrian's straw hat; 
 
 [233] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 some of them, buffeted by the terrific storms of 
 July and September, 1916, lean drunkenly, and 
 there are picket fences everywhere which have 
 fallen flat on their faces and look as if they 
 meant to stay there, like refractory children. 
 Living in the shadow of such an inexorable fate 
 — for even optimism and the enthusiasm of 
 capitalists have failed to stop the Gulf storms 
 — makes the people livelier than ever. Like 
 Neapolitans, they enjoy living to-day because 
 it is not altogether improbable that they will be 
 blown to smithereens to-morrow. The surest 
 way to enjoy life is to go where nature values it 
 lightly. I have never appreciated the gift of 
 mere existence more poignantly than I did when 
 an earthquake nearly deprived me of it. In 
 that violent moment I would have snatched the 
 dull routine of endless days out of the jaws of 
 hell to treasure forever! In Pensacola they 
 have learned that lesson. They trust to luck, 
 live close to the ground, and smile. „ . . 
 
 At night Palafox Street is crowded, riff-raff 
 and gentry mixing and apparently liking it. A 
 steady tide of pedestrians drifts up and down the 
 narrow sidewalks or answers the lure (at ten 
 cents a lure) of the Movie Theatres, or goes 
 to the *'Zoo" to stare at an exhibition of moth- 
 eaten snakes and odoriferous trained bears, or 
 
 [234] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 takes a shot at a disappearing target in one of 
 the clattering shooting galleries on the chance 
 of being sober and steady enough to win a nickel 
 cigar. Hawkers yell hoarse invitations; you 
 catch the alluring tinkle of a distant piano play- 
 ing syncopated melodies for dancing sailors; the 
 busy little Fords rush up and down always pre- 
 tending that it is Broadway. If you are a coun- 
 try cousin you stare into Kress's windows and 
 admire tinware, ribbon, five-cent lace and ten- 
 cent calico, pressed glass, lemon squeezers, 
 chromos and clocks. The crowd is colourful 
 and picturesque. There are husky young sail- 
 ors walking in bashful pairs like Italian 
 carabinieri; there are longshoremen, big-handed 
 Swedes, taciturn Englishmen, voluble Italians, 
 niggers and more niggers — tall ones with little 
 bullet heads and flat noses, lanky ones laughing 
 liquid contagious laughter, yellow ones and sooty 
 ones, jaunty, cheap coons and ragged coons; 
 negresses with feathers in their hats and white 
 kid shoes; likable fat negresses in inconceivable 
 tatters; untidy, down-at-the-heel people and trim 
 officers in khaki, marines, Cubans, Japanese, 
 pretty girls, tourists, the tag-ends of humanity 
 and the show-room pieces, drunks, riff-raff and 
 jetsam. 
 
 In the Movie Theatres there are close-packed 
 
 [235] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 perspiring audiences and sobbing organ music 
 — "I Hear You Calling Me" on the vox 
 humana! Babies, who should have been in bed 
 for hours, squawk and squall and bubble; sailors 
 giggle and middle-aged citizens watch gravely, 
 reading the captions aloud. 
 
 But beyond Palafox Street, the rest of the city 
 is dark and quiet. You can walk for blocks and 
 hear nothing but the ghostly rattle of the palms, 
 see nothing but sober, sedate houses and discreet 
 clubs. Architecturally, Pensacola is not exciting 
 except for a little Sp^anish baroque church which 
 may be new but which looks as old as the world. 
 Most of the houses and all of the business build- 
 ings were apparently planned according to the 
 deadly American system of usefulness before 
 beauty, without regard for the landscape, the 
 colour of the sky or the permanence of anything. 
 Sometimes I wonder why we do not regulate 
 civic architecture by law. To encounter rows 
 and rows of ugly houses built in the jig-saw man- 
 ner and painted a dingy grey or a sulphurish and 
 sickening yellow, is cramping to the soul. But 
 to encounter them in Western Florida is both 
 humiliating and tragic. 
 
 All roads led to the Navy Yard, so we motored 
 out there one morning, Allan warning the hotel 
 garage that he didn't want a Ford, wouldn't have 
 
 [236] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 a Ford, the garage bridling and sending us a 
 fashionable relic that rode high on buoyant 
 springs. We sat in the lofty and slippery ton- 
 neau and rattled loosely like beans in a pod. 
 Any slight variation in the surface of the road, 
 like a blade of grass or a pebble, bounced us 
 skyward. Fortunately, the road was macadam- 
 ised except for one stretch, just across the long 
 wooden bridge over the Bayou Grande, where 
 some niggers, three mules and a ponderous 
 steam-roller had created a No-Man's Land with 
 the mistaken intention of repairing the road. 
 We were constantly in mid-air while we nego- 
 tiated the craters, so I have a blurred impression 
 of the cross-country approach to the Yard. And 
 I found out later that we could have gone quite 
 comfortably and cheaply by tram from the 
 centre of the city. 
 
 We went first to the old Civil War ruin, 
 Barancas, and left the car to climb up into the 
 fort and from its high walls to fix the plan of the 
 Bay in our mind's retina. We crossed a wooden 
 portcullis that bridged a shallow moat and 
 entered the fort through a steep underground 
 passageway, coming out by the spiny tower of 
 the Government wireless station. A lonely boy 
 in khaki was on guard-duty there, looking as if 
 he would have welcomed a stiff hand-to-hand 
 
 [237] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 fight with almost any variety of enemy — but a 
 ferocious one preferred. I suppose soldiers do 
 grow tired, now and then, of what is for the 
 most part a hypothetical profession. We tried 
 to cheer this one by talking in a hopeful way of 
 the lively possibility of war with Germany. He 
 brightened, but he let us see very plainly that 
 he had heard the cry of "Wolf!" too many times 
 to take our feeble pipings seriously. 
 
 We leaned on the wall by his side and stared 
 out at the Bay. It enters obligingly through a 
 narrow mouth so that modern Fort Pickens, on 
 the tip of Santa Rosa Island, dominates it easily. 
 Then it widens back ten miles to Pensacola, and 
 still further on splits like a scorpion's tail into 
 two smaller bays, Escambia and St. Mary de 
 Galvez. Santa Rosa Island, a narrow sand-strip 
 forty-four miles long, locks the harbour away 
 from the Gulf. Fort Pickens, the mortar bat- 
 tery and quarantine are all out there, and curi- 
 ous tourists have to be ferried across from the 
 mainland. I am a layman and know nothing 
 of these things, but it seemed to me a very 
 inconvenient arrangement of fort and barracks 
 — the fort on an island, the barracks on the 
 mainland and a wide strip of harbour between 
 exposed to the fire of enemy ships lying just 
 across that narrow bar of sand. I had an un- 
 
 [238] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 easy feeling that if Pickens were surprised at 
 night, or when the defenders were having aft- 
 ernoon tea ashore, getting to the fort would be 
 a blighting business. Apparently, all of those 
 things had been thought out long before I got 
 to Pensacola, for when I put my fear into words 
 the fresh-cheeked boy in khaki became hys- 
 terical. 
 
 To change the subject, I asked him why 
 Pensacola is called the "Deep Water City." He 
 controlled his expression long enough to answer, 
 "Because the harbour channel is thirty feet deep 
 on zero tide," and then leaned against one cor- 
 ner of the wireless tower and laughed until he 
 cried. 
 
 The brick walls of Barancas rise steeply from 
 the grey ruins of the old Media de Luna, the 
 half-moon fort built by d'Ariola in 1696. While 
 Allan sketched the curious, shallow defences 
 and the incomparably white beach which curves 
 beyond them, I watched some small boys play- 
 ing at mediaeval warfare, two of them barri- 
 caded in the fort, the rest swarming with blood- 
 thirsty howls (if three very small boys can be 
 said to swarm) over the crescent-shaped walls. 
 
 When the sketch was finished we said good- 
 bye, I rather stiffly, to the very young soldier, 
 and went back to the car. As we bounced on 
 
 [239] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 we saw a great white bird — not the dove of 
 peace — suddenly thrust its nose skyward and 
 with widespread wings wheel and dip over the 
 glittering harbour. 
 
 The Yard and the aeronautic station are half- 
 way between the entrance to the Bay and Pensa- 
 cola, facing Santa Rosa Island across the wide 
 strip of water. A sentry deprived us of our 
 camera at the gate, but didn't insist on our being 
 blindfolded, which seemed rather inconsistent 
 considering the accuracy of optic photography. 
 A real spy doesn't fix a tripod on the periscope 
 of a submarine and prance about taking photo- 
 graphs in full view of officers and crew. Nor 
 does he spread his maps and foul plans on the 
 parade-ground of a Navy Yard for the amuse- 
 ment of nursemaids and babies in perambulators. 
 Our idea of a spy is one who surrenders his 
 camera at the gate, swaps a yarn with the sentry, 
 and then saunters leisurely about puffing a ciga- 
 rette and endearing himself to every one from 
 the Commandant to the Admiral's pet dog — 
 such an artless, winning creature that no one 
 can resist telling him everything he wants to 
 know, leading him ever3rwhere he wants to go. 
 And all the while he looks and looks and sees 
 and sees. . . . 
 
 The Zlavy Yard at Pensacola encloses both 
 
 [240] 
 
A GRKAI FLOATING HANGAR, TRLLY MAGNIFICENT IN 
 PROPORTION 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 the naval and aeronautic stations. When we 
 were there, all traces of the destructive July and 
 September storms had been wiped out. Except 
 for the wharves, which had not been rebuilt, 
 things were in spick-and-span condition. The 
 hangars and machine shops are near the water 
 and connected with it by wide concrete 
 "beaches," so that the machines can be wheeled 
 out of the sheds and floated, if I may put it that 
 way, at their own front door. The offices and 
 quarters are further back — all square, white, 
 unbeautiful buildings. And there are the usual 
 patches of discouraged grass and shiny mounds 
 of cannon balls. In the harbour out be- 
 yond, the Columbia, the Tallahassee and the 
 McDonough were "mothering" little strings 
 of almost invisible submarines. From the top 
 of what looked like a battleship's skeleton mast 
 a signal flag announced "Flying to-day." And 
 the air was full of the mysterious and unfamiliar 
 hum of giant wings. We felt that we were in 
 the midst of a very important and vital activity, 
 for the men who are developing naval aero- 
 nautics at Pensacola are carrying on experiments 
 which make them the focus of national atten- 
 tion. 
 
 As soon as I passed the Yard gate I began to 
 ask questions, remembering what I had been 
 
 [241] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 told before I left New York: "Find out what 
 they are doing down in Pensacola. Find out 
 how they are doing it. We may be going to 
 have a war, you know." I had not forgotten. I 
 faced the Commandant in his office and, pretend- 
 ing that I was a composite American, rather put 
 it up to him. 
 
 "Well," I said, fixing him with my composite 
 gaze, "what are you doing down here?" 
 
 Instead of taking me by the scrufif of my neck 
 and putting my composite person outside the 
 door, the Commandant answered very seriously 
 with another question, "Do you really want to 
 know?" 
 
 "I do." 
 
 "How much do you know already?" 
 
 "Nothing." Which wasn't exactly cornposite, 
 but was at least honest. 
 
 The Commandant smiled and commissioned 
 a patient aviator to show us over the Yard and 
 to explain everything lucidly and repeatedly. 
 The aviator told us, among other things, that 
 the school at Pensacola is the only one in the 
 United States for the training of officers and men 
 in the naval aeronautic service. This was in 
 February, 19 17, and the school was working 
 to the limit of its capacity, with full classes not 
 only of naval and marine officers and men, but 
 
 [242] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 naval militia and coast-guard officers and men 
 who are received every three months. Thirteen 
 lieutenants (junior grade), one lieutenant, two 
 marine corps captains and an ensign — seventeen 
 men in all — were in training. There were only 
 five senior flight instructors. Considering that 
 other first-class powers have from two thousand 
 to ten thousand aviators, and that there were 
 less than two hundred trained aviators in the 
 United States Army and Navy at that time, it is 
 easy to see that such slow training of personnel 
 and instructors has held back progress in the 
 building of the national aeronautic service. The 
 need is not so much to get more aircraft, but to 
 equip men to handle them. And for every 
 anxious question of mine, the patient aviator had 
 one answer, "Universal training! When we 
 have universal training, the problem of men and 
 instructors will be solved. In the meantime, the 
 aeronautic station at Pensacola is going ahead 
 as fast as it can. As fast, remember, as it can!" 
 In working with the fleet, naval aircraft have 
 four distinct, invaluable duties — to scout from 
 ships at sea, to scout off shore from coastal sta- 
 tions, to "spot" and to engage in oflfensive opera- 
 tions against enemy 'planes or against enemy 
 ships and stations. There, and on the first line 
 of defence, they are of inestimable value. Eng- 
 
 [243] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 land had not been slow to realise, to quote Mr. 
 Balfour, that "the time is here when command 
 of the sea will be of no value to Great Britain 
 without corresponding command of the air." 
 And Lord Charles Beresford made an even 
 stronger statement when he said that "the time 
 is here when the air-service of Great Britain 
 will be more vital for her safety than her Army 
 and her Navy combined." General Petain has 
 said, "I see France in the near future with fifty 
 thousand aeroplanes." And Rear-Admiral 
 Peary states that "if we are to have a real de- 
 fence we must begin developing our aerial 
 strength now and push it unsparingly. We shall 
 not have started on a proper pace of develop- 
 ment of this vital arm until we are spending not 
 less than fifty million dollars a year." 
 
 As I trotted at the heels of the communicative 
 aviator at Pensacola, he explained to me bitterly 
 and explicitly why America is so overwhelm- 
 ingly outclassed by Europe in the matters of 
 naval aeronautics. He told me, among other 
 things, that there was not a single anti-aircraft 
 unit in the United States. Up to that time there 
 had been no practice in the handling of aero- 
 plane guns at Pensacola, nor had a single gun 
 been mounted on an aeroplane. There had been 
 no practice in locating submarines, torpedoes 
 
 [244] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 and mines. Again lack of men and material! 
 There was only one kite balloon, the ''aerial 
 eye" of the forts and field artillery batteries, in 
 the United States, nor were there any small 
 dirigible balloons for coast patrol and submarine 
 hunting. 
 
 "And do you remember," the aviator said, 
 "that it was a Zeppelin which secured co-opera- 
 tion for the German fleet at the battle of Jutland, 
 and that the British fleet was warned of the ap- 
 proach of the Germans by an aeroplane piloted 
 by Flight Lieutenant Rutland from the aero- 
 plane mother ship Engadine? Did you know 
 that only two of our ships, the Seattle and the 
 North Carolina, are equipped with seaplanes 
 and the catapult launching device which per- 
 mits scouting away from the shore station?" 
 
 I did not know. And it had to be explained 
 to me that the "catapult" is a pneumatic ram 
 which gives the seaplane the necessary velocity 
 to leave the stern of the ship and to take the 
 air. But it was hard for me to believe that the 
 development of the seaplane in America has 
 been anything but miraculous, when I saw the 
 machines in the hangars and in the sky at Pensa- 
 cola. It was hard to be pessimistic, even though 
 the war-cloud was hanging low over the coun- 
 try, in the presence of so much activity and genu- 
 
 [245] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 ine enthusiasm. We went into the hangars, 
 where there were twenty-five little Curtiss school 
 machines with flirty tails, two Thomas aero- 
 planes that looked like blunt-nosed dragon-flies, 
 a Martin, five big Sturtevants, a "scouting" Cur- 
 tiss, a three hundred horse-power Gallaudet with 
 the drivers' seats far forward so that the pilots 
 ride like seasprites on a dolphin's nose, four Bur- 
 gesses and a Navy type, designed by Naval Con- 
 structor H. C. Richardson. Another Navy 
 type, a school machine, designed by Lieutenant 
 E. O. McDonnell, was in the process of con- 
 struction. 
 
 I was allowed to go close to the beautiful 
 monsters while they were being "curried" by 
 mechanics, and even to put my hand on their 
 polished sides and to touch the tips of their out- 
 spread wings. Each one had its "record." This 
 one had always been a "Jonah," that one had 
 made an altitude record; this one, with Lieu- 
 tenant Mcllvaine, had been lost in the fog the 
 day before and for nine hours had drifted like 
 a lame duck on Pensacola Bay. Some of them 
 had settled on their tails like those fragile flies 
 whose front legs are out of all proportion to 
 their hind legs. They reared their noses heaven- 
 ward. The motors were silent, and the devoted 
 mechanics, aeronautic grooms, polished and 
 
 [246] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 rubbed and did mysterious, deeply intelligent 
 things with the complex, delicate veins and 
 arteries that move the inert body with pulsating 
 life and lift it out of the water to the topmost 
 skies. 
 
 The aviator told me that a student's first flight 
 without the instructor proves his sense of bal- 
 ance and determines whether or not he will be 
 a successful pilot. He may do very well as long 
 as he is not alone, but the "feel" of a machine is 
 different when it carries only one passenger, and 
 the result is confusing; so confusing, in fact, 
 that the hopeful student, even if he escapes in- 
 tact, is not always granted his pilot's degree and 
 has to choose a more stationary branch of the 
 service. It is not a question of intelligence or of 
 personal courage, but depends rather on how 
 good an equilibrist one happens to be. 
 
 'Tt is a magnificent sensation," the aviator 
 told me, "to feel yourself actually flying, to see 
 the earth and sea dropping away from under 
 you, diminishing dizzily like sea and earth seen 
 through the wrong end of a telescope. The 
 world looks as flat and featureless as a pricked 
 bubble — it just collapses. And there you are, 
 absolutely not afraid, suspended in the air like 
 a lazy buzzard coasting on the wind. More 
 than anything else, it is freedom. You are alone 
 
 [247] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 with the sky and the machine, and somehow the 
 petty things of the world get left behind. I tell 
 you," he assured me, fixing me with his eyes, 
 "it's great! It gets into your blood." 
 
 It was a breathlessly calm day and there was 
 an animated bustle along the broad glaring- 
 white concrete water-front before the hangars. 
 With the aviator, who had witnessed the 
 spectacle more times than he could remember, 
 we stood in the hot sun for over an hour to watch 
 a long line of machines, suddenly shaken by 
 astounding explosions, leap away from shore, 
 skim the surface of the water for a few hundred 
 yards and then rise steadily higher and higher 
 into the sky. No matter how often the miracle 
 was repeated, I was as excited as a child with a 
 toy balloon. I had an uncontrollable desire to 
 cheer, to clap, to flutter a handkerchief. 
 
 But a memory restrained me. Once in Lon- 
 don I had been the only human being in an im- 
 mense crowd to cheer King George. I was 
 standing on the edge of the curb, firmly wedged 
 from behind by a British mob and still more 
 firmly wedged from before by a stolid and 
 immovable line of British police. I had 
 never seen a king. Once in Rome I had 
 glimpsed the shiny berretta of Vittorio Em- 
 manuele, who was apparently sitting on the 
 
 [248] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 floor of his carriage as he drove in the 
 Villa Borghese. But you could hardly call a 
 berretta a whole king. It was quite a different 
 matter in London, for the King was there to be 
 seen, and I, with my chin resting on a Bobby's 
 broad shoulder, waited only to see him. The 
 great state coach rattled down the street slowly 
 with a lumbersome, unwieldy majesty and 
 pomp. Hats were lifted in respectful silence. 
 I remember that my heart beat as the prancing 
 horses came abreast. Then I caught sight of the 
 familiar profile of the King, and something in- 
 explicable and unrecognisable rose in me from 
 the mysterious depths of my being. I had to 
 cheer. So I cheered. My voice rose above the 
 British silence, the British decorum, like an 
 hysterical and blood-curdling Indian whoop. 
 The King and several thousand people turned 
 astonished eyes on me; the long row of police- 
 men stiffened. Then the coach creaked and 
 rattled past, turned at right angles into St. 
 James, and the incident was closed. I had 
 cheered. . . . 
 
 At Pensacola I suppressed the impulse stern- 
 ly, for I could not have cheered aviators who 
 take the glorious business of flying as uncon- 
 cernedly as the English take the historical busi- 
 ness of kings. 
 
