Gigantic movements and mutations, Niagara-like noises, great bursts of flame like fallen fragments from the sunGigantic movements and mutations, Niagara-like noises, great bursts of flame like fallen fragments from the sun
There were some four thousand men in the plant, I believe, at the time we were there, but excepting when a shift changed, and a great army passed out through the gates, we never saw a crowd; indeed I hardly think we saw a group of any size. Here and there two or three men would be doing something—something which, probably, we did not understand; in the window of a locomotive cab, or that of a traveling crane, we would see a man; we kept passing men as we went along; and sometimes as we looked from a high perch over the interior of one of the great sheds, we would be vaguely conscious of men scattered about the place. But they were very small and gray and inconspicuous dots upon the surface of great things going on—going on, seemingly by themselves, with a sort of mad, mechanical, majestic, molten sweep.
At this time, when the great efficient organization started by Bismarck is being devoted entirely to destruction, it is interesting to recall that the idea of industrial welfare work originated in Germany during the period of Bismarckian reorganization. So, paradoxically, the very forces which, on one hand, were building towards the new records for the extinction of life established in the present war, were, upon the other hand, developing plans for the safeguarding of life and for making it worth living—plans which have enormously affected the industrial existence of the civilized world.
The broad theory of industrial welfare work was brought to this country by engineers, chemists, and workmen who had resided in Germany; but, where this work developed over there along coöperative lines, it has remained for Great Britain and the United States to work it out in a more individualistic way.
In this country welfare work has come as a logical part of the general industrial development. The first step in this development was the assembling of small, weak industrial units into large, powerful, effective units—that is to say, the formation of great corporations and trusts. The second step was the coördination of these great industrial alliances for "efficiency." The third step was the achievement of material success.
When our great corporations were in their formative period, effort was concentrated on making them successful, but with success came thoughts of other things. It began to be seen, for example, that whereas the old small employer of labor came into personal contact with his handful of workmen, and could himself supervisetheir welfare, some plan must now be devised for doing this work in a large, corporate way.
Thus welfare work developed in the United States, and it is interesting to observe, now, that many of our great corporations are finding time and funds to expend upon purely æsthetic improvements, and that, in the construction of the most modern American industrial plants, architects, landscape gardeners, and engineering men work in coöperation, so that, instead of being lopsided, the developments are harmonious and oftentimes beautiful.
On work calculated to prevent accidents in mines, not only the Tennessee Coal, Iron, & Railroad Company, but all the leading mining companies in the State join for conference. As a result the number of accidents steadily decreases. Nine years ago one man was killed, on an average, for every 100,000 tons of iron ore raised. The record at the time of our visit was one man to 450,000 tons. In the coal mines, where nine years ago one man was killed for every 75,000 tons raised, the recent record is one man for 650,000 tons.
In 1914, 126 men were killed in the coal mines of Alabama. In 1915, though the tonnage was about the same, this number was reduced to 63, which was a record. All this is the result of safety work.
"Aside from humane considerations," said an official of the Tennessee Company, "this concern realizes that the man is the most valuable machine it has."
This gentleman was one of the ablest men we metin the South. While taking us through the company's plant, and explaining to us the various operations, he was interesting, but the real enthusiasm of the man did not crop out until he took us to the company's villages and showed us what was being done for the benefit of operatives and their families, and, of course, for the benefit of the company as well—for he was a corporation official of the modern school, and he knew that by benefiting its men a corporation necessarily benefits itself.
The story of the Tennessee Company's work among its employees, which began about five years ago, some time after the company was taken over by the United States Steel Corporation, is too great to be more than touched on here. In the department of health thirty-six doctors, sixteen nurses, and a squad of sanitary inspectors are employed. The department of social science covers education, welfare, and horticulture. To me the work of these departments was a revelation. Each camp has a first-rate hospital, each has its schools and guildhall, and everything is run as only an efficiently managed corporation can run things.
The Docena Village is less like one's idea of a coal "camp" than of a pretty suburban development, or a military post, with officers' houses built around a parade. The grounds are well kept; there is a tennis court with vine-clad trellises about it, a fine playground for children, pretty brick walks, with splendid trees to shade them; and there is a brick schoolhouse which is abetter building, better equipped, better lighted, and, above all, better ventilated than the schools I attended in my boyhood.
Near the school is the guildhall, which is used for religious services, meetings, and entertainments. And best of all, perhaps, the houses are not the rows of sad, unpainted cabins one remembers having seen in western mining camps, but are pretty cottages, touched with a slight architectural variety, and with little variations of color, so that each home has individuality.
The schools are financed partly by the company and partly by the parents of the three thousand scholars. The teachers are, for the most part, graduates of leading colleges—Smith, Wellesley, Vassar, the University of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin—and educational work of great variety is carried on, including instruction in English for foreign employees, and domestic-science classes for women—separate establishments, of course, for whites and blacks, for the color line is drawn in southern mining camps as elsewhere. Negroes are, however, better provided for by the corporation than by most southern municipalities, both in the way of living conditions and of education.
On the whole, I believe that a child who grows up in the Docena Village, and is educated there, has actually a better chance than one who grows up in most Alabama towns, or, for the matter of that, in towns in any other State which has not compulsory education.Moreover, I doubt that there is in all Alabama another kindergarten as truly charming as the one we visited at Docena, or that there is, in the State, a schoolhouse of the same size which is as perfect as the one we saw in that camp.
In another camp old houses have been remodeled, giving practical demonstration of what can be done in the way of making a hovel into a pretty home by the intelligent use of a little lattice-work, a little paint, and a few vines and flowers. Old boarding-houses in this neighborhood have been converted into community houses, with entertainment halls, shower baths, and other conveniences for the men and their families. Thus tests are being made to discover whether it is possible to encourage among certain classes of foreign laborers, whose habits of life have not, to put it mildly, been of the tidiest, some appreciation of the standard of civilization represented by clean, pretty cottages, pleasant meeting houses, and shower baths.
I have not told about the billiard tables, bowling alleys, and game rooms of the clubs, nor about the model rooms fitted up to show housewives how they may make their homes attractive at but slight expense, nor about the annual medical examination of the children, nor about the company dentists who charge their patients only for the cost of gold actually used, nor about the fine company store at Edgewater Mine, nor about the excellent meats supplied by the company butchers, nor about the low prices of supplies, nor about the effort todiscourage employees from buying cheap furniture at high prices on the installment plan, nor, above all, about the clean, decent, happy look of the families we chanced to see.
Even had I the space in which to tell of these things, it is perhaps wiser that I refrain from doing so. For I am aware that in speaking anything but ill of a great corporation I have scandalously outraged precedent. Nor does it argue well for my powers of observation, or those of my companion. I feel confident that where our limited visions perceived only prosperity and contentment, certain of my brother writers, and his brother illustrators would, in our places, have rent the thin, vaporish veil of apparent corporate kindliness, and found such foul shame, such hideous malignity, such grasping, grubby greed, such despicable soul-destroying despotism, as to shock the simple nature of a chief of the old-time Russian Secret Police.
It shames me to think what my friend Lincoln Steffens could have done had he but enjoyed my opportunities. It shames me to think what John Reed or other gifted writers for "The Masses" could have done. And I should think that Wallace Morgan would writhe with shame. For, where Art Young would have seen heavy-jowled, pig-eyed Capital, in a silk hat and a checked suit, whirling a cruel knout over the broad and noble (but bent and shuddering) back of Labor—where Boardman Robinson would have found a mother, her white, drawn face half hidden by the shoddy shawlof black, to which cling the hands of her emaciated brood—what has Wallace Morgan seen?
A steel-plant in operation. A company steel-plant! Acorporationsteel-plant! Atruststeel-plant.
Yet never so much as a starving cat or a pile of garbage in the foreground!
Before we saw the train which was to take us from Birmingham to Columbus, Mississippi, we began to sense its quality. When we attempted to purchase parlor car seats of the ticket agent at the Union Station and were informed by him that our train carried no parlor car, it seemed to us that his manner was touched with cynicism, and this impression was confirmed by his reply to our further timid inquiry as to a dining car:
"Where do you gentlemen reckon you're a-goin' to, anyhow?"
Presently we passed through the gate and better understood the nature of the ticket agent's thoughts. The train consisted of several untidy day coaches, the first a Jim Crow car, the others for white people. The negro car was already so full that many of its occupants had to stand in the aisle, but this did not seem to trouble them, for all were gabbling happily, and the impression one got, in glancing through the door, was of many sets of handsome white teeth displayed in as many dark grinning faces. There are innumerablethings for which we cannot envy the negro, but neither his teeth nor his good nature are among them.
It was Saturday afternoon, and the two or three other cars, though not overcrowded, were well filled with people from the neighboring mining towns who were going home after having spent the morning shopping in the city. Almost all our fellow passengers carried packages, many had infants with them, and we were struck with the fact that the complexions of these people suggested a diet of pie—fried pie, if there be such a thing—that a peculiarly high percentage of them suffered from diseases of the eye, and that the pervading smell of the car in which we sat was of oranges, bananas, babies, and overheated adults.
A young mother in the seat in front of us had with her three small children, the youngest an infant in arms. She was feeding a banana to the second child, who looked about two years old. Behind us a clean, capable-looking woman talked in a broad Scottish dialect with another housewife whose jargon was that of the mountaineers.
The region through which the train presently began to wind its way was green and hilly, and there were many stops at villages, all of them mining camps apparently, made up of shabby little cabins scattered helter-skelter upon the hillsides. In many of the cabin doorways mothers lingered with their broods watching the train, and on all the station platforms stood crowds of idlers—men, women, and children, negro and white—many of the men stamped, by their coal-begrimed faces, their stained overalls, and the lamps above the visors of their caps, as mine workers.
After a time my companion and I moved to the exceedingly dirty smoking room at the end of the car, where we sat and listened to the homely conversation of a group of men who seemed not only to know one another, but to know the same people in towns along the line. Between stations they gossiped, smoked, chewed, spat, and swore together like so many New England crossroad sages, but when the train stopped they gave encouraging attention to the droll performances of one of their number, a shaggy, unshaven, rawboned man, of middle age, gray-haired and collarless, who sat near the window and uttered convincing imitations of the sounds made by chickens, roosters, pigs, goats, and crows.
A shaggy, unshaven, rawboned man, gray-haired and collarless, sat near the window and uttered convincing imitations of the sounds made by chickens, roosters, pigs, goats and crowsA shaggy, unshaven, rawboned man, gray-haired and collarless, sat near the window and uttered convincing imitations of the sounds made by chickens, roosters, pigs, goats and crows
The platform crowds, the negroes in particular, were mystified and lured by this animal chorus coming from a passenger coach. On hearing it they would first gaze in astonishment at the car, then edge up to the windows and doors, and peer in with eyes solemn, round, and wondering, only to be more amazed than ever by the discovery that the car housed neither bird nor beast. This bucolic comedy was repeated at every station until we reached Wyatt, Alabama, where our gifted fellow traveler arose, pointed his collar button toward the door, bade us farewell, and departed, saying that he was going to "walk over to Democrat."
Presently the conductor dropped in for a chat, in thecourse of which he informed the assembly that a certain old lady in one of the towns along the way had died the night before, whereupon our companions of the smoking room, all of whom seemed to have known the old lady well, held a protracted discussion of her history and traits.
After a time my companion and I put in a few questions about the State of Mississippi. Boiled down, the principal information we gathered was as follows:
By the 1910 census Mississippi had not one city of 25,000 inhabitants. Meridian, with 23,000, was (and probably still is) her metropolis, with Jackson and Vicksburg, cities of about 20,000 each, following. The entire State has but fifteen cities having a population of 5000 or more, so that, of a total of about a million and three-quarters of people in the State (more than half of them colored), only about one-tenth live in towns with a population of 5000 or over.
After a little visit the conductor went away. Now and then a man would leave us and get off at a station, or some new passenger would join our group. Presently I found myself thinking about dinner, and asked a man wearing an electric-blue cap if he knew what provision was made for the evening meal.
Before he could reply the train boy, who had come into the smoking room a few minutes before, piped up. He was a train boy of a type I had supposed extinct: the kind of train boy one might have encountered on almost any second-rate train twenty years ago,—a bold, impudent young smartaleck, full of insistent salesmanship and obnoxious conversation. He declared that dinner was not to be had, and that the only sustenance available en route consisted in the uninviting assortment of fruit, nuts, candy, and sweet tepid beverages contained in his basket.
Fortunately for us, the man we had addressed knew better.
"What do you want to lie like that for, boy?" he demanded. "You know as well as I do that the brakeman takes on five boxes of lunch at Covin."
"Well," said the boy, with a grin, "I gotta sell things, ain't I? The brakeman hadn't oughta have that graft anyhow.I'doughta have it. He gets them lunches fer two bits and sells 'em for thirty-five cents." Far from feeling abashed, he was pleased with himself.
"Folks is funny people," remarked a man with a weather-beaten face who sat in the corner seat, and seemed to be addressing no one in particular. "I know a boy that's going to git hung some day. And when they've got the noose rigged nice around his neck, and everything ready, and the trap a-waitin' to be sprung, why, then that boy is goin' to be so sorry for hisself that he won't hardly know what to do. He'll say: 'I ain't never had no chance in life, I ain't. The world ain't never used me right.' ... Yes, folks is funny people."
After this soliloquy there occurred a brief silence inthe smoking room, and presently the train boy took up his basket and went upon his way.
"You say they take on the lunches at Covin now?" one of the passengers asked of the man in the electric-blue cap.
"Yes."
"What's become of old man Whitney, over to Fayetteville?"
"They used to git lunches off of him," replied the other, "but the old man wasn't none too dependable. Now and then he'd oversleep, and folks on the 5a. m.out of Columbus was like to starve for breakfast."
"Right smart shock-headed boy the old man's got," put in another. "The old man gives 'im anything he wants. He wanted a motorcycle, and the old man give 'im one. Then he wanted one of them hot-candy machines; they cost about two hundred and fifty dollars, but the old man give it to 'im just the same."
"The kid went to San Francisco with it, didn't he?" asked the man with the electric-blue cap.
"He started to go there," replied the former speaker, "but he only got as fur as Little Rock; then he come on back home, and the old man bought 'im a wireless-telegraph plant. Yeaup! That boy gets messages right outa the air—from Washington, D. C., and Berlin, and every place. The Govamunt don't allow 'im to tell you much of it. He tells a little, though—just to give you a notion."
So, through the five-hour ride the conversation ran. Several times the talk drifted to politics and to the European War, but the politics discussed were local and lopsided, and the war was all too clearly regarded as something interesting but vague and remote. On the entire journey not one word was spoken indicating that the people of this section had the least grasp on any national question, or that they were considering national questions, or that they realized what the war in Europe is about—that it is a war for freedom and democracy, a war against war, a war to prevent a few individuals from ever again plunging the world into war. Nor, though the day of our entry into the war was close at hand, had the idea that we might be forced to take part in the conflict so much as occurred to any of them.
They were not stupid people; on the contrary, some of them possessed a homely and picturesque philosophy; but they were not informed, and the reason they were not informed has to do with one of the chief needs of our rural population—especially the rural population of the South.
What they need is good newspapers. They need more world news and national news in place of county news and local briefs. In the whole South, moreover, there is need for general political news instead of biased news written always from inside the Democratic party, and sandwiched in between patent medicine advertisements.
It was dark when, after a journey of one hundred and twenty miles at the rate of twenty miles an hour, we reached Columbus, a city which was never intended to be a metropolis and which will never be one.
Columbus is situated upon a bluff on the east bank of the Tombigbee River, to the west of which is a very fertile lowland region, filled with plantations, the owners of which, a century ago, founded the town in order that their families might have churches, schools, and the advantages of social life. As the town grew, a curious but entirely natural community spirit developed; when a gas plant, water works, or hotel was needed, prosperous citizens got together and financed the enterprise, not so much for profit as for mutual comfort.
In these ante bellum times the planters used to make annual journeys to Mobile and New Orleans, going by boat on the Tombigbee and taking their crops and their families with them. After selling their cotton and enjoying themselves in the city, they would load supplies for the ensuing year upon river boats and return to Columbus, where the supplies were transferred to their vast attic storerooms.
Though their only water transportation was to the southward, they did not journey invariably in that direction, but sometimes made excursions to such fashionable watering places as the Virginia Springs, or Saratoga, to which they drove in their own carriages.
When, in the early days of railroad building, the Mobile & Ohio Railroad was being planned, the company proposed to include Columbus as one of its main-line points and asked for a right of way through the town and a cash bonus in consideration of the benefits Columbus would derive from railroad service. Both requests were refused. The railroad company then waived the bonus and attempted to obtain a right of way by purchase. But to no purpose. The citizens would not sell. They did not want a railroad. They were prosperous and healthy, and they contended that a railroad would bring poor people and disease among them, besides killing farm animals and causing runaways. The company was consequently forced to make a new survey, and when the line was built it passed at a distance of a dozen miles or more from the city.
Gradually dawned the era of speed and impatience. People who had hitherto been satisfied to make long journeys in horse-drawn vehicles, and had refused the railroad a right of way, now began to complain of the twelve-mile drive to the nearest station, and to suggest that the company build a branch line into the town. But this time it was the railroad's turn to say no, and Columbus was informed that if it wished a branchline it could go ahead and build it at its own expense. This was finally done at a cost of fifty thousand dollars.
With the construction of the branch line, carriages fell into disuse and dilapidation, and many an old barouche, landau, and brett passed into the hands of the negro hackmen who were former slaves of the old families. Among these ex-slaves the traditions of the first families of Columbus were upheld long after the war, and it thus happened that when, a few years since, a young New Yorker, arriving for a visit in the town, alighted from his train, he was greeted by an ancient negro who, indicating an equally ancient carriage, cried: "Hack, suh! Hack, suh! Ain't nevah been rid in by none but the Billupses."
Not every young man from the North would have understood this reference, but by a coincidence it was at the residence of Mrs. Billups that this one had come to visit.
Neither as to hack nor habitation were my companion and I so fortunate as the earlier visitor. Our conveyance was a Ford, and the driver warned us, as we progressed through shadowy tree-bordered streets, that the Gilmer Hotel was crowded with delegates who had come to attend the State convention of the Order of the Eastern Star. Nor was his warning without foundation. The wide old-fashioned lobby of the Gilmer was hung with the colors of the Order and packed with Ladies of the Eastern Star and their ecstatic families; wemanaged to make our way through the press only to be told by the single worn-out clerk on duty that not a room was to be had.
Unlike the haughty clerk who had dismissed us from the Tutwiler Hotel in Birmingham, the clerk at the Gilmer was not without the quality of mercy. Overworked though he was, he began at once to telephone about the town in an effort to secure us rooms. But if this led us to conclude that our problem was thereby in effect solved, we discovered, after listening to his brief telephonic conversations with a series of unseen ladies, that the conclusion was premature. Though there were vacant rooms in several private houses, strange stray males were not desired as lodgers.
Concerned as we were over our plight, my companion and I could not help being aware that a young lady who had been standing at the desk when we came in, and had since remained there, was taking kindly interest in the situation. Nor, for the matter of that, could we help being aware, also, that she was very pretty in her soft black dress and corsage of narcissus. She did not speak to us; indeed, she hardly honored us with a glance; but, despite her sweet circumspection, we sensed in some subtle way that she was sorry for us, and were cheered thereby.
After a time, when the clerk seemed to have reached the end of his resources, the young lady hesitantly ventured some suggestions as to other houses where rooms might possibly be had. These suggestions she addressed entirely to the clerk—who, upon receiving them, did more telephoning.
"Have you tried Mrs. Eichelberger?" the young lady asked him, after several more failures.
He had not, but promptly did so. His conversation with Mrs. Eichelberger started promisingly, but presently we heard him make the damning admission he had been compelled repeatedly to make before:
"No, ma'am. It's two men."
Then, just as the last hope seemed to be fading, our angel of mercy spoke again.
"Wait!" she put in impulsively. "Tell her—tell her I recommend them."
Thus informed, Mrs. Eichelberger became compliant; but when the details were arranged, and we turned to thank our benefactor, she had fled.
Mrs. Eichelberger's house was but a few blocks distant from the Gilmer. She installed us in two large, comfortable rooms, remarking, as we entered, that we had better hurry, as we were already late.
"Late for what?" one of us asked.
"Didn't you come for the senior dramatics?"
"Senior dramatics where?"
"At the I. I. and C."
"What is the I. I. and C?"
At this question a look of doubt, if not suspicion, crossed the lady's face.
"Where are you-all from?" she demanded.
The statement that we came from New York seemedto explain satisfactorily our ignorance of the I. I. and C. Evidently Mrs. Eichelberger expected little of New Yorkers. The I. I. and C., she explained, was the Mississippi Industrial Institute and College, formerly known as the Female College, a State institution for young women; and the senior dramatics were even then in progress in the college chapel, just up the street.
To the chapel, therefore, my companion and I repaired as rapidly as might be, guided thither by frequent sounds of applause.
From among the seniors standing guard in cap and gown at the chapel door, the quick artistic eye of my companion selected a brown-eyed auburn-haired young goddess as the one from whom tickets might most appropriately be bought. Nor did he display thrift in the transaction. Instead of buying modest quarter seats he magnificently purchased the fifty-cent kind.
The dazzling ticket seller, transformed to usher, now led us into the crowded auditorium and down an aisle. A few rows from the stage she stopped, and, fastening a frigid gaze upon two hapless young women who were seated some distance in from the passageway, bade them emerge and yield their place to us.
Of course we instantly protested, albeit in whispers, as the play was going on. But the beautiful Olympian lightly brushed aside our objections.
"They don't belong here," she declared loftily. "They're freshmen—and they only bought quarter seats."
Then, as the guilty pair seemed to hesitate, she summoned them with a compelling gesture and the command: "Come out!"
At this they arose meekly enough, whereupon we redoubled our protests. But to no purpose. The Titian-tinted creature was relentless. Our pleas figured no more in her scheme of things than if they had been babblings in an unknown tongue. To add to our discomfiture, a large part of the audience seemed to have perceived the nature of our dilemma, and was giving us amused attention.
It was a crisis; and in a crisis—especially one in which a member of the so-called gentle sex is involved—I have learned to look to my companion. He understands women. He has often told me so. And now, by his action, he proved it. What he did was to turn and flee, and I fled with him; nor did we pause until we were safely hidden away in humble twenty-five cent seats at the rear of the chapel, in the shadow of the overhanging gallery.
It is not my intention to write an extended criticism of the performance. For one thing, I witnessed only a fragment of it, and for another, though I once acted for a brief period as dramatic critic on a New York newspaper, I was advised by my managing editor to give up dramatic criticism, and I have followed his advice.
The scene evidently represented a room, its walls made of red screens behind which rose the lofty pipes of the chapel organ. On a pedestal at one side stood a bustof the Venus de Milo, while on the other hung an engraving of a familiar picture which I believe is called "The Fates," and which has the appearance of having been painted by some-one-or-other like Leighton or Bouguereau or Harold Bell Wright.
After we had given some attention to the play my companion remarked that, from the dialect, he judged it to be "Uncle Tom's Cabin." I had been told, however, that for certain reasons "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is never played in the South; I therefore asked the young man in front of me what play it was. He replied that it was Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson's comedy, "The Man From Home," and as he made the statement openly, I feel that I am violating no confidence in repeating what he said—especially since his declaration was supported by the program which he showed me.
He was a pleasant young man. Perceiving that I was a stranger, he volunteered the additional information that the masculine rôles, as well as the feminine ones, were being played by girls; and I trust that I will not seem to be boasting of perspicacity when I declare that there had already entered my mind a suspicion that such was indeed the case.
Behold them! Gaze upon the character called Daniel Voorhees Pike! See what long strides he takes, and with what pretty tiny feet! Observe the manliness with which he thrusts his pink little hands deep in the pockets of his—or somebody's—pantaloons!
Gaze upon the character called Daniel Voorhees Pike! Observe the manliness with which he thrusts his pink little hands deep in the pockets of his—or somebody's—pantaloons!Gaze upon the character called Daniel Voorhees Pike! Observe the manliness with which he thrusts his pink little hands deep in the pockets of his—or somebody's—pantaloons!
Look at the Grand Duke Vasili of Russia, his sweetoval face and rosy mouth partly obscured by mustache and goatee of a most strange wooliness.
Observe the ineradicable daintiness of the Honorable Almeric St. Aubyn, but more particularly attend to that villain of helpless loveliness, the Earl of Hawcastle. The frightful life which, it is indicated, the Earl has led, leaves no tell-tale marks upon his blooming countenance. His only facial disfigurement consists in a mustache which, by reason of its grand-ducal lanateness, seems to hint at a mysterious relationship between the British and Russian noblemen.
Take note, moreover, of the outlines of the players. If ever earl was belted it was this one. If ever duke in evening dress revealed delectable convexities of figure, it was this duke. If ever worthy male from Indiana spoke in a soprano voice and was lithe, alluring, and recurvous, she was Daniel Voorhees Pike.
A young woman seated near us described to her escort the personal characteristics of the various young ladies on the stage, and when we heard her call one girl who played in a betrousered part, "a perfect darling," we echoed inwardly the sentiment. All were darlings. And this especial "perfect darling" appeared as well to be a "perfect thirty-six."
The Earl was my undoing. At a critical point in the unfolding of the plot there was talk of his having been connected with a scandal in St. Petersburg. This he attempted to deny, and though I am unable to quote the exact words of his denial, the sound of itlingers sweetly in my memory. Nor would the exact words, could I give them, convey, in print, the quality of what was said, for the Earl, and all the rest, spoke in the soft, melodious tones of Mississippi.
"What you-all fussin' raound heah for, this mownin'?" That, perhaps, conveys some sense of a line he spoke on entering.
And when, in reply, one of the others mentioned the scandal at St. Petersburg, the flavor of the Earl's retort, as its cooing tones remain with me, was this:
"Wha', honey! What you-all mean hintin' raound 'baout St. Petuhsbuhg? I reckon you don' know what you talkin' 'baout! Ah nevuh was in that taown in all ma bo'n days!"
What followed I am unable to relate, for the Earl's speech caused me to become emotional, and my companion, after informing me severely that I was making myself conspicuous, removed me from the chapel.
The auburn goddess was still on duty at the door as we went out. Advancing, she placed in each of our hands a quarter. I regret to say that, in my shaken state, I misinterpreted this action.
"Oh, no!Please!" I protested, fearing that she thought we had not enjoyed the performance, and was therefore returning our money. "It really wasn't bad at all. We're only going because we have an engagement."
"Be quiet!" interrupted my companion in a savage undertone, jerking me along by the arm. "It's only a rebate on the seats!" And without allowing me a chance to set myself right he dragged me out.
Mrs. Eichelberger supplied us merely with a place to sleep. For meals she referred us to a lady who lived a few doors up the street. But when in the morning we went, full of hunger and of hope, to the house of this lady, we were coldly informed that breakfast was over, and were recommended to the Bell Café, downtown.
My companion and I are not of that robust breed which enjoys a bracing walk before its morning coffee, and the fact that the streets of Columbus charmed us, as we now saw them for the first time by daylight, is proof enough of their quality. There is but little appetite for beauty in an empty stomach.
The streets were splendidly wide, and bordered with fine old trees, and the houses, each in its own lawn, each with its vines and shrubs, were full of the suggestion of an easy-going home life and an informal hospitality. Most of them were of frame and in their architecture illustrated the decadence of the eighties and nineties, but here or there was a fine old brick homestead with a noble columned portico, or a formal Georgian house, disposed among beautiful trees and gardens and sheltered from the street by an ancient hedge of box. So, though Columbus is, as I have indicated, not too easily reached by rail, and though, as I have further indicated, walks before breakfast are not to my taste, I am compelled to say that for both the journey and the walk I felt repaid by the sight of some of the old houses—the Baldwin house, the W. D. Humphries house, the J. O. Banks house, the old McLaren house, the Kinnebrew house, the Thomas Hardy house, the J. M. Morgan house, with its garden of lilies and roses, its giant magnolia trees and its huge camellia bushes; and most of all, perhaps, for its Georgian beauty, the mellow tone of its old brick, its rich tangle of southern growths, and its associations, the venerable mansion of the late General Stephen D. Lee, C. S. A.—now the property of the latter's only son, Mr. Blewett Lee, general counsel of the Illinois Central Railroad, and a resident of Chicago.
The houses were full of the suggestion of an easy-going home life and an informal hospitality. (Back yard of the former home of General Stephen D. Lee.)The houses were full of the suggestion of an easy-going home life and an informal hospitality. (Back yard of the former home of General Stephen D. Lee.)
It was apropos of our visit to the Lee house that I was told of a dramatic and touching example of the rebirth of amity between North and South.
Stephen D. Lee it was who, as a young artillery officer attached to the staff of General Beauregard, transmitted the actual order to fire on Fort Sumter, the shot which began the war. Two years later, having been promoted to the rank of lieutenant-general, the same Stephen D. Lee participated in the defense of Vicksburg against the assaults of Porter's gunboats from the river and of Grant's armies, which hemmed in the hilled city on landward side, until at last, on the 4th of July,1863, the place was surrendered, making Grant's fame secure.
Years after, when the Government of the United States accepted a statue of General Stephen D. Lee, to be placed upon the battle ground of Vicksburg—now a national park—it was the late General Frederick Dent Grant, son of the capturer of the city, who journeyed thither to unveil the memorial to his father's former foe. And by a peculiarly gracious and fitting set of circumstances it came about that when, in April last, the ninety-fifth anniversary of the birth of U. S. Grant was celebrated in his native city, Galena, Illinois, it was Blewett Lee, only son of the general taken by Grant at Vicksburg, who journeyed to Galena and there in a memorial address, returned the earlier compliment paid to the memory of his own father by Grant's son.
Columbus may perhaps appreciate the charm of its old homes, but there is evidence to show that it did not appreciate certain other weatherworn structures of great beauty. I have seen photographs of an old Baptist Church with a fine (and not at all Baptist-looking) portico and fluted columns, which was torn down to make room for the present stupidly commonplace Baptist church: and I have seen pictures of the beautiful old town hall which was recently supplanted by an ignorantly ordinary town building of yellow pressed brick. The destruction of these two early buildings represents an irreparable loss to Columbus, and it is to be hopedthat the town will some day be sufficiently enlightened to know that this is true and to regret that it did not restore and enlarge them instead of tearing them down.
Until a decade or two ago Columbus had, so far as I can learn, but four streets possessing names: Main Street, Market Street, College Street, and Catfish Alley, all other streets being known as "the street that Mrs. Billups, or Mrs. Sykes, or Mrs. Humphries, or Mrs. Some-one-else lives on."
Market and Main are business streets—at least they are so where they cross—and, like the other streets, are wide. They are lined with brick buildings few if any of them more than three stories in height, and it was in one of these buildings, on Main Street, that we found the Bell Café—advertised as "the most exclusive café in the State."
Being in search of breakfast rather than exclusiveness, we did not sit at one of the tables, but at the long lunch counter, where we were quickly served.
After breakfast we felt strong enough to look at picture post cards, and to that end visited first "Cheap Joe's" and then the shop of Mr. Divilbis, where newspapers, magazines, sporting goods, cameras, and all such things, are sold. Having viewed post cards picturing such scenes as "Main Street looking north," "The 1st Baptist Church," and "SteamerAmerica, Tombigbee River," we were about to depart, when our attention was drawn to a telephonic conversation whichhad started between Mr. Divilbis's clerk and a customer who was thinking of going in for the game of lawn tennis. The half of the conversation which was audible to us proved entertaining, and we dallied, eavesdropping.
The clerk began by recommending tennis. "Yes," he said, "that would be very nice. Everybody is playing tennis now."
But that got him into trouble, for after a pause he said: "I'm sorry I can't tell you everything about it. I don't play tennis myself. Al could tell you, though. He plays."
Then, after a much longer pause: "Well, ma'am, you see, in a game of lawn tennis everybody owns their own racquet."
At this juncture a tall, thin man in what is known (excepting at Palm Beach) as a "Palm Beach suit," entered the shop and the clerk asked his inquisitor to hold the wire while he made some inquiries. After a long conversation with the new arrival he returned to the telephone and resumed his explanation.
"Well, you see, they have a net, and one stands on one side and one on the other—yes, ma'am, therecanbe two on each side—and one serves. What? Yes, he hits the ball over the net, and it has to go in the opposite court on the other side, and then if that one doesn't send it back—Yes, the court is marked with lines—why, that counts fifteen. The next count is thirty. What? No, ma'am, I don't know why they count thatway. No, it's just the way they do in lawn tennis. If your opponent has nothing, why, they call that 'love.' Yes, that's it—l-o-v-e—just the same as when anybody'sinlove. No, ma'am, I don't know why.... So that's the way they count.
"No, ma'am, the lines are boundaries. You have to stand in a certain place and hit the ball in a certain place.... No, I don't mean that way. You've got to hit it so itlandsin a certain place; and the one that's playing against you has to hit it back in a certain place, and if it goes in someotherplace, then you can't play it any more. Oh, no! Not all day. I mean that endsthatpart, and you start over. You just keep on doing like that."
But though it was apparent that he considered his explanation complete, the lady at the other end of the wire was evidently not yet satisfied, and as he began to struggle with more questions we left the shop and went to the Gilmer Hotel to see if any mail had come for us.
The Gilmer was built by slave labor some years before the war, and was in its day considered a very handsome edifice. Nor is it to-day an unsatisfactory hotel for a town of the size of Columbus. Its old brick walls are sturdy, and its rooms are of a fine spaciousness. Downstairs it has been somewhat remodeled, but the large parlor on the second floor is much as it was in the beginning, even to the great mirrors and the carved furniture imported more than sixty years ago from France. Most of the doors still have the old locks,and the window cords originally installed were of such a quality that they have not had to be renewed.
The Gilmer was still new when the Battle of Shiloh was fought, and several thousand of the wounded were brought to Columbus. The hotel and various other buildings, including that of the former Female Institute, were converted into hospitals, as were also many private houses in the town.
Though there was never fighting at Columbus, the end of the war found some fifteen hundred soldiers' graves in Friendship Cemetery, perhaps twoscore of the number being those of Federals. The citizens were, at this time, too poor and too broken in spirit to erect memorials, but several ladies of Columbus made it their custom to visit the cemetery and care for the graves of the Confederate dead. This movement, started by individuals—Miss Matt Moreton, Mrs. J. T. Fontaine, and Mrs. Green T. Hill—was soon taken up by other ladies of the place and resulted in a determination to make the decoration of soldiers' graves an annual occurrence.
In an old copy of the "Mississippi Index," published at the time, may be found an account of the solemn march of the women, young and old, to the cemetery, on April 25, 1866—one year after Robert E. Lee's surrender—and of the decoration of the graves not only of Confederate but of Federal soldiers. It is the proud boast of Columbus that this occasion constituted the first celebration of the now national Decoration Day—or, as it is more properly called, Memorial Day.
It should perhaps be said here that Columbus, Georgia, disputes the claim of Columbus, Mississippi, as to Memorial Day. In the Georgia city it is contended that the idea of decorating soldiers' graves originated with Miss Lizzie Rutherford, later Mrs. Roswell Ellis, of that place. The inscription of Mrs. Ellis' monument in Linwood Cemetery, Columbus, Georgia, states that the idea of Memorial Day originated with her.
It seems clear, however, that the same idea occurred to women in both cities simultaneously, and that, while the actual celebration of the day occurred in Columbus, Mississippi, one day earlier than in Columbus, Georgia, the ladies of the latter city may have been first in suggesting that Memorial Day be not a local celebration, but one in which the whole South should take part.
The incident of the first decoration of the graves of Union as well as Confederate soldiers appears, however, to belong entirely to Columbus, Mississippi, and it is certain that this exhibition of magnanimity inspired F. W. Finch to write the famous poem, "The Blue and the Gray," for when that poem was first published in the "Atlantic Monthly" for September, 1867, it carried the following headnote: