HINTS TO BEGINNERSBuy the best horses you can afford; but remember that a workably sound horse, though blemished or a bit gone in the wind, will give you plenty of fun, if you do not knock him about.Obey the Master's orders without argument; in the field he is supreme.Hold up your hat if you view the fox away; do not halloa. If none of the hunt servants see your uplifted hat, go and tell the nearest of them.Ride fast at water; if hounds clear a brook a horse has a good chance of doing so. Steady your horse and let him take his own pace at big timber.Keep well away from hounds, and down wind of them at a check. The steam from heated horses adds a fresh difficulty to recovery of lost scent. Look out for signs that may indicate the whereabouts or passing of the fox. Huddling sheep, staring cattle, chattering magpies, circling rooks, may mean that they see, or have just seen, the fox.Never lark over fences; it tires your horse needlessly and may cause damage and annoy the farmer.Never take a short cut through a covert that is likely to be drawn during the day; and keep well away from a covert thathounds are drawing if you start for home before the day's sport is over, lest you head the fox.Always await your turn at a gate or gap; do not try and push forward in a crowd.If you follow a pilot, do not "ride in his pocket"; give him plenty of room, say fifteen lengths, at fences, or if he falls you might jump on him.If your horse kicks, tie a knot of red ribbon in his tail. N. B.—Do not be guilty of using this "rogue's badge" for the sake of getting room in a crowd, as some men have been known to do.If a man is down and in danger of being kicked, put your own saddle over his head.HINTS CONCERNING THE HUNTERIt should be remembered that in the ordinary routine the horse is fed three or four times a day. On a hunting day he gets one good feed early in the morning and loses one or two feeds. Moreover, he is doing hard work for hours together, with a weight on his back. Carry a couple of forage biscuits in your pocket to give him during the day. Also get off and relieve him of your weight when you can do so.When he is brought home, put him in his stall or box, slack the girths, take off the bridle and give him his gruel at once. Throw a rug over his loins and pull his ears for a minute or two.An old horse needs more clothing than a young one.Condition is a matter of seasons, not of months; a horse in hard condition can take without injury a fall that would disable a soft one for weeks.
HINTS TO BEGINNERS
Buy the best horses you can afford; but remember that a workably sound horse, though blemished or a bit gone in the wind, will give you plenty of fun, if you do not knock him about.
Obey the Master's orders without argument; in the field he is supreme.
Hold up your hat if you view the fox away; do not halloa. If none of the hunt servants see your uplifted hat, go and tell the nearest of them.
Ride fast at water; if hounds clear a brook a horse has a good chance of doing so. Steady your horse and let him take his own pace at big timber.
Keep well away from hounds, and down wind of them at a check. The steam from heated horses adds a fresh difficulty to recovery of lost scent. Look out for signs that may indicate the whereabouts or passing of the fox. Huddling sheep, staring cattle, chattering magpies, circling rooks, may mean that they see, or have just seen, the fox.
Never lark over fences; it tires your horse needlessly and may cause damage and annoy the farmer.
Never take a short cut through a covert that is likely to be drawn during the day; and keep well away from a covert thathounds are drawing if you start for home before the day's sport is over, lest you head the fox.
Always await your turn at a gate or gap; do not try and push forward in a crowd.
If you follow a pilot, do not "ride in his pocket"; give him plenty of room, say fifteen lengths, at fences, or if he falls you might jump on him.
If your horse kicks, tie a knot of red ribbon in his tail. N. B.—Do not be guilty of using this "rogue's badge" for the sake of getting room in a crowd, as some men have been known to do.
If a man is down and in danger of being kicked, put your own saddle over his head.
HINTS CONCERNING THE HUNTER
It should be remembered that in the ordinary routine the horse is fed three or four times a day. On a hunting day he gets one good feed early in the morning and loses one or two feeds. Moreover, he is doing hard work for hours together, with a weight on his back. Carry a couple of forage biscuits in your pocket to give him during the day. Also get off and relieve him of your weight when you can do so.
When he is brought home, put him in his stall or box, slack the girths, take off the bridle and give him his gruel at once. Throw a rug over his loins and pull his ears for a minute or two.
An old horse needs more clothing than a young one.
Condition is a matter of seasons, not of months; a horse in hard condition can take without injury a fall that would disable a soft one for weeks.
In old times many of Virginia's country gentlemen kept their own packs, but though some followed thehounds according to the English tradition, there developed a less sportsmanlike style of hunting called "hilltopping," under which the hunting men rode to an elevated point and watched the hounds run the fox, without themselves attempting to follow across country and be in at the kill. As a result, the fox was, if caught, torn to pieces by the hounds, and the brush and head were infrequently saved.
Under the traditions of English fox-hunting—traditions the strictness of which can hardly be exaggerated—"hilltopping" is a more than doubtful sport, and, since organized fox-hunting in the United States is taken entirely from the English idea, the practice is tabooed on first-class hunting regions.
