Citizens go at midday to the square where they buy popcorn for the squirrels and pigeons—MemphisCitizens go at midday to the square where they buy popcorn for the squirrels and pigeons—Memphis
In reviewing my visit to Memphis I find myself, for once, kindly disposed toward a Chamber of Commerce and Business Men's Club. I like the Business Men's Club because, besides issuing pamphlets shrieking the glory of the city, it has found time to do things much more worth while—notably to bring to Memphis some of the great American orchestras.
A pamphlet issued by these organizations tells me that Memphis is the largest cotton market in the country, the largest hardwood producing market, the third largest grocery and jobbing market.
Cotton is, indeed, much in evidence in the city. The streets in some sections are full of strange little two-wheel drays, upon which three bales are carried, and which display, in combination, those three southern things having such perfect artistic affinity: the negro, the mule, and the cotton bale. The vast modern cotton warehouses on the outskirts of the city cover many acres of ground, and with their gravity system of distributionfor cotton bales, and their hydraulic compresses in which the bales are squeezed to minimum size, to the accompaniment of negro chants, are exceedingly interesting.
The same pamphlet speaks also of the unusually large proportion of the city's area which is given over to parks and playgrounds, and it seems worth adding that though Memphis follows the general southern custom of barring negroes—excepting, of course, nursemaids in charge of children—from her parks, she has been so just as to provide a park for negroes only. In this she stands ahead of most other southern cities.
Memphis has the only bridge crossing the Mississippi below the mouth of the Ohio. At the time of our visit a new bridge was being built very near the old one, and an interesting experience of our trip was our visit to this bridge, under the guidance of Mr. M. B. Case, a young engineer in charge.
On a great undertaking, such as this one, where the total cost mounts into millions, the first work done is not on the proposed bridge itself, but on the plant and equipment to be used in construction—derricks, barges, concrete-mixers, air compressors for the caissons, small engines, dump-cars and all manner of like things. This preparatory work consumes some months. Caissons are then sunk far down beneath the river bed. Caisson work is dangerous, and the insurance rate on "sand hogs"—the men who work in the caissons—is very high. The scale of wages, and of time, varies in proportion to the risk, which is according to the depth at which work isbeing done. On this enterprise, for example, men working from mean level to a depth of 50 feet received $3 for an eight-hour day. From 50 to 70 feet they worked but six hours and received $3.75. From 90 to 105 feet they worked in three shifts of one hour each, and received $4.25. And while they were placing concrete to seal the working chamber there was an additional allowance of fifty cents a day.
The chief danger of caisson work is the "bends," or "caisson disease." In the caisson a man works under high air pressure. When he comes out, the pressure on the fluids of the body is reduced, and this sometimes causes the formation of a gas bubble in the vascular system. If this bubble reaches a nerve-center it causes severe pain, similar to neuralgia; if it gets to the brain it causes paralysis. Day after day men will go into the caisson and come out without trouble, but sooner or later from 2 to 8 per cent. of caisson workers are affected. Of 320 "sand-hogs" who labored in the caissons of this bridge, three died of paralysis, and of course a number of others had slight attacks of the "bends," in one form or another.
The bridge, when we visited it, was more than half completed. On the Memphis side the approaches were almost ready, and the steel framework of the bridge reached from the shore across the front pier, and was being built out far beyond the pier, on the cantilever principle, hanging in the air above the middle of the stream. By walking out on the old bridge we could survey the extreme end of the new one, which was being extended farther and farther, daily, by the addition of new steel sections. There were then about 100 journeymen bridgemen on the work—these being workmen of the class that erects steel skyscraper frames—with some fifty apprentices and carpenters, and about twenty common laborers. Bridgemen are among the highest paid of all workmen. In New York, at that time, their wage was $6 for eight hours' work. Here it was $4.50. Very few of the men had families with them in Memphis. They are the soldiers of fortune among wage-earners, a wild, reckless, fine looking lot of fellows, with good complexions like those of men in training, and eyes like the eyes of aviators. No class of men in the world, I suppose, have steadier nerves, think quicker, or react more rapidly from stimulus to action, whether through sight or sound. They have to be like that. For where other workmen pay for a mistake by loss of a job, these men pay with life. Yet they will tell you that their work is not dangerous. It is "just as safe as any other kind of job"—that, although four of their number had already been lost from this bridge alone. One went off the end of the structure with a derrick, the boom of which he lowered before the anchor-bolts had been placed. Two others fell. A fourth was struck by a falling timber.
Hanging in the air above the middle of the streamHanging in the air above the middle of the stream
Once, while we were watching the men scrambling about upon the steel members of the uncompleted cantilever arm, one of them thought something was about tofall, and ran swiftly in, over a steel beam, toward the body of the structure; whereafter, as nothing did fall, he was unmercifully twitted by his fellow workers for having shown timidity.
Many of the men working on this bridge had worked on the older structure paralleling it. This was true not only of the laboring men, but of the engineers. Ralph Modjeski, the consulting engineer at the head of the work (he is, by the way, a son of Madame Modjeska), was chief draughtsman when the earlier structure was designed; W. E. Angier, assistant chief engineer in the present work, was a field engineer on the first bridge, and it is interesting to know that, in constructing the approach to the old bridge he unearthed a Spanish halbert which, it is thought, may date from the time of De Soto. These bridge engineers and bridgebuilders move in a large orbit. Their last job may have been in Mexico, in the far West, or in India; their next may be in France. Many of the men here, worked on the Blackwell's Island bridge, on the Quebec bridge (which fell), on the Thebes bridge over the Mississippi, twenty miles above Cairo, on the Vancouver and Portland bridges over the Columbia and Willamette rivers, and on the great Oregon Trunk Railway bridges.
After standing for a time on the old bridge watching work on the new, and shuddering, often enough, at the squirrel-like way in which the men scampered about up there, so far above the water, we walked in and moved out again upon the partially completed floor of the newbridge. Here it was necessary to walk on railroad ties, with gaps, six or eight inches wide, between them. Even had one tried, one could hardly have managed to squeeze one's body through these chinks; to fall through was impossible; nevertheless it gave me an uncomfortable feeling in the region of the stomach to walk out there, seeing the river all the time between the interstices. When we had progressed for some distance we came to a gap where, for perhaps a yard, there were no ties—just open space, with the muddy water shining cold and cruel below. The opening was only about as wide as the hall of a small New York flat, and heaven knows that to step across such a hall is easy enough. But this was not so easy. When we came to the gap I stopped. Mr. Case, the young engineer, who loved all bridges with a sort of holy passion, and loved this bridge in particular, was talking as we went along. I liked to hear him talk. He had been telling us how a thing that is tobestrong ought tolookstrong, too, and from that had got somehow to the topic of expansion and contraction in bridges, with variations of temperature. "It isn't only the steel bridges that do it," he said. "Stone arch bridges do it, too. The crown of the arch rises and falls. The Greeks and Romans and Egyptians knew that expansion and contraction occurred. They—"
While talking he had gone across the gap, stepping lightly upon a stringpiece probably a foot wide, and proceeding over the ties. Now, however, he ceased speaking and looked back, for I was no longer beside him.At the gap I had stopped. I intended to step across, but I did not propose to do so without giving the matter the attention it seemed to me to deserve.
Mr. Case did not laugh at me. He came back and stood on the string-piece where it crossed the opening, telling me to put my hand on his shoulder. But I did not want to do that. I wanted to cross alone—when I got ready. It took me perhaps two minutes to get ready. Then I stepped over. It was, of course, absurdly easy. I had known it would be. But as we walked along I kept thinking to myself: "I shall have to cross that beastly place again when we come back," and I marveled the more at the amazing steadiness of eye and mind and nerve that enables some men to go continually prancing about over emptiness infinitely more engulfing than that which had troubled and was troubling me.
Returning I stepped across without physical hesitation. But after I had crossed I continued to hate that gap. I hated it as I drove back to the hotel, that afternoon, as I ate dinner that night, as I went to bed, and in my dreams I continued to cross it, and to see the river waiting for me, seeming to look up and leer and beckon. I woke up hating the gap in the bridge as much as ever; I hated it down into the State of Mississippi, and over into Georgia; and wherever I have gone since, I have continued to hate it. Of course there isn't any gap there now. It was covered long ago. Yet for me it still exists, like some obnoxious person who, though actually dead, lives on in the minds of those who knew him.
How often it occurs that the great work a man set out originally to accomplish, is lost sight of, by future generations, in contemplation of other achievements of that man, which he himself regarded as of secondary importance.
In 1733, the year in which General Oglethorpe started his Georgia colony, there were more than a hundred offenses for which a person might be hanged in England; Oglethorpe's primary idea in founding the colony was to provide a means of freeing debtors from prison, and giving them a fresh start in life; yet it is as the man responsible for the laying out of the beautiful city of Savannah, that Oglethorpe is probably most widely remembered to-day.
Oglethorpe was a first-rate soldier. He defeated a superior Spanish force from Florida, and successfully resisted attacks from the Indians. Also, he was a man whose ethical sense was in advance of his period. He did not permit slavery in Georgia, and it was not adopted there until he went back to England. In planning Savannah he was assisted by a Charleston engineer named Bull, for whom the chief street of Savannah isnamed. The place is laid out very simply; it has rectangular blocks and wide roads, with small parks, or squares, at regular intervals. There are some two dozen of these small parks, aside from one or two larger parks, a parade ground, and numerous boulevards with double roadways and parked centers, and the abundance of semi-tropical foliage and of airy spaces, in Savannah, gives the city its most distinctive and charming quality—the quality which differentiates it from all other American cities. Originally these parks were used as market-places and rallying points in case of Indian attack; now they serve the equally utilitarian purposes of this age, having become charming public gardens and playgrounds. One of them—not the most important one—is named Oglethorpe Square; but the monument to Oglethorpe is placed elsewhere.
These small parks give Savannah a quality which differentiates it from all other American citiesThese small parks give Savannah a quality which differentiates it from all other American cities
Madison Square, Savannah, is relatively about as important as Madison Square, New York, and though smaller than the latter, is much prettier. It contains a monument to Sergeant Jasper, the Revolutionary hero who, when the flag was shot down from Fort Moultrie, off Charleston, by the British, flung it to the breeze again, under fire. Jasper was later killed with the flag in his arms, in the French-American attempt to take Savannah from the British. Monterey Square has a statue of Count Pulaski, who also fell at the siege of Savannah. Another Revolutionary hero remembered with a monument is General Nathanael Greene who, though born in Rhode Island, moved after the war toGeorgia where, in recognition of his services, he was given an estate not far from Savannah. "Mad" Anthony Wayne, a Pennsylvanian by birth, also accepted an estate in Georgia and resided there after the Revolution.
An interesting story attaches to Greene's settlement in Georgia. The estate given to him was that known as Mulberry Grove, above the city, on the Savannah River. The property had previously belonged to Lieutenant-governor John Graham, but was confiscated because Graham was a loyalist. Along with the property, Greene apparently took over the Graham vault in Colonial Cemetery—now a city park, and a very interesting one because of the old tombs and gravestones—and there he was himself buried. After a while people forgot where Greene's remains lay, and later, when it was decided to erect a monument to his memory in Johnson Square, they couldn't find any Greene to put under it. However, they went ahead and made the monument, and Lafayette laid the cornerstone, when he visited Savannah in March, 1825. Greene's remains were lost for 114 years. They did not come to light until 1902, when some one thought of opening the Graham vault. Thereupon they were removed and reinterred in their proper resting place beneath the monument which had so long awaited them. That monument, by the way, was not erected by Savannah people, or even by Southerners, but was paid for by the legislature of the general's native Rhode Island. When the remains were discovered,Rhode Island asked for them, but Savannah, which had lost them, also wanted them. The matter was settled by a vote of Greene's known descendants, who decided almost unanimously to leave his remains in Savannah.
The foundation of the general's former home at Mulberry Grove may still be seen. It was in this house that Eli Whitney invented the cotton-gin. Whitney was a tutor in the Greene family after the general's death, and it was at the suggestion of Mrs. Greene that he started to try and make "a machine to pick the seed out of cotton." It is said that Whitney's first machine would do, in five hours, work which, if done by hand, would take one man two years. This was, of course, an epoch-making invention and caused enormous commercial growth in the South, where cotton-gins are as common things as restaurants in the city of New York. Which reminds me of a story.
A northern man was visiting Mr. W. D. Pender, at Tarboro, North Carolina. On the day of the guest's arrival Mr. Pender spoke to his cook, a negro woman of the old order, telling her to hurry up the dinner, because he wished to take his friend down to see the cotton-gin. "You know," he explained, "this gentleman has never seen a cotton-gin."
The cook looked at him in amazement.
"Lor'! Mistuh Penduh," she exclaimed. "An' dat manlooklike he was edjacated!"
Another item in Savannah history is that John Wesley came over about the middle of the eighteenth century to convert the Indians to Christianity. It was not until after this attempt, when he returned to England, that he began the great religious movement which led to the founding of the Methodist Church. George Whitfield also preached in Savannah. Evidently Wesley did not get very far with the savages who, it may be imagined, were more responsive to the kind of "conversion" attempted in South Carolina, by a French dancing-master, who went out from Charleston in the early days and taught them the steps of the stately minuet.
Another great event in Savannah history was the departure from that port, in 1819, of theCity of Savannah, the first steamship to cross the Atlantic. If I may make a suggestion to the city, it is that the centennial of this event be celebrated, and that a memorial be erected. Inspiration for such a memorial might perhaps be found in the simple and charming monument, crowned by a galleon in bronze, which has been erected in San Francisco, in memory of Robert Louis Stevenson. A ship in bronze can be a glorious thing—which is more than can be said of a bronze statesman in modern pantaloons.
More lately Savannah initiated another world-improvement: she was the first city to abolish horses entirely from her fire department, replacing them with automobile engines, hook-and-ladders, and hose-carts.That is in line with what one would expect of Savannah, for she is not only a progressive city, but is a great automobile city, having several times been the scene of important international automobile road races, including the Grand Prize and the Vanderbilt Cup.
Nor is there want of other history. The Savannah Theater, though gutted by fire and rebuilt, is the same theater that Joseph Jefferson owned and managed for a time, in the fifties; in the house on Lafayette Square, now occupied by Judge W. W. Lambdin, Robert E. Lee once stayed, and Thackeray is said to have written there a part of "The Virginians."
A sad thing was happening in Savannah when we were there. The Habersham house, one of the loveliest old mansions of the city, was being torn down to make room for a municipal auditorium.
The first Habersham in America was a Royal Governor of Georgia. He had three sons one of whom, Joseph, had, by the outbreak of the Revolution, become a good enough American to join a band of young patriots who took prisoner the British governor, Sir James Wright. The governor's house was situated where the Telfair Academy now is. He was placed under parole, but nevertheless fled to Bonaventure, the Tabnall estate, not far from the city, where he was protected by friends until he could escape to the British fleet, which then lay off Tybee Island at the mouth of the Savannah River, some eighteen miles below the city. This same Joseph Habersham, it is said, led a party which went out in1775 in skiffs—calledbateauxalong this part of the coast—boarded the British shipHinchenbroke, lying at anchor in the river, and captured her in a hand-to-hand conflict. Mr. Neyle Colquitt of Savannah, a descendant of the Habershams, tells me that the powder taken from theHinchenbrokewas used at the Battle of Bunker Hill. After the war, in which Joseph Habersham commanded a regiment of regulars, he was made Postmaster General of the United States. The old house itself was built by Archibald Bulloch, a progenitor of that Miss "Mittie" Bulloch who later became Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., mother of the President. It was designed by an English architect named Jay, who did a number of the fine old houses of Savannah, which are almost without exception of the Georgian period. Archibald Bulloch bought the lot on which he built the house from Matthew McAllister, great-grandfather of Ward McAllister. When sold by Bulloch it passed through several hands and finally came into the possession of Robert Habersham, a son of Joseph.
The old house was spacious and its interiors had a fine formality about them. The staircase, fireplace and chandeliers were handsome, and there was at the rear a charming oval room, the heavy mahogany doors of which were curved to conform to the shape of the walls. To tear down such a house was sacrilege—also it was a sacrilege hard to commit, for some of the basement walls were fifteen feet thick, and of solid brick straight through.
Sherman's headquarters were on the Square, just south of the De Soto Hotel, in the battlemented brick mansion which is the residence of General Peter W. Meldrim, ex-president of the American Bar Association, and former Mayor of Savannah.
Among other old houses characteristic of Savannah, are the Scarborough house, the Mackay house, the Thomas house in Franklin Square (also known as the Owens house), in which Lafayette was entertained, and the Telfair house, now the Telfair Academy. The Telfair and Thomas houses were built by the architect who built the Habersham house, and it is to be hoped that they will never go the way of the latter mansion.
The Thomas House in Franklin Square in which Lafayette was entertainedThe Thomas House in Franklin Square in which Lafayette was entertained
In 1810, about the time these houses were built, Savannah had 5,000 inhabitants; by 1850 the population had trebled, and 1890 found it a place of more than 40,000. Since then the city has grown with wholesome rapidity, and attractive suburban districts have been developed. The 1910 census gives the population as 65,000, but the city talks exuberantly of 90,000. Well, perhaps that is not an exaggerated claim. Certainly it is a city to attract those who are free to live where they please. In fall, winter and spring it leaves little to be desired. I have been there three times, and I have never walked up Bull Street without looking forward to the day when I could go there, rent an old house full of beautiful mahogany, and pass a winter. Not even New Orleans made me feel like that. I feel aboutNew Orleans that it is a place to visit rather than to settle down in. I want to go back to New Orleans, but I do not want to stay more than a few weeks. I want to see some people that I know, prowl about the French quarter, and have Jules Alciatore turn me out a dinner; then I want to go away. So, too, I want to go back to Atlanta—just to see some people. I want to stay there a week or two. Also I want to go to St. Augustine when cold weather comes, and bask in the warm sun, and breathe the soft air full of gold dust, and feel indolent and happy as I watch the activities about the excellent Ponce de Leon Hotel; but there are two cities in the South that I dream of going to for a quiet happy winter of domesticity and work, in a rented house—it must be the right house, too—and those cities are, first Charleston; then Savannah.
The Telfair Academy in the old Telfair mansion was left, by a member of the family, to the city, to be used as a museum. Being somewhat skeptical about museums in cities of the size of Savannah, not to say much larger cities, especially when they are art museums, I very nearly omitted a visit to this one. Had I done so I would have missed seeing not only a number of exceedingly interesting historic treasures, but what I believe to be the best public art collection contained in any southern city.
The museum does, to be sure, contain a number of old "tight" paintings of the kind with which the country was deluged at the time of the Chicago World's Fair,but upstairs there is a surprise in shape of an exhibition of modern American paintings (the best paintings being produced in the world to-day) showing brilliant selection. I was utterly amazed when I found this collection. There were excellent canvases by Childe Hassam, Ernest Lawson, George Bellows, and other living American painters whose work, while it is becoming more and more widely appreciated each year, is still beyond all but the most advanced and discriminating buyers of paintings. I went into ecstasies over this collection, and I said to myself: "Away down here in Savannah there is some one buying better paintings for a little museum than the heads of many of the big museums in the country have had sense enough or courage enough to buy. This man ought to be 'discovered' and taken to some big museum where his appreciation will be put to the greatest use." With that I rushed downstairs, sought out the curator, and asked who had purchased the modern American pictures. And then my bubble was pricked, for who had they had, down there, buying their pictures for them, but Gari Melchers! Naturally the pictures were good!
In one room of the building, on the ground floor, is a collection of fine old furniture, etc., which belonged to the Telfair family, including two beautiful mantelpieces of black and white marble, some cabinets, and a very curious and fascinating extension dining-table, built of mahogany. The table is perfectly round, and the leaves, instead of being added in the middle, arecurved pieces, fitting around the outer edge in two series, so that when extended to its full capacity the table is still round. I have never seen another such table.
Also I found many interesting old books and papers passed down from the Telfairs. One of these was a ledger with records of slave sales.
In a sale held Friday, October 14, 1774, Sir James Wright, the same British governor who was presently put to flight, purchased four men, five women, nine boys, and one girl, at a total cost of £820, or about $3,280. Sir Patrick Houston bought two women at £90, or $450. The whole day's sale disposed of thirty-five men, seventeen women, twenty-seven boys and ten girls, at a grand total of £3206, or roughly between nine and ten thousand dollars.
The Telfairs were great planters. Among the papers was one headed "Rules and Directions to be strictly attended to by all overseers at Thorn Island Plantation." This plantation was on the North Carolina side of the river, and was owned by Alexander Telfair, a brother of Miss Mary Telfair who gave the Academy to the city. Dates which occur in the papers stamp them as having been issued some time prior to 1837. Here are some of the regulations:
The allowance for every grown negro, let him or her be old and good for nothing, and every young one that works in the field, is a peck of corn a week and a pint ofsalt and a piece of meat not exceeding fourteen pounds per month.No negro to have more than forty lashes, no matter what his crime.The suckling children and all small ones who do not work in the field draw a half allowance of corn and salt.Any negro can have a ticket to go about the neighborhood, but cannot leave it without a pass. No strangers allowed to come on the place without a pass.The negroes to be tasked when the work allows it. I require a reasonable day's work well done. The task to be regulated by the state of the ground and the strength of the negro.All visiting between the Georgia plantation to be refused. [The Telfairs owned another plantation on the Georgia side of the river.] No one to get husbands or wives across the river. No night meeting or preaching allowed on the place except on Saturday or Sunday morning.If there is any fighting on the place whip all engaged in it, no matter what may be the cause it may be covered with.In extreme cases of sickness employ a physician. After a dose of castor oil is given, a dose of calomel, and blister applied, if no relief, then send.My negroes are not allowed to plant cotton for themselves. Everything else they may plant. Give them ticket to sell what they make.I have no Driver (slave-driver). You are to task thenegroes yourself. They are responsible to you alone for work.
The allowance for every grown negro, let him or her be old and good for nothing, and every young one that works in the field, is a peck of corn a week and a pint ofsalt and a piece of meat not exceeding fourteen pounds per month.
No negro to have more than forty lashes, no matter what his crime.
The suckling children and all small ones who do not work in the field draw a half allowance of corn and salt.
Any negro can have a ticket to go about the neighborhood, but cannot leave it without a pass. No strangers allowed to come on the place without a pass.
The negroes to be tasked when the work allows it. I require a reasonable day's work well done. The task to be regulated by the state of the ground and the strength of the negro.
All visiting between the Georgia plantation to be refused. [The Telfairs owned another plantation on the Georgia side of the river.] No one to get husbands or wives across the river. No night meeting or preaching allowed on the place except on Saturday or Sunday morning.
If there is any fighting on the place whip all engaged in it, no matter what may be the cause it may be covered with.
In extreme cases of sickness employ a physician. After a dose of castor oil is given, a dose of calomel, and blister applied, if no relief, then send.
My negroes are not allowed to plant cotton for themselves. Everything else they may plant. Give them ticket to sell what they make.
I have no Driver (slave-driver). You are to task thenegroes yourself. They are responsible to you alone for work.
Certain negroes are mentioned by name:
Many persons are indebted to Elsey for attending upon their negroes. I wish you to see them or send to them for the money.If Dolly is unable to return to cooking she must take charge of all the little negroes.Pay Free Moses two dollars and a half for taking care of things left at his landing.
Many persons are indebted to Elsey for attending upon their negroes. I wish you to see them or send to them for the money.
If Dolly is unable to return to cooking she must take charge of all the little negroes.
Pay Free Moses two dollars and a half for taking care of things left at his landing.
Bull Street, the fashionable street of the city, is a gem of a street, despite the incursions made at not infrequent intervals, by comparatively new, and often very ugly buildings. Every few blocks Bull Street has to turn out of its course and make the circuit of one of the small parks of which I have spoken, and this gives it charm and variety. On this street stands the De Soto Hotel, which, when I first went to Savannah, years ago, was by all odds the leading hostelry of the city. It is one of those great rambling buildings with a big porch out in front, an open court in back, and everything about it, including the bedchambers, very spacious and rather old fashioned. Lately the Savannah Hotel has been erected down at the business end of Bull Street. It is a modern hotel of the more conventional commercial type. But even down there, near the business part of town, it is not confronted by congested cobbled streets and clanging trolley cars, but looks out upon one of the squares, filledwith magnolias, oaks and palms. But another time I think I shall go back to the De Soto.
The building of the Independent Presbyterian Church, on Bull Street, is one of the most beautiful of its kind in the country, inside and out. It reminds one of the old churches in Charleston, and it is gratifying to know that though the old church which stood on this site (dedicated in 1819) burned in 1889, the congregation did not seize the opportunity to replace it with a hideosity in lemon-yellow brick, but had the rare good sense to duplicate the old church exactly, with the result that, though a new building, it has all the dignity and simple beauty of an old one.
Broughton Street, the shopping street, crosses Bull Street in the downtown section, and looks ashamed of itself as it does so, for it is about as commonplace a looking street as one may see. There is simply nothing about it of distinction save its rather handsome name.
Elsewhere, however, there are several skyscrapers, most of them good looking buildings. It seemed to me also that I had never seen so many banks as in Savannah, and I am told that it is, indeed, a great banking city, and that the record of the Savannah banks for weathering financial storms is very fine. On a good many corners where there are not banks there are clubs, and some of these clubs are delightful and thoroughly metropolitan in character. I know of no city in the North, having a population corresponding to that of Charleston or of Savannah, which has clubs comparablewith the best clubs of these cities, or of New Orleans. When it is considered that of the population of these southern cities approximately one half, representing negroes, must be deducted in considering the population from which eligibles must be drawn, the excellence of southern clubs becomes remarkable in the extreme. Savannah, by the way, holds one national record in the matter of clubs. It had the first golf club founded in America. Exactly when the club was founded I cannot say, but Mr. H. H. Bruen, of Savannah, has in his possession an invitation to a golf club ball held in the old City Hall in the year 1811.
The commercial ascendancy of Savannah over Charleston is due largely to natural causes. The port of Savannah drains exports from a larger and richer territory than is tapped by Charleston, though new railroads are greatly improving Charleston's situation in this respect. Savannah is a shipping port for cotton from a vast part of the lower and central South, and is also a great port for lumber, and the greatest port in the world for "naval stores." I did not know what naval stores were when I went to Savannah. The term conjured up in my mind pictures of piles of rope, pulleys and anchors. But those are not naval stores. Naval stores are gum products, such as resin and turpentine, which are obtained from the long-leafed pines of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Florida. The traveler through these States cannot have failed to notice gashes on the tree-trunks along the way. From these theresinous sap exudes and is caught in cups, after which it is boiled, there in the woods, and thus separated into turpentine, resin and pitch. Vast quantities of these materials are stored on the great modern docks of Savannah. It is said that owing to wasteful methods, the long-leafed pine forests are being rapidly destroyed, and that this industry will die out before very long because the eager grabbers of to-day's dollars, having no thought for the future, fail to practise scientific forestry.
All about Savannah, within easy reach by trolley, motor or boat, lie pleasant retreats and interesting things to see. The roads of the region, built by convict labor, are of the finest, and the convict prison camps are worth a visit. In the Brown Farm camp, living conditions are certainly more sanitary than in ninety nine out of a hundred negro homes. The place fairly shines with cleanliness, and there are many cases in which "regulars" at this camp are no sooner released than they offend again with the deliberate purpose of carrying out what may be termed a "back to the farm" movement. The color line is drawn in southern jails and convict camps as elsewhere. White prisoners occupy one barracks; negroes another. The food and accommodations for both is the same. The only race discrimination I could discover was that when white prisoners are punished by flogging, they are flogged with their clothes on, whereas, with negroes, the back is exposed. The men in this camp are minor offenders and wear khaki overalls in place of the stripes in which the worse criminals, quartered in another camp, are dressed. Strict discipline is maintained, but the life is wholesome. The men are marched to work in the morning and back at night escorted by guards who carry loaded shotguns, and who always have with them a pack of ugly bloodhounds to be used in case escape is attempted.
All the drives in this region are extremely picturesque, for the live-oak grows here at its best, and is to be seen everywhere, its trunk often twenty or more feet in circumference, its wide-spreading branches reaching out their tips to meet those of other trees of the same species, so that sometimes the whole world seems to have a groined ceiling of foliage, a ceiling which inevitably suggests a great shadowy cathedral from whose airy arches hang long gray pennons of Spanish moss, like faded, tattered battle-flags.
On country roads you will come, now and then, upon a negro burial ground of very curious character. There may be such negro cemeteries in the upper Southern States, but if so I have never seen them. In this portion of Georgia they are numerous, and their distinguishing mark consists in the little piles of household effects with which every grave is covered. I do not know whether this is done to propitiate ghosts and devils (generally believed to "hant" these graveyards), or whether it is the idea that the deceased can still find use for the assortment of pitchers, bowls, cups, saucers, knives, forks, spoons, statuettes, alarm-clocks, andheaven only knows what else, which were his treasured earthly possessions.
In Savannah, I have heard Commodore Tatnall, who used to live at Bonaventure, credited with having originated the saying "Blood is thicker than water," but I am inclined to believe that the Commodore merely made apposite use of an old formula. The story is told of one of the old Tatnalls that in the midst of a large dinner-party which he was giving at his mansion at Bonaventure plantation, a servant entered and informed him that the house was on fire. Whereupon the old thoroughbred, instead of turning fireman, persisted in his rôle of host, ordering the full dining-room equipment to be moved out upon the lawn, where the company remained at dinner while the house burned down.
Most of the old houses of the plantations on the river have long since been destroyed. That at Whitehall was burned by the negroes when Sherman's army came by, but the old trees and gardens still endure, including a tall hedge of holly which is remarkable even in this florescent region. The old plantation house at the Hermitage, approached by a handsome avenue of live-oaks, is, I believe, the only one of those ancient mansions which still stands, and it does not stand very strongly, for, beautiful though it is in its abandonment and decay, it is like some noble old gentleman dying alone in an attic, of age, poverty and starvation—dying proudly as poor Charles Gayarré did in New Orleans.
The Hermitage has, I believe, no great history savewhat is written in its old chipped walls of stucco-covered brick, and the slave-cabins which still form a background for it. It is a story of baronial decay, resulting, doubtless, from the termination of slavery. Hordes of negroes of the "new issue" infest the old slave-cabins and on sight of visitors rush out with almost violent demands for money, in return for which they wish to sing. Their singing is, however, the poorest negro singing I have ever heard. All the spontaneity, all the relish, all the vividness which makes negro singing wonderful, has been removed, here, by the fixed idea that singing is not a form of expression but a mere noise to be given vent to for the purpose of extracting backsheesh. It is saddening to witness the degradation, through what may be called professionalism, of any great racial quality. These negroes, half mendicant, half traders on the reputation of their race, express professionalism in its lowest form. They are more pitiful than the professional tarantella dancers who await the arrival of tourists, in certain parts of southern Italy, as spiders await flies.
"Or mebbe you 're intendin' ofInvestments? Orange-plantin'? Pine?Hotel? or Sanitarium? What aboveThis yea'thcanbe your line?..."Sidney Lanier ("A Florida Ghost.")
"Or mebbe you 're intendin' ofInvestments? Orange-plantin'? Pine?Hotel? or Sanitarium? What aboveThis yea'thcanbe your line?..."
Sidney Lanier ("A Florida Ghost.")
It is the boast of Jacksonville (known locally by the convenient abbreviation "Jax") that it stands as the "Gate to Florida." But the fact that a gate is something through which people pass—usually without stopping—causes some anguish to an active Chamber of Commerce, which has been known to send bands to the railway station to serenade tourists in the hope of enticing them to alight.
If I were to personify Jacksonville, it would be, I think, as an amiable young woman, member of a domestic family, whose papa and mama had moved to Florida from somewhere else—for it is as hard to find a native of Jacksonville in that city as to find a native New Yorker in New York. Miss Jacksonville's papa, as I conceive it, has prospered while daughter has been growing up, and has bought for her a fine large house on a main corner, where many people pass. Having reached maturity Miss Jacksonville wishes to be inFlorida society—to give, as it were, house parties, like those of her neighbors, the other winter resorts. She sees people passing her doors all winter long, and she says to herself: "I must get some of these people to come in."
To this end she brushes off the walk, lays a carpet on the steps, puts flowers in the vases, orders up a lot of fancy food and drink (from the very admirable Hotel Mason), turns on the lights and the Victor, leaves the front door invitingly open, and hopes for the best. Soon people begin to come in, but as she meets them she discovers that most of them have come to see papa on business; only a few have come on her account. They help themselves to sandwiches, look about the room, and listen to what Miss Jacksonville has to say.
Time passes. Nothing happens. She asks how they like the chairs.
"Very comfortable," they assure her.
"Do have some more to eat and drink," says she.
"What is your history?" a guest asks her presently.
"I haven't much history to speak of," she replies. "They tell me Andrew Jackson had his territorial government about where my house stands, but I don't know much about it. We don't care much about history in our family."
"What do you do with yourself?"
"Oh, I keep house, and go occasionally to the Woman's Club, and in the evenings father tells me about his business."
"Very nice," says one guest, whom we shall picture as a desirable and wealthy young man from the North. "Now let's do something. Do you play or sing? Are you athletic? Do you go boating on the St. John's River? Do you gamble? Can you make love?"
"I dance a little and play a little golf out at the Florida Country Club," she says, with but small signs of enthusiasm. "The thing I'm really most interested in, though, is father's business. He lost a lot of money in the fire of 1901, but he's made it all back and a lot more besides."
"What about surf-bathing?" asks the pleasure-seeking visitor, stifling a yawn.
"There's Atlantic Beach only eighteen miles from here. It's a wonderful beach. Father's putting a million in improvements out there, but there's no time to go there just now. However, if you'd like to, I can take you down and show you the new docks he has built."
"Oh, no, thanks," says the guest. "I don't care for docks—not, that is, unless we can go boating."
"I'm afraid we can't do that," says Miss Jacksonville. "We don't use the river much for pleasure. I can't say just why, unless it is that every one is too busy.... But please eat something more, and do have something to drink. There's plenty for every one."
"I must be running along," says the visitor. "I've been invited to call at some other houses down the block.By the way, what is the name of your neighbor next door?"
"St. Augustine," says Jacksonville, with a little reluctance. "She is of Spanish descent and sets great store by it. If you call there she'll show you a lot of interesting old relics she has, but I assure you that when it comes to commercial success her family isn't one-two-three with papa."
"Thanks," says the visitor, "but just at the moment commerce doesn't appeal to me. Who lives beyond her?"
Miss Jacksonville sighs. "There are some pleasant, rather attractive people named Ormonde, beyond," she says, "and a lively family named Daytona next door to them. Neither family is in business, like papa. They just play all the time. Then come a number of modest places, and after them, in the big yellow and white house with the palm trees all around it—but I'd advise you to keep away from there! Yes, you'd better go by that house. On the other side of it, in another lovely house, live some nicer, simpler people named Miami. Or if you like fishing, you might drop in on Mrs. Long-Key—she's wholesome and sweet, and goes out every day to catch tarpon. Or, again, you might—"
"What's the matter with the people in the big yellow and white house surrounded by palm trees? Why shouldn't I go there?" asks the guest.
"A young widow lives there," says Miss Jacksonville primly. "I don't know much about her history, butshe looks to me as though she had been on the stage. She's frightfully frivolous—not at all one of our representative people."
"Ah!" says the visitor. "Is she pretty?"
"Well," admits Miss Jacksonville, "I suppose sheis—in a fast way. But she's all rouged and she overdresses. Her bathing suits are too short at the bottom and her evening gowns are too short at the top. Yes, and even at that, she has a trick of letting the shoulder straps slip off and pretending she doesn't know it has happened."
"What's her name?"
"Mrs. Palm-Beach."
"Oh," says the visitor. "I've heard of her. She's always getting into the papers. Tell me more."
Miss Jacksonville purses her lips and raises her eyebrows. "Really," she says, "I don't like to talk scandal."
"Oh, come on! Do!" pleads the visitor. "Is she bad—bad and beautiful and alluring?"
"Judge for yourself," says Miss Jacksonville sharply. "She keeps that enormous place of hers shut up except for about two months or so in the winter, when she comes down gorgeously dressed, with more jewelry than is worn by the rest of the neighborhood put together. Few Southerners go to her house. It's full of rich people from all over the North."
"Is she rich?"
"You'd think so to look at her—especially if youdidn't know where she got her money. But she really hasn't much of her own. She's a grafter."
"How does she manage it?"
"Men give her money."
"But why?"
"Because she knows how to please the rich. She understands them. She makes herself beautiful for them. She plays, and drinks, and gambles, and dances with them, and goes riding with them in wheel chairs by moonlight, and sits with them by the sea, and holds their hands, and gets them sentimental. There's some scent she uses that is very seductive—none of the rest of us have been able to find out exactly what it is."
"But how does she get their money?"
"She never tells a hard-luck story—you can't get money out of the kind she goes with, that way. She takes the other tack. She whispers to them, and laughs with them, and fondles them, and makes them love her, and when they love her she says: 'But dearie, be reasonable! Think how many people love me! I like to have you here, you fat old darling with the gold jingling in your pockets! but I can't let you sit with me unless you pay. Yes, I'm expensive, I admit. But don't you love this scent I wear? Don't you adore my tropical winter sea, my gardens, my palm trees, my moonlight, and my music? They are all for you, dearie—so why shouldn't you pay? Don't I take you from the northern cold and slush? Haven't I built a siding for your private car, and made an anchorage for youryacht? Don't I let you do as you please? Don't I keep you amused? Don't you love to look at me? Don't I put my warm red lips to yours? Well, then, dearie, what is all your money for?' ... That is her way of talking to them! That is the sort of creature that she is!"
"Shocking!" says the visitor, rising and looking for his hat "You say hers is the third large house from here?"
"Yes. Remember, she's as mercenary as can be!"
"Thanks. I can take care of myself. If she's amusing that suits me. Good-by."
In the vestibule he pauses to count his money.
"Jacksonville seems to be a nice girl," he says to himself as he hastens down the block. "I imagine she might make a good wife and mother, and that she'd help her husband on in business. However, I'm not thinking of getting married and settling down in Florida. I'm out for some fun. I think I'll run in and call upon Mrs. Palm-Beach."