 [249] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 Mechanics wearing hip-length rubber boots 
 splashed out into the shallow water to hold the 
 machines in leash and to preserve the exact bal- 
 ance of the great wings while the pilots scram- 
 bled aboard. Then suddenly, with a staccato 
 roar and a blinding shower of spray, they were 
 off! Then they were clear of the water, skim- 
 ming just above it with taut wings. Then up 
 with a graceful swoop, up and up and still up 
 — the sun glinting along the planes. They shot 
 away from the beach one after the other until 
 the sky was full of dipping, wheeling monsters. 
 They poked their blunt noses straight at the sun, 
 climbing until the throbbing of their engines 
 came to us as faint as a pulse beat. They passed 
 and repassed each other across the face of the 
 blazing sky. They coasted down to the water 
 again with subdued hums like heavy bumble- 
 bees swollen to nightmarish proportions. 
 
 Having likened them to every winged thing 
 but the common house-fly, my superlatives 
 sizzled ofi into speechlessness, and the aviator, 
 greatly relieved, took me over to see the 
 dirigible. It had just arrived and had been tied 
 up in its kennel, looking very much like a long, 
 yellow dachshund. It was squashy and soft to 
 the prodding finger, and I was surprised to 
 find myself on intimate terms with a dirigible 
 
 [250] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 and saying that it felt like a 'Very old orange." 
 As it is the dirigible, I was snubbed for being 
 facetious and made to feel that I had taken 
 liberties with a divinity. Yet I suppose Sieg- 
 fried might have grown used to the dragon in 
 time! The dirigible's kennel, to tell the truth, 
 was more impressive — a great floating hangar, 
 truly magnificent in proportion, which can be 
 towed to sea and so turned with the wind that 
 the dirigible is able to leave its shelter and to 
 re-enter it with the utmost facility. Taking a 
 dirigible to sea would be as exciting, it seems to 
 me, as giving a dinotherium a ride in a swan 
 boat I 
 
 We walked gingerly about the recumbent 
 monster, stepping over ropes, chains and snake- 
 like tubings, vaguely fearful in the unfamiliar 
 atmosphere of making some misstep which 
 would precipitate a calamity. The vast interior 
 of the hangar was as cool and shadowy as a 
 cathedral transept. Only where the great can- 
 vas curtains of the entrance were looped back, 
 a patch of hot, noon sky blazed magnificently. 
 
 Friends "with the submarines" were expect- 
 ing us for lunch, and we had been told that the 
 Admiral's "barge" would be waiting for us at 
 the Yard wharf to take us out to the Columbia. 
 Already little chills of excitement were creep- 
 
 [251] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 ing over me at the thought of having lunch with 
 an admiral and an indefinite number of "other 
 officers." While Allan and the aviator were 
 examining the dirigible's car I slipped behind 
 a convenient bulge in the creature's cigar-shaped 
 anatomy, and squinting into a pocket mirror 
 which is about the size of a fifty cent 
 piece and just as successful in reflecting me, I 
 powdered my nose and settled my hat at a more 
 rakish angle. When I emerged looking, as 
 Allan instantly remarked, like a whited 
 sepulchre, it was time to go in search of the 
 "barge." So we said good-bye to the patient 
 aviator, insinuating a few last questions into our 
 gratitude, and hurried away to keep our 
 rendezvous at the wharf. 
 
 The "barge," of course, was a shining, brass- 
 trimmed nifty horse-power motor-boat. It shot 
 away from the Yard wharf, bearing us toward 
 lunch with a delicious, exhilarating leap, 
 cutting a path like the churning wake of an in- 
 jured sperm-whale across the iharbour. The 
 soles of our feet tickled responsively to the 
 shivering vibrations of the engine. We passed 
 close to the rakish destroyer McDonough and 
 had a blurred glimpse of a half a dozen sub- 
 marines lying side by side and swarming with 
 men. Overhead the great white birds still 
 
 [252] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 circled and dipped, still coasted nose-down to 
 the water or shot into the face of the sun. Real 
 birds, white-breasted, hovered over the warships 
 and wheeled in the wake of a big grey liner 
 which steamed slowly towards the open sea. 
 There was a gay flutter of flags, — brilliant spots 
 of colour against the blue and white of the 
 world. A magnificent activity everywhere — 
 little spurts of grey smoke and the long wisps of 
 dazzling steam snatched skyward and the glitter- 
 ing path of fast launches passing and repassing 
 across the shining water. A submarine, like a 
 thin, black pencil, detached itself from the others 
 and moved slowly up the harbour, the crew 
 walking along its narrow spine like men on a 
 raft Looking back, we could see the floating 
 hangar and the blazing white of the Yard build- 
 ings. It was a fine moment. Before us lay a 
 pageant of American preparedness on the sea 
 and in the air, and we forgot carping criticisms, 
 odious comparisons and doleful forebodings 
 long enough to be proud of our country. The 
 spectacle at Pensacola was both creditable and 
 impressive. We find so much to depreciate in 
 these days of preparation and anxiety that any 
 real emotion, any thrill of genuine enthusiasm, 
 is cause for rejoicing. 
 
 At lunch there was very little talk of war, 
 
 [253] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 and that, I suppose, was as it should be. We 
 spoke of the U-53, and the Admiral showed us 
 some photographs of the crafty and daring 
 undersea boat which he had had framed and 
 hung on the walls of the mess room. I am won- 
 dering whether they are still there. I fancy they 
 are, for there is nothing a good fighter admires 
 more than a "sporting" enemy, and the U-53 
 was all of that. 
 
 We did not know that while we were enjoy- 
 ing the unaffected and delightful hospitality of 
 the Columbia, word had been flashed all over 
 the United States that Germany intended to 
 carry on her submarine warfare. The Admiral 
 and every one at the luncheon table but our- 
 selves knew that the war-cloud had rolled up 
 over the horizon and had spread like a menacing 
 shadow over America. They knew that the 
 dramatic spectacle of submarines, seaplanes and 
 warships all about us was soon destined to be- 
 come something more than a dramatic pageant. 
 Yet our talk dealt pleasantly with other things. 
 It was not until we got back to Pensacola, late 
 that afternoon, that we found out for ourselves. 
 Allan snatched a paper from a howling dervish 
 of a newsboy who flashed by shrieking, "War 
 Extra!" and we stood on the sidewalk to read 
 
 [254] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 the glaring headlines. ... It had come, then, 
 and so soon! 
 
 That night, as if the news had stirred heaven 
 and earth, a thunderstorm roared across the 
 Gulf. The first blinding flash of lightning woke 
 us. We heard thick splatters of rain, and a 
 thunder clap which shook the San Carlos like 
 an earthquake. Then the wind came, with a 
 thin and querulous whine that rose in pitch, in- 
 tensified, developed into a shriek. Chairs and 
 tables on the open-air terrace down below turned 
 over with a clatter. We heard bellboys and 
 night watchmen scurrying back and forth to the 
 rescue. Doors slammed and rattled, and the 
 terrific impact of the wind drove the rain in solid 
 sheets against our windows. I cowered under 
 the bedclothes and called into the next room to 
 Allan. 
 
 "Are you awake?" 
 
 "I am." 
 
 "What on earth is the time?" 
 
 He waited until the theatrical lightning had 
 shown him the face of his watch. 
 
 "Four o'clock." 
 
 "Are we going to take the six o'clock train to 
 Mobile?" I howled. 
 
 "If we're still alive." 
 
 Then we both crawled under our pillows and 
 
 [255] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 tried to shut out the terrifying reverberations of 
 the implacable wind. When we woke it was 
 nine o'clock, and the sun was shining crisply. 
 The thermometer had fallen to twenty-two de- 
 grees and the radiator was blowing steam bub- 
 bles in an unaccustomed effort to heat the San 
 Carlos. We took a later train to Mobile, leaving 
 Pensacola ashiver in the grip of an icy frost. 
 But we were still alive. 
 
 1256} 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 A DAY IN MOBILE AND ON TO NEW ORLEANS 
 
 WHERE WE MEET A VERY CAPABLE 
 
 YOUNG WOMAN 
 
 "To Jean Baptiste Le Moyne 
 
 Sieur de Bienville 
 
 ^Native of Montreal, Canada, 
 
 Naval Officer 
 
 Of France 
 
 Governor of Louisiana 
 
 And Founder of the First Capital 
 
 Mobile, 
 
 IJII 
 
 Born 1680— Died 1 768 
 
 With the Genius to Create an Empire 
 
 And the Courage to Maintain It 
 
 Patient Amid Faction and Successful Even 
 
 In Defeat 
 
 He Brought His Settlement 
 
 The Prosperity of True Civilization 
 
 And the Happiness of Real Christianity. 
 
 He Who Founds a City Builds Himself 
 
 A Life-Long Monument." 
 
 In this fashion Mobile expresses her gratitude 
 to the Canadian who immortalised himself in 
 
 [257] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 the founding of both New Orleans and Mobile, 
 and in putting the Latin imprint upon the two 
 cities guaranteed their charm for all time. You 
 may see the generous inscription in Bienville 
 Square, where the citizens of Mobile have raised 
 a granite cross to the great Frenchman, proving 
 themselves more appreciative than New 
 Orleans, who has so far neglected to honour 
 Bienville's memory that only one small street 
 has been named after him in the Creole City. 
 Mobile dedicated its most beautiful square, a 
 magnificent grove of live oaks in the centre of 
 the city, to the man who followed in the foot- 
 steps of La Salle and Iberville and not only 
 carried the French flag to the very mouth of the 
 Mississippi, but planted it as far east as Florida. 
 Mobile was the capital of French Louisiana 
 until 1723, and thereafter the city changed hands 
 with the dizzy speed of a juggler's ball, sharing 
 the fate of Pensacola and New Orleans, and 
 passing from the French to the English, from 
 the English to the Spanish, and finally casting 
 in its lot with the new and untried United States. 
 The colonists had very little to say as to what 
 their allegiance should be, for the political in- 
 triguers of Europe pulled the wires that made 
 Louisiana a French, English or Spanish prov- 
 ince. Boundaries were elastic, flags were hoisted 
 
 [258] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 only to be hauled down again, and the stamp 
 of three nationalities was put upon the people 
 who had ventured into the uncharted wilderness 
 in search of religious freedom, riches or the mad- 
 dest, boldest adventure. Mobile profited by her 
 cosmopolitan experience, and like a woman who 
 has lived in many countries and who speaks 
 many languages, the city has emerged from her 
 varied past socially expert. 
 
 The softness of the name. Mobile, Maubila 
 of the Spaniards, is both gracious and dis- 
 tinguished. Such a combination of phonetics as 
 "Mobile, Alabama" could not belong to a lout- 
 ish city. And indeed one must dust ofif one's 
 modern carelessness before one enters the 
 fashionable Mobile's drawing room. She is an 
 old woman now but she is a great personality, 
 a creature of distinction, still intolerant of the 
 leisurely and careless society of to-day. In the 
 brilliant ante-bellum days she filled her salons 
 with governors and generals, European nobles, 
 rich planters, statesmen and merchants from 
 Charleston and Boston, Liverpool, London, 
 Glasgow and New York. And because she was 
 witty, beautiful and aristocratic, she attracted 
 men and women like herself and created around 
 herself a sort of social glamour, a charm that 
 was both rare and distinguished, and won her a 
 
 [25.9] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 place with Charleston and Richmond in the 
 social sun. She became so finished a product 
 that one of her daughters, Madame Octavis 
 Walton Levert, was presented to Queen Victoria 
 at a "special drawing room" at a time when 
 Americans were still popularly supposed to be 
 savages and to live in wigwams. So it is not 
 altogether improbable that Madame Levert 
 placed the first bomb under the exalted edifice 
 of British antagonism and helped to open the 
 way to a mutual Anglo-American social under- 
 standing. 
 
 We came to Mobile from Pensacola across a 
 lovely slice of Alabama that has been rudely 
 devastated by the 1916 storms. Trees were 
 snapped ofT two or three feet from the ground 
 and thrown forward on their faces in an atti- 
 tude of Moslem prayer. The hurricanes left 
 a wide trail of these prostrated pines and oaks, 
 and no one seems to have taken the trouble to 
 haul away the dead wood or to prop up the 
 over-zealous but still living worshippers. But 
 the country is rich in timber, and where there 
 is a surplus of anything there is always small 
 regard for the source of supply. If the Italians 
 of Tuscany could only see that wasted firewood! 
 Where kindling wood is worth its weight in 
 gold, a whole forest of decaying trees would 
 
 [260] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 cause the mouth to water — Like Millet"'s 
 canvas, "The Reapers," which always makes my 
 back ache if I look at it too long, the snapped- 
 off pines along the way to Mobile are so 
 eternally bent over in an awkward attitude of 
 prayer that I groaned out of sympathy. 
 
 And again the character of the country had 
 mysteriously changed as if man-made boundary 
 lines could transform the colour of the earth, 
 the smell of the air and the very characteristics 
 of the people. Alabama was not Alabama until 
 after the Louisiana Purchase, but it is as dif- 
 ferent from Florida on the one hand and 
 Louisiana on the other as black is from white. 
 I have never understood why the crossing of a 
 surveyed line should take one from the racial 
 and geographical characteristics of one State 
 into those of another, why Connecticut is so un- 
 like Rhode Island, why Vermont is so entirely 
 different from New Hampshire and so on, ad 
 infinitum. Florida is still Spanish and Louisi- 
 ana is French, while Alabama, set exactly be- 
 tween the two and only separated from them by 
 an imaginary line and a different colour on the 
 map, is wholly American. Alabama still be- 
 longs to a social past that was characteristically 
 American in spite of, or perhaps because of its 
 cosmopolitanism. It seemed to us that even 
 
 [261] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 the soil changed as soon as we crossed the border, 
 for the foothills of the Appalachians pour down 
 to the Gulf, lifting the coast line of Alabama out 
 of the water and mercifully ridding it of salt 
 marshes and swampy bayous. 
 
 In Florida we had touched upon the tropics, 
 passing through an endless waste of oak and 
 cypress forest sunk to its knees in water and 
 clogged with vine and moss. A Martian must 
 see Florida as a beautiful green land pitted with 
 lakes and laced with rivers, encroached upon by 
 the waters of both the Atlantic Ocean and the 
 Gulf of Mexico. Wherever Florida rears her- 
 self out of the swamps there is a wealth of bloom 
 and the moist, damp air is filled with the spicy 
 sweetness of green bay and orange, live oak, 
 holly, oleanders and magnolia, high reeds and 
 bull-briers, sedge and palmetto, Spanish dagger 
 and cypress. The country is grey and dusty in 
 the early winter, and for that reason perhaps a 
 disappointment to those travellers who leave the 
 North too soon and cannot wait in Florida for 
 the miraculous flowering of bushes and trees 
 that makes the semi-tropical spring an ecstatic 
 symphony of sweet odours and blazing colours. 
 All the way down the Atlantic coast the winter 
 landscape is a dusty, cinder-grey procession of 
 moss-choked swamps and brittle palmetto scrub, 
 
 [262] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 and there is no variation in the deadly monotony 
 except where the hills of Tallahassee rise mys- 
 teriously out of the water-soaked plain 
 
 We did not see the azaleas in Mobile, for they 
 bloom towards the end of February and, with 
 our usual poor luck, we had come too soon for 
 their blooming. The azaleas of Mobile do not 
 grow in pots to live and die during Easter week, 
 like our Northern azaleas. They are not decked 
 out with blue bows and crinkly tissue paper for 
 exhibition on the family piano. In Mobile, an 
 azalea is a tree, often growing as high as the 
 Italian camellia and just as richly starred with 
 blossoms. I am repeating, dear Reader, what I 
 heard in Mobile, and you need not put your 
 finger on the side of your nose and accuse me 
 of having a microscopic eye, like a horse's, 
 which enlarges everything it sees. 
 
 The only flowers I saw in Mobile were in 
 the florist shop windows, for nothing but a 
 Christmas tree could have survived the bitter 
 cold. There were undoubtedly some bitter 
 tragedies in the great orange groves and truck 
 gardens of Mobile County. Even the hardy 
 Satsuma trees must have shivered in the icy wind 
 that tore across Alabama from the North. 
 
 Travelling is a vicarious enjoyment unless cli- 
 mate and scenery are both guaranteed in ad- 
 
 [263] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 vance. Mobile advertises a medium tempera- 
 ture and states positively that muslin in vv^inter 
 and furs in summer are the usual thing on Mo- 
 bile Bay. And it must have been that we are 
 hoodoos, for Mobile is strictly truthful about 
 everything else, even stretching a point to assure 
 the fisherman who goes to Coden or to Dau- 
 phine Island for '^big game" fish that if tarpon 
 and crevallier aren't biting well, John Rolston 
 of Rolston's Hotel will tell him the strict truth. 
 This, from a man who rents launches, bait and 
 tackle, is the sort of integrity that touches the 
 heart. 
 
 But the inhabitants of Mobile apparently live 
 under a popular misapprehension as to the 
 weather, for they were not prepared for the 
 antics of the thermometer and went chattering 
 about the city wrapped to the tips of their blue 
 noses in woollen mufflers. Our blood had ad- 
 justed itself to tropical heat in Pensacola and, 
 taken by surprise, refused to meet the situation. 
 There is nothing on earth more depressing than 
 being too cold unless it is being too hot! And 
 in Mobile I was decidedly too cold. Time and 
 time again we tucked ourselves into the revolv- 
 ing front doors of the Battle House and tried to 
 brave the frosty wind, each time making the 
 complete revolution and spinning back into the 
 
 [264] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 warm lobby again, baffled and beaten. I had 
 come to Mobile with romantic intentions, but 
 they were nipped in the bud; I had wanted to 
 make a sentimental pilgrimage to Augusta Jane 
 Evan's home, because I had read "St. Elmo" 
 and "Tales of the Alamo" when I should have 
 been reading Hans Christian Andersen, and I 
 owed Augusta Jane Evans a debt of gratitude 
 for stolen sweets. I had wanted to pay humble 
 tribute to Joseph Jefferson's rare and gentle art 
 and in looking at his Mobile home to utter a 
 little prayer of thankfulness for the legend of 
 Rip Van Winkle and for Jefferson's interpreta- 
 tion of it. Jefferson opened the magic door of 
 the theatre to me. "Rip Van Winkle" was my 
 first play, and I can remember to this day how 
 I wept for Rip's lost youth and the tragedy of 
 his return from sleep. In those days I could 
 weep at the spectacle of age because I was so 
 immune from it myself. But now I am twenty- 
 seven and the gibbering monster is at hand al- 
 ready, strangely transformed and glorified, as 
 welcome as Rip himself would be. 
 
 Jefferson appeared in amateur theatricals at 
 the Old Mobile Theater when he was a little 
 boy, and the city has been grateful enough to 
 the lovable stroller to place a tablet on his home, 
 paying tribute to a "legal vagabond" as if he 
 
 [26r>] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 were a general, an admiral or a millionaire 
 philanthropist. It is not often that cities honour 
 their players, preferring to raise monuments to 
 more concrete benefactors and forgetting the 
 inestimable debt humanity owes to those gra- 
 cious men and women who have the gift of tears 
 and laughter. 
 
 We finally did leave our hotel and ran brisk- 
 ly around the corner to Bienville Square and 
 up and down Government Street once or twice, 
 battling our way against the tempestuous wind 
 with our heads down and our eyes shut. We 
 fought valiantly to do our duty by Mobile, for 
 it is in the spirit of the place to ward off defeat 
 with one's dying breath. De Soto set the fashion 
 by battling furiously with Tuscaloosa's warriors 
 in the old Maubila; Andrew Jackson fanned 
 the flame by defeating the British and their 
 Indian allies under Colonel Nichols in 1814, 
 and during the Civil War Admiral Farragut, 
 sailing up Mobile Bay lashed to the mast of his 
 ohip like a modern Ulysses, cried, "Damn the 
 mines!" and landed at South End, safe and 
 sound. But it was hard to subdue the fighting 
 spirit of aristocratic Mobile. After Farragut 
 had captured Fort Morgan, the city boiled and 
 bubbled with rebellion for a year. The last 
 battle of the Civil War took place just outside 
 
 [266] 
 
smi-'S FROM lill'. MIIXICAX CilLF AND Till-, tAKlHHi:A\ 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 Mobile at Blakely on Sunday afternoon, April 
 9, 1865, several hours after Lee had surrendered. 
 So that Lee's army really struck the penultimate 
 blow for the flag of the Confederacy. And when 
 the last futile hope had died, the poet-priest of 
 the South, Father Ryan, voiced the tragic de- 
 spair of the conquered people: 
 
 "Furl that banner, softly, slowly. 
 Treat it gently — it is holy — 
 For it droops above the dead. 
 Touch it not — unfold it never, 
 Let it droop there, furled forever, 
 For its people's hopes are dead." 
 
 Father Ryan was wrong, for hope is imperish- 
 able. The Confederate flag was indeed furled 
 forever, but another flag floats bravely above 
 the Confederate dead and Mobile has just hon- 
 oured one of her sons who died for it at Vera 
 Cruz in 1914. Esau Frohlichstein was the name 
 of the Mobile boy who followed the Stars and 
 Stripes into the Mexican town, and you may 
 see the tablet to his memory in Fearn Way. 
 
 As we approached Mobile from Pensacola 
 our train had skirted the river front, passing a 
 beautiful procession of large schooners from the 
 Mexican Gulf and the Caribbean Sea. They 
 rode at anchor in the centre of the yellow stream, 
 
 [267] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 their spars and masts rimmed magnificently with 
 the crisp winter sunlight. It seemed to us that 
 there were more sailing vessels than there were 
 steamers in the port, and it cheered us enor- 
 mously to think that the four-masted and five- 
 masted merchantman has not vanished entirely 
 from the high seas. The great ships carry lum- 
 ber and coal to small ports in the far South. 
 Long life to them and to their masters and to 
 their crews! We saluted them once more as 
 our train drew out of Mobile again, lifting our 
 hats figuratively to their beauty and registering 
 a vow to return to Mobile in the azalea season 
 when the city will have taken off her woollen 
 mufflers and put on muslin again. 
 
 We were not in New Orleans during the 
 Carnival week, and I am not altogether sorry. 
 When we were there, the Creole City had not 
 put on her cap and bells to romp with Comus, 
 Momus and Proteus. She had not hung in- 
 candescent bulbs about her beautiful neck or 
 swathed herself in flags and bunting. Where 
 most travellers see her rollicking behind a paper- 
 cambric mask and a shapeless domino, we saw 
 her in her least self-conscious and most gracious 
 mood. She was indifferent to our tourist curi- 
 osity, but tender when she found that we had 
 come to her as lovers. 
 
 [268] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 We had the vieux carre pretty much to our- 
 selves, and there, in the twisted, narrow old 
 streets we encountered the real New Orleans. 
 Modern New Orleans, who lives, officially, on 
 the other side of Canal Street in the American 
 quarter, insists that the real New Orleans is a 
 business woman pure and simple, a creature of 
 brains and ability, who wears starched shirt- 
 waists and flat-heeled shoes, and who would 
 rather pound a typewriter than play an old- 
 fashioned love song on the family piano. But 
 we knew better. We discovered, as all true 
 lovers of New Orleans do sooner or later, that 
 the delectable creature leads a double life. 
 
 The scandal troubles the dweller in New 
 Orleans; he tries to hide it from you. Heaven 
 knows why. Probably because he is convinced 
 that such an irregularity in the city's life, if it 
 were generally known, might injure her busi- 
 ness standing, he keeps it dark. For the dweller 
 in New Orleans is more interested in the city's 
 present and future prosperity than in the most 
 alluring and mendacious stories of her past. He 
 wants you to think of her as a business woman, 
 and he doesn't care a hang whether you are 
 2?sthetically upset by the ink-stains on her 
 lovely fingertips, or the soot on the end of her 
 delightful nose. He leads you at great length 
 
 [269] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 and with some ostentation through Canal Street 
 and points out the big department stores with 
 their smart window displays and their revolving 
 doors sucking in the tide of women shoppers as 
 whirlpools gobble jetsam. He shows you the 
 impressive Moving Picture theatres built to ac- 
 commodate opera-size audiences and serving 
 celluloid dramas to the accompaniment of 
 churchly organ music. 
 
 He takes you into the Grunewald Hotel and, 
 steering you with an expert and accustomed 
 hand through the mobs in the gilt and marble 
 lobby, dives with you into the Cave, an artificial 
 Paradise for those modern spirits who prefer to 
 eat in the dark, who really like the ukelele and 
 the big bass drum, and who enjoy that sort of 
 vaudeville which encroaches upon the dining- 
 room table. 
 
 To further impress you, if you are inclined to 
 doubt Miss New Orleans' up-to-dateness, he 
 dines with you in the scented magnificence of 
 the St. Charles or at Kolb's, a German restaurant 
 in St. Charles Street where Alt Heidelberg is 
 reconstructed to suit American taste and where 
 nickel-topped steins, china pipes, oak furniture, 
 beamed ceilings and Swiss waiters are calculated 
 to throw you into a German state of mind. If 
 this is a subtle propaganda, there was something 
 
 [270] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 wrong with the artificial atmosphere when we 
 were there, for the big, smoke-clouded dining- 
 room was full of Americans reading the latest 
 War Extras and taking the Times-Picayune's 
 incendiary editorials and fiery anti-Teutonism 
 together with their sauerkraut und bier. 
 
 And as for us, we ordered Frau Kolb's own 
 particular "fried chicken Southern style" and 
 ate it with relish while we discussed what 
 America would do to the Horrible Hun when 
 she finally woke from her lethargy and gath- 
 ered herself together. 
 
 Inside, an atmosphere redolent of the new 
 Germany, an American interpretation, by Ger- 
 mans, of the Hofbrauhaus; outside, war extras 
 still limp and wet from the press, selling like hot 
 cakes! The indescribably hoarse shouts of the 
 newsboys drifted in to us and made strange dis- 
 cords with the steady flow of German that 
 poured out of the swinging, eternally banging 
 kitchen doors! 
 
 When I had finished the delectable fried 
 chicken, a fried chicken worthy of the best 
 Southern culinary traditions, a fried chicken 
 worthy of a Creole mammy, I asked the Swiss 
 waiter whether Frau Kolb had prepared the 
 dish herself. I was told that her recipe had 
 passed from chef to chef of the establishment, 
 
 [271] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 but that Frau Kolb had retired from the activi- 
 ties of the restaurant kitchens. 
 
 The dweller in New Orleans, still fearful that 
 you may have discovered the scandal in New 
 Orleans' life and feeling that he must entertain 
 you before he can satisfy the desire of his heart 
 and tell you of his sweetheart's business ability, 
 proceeds to entertain you, as he does everything, 
 lavishly. For the dweller in New Orleans, more 
 than any man in the world except perhaps the 
 New Yorker, opens his pocket-book as well as his 
 heart to the stranger. In him the traditional 
 hospitality of the South is exaggerated tenfold; 
 he comes of a long ancestry of reckless, spend- 
 thrift, thoroughly generous and high-spirited 
 men who drank, loved, fought, prayed and died 
 with open-handed generosity. It is in his blood 
 to share his pleasures and to send the traveller 
 away with his pockets, his handbag, his trunk, 
 his hands and even the crown of his hat 
 crammed with gifts. 
 
 For what other purpose was the delectable 
 praline, that sugar-cane and pecan concoction 
 of surpassing delicacy and diabolical temptation, 
 invented save to ravish the soul of the visitor? 
 I was never able to pass a praline shop without 
 stopping to buy one of the big candies that look 
 so much like Spanish doubloons and taste like 
 
 [272] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 something one might buy in a candy store in 
 Paradise. They were packed for shipment in 
 ornamental boxes; by simply writing the ad- 
 dress of the "loved one up North" on the cover 
 and paying a dollar and a few odd cents, you can 
 start another advertisement of New Orleans on 
 its way. There is a flavour about the praline 
 amazingly suggestive of New Orleans itself; it 
 is a romantic taste, and I would be willing to 
 wager that thousands of tourists have been 
 drawn across the continent in pursuit of it, just 
 as in ante-bellum days one turned toward Vienna 
 for coffee 'n' rolls. I ate pralines in the street; 
 I nibbled them in the grateful shadows of the 
 Movie theatres; I tried to satiate myself with 
 the elusive deliciousness, but I could not have 
 succeeded, for the very memory of the adorable 
 confection brings tears to my eyes. 
 
 Nothing that the dweller in New Orleans had 
 to ofifer could match the peculiar charm of the 
 praline. And I think he resented our affection 
 for the frivolous candy as if it reflected in some 
 mysterious way upon the integrity, the ability, 
 the astounding business talent of his mistress. 
 
 "She is modern," he assured us, time and time 
 again, "absolutely modern. The old New 
 Orleans is dead. Of course," shrugging his 
 shoulders and spreading out his hands, "we re- 
 
 [273] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 gret the passing of so delightful a creature. But 
 you know, my dear friends, she was perverse; 
 she was dreadfully dangerous. She was untidy, 
 too, and never swept in the corners or washed 
 down the steps or polished the windows. When 
 the modern New Orleans came along, she had 
 to drive out the mosquitoes that infested the 
 gardens, carrying the yellow fever on their 
 poisoned wings; she had to rat-proof the houses 
 for fear of the bubonic plague. The old New 
 Orleans was a careless wench and altogether 
 too many people fell in love with her. She was 
 frivolous, she danced too much; she slept all day 
 and feasted all night. She died, and the modern 
 New Orleans — a splendid woman, a capable 
 woman! — set about recovering the improvident 
 creature's fortune." 
 
 "But," we wanted to know, "does any one ever 
 fall in love with this modern New Orleans? Do 
 people lose their heads, as they used to, at the 
 very sight of her?" 
 
 "Why, yes," answered the dweller in New 
 Orleans, looking slightly confused and dropping 
 his eyes, "business men, go-ahead young men 
 adore her. She is so supremely capable. I will 
 show you how she amuses herself. There are 
 no more tawdry gowns and seductive smiles, 
 sly flirtations and serenades, perfumed notes and 
 
 [274] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 stolen kisses. Modern New Orleans patterns 
 herself after New York and Chicago. She is 
 chic. You will see. . . ." 
 
 You go to the opera; it is not the traditional 
 audience you have dreamed of finding, nor is the 
 performance given in the old French Opera 
 House, Gallier's famous theatre "across Canal 
 Street" in the vieux carve, where Patti sang and 
 where the glorious traditions of French opera 
 were upheld for fifty years. It is, instead, Bos- 
 ton grand opera, an unworthy performance of 
 Mascagni's "Iris," which the dweller in New 
 Orleans offers you as a sop for those fascinating 
 days of French opera, when New Orleans wore 
 all of her jewels, bared her beautiful neck, stuck 
 a flower in her hair and dazzled the ardent 
 Creole beaux through the interminable operas 
 of another day. Meyerbeer, Auber, Rossini, 
 Donizetti, Ponchielli — can you hear the lilting 
 arias, the trills and cadenzas and tripping melo- 
 dies? Can you see the ballerine floating, like 
 povv'der puffs, across the stage? In those days 
 the music lovers packed the galleries as they do 
 in all Latin countries, and New Orleans got the 
 name of being music-mad and therefore musi- 
 cally intelligent, for one grows out of the other. 
 Strakosch and Canonge and Beauplan directed 
 in those golden days of New Orleans' musical 
 
 [275] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 past, and who knows now, since great voices are 
 as evanescent as dandelion puffs, how many 
 famous tenors and sopranos reached the climax 
 of their fame on the stage of the French Opera 
 House? 
 
 Modern New Orleans seems strangely content 
 to listen to music in a theatre unhallowed and 
 unseasoned by such precious memories, for the 
 old opera house in the vieux carre is deserted, a 
 ghost-ridden place peeling and faded like an 
 ancient ballerina, where the "glorious traditions" 
 are shut away with those embarrassing memories 
 of old New Orleans. 
 
 But you are not given time to drop a tear on 
 the grave of French opera. The dweller in New 
 Orleans hustles you into his motor and you rush 
 smoothly through the city along broad avenues 
 bordered with palms and oaks, crepe myrtle and 
 ligustrum, feathery bamboo and giant Louisiana 
 cane, past splendid modern homes set deeply in 
 gardens and girdled with wide lawns, past green 
 parks and monuments and impressive public 
 buildings, out of the city altogether to the white 
 shell road which borders the New Basin Canal. 
 Then the dweller in New Orleans tries to break 
 all speed records, for he loves speed as well as 
 ability, in getting you to West End. You shut 
 your eyes, pray hard for your guardian angel 
 
 [276] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 to clear the road and count a hundred. When 
 you get to ninety-nine you are in West End, a 
 brand-new resort which has been built over the 
 ruins of an older and possibly more likable resort 
 destroyed several years ago during one of the 
 violent Gulf storms. 
 
 West End is in a painful state of newness; 
 where there should be trees, a forest of ornamen- 
 tal street lamps springs from the neat patches 
 of clipped green sward. The dweller in New 
 Orleans tells you that the place is crowded in 
 summer and that the automobiles of breeze-seek- 
 ing New Orleans stand wheel to wheel along the 
 driveway; with eloquent gestures he describes 
 the Prismatic Fountain, a sort of Wagnerian 
 nightmare of coloured lights and thin, high- 
 tossed water jets and drifting clouds of spray. 
 But even such cheap attractions as this cannot 
 spoil the beauty of Pontchartrain, a beautiful 
 lake full of caprices and subject to fits of anger, 
 but ideal, in its calmer moods, for the small sail- 
 ing boat, the flower-laden and lumbersome 
 house-boat and the jaunty pleasure launch. It 
 perhaps feels a sense of its commercial impor- 
 tance, for a canal is being cut which will join 
 Pontchartrain to the Mississippi and make a 
 great industrial artery of the lake. Modern 
 New Orleans never overlooks an opportunity 
 
 [277] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 for trade expansion. For a long time she has 
 had her eye on a certain canal in Panama — 
 
 The dweller in New Orleans pulled himself 
 up short, for it is not his custom to mention 
 business when there are pleasures on hand; he 
 never wears a preoccupied frown when he is 
 playing host. He said nothing more of Panama 
 but turned his car out of West End and took 
 us to the Bungalow, a roadhouse on the way 
 back to New Orleans famous for the lyric tal- 
 ents of its chef d'orchestre. The genial black 
 can improvise, to an indescribable tune of his 
 own, couplets without end. He rhymes as easily 
 as you and I breathe. He grins, rocks, shows 
 his capacious gums and spins verses as a spider 
 spins a thread. He will take any theme you offer 
 him — war, politics or personalities — put it into 
 his extraordinary black brain and draw it out 
 again as poetry. 
 
 The dweller in New Orleans scribbled our 
 names and something about us on the back of 
 the menu card and smuggled the information 
 through several black palms crossed with silver 
 to the improvisateiir so that we were astounded 
 to hear ourselves immortalised in verse. It was 
 all perfectly good-natured and in good taste, al- 
 though I can see how one might precipitate some 
 
 [278] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 pretty scandals by giving the poet embarrassing 
 personalities for elaboration. 
 
 This sort of thing could not have gone on in 
 the New Orleans of the past, where any familiar- 
 ity set the young bloods off like firecrackers. It 
 used to be a ticklish business to jest with a Creole 
 about the cut of his nose or the colour of his 
 vest or the state of his heart. The practical 
 joker or the genial drunk usually found himself 
 paying for the follies of his wagging tongue 
 under the duelling oaks. Many young men set- 
 tled these little matters of honour with their 
 lives. One fire-eating member of Congress 
 fought eighteen duels in defence of his opinions, 
 and we wonder, in retrospect, whether they 
 could have been worth defending! They fought 
 for excitement, for sport, and for exercise, ap- 
 parently, for scarcely a morning passed that 
 there were not one or two meetings under the 
 duelling oaks, and it is an historical fact that 
 ten duels were fought there one Sunday morn- 
 ing between dawn and the breakfast hour! They 
 quarrelled over nothing at all and battled like 
 demons with sword and pistol in defence of 
 what seems to us a supersensitive honour. And 
 sometimes the result was tragic and ended in a 
 young life snuffed out and another young life 
 embittered, and sometimes it was ludicrous. 
 
 [279] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 Bernard Marigny, who was a famous wit, 
 wagged his barbed tongue once too often in the 
 presence of the exquisite Monsieur Tissier, the 
 Beau Brummel of New Orleans. For a long 
 time, the story goes. Monsieur Ti<;sier had en- 
 dured Marigny's exaggerated and probably of- 
 fensive greetings. ''Ah, Monsieur Tissier," 
 Marigny would exclaim whenever he encoun- 
 tered the fashionable young man, "what a beau 
 you are! How I admire you! How deeply, 
 how profoundly, how utterly I admire you!" 
 This sort of thing is hard to bear. Tissier lost 
 his temper finally and challenged the wit to a 
 duel. They met (probably at dawn when the 
 beau was not looking his best) under the famous 
 oaks in the City Park. Marigny faced his furi- 
 ous opponent seriously and said, in a tragic 
 voice, "What a delightful fellow you are! Must 
 I really deprive the world of the incomparable 
 Beau Tissier?" Tissier, to his everlasting credit, 
 burst into laughter and the duel was called off. 
 
 To-day the old duelling oaks afford a pleasant 
 circle of shade in the wide-spreading fields and 
 clipped lawns of a public park. What used to 
 be Louis Allard's plantation has become a mas- 
 terpiece of landscape gardening, an exquisite 
 realisation of a Watteau background. If Louis 
 Allard could leave his grave under the oaks and 
 
 [280] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 see the classic peristyle where his sugar cane 
 used to grow, he would not believe his eyes. 
 Poor AUard wrote verses and had so little busi- 
 ness sense in his poetic head that when he died 
 nothing belonged to him of his plantation save 
 the scant six feet of his grave. But that was 
 dearly beloved earth, and Louis Allard probably 
 lay down in it contentedly. His oaks are still 
 alive, inconceivably gnarled and wrapped in 
 moss. But where his neglected cotton and indigo 
 grew there are velvety golf links and smooth 
 polo fields; and where the sandy, deeply rutted, 
 ambling roads used to be, there are boulevards 
 bordered with palms and purring motors pursu- 
 ing each other in an endless game of tag. No, 
 Louis Allard, you had best not leave your little 
 grave under the oaks! It is your own, and there 
 is poetry in the dense branches overhead, a faint 
 fragrance of the old New Orleans, dreams of a 
 romantic and vanished past. . . . 
 
 There were pleasures I could not share. The 
 dweller in New Orleans introduced Allan to 
 gin fizzes as they are concocted at Ramos's and 
 to a certain cocktail at Sazerac's which almost 
 persuaded Allan to settle down in the Creole 
 City for life. 
 
 But all the while we were not permitted to 
 cross Canal Street; the dweller in New Orleans 
 
 [281] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 kept us away from the vieux carre, and we dined 
 at the St. Charles or in the Forest Grill at the 
 Grunewald in an atmosphere which might have 
 been bottled in New York or Chicago, labelled 
 Broadway or Michigan Avenue and shipped 
 to New Orleans for tourist consumption. It was 
 the height of the racing season and the big 
 Grunewald was crowded. All day long, and 
 apparently most of the night, the track habitues 
 filled the lobby. Getting from the front door 
 to the elevators was a blighting business. The 
 close-packed mob of men, most of them having 
 that acute forward curve of the eye which 
 George Randolph Chester attributes to a life- 
 long study of the "shell and bean trick," had to 
 be charged head down. The Grunewald was 
 already "booked up" for the Carnival season, 
 and prices had begun to soar in anticipation of 
 the week of gaiety which began, in 1917, on the 
 twentieth of February and continued in a mad 
 crescendo of pleasure until Fat Tuesday, Mardi 
 Gras of the Latins. 
 
 Carnival, or came vale, has lost its meaning 
 as an English word, for carnival is literally the 
 "farewell to flesh" before the sober denials of 
 Lent. The good-bye is a long one in New Or- 
 leans, the gay city putting ofif the inevitable dis- 
 cipline with six days of mad excitement — street 
 
 [282] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 parades, balls, masked frolics and public and 
 private entertainments of all sorts. And since 
 New Orleans has to care for as many as fifty 
 thousand visitors, it requires an ambassador's 
 diplomacy or an inflated pocket-book or both to 
 engage rooms at any of the hotels during Carni- 
 val. You are a lucky tourist indeed if at the 
 eleventh hour you are given a square inch and a 
 pillow — not that you will need the pillow at all 
 during Carnival week except for an early morn- 
 ing recuperation! They tell the story in New 
 Orleans of the hotel guest who sauntered up to 
 the desk at noon and, stifling a yawn, asked for 
 his mail. 
 
 "D. Jones," said he. 
 
 "Room number, please?" the harassed clerk 
 enquired. 
 
 "Bathroom Z," replied the cheerful reveller, 
 surrendering his key. 
 
 It takes more than a bed in a bathtub to de- 
 press the Carnival tourist. He enjoys himself. 
 And because New Orleans is first and last a 
 Latin city, she sees to it that he enjoys himself 
 in the New Orleans way. For Carnival in New 
 Orleans is the very spirit of gaiety, a grotesque 
 madness, a delightful joke — it is never, never an 
 affair of confetti and vulgarity. It takes the 
 true soul of fun to put on a mask and romp in 
 
 [283] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 public, and in New Orleans one sees that rare 
 social talent en masse, a whole population bent 
 on fun and getting it without once offending 
 good taste or self-control. There are not many 
 cities in the world where such a thing would be 
 possible. It would not be possible in New York 
 — if you have ever scratched, clawed and battled 
 your way through a New Year's Eve crowd on 
 Broadway you will know why. It was not pos- 
 sible in Munich even in those ante-strafing days 
 of Bavarian revelry. It would not be possible 
 in London. But in Vienna — Wien, the rogue! — 
 it always has been possible for there you find the 
 light touch, the inestimable gift of gaiety. In 
 Florence, in Rome, in all the hill towns of Italy 
 you may romp streetwards, if you choose, in a 
 domino, an incandescent nose and a musical 
 shirt-bosom, and meet nothing more offensive 
 than a tickling feather and a compliment. So 
 it is in New Orleans. 
 
 The fun begins with the parade of the knights 
 of Momus, one of the four leading Carnival 
 societies responsible for the decorated floats and 
 the elaborate street pageants that have meant 
 so much in the life of the city since 1827. Rex, 
 Comus and Proteus follow in lively procession. 
 Canal Street is a seething river of people. The 
 huge floats, like gilded and frosted sugar-cake 
 
 [284] 
 
VOr REMEMBER JIM BLUPSO, DOX'T VOL' .'' ILL SHOW 
 YOU HIS WORLD 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 nightmares, trundle in comic magnificence 
 through the crowds. There are monstrous 
 swans, bloated dragons, castles, suns, caverns, 
 giants. Angels with crepey hair balance on 
 swollen clouds blowing gilded trumpets; 
 bearded Neptunes brandish tridents, clowns 
 gambol and grin. There are toad-faced men 
 and dwarfs, gnomes, kings and queens in ermine 
 and rhinestones. It is amazingly gay and gro- 
 tesque; the people pack the streets all day; 
 crowds pour in from the neighbouring cities and 
 towns, the restaurants are busier than ever, and 
 there are Carnival balls every night where you 
 may dance until dawn and start another day 
 without having gone to your fabulously expen- 
 sive hall bedroom at all! 
 
 The dweller in New Orleans seemed to fear 
 that we would take the Carnival too seriously. 
 He deprecated the week's frivolity as if he were 
 apologising for some hereditary weakness. And 
 before we could discover why a serious business 
 woman should spend- a fortune on tinsel trap- 
 pings once a year, the dweller in New Orleans 
 :hanged the subject. He uttered the magic word 
 "Panama," which is a sort of industrial kismet 
 in the Crescent City, an Open Sesame to the in- 
 most heart of American New Orleans. 
 
 "I will show you," he said, "what we are do- 
 
 [285] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 ing to prepare ourselves for the trade that is 
 bound to come through the Panama Canal after 
 the war. Commerce must some day return to 
 its normal activity. When it does, New Orleans 
 will be ready for it. She owns most of her 
 water-front property; she is improving her rail- 
 way facilities; she is putting a short-cut through 
 to Lake Pontchartrain from the Mississippi; 
 she is going to be exceptionally nice to large 
 steamers from all over the world, so that if they 
 come once they will come again! What are you 
 going to do about it, you New Yorkers? Pres- 
 ently New Orleans will be written large on the 
 industrial map of the world; she will stand 
 shoulder to shoulder with Liverpool, Hamburg, 
 Rotterdam and London!" 
 
 The dweller in New Orleans, with a fanatic 
 gleam in his eyes, seized his hat and beckoned 
 to us. 
 
 "Come! I'll show you some wonderful 
 things. I'll show you the great Mississippi roll- 
 ing down to the Gulf between the high levees, 
 bringing grain from the Middle West and cot- 
 ton from the whole Mississippi Valley. I'll 
 show you where the famous river steamers, 
 loaded to their hurricane decks with bales of cot- 
 ton, used to wait six or eight deep at the wharves. 
 Fifty years ago they came into New Orleans one 
 
 [286] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 after the other, bursting their steam lungs to 
 make and to break speed records. They brought 
 rich planters from up the river, gamblers, slaves, 
 immigrants, rifif-rafif and rich gentry coming 
 down to New Orleans for a holiday. You re- 
 member Jim Bludso, don't you? I'll show you 
 his world — a vastly changed world since Jim 
 Bludso's day, for there aren't any tumble-down 
 wharves and jetties left, and the river steamers, 
 like old Jim himself, have disappeared — gone, 
 we hope, to some river Paradise of their own. 
 I'll show you miles of city-owned docks and a 
 cotton warehouse that covers a hundred acres, 
 where machinery does the work of slaves and 
 lifts, sorts, loads and unloads two million bales 
 of cotton a year. What would Bludso say to 
 that, eh? I'll show you grain elevators, banana 
 wharves and coffee wharves, ships loading and 
 ships unloading — you'll hear every language 
 under the sun — even German if you venture 
 near the interned ships. And if you don't say 
 that New Orleans is New York's most danger- 
 ous rival," he said, wagging his finger under 
 our astonished noses, "I'll eat my hat!" 
 
 We didn't want him to eat his hat, and we 
 knew his spirit well enough to be certain that if 
 we didn't indulge in superlatives he would eat 
 it crown, brim and all. So we followed him 
 
 [287] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 to the water-front and saw the resistless Missis- 
 sippi — (what a happy name it is! It rolls and 
 hisses like the yellow stream itself!) — caged be- 
 tween the levees and snarling at the city it has 
 inundated so many times. We spent hours in 
 the steel and concrete warehouses and gazed 
 lovingly at big ships lying like passive Prome- 
 theuses while the giant claws of snorting der- 
 ricks dived into their vitals. We were deafened 
 by the rattle and clamour of commerce. We 
 saw New Orleans, capable, canny New Orleans, 
 sitting in her comfortable front parlour waiting 
 for the ships that are bound to come up from 
 Panama after the war. Watch out. New York, 
 for your Creole rival! She may have ink- 
 stained fingers and soot-grimed cheeks, but she 
 is clever, she is capable, she is far-sighted 
 and — 
 
 "I know she leads a double life," I whispered 
 to Allan, as we came out into Canal Street 
 again. 
 
 "Who, for goodness' sake?" Allan demanded, 
 looking startled. 
 
 "New Orleans. I have heard that she is 
 French and dangerous and alluring. Let's run 
 away from the dweller in New Orleans and find 
 out for ourselves." 
 
 [288] 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 CREOLES, PRALINES AND A LITTLE HISTORY 
 
 O at Royal Street we excused ourselves 
 and ran like two children into the 
 vieux carre. For you know that 
 Canal Street divides New Orleans in 
 two, just as the Danube divides Buda from 
 Pesth, just as the Seine divides the Paris of to- 
 day from the Paris of Montmartre and yester- 
 day, just as the Thames divides London, and 
 the Arno Florence and the Tiber Rome. On 
 the right side of Canal Street as you face the 
 river lies the American city, bristling with 
 energy and ambition, noise and electric lights, 
 shops, Movie theatres, banks, tourist offices, sky- 
 scrapers and street cars; on the left is the old 
 city, the most completely foreign place in the 
 United States, where the width of the streets, 
 the paving stones, the architecture, the people, 
 and even human voices are utterly different and 
 alien and arresting and unforgettable. You 
 leave the tawdry crowd in Canal Street and 
 
 [289] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 plunge into a world of soft-spoken people; you 
 leave modern department stores and come upon 
 curiosity shops that would have delighted Ana- 
 tole France, dim and musty places filled with 
 the spoils of all that magnificence which centred 
 about the Place d'Armes. The windows are full 
 of odds and ends of bronze and china, crystal 
 and tarnished silver, and little trays, full of old- 
 fashioned jewelry — hoop earrings, monstrous 
 bracelets set with cameos, necklaces of Etruscan 
 gold, fat watches that must have ticked in the 
 pockets of embroidered waistcoats, signet rings 
 and seals. We stopped every now and then to 
 wander into the dim and dusty places, making 
 believe that we could aflford to buy some rare 
 bit of Sevres "only slightly cracked, as you see, 
 Madame," just for the pleasure of watching the 
 antiquarian take the piece in his hands, blow 
 ofif the accumulation of dust and whisper, in an 
 ingratiating voice, a price that would have stag- 
 gered a Morgan. I have a passion for long 
 earrings which Allan says is due to my ungrati- 
 fied longing to be a movie-vampire. I don't 
 look at all like a vampire — to tell the truth, 
 after making a hurried trip to the looking-glass, 
 I don't believe I can describe myself at all. And, 
 as far as T can remember, my friends have only 
 made two attempts to do it for me. Usually 
 
 [290] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 people approach me with a Samaritan gleam m 
 their eyes and prepare me for the worst by say- 
 ing in a soothing voice, "I am going to tell you 
 something for your own good, my dear," which 
 always prefaces something utterly nasty and 
 hard to bear. I brace myself and hear the truth. 
 But on two memorable occasions the formula 
 was varied. "I am going to tell you something 
 nice, my dear," was followed by the announce- 
 ment that Percy B. Shelley and I looked enough 
 alike to be twins, and that I was the dead, breath- 
 ing image, whatever that means, of George 
 Eliot! I struggled under the shame of it for 
 years, and might never have recovered my 
 self-respect at all if it had not been restored 
 to me by a shop-girl. This is how it hap- 
 pened. She had been staring at me with such 
 fixed attention that she had stopped chewing 
 gum. 
 
 "Good Lord," I thought, "does she think I 
 am Mark Twain?" 
 
 Apparently not. She nudged her neighbour 
 shop-girl and I heard her hoarse whisper, "Seen 
 her in the movies?" 
 
 "Naw," said the other, staring, too. "The 
 one with the earrings?" 
 
 "Yeh. Ain't you seen her in the movies?" 
 
 "Naw. Whatcher call her?" 
 [291] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 "Edith Storey," declared the blessed restorer 
 of my self-respect. "She's some swell little 
 emoter." 
 
 Edith Storey! I rose in my own esteem. I 
 hugged myself. I was born again. 
 
 But where were we? Trying on earrings in 
 a New Orleans curiosity shop in Royal Street — 
 the Rue Royal which can't be pronounced save 
 by a true Parisian, a cockney of the boulevards. 
 Try it and see! 
 
 I dangled a large cluster of golden and ame- 
 thyst grapes against my cheeks and peered into 
 a cracked mirror while Allan, with his chin 
 tucked into his collar and a capitalist's manner, 
 priced Napoleonic escritoires and Wedgewood 
 plates. I tried another pair made of coral, 
 fringed with Etruscan gold, and asked Allan, 
 as I turned my head this way and that, "D' you 
 like them at all?" 
 
 Allan tore himself away from the impassioned 
 salesman and examined me critically. "You 
 would need a Madame Bovary velvet gown with 
 a square train to wear earrings like that," he 
 decided. "And vou are too young to wear vel- 
 vet" 
 
 It was a triumph of diplomacy. I bought a 
 pair of light hoops very delicately made and 
 altogether sub-deb and frivolous. It saved us 
 
 [292] 
 
THIS IS riii: rkal xi.w oklkaxs 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 from an ignominous retreat at least, but I put 
 the Madame Bovary corals back in their tray 
 reluctantly with a sigh for the vanished picture 
 of myself in a velvet gown with a square 
 train. . . . 
 
 Out in Royal Street again we shouted aloud. 
 
 ''This is the real New Orleans! We are find- 
 ing her out. She has put aside her sailor hat 
 and her tailored suit and has slipped into a 
 ruffled dressing gown, an untidy dressing gown 
 a little too long in the back. She has put her 
 pretty bare feet into slippers and has clasped a 
 string of pearls around her neck. She is at home 
 again, in her shabby, dusty old house full of 
 beautiful things. She is lazy and sensuous and 
 mysterious and provoking. She hums little 
 Creole songs: // va partir et na pas vue mes 
 larmes or Pauvre piti' Mamsel Zizi. She may, 
 oh, she may ask us to supper. . . ." 
 
 And of course she did. She explained, not 
 apologetically, but sadly, that her most famous 
 chefs were dead. Boudro, Moreau, Antoine 
 Alciatore pere, the elder Madame Eegue, fa- 
 mous cooks of another generation, could not be 
 there to serve us. But we could still have an 
 amazing breakfast at Begue's if we should stop 
 there any morning at eleven o'clock. Galatoire's 
 was excellent. Or we could go to Antoine's in 
 
 [293] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 St. Louis Street or to the Louisiane in Iberville 
 Street. Alciatore pere bequeathed his secrets 
 to his two sons, Jules and Fernand; one is in 
 charge of Antoine's, the other of the Louisiane, 
 and it is a toss-up which of the two is the best 
 restaurant. The Louisiane has been garnished 
 and brightened recently, and both of the old 
 cafes have done away with the characteristic 
 sanded floors of the past. Of the two places, 
 Antoine's is the simpler and Jules presides in 
 the kitchen. The Louisiane has surrendered to 
 the dancing onslaught, and an excited little 
 waiter proudly showed us a large room with a 
 polished floor which has been set aside for those 
 fox-trotters and one-steppers who have so little 
 reverence of the masterpieces of Alciatore fils 
 that they will dance between mouthfuls. 
 
 It was at the Louisiane that we met the lover 
 of New Orleans. He was sitting at a table not 
 far from us, hidden behind a copy of Le Rire 
 three months old, just as we had left him five 
 years before in Paris. We had parted from him 
 then, after a month spent pleasantly together in 
 exploring the ''other bank of the Seine," at a 
 little restaurant in the Rue des Saints Peres 
 where we had stopped to drink to our next meet- 
 ing. 
 
 "You must come to New Orleans some day," 
 [294] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 he had said. "I expect to go back there next 
 year or the year after. You will like it." 
 
 We had promised and had left him, little 
 thinking that the mysterious threads of our com- 
 plex destinies were to draw us back to America 
 and southward to New Orleans and into the 
 Louisiane; little thinking that our friend's des- 
 tiny would lie towards the Marne and that it 
 would lead him into battle for France and up to 
 the gates of death and then mysteriously back 
 again into delectable life. . . . 
 
 He heard our voices and lowered Le Rire to 
 stare at us. And it was as if five years had 
 evaporated into thin air with all their anxieties 
 and anguish, pleasures and loves, and we were 
 back at the start again — three young pairs of 
 eyes looking at an untarnished and romantic 
 world. 
 
 "So you have come to New Orleans after all," 
 he said. 
 
 And then there was bedlam! The Louisiane, 
 from Fernand to Fernand fils, from the cashier 
 to the oldest waiter, joined in the reunion. 
 
 "I've come to sit at the knees of my first god- 
 dess," he told us. "I can't fight for her because 
 there is a piece of German shrapnel waltzing 
 around my anatomy and blighting my locomo- 
 tive powers — but I can love her. Paris has my 
 
 [295] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 soul, but New Orleans has my heart. I am a 
 good Creole." 
 
 We toasted his sweetheart in absinthe, a little 
 pale green drink flavoured delicately with par- 
 egoric, so insidious that where you should take 
 one you take two — and so on. We went all the 
 way to the old Absinthe House over on Bour- 
 bon Street, so that we might pledge on historic 
 pledging ground. But v/hen we knocked at the 
 door a very polite and positive fellow in a tweed 
 cap opened it an inch or two and whispered, 
 "Very pleased to serve the two gentlemen. But 
 I can't serve the lady. The lid is on." And 
 then shut the door in our faces. 
 
 So we had to turn away from the famous old 
 place, where at one time I could have toasted 
 New Orleans in a true Parisian mixture of Me- 
 lissa and Fennel, Anise and Hyssop, the absinthe 
 frappee of delectable memory. We went back 
 to the Louisiane and pledged our hostess in 
 Spanish absinthe before the first course of our 
 supper was served. 
 
 I don't know whether Allan and the lover of 
 New Orleans noticed it, but absinthe is not my 
 habitual beverage and I sank back almost at 
 once into an abyss of strange mental mists where 
 I was acutely conscious of the dining-room, the 
 smiling and paternal waiter, the chattering din- 
 
 [296] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 ers and, before me, a plate of baked oysters — 
 acutely conscious and at the same time irrepara- 
 bly divided, set aside like a lost soul behind a 
 transparent and imprisoning veil. It was an 
 atrocious nightmare. But I must have acquitted 
 myself well, for Allan asked me if I would like 
 another absinthe. Another! I rose slowly out 
 of the numbing languor to shake my head, and 
 then sank again like a pebble falling to the bot- 
 tom of a deep pool. 
 
 The appalling thing passed as quickly as it 
 had come; the veil was whisked away and I 
 heard the rattle of dishes and the clamour of 
 voices distinctly again. I pushed the little glass 
 of pale green froth across the table with a shud- 
 der and speared one of the divine oysters. An- 
 other? Rather not! 
 
 Day after day we dined at the Louisiane or 
 at Antoine's, so that with our devotion we won 
 smiles from the Alciatore family, from Jules 
 and Fernand and his son and from old Madame 
 Alciatore, who was the wife of Antoine pere and 
 who still sits enthroned behind the caisse and 
 makes change nimbly and unceasingly. I should 
 like to tell you of all the delicious things we 
 had to eat, for the dishes of the two Alciatore 
 brothers deserve the praise one would give a 
 work of art. 1 remember the gumbo a la Creole, 
 
 [297] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 of course, for that is first and last a New Orleans 
 delicacy; I remember the bouillabaisse, the hot 
 breads, the bisque of crayfish a la Cardinal, and 
 pompano en Papillote; I remember oysters dis- 
 guised and oysters glorified, and tomatoes puree 
 that would have melted in the mouth of a snow 
 man, and salads that might have been sent on a 
 magic carpet from Paoli's in Florence, duck 
 pressed a la Tour d' Argent, brulot and adorable 
 little pastries meant only for gods and goddesses, 
 not for hungry mortals. 
 
 The secret of it all? Who knows! What is 
 the secret behind a Tintoretto or a beautiful 
 gown or a Strauss song? A little pepper, a little 
 skill and much art. When the famous Cafe 
 Brulot Diabolique is served at Antoine's, the 
 lights are lowered in the restaurant. The serv- 
 ing of such a coffee becomes, appropriately, a 
 rite, and it is a solemn moment when the silver 
 bowls, ablaze with burning cognac, make their 
 appearance in the crowded cafe. Strangely, 
 since we claim to love freedom, it is ceremony 
 and not license which appeals most strongly to 
 our heart of hearts! 
 
 From the moment of our first discovery, the 
 vieux carre claimed us every day. The sixty 
 squares of the original city still enclose all that 
 is most appealing of romantic New Orleans. 
 
 [298] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 Few changes have been made in It, and it speaks 
 well for the taste and veneration of modern New 
 Orleans that the characteristic balconied houses 
 built of adobe and stuccoed brick have not been 
 interfered with. The city which rose out of 
 the destructive fire of 1794 looks very much as 
 it did over a hundred years ago. The doors are 
 flush with the street and the houses are built in 
 the Spanish fashion to enclose an inner court. 
 The tinted and peeling walls are so varied in 
 surface and colour that one is led from corner 
 to corner in pursuit of the picturesque, now at- 
 tracted by the high-piled iron balconies or the 
 dormer windows or the quaint chimney pots 
 of some delightful old house, now lured by a 
 glimpse of weed-grown gardens. It is quite 
 true that the quarter has been given over in part 
 to Italians from the bassa Italia and to negroes. 
 But a few Creoles still cling to their city; I 
 have heard their soft voices and ingratiating 
 patois everywhere in the streets. 
 
 What the racial status of the Creole really is 
 has been misunderstood, if not generally, at least 
 by a great enough number of people to warrant 
 an explanation of the matter here. A Creole is 
 a person of mixed Spanish and French blood, 
 a native of New Orleans, and not, as is occa- 
 sionally supposed, a French or a Spanish mu- 
 
 [299] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 latto. The octoroons and quadroons, who played 
 such a sinister part in the story of the city, have 
 been confused, perhaps not unnaturally, with 
 the Creoles. The social distinction between the 
 two was not only desirable but necessary. To- 
 wards the end of the eighteenth century, when 
 New Orleans had begun to recover from the 
 effects of an unstable and adventurous history, 
 the idle, spendthrift, profligate young men of 
 the town dangled at the heels of the pretty yel- 
 low women who came from Jamaica, Santa 
 Domingo and the French West Indies. These 
 women were often amazingly beautiful; there 
 was just enough white blood in their veins to 
 make them conspicuously unlike negresses, and 
 they were a danger to the social life of New 
 Orleans. They dressed in the height of fashion, 
 established themselves luxuriously and flaunted 
 their mulatto loveliness under the outraged 
 noses of the Creole matrons. 
 
 There are terrible stories of the wild, utterly 
 abandoned orgies that took place during the 
 famous quadroon balls of the period. The ball- 
 room was in a building in Orleans Street near 
 the little gardens of St. Anthony's Close, and it 
 is said that white men fought duels in the Close 
 over the yellow sirens. An order of coloured 
 nuns has turned the dance-hall into a convent, 
 
 [300] 
 
STUCCOED HRICK WALLS, ARCADES AND COOL INNER 
 
 COURTS 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 but no number of litanies and candles, tears and 
 prayers can make the place anything but tragi- 
 cally suggestive of that unmoral and degenerate 
 society. The alluring quadroons might have 
 disrupted the social life of New Orleans if the 
 law had not finally forced all women of negro 
 blood to wear the tignon, the distinguishing ban- 
 dana headdress which branded the wearer as 
 conspicuously and perhaps as tragically as Hes- 
 ter Pryne's scarlet letter. 
 
 But if you would know more about the quad- 
 roons, read Cable's "Old Creole Days." Ma- 
 dame John's house is in Dumaine Street — a two- 
 story house 'deeply balconied, as forlorn and 
 dilapidated as a house can be; the shutters are 
 closed, the pillars of the balcony lean drunkenly, 
 the whole place totters as if a slight push would 
 send it crashing down. 
 
 Cable is not the only "literary memory" of 
 New Orleans. Alcee Fortier and Gayarre, in 
 their histories of Louisiana, told the exciting 
 story of the Crescent City as well as it could be 
 told, although there is a more recent book by 
 Miss Grace King, "New Orleans, the Place and 
 the People," that reads like a novel and has the 
 double advantage of being perfectly true. Laf- 
 cadio Hearn, the myopic Greek-Oriental-Irish- 
 Amerlcan, who saw life and people and things 
 
 [301] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 dimly and vested them with his own amazing 
 imagination, lived a part of his life in New 
 Orleans. He knew every street and courtyard 
 in the vieux carre, and he collected some of the 
 most amusing of the Creole proverbs and called 
 the little book "Gombo Zebes." His best story, 
 "Chita," was written about the wild country at 
 the mouth of the Mississippi and the hurricane 
 that destroyed Last Island in 1856. ''Chita," 
 like Conrad's "Typhoon," is a hair-raising pic- 
 ture of nature on the rampage, nature let loose 
 and furious, implacable, terrifying and unen- 
 durable. After reading it I had no desire to 
 go to Grand Isle, the pirate La Fitte's stamping 
 ground. Byron chose that adorable buccaneer 
 for the hero of his "Corsair," and I ought to 
 have been willing to pursue such literary treas- 
 ure to the ends of the earth. But when we were 
 in New Orleans the weather was erratic; it was 
 alternately as cold as Burlington, Vermont, and 
 as hot as Bay Head, New Jersey. And since 
 Grand Isle is occasionally blown to ribbons in 
 the teeth of the devouring hurricanes that sweep 
 across the Gulf, I fought shy of going there. 
 
 La Fitte was a magnificent fellow, a pirate 
 with the "grand manner" and surely no worse a 
 villain than the submarine commanders of to- 
 day. He called himself a privateer, and if he 
 
 [302] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 attacked and robbed English merchantmen he 
 explained that he was privileged, as a bearer of 
 letters of marque from the Republic of Cartha- 
 gena, to plunder enemy ships. This has a fa- 
 miliar sound to our modern ears, accustomed to 
 the excuses and self-justifications of U-boat 
 pirates! 
 
 The legend of La Fitte has taken on romance 
 with time, and New Orleans is rather proud of 
 him to-day. They show you the site of his little 
 blacksmith shop at the corner of Chartres and 
 St. Philip Streets, where he is supposed to have 
 wrought a great many of the beautiful iron 
 railings and balustrades in the old city before 
 he "hit the trail" to piracy and fame. Like so 
 many of those historical criminals whom we 
 have learned to admire by simply sitting cosily 
 in our library and shuddering at their fearless- 
 ness. La Fitte had his own sense of honour. The 
 British had so great a respect for his ability that 
 when they were getting ready to attack New 
 Orleans in 1814, they tried to win La Fitte over 
 to their side. Whereupon the bold freebooter 
 rushed back to New Orleans and offered his 
 sword to General Andrew Jackson in the cam- 
 paign against the British! This act of patriot- 
 ism greatly endeared the pirate to New Orleans, 
 and if he had stayed in the city until death gave 
 
 [303] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 him his reward, he would have had it without 
 any doubt. But he sailed away to a mysterious 
 fate, and the thwarted Creoles erected a monu- 
 ment in the St. Louis Cemetery to his lieutenant, 
 Dominique You, calling him, of all things, the 
 new Bayard — sans peur et sans reproche! 
 
 Eugene Field and Thomas Bailey Aldrich 
 have given their genius to the celebration of 
 the Creole charm, and France, too, contributed 
 to the literature that has grown out of the settle- 
 ment of Louisiana. The Abbe Prevost's "Ma- 
 non Lescaut," the first French novel, is a story 
 of the filles a la cassette, the "casket girls" who 
 were sent over from France to those wifeless 
 settlers who were "running in the woods after 
 the Indian girls" and were in need of wives. 
 Iberville had come from Canada, following in 
 La Salle's footsteps in 1699, and had seen what 
 any far-sighted man was bound to have seen, 
 that a city at the mouth of the Mississippi would 
 be also at the mouth of the whole continent. 
 Iberville died ignominiously of a yellow fever 
 and left the task of establishing New Orleans 
 to his brother, Bienville. And Bienville, send- 
 ing engineers and workmen to lay out the city, 
 actually built the vieux carre, not as we know it 
 to-day, but a mere scattering of wooden huts, 
 
 [304] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 a camp in the wilderness of swamps, bayous and 
 forest. 
 
 A parade-ground was set aside and destiny 
 made it the Place d'Armes, Jackson Square of 
 to-day, the "down stage" of the whole drama 
 of New Orleans. Bienville had a pretty task 
 before him. The river overflowed its banks, 
 there were epidemics and hardships and dis- 
 couragements without end. And to add to the 
 poor man's anxieties, the lonely settlers clam- 
 oured for wives. An appeal for wives was sent 
 to France, and the authorities at home, scurry- 
 ing about in mad haste to meet the demands of 
 the important new colony in Louisiana, scoured 
 the houses of correction, the hospitals, the pris- 
 ons and the streets for the much-desired wives, 
 and sent them to the wilderness of New France. 
 Poor Manon Lescaut was one of the pathetic 
 brides, and although there is no record in New 
 Orleans to prove that the Abbe Prevost founded 
 his fiction on fact, it is at least certain that the 
 Chevalier des Grieux is buried there, for you 
 may see his grave, if you are curious enough 
 about such things, to-day. 
 
 The first shipments of wives were apparently 
 not acceptable to the better class of men among 
 the colonists, for the Cassette girls, dowered by 
 the king of France with a little cassette of linen 
 
 [305] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 and fine raiment, were sent later to the Ursuline 
 nuns to be chaperoned and then married with a 
 not too indecent haste. The Ursulines must have 
 had their hands full if all the girls were as pretty 
 as Manon and all the colonists as ardent as the 
 Chevalier des Grieux! 
 
 After that, the lively history of the place was 
 varied by the coming and going of this governor 
 and that governor, the building of forts and the 
 expulsion of the Jesuit priests, who had estab- 
 lished themselves in the town. And in 1762 
 France, with a sudden cessation of interest in 
 her colony, ceded Louisiana to Spain. When 
 one considers that Louisiana began at the Mis- 
 sissippi and ended, more or less indefinitely, at 
 the Rocky Mountains, France seems to have 
 been even recklessly generous! The Creoles 
 very naturally resented the transfer and sent up 
 a howl of protest. But Louis XV had wires 
 of his own to pull. He said nothing, silence be- 
 ing the better part of discretion, and a Spanish 
 governor, Ulloa, arrived at New Orleans. It 
 took five years for the resentment of the Creoles 
 to reach the boiling point; then they ousted 
 Ulloa and might have joined the British-Amer- 
 ican colonies of the North if the fiery Don Ales- 
 sandro O'Reilly, with three thousand troops, 
 fifty pieces of artillery and twenty-four ships, 
 
 [306] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 had not arrived to discipline the unruly colo- 
 nists. He began his tirade by shooting six of 
 the most rebellious spirits and imprisoning six 
 more in the unsavoury dungeons of Morro Cas- 
 tle. He believed in thoroughness, this Spanish- 
 Irish Don Alessandro O'Reilly! 
 
 During the Spanish possession the crude, ill- 
 paved and badly drained town planned by Bien- 
 ville was destroyed by fire. The vieux carre of 
 to-day is the Spanish town which rose from the 
 ashes of the old French settlement, so that we 
 owe the adobe and stuccoed brick walls, the 
 arcades and cool inner courts, the iron balconies 
 and tiled roofs to Spanish and not to French in- 
 fluence. 
 
 We should be particularly grateful to one 
 public-spirited Spaniard, Don Almonaster y 
 Roxas, who built the St. Louis Cathedral and 
 the splendid old Hall of the Cabildo facing the 
 wide, open space which was then known as the 
 Place d'Armes and has been renamed Jackson 
 Square to suit the American tongues of the pres- 
 ent generation. 
 
 The Cabildo houses an interesting collection 
 of Indian relics and colonial antiques. In the 
 Sala Capitular on the second floor, Louisiana 
 was ceded from Spain to France and from 
 France to the United States. But I scarcely 
 
 [3071 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 paused on the stairway to glance at the portrait 
 of La Salle in a curled wig and armour, or to 
 look at the paintings of Bienville and Iberville, 
 fathers of the delectable New Orleans. I hur- 
 ried past them because I knew that the Antom- 
 marchi death-mask of Napoleon was upstairs in 
 one of the salons facing the Place d'Armes. 
 Allan followed, helping the lover of New Or- 
 leans to negotiate the stairs as nimbly as the 
 piece of German shrapnel allowed. And when 
 we were all three bending over the glass case 
 where the mask is displayed, we gasped, for we 
 might have been looking at the quiet face of 
 the Little Corporal himself. 
 
 "How like," the lover of New Orleans said in 
 a gentle voice, "how amazingly like him!" And 
 then smiled at his own assumption of familiarity. 
 
 The head lies against a dark background of 
 velvet or some soft stuff, and it is startlingly 
 lifelike, almost palpitant in its extraordinary 
 reality. It seemed to us the face of a young man. 
 The cheek bones are broad, the chin powerful, 
 thrust forward and deeply dented. The mouth 
 is open, the lips drawn back from the teeth in 
 a half smile, a shadowy, indistinct, fleeting smile 
 touched with irony and with tenderness. The 
 eyes are full-lidded and deeply sunk, either from 
 pain or weariness or in the strange metamorpho- 
 
 [308] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 sis of death. The nose is magnificent. It is an 
 heroic nose, a nasal extremity worthy of an epic 
 poem; it springs grandly from the forehead, the 
 nostrils are clean-cut and spirited; the whole 
 structure, like noble architecture, inspires awe 
 and admiration. We prostrated ourselves before 
 Dr. Antommarchi's record of that superb olfac- 
 tory organ, Allan comparing it to Emma Eames', 
 the lover of New Orleans ranking it with .No- 
 velli's, and I claiming for it a place in the sun 
 with Scotti's incomparable nose. 
 
 If Nicholas Girod, mayor of New Orleans, 
 had had his way. New Orleans might have pos- 
 sessed the body, as well as the death-mask of 
 the Emperor. Girod was an ardent Napoleon- 
 ist and a bitter enemy of England. With Cap- 
 tain Bossiere and a few other sympathisers, he 
 actually attempted to cheat the English, St. 
 Helena and death. Girod built a house at the 
 corner of St. Louis and Chartres Streets and 
 furnished it for Napoleon's use. Bossiere 
 equipped a fast clipper, the Seraphine, for the 
 voyage of rescue to St. Helena. The crew was 
 engaged, Bossiere was in possession of maps and 
 plans of the harbour and coast defences of the 
 prison-island, and the magnificent adventure 
 might have been put through to a glorious finish 
 if death had not snatched away the prize. The 
 
 [309] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 news of Napoleon's passing reached New Or- 
 leans three days before the Seraphine and the 
 adventurous Bossiere were ready to sail. Bos- 
 siere, of course, was broken-hearted; he had 
 dreamed so long of freeing his idol from a de- 
 testable bondage and bringing him across the 
 ocean in the Seraphine to an expectant and de- 
 voted New Orleans, to freedom, to the simple 
 luxury of Nicholas Girod's gift-house, and to 
 peace among friends! If Napoleon had reached 
 America, it is not at all improbable that New 
 Orleans, and not Paris, would have claimed his 
 body and the right to build his tomb. He would 
 have been on French soil, after all! 
 
 We left the Cabildo and went out into Jack- 
 son Square to wander up and down the sunny 
 paths between the neat plots of grass and flow- 
 ers laid out by the Baroness Pontalba, daughter 
 of that public-spirited Andalusian, Don Almo- 
 naster y Roxas, who was fired by the paternal 
 longing to beautify New Orleans. For she built 
 the double row of houses flanking the square, 
 and with a likable and pardonable pride, had 
 her initials, A. P., interwoven into the intricate 
 patterns of the beautiful iron balconies. The 
 buildings have fallen into decay, and where they 
 are occupied at all, the tenants seem to rejoice 
 in hanging their wash on the balconies to dry. 
 
 [310] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 The fastidious Baroness, if she were to return 
 to New Orleans to-day, would not recognise the 
 Pontalba estate. Jackson Square was the heart 
 of the old city; but modern New Orleans wears 
 her heart on her sleeve over in Canal Street, and 
 the drowsy little square was deserted except for 
 a few derelicts who had set up light-housekeep- 
 ing on the public benches. 
 
 We went over to the French Market, hoping 
 to capture a little of the local colour that every 
 other traveller has encountered among the vege- 
 table and fruit stalls of the old Halle de Bou- 
 cheries. But the Creole has abandoned the 
 market to the Italian small grocer. Natives of 
 Reggio, Calabria and the Abruzzi answered my 
 feeble French questions with blank stares or 
 torrents of absolutely unintelligible Calabrese. 
 One black-eyed son of Italy posed for my cam- 
 era, holding a roach delicately between thumb 
 and forefinger. It was the biggest roach I have 
 ever seen, and I am thinking of sending the pho- 
 tograph to the lover of New Orleans to prove 
 that although his city is rat-proof, and mosquito- 
 proof, it is not by any means roach-proof. 
 
 Allan refused to take any interest in cabinet 
 photographs of French Market roaches. He 
 established himself on a barrel of apples and 
 made colour-sketches of the long, pillared mar- 
 
 [311] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 ket, the stands of fruits and vegetables, the 
 sunny, cobbled streets beyond. His audience, ex- 
 pecting to see lifelike portraits of silver-skinned 
 onions, smiting radishes, emerald-green cab- 
 bages, golden oranges and yellow beans, hung 
 over his shoulder and marvelled, and was 
 vaguely disappointed, at cub'stic swirls and 
 whirligigs of colour. If you are going to paint 
 in public, and want to be popular with the mob, 
 you should try to keep Picasso out of your work. 
 
 ''That," said one long-moustached fruit ven- 
 dor, he of the roach, looking over Allan's 
 shoulder with a critical air and pointing with 
 his little finger at a daub of red, "is the Signora 
 Romano of the vegetable stand. I recognise her 
 shawl. It is," he added, winking at me, "a 
 speaking likeness." 
 
 "You are mistaken," a little fellow who was 
 standing on tiptoe interrupted. "The red spot 
 is the wheel of the carriage that stands outside 
 in the street. I see the spokes, and the left ear 
 of the horse just beyond." 
 
 There was a shout of laughter and Allan 
 closed his pochade box with a snap. "I'll show 
 you," he said, looking fierce and knitting his 
 brows, "that I can draw a picture of your Sig- 
 nora Romano and your red cart and your lop- 
 eared horse that the great-grandmother of all 
 
 [312] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 three will recognise and venerate. Tell Signora 
 Romano to sit where she is and not to move on 
 the pain of death. And some one see that the 
 horse and cart stays put." 
 
 Thereupon he filled his mouth with pencils, 
 and while the fruit vendor shouted to the 
 Signora Romano to hold fast and not to wink 
 an eye for ten minutes, the insulted artist turned 
 out an Art Students' League chromo that created 
 a sensation in the French Market. He drew 
 every buckle on the lop-eared horse's harness, 
 he reproduced the pattern on Signora Romano's 
 red shawl, he painted the portrait of every scar- 
 let-cheeked apple and crusty potato and feather- 
 topped celery head that came between him and 
 his line of vision. A chorus of "Ohs" and "Ahs," 
 ecstatic and appreciative, rose from the Market 
 as the awful masterpiece progressed. 
 
 "It is the Signora's nose, her very mouth, her 
 eyes " 
 
 And then a shout to the rigid and blushing 
 Signora, ''Don't move! The gentleman is re- 
 producing the mole on your cheek!" 
 
 The Signora, stiffening, gave herself to im- 
 mortality. 
 
 When it was finished, Allan plucked the pen- 
 cils out of his mouth and presented the work of 
 art to the Market. He accepted his triumph 
 
 [313] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 in a moody silence and muttered, as soon as we 
 were beyond earshot, ''Shades of Cellini and 
 Giotto! The Italians of to-day have drifted into 
 an artistic backwater. What a fool I was not 
 to make them swallow what is good for them!" 
 
 But the lover of New Orleans and I shouted 
 with laughter all the way back to Jackson 
 Square, although Allan's depression lasted still 
 further and couldn't be done away with until the 
 paternal waiter at the Louisiane had restored 
 both self-respect and good humour by serving 
 three "Smiles," cocktails calculated to warm the 
 heart of the most misunderstood artist in the 
 world. 
 
 "I am sorry," the lover of New Orleans said, 
 as we came out into the street again, vastly 
 cheered, "that you have heard so much Italian 
 and so little French spoken in the vieux carre. 
 Creole French is full of an ingratiating softness. 
 Like the English of New England and the 
 French of Canada, it has remained practically 
 unchanged, except for the inevitable colloquial- 
 isms, since the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
 turies; it is strangely aflfected, too, by the dialect 
 of the Creole negroes, whose speech is a mad 
 jumble of African and French, and is unintel- 
 ligible except to the initiated. The Creole negro 
 is a strange concoction; he may be a 'modern 
 
 [314] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 nigger' as far as the eye can penetrate him, but 
 in his soul of souls he is still a prey to terrifying 
 superstitions. Voudouism may have been put 
 under the ban of the police, but it is still exist- 
 ent. To stamp out witchcraft of that sort would 
 mean stamping out the ignorance of the negro 
 soul. I have seen some of their rites ; they chant, 
 they eat loathsome brews, they dance themselves 
 into a cataleptic state. If you have seen Ridgely 
 Torrance's 'Granny Maumee' you know how 
 dangerous such frenzies of hate and terror can 
 be. Beauregard Square used to be the place 
 where the negroes gathered to go through their 
 detestable orgies. It was called Congo Square 
 in the old days, for the Voudou rites and dances 
 were brought by the first slaves from Africa." 
 We thought that the grisly past of Congo 
 Square made going there a futile pilgrimage 
 unless we could see a Voudou seance ourselves. 
 But the lover of New Orleans assured us that 
 the lid had not only been clamped down on 
 absinthe, or for that matter on any sort of a 
 drink on Sunday, but on the faintest suspicion 
 of Congo orgies. A negro, to keep strictly 
 within the law, must boil his toads and snakes in 
 the privacy of his own home, and he may not 
 build sacrificial fires or brew poisons or "throw 
 a hoodoo" unless he does it behind closed doors. 
 
 [315] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 So long as the sensitive police do not see the 
 affair, it may go on. But woe betide the Vou- 
 dou Queen who cavorts in public! 
 
 The lover of New Orleans, seeing that we 
 were in a state of mind for horrors, piloted us 
 down Bourbon Street to see the Haunted House, 
 where a certain Madame Lalaurie, a society 
 woman of charm and influence, amused herself 
 in her moments of leisure by torturing her slaves. 
 She tied them to the walls with heavy iron 
 chains, she flogged them and bruised and starved 
 them. Afterwards, with a tender smile and an 
 air of great sweetness, she descended to her 
 beautiful drawing-room and entertained the 
 elite of New Orleans society. And the pretty 
 sport might have gone on indefinitely if one of 
 the slaves had not set fire to the straw pallet of 
 her miserable bed and brought the fire depart- 
 ment and the light of publicity to the scandal. 
 Madame Lalaurie escaped, fortunately for her 
 own good, since a mob had gathered to burn, pil- 
 lage and lay waste her home and to tear the 
 gentle Lalaurie herself into ribbons. She some- 
 how got to France and disgraced charity by 
 becoming charitable, and died, we hope, in 
 despair. 
 
 We might have stayed in the vieux carre for- 
 ever, pursuing such stories, and many roguish 
 
 [316] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 and pleasant ones, from street to street and from 
 house to house. But we had engaged passage 
 to New York on a certain steamer called the 
 Concho sailing from Galveston in a day or so. 
 We had to go on. And that is the penalty of 
 being a tourist. The tickets were in the leather 
 pocket-book in Allan's vest pocket; the Concho 
 apparently held to a rigid schedule and couldn't 
 be bribed to wait over until we had exhausted 
 the fascinations of those sixty squares of Creole 
 town. 
 
 We walked for the last time through the nar- 
 row streets, and heard the real New Orleans 
 singing little love songs behind her open win- 
 dows, saw her flirting lazily in her courtyards, 
 dined with her for the last time at Antoine's and 
 then fell into a taxi-cab, reeled across the city 
 on two wheels and caught the El Paso express 
 by the fraction of a second. 
 
 [317] 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 GALVESTON, THE OPTIMIST 
 
 FTER the train left New Orleans it 
 ambled in a leisurely way along the 
 banks of the river as if it were look- 
 ing for a good place to wade across. 
 The long search piqued our curiosity for we 
 knew that the most courageous trestle in the 
 world could scarcely straddle the rushing Mis- 
 sissippi. While most of the passengers stowed 
 themselves away behind the swaying green cur- 
 tains of their berths, we preferred to stay awake 
 and to see the manner of our crossing. 
 
 If La Salle and Iberville and Bienville could 
 have witnessed the miracle of an express train 
 being ferried across the mighty river that 
 whirled their fragile craft towards the Gulf like 
 jetsam, they would have known that man was 
 destined to conquer the Mississippi, to hold it 
 in leash and to make it do his bidding. We 
 Stopped at a small station at the water's edge and, 
 with nothing more startling than a slight jerk 
 and a bump, the long train was divided into sec- 
 
 [318] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 tions and put aboard a barge. The d'rowsy 
 passengers did not even bother to look out of 
 the windows, but Allan and I, unused to such 
 spectacles, left the Pullman altogether and 
 watched the crossing from the deck of the pon- 
 derous ferry. 
 
 Night had snufTed out earth and sky in a 
 stiffling blanket of darkness, and we could see 
 nothing at first but the two powerful tugs that 
 drew us across the river and the towering super- 
 structure of the barge, where a watchful pilot 
 paced back and forth like a sea captain on the 
 bridge of a ship. We went forward, baffled and 
 furious, and sought compensation for the black- 
 ness of the night in watching the locomotive. 
 The big monster was as tranquil as a drowsy 
 cab-horse and tended by a solicitous engineer 
 who rubbed and oiled his steed with tenderness 
 and enthusiasm. I shouted to Allan above the 
 thundering reverberations of steam and the 
 rushing of water, *T can't see anything! Where 
 is the Mississippi?" 
 
 "Under us," Allan answered. 
 
 Providence must have heard my groan of de- 
 spair for a great scarlet disc of a moon appeared 
 magically on the horizon and rose like a whirl- 
 ing pin-wheel of light, trailing fiery reflections 
 across the wide expanse of the river. We saw 
 
 [319] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 the Mississippi from bank to bank, rolling 
 grandly down to the Gulf, inexpressibly roman- 
 tic and beautiful and unforgettable. Providence 
 had arranged a spectacular finis to our fog- 
 befuddled journey; it was tardy generosity per- 
 haps, but we were properly grateful, watching 
 the magnificent decor until the ferry bumped 
 gently against the shore again and we were 
 warned by a dervish of a conductor frantically 
 swinging a lantern that if we didn't "get aboard" 
 we would be abandoned by the El Paso express 
 altogether. 
 
 I made no feint at going to sleep, for as soon 
 as the train was safely ashore again and hitched 
 together in its proper sequence, we spun mag- 
 nificently across Louisiana, Louisiana illumi- 
 nated by Providence's moon, no longer scarlet 
 but icy white arbd as penetratingly brilliant as 
 a spot-light. I have an unfortunate enthusiasm 
 for new country. There are people, T know, 
 who can sleep soundly in a train that is crossing 
 Umbria or climbing the Semmering or rushing 
 magnificently across the American desert. And 
 I hate them for their indifiference while I envy 
 them their somnolence. 
 
 "Mr. Foster" had managed to get compart- 
 ments for us and a spotless darkey in a white 
 coat "made up" my berth with such cunning art 
 
 [320] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 that I should have gone to sleep at once to show 
 my appreciation of his handiwork. If we could 
 only apprentice our housemaids to Pullman 
 porters! Might it not be a money-making 
 scheme for some ebony white-coated potentate 
 to start a correspondence school for scientific 
 bed-making? A Pullman porter folds sheets 
 just as a hotel waiter folds napkins — there are 
 crepey irregularities and fan plaitings and deco- 
 rative creases. A Pullman porter knows to a 
 nicety the exact angle of a blanket, the exact 
 adjustment of a fat, snow white pillow\ When 
 the master bed-maker of the El Paso express 
 had backed discreetly out of the compartment, 
 wishing me a "very" good night, I surveyed his 
 handiwork with a pang of regret, for I did not 
 intend to lie in it. I lay, rather, upon it, with 
 the pillow tucked cosily behind my head. Then 
 I turned out the light and raised the window 
 curtain. 
 
 We were rushing smoothly across vast fields. 
 Long ditches of shallow water, shining like 
 threads of platinum in the white moonlight, 
 pointed in oddly converging lines towards the 
 horizon. The moon had climbed swiftly, like 
 an ambitious society woman, and was sailing 
 serenely overhead, crystal clear in a starless sky. 
 I watched for an hour. Plain and sky and il- 
 
 [321] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 limitable horizon. ... I watched another hour 
 — plain and sky — Texas perhaps. . . . 
 
 Then I fell asleep. 
 
 We were in Houston when I woke and it was 
 dawn, a nice, fresh dawn prettily tinted with 
 fleecy, gold-lined clouds. Allan was already 
 dressed and standing on the station platform 
 haloed by clouds of cigarette smoke and in ani- 
 mated conversation with the fattest conductor I 
 have ever seen. They were reading the latest 
 war news in the Houston morning paper and I 
 heard the fat conductor say that he would be 
 afraid to go by steamer to New York, "what 
 with the U-boats and raiders." Allan reminded 
 him that war had not been declared, but the con- 
 ductor had a low opinion of German military 
 methods. 
 
 ''You can't count on 'em," he said in a lugu- 
 brious voice. "They're just as apt as not to sink 
 you before you get to Key West. Travellin' 
 alone?" 
 
 Allan confessed that he had a sister in tow. 
 
 "Ain't she afraid?" 
 
 Allan thought not. 
 
 "Well, if / were you and had a sister, I'd go 
 back by train. They'll get you as sure as my 
 name's Spencer Jones." 
 
 This was professional railroad advice and 
 
 [322] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 Allan said stoutly that the sea was good enough 
 for him, raiders or no raiders, U-boats or no 
 U-boats; he would rather take his chances in the 
 Concho than be blown to pieces by dynamite or 
 some railroad bridge in the Middle West. The 
 fat conductor, who apparently considered us 
 both lost, waddled away mumbling, ''They'll get 
 youl You watch out. Never saw a German yet 
 who wasn't quick on the trigger." 
 
 All we saw of Houston, as we pulled slowly 
 out of it again, was forlorn and ugly. Workmen, 
 heavy-eyed and morose, plodded to work; some 
 of them paused by the tracks to watch the train, 
 perhaps envious of its freedom, but none of them 
 seemed aware of the magnificent sunrise that 
 was doing its best to glorify the drab factories 
 and warehouses and to transform the first hour 
 of the long day. It is a pity that railroads enter 
 cities by the back door, for it would have been 
 much nicer, for us at least, if the El Paso express 
 had passed through Houston's residential streets. 
 Instead, like a shame-faced tramp, it picked its 
 way through dreary slums and forlorn, untidy 
 yards. 
 
 The approach to Galveston is a spectacular 
 exception to the general rule, howxver. The 
 casual tourist is entranced before he has fairly 
 arrived at the station, for a two-mile causeway 
 
 [323] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 has been thrown out from Galveston Island to 
 the Texas mainland. Superlatives are the order 
 of the day before Galveston itself has appeared 
 on the horizon and superlatives continue to be 
 in demand as long as one remains in the city. 
 Like Messina, Galveston has been built and re- 
 built upon the ruins of itself; it has withstood 
 wind, water and fire; it has been blown down, 
 flooded and burned, not once but several times. 
 And always it has emerged triumphant, the peo- 
 ple labouring with the tireless patience of ants 
 to cover up the ruin and to forget the cataclysm. 
 It is not considered good form to mention 
 hurricanes and tidal waves in Galveston; the city 
 resents any discussion of her secret infirmity. 
 The year 1900 is skipped lightly over by local 
 historians and the penny guide books and adver- 
 tising pamphlets date everything from 1902. 
 Curious tourists are not supposed to notice the 
 discrepancy; but it becomes conspicuous when 
 one learns that the whole city of Galveston was 
 raised nineteen feet — houses, streets, sidewalks, 
 sewers, parks and all — not very long after that 
 curious omission. Why, one asks, should a mod- 
 ern city have been lifted bodily nineteen feet 
 into the air unless the inhabitants had an expen- 
 sive desire to look down upon the Gulf of Mex- 
 ico? And eventually, whether the tourist comes 
 
 [324] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 from New England or East Africa, he learns 
 the truth. 
 
 For Galveston has an implacable enemy. Like 
 Torre Annunziata and Herculaneum, the great 
 seaport lives in the shadow of possible destruc- 
 tion. The first storm, which tore across the Gulf 
 like a devastating fury in September, 1900, prac- 
 tically destroyed the city. Wind, tidal wave, 
 flood and fire! Small wonder that Galveston 
 still shudders at the memory and refuses to 
 dwell upon it! Baedeker (whom I should not 
 have consulted, considering the tender state of 
 German-American sentiment) puts the number 
 of victims at an indefinite six or eight thousand. 
 The actual toll does not matter. We do 
 know that houses were unroofed, smashed to 
 splinters, reduced to atoms before the mad on- 
 slaught of the hurricane; we do know that Gal- 
 veston was cut off from the mainland by terrific 
 seas, and buried under a wall of water. We do 
 know that people drowned like rats in their 
 houses or floated out into the Gulf to perish 
 miserably there. And we agree with Galveston 
 that the wretched details of all that terror and 
 death and destruction are best forgotten. Gal- 
 veston determined to go on; the remnant of the 
 population, under the leadership of a City Com- 
 mission, rebuilt the ruined town and at the same 
 
 [325] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 time, with no frivolous desire to "look down" 
 on the Gulf, but with fiery determination to get 
 beyond its reach, the Galvestonians raised their 
 city nineteen feet. Not content with this, as if 
 pumping twenty millions cubic yards of sand 
 into the city were a mean accomplishment, a 
 concrete sea wall five miles long, seventeen feet 
 high and sixteen feet wide was built along the 
 water-front — a barrier calculated to rebuff the 
 most impudent tidal wave in the world. To cap 
 the climax, Galveston was so certain that she 
 had conquered her enemy that she built a mil- 
 lion dollar hotel directly behind the sea wall. 
 Then she sat back, folded her hands and said, 
 "Let the wind howl and the sea rage. Galves- 
 ton is secure." 
 
 There have been three storms since the epoch- 
 making hurricane of 1900. The enraged enemy, 
 returning to the attack during the summer of 
 1916, bit large pieces out of the sea wall and 
 completely wrecked the concrete causeway 
 which links the city to Texas. As our train 
 crossed the tranquil stretch of water we saw the 
 destruction. Huge slabs of concrete are tipped 
 on end, smashed, pulverised, tossed about as if 
 playful giants had caught them up and thrown 
 them down again. The railroad trestle has been 
 repaired, but the causeway has been abandoned 
 
 [S26] 
 
A GRAIN ELEVATOR, AS GRLM AND SOMHRE AS A 
 MEDI.T.VAE FORTRESS 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 to the enemy. Galveston said little about the 
 storm, and 1 am quoting the driver of a taxi- 
 cab (an uncerain authority) when I venture to 
 say that over a hundred people were sacrificed. 
 But the sea wall withstood the attack and the 
 million dollar hotel, to quote again, not only 
 "went on as usual with little or no interruption 
 of service," but came out of the maelstrom in- 
 tact. 
 
 There is something magnificent in this tenacity 
 of purpose. Fancy serving six-course dinners 
 while the black hurricane raged outside! Fancy 
 bellboys answering bells and carrying clinking 
 pitchers of ice water to frightened guests while 
 the huge hotel shivered and rocked in the teeth 
 of the gale! It makes one shudder for Galves- 
 ton's destiny, for man has never defied the ele- 
 ments with more impudence or greater self- 
 assurance. You may ask favours of nature, but 
 you may never command her, and you take your 
 life in your hands when you challenge her. Gal- 
 veston's million dollar hotel says, "Come, if you 
 dare!" I should not care to be in Galveston 
 when nature decides to accept the challenge. 
 But then I am afraid of wind, mortally afraid 
 of it. I am abject and craven and detestable 
 in a hurricane. I simply lie down and die. So 
 I am possibly prejudiced when I warn Galves- 
 
 [327] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 ton not to boast too smugly of her invincible sea 
 wall. Every time I mention it I put down my 
 pen and rap three times on wood. But Galves- 
 ton is neither Irish nor afraid of storms. She 
 pulls herself together after each fresh disaster, 
 rebuilds the ruined houses, restrings the tele- 
 graph and telephone wires, buries the dead and 
 begins again. It would not pay to abandon one 
 of the greatest ports in the world, and Ameri- 
 cans do not surrender so easily. 
 
 The sea was breaking gently when we were 
 there; it beat against the enormous concrete 
 barrier with tender little caresses, pretending 
 friendship. But still the Gulf seemed over us, 
 around us, unavoidable and menacing; it drew 
 our gaze just as the slumbering Vesuvius at- 
 tracts and repels the Neapolitan. 
 
 After a faultless breakfast at the million dol- 
 lar hotel we drove through the city, finding lit- 
 tle to admire beyond the magnificent courage 
 of its inhabitants and some splendid avenues of 
 royal palms. The driver of our taxi-cab wanted 
 us to take the Texas Hero monument to our 
 hearts, and there were three or four million- 
 aires' residences that touched his simple soul 
 with awe. He could not understand why we 
 insisted upon driving out of the city altogether 
 to spend an hour watching a cotton press. He 
 
 [328] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 stood at our elbow and murmured invitingly that 
 we had not seen the Public Library, the Ball 
 School or the City Park. . . . 
 
 But the cotton press was more entertaining 
 than a city full of endowed hospitals and public 
 schools, and we added to the taxi-cab driver's 
 aesthetic confusion by lingering in its vicinity 
 long enough for Allan to sketch the press at 
 work. A cotton press is a machine gifted with 
 uncanny intelligence and the strength of a god. 
 It catches a roughly packed bale of cotton, tosses 
 it neatly into the exact centre of a woven con- 
 tainer, presses it between two enormous steel 
 slabs, ejects it and reaches for another. There 
 are no variations in its precise and graceful mo- 
 tions. Negro workmen step between the presses 
 to thread and secure the containers, unconcerned 
 and facile, singing softly. And one misstep, one 
 miscalculation would roll them out as flat and 
 as featureless as pancakes! 
 
 The Concho sailed at noon, so we tore our- 
 selves away and hurried to the dock, stopping 
 long enough in the city to buy a dozen collars 
 for Allan and a long veil for me. A neat trio 
 of Haytian stewards fell on our luggage and 
 carried it aboard, stowing us away in comfort- 
 able cabins on the main deck. A handful of 
 guardsmen and some romantic looking Mexicans 
 
 [329] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 in wide-brimmed sombreros shared the forward 
 deck in amicable proximity. "Villa, dead or 
 alive" had brought the guardsmen to Texas and 
 "higher wages, dead or alive" was the bait that 
 had lured the Mexicans northward toward snow 
 and ice and undreamed of hardships. 
 
 Promptly at noon the little steamer backed 
 away from Galveston, turned right about face 
 and headed for the Gulf. Behind us we could 
 see the plucky city, still touched by the tragedy 
 of the past, strangely unstable, transient and 
 weird. We drifted slowly along the water-front, 
 passing beneath a towering grain elevator, as 
 grim and sombre as a mediaeval fortress. There 
 were compact rows of docks and wharves, where 
 ships crowded to load and unload — freighters, 
 tramps, schooners, and two big English steam- 
 ers painted grey from bow to stern. We waved 
 our hats and cheered the British Jack. At last 
 we could! The English crews, as dingy grey as 
 their ships, waved back and shouted to us 
 "Don't let the Germans get you, Sammy!" 
 The Baratarian pirate, Jean La Fitte, was not 
 alive, but we were no more secure in the Con- 
 cho than we would have been in a Spanish gal- 
 leon in the days of Count Bernardo de Galvez, 
 Spanish Viceroy of Mexico and patron saint of 
 Galveston. . . . 
 
 [330] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 "Don't let the Germans get you, Sammy!" 
 We waved our hands and laughed. "We 
 won't I" 
 
 And the Concho, ignoring such absurdities, 
 passed the furthermost tip of Galveston Island 
 and entered the dazzling blue of the Gulf. 
 
 [331] 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 KEY WEST AT DAWN 
 
 T took three days and three nights to 
 get from Galveston to Key West. The 
 Gulf of Mexico was as unruffled as a 
 mirror, and there was nothing to do 
 but loll in our steamer chairs while the "tired 
 of ages" evaporated from our spirits. The 
 Concho was a steamer one somehow cottoned 
 to on first acquaintance. She was tidy and 
 small, comfortable but not cluttered with luxu- 
 ries, and there was a total absence of that dis- 
 tressing vibration one feels on fast ships. The 
 twenty-eight Mexicans who had come aboard 
 at Galveston were bound for the frigid North 
 to work "somewhere on the Lehigh Railroad." 
 They lay somnolent on the forward deck with 
 their hats over their eyes, and only wakened oc- 
 casionally to fraternise with the khaki-clad 
 guardsmen who had picked up enough pigeon- 
 Spanish on the border to carry on a halting con- 
 versation. The guardsmen confessed to a sneak- 
 ing fondness for the game little peons, but there 
 
 [332] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 was nothing black enough in the way of adjec- 
 tives to garnish their opinion of the border 
 Texans. Their feeling toward the Mexican was 
 more or less neutral, but their dislike of the 
 Texan was a real and impressive thing. 
 
 Life aboard the Concho was delightful. It 
 may have been the geniality of Captain 
 Mcintosh, who looked like Wallingford — 
 Wallingford in uniform! — and was one of the 
 finest types I have encountered in the American 
 Merchant Marine service. It may have been 
 the Austrian pastry-cook's triumphant cakes 
 and pies, or the soft voices and ingratiating 
 manners of the Dutch East Indians and 
 Haytians in the crew. Or it may have been the 
 sea, which never fails to tinge one's own mood 
 with its vast impersonality. Or it may have 
 been because the Concho was a small ship. The 
 giant ocean greyhounds of ante-bellum days were 
 meant for the timid landlubber who felt more 
 secure, for some inexplicable reason, when there 
 were ten stories between him and the deep. For 
 my part, I like to hear the slap of the boisterous 
 waves against the sides. I like to lean on the 
 rail within nose-touch of the patterned foam 
 rushing by in endless, dissolving repetition. I 
 like to feel the sting of spray tossed back by the 
 runting bow. I like to stand by the ventilators 
 
 [333] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 and listen to the muffled clatter and shouting 
 down in the boiler room. At night I like to sit 
 on the forward deck where I can watch the mast 
 light, like a fiery spark, swinging against the 
 ice-blue stars. I like to be on intimate terms 
 with the sea, never unaware of it but watchful 
 and deliciously afraid, as I would fear an in- 
 dulgent and unstable god. I like to talk now 
 and then to the crew, and if I see the captain 
 or the first officer squinting at sun-spots through 
 a sextant, I like to be allowed to squint, too. I 
 prefer a capstan to the dubious luxury of a 
 steamer chair. I like to watch the whirling log- 
 line and the wake churned into milky foam by 
 the ship's swift passing. I like to lie in my 
 berth and watch the black waves heaving above 
 the horizon, flecked at their crests with fiery 
 phosphorescence. And manifestly I couldn't do 
 any of those things aboard what newspaper men 
 call a Leviathan. 
 
 Three days and three nights passed slowly in 
 a procession of lazy hours. Just after we had 
 rounded the clawlike tip of Galveston Island we 
 encountered a heavy ground swell which sent 
 most of the more imaginative passengers scurry- 
 ing to their berths. But once clear of that, we 
 moved across the surface of the water like a 
 pasteboard ship blown across a marble-topped 
 
 [334] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 table. When Galveston had dropped behind 
 the horizon, there was no further sign of life 
 until we caught the first intermittent flashes of 
 the Tortugas Light on the evening of the third 
 day. A German raider was supposed to be 
 somewhere in the neighbourhood, and although 
 war had not yet been declared, there was a cer- 
 tain amount of speculation as to whether the 
 raider might not precipitate matters if it should 
 happen to encounter such a neat, staunch, fat 
 little morsel as the Concho. Three of the twelve 
 Germans in the Concho's crew had left the ship 
 at Galveston to cross the Texan border and go 
 into Mexico, probably because they had definite 
 work to do there for Germany. The Austrian 
 pastry-cook, author of the culinary masterpieces 
 I have mentioned before, sat in the galley door 
 between his moments of inspiration, looking as 
 melancholy as a man can look who is a mountain 
 of fat, as pale as dough and clad in a sleeveless 
 flannel shirt and an apron. When I had passed 
 him several times in my pacing around the deck 
 and each time had discovered him with his 
 shaven head buried in his arms, I sought the 
 chief steward and asked him why a talented 
 pastry-cook should abandon himself publicly to 
 grief. Were the Germans in the crew planning 
 to scuttle the ship? And did the pastry-cook 
 
 [335J 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 know about it? Or was he weeping for his 
 government's sins? It seemed to me an exagger- 
 ated case of conscience. 
 
 "He is afraid of internment," the steward ex- 
 plained. "God knows why, for turn about has 
 never been fair play in America, but that poor 
 devil had visions of another Wittenberg. He 
 owns a little farm in New Jersey, and in the 
 summer time he leaves the Concho and potters 
 about in his vegetable garden. As far as he can 
 understand, that is all over for him. He ex- 
 pects to be nabbed and put behind a wire en- 
 closure as soon as we touch the pier in New 
 York. And I tell you," the steward assured me 
 with a grave face, "it is having a bad effect on 
 his pastry. I wish I could convince him some- 
 how. The cherry tarts weren't up to the 
 standard to-day." 
 
 After that, I lost interest in the desserts. It 
 always seemed to me that they were flavoured 
 with Austrian tears. In spite of my affection for 
 Austria, I couldn't quite stick a lachrymose 
 souvenir, and the cook was a prey to his terror 
 all the way to New York. 
 
 The monotony of the placid Gulf was un- 
 broken save for schools of flying fish that 
 skimmed the surface of the water like little skip- 
 ping-stones and disappeared again in a hoop of 
 
 [336] 
 
DOLPHINS CAVORTED AT SUNSET, TURNING BEAUTIFUL 
 SOMERSAULTS 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 ripples. Portuguese men-o'-war sailed past in 
 squadrons. They looked like large opalescent 
 bubbles, but they were amazingly brisk and 
 intelligent for jellyfish. With the sail-like mem- 
 brane attached to their backs they contrived to 
 come about, to tack, to run before the wind — 
 in short, to behave like full-rigged ships. I take 
 off my hat to a jellyfish that knows enough to 
 jibe! Dolphins cavorted at sunset, turning 
 beautiful somersaults — the most likable and 
 roguish fellows in the sea. And always there 
 was an escort of white-breasted gulls following 
 close astern. 
 
 As I was the only lady in the first cabin, the 
 stewardess was pathetically devoted to me. 
 Probably because the poor woman was bored 
 and had nothing better to do, she gave her un- 
 divided attention to getting me out of bed at 
 seven in the morning. On the stroke of the 
 minute she applied herself to my door. 
 
 "Miss, breakfast is served." 
 
 'What on earth do you want?" was my greet- 
 ing, muffled by as much of the sheet as I could 
 draw over my head, for I hate to be stared at at 
 seven o'clock in the morning. 
 
 The stewardess always pretended to be sympa- 
 thetic after the manner of her kind. She 
 manoeuvred to unearth me from under the sheet. 
 
 [337] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 *'I do believe you are seasick. And on a calm 
 day, too! Aren't you ashamed?" 
 
 'Tve never been seasick in my life. Go away, 
 and shut the door!" 
 
 "Breakfast is ready, Miss." 
 
 "But I don't w^ant breakfast at seven o'clock. 
 Go away!" 
 
 "Your brother is on deck. Miss. He's been 
 up and out for an hour." (That was a gross 
 exaggeration !) "He told me to tell you that you 
 are missing everything and how could you ex- 
 pect to write a book if you sleep all day?" 
 
 "He said that?" 
 
 "He did, indeed." 
 
 "Well, go away! I want to sleep." 
 
 "There is corn-bread for breakfast, Miss." 
 And so on, until she had accomplished her pur- 
 pose. 
 
 I have only one thing to thank her for. She 
 got me out of bed in time to go ashore at Key 
 West. We had caught sight of Tortugas' sultry 
 flashes late on Monday night, and had passed the 
 light sixty-six miles from Key West while we 
 slept. I knew little of Tortugas except that it 
 has played the role of an American St. Helena 
 for several prisoners — among them the doctor 
 who cared for J. Wilkes Booth and who was 
 supposed to have been a conspirator in the 
 
 [338] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 assassination of Lincoln. The stewardess woke 
 me at dawn with the magic words, "Key West 
 in twenty minutes, Miss!" And before she had 
 fairly opened the door I was on my feet. 
 
 ''All right, Fm coming. Twenty minutes, 
 did you say?" 
 
 Key West! The Cayo Hueso of the Span- 
 iards! The jumping-ofif place; America's 
 furthest south — a city to touch the imagination! 
 By the time I got out on deck the first faint 
 blue of dawn had spread over the sky. The 
 Concho had slowed down until the vibrations 
 of the screw sounded like a muffled heart beat. 
 Key West lay just ahead, a long string of lights 
 that drifted toward us across the water. Puffs 
 of hot, moist wind brought the odour of the 
 wharves — the inexplicable smell of the land. 
 And suddenly, as the blue light deepened, we 
 saw bulky shadows, vague outlines of houses 
 and sheds, a ghostly wireless tower. We heard 
 the water lapping the wharf piles, voices, the 
 liquid laughter of black men and a chorus of 
 yapping dogs. 
 
 "Hi, there, Conchor 
 
 "Hi, you!" 
 
 And as if a veil had been whisked away, we 
 saw the wharf just under us and a row of people 
 staring up and waving. The mongrel dogs kept 
 
 [389] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 up their infernal howling or piled themselves 
 in tangled heaps, snapping and tearing each 
 others' ears into ribbons. I have never seen such 
 outcasts, such forlorn pariahs of the dog world. 
 Slinking, cowardly, shivering — they alternately 
 raised their begging eyes to the row of faces 
 along the Concho's rail and squatted miserably 
 to scratch. 
 
 Key West is the terminus of the Florida East 
 Coast Railway, and the joining of the island city 
 to the rest of Florida by a series of trestles, 
 bridges and concrete viaducts thrown from key 
 to key has brought Cuba to within ninety miles 
 of the American mainland. The trip from Key 
 West to Havana takes no longer than the cus- 
 tomary channel passage, and is supposed to be 
 one of the most expensive short crossings 
 anywhere in the world. Only one meal is served 
 during the trip, and as the bit of water between 
 Key West and Havana is usually as rough as the 
 English Channel in mid-winter, the serving of 
 that one meal is more or less of an empty for- 
 mality. As one discouraged tourist told me, 
 ''The trip to Havana is on a par with the ascent 
 of Vesuvius — it costs a fortune to go, but it costs 
 three times a fortune to get back again. The 
 Cuban learns the verb to extort, even if he pre- 
 tends ignorance of the verb to cheat — and he 
 
 [340] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 can conjugate the verb to wheedle in every one 
 of its ninety-nine tenses." 
 
 The engineering feat which put Key West 
 conspicuously on the map of Florida and 
 brought passengers and freight trains literally 
 ''overseas" to Cuba's front door, is one of the 
 most dramatic and spectacular things railroad- 
 ing has ever accomplished, the climax of the 
 Flagler system's exploitation of the South. 
 Florida dwindles at its furthermost tip into a 
 loosely-strung chain of small coralline islands, 
 some of them habitable, some of them simply 
 ridges of fluted sand, called keys or cayos, which 
 divide the Gulf of Mexico from the Straits of 
 Florida for over a hundred miles. The railroad 
 jumps from key to key with the ease of a colossus 
 straddling the globe. Part of the time the con- 
 crete arches and ponderous trestles rise directly 
 out of the water, so that the approach to Key 
 West is not unlike the approach to Venice from 
 Mestre, except that the Venetian viaduct is al- 
 ways linked with the shore on one hand and 
 the city on the other, while the Overseas track 
 seems to plunge straight out to sea with no ap- 
 parent objective but the horizon. Some of the 
 white natives of the Bahama Islands have settled 
 in the Florida keys and are called Conchs, a 
 name which suits them to perfection. They are 
 
 [341] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 nearly always fishermen, for they live in a 
 piscatorial paradise, a sort of happy-hunting- 
 ground for the confirmed angler. The waters 
 of the keys are swarming with every known 
 variety of fish from the mild and gentle nibbler 
 to the gamest deep-sea monster. I should think 
 that a fisherman would have to do little more 
 than whistle for his living down there. Key 
 West is famous for its turtle soup, made from 
 the big deep-sea turtles which are caught in the 
 neighbourhood. But after I had seen the pa- 
 thetic, ugly, unwieldy creatures on the docks, 
 with their flat feet pierced and tied together with 
 ropes, I could not have managed a spoonful of 
 the detestable potage. The turtles were brought 
 in by the hundreds and crucified in the most re- 
 volting and ghastly manner; the twisting of their 
 parrot-like heads, the futile and agonised wav- 
 ings of their legs, their grotesque sufferings have 
 made turtle soup forever an impossibility as far 
 as I am concerned. And oh, the smell of turtles, 
 dead turtles, drying turtles, turtles in their death 
 agonies, turtles spliced and bound, but still alive, 
 for shipment! The odour assailed us as soon as 
 we docked at Key West, and I was not happy 
 until a broad expanse of water and a fresh breeze 
 had dimmed the memory of it and made breath- 
 ing endurable again. I cannot understand the 
 
 [342] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 aesthetic reasoning which shows you a wharf 
 full of stinking, tortured turtles and then says, 
 "Now you must eat our turtle soup! We pride 
 ourselves that here in Key West you may taste 
 the uttermost essence of turtle soup, the master- 
 piece, the climax!" Undoubtedly. But I reeled 
 past the temptation, holding the tip of my nose. 
 
 Every traveller we had met in the South had 
 consistently blackened Key West's reputation. 
 It was dirty, the people were mongrel, the taxi- 
 cabs were rusty, the hotels were bad, there was 
 nothing on earth to see but a banyan tree. 
 "Don't go there," we had been told, "unless you 
 are sure you can get out again in twenty-four 
 hours." It is apparently fashionable to call Key 
 West dirty, just as it was fashionable to say of 
 Venice, in those dim, legendary days before the 
 war, "Venice is beautiful, my dear, but how the 
 canals smell!" One gives with the left hand 
 and takes away with the right. The truth of 
 the matter is, Venice doesn't smell except in the 
 sultry dog-days of August and September, and 
 Key West — at dawn — isn't dirty at all. I almost 
 hesitate to make the statement for fear I will be 
 called unobservant; Key West is so overwhelm- 
 ingly accused of slovenliness! 
 
 Perhaps the freshness of the dawn purified the 
 city; perhaps the heavy dews of the semi-tropi- 
 
 [343] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 cal night had washed it clean. Whatever the 
 reason was, Key West sparkled for us. We took 
 an automobile driven by a dark, flashing and 
 very black-eyed Cuban boy who was lying in 
 wait for possible tourists from the Concho just 
 outside the entrance to the wharf. The miser- 
 able dogs followed us, whining and begging 
 and snapping until we had climbed into the ma- 
 chine. The Cuban scattered the poor creatures 
 by starting the car with a terrific jerk and an 
 ear-splitting squawk of the horn. A fresh breeze 
 had come up with the increasing light of day — 
 very cool and invigorating, life-giving after the 
 stifling calm of the night. It fluttered out the 
 ends of my veil so that they flapped like a sail as 
 we turned away from the water-front and en- 
 tered the city. The sky was still untouched by 
 the direct rays of the sun; the blue had given 
 way to a luminous pearl-grey and the horizon 
 was banked with broken thunder clouds, jagged 
 and blue-black, which sprang toward the arch 
 of the sky like torn pennants. Key West was 
 asleep. The blinds were shut like lids over tired 
 eyes. The shutters of the shops were closed; 
 there were no motors, no horses, no pedestrians 
 on the street; even the big, sulphur-yellow Flag- 
 ler hotel looked absolutely deserted and empty, 
 
 [344] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 as forlorn and dreary as a summer hotel in mid- 
 winter. 
 
 The Cuban boy asked us where we wanted 
 to go. We had no idea. We told him to take 
 us "around Key West," and that we wanted to 
 see everything there was to see. He looked 
 doubtful, as if he would have preferred being 
 given a definite destination. Responsibility is 
 irksome to a handsome boy, but being asked to 
 entertain two insane travellers who wanted to 
 look at a city before daybreak taxed this one's 
 indulgence. He considered the thing a moment 
 as if he wondered what on earth he could show 
 us at that God-forsaken hour. Then his face 
 brightened. 
 
 "There's the banyan tree," he said. 
 
 "Is that all there is in Key West?" I de- 
 manded. 
 
 iEsthetically there was apparently nothing 
 else. The banyan tree at Key West carries a 
 heavy burden. Like St. Peter's, it must never 
 disappoint the pilgrim. We decided to wait 
 until after dawn to see it, for we felt that such 
 a tourist-sop must be as self-conscious as the 
 Sphinx. Faint puffs of rosy light were be- 
 ginning to touch the peaks of the thunder clouds 
 on the horizon, so we told the Cuban that the 
 
 [345] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 banyan tree could wait for the sunrise. He must 
 take us out of the city. 
 
 There is a single main street (which is not 
 really a slip of the pen, for most cities have main 
 streets crossing each other at right angles), and 
 we followed it to the outskirts of Key West 
 where the one and two-storied frame houses 
 thinned out into a fringe of pretty bungalows 
 and more pretentious private houses. In the 
 luminous light the green of the gardens was in- 
 tensified a hundred times so that every leaf and 
 blade of grass was unnaturally brilliant in hue. 
 We passed a cottage which was buried under an 
 avalanche of purple bougainvillea. The streets 
 were clear of people and of dust, and we rushed 
 smoothly forward against the boisterous wind 
 as if we were the only living creatures on the 
 face of the earth. The road passed the last of 
 the bungalows, ran close to two large cigar fac- 
 tories where, for a moment, we could smell the 
 fragrant, sweet odour of tobacco, and then 
 curved away toward the sea again between fields 
 and a tangled growth of scrub and hardy, shiny- 
 leaved bushes. The young Cuban urged the 
 motor up to forty-five and we spun magnificently 
 toward the sunrise. 
 
 Gold flakes of light sprayed up from behind 
 the purple thunder heads and floated to the very 
 
 [346] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 apex of the sky to gild every wisp and shred of 
 vapour. A magnificent conflagration blazed in 
 our eyes. The coming of the sun seemed to stir 
 the sluggish and immovable thunder clouds into 
 action. They rolled majestically aside like the 
 parting of a great curtain to reveal the very heart 
 of the burning day as it stepped over the horizon. 
 The tumbled peaks took on magnificent shapes, 
 thrust higher and higher, converged, parted, flat- 
 tened themselves into anvil-like plateaux. The 
 gold light turned to saffron, then to rose, then 
 to a flaming and indescribable scarlet. And as 
 we came within sight of the sea we saw that it 
 had turned from black to a vivid ice-green — a 
 Winslow Homer sea laced with sandy shoals and 
 dotted with shallow islands. 
 
 The sun came up, like Kipling's sun, with a 
 crash, and climbed with incredible speed above 
 the thunder clouds. They had played their part 
 in the morning pageant and retreated, like 
 circus supers, over the edge of the world and 
 out of our sight. We drove to the end of the 
 boulevard and turned back just where the gov- 
 ernment wireless station is being built. 
 
 Groups of workmen were trudging out to the 
 cigar manufactories as we entered the city — 
 Cubans, swarthy and slender, Spaniards, the in- 
 evitable negro. And Key West was waking. 
 
 [347] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 The boisterous wind rattled the cocoa-palms and 
 the wide, stifif leaves of the sword-palms. Win- 
 dows opened here and there and curious eyes 
 peered at us. Shopkeepers were opening the 
 doors of their shops or sweeping off their front 
 steps. A drowsy night clerk stood on the porch 
 of the Overseas Hotel and stretched himself, 
 taking deep breaths of the morning air. The 
 sun gilded the ugly little houses and glorified 
 them; it was all indescribably fresh and 
 sparkling and buoyant. 
 
 "And now," the young Cuban said, witH the 
 air of the custode of Santa Maria Novella when 
 he opens the door of the Spanish Chapel, "I will 
 show you the banyan tree." 
 
 He wanted us to get the full impact of the 
 sensation, so he turned in at the barracks gate 
 at top speed and brought us up to the banyan 
 with a flourish. I don't know what I had ex- 
 pected. I remember that I had formed a mental 
 picture of a colossus of a tree, an octupus, a maze 
 of branches. A banyan, to me, had always meant 
 something which begins by being a sprout and 
 winds up as a forest. The banyan at Key West 
 disappointed me. It did all it was supposed to 
 do; it struck its branches down into the ground, 
 it multiplied its trunks, it was as smooth and 
 grey as a snake's skin. But it was not large 
 
 [348] 
 
niK HOISTl'KorS WIXI) RATILKD 1111: COCOA-PALMS 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 enough, and it had been whitewashed. I 
 couldn't manage to squeeze out a superlative. 
 I gazed on the banyan in utter, abysmal silence, 
 aware that something was expected of me but 
 utterly incapable of filling in the conversational 
 gaps. 
 
 *Tt's the banyan," the Cuban said, making his 
 eyes very round. And then, seeing that he had 
 failed, he made a supreme effort. "Gee," he 
 said with a good deal of passion, "don't you see 
 the banyan?" 
 
 Even this left me unmoved. The Cuban gave 
 me a savage look and left the banyan with a 
 violent jerk. We spun out of the barracks yard 
 on two wheels, narrowly missing the toes of a 
 sentry on guard at the gate, who was so surprised 
 that he saluted. 
 
 The Concho was "waiting breakfast" for us 
 when we got back after a zigzag impression of 
 Key West's shopping street. Going aboard was 
 like returning to a comfortable home. We 
 smiled at the familiar faces of the Haytian stew- 
 ards who were leaning on the rail, all making 
 striking contrasts of themselves by wearing 
 crisply clean white coats. As soon as we had 
 swallowed a cup of coffee we went on deck to 
 watch the unloading of a huge shovel which had 
 been lashed to the forward deck at Galveston 
 
 [349] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 and had been the bane of the Captain's existence 
 all the way across the Gulf. He stood on the 
 bridge and roared choleric comments on the 
 stupidity of his crew, the lateness of the hour, 
 the heat of the day, the feebleness of the steam 
 winch and the general cussedness of everything. 
 While he roared, in his good-natured but per- 
 fectly effective way, the first officer became fever- 
 ishly, acutely busy. He was an intense English- 
 man, a fellow who took everything too seriously 
 and who invested simple duties with a profound 
 importance. Now he stripped off his coat, knit- 
 ted his brows, gave orders, promptly took them 
 back again, hopped from one side of the deck 
 to the other, as active and as efficient as a rabbit. 
 The Captain leaned from the bridge, with his 
 Wallingford cigar protruding from one corner 
 of his mouth like a torpedo projectile, and added 
 colour to the moment with a few rumbling and 
 highly picturesque suggestions. 
 
 The big shovel rose inch by inch clear of the 
 deck, the ropes and chains that held it screech- 
 ing and shrieking under the strain. A long line 
 of negroes on the wharf below tugged to swing 
 the obstinate mass of iron away from the ship. 
 They grunted and laughed — big, black fellows 
 in blue jeans and tattered shirts, barefooted, in- 
 conceivably lazy. They laid hold of the rope 
 
 [350] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 with their powerful hands and swayed and 
 jerked in unison. 
 
 While we watched, a tall, bullet-headed negro 
 in a bathing-suit appeared on the wharf and of- 
 fered to dive for us. 
 
 "Gimme a quarter!" he shouted, "gimme a 
 quarter! Down heah. In the water. Quick! 
 Gimme a quarter, please, sir." Then he capered 
 and grinned and made wide gestures. "Watch 
 me dive. Dive fob a quarter. Down heah. 
 Right heah in the water. Throw it, please, sir!" 
 
 There was no resisting him. He scrambled to 
 the top of one of the wharf piles and balanced 
 there a moment, looking like a wet codfish. The 
 quarter flashed through the air and he dived 
 after it, as straight and clean a dive as any I 
 have ever seen. For an instant his squirming 
 black body hung below the surface of the water, 
 then he came up, spluttering and laughing, with 
 the quarter between his teeth. He was aware of 
 his talents, for when one of the stewards threw 
 him a dime he let it sink slowly out of sight with- 
 out stirring a muscle to dive for it. 
 
 At half-past nine, the shovel having been 
 dumped on the wharf, much to the relief of the 
 crew, the Concho churned her way backwards 
 into Key West Harbour. As she turned slowly 
 around, swinging her nose towards the Straits 
 
 [351] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 of Florida, we saw Cayo Hueso for the first 
 time, the mysterious, turtle-backed island where 
 the Spanish sailors and explorers found nothing 
 but human bones — the Key West of to-day. It 
 rose out of the smiting green of the shallow 
 water like a tropical mirage, veiled in hot mists, 
 linked to America by the far-flung viaduct and 
 still as remote and strange as only a city in the 
 sea can be. 
 
 We passed the destroyer No. 20 and a big 
 South American tramp on their wa^ inta the 
 harbour. Small fishing schooners and launches 
 bobbed in our wake. At noon, Key West had 
 dropped behind the horizon. We followed the 
 Keys northward until sunset. And that night, 
 as we lounged in our deck chairs after dinner, 
 we saw the diamond strung lights of Palm 
 Beach. 
 
 [352] 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 WIND, WAVES AND HOME AGAIN 
 
 E had taken aboard a handful of pas- 
 sengers at Key West — some sea cap- 
 tains, the crew of a wrecked schooner, 
 a tourist or two and a trio of gam- 
 blers. The gamblers sat like poisonous spiders 
 in the smoke-room and lured first one and then 
 another of the male passengers of the Concho in- 
 to a losing game of cards. They all played and 
 they all lost. And they all played again! 
 
 The captain of the wrecked schooner, a little 
 wisp of a man, went on ridding himself of his 
 worldly goods at the rate of fifteen dollars a 
 game until the sleek gamblers had emptied the 
 pockets of his decent blue serge clothes. The 
 Swedish first mate, who had been twice "tor- 
 pedoed" in the English Channel and who should 
 have developed a bump of caution, was drawn 
 to the smoke-room irresistibly. My chair was 
 near the door and when I turned my head I 
 could see the three sinister profiles of the nro- 
 
 [353] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 fessional card players, pallid as Monte Carlo 
 croupiers — one wearing the traditional spade 
 beard, the other two smooth and shaven. And I 
 saw the victims pass, one by one, into the flood 
 of light that fell from the smoke-room door 
 across the deck; I saw them pivot there, balance, 
 and finally go in. Then, with their hats pushed 
 back and their brows wrinkled and their eyes 
 full of doubt and rage they played the gamblers' 
 "simple little game" and lost and lost and lost. 
 
 Once I spoke to the Swedish first mate about 
 it from the security of my deck chair. I had 
 seen so many men swallowed up by the smoke- 
 room door that I thought I would try to probe 
 the reason. 
 
 "They're gamblers," I remarked, as the first 
 mate hesitated there, "aren't they?" 
 
 "I know, m'am," he answered, taking a puff 
 at his cigarette and then throwing it over the 
 rail, a little comet-flash of fire against the dark- 
 ness of the sea, "I know, ma'am, but I hate to let 
 men like them get the best of me. Crooks, all 
 three of 'em." 
 
 "Of course." 
 
 He hesitated a moment longer. "I'll tell you 
 what," he volunteered. "They got all I earned 
 comin' from Tilbury to Key West — every penny 
 of it." 
 
 [354] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 "And you are going to play again?" 
 
 "Well, you see, ma'am, 1 hate to let men like 
 them get the best of me." 
 
 "They always do, don't they? You're no 
 match for them. They travel between New 
 York and Havana, following tourist dollars. 
 You are small pickings for them, if you will 
 pardon me. The money you risked your life to 
 earn will no more than pay their passage from 
 Key West to New York." 
 
 The first mate grinned. "Risked my life?" 
 he repeated softly. "I should say! Twice I've 
 started out from England in a ten thousand ton 
 ship and have had it blown from under me." 
 He whistled a long, slow whistle. "Yes, m'am! 
 You might call it a risk." 
 
 "I suppose you are going back again?" 
 
 "From New York." 
 
 "Aren't you afraid?" 
 
 He shook his head. "They say in English, 
 'three times and out.' No, Fm not afraid." 
 
 He glanced in through the open door of the 
 smoke-room. The three gamblers sat knee to 
 knee, offering a "simple little game" to any one 
 who cared to play. The first mate tipped his 
 hat to me. 
 
 "Well," he said jauntily, "I guess Fll go in." 
 
 The wisp of a sea captain had followed him, 
 
 [355] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 but since his pockets were empty he stopped in 
 the band of light, rocked on the toes and heels of 
 his creaking black shoes and gazed longingly 
 after the bold first mate. 
 
 "Are you going to play?" I asked. 
 
 The wisp of a captain spun around to stare 
 at me. *'Me?" he demanded, in a startled whis- 
 per. "I borrowed fifty dollars in Key West and 
 they got that inside of two minutes last night. 
 No, I'm not goin' to play, m'am. But I'll tell 
 you — if I had five hundred dollars I'd bust that 
 combination." 
 
 "Oh," I said, pretending innocence, "do you 
 think they're gamblers?" 
 
 "I know it," thundered the captain, spitting 
 violently over the rail. 
 
 "Why don't you tell Captain Mcintosh?" 
 
 "Can't catch 'em. No one could. They're 
 eels, not men. They got my fifty dollars quick 
 as that, and everything as easy and nice and 
 honest." He shook his head. "I'd ought to have 
 learned better, but I never seem to. I like a 
 game. Always playing games one way or an- 
 other. My schooner " 
 
 "Your schooner? What about her? Some 
 one said you lost her." 
 
 The captain sat down on the edge of Allan's 
 steamer chair (Allan, of course, had been in the 
 
 [356] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 smoke-room for an hour) and fixed me with his 
 weak, watery blue eyes, eyes full of vague 
 dreams and gentle, ineffectual longings, the eyes 
 of a lovable failure. "I'll tell you about my 
 schooner. I called her the Charles Perkins 
 after my father. He was a captain, too, and took 
 his ship from Maine to the Azores back in 1838. 
 He was a man of his word, my father, and my 
 schooner took after him, never failed me, never 
 played me a dirty trick — as trustworthy a ship 
 as ever you S'aw. But all of us gets old, and 
 the Charles Perkins got old, too. Old and tired, 
 like a human being. You remember the storm, 
 two weeks ago?" 
 
 "Yes. We were in Pensacola." 
 
 "I was off Tortugas, in the Gulf, beating in 
 to Key West. Middle of the night, cold, big 
 seas. You remember?" 
 
 I said I did. 
 
 The captain shrugged his shoulders. "The 
 Charles Perkins/' he said, "took it into her head 
 that she wasn't going a step further. Yes, m'am, 
 and she'd never failed me before. Sprung a leak 
 and began to go down by the bow. I can't tell 
 you how surprised I was. I couldn't see my 
 hand before my face and I couldn't hear a word 
 I said, but I shouted at her that I deserved 
 something better than drowning like a rat in 
 
 [357] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 the Gulf of Mexico. Tou're a Perkins,' I says 
 to her, 'and a Perkins keeps his word. A 
 Perkins is a good friend. You stay afloat until 
 morning. Going back on me like this!' The 
 crew thought I was crazy, but the old Charles 
 Perkins heard and she understood. She floated 
 all night, sunk up to her neck in the seas and 
 wallowing like a cow in a ditch. Floated, with 
 a hole in her as big as a church door. What 
 d'you think of that?" 
 
 "I think she was a good sort." 
 
 "She was. At dawn, just as the wind calmed 
 down a little and a big tramp eased up over the 
 horizon, she took one long look at me, sighed 
 deep down in herself and sank like a stone." 
 
 The captain got up, went to the rail, gazed 
 down into the black water a moment and then 
 came hurriedly back. "Like a stone," he re- 
 peated. "What do you think of that?" 
 
 And before I could answer he rushed along 
 the deck, hiding his tears behind a huge red 
 handkerchief. 
 
 There were many such stories. The guards- 
 men on the forward deck had tales of the throb- 
 bing nights along the border and of blazing 
 days between the parched desert and the wither- 
 ing sky. The English fiirst officer and the smil- 
 ing, red-cheeked German mate, and the hatchet- 
 
 [358] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 faced watchman all had stories. The captain 
 was a treasure house of yarns, and the Charles 
 Perkins shabby crew could have supplied Con- 
 rad with themes to last another magnificent life- 
 time. There was a scarlet-headed Irishman with 
 a Jewish nose and a mouth full of dazzling gold 
 teeth who developed, upon acquaintance, a 
 whimsical fancy and a vast knowledge of men. 
 He sold furs in the far South and had naturally 
 acquired a broad and unending optimism. There 
 was a musical New Englander who played "Still 
 Wie Die Nacht" from morning to night and 
 brought floods of tears from the lachrymose 
 pastry cook. There was a little old man in the 
 black alpaca jacket who "took his vacation" on 
 the Concho every year and improved the shin- 
 ing hours by gilding the railings and pillars and 
 carved ornamentations of the dining saloon. A 
 perfect frenzy of gilding seized him as we ap- 
 proached New York. A daredevil negro was 
 sent aloft to unscrew the big gold balls that 
 tipped the ship's masts and to lower them to the 
 deck for the little old man's ministrations. 
 Every one stood on the forward deck and craned 
 their necks and stared into the face of the blaz- 
 ing sky at the climbing negro who curled his 
 legs around the mast and lifted himself inch by 
 inch toward his goal. And the captain, with his 
 
 [359] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 cigar turned upward at the extreme angle of an 
 anti-aircraft gun, warned me to stand well out 
 of the way. "If he should fall, you know " 
 
 Oh, there was no end of excitement. The fire- 
 men became incendiary (small wonder!) and 
 fought like demons in the boiler room; the 
 Mexicans caught the fever and attacked, not 
 their enemies the guardsmen, but one another. 
 A miniature German-Mexican war raged below 
 decks, and while I cowered in delicious fright in 
 my steamer chair, expecting almost anything, a 
 fire-eating Kain-tuckian who had the next chair 
 produced a six-shooter, juggled it carelessly and 
 told me to "never you mind. I could pick ofif 
 the whole crew of 'em, m'am. Just you sit 
 quiet." 
 
 I sat quiet, hoping that the howling Mexicans 
 would disrupt onto the main deck and that I 
 would see the little Kain-tuckian in action. He 
 rested the six-shooter on the arm of his chair 
 and talked about the price of eggs. That, I sup- 
 pose, was calculated to quiet me, but afterwards, 
 when the Mexicans had been restored to peace 
 and had kissed each other tenderly, the disap- 
 pointed Kain-tuckian told me wonderful stories 
 of his bloodthirsty youth. He had taken part in 
 countless battles with moonshiners and outlaws 
 — he had been wounded, he had killed, he had 
 
 [360] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 had hairbreadth escapes from unspeakable 
 dangers. He was the living embodiment of a 
 Richard Harding Davis hero — Captain Mack- 
 lin at fifty. And how he could talk! Life — 
 romantic, delectable, impossible life — rolled ofif 
 the tip of his tongue like honey. He was the 
 legendary adventurer with the gift of gab, and 
 from morning to night the glorious impossibili- 
 ties were spun for my delectation. I could not 
 keep the discovery to myself; it was all super 
 "copy," but since Allan does not write stories 
 I allowed him to share the Kain-tuckian's yarns 
 with me. 
 
 "Dare I write them?" I asked Allan one 
 morning at breakfast. 
 
 "Write what?" 
 
 "Those 'moonshine' tales — I could make a for- 
 tune." 
 
 "Some one else has already made that par- 
 ticular fortune," Allan decided, and my heart 
 dropped into my boots. 
 
 "D'you mean that they are old stories?" I 
 gasped. 
 
 "Old as the Aztec ruins," Allan answered, and 
 winked at Captain Mcintosh. 
 
 Oh, it was not stupid, this coming from 
 Southern seas into the grey waters of the North! 
 We followed the Gulf Stream for two nights 
 
 [361] 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 and two days, rushing smoothly forward across 
 the patterned water. The sky was a beautiful 
 pageant, a procession of immaculate clouds that 
 rolled from horizon to horizon, wrapped in 
 white robes, trailing their feet in the sea and 
 thrusting their heads into a glory of light. 
 Clouds of flying fish sprayed before us, dolphins 
 and white-breasted gulls followed astern and 
 the sea was deeply blue, black-blue save where 
 the crested waves turned over at their tips and 
 broke in a spreading fan of milky foam. The 
 South had not dropped behind — we were linked 
 to it by the endless wake left by the hurrying 
 Concho across the brilliant sea. Sometimes we 
 saw the sandy shores of Florida and long, white 
 beaches fringed with tufted palms. Sometimes 
 the land receded and the limitless sea sur- 
 rounded us. Always the air was mild and in- 
 finitely fragrant. Ships rose above the horizon 
 trailing long banners of oily smoke, crossed our 
 bow and passed, going down to the Islands or to 
 South America. Tide rifts, like periscopes 
 awash, followed us as long as we stayed in the 
 hot Gulf Stream. Night swarmed with blue 
 stars and a late moon climbed into the sky and 
 flooded the world with phosphorescent white- 
 ness. 
 
 Then miraculously the world grew grey and 
 
 [362] 
 
OF THE SOUTH 
 
 we passed out of the brilliant South into the 
 colourless North. Gusts of wind shook the 
 Concho, the seas piled up, slate-grey, furious, 
 and slapped the bow resoundingly, throwing 
 clouds of icy spray across the decks. The 
 Mexicans went below to chatter and to repent 
 at their leisure. The drenched ship wallowed 
 deeper and deeper, the scudding clouds shut out 
 the world. And Allan and I, wrapped to our 
 blue noses in great coats and mufflers, stared 
 through the black squalls toward New York and 
 sighed — for we were going home again to 
 snow, ice, bitter winds, routine, work — and we 
 had just learned how to play! We had just 
 learned to love the dreamy and romantic South. 
 The Concho, reeling through the mountainous 
 seas, was taking us to reality. One by one the 
 octopus arms of the great city reached out to 
 draw us back again. Lightships, heaving drunk- 
 enly, and a great tide of steamers rushing west 
 and south across our path — New York! We 
 sensed it before the flickering lights of Asbury 
 Park warned us that the voyage was nearly over. 
 We waited until the Concho has passed Sandy 
 Hook and had anchored for the night under the 
 outstretched arm of flamboyant Mother Lib- 
 erty. We could hear the city, grumbling and 
 groaning faintly. We could see the myriad 
 
OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
 
 lights in its towers and pinnacles. We were 
 apart from it, still mysteriously caught into our 
 brief dream. A light powder of snow fell gen- 
 tly on the Concho's decks and rimmed the spars 
 and rails and touched our cheeks with caressing 
 fingers. It veiled the crowded harbour and 
 vested Madame Liberty in white. Ferry boats 
 passed bearing black crowds 
 
 "Home," we said. 
 
 Need I tell you that we sighed? And we part 
 from you, dear Reader, patient, consoling, for- 
 giving Reader, with a sigh. For we were leav- 
 ing you who have gone with us on our long 
 pilgrimage and we were leaving the splendid, 
 the magnificent South. Think of us leaning on 
 the Concho's rail, shrouded in the gentle snow, 
 with our eyes on New York and a sigh for the 
 South in our full hearts. 
 
 THE END 
 
 [364] 
 
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