The origin of hilltopping is, however, easily understood. The old fox-hunters simply did not, as a rule, have horses adequate to negotiate the country, hunters not having been developed to any great extent in America in early times.
The perfect type of hunter is of thoroughbred stock. By the term "thoroughbred" horsemen do not mean highly bred horses of any kind, as is sometimes supposed, but only running horses. All such horses come originally of British stock, for it is in Great Britain that the breed has been developed, although it traces back, through a number of centuries, to a foundation of Arabian blood. I am informed that climatic and other conditions in a certain part of Ireland are for some reason peculiarly favorable to the development of huntersand that these conditions are duplicated in the Piedmont section of Virginia, and nowhere else in the whole world. Only the stanchest, bravest, fastest type of horse is suited for hunting in Virginia, and for this reason the more experienced riders to hounds prefer the thoroughbred, though half-bred and three-quarter-bred horses are also used to some extent, the thoroughbred often being too mettlesome, when he becomes excited, for any but the best riders. The finest qualities of a horse are brought out in hunting in the Piedmont section, for the pace here is very fast—much faster than in England, though it should be added that in the English hunting country there are more hedges than over here, and that the jumps are, upon the whole, stiffer.
The speed of the Piedmont Hunt and other hunts in Virginia is doubtless due to the use of southern hounds, these being American hounds, smaller and faster than English hounds, from which, however, they were originally bred. The desirable qualities in a pack of hounds are uniformity of type, substance, speed, and color. These points have to do not only with the style of a pack, but also with its hunting quality. Thus in the Piedmont pack they breed for a red hound with white markings, so that the pack may have an individual appearance, but in all packs a great effort is made to secure even speed, for a slow hound lags, while a fast one becomes an individual hunter. The unusual hound is therefore likely to be "drafted" from the pack.
There has been a long controversy as to whether theEnglish or American type of hound is best suited for hunting in this country, and the matter seems still to remain one of opinion. Probably the best English pack in the United States is that of Mr. A. Henry Higginson. Some years since, Mr. Higginson and Mr. Harry Worcester Smith, of Worcester, Massachusetts, master of the Grafton pack, made a bet of $5000 a side, each backing his own hounds, the question being that of the general suitability of the American versus the English hound for American country. The trials were made in the Piedmont region of Virginia, and Mr. Smith's American hounds won the wager for him.
In the last ten or twenty years hunting in the United States has been organized under the Hunts Committee of the National Steeplechase Association. Practically all the important hunting organizations are members of this association, there being forty of these: eleven in Virginia, nine in Pennsylvania, six in New York, four in Massachusetts, three each in Maryland and New Jersey, and one each in Connecticut, Vermont, Ohio, and Michigan—the Grosse Pointe Hounds, near Detroit, being the most westerly of recognized hunts, although there is some unrecognized hunting near Chicago.
An idea of the comparative importance of hunting in the United States and in England may be gathered from the fact that in England and Wales alone there are more than 180 packs of foxhounds, 88 packs of beagles, and 16 packs of staghounds, while Ireland and Scotland have many also. The war, however, has struck hard athunting in the British Isles. Baily's Hunting Directory for 1915-16, says:
"Hunting has given her best, for of those who have gone from the hunting field to join the colors, the masters lead, as they have led in more happy days, with a tale of over 80 per cent. of their number, the hunt secretaries following with over 50 per cent., while the hunt servants show over 30 per cent. No exact data are available to tell of the multitude from the rank and file that has followed this magnificent lead, excepting that from all the hunts there comes the same report, that practically every man fit for service has responded to the call."
It is estimated that 17,000 horses were drafted from hunting for the cavalry in England at the beginning of the war; and it is to be noticed that so soon after the outbreak as July, 1915, the "Directory" published a list of names of well-known hunting men killed in action, which occupied more than seven large pages printed in small type.
Under the heading "Incidents of the 1914-15 Season" are to be found many items of curious early war-time interest, a few of which I quote:
Lady Stalbridge announces willingness to act as field master of the South and West Wilts Hounds during her husband's absence in France.Lieutenant Charles Romer Williams took out to the front a pack of beagles, with which the officers of the Second Cavalry Brigade hoped to hunt Belgian hares.Capt. E. K. Bradbury, a member of the Cahir Harriers, earned the V. C. at Nery, but died from wounds.The Grafton Hounds have seventy-six followers with the colors.Admiral Sir David Beatty, of North Sea fame, has a hunting box at Brooksby Hall, in the Melton Mowbray country.Five members of the Crawley and Horsham Hounds have been killed, three wounded, and two are missing.Quorn fields down to about 30, instead of 300 last season.Captain the Honorable R. B. F. Robertson (Twenty-first Lancers) a prisoner of war. He took over the North Tipperary Hounds in May, and, of course, did not get a chance to have any sport.We now learn that the French authorities have discouraged fox-hunting behind the fighting lines. So did the Germans. One day British hounds took up the scent on their own initiative. The usual followers had bigger game afoot, and were in the thick of an engagement. The Germans gained ground and occupied the kennels. When the hounds returned from their chase and challenged the intruders they were shot down one by one.
Lady Stalbridge announces willingness to act as field master of the South and West Wilts Hounds during her husband's absence in France.
Lieutenant Charles Romer Williams took out to the front a pack of beagles, with which the officers of the Second Cavalry Brigade hoped to hunt Belgian hares.
Capt. E. K. Bradbury, a member of the Cahir Harriers, earned the V. C. at Nery, but died from wounds.
The Grafton Hounds have seventy-six followers with the colors.
Admiral Sir David Beatty, of North Sea fame, has a hunting box at Brooksby Hall, in the Melton Mowbray country.
Five members of the Crawley and Horsham Hounds have been killed, three wounded, and two are missing.
Quorn fields down to about 30, instead of 300 last season.
Captain the Honorable R. B. F. Robertson (Twenty-first Lancers) a prisoner of war. He took over the North Tipperary Hounds in May, and, of course, did not get a chance to have any sport.
We now learn that the French authorities have discouraged fox-hunting behind the fighting lines. So did the Germans. One day British hounds took up the scent on their own initiative. The usual followers had bigger game afoot, and were in the thick of an engagement. The Germans gained ground and occupied the kennels. When the hounds returned from their chase and challenged the intruders they were shot down one by one.
Such is the lore I had acquired when the motor came for me; whereupon, taking a few sandwiches to sustain me until supper time, I set forth through the night by Ford, for the station at The Plains.
The publication of the larger part of the foregoing chapter on fox hunting, in "Collier's Weekly," brought me a number of letters containing hunting anecdotes.
Mr. J. R. Smith of Martinsville, Virginia, calls my attention to marked difference in character between the red fox and the gray. The red fox, he says, depends upon his legs to elude the hounds, and will sometimes lead the hunt twenty-five miles from the place where he gets up, but the gray fox depends on cunning, and is more prone to run a few miles and "tack."
Mr. Smith tells the following story illustrative of the gray fox's amazing artfulness:
"We had started a fox on three different occasions," he writes, "running him a warm chase for about four miles and losing him every time in a sheep pasture. Finally we stationed a servant in that pasture to see what became of the fox. We started him again and he took the same route to the pasture. There the mystery was solved. The fox jumped on the back of a large ram, which, in fright, ran off about half a mile. The fox then jumped off and continued his run. When the hounds came up we urged them on to the point where the fox dismounted, and soon had his brush."
Another correspondent calls my attention to the fact that, in Virginia, hunting is not merely the sport of the rich, but that the farmers are enthusiastic members of the field—sometimes at the expense of their cattle and crops. He relates the following story illustrative of the point of view of the sporting Virginia farmer:
"A man from the Department of Agriculture came down into our section to look over farms and give advice to farmers. He went to see one farmer in my county and found that he had absolutely nothing growing, and that his livestock consisted of three hunters and thirty-two couples of hounds. The agricultural expert was scandalized. He told the farmer he ought to begin at once to raise hogs. 'You can feed them what you feed the dogs,' he said, 'and have good meat for your family aside from what you sell.'
"After hearing his visitor out, the farmer looked off across the country and spat ruminatively.
"'I ain't never seen no hawg that could catch a fox,' he said, and with that turned and went into the barn, evidently regarding the matter as closed. Clearly he did not share the view of the Irishman who dismissed fox hunting with the remark that a fox was 'damned hard to catch and no good when you got him.'"
Kind are her answers,But her performance keeps no day;Breaks time, as dancersFrom their own music when they stray.Lost is our freedomWhen we submit to women so:Why do we need 'emWhen, in their best, they work our woe?—Thomas Campion.
Kind are her answers,But her performance keeps no day;Breaks time, as dancersFrom their own music when they stray.
Lost is our freedomWhen we submit to women so:Why do we need 'emWhen, in their best, they work our woe?
—Thomas Campion.
The motor ride to The Plains was a cold and rough one. I remember that we had to ford a stream or two, and that once, where the mud had been churned up and made deep by the wheels of many vehicles, we almost stuck. Excepting at the fords, the road was dusty, and the dust was kept in circulation by the feet of countless saddle horses, on which men from the country to the south of Upperville were riding home from the races. All the way to The Plains our lights kept picking up these riders, sometimes alone, sometimes in groups, all of them going our way, we taking their dust until we overhauled them, then giving them ours.
Dust was over me like a close-fitting gray veil when I reached the railroad station only to find that the trainwas late. I had a magazine in my bag, but the light in the waiting-room was poor, so I took a place near the stove and gave myself up to anticipations of a bath, a comfortable room, clean clothing, and a good supper with my companion—and another companion much more beautiful.
I tried to picture her as she would look. She would be in evening dress, of course. After thinking over different colors, and trying them upon her in my mind, I decided that her gown should be of a delicate pink, and should be made of some frail, beautiful material which would float about her like gossamer when she moved, and shimmer like the light of dawn upon the dew. You know the sort of gown I mean: one of those gowns upon which a man is afraid to lay his finger-tips lest the material melt away beneath them; a gown which, he feels, was never touched by seamstress of the human species, but was made by fairies out of woven moonlight, star dust, afterglow, and the fragrance of flowers. Such a gown upon a lovely woman is man's proof that woman is indeed the thing which so often he believes her—that she is more goddess than earthly being; for man knows well that he himself is earthly, and that a costume made from such dream stuffs and placed on him, would not last out the hour. He has but to look up at the stars to realize the infinity of space, and, similarly, but to look at her in her evening gown to realize the divinity of woman.
And that is where she has him. For it isn't so!
At last came the train—just the dingy train to stop at such a station. I boarded it, found a seat, and continued to dream dreams as we rattled on toward Washington.
Even when I found myself walking through that great terminal by which all railroads enter the capital, I hardly believed that I was there, nor did I feel entirely myself until I had reached my room in the New Willard.
Having started my bath, I went and knocked upon the door of the near-by room where the clerk had told me I should find my fellow traveler.
"Oh," he said, without enthusiasm as he discovered me. "You're here, are you?"
He looked imposing and severe in his evening dress. I felt correspondingly dirty and humble.
"Yes," I replied meekly. "Any news?"
"None," he replied. "I've reserved a table at Harvey's. They dance there. At first they said there was not a table to be had—Saturday night, you know—but I told them who was to be with us, and they changed their minds."
"Good. I'll be dressed in a little while. Silk hats?"
He nodded. I returned to my own room.
Less than an hour later, my toilet completed, I rejoined him, and together we descended, in full regalia, to the lobby.
"Shall we take a taxi?" he suggested, as we passed out of the side entrance.
"How far away is the theater?"
"I don't know."
We asked the carriage starter. He said it was only two or three blocks.
"Let's walk," I said.
"I don't feel like walking," he returned.
We rode.
The theater was just emptying when we arrived.
"I suppose we'd better let the cab go?" I said. "There'll be quite a while to wait while she's changing."
"Better keep it," he disagreed. "Might not find another."
We kept it.
At the stage door there was confusion. Having completed its week in Washington, the play was about to move elsewhere, and furniture was already coming out into the narrow passage, and being piled up to be taken on wagons to the train. It took us some time to find the doorman, and it took the doorman—as it always does take doormen—a long, long time to depart into the unknown region of dressing rooms, with the cards we gave him, and a still longer time to return.
"Says to wait," he grunted when he came back.
Meanwhile more and more furniture had come out, menacing our shins and our beautifully polished hats in passing, and leaving us less room in which to stand.
We waited.
After ten minutes had passed, I remarked:
"I wish we had let the taxi go."
After twenty minutes I remarked:
"I always feel like an idiot when I have to wait at a stage door."
"I don't see why you do it, then," said he.
"And I hate it worse when I'm in evening dress. I hate the way the actors look at us, when they come out. They think we're a couple of Johnnies."
"And supposing they do?"
I do not know how long this unsatisfactory dialogue might have continued had not some one come to the inside of the stage door and spoken to the doorman, whereat he indicated us with a gesture and said:
"There they are."
At this a woman emerged. The light was dim, but I saw that she wore no hat and had on an apron. As she came toward us we advanced.
"You wait for madame?" she asked, with the accent of a Frenchwoman.
"Yes."
"Madame receive your telegram only this afternoon," she said. "All week, she say, she wait to hear. This morning she have receive a telegram from Mr. Woods that say she mus' come to New York. She think you not coming, so she say 'Yes.' Then she receive your message. She don't know where to reach you. She can do nossing. She is desolated! She mus' fly to the train. She is ver' sorry. She hope that maybe the gentlemans will be in Baltimore nex' week? Yes?"
"You mean she can't come to-night?"
"Yes, monsieur. She cannot. She are fill with regret. She—"
"Perhaps," said my companion, recovering, "we can drive her to the train?"
The maid, however, did not seem to wish to discuss this point. She shook her head and said:
"Madame ver' sorry she cannot come."
"But I say," repeated my companion, "that we shall be delighted to drive her to the train if she wishes."
"She ver' sorry," persisted the maid negatively.
"Oh, I see," he said. "Very well. Please say to her that we are sorry, too."
"Yes, monsieur." The maid retired.
"I want something to eat," I remarked as we passed down the long furniture-piled passage leading to the street.
"So do I. We have that table at Harvey's."
"I know; but—"
"That's a fact," he put in. "I mentioned her name. We can't very well go there without her."
"And all dressed up like a pair of goats."
"No."
"There's always the hotel."
"I don't want to go back there—not now."
"Neither do I. Let's make it the Shoreham," I suggested as we emerged upon the street.
"All right." Then, looking across the sidewalk, he added: "There's that damned taxi!"
"Yes. We'll drive around there in it."
"No," said he, "send it away. I don't feel like riding."
We walked to the Shoreham. The café looked cheerful, as it always does. We ordered an extensive supper. It was good. There were pretty women in the room, but we looked at them with the austere eyes of disillusioned men, and talked cynically of life. I cannot recall any of the things we said, though I remember thinking at the time that both of us were being rather brilliant, in an icy way. I suppose it was mainly about women. That was to be expected. Women, indeed! What were women to us? Nothing! And pretty women, least of all. Ah, pretty women! Pretty women!... Yes, yes!
I had ordered fruit to finish off the meal, and I remember that as the dish was set upon the table, it occurred to me that we had made a very pleasant party of it after all.
"Do you know," I said, as I helped myself to some hothouse grapes, "I've had a bully evening. It has been fine to sit here and have a party all to ourselves. I'm not so sorry that she did not come!"
Then I ate a grape or two.
They were very handsome grapes, but they were sour.
... Immortal hate,And courage never to submit or yield.—Paradise Lost.
... Immortal hate,And courage never to submit or yield.
—Paradise Lost.
The last time I went abroad, a Briton on the boat told me a story about an American tourist who asked an old English gardener how they made such splendid lawns over there.
"First we cut the grass," said the gardener, "and then we roll it. Then we cut it, and then we roll it."
"That's just what we do," said the American.
"Ah," returned the gardener, "but over here we've been doing it five hundred years!"
In Liverpool another Englishman told me the same story. Three or four others told it to me in London. In Kent I heard it twice, and in Sussex five or six times. After going to Oxford and the Thames I lost count.
In the South my companion and I had a similar experience with the story about that daughter of the Confederacy who declared she had always thought "damn Yankee" one word. In Maryland that story amused us, in Virginia it seemed to lose a little of its edge, and we are proud to this day because, in the far southern States, we managed to grin and bear it.
Doubtless the young lady likewise thought that "you-all" was one word. However I refrained from suggesting that, lest it be taken for an attempt at retaliation. And really there was no occasion to retaliate, for the story was always told with good-humored appreciation not only of the dig at "Yankees"—collectively all Northerners are "Yankees" in the South—but also of the sweet absurdity of the "unreconstructed" point of view.
Speaking broadly of the South, I believe that there survives little real bitterness over the Civil War and the destructive and grotesquely named period of "reconstruction." When a southern belle of to-day damns Yankees, she means by it, I judge, about as much, and about as little, as she does by the kisses she gives young men who bear to her the felicitous southern relationship of "kissing cousins."
Even from old Confederate soldiers I heard no expressions of violent feeling. They spoke gently, handsomely and often humorously of the war, but never harshly. Real hate, I think, remains chiefly in one quarter: in the hearts of some old ladies, the wives and widows of Confederate soldiers—for there are but few mothers of the soldiers left. The wonder is that more of the old ladies of the South have not held to their resentment, for, as I have heard many a soldier say, women are the greatest sufferers from war. One veteran said to me: "My arm was shattered and had to be amputated at the shoulder. There was no anesthetic.Of course I suffered, but I never suffered as my mother did when she learned what I had endured."
Be they haters of the North or not, the old ladies of the South are among its chief glories, and it should be added that another of those glories is the appreciation that the South has for the white-haired heroines who are its mothers, grandmothers, and great grandmothers, and the unfailing natural homage that it pays them. I do not mean by this merely that children and grandchildren have been taught to treat their elders with respect. I do not mean merely that they love them. The thing of which I speak is beyond family feeling, beyond the respect of youth for age. It is a strong, superb sentiment, something as great as it is subtle, which floods the South, causing it to love and reverence its old ladies collectively, and with a kind of national spirit, like the love and reverence of a proud people for its flag.
Among young men, I met many who told me, with suitable pride, of the parts played by their fathers and uncles in the war. Of these only one spoke with heat. He was a Georgian, and when I mentioned to him that, in all my inquiries, I had heard of no cases of atrocious attacks upon women by soldiers—such attacks as we heard of at the time of the German invasion of Belgium and France—he replied with a great show of feeling that I had been misinformed, and that many women had been outraged by northern soldiers in the course of Sherman's march to the sea. At this my heart sank, for I had treasured the belief that, despite the roughness of war, unprotected women had generally been safe from the soldiers of North and South alike. What was my relief, then, on later receiving from this same young man a letter in which he declared that he had been mistaken, and that after many inquiries in Georgia he had been unable to learn of a single case of such crime. If it is indeed true that such things did not occur in the Civil War—and I believe confidently that it is true—then we have occasion, in the light of the European War, to revise the popular belief that of all wars civil war is the most horrible.
The attitude of the modern South (the "New South" which, by the way, one Southerner described to me as meaning "northern capital and smoke") toward its own "unreconstructed" citizens, for all its sympathy and tenderness, is not without a glint of gentle humor. More than once, when my companion and I were received in southern homes with a cordiality that precluded any thought of sectional feeling, we were nevertheless warned by members of the younger generation—and their eyes would twinkle as they said it—to "look out for mother; she's unreconstructed." And you may be sure that when we were so warned we did "look out." It was well to do so! For though the mother might be a frail old lady, past seventy, with the face of an angel and the normal demeanor of a saint, we could see her bridle, as we were presented to her, over the thought there here were two Yankees in her home—Yankees!—we could see the light come flashing upinto her eyes as they encountered ours, and could feel beneath the veil of her austere civility the dagger points of an eternal enmity. By dint of self-control on her part, and the utmost effort upon ours to be tactful, the presentation ceremony was got over with, and after some formal speeches, resembling those which, one fancies, may be exchanged by opposing generals under a flag of truce, we would be rescued from her, removed from the room, before her forbearance should be strained, by our presence, to the point of breaking. A baleful look would follow us as we withdrew, and we would retire with a better understanding of the flaming spirit which, through that long, bloody conflict against overwhelming odds in wealth, supplies, and men, sustained the South, and which at last enabled it to accept defeat as nobly as it had accepted earlier victories.... How one loves a gentle old lady who can hate like that!
In this chapter, when it appeared originally, in "Collier's Weekly," I made the statement that I had seldom spent an hour in conversation with a Southerner without hearing some mention of the Civil War, and that I had heard other Northerners remark upon this matter, and express surprise at the tenacity with which the war holds its place in the foreground of the southern mind.
This, like many another of my southern observations, brought me letters from readers of "Collier's," residing in the South. A great number of the letters thus elicited, as well as comments made upon these chapters bythe southern press, have been of no small interest to me. On at least one subject (the question discussed in the next chapter, as to whether the expression "you-all" is ever used in the singular) my correspondents have convinced me that my earlier statement was an error, while on other subjects they have modified my views, and on still others made my convictions more profound. Where it has been possible, and where it has seemed, for one reason or another, to be worth while, I have endeavored, while revising the story of my southern wanderings for this book, to make note of the other fellow's point of view, especially in cases where he disagrees with me.
The following, then, is from a letter written on the stationery of Washington and Lee University, and applies to certain statements contained in this chapter:
In 1813, Thomas Jefferson wrote to a newspaper publisher: "Were I the publisher of a paper, instead of the usual division into Foreign, Domestic, etc., I think I should distribute everything under the following heads: 1. True. 2. Probable. 3. Wanting confirmation. 4. Lies, and be careful in subsequent papers to correct all errors in preceding ones."Allow me to suggest that your story might, under Mr. Jefferson's category, be placed under "2." Perhaps you went to see "The Birth of a Nation" before you wrote it. It has been my experience that my acquaintances among the F. F. V.'s have been far more interested in whether Boston or Brooklyn would win the pennant than in discussing the Civil War. By the young men of the South the War was forgotten long ago.
In 1813, Thomas Jefferson wrote to a newspaper publisher: "Were I the publisher of a paper, instead of the usual division into Foreign, Domestic, etc., I think I should distribute everything under the following heads: 1. True. 2. Probable. 3. Wanting confirmation. 4. Lies, and be careful in subsequent papers to correct all errors in preceding ones."
Allow me to suggest that your story might, under Mr. Jefferson's category, be placed under "2." Perhaps you went to see "The Birth of a Nation" before you wrote it. It has been my experience that my acquaintances among the F. F. V.'s have been far more interested in whether Boston or Brooklyn would win the pennant than in discussing the Civil War. By the young men of the South the War was forgotten long ago.
This letter has caused me to wonder whether the frequency with which my companion and I heard the CivilWar discussed, may not, perhaps, have been due, at least in part, to our own inquiries, resulting from the consuming interest that we had in hearing of the War from those who lived where it was fought.
Yet, after all, it seems to me most natural that the South should remember, while the North forgets. Not all Northerners were in the war. But all Southerners were; if a boy was big enough to carry a gun, he went. The North almost completely escaped invasion, and upon one occasion when a southern army did march through northern territory, the conduct of the invading troops toward the civilian population (the false Barbara Frietchie legend to the contrary notwithstanding) was so exemplary as to set a record which is probably unequaled in history.[2]The South, upon the other hand, was constantly under invasion, and the record of destruction wrought by northern armies in the valley of the Shenandoah, on the March to the Sea, and in some other instances, is writ in poverty and mourning unto this day.
Thus, except politically, the North now feels not the least effect from the war. But the South knew the terrors of invasion and the pangs of conquest, and is only growing strong again after having been ruined—as instanced by the fact, which I came across the other day, that the tax returns from one of the southern States have, for the first time since the Civil War, reached the point at which they stood when it began.
So, very naturally, while the War has begun to take its place in the northern mind along with the Revolutionary War, as something to be studied in school under the heading "United States History," it has not, in southern eyes, become altogether "book history," but is history that lives—in swords hanging upon the walls of many homes, in old faded letters, in sacks of worthless Confederate bills, in the ruins of great houses, in lovingly preserved gray uniforms, in southern battle fields, and in southern burial grounds where rows upon rows of tombstones, drawn up in company front, stand like gray armies forever on parade.
Small wonder if, amid its countless tragic memorials, the South does not forget. The strange thing is that bitterness has gone so soon; that remembering the agonies of war and the abuses of reconstruction, the South does not to-day hate the North as violently as ever. If to err is human, the North has, in its treatment of the South, richly proved its humanness; and if forgiveness is divine, the South has, by the same token, attained something like divinity.
Had the numbskull North understood these things as it should have understood them, there would not now be a solid Democratic South.
Such rancor as remains is, I believe, strongest in the smaller towns in those States which suffered the greatest hardships. I know, for instance, of one lady, from a little city in Virginia, who refused to enter the Massachusetts Building at the Chicago World's Fair, andthere are still to be found, in Virginia, ladies who do not leave their houses on the Fourth of July because they prefer not to look upon the Stars and Stripes. The Confederate flag is still, in a sense, the flag of the South. Southerners love it as one loves a pressed flower from a mother's bridal wreath. When the Eleventh Cavalry rode from Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, to Winchester, Virginia, a few years since, they saw many Confederate flags, but only one Union flag, and that in the hands of a negro child. However, war had not then broken out in Europe. It would be different now.
A Virginia lady told me of having gone to a dentist in Winchester, Virginia, and having taken her little niece with her. The child watched the dentist put a rubber dam in her aunt's mouth, and then, childlike, began to ask questions. She was a northern child, and she had evidently heard some one in the town speak of Sheridan's ride.
"Auntie," she said, "was Sheridan a Northerner or a Southerner?"
Owing to the rubber dam the aunt was unable to reply, but the dentist answered for her. "He was a drunken Yankee!" he declared vehemently.
When, later, the rubber dam was removed, the aunt protested.
"Doctor," she reproved, "you should not have said such a thing to my niece. She is from New York."
"Then," returned the unrepentant dentist, "she has heard the truth for once!"
Doubtless this man was an inheritor of hate, like the descendants of one uncompromisingly bitter old Southerner whose will, to be seen among the records of the Hanover County courthouse, in Virginia, bequeaths to his "children and grandchildren and their descendants throughout all future generations, the bitter hatred and everlasting malignity of my heart and soul against the Yankees, including all people north of Mason and Dixon's line."
The southern negro is the world's peasant supremeThe southern negro is the world's peasant supreme
Let us make an honorable retreat.—As You Like It.
Let us make an honorable retreat.
—As You Like It.
Those who write school histories and wish them adopted by southern schools have to handle the Civil War with gloves. Such words as "rebel" and "rebellion" are resented in the South, and the historian must go softly in discussing slavery, though he may put on the loud pedal in speaking of State Rights, the fact being that the South not only knows now, but, as evidenced by the utterances of her leading men, from Jefferson to Lee, knew long before the war that slavery was a great curse; whereas, on the question of State Rights, including the theoretical right to secede from the Union—this being the actual question over which the South took up arms—there is much to be said on the southern side. Colonel Robert Bingham, superintendent of the Bingham School, Asheville, North Carolina, has made an exhaustive study of the question of secession, and has set forth his findings in several scholarly and temperately written booklets.
Colonel Bingham proves absolutely, by quotation oftheir own words, that the framers of the Constitution regarded that document as acompactbetween the several States. He shows that three of the States (Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island) joined in this compactconditionally, with the clear purpose of resuming their independent sovereignty as States, should the general government use its power for the oppression of the States; that up to the time of the Mexican War the New England States contended for, not against, the right to secede; that John Quincy Adams went so far as to negotiate with England with a view to the secession of the New England States, because of Jefferson's Embargo Act, and moreover that up to 1840 the United States Government used as a textbook for cadets at West Point, Rawle's "View of the Constitution," a book which teaches that the Union is dissoluble. Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, were, therefore, in all probability, given this book as students at West Point, and consequently, if we would have honest history, we must face the astonishing fact that there is evidence to showthat they learned the doctrine of secession at the United States Military Academy.
Colonel Bingham, who, it may be remarked, served with distinction in the Confederate Army, has very kindly supplemented, in a letter to me, his published statements. He writes:
Secession was legaltheoretically, but practically the conditions on which the thirteen Independent Republics, covering a little strip on the Atlantic coast, came to an agreement, could notpossibly be applied to the great inter-Oceanic Empire into which these thirteen Independent Republics had developed."Theory is a good horse in the stable, but may make an arrant jade on the journey"—to paraphrase Goldsmith—and the only way in which these irreconcilable differences could be settled was by bullet and bayonet, which settled them right and finally.
Secession was legaltheoretically, but practically the conditions on which the thirteen Independent Republics, covering a little strip on the Atlantic coast, came to an agreement, could notpossibly be applied to the great inter-Oceanic Empire into which these thirteen Independent Republics had developed.
"Theory is a good horse in the stable, but may make an arrant jade on the journey"—to paraphrase Goldsmith—and the only way in which these irreconcilable differences could be settled was by bullet and bayonet, which settled them right and finally.
Once such matters as these are fully understood in the North, there will be left but one grave issue between North and South, that issue being over the question of whether or not Southerners, under any circumstances, use the phrase "you-all" in the singular.
"Whatever you write of the South," said our hostess at a dinner party in Virginia, "don't make the mistake of representing any one from this paht of the country, white oh black, educated oh ignorant, as saying 'you-all' meaning one person only."
When I remarked mildly that it seemed to me I had often seen the phrase so used in books, and heard it in plays, eight or ten southern ladies and gentlemen at the table pounced upon me, all at once. "Yes!" they agreed, with a kind of polite violence, "books and plays by Yankees!"
"If," one of the gentlemen explained, "you write to a friend who has a family, and say, according to the northern practice, 'I hope to see you when you come to my town,' you write something which is really ambiguous, since the word 'you' may refer only to your friend, or may refer also to his family. Our southern 'you-all' makes it explicit."
I told him that in the North we also used the word "all" in connection with "you," though we accented the two evenly, and did not compound them, but he seemed to believe that "you" followed by "all" belonged exclusively to the South.
The argument continued almost constantly throughout the meal. Not until coffee was served did the subject seem to be exhausted. But it was not, for after pouring a demi-tasse our hostess lifted a lump of sugar in the tongs, and looking me directly in the eye inquired: "Do you-all take sugah?"
Undoubtedly it would have been wiser, and politer, to let this pass, but the discussion had filled me with curiosity, not only because of my interest in the localism, but also because of the amazing intensity with which it had been discussed.
"But," I exclaimed, "you just said 'you-all,' apparently addressing me. Didn't you use it in the singular?"
No sooner had I spoken than I was sorry. Every one looked disconcerted. There was silence for a moment. I was very much ashamed.
"Oh, no," she said at last. "When I said 'you-all' I meant you and Mr. Morgan." (She pronounced it "Moh-gan," with a lovely drawl.) As she made this statement, she blushed, poor lady!
Being to blame for her discomfiture, I could not bear to see her blush, and looked away, but only to catch the eye of my companion, and to read in its evil gleam the thought: "Of course they use it in the singular. Butaren't you ashamed of having tripped up such a pretty creature on a point of dialect?"
Though my interest in the southern idiom had caused me to forget about the sugar, my hostess had not forgotten.
"Well," she said, still balancing the lump above the cup, and continuing gamely to put the question in the same form, and to me: "Do you-all take sugah, oh not?"
I had no idea how my companion took his coffee, but it seemed to me that tardy politeness now demanded that I tacitly—or at least demi-tacitly—accede to the alleged plural intent of the question. Therefore, I replied: "Mr. Morgan takes two lumps. I don't take any, thanks."
Late that night as we were returning to our hotel, my companion said to me somewhat tartly: "In case such a thing comes up again, I wish you would remember that sugar in my coffee makes me ill."
"Well, why didn't you say so?"
"Because," he returned, "I thought that you-all ought to do the answering. It seemed best for me-all to keep quiet and try to look plural under the singular conditions."
No single thing I ever wrote has brought to me so many letters, nor letters so uniform in sentiment (albeit widely different in expression), as the foregoing, seemingly unimportant tale, printed originally in "Collier's Weekly."
Some one has pointed out that various communities have "fighting words," and as the letters poured in I began to realize that in discussing "you-all" I had inadvertently hit upon a term which aroused the ire of the South—or rather, that I had aroused ire by implying that the expression is sometimes used in the singular—the Solid South to the contrary notwithstanding.
Never, upon any subject, have I known people to agree as my southern correspondents did on this. The unanimity of their dissent was an impressive thing. So was the violence some of them displayed.
For a time, indeed, the heat with which they wrote, obscured the issue. That is to say, most of them instead of explaining merely denied, and added comments, more or less unflattering, concerning me.
Wrote a lady from Lexington, Kentucky: