IN my wandering life of deepest shadow and occasional sunshine, there is but one thing for which I am altogether devoutly thankful,—I was born and bred in the South, and for generations on both sides of my family my ancestors were Southern people; consequently, without conflict, my qualities and defects are those of my race. For my own personal defects, given me at birth with a free hand by my whimsical fairy godmother, neither my family nor my beloved land is responsible.

My great-grandfather, Major Duval, fought in the War of the Revolution, and gave goodly sums towards the cause. He married at twenty-three a Miss Pope of Virginia, an heiress of whom he made rather a sudden and theatrical conquest, not later than five minutes after he discovered her. She, a fair-haired, dimpled beauty, wearing a silken hood, a green merino gown, little calfskin shoes with silver buckles, a black silk apron, and open-work mittens, was walking one golden October afternoon in a primeval forest near the banks of the Shenandoah. In the angle of her round arm lay a big ball of worsted, and the sun slanting down on her glancing needles struck diamond brilliance from their quick activity.

My great-grandfather, returning from the chase, young, dashing, good-looking, suddenly beheld this vision. He wore the buckskin clothes of the Virginian hunter, and carried his day's trophy of wild turkey, ducks, and rabbits slung across his shoulder. His rifle held one last bullet.

Quickly advancing to the astonished young lady, he took off his bearskin cap, and making a bow so low that the turkeys touched the ground, he said, “Madame, permit me.” Then lifting the ball of worsted from its envied resting-place, he lightly tossed it high into the air, shot the bullet straight through its heart, and as it came down caught it and placed it, smoking with powder and with love, in her apron pocket.

The dimples all appeared as she said, “Sir, you can shoot and hit the mark.”

He bowed again and answered, “So can Cupid, and I hope,”—pointing to her fluttering heart—“in the right direction.”

The young lady, a very distant cousin whom he had never met, was from Richmond, visiting an aunt on an adjoining plantation. He walked home with her, in the mellow sunshine of an Indian summer afternoon, through the wonderful scarlet and gold forests of the early Virginia autumn, leaving on the doorstep of the wide plantation house his day's hunt as his first love offering.

THEY had only been married a week when court was held at a country town twenty-five miles away. It was hard for William Duval to leave his pretty bride, and he had no money, but he borrowed a little, and a horse from a neighbour and, like young Lochinvar, rode gaily away. Fate loves reckless courage and protects its possessors. The young lawyer had no case to plead before the court and no influence to get him one, but just as he entered the inn an old man in the barroom was struck by a bully. The young man promptly knocked the bully down. This secured his popularity. The crowd shook hands with the plucky stranger and plied him with drinks, which he had the judgment to refuse, for he felt the morrow would be a momentous day for him.

The next morning when the court opened, he boldly seated himself among the advocates. A man was charged with passing counterfeit money. He had been out of the range of lawyers and was asked to choose one for his defence. Looking around, he selected the eager faced lad, who was given until next day to prepare his case. As they left the court the accused man gave his counsel one hundred dollars as a retaining fee.

Young Duval spent many hours in anxious preparation of his defence and argument. When night came he was too excited to speak; in the morning he could not eat. He reached the court agitated and unnerved, and when he began to speak it was only to flounder and stammer. Presently the public prosecutor made a cruelly sarcastic remark. There was a laugh in court. At that his nerves became taut and steady. His voice rang out with a brave challenge. He marshalled his facts with telling effect and proved his client's innocence conclusively. The case ended triumphantly in the man's acquittal, and young Duval was made. His earnestness and eloquence had stirred even the lawyers. His youth, his courage, his knowledge of law were discussed. Other cases were given him, and when the week ended he had made seven hundred dollars. The night the fees were paid him he was like a miser. He locked his bedroom door and let the gold trickle through his fingers; he piled it up and saw in its glitter a rosy future of comfort for his wife and of gratified ambition for himself.

The next morning before dawn, he mounted the borrowed horse and started for Bardstown. His wife had prepared a delicious breakfast for him, but he was too excited to eat. Like the boy that he was, he wanted to surprise her, and he sat down at the table and began slowly counting out the money in ten-dollar gold pieces. His wife looked on and said, “Whose money is it? Have you got to take it to the bank?”

“It is my money!” said my grandfather, “mine and yours! Oh Nancy, come and dance and sing and cry.” And together they laughed and waltzed round the room, like the children they were, for poverty had gone out of the window, and success had come in at the door.

Later, my grandfather was elected to Congress from Kentucky, as he said he would be, and on his return to the States was appointed Judge of the Federal Court, which office he retained for some years. By this time three of his eight children had been added to the family. In those days the Floridas were a territory, and the Indians being somewhat troublesome a man of courage, decision, and heart was wanted for governor. The appointment was offered to my grandfather, who retained the office for twenty-four years. The youngest five children were born in Florida and the last pretty little girl was named after that land of flowers.

The new governor kept open house. All the year carriages drove back and forth, and people came and went as if it had been a hotel. Christmas and Easter were different from other seasons only in more turkeys and game, larger cakes, more egg-nog, and greater quantities of punch.

Three of my aunts and my mother were all celebrated beauties, my mother inheriting the Scotch hair, a dark auburn, and the deep blue eyes of her mother. My grandfather was always hospitable to the admirers of his daughters. They could spend the day, or even, if they felt inclined, several days, but at ten o'clock each night old Scipio, the negro butler, was required to see that the drawing-room was closed and the piazzas cleared.

Scipio made his appearance dressed in a swallow-tailed coat, his hair tied like my grandfather's in a queue (a strain of Indian blood had given him straight hair), and bearing an enormous waiter, with a large, noisily ticking silver watch lying upon it and numerous mint juleps. The suitors were supposed to observe the time, drink the juleps, say good-night and go home.

Life in Florida in those days must have been enchanting. There were fruit and vegetables all the year round, oranges for the picking, peaches and melons in great abundance. The Indians constantly brought in all kinds of game; the woods were full of wild orchids and myriads of wild flowers, and the pink cranes and scarlet flamingoes were quite tame on the banks of the little river that flowed at the bottom of the grounds.

In 1823, Governor Duval rendered signal service to the territory of Florida and to the United States Government by putting down the conspiracy of Neamathla, one of the most noted Indians in American history. He was the chief of the Mickasookies, a fighting tribe of warriors, who had their hands not only against the white man, but against the weaker Indian as well. They had committed many depredations on the frontiers of Georgia and were constantly attacking the Seminoles, a peaceful and picturesque tribe, who gave the Government no trouble, but sought (unless influenced by the Mickasookies) its protection.

Neamathla was a splendid figure, more than six feet in height, with fierce fiery eyes and a face like a hawk. He hated white men and proudly called Governor Duval “brother,” never acknowledging his superiority.

The Indians at this time, chiefly through the governor's influence, had signed a treaty to remove to a small section of land in the eastern part of Florida and to remain there for twenty years, thus leaving the remainder of the State free to the white man. Neamathla fought bitterly against the treaty, but finally signed it, saying quite frankly: “If I had enough warriors, brother, instead of signing the treaty, I would wipe every white man from the face of Florida. I say this to you, for though you are white, you are a Man. Your pale-faced people wouldn't understand me.”

Thinking it wise to be near the Indians, Governor Duval had settled at Tallahassee. The village of Neamathla being only three miles away, he often rode out to have a pow-wow with him. One day he found him surrounded by all his warriors, drinking brandy freely. Neamathla began to boast that although the red man had made a treaty, the treaty was at an end, “broken by the white man, who had not delivered the cattle and money promised.”

The Governor replied, “The time for the money and cattle has not yet arrived.” But the old chief only looked sly and continued to drink and threaten. He had been cutting tobacco with a long knife, and while he was talking he flourished his keen blade not an inch away from the Governor's throat, saying the country was the red man's, that it should belong to him, and he would fight for it until his bones, and the bones of his warriors bleached upon its soil.

Suddenly and unexpectedly the Governor seized him by the bosom of his shirt, clenched his fist in his face, and said: “You have made your treaty. You shall keep it. I am your White Chief sent by your father in Washington to see that you do it. If you do not, the blood of every Indian in the country will dye the land, and his bones will bleach upon its soil.”

The old chief threw himself back with a bitter laugh. “Ho, ho, little white brother!” he said, “can't you see my joke?”

My grandfather returned to Tallahassee, and things went smoothly for several months. Every day some of the Indians reported themselves at the Governor's house, but suddenly their visits ceased, and at midnight of the fourth day after this, Yellow Hair, a young brave who loved the White Chief, stole into the house. “Governor,” he said, “at the risk of my life I've come to tell you that five hundred warriors are holding a secret war talk with Neamathla.”

There was no more sleep that night for Governor Duval; he saw that he must take a desperate chance. There were one hundred white families near, and he had no soldiers. Everything depended on himself. At dawn he was up, and, mounting a fleet horse, called upon the interpreter, De Witt, to follow.

The man demurred. “Wait, Governor,” he said, “until we can get the militia.”

“No,” said my grandfather, “there is not a moment to lose, we must ride fast.” And they struck for the Indian village to what De Witt thought was certain death.

“The chiefs,” he said, “are old, discontented, suspicious and exasperated. They intend serious mischief.”

Finally my grandfather said, “Go back, man, and leave me to go on alone.”

“No,” said De Witt, “I won't leave you to die alone, but God! what a foolhardy expedition.”

They rode on in silence, and when they neared the village my grandfather said sternly, “Translate word for word what I say to you. Only courage can save us now.”

There was a great council fire, and Neamathla was sitting on a rude throne surrounded by his warriors. The Governor rode straight into the circle, while forty rifles were cocked and levelled at him. He slowly dismounted, looked Neamathla fearlessly in the eyes, and, with a gesture of contempt, stood waiting. The old chief threw up his arm; the guns were lowered. The Governor then walked up to Neamathla and asked why he was holding a council of war. The old chief was silent.

The White Chief said, “You need not answer. I know; but if a single hair of the head of a white man in this country is harmed”—he made a mighty sweeping gesture with his arm—“I will hang every chief to the trees that surround you. The Great Father in Washington holds you in the hollow of his hand. He has only to close it and you are dead. I am but one man. You may kill me, but the white man is as many as the leaves on this oak. Remember your warriors, whose bones have made the battlefields white. Remember your wives and your children dead in the swamps. Another war with the white man, and there will not be one Indian left to tell the story to his children.”

His words had effect. They sat still and silent. Then he appointed a day for them to meet him in St. Mark's and rode forty miles straight ahead to the Apalachicolas, a friendly tribe who were at feud with the Mickasookies. They immediately sent three hundred warriors to St. Mark's. He summoned also the regular army and the militia, and was then ready for Neamathla. Yellow Hair came again in the dead of night to tell the Governor that nine towns concerned in the conspiracy were disaffected, and from him he found out the names of the chiefs in these towns who were popular, but without power.

On the day of the conference he rode out to meet Neamathla, who, although at the head of eight hundred Indians, was afraid to venture into the court of St. Mark's alone. He thought when he saw the troops and the preparations that he had been betrayed, but was reassured when the Governor rode by his side and told him when the talk was ended that he could go home free.

Neamathla and the older chiefs blamed the younger ones who had led them into conspiracy. “Then,” said my grandfather, “if you cannot govern your braves you must, like the white man, find men who can. I depose you, Neamathla, and appoint Little Bear in your place.” And with great ceremony a broad ribbon sewn with beads, from which a large medal of the Capitol depended, was hung around the neck of a younger chief.

In this way nine chiefs were deposed and popular braves appointed in their place. The Indians were delighted; they thought my grandfather a prophet to have divined their choice. The new warriors, he was confident, would keep an eye on the disaffected, and would remain loyal to the Government and to him.

Neamathla left the country and returned to the Creek nation, who made him a chief, but, shorn of his great power, he soon died of disappointment. The Governor's achievement of defeating alone and unaided a conspiracy which would have brought about a terrible massacre, was a valiant and heroic act. In later years with no military escort, he was able to remove, through their confidence in him, all the Indians from Florida to the Indian Territory—thus saving the Government at Washington great trouble and expense.

When the question of the Indians was settled, he devoted himself to the development of the State. His children were being educated in Kentucky. The girls went to the Convent of Nazareth in Bardstown, and the boys to St. Joseph's, the college of the Jesuits which gave shelter to Louis Philippe when he was a refugee in America, and where later Jefferson Davis was a hard-working student.

My uncle Burr, the eldest son, was the flower of my grandfather's flock, tall, with a splendid figure, bright blue eyes, light waving hair, a dazzling smile, a speaking voice of golden sweetness, a dashing rider, and like his father a man of extraordinary courage, he sounds a perfect hero of romance. As a child I was ever eager for stories about him. When he graduated from college, young, gallant, intrepid, inheriting from his father the pioneer spirit, Texas, with a handful of brave men, was fighting for her liberty against the Mexicans, and Burr Duval raised in Kentucky a company of young men like himself, college bred and the sons of gentlemen. Among them was the lover of my great aunt Polly Hynes,—then a young lady who made her home with my grandfather—and my uncle John Duval, a boy of eighteen. This gallant company was called the “Kentucky Mustangs,” and Burr Duval was their captain. They offered themselves for service to Texas, and Colonel Fannin asked them to join his army.

They had not been long in the State when in a battle between Fannin's army and the Mexicans they surrendered to General Urrea, who agreed to treat them as prisoners of war, but at Goliad, on Palm Sunday, 1836, they with other companies, about four hundred and forty-three men in the very flower of their youth, were marched out and traitorously drawn up in line and shot. A few escaped, my uncle John, being at the end of the line and fleet of foot, among them.

When the scourge of yellow fever fifteen years later visited Florida, John had returned from Texas, brown, thin, and still saddened from the loss of his gallant young soldier brother, and another and slighter grief which ever pursued him, the necessity of choking to death a little dog that he had taken to Texas from Kentucky. With Mexicans in full pursuit, the dog was about to bark, and the only way to save his own life was to strangle his one faithful friend. It was a miserable little tragedy, and when quite an old man his face would still grow melancholy when he spoke of it.

After the death of her first-born beautiful son even my grandfather, they said, could rarely make my grandmother smile, and she was one of the first to die of yellow fever, for she made no effort to live. Aunt Polly, who was a woman of strong character and affections, had closed the room where she bade her lover good-bye forever, and she allowed no one to enter it but herself. The silver candlesticks had grown tarnished, the orange blossoms were brittle in the vase, the dust, like a grey pall, covered every object. But she spent hours alone there every day.

The loss of my grandmother was a terrible blow to my grandfather, and to the end of his life he remained inconsolable. They had been like two happy birds in the springtime. He teased her, and she would laugh and pull his ears and play with him as if they were still boy and girl. After her death he was restless and miserable, having lost interest in all things. With aunt Polly and her grief, it was a depressed and changed household. My uncle John, in spite of the terrible tragedy he had lived through, wanted to go back again to Texas. He had lost his heart to that vast country, so full of excitement and of seething vivid life, and my grandfather, to seek change from his poignant grief, consented to take his remaining family and go with him. They settled first in Galveston where my aunt, Elizabeth Beall, who was a very beautiful young widow, was at the head of the house. His children gathered around him, he began to get back his cheerfulness again, to take an interest in politics and the rapid development of the great “Lone Star State.” My father, who had held the office of Supreme Judge of the State of Arkansas, resigned and came to Texas, where he married my mother and went with her to live at Austin.

Fate surely cheated me out of a joy in not knowing my grandfather. I have always felt that we were congenial spirits. He was the soul of hospitality, affectionate, generous, brave, witty, and light-hearted, even in the face of death. His love of tradition led him to wear a queue. In his youth it was tied with a black ribbon, but later in life, when considered too aristocratic and dandified, it was plaited and tucked up out of sight among his curls with a hair-pin. Doctor Blake after his death cut off the queue and sent it to my aunt, his eldest daughter, Mrs. Elizabeth Beall. He was not an old man when he died in Washington from an attack of gout and pneumonia. He loved life, and he had not an enemy in the world. He was vitally interested in Texas, that splendid new country of his later years. He had many friends, and his children adored him, not with the theoretical love of children for their parents, which can brook absence, but with the real companionable love, desiring nothing so much as constant, affectionate intercourse and intimate interchange of thought. Aunt Lizzie told me that his daughters, my mother, my aunt Mary, my aunt Florida and herself were counting the days of his return from Washington, when they received a letter from old Doctor Blake announcing his death.

THE best blood of America is in Texas, the hardy blood of the conquering pioneer. Even to-day, by instinct, inheritance, and tradition, the men of Texas are still pioneers, for they must be ever on the alert to fight nature as she tries their prowess in droughts, floods, hurricanes and tornadoes, but the golden possibilities in that vast land— oil and coal to-day, topaz and turquoise to-morrow, gold and silver in the future—urge them on to hope and fresh endeavour.

The men who first established the Republic had force enough to wrest the land from the Indian, and afterwards from the Mexican. They were strong, they fought to conquer or to die. And not only were there pioneer men, but splendid pioneer women as well. How wise is Nature in aptly supplying her needs! After the Civil War all the babies born in the South were boys. It was impossible for mothers who longed for them, to produce girls, and when women were needed with intrepid souls, great powers of endurance, and vigorous health to share a life of difficulty and danger with daring men, Nature produced them. Medea, when asked, “Country, husband, children are all gone, what remains?” answered, “Medea remains.” There were many Medeas in Texas. When husband and children were killed by the Indians, and later by the Mexicans, houses destroyed by fire, cattle and horses confiscated, still these hardy women lived on to a brave old age.

Mrs. Long, whose husband of her youth was assassinated by the Mexicans, spent a long life in trying to avenge his death. It needs an iron constitution and rugged health, to survive the memory of bloody tragedies, and life in those days was melodramatic in its intensity. If the occurrences of a day or a week of that time were now put on the stage, it would give us, sitting in our seats in a theatre, fierce and bloodcurdling thrills.

The crest of that wave of supreme daring—and history, ancient or modern, contains no more sublime display of courage—was the defence of the Alamo. Not one man survived. They died like their leaders, Travis, Crockett, Bowie and Bonham, fighting until death loosened the grip of the smoking weapons from their brave hands. There is something glorious and complete in a bloody struggle where every man dies. On the old monument of the Alamo was the inscription: “Thermopylæ had her messenger of defeat, but the Alamo had none.” None was needed. It was better for that superhumanly gallant band to die together. They have made an imperishable page of glory in history, and left a proud heritage of unconquerable courage for the state to hand down to her sons.

But the battle of San Jacinto, when the Texans, concealed behind a gradually sloping hill, descended unawares upon the Mexicans with the terrible cry from every man: “Remember Goliad! Remember the Alamo! Goliad! The Alamo!” avenged many deaths. And in such furious, revengeful haste were the soldiers that, coming to close quarters with the Mexicans they clubbed their muskets, and fought hand to hand with bayonets and knife. “Goliad! Goliad!” which in hoarse, fierce cries echoed over the battlefield, meant death to the Mexican army, for, cruel memories crowding upon them, the men fought like savages. The artillerymen ordered: “Guns to the front! Guns to the front! God! This for the Alamo!” and a steady stream of fire poured forth on the Mexicans. The men at the guns were blackened with powder; the cannon smoked and sent out long tongues of flame.

“Fire, fire,” cried one, “in God's name, fire!”

“In the name of Travis, Bowie, and Crockett, fire, men, fire!”

The guns roared like wakeful hyenas, the band of drum and fife stridently played, “Will you come to the bower?” The Mexicans were running, rushing, fleeing, agonised and appalled from “The Bower.”

The battle lasted only half an hour, but six hundred and thirty Mexicans were dead on the fertile plain, more than two hundred were wounded, and more than seven hundred were prisoners. Arms, munition, mules, horses, money in gold and silver, were taken as loot from the Mexicans, and of the brave little army of seven hundred and forty-three Texans there were only six killed and twenty-five wounded. Goliad and the Alamo were avenged.

Santa Anna when captured was generously treated as a prisoner of war. If women, the mothers and wives of the men slain at the massacre of Goliad and shot at the Alamo, had taken him prisoner he would have met instant death, which he deserved, but he lived to again betray in 1843 the Texan troops at Nier, when Fisher's men, surrendering under a written promise to be accorded treatment as prisoners of war, were instantly tied together in pairs, and driven like cattle towards the city of Mexico.

In the early dawn of the following day, led by a brave Scotchman, Captain Ewan Cameron, many of them escaped. The remaining number who could not get away were commanded by Santa Anna to be drawn up in a line and shot, but the order was modified to the drawing of black beans. The man, who, blindfolded, drew the fatal colour was shot. Seventeen men in this way were executed, and those who drew white beans had better have died than lived, so cruelly did they suffer. But every day brought nearer to the undaunted pioneers of Texas the hope of freedom and independence. Men may have been many things in that struggling republic, filibusters, outlaws, adventurers, gamblers, pirates, but I never heard of a coward.

We had the honour of sharing with Louisiana the picturesque gentleman pirate Lafitte, who was said by his enemies to make love or to scuttle a ship with equal success, and by his friends to be a seigneur with letters of marque from the French government. He was certainly, to put it politely, a violator of the revenue, and Governor Claybourne had put a price upon his head, when, at an opportune moment for him, General Jackson and his army arrived in New Orleans. With the ready assurance of the bold adventurer, Lafitte offered his services and that of an armed company for the defence of the state, and though General Jackson had denounced “robbers, pirates, and hellish bandits,” he entered the army, was commended for bravery, gained a full and free pardon by the government, and left Louisiana rehabilitated, only to start privateering in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Galveston. In an incredibly short space of time he had gathered more than a thousand lawless adventurers about him. Finally a Government vessel was robbed of some thousands in gold. After that he disappeared and was supposed to have sailed for South America.

La Salle, that brave and intrepid discoverer, having claimed and named Louisiana for Louis XIV, sailed for Texas, landed at Matagorda Bay, explored the Lavaca River, and built Fort St. Louis. He called it “The St. Louis of Sorrow,” and so it proved for him. It is a pity that its historic name has been changed to Dimmit's Point. A leader of men can never escape the destroying jealousy of those whom he dominates. They admire him. They fear him. They envy him to the point of hatred. La Salle escaped the dangers of the explorer by land and sea only to die by the hand of an assassin, one of his own men, on the Neches River.

There was courage and daring and carelessness of life in Texas; not only in those early days, but even as a child I myself remember the old disregard of danger which prevailed in Texas. There is a great deal in atmosphere. When a man lives in a country where cowardice is not tolerated, although he may quake inwardly he would never dare to show the white feather. On a Saturday night if a frontiersman had drunk enough liquid “hell-fire,” he would ride into the town yelling like a Comanche Indian, the reins of his horse thrown over his arm or held in his teeth, and both hands occupied in alternately firing off pistols, one perhaps pointed upward to the heavens, the other downward to the earth, or by misadventure hitting a human being. My youngest brother, Ridge, standing on the side-walk, enjoying one of these all too realistic spectacular performances, was shot through the foot. He was about fifteen years old and we were the greatest friends, then and always. After a few days I was allowed as a great privilege to see the little greyish hole in his instep. I don't think he minded it much; with a bundle of newspapers and a pile of books he was always oblivious to the world.

When I grew up and married, during my visits to Texas my brother Ridge always spent a part of every day with me and he had such a restful, comfortable, sensible, original way of visiting. He wanted to see me, but having nothing in particular to say, he said nothing. Arriving with a dozen newspapers under one arm and several books under the other, he gave me a brief but affectionate greeting, and, sitting down, he read steadily for two hours, got up, patted me on the head or shoulder, and said, “Good-bye, Betts Swizzlegigs, see you to-morrow.” And off he would go; but he always saw me on the morrow. For, in the whole of his life, he never broke the slightest promise, or told a little or a big lie.

When he talked, which he did amazingly well, it was to say something worth while, for he had a perfectly astounding memory. It was like a moving picture show, and seemed to have literally photographed every event, every book, and every poem that he had ever read. He was very fond of some little verses by Rollin Ridge, a talented Cherokee Indian: I love thee as the soaring birdThe bright blue morning when he sings,With circling, circling melody,And Heaven's sweet sunlight on his wings.I love thee as the billows loveIn tropic lands the pearly shore;They come and go—they come and go,With answering kisses evermore.I love thee as the marinerFar driven o'er the stormy seaThe bright and shining silver starWhich tells him where his home may be.I love thee thus and ever shall;Thine eyes their bright and glorious lightShine in my soul for evermoreIllumining its darkest night. and he always repeated again the lines, “With circling, circling melodyAnd Heaven's sweet sunlight on his wings.” and I hope in that other and more beautiful country where he has gone, “Heaven's sweet sunlight” is shining upon him.

As a little girl, I had a great desire to be brave, but, like the burglar described to me by F. C. Froest, the able superintendent of police in London, who had three terrors— an old-fashioned iron bar fastened across a door, a little shrill barking dog, and an old maid who always sleeps with one eye open,—there were three things, which struck terror to my soul. These were the drunken yells of the galloping outlaws, the old Voodoo negro witch living near us, who was said to make people die by putting a spell on them; and the bellowing of a bull, which for a long time I believed to be the devil roaring aloud for bad children whom he was seeking to devour. This fable had been told me by a little negro girl on the place, and had sunk deep into my well of credulity, where even yet the waters have not been dried to dust by the world's disillusionment.

Maum Phyllis, the Voodoo witch, had been brought to Texas from South Carolina by my uncle Marcellus Duval, and my father always said she was the last slave who had been born in Africa. She was so black that even her lips were a blue-black colour; her eyes were large and rolling; she never smiled and seldom spoke. In her ears she wore big hoops of gold, and a snow-white head handkerchief instead of the gay plaid turban always worn by other negro women. The contrast of her stern black face and the white above it was startling. There was no scandal, no secret, no small incident in any house in town which was unknown to her, and even white women were not above buying her love philtres. One of her peculiar talismans, composed of a bat's wing, a rabbit'a foot, some hemp from the rope which had hanged a murderer, and drops of milk from the breasts of a mother and daughter, each nursing a baby of the same age, was supposed to bring unwilling lovers to the most forbidding of woman-kind. In the South, where women married very young, it was not an unusual thing for the mother's youngest child to be of the same age as her daughter's firstborn.

Mammy, although a very religious and ardent Methodist, was a firm believer in Voodooism, charms, amulets, the evil eye, “sperrits” and all the rest of it, I cannot even now disabuse my mind of superstition and I know, “de cunjhe book” contains many warnings and shuddering peeps into the future.

BEFORE the war, society in Austin must have been very varied and interesting. General Sam Houston was governor of the State. My mother did not like him, holding him responsible for the massacre of Goliad where my Uncle Burr Duval had been shot; but from this history exonerates him. He came to Texas in the first instance, like many another man, to mend a broken heart, and for a time eschewed the society of the white man and above all the white woman. Living entirely with the Indians, he learned their language, adopted their costume, and to the end of his life retained a certain bold picturesqueness in his dress. When Governor of the State, he wore a soft silk shirt, a flowing red necktie, a leopard-skin vest, coat and trousers of brown camel's hair, a wide sombrero of grey felt embroidered in silver, and a rich-coloured Mexican serape. Some of these serapes woven by the Indians are of great value; they are made on a fine frame not unlike the manner of weaving an Eastern rug, and are splendid in colouring and as pliable and soft as an Indian shawl. Age only improves them; with care they last for generations and are with the Mexicans valued heirlooms. Governor Houston loved popularity and was always sending my mother, through my father, some small carved object. Like Madame de Staël he required constant occupation for his hands; she played with a twig or a flower, he was always whittling, and he was rarely seen without a knife and a piece of soft wood which he transformed into stars, hearts, diamonds, and Noah's Ark people and animals. Eventually my mother softened towards him, for he and my father were always friends. In a quarrel which he had with a public man, my father was trying to mend matters when Governor Houston said: “You are right, Judge, I must n't be too hard on Jones; he has every quality of the dog except his fidelity.”

The romance of his life was not unlike that of Claude Melnotte, but without the happy ending which romance so easily, but life rarely, gives. He was a man of great ability and when very young was elected governor of Tennessee. During his term of office he fell ardently in love with a beautiful and ambitious girl. The wooing was not without difficulty as he had a rival, a young man, undesirable and undistinguished, who scarcely entered into his big busy mind. The girl he loved lived in an adjoining town, and the courtship was mainly through letters, therefore he had not the opportunity of properly studying her character. As was the fashion of the time they were married at night, in a candle-lighted, flower-wreathed church. There was a big wedding, for everybody wanted to see the handsome young couple, and to congratulate the Governor, but at last, at the end of the festivities, he sought the beautiful bride. All shimmer of satin and glimmer of pearl, she awaited him, in the rose-and-white bridal chamber.

He went quickly towards her, speechless with emotion, and tenderly gathered her in his arms. “Don't,” she said, pushing him away, “you will crush my veil.” Her voice struck coldly upon his quickened emotions, but he was repelled only for a second. He was too happy to take warning, and he unfastened her veil, laid it reverently on the sofa, and softly lifted her face to kiss her. She drew back with a look almost of dislike, and said, “Please, please, not now.” He thought it was maidenly modesty and said: “I have n't thanked you yet for marrying me, but I do. See, I am humble; I am on my knees, my darling, to thank you,” and he knelt and covered her hands with kisses.

Another, softer woman, not loving him, would have done it then, and laying her hand upon his head would have thanked God for this adoring heart, but her own was of ice. She said, somewhat sharply: “Do get up and don't be foolish; I don't want you to thank me for marrying the Governor of Tennessee.” He said very gently, “You have married your lover, Madame.”

“I don't want a lover,” she said, coldly, “if I had wished to give myself up to love,—a thing I don't believe in,—I would have married S.,” naming his rival.

“Did you,” said her husband fiercely, “love him?”

“No,” she said, “but I might have loved him, if you had not been a man of successful ambition. I have married, as I said before, the Governor of Tennessee.”

“Perhaps,” said he with a dangerous light in his eyes, “you do not love this gentleman—this paltry Governor—”

She said, “Love is not necessary in an ambitious marriage. I am the Governor's wife. I am to sit at the head of his table, to receive his friends, to share his triumphs—”

“And,” he cried with a great burst of passion, “to starve his heart and leave it empty! To break it in the end, and to make ambition his curse. Even now,” he added bitterly, “my ambition is dead. You have killed all my hopes, and I suffer the torments of the damned, for I wanted you and I loved you,—my God, how I loved you!”

She answered calmly: “I thought men placed ambition before a woman. I am willing for you to do that. You are the Governor of . . .”

“By heaven, Madame,” he said harshly, “there is no such person.”

And with that, he strode to the writing-table, wrote his resignation to the State, threw it at her feet, picked up his hat, and said:

“I married you for love, the purest, the truest, the most reverently adoring that man ever gave to woman. You married me without love. I scorn a woman's body without her soul. We are as far asunder as the poles. We part here, now and forever.”

He closed the door and went out into the darkness of the stormy night—his tragic wedding night—and they never met again.

He sought forgetfulness among the Indians, and was only roused from lethargy by the desperate efforts of the struggling Republic of Texas towards liberty. When he became General of the army, his wife, at last loving him deeply, should, according to romance, have travelled thousands of miles and appeared, travel-stained, softened and repentant, to sue for his forgiveness; but in reality they were divorced. Each married again, and they never met after the fatal night of their parting.

Texas must have held more than her share of thrilling romance at this period. Men made love with impulsive ardour, for the rapid uncertainty of life brings greediness for all it holds. During the war, one day's courtship served for marriage. “Love to-night and death to-morrow,” was the soldier's motto.

Among the first settlers of Texas a number of representatives of old Southern families had established themselves in Austin. James Raymond had helped to frame the constitution of the State and was a banker; the Flournoys (what pity to anglicise the aristocratic name of Fleur Noire!), the Lubbocks, the Wauls (Waul's confederate Texas brigade was later to become a synonym in the army for undaunted courage);—the Hancocks, the Duvals, the Peases—Elisha Pease, afterwards governor, although born in the North and a Union man, never lost the affection or confidence of the people—these were among the most distinguished of the early settlers. Then there were the Throckmortons, the Wests, the Burlesons, the Steiners, the Haynes, and the Wigfalls. Louis Wigfall had been sent from Texas to the United States Senate. With uncompromising Southern proclivities, he became in 1861 one of the leaders of Secession, and was a fiery, vehement, passionate speaker, earning for himself the sobriquet of “the stormy petrel.”

Mrs. Chesnut, in her Diary from Dixie, 1860-65, frequently mentions the Wigfalls. “I sent Mrs. Wigfall a telegram—‘Where shrieks the wild seamew?’ She answered, ‘Seamew at the Spotswood Hotel will shriek soon. I will remain here.’ ” And of the bombardment of Fort Sumter, she says, “Wigfall was with them on Marius' Island when they saw the fire in the fort. He jumped into a little boat and, with his handkerchief, as a white flag, rode over . . . . As far as I can see, the fort surrendered to Wigfall. It is all confusion.” And at Richmond in 1861 she says: “Heavens! He manœuvered until I was weary for their sakes. Poor fellows, it was a hot afternoon in August and the thermometer in the nineties. President Davis uncovered to speak. Wigfall kept his hat on. Is that military?” After the war Louis Wigfall lived for a time in England, but eventually returned to the United States.

Matthias Ward, another Senator from Texas in 1860, was very popular. He had a great sense of humour and enjoyed a story against himself. His face was extremely youthful, with fresh bright eyes as blue as that dear flower, the prairie blue-bonnet, and cotton-white hair. Travelling from New Orleans to St. Louis by a Mississippi steamer, he had engaged the state-room number one hundred and ten. The boat was immensely crowded, and his room had been taken possession of by a party of lawless men. Standing outside the open door of the ladies' cabin, the steward called to one of the understewards, “Here, can't you get this poor man, one hundred and ten, a berth?” A pretty lady put her head out of the state-room. “Oh, steward, bring him right in here,” she said; “the ladies won't mind a harmless old man of a hundred and ten, and, poor old soul, he must have somewhere to sleep.” “Pull your hat down,” said the steward, “and hobble to your berth; it will be all right.” But the lovely ladies chattering, relieving their pretty heads of hundreds of curls and braids, letting their own hair flow over their shoulders, and dropping immense hoop skirts which fell with a clang like steel armour to the floor, were temptations too strong to be withstood. Mr. Ward peeped, and immediately an observant young lady called out, “Steward, steward, come quick and get your hundred and ten. He's looking at us with young blue eyes.” And the steward had to find him another state-room, minus crinolines.

There were many men in Texas opposed to Secession at the beginning of the war. The State had entered the Union on her own terms; she was prosperous and far enough away from the passionate excitement in Washington for astute statesmen to see inevitable defeat. From the beginning everything was against the South. The North had wealth, open ports, greater numbers, and even with success the South must have suffered horribly from a war fought on her own territory. But when Texas finally accepted Secession she did it with no half measures, furnishing to the Confederate army eighty-eight regiments of infantry and cavalry, and more than thirty batteries of artillery. In all, seventy-five thousand Texas men fought for the Southern cause. Albert Sydney Johnston ranked among the ablest officers in the service. Ben McCullough commanded the Texas Rangers, who did not know fear. Sam Bell Maxey, a cousin of my mother's, soon won his two stars. General William Steele, who had married my aunt Laura Duval's sister, an ardent sympathiser with the South, had resigned from a crack cavalry regiment in the United States army to take command in Texas. And the long roll-call of glory holds hundreds of Texas names.

WHEN the responsibility of my own life was suddenly and violently thrust upon me and I found myself homeless and alone, the waves of misery which rushed over and submerged me were so thunderous and heavy, they left me bruised, beaten, and broken. Blindly I struggled to shore, as one already dead. The first thing that brought me to life was the voice of a little child.

It was a long, long way off, and it was only in my dreams, but one day it came closer, and then the dear Love, my grandson, rushed into my room and said, “Damma, you have come to live with us, and must never go away again, not for one minute!” And all these precious words were said between little close, bear-like hugs and haphazard warm kisses. When he left me the drought of my tears was over. I could weep again, and life could not be altogether desolate when the day began with play and toys. Quite early in the morning my bedroom door was flung open with a cheerful, “Well, little Dam!” and the Love, with his hands full of soldiers, or ducks, or bears, or boats, would perch himself on my bed. And when he returned to his nursery he always left one little toy so that “Damma would n't be lonesome.” And so throughout the day, if my troubles weighed too heavily upon me, I would touch for a moment the toy soldier, or the little boat, or the woolly dog, and they brought me consolation.

But the nights were dreadful, the long nights of hideous sleeplessness, with one maddening thought hammering my brain into pulp. I was like an uprooted plant dying in a new soil. Lura, my sweet Love's mother and an affectionate daughter to me, said: “Mother, you must go to America and get well, not to New York, not to Washington, not to any of the large cities, but go down to the very heart of the South, go where the sun shines. Go, dear, it will prove a healing balm to your spirit; I am sure it will.” And I looked into my little Love's beautiful eyes and said:

But a horribly sad inertia possessed me, and it was months before I could gather strength enough to cross the Atlantic, although it is the easiest thing possible to go to Tilbury, get on board one of the Atlantic Transport Line Steamers, and almost immediately a beneficial rest cure begins. The boats are particularly comfortable and quiet; they are primarily built for carrying valuable cattle, and the accommodation for horses, cows, sheep and pigs, is vastly more comfortable and better ventilated than third-class passengers get on the larger steamers.

I often cross on this line and always go down on the lower deck to see the four-footed travellers; sometimes they are valuable thoroughbreds, or a hundred draft horses, big, black, brown and bay fellows, from Belgium, France, and England.

Once there were sixty Egyptian donkeys with us, beauties in colour, colossal in size and also in voice. One morning when a loud noise clove the air, a lady passenger turned alarmed and said to me: “What a strange thing, the fog whistle is blowing and there is n't any fog. Something serious must be the matter.” But it was only an Egyptian donkey braying a regret for the Nile. And there are occasional prize dogs, beautiful fluffy-haired cats, and wonderfully bred guinea pigs with such long feathery hair, high crests, and top-knots that they bear a strange likeness to unwinged cockatoos. And the gulls followed us, those gipsies of the air, darting here and there or balanced on a wave almost all the way to New York. The service is excellent on these sensible ships, the food is good and abundant. The nine or ten days of our voyage passed quickly, for there were most agreeable people on board.

Dr. Venning, from Charles Town, in West Virginia, helped me by a good deal of sound advice. I think I never saw a saner, healthier, kinder or more capable man than this young surgeon. His mind, his body, and his work are all attuned to his profession which make for success. He drinks neither tea, coffee nor stimulants of any kind. He sleeps in the open air, lives on simple food, has a contented mind and is altogether a Man—frank, honest, and straightforward. He is happily married, is an intelligent, strict father, and, above all, he is deeply interested in his profession and ambitious about his work. In his short vacation in England he had spent every afternoon in the operating-room of some hospital, and yet he could drop his work and all thought of it in a minute, talk about any subject under the sun, and laugh with the heartiness of a boy. What a help his very presence must be in the sick room!

When we arrived in New York I lingered unnecessarily. My healing had not begun—I had not enough energy to unpack and leave my winter belongings, and take out my lighter clothes for the South. And Julia, one of my adopted daughters, begged me to stay. I have five adopted daughters—Helen, for brilliancy and inspiration; Caroline, for beauty and gentleness; Bee, for loyalty and unselfishness; dear Margaret Douglas for sweetest sympathy and appreciation, and Julia for love and honeyed flattery (Ah, what soothing balm!).

Julia is of good birth and lineage, a tall, fair daughter of the South, and through certain qualities she has won success in that hard city. The stranger passing up and down Fifth Avenue can see on a modest but very distinct sign, Miss CARROLL Gowns.

This is the way it came about. Julia, with a negro Mammy, living in New York, was somewhat helplessly looking round for work when she and the negress, a beautiful needlewoman, made a Southern gown for a Southern woman going to Saratoga. It was one of those cobwebby New Orleans organdies, trimmed with much Valenciennes insertion and lace, with here and there a heavenly satin bow made by Mammy, whose genius lay in that direction. The dress was an instantaneous success, and Julia became a specialist in wash-dresses. Later, silk and fine woollen gowns were added to her jaconets and muslins, and now she goes to Paris twice a year and all the latest modes fashioned from the most wonderful materials are to be found in her splendid shop, with its setting of beautiful antique furniture, carved mirrors, cases of old fans, china, and bric-à-brac. This success has grown, not out of the rosebud organdie, but from Julia's tact—tact in the morning, tact in the afternoon, tact in the evening. Julia puts it on like armour before the polyglot waiter arrives in her apartment with her breakfast.

“Where,” she said to a strange dark little man, “is Tony?”

“Gone, Madame.”

“And do you take his place?”

“Yes, Madame.”

“And what are you?”

“A Greek, Madame; I am going back to Athens in the spring for the Olympic games.”

“And,” said Julia, very sweetly,—but absent-mindedly, looking at his queer little knock-kneed legs—“do you take part in the Olympic games?”

The poor creature tried to stand straight, and said with an air of pride, “No, Madame, that is . . . ”

“Ah,” said Julia, “I am sure you could.” And whenever after that she telephoned, the Olympian appeared with lightning rapidity.

Moreover, Julia does n't only listen to bores, she goes further; she drinks in what they have to say and laughs spontaneously at their witless jokes. It is royally splendid. Of course now and then she has to retire to a sanatorium to seek silence and a rest cure, for eternal tact tries the most robust health.

One of her customers has a chicken farm, and, next to the agricultural department, there is no one who knows so much of cocks and hens, their food and their vagaries as Julia. Another is a rose grower, and on slugs too she could take a degree. Her true position in the world should be that of an ambassadress in a foreign country having very complicated relations with America,—Japan, for example. With Julia there to pour oil on the troubled waters, we would never be embroiled in war.

So, without energy, I stayed on. The first impetus to encourage my departure occurred at a charming dinner in the house of that wonderfully successful woman, Elizabeth Marbury. She lives in Washington Irving's pretty, old house in Seventeenth Street; it is decorated and furnished in perfect taste by her friend and comrade, Elsie de Wolfe, and is one of the few old landmarks left in that restless city of constant change and continual progress.

I remembered that my grandfather had dined with Washington Irving in this very house. In that white dining-room whose walls must have heard many a brilliant jeu d'esprit, he had talked and laughed and told stories (for he was a famous raconteur) which that delightful writer afterwards used in Wolfert's Roost.

I heard at my left a fragment of conversation between a Southern lady, living in England, and Professor Pupin.

“Are you,” she said, “an American?”

“Yes,” he answered, “I am.”

LOVE is a poor invertebrate thing, unless the people who care for each other are congenial. They must enjoy long talks, spontaneous laughs, long silences, and the confidences that only midnight brings; for there is something about that hour which induces a true communion of spirits. How Sam and I have owled it, talking far into the morning, until Lois has called out, “Are you two ever coming to bed?”

In every family certain members are particularly congenial to each other. We two seem to have so much to talk about—our father, first and best of all. I can always talk of him, and Sam, who was only four when our father died, can always listen. “You know,” I said, disregarding Lois, “Pappy was like the Pied Piper of Hamelin with the tail of childern following after him. He had kept the heart of a child and was one of them, and his pockets bulged with candy and oranges for the little ones. He was tender to all humanity, and he had a great taste for romance!”

And I told Sam my father's story of Jonathan Meigs, who, some four generations ago, was a suitor for the hand of a charming coquettish Virginia beauty. He was desperately in love with her and anxiously uncertain as to his fate. At last after months of abject devotion on his part, he made up his mind to offer her his hand and heart, feeling that if she refused him it would mean a life-long disappointment.

The young lady lived on Capitol Hill in a house with a garden in front and a long flagged path leading to the gate. One beautiful moonlight night while she was sitting on the balcony, and the mocking-bird trilled a love song to his mate, Jonathan took his courage in both hands and proposed to the love of his life. She was uncertain—said she liked him very much, but she did not love him and could not marry him. The blow of her refusal was even more terrible than he had anticipated, and when he said good-night to her and walked down the path, the moonlight streaming on his bare head, she saw a face of deathlike pallor, and his shoulders were bent like those of an old man.

In that moment pity entered her gentle heart, and a tender maternal love came fluttering after it, for the love of every true woman should have in it something of the mother too. As Jonathan reached the front gate and raised the latch, he heard a sweet, gentle, tender voice say, “Return, Jonathan! Jonathan! Return!” In a moment he was a man again, the colour came back to his face, he raised his head like a crest, squared his shoulders, and walked up the path with the proud step of a soldier who had won a battle. She was standing on the balcony, and he knelt down before her and kissed the hem of her gown, saying, “God bless you, dear, for those beautiful words, ‘Return, Jonathan.’ ”

They were married, and when the first baby came there was a grand christening, and the name given to it was “Return Jonathan.”

There have been four Return Jonathans in the Meigs family since.

“I hope,” said Sam, “the name will ever continue.”

The story of Senator Pettus was another of Pappy's favourite love stories. Young Pettus belonged to an excellent family, but his father had a moderate income and he did not go to college. When he fell in love it was with a girl of high education, great beauty and vaulting ambition. She liked the attentions of the frank, agreeable young man, but when he proposed marriage to her she said, “Mr. Pettus, when I marry it must be a college-bred man, and a man of energy and ambition. Life holds for me more than love.”

He took his defeat very quietly, and the next thing she heard of him was, that he had gone to college without even saying good-bye to her. The years passed and she received no letter nor any indication whatever that she was remembered, but her thoughts often strayed to the young man who had shown at least a practical regard for her opinion, for she knew that his college course must have cost both himself and his family a valiant effort. At the end of four years, in the sweet summertime, she was sitting in the garden in a little arbour all overgrown with roses, when she heard a quick, triumphant step coming up the path, and Edmund Pettus appeared before her, having graduated brilliantly. He laid his diploma on her knee with a low bow, saying, “Madam, I have been to college.”

It had been a hardly won guerdon, for he was not like a knight of old who had fought his fight in joust or tournament in one glorious encounter. His battle had meant four years of struggle and hard work, but he had won. Of course the lady was his, for she looked at the diploma with suspiciously shining eyes, and said, “I love it.” And, he answered leaning over and kissing her hand, “I hope you love me a little too.”

They were married shortly afterwards and lived happy ever after. “Mighty pretty,” said Sam, “all that old romance of the South.”

Lois called down the stairs, “Do you know the hour? It is one o'clock; time for even owls to stop hooting.”

“To-morrow,” said Sam, “we will go to bed at nine o'clock.” Oh, those good resolutions, so delightfully broken!

The next day was Christmas, and Lois and I went into Washington to dine with Mary. The house presented a festive appearance, with wreaths of holly and bunches of holly and mistletoe adorning the pretty rooms. The menu for the feast included Blue Point oysters, fresh from the mouth of the Potomac River, a splendid Christmas turkey stuffed with chestnuts, and served with sausages from Virginia, a smoked ham of rare excellence, fried hominy, candied sweet potatoes, cranberries, and wonderful complex ice-cream of different layers and colours. But the chef d'œuvre of this dinner was my Santa Claus chimney which adorned the centre of the table.

Bee has a singular talent for carpentry and the creation of all sorts of pretty things, and instead of a Christmas tree she had made the top of a chimney. It was of wood, covered with red paper simulating little bricks. The edge of the chimney was heaped thickly with a deep layer of snow, which if it was not real snow looked very like it and lasted better than the genuine article. The table all around the chimney glittered with snowflakes, and Santa Claus waited to descend and fish up the Christmas presents with a small hook.

There was an affectionate thought for everybody at the table, but Mary had imparted to my family and friends the secret of the chimney, and the pretty things drawn up for me by that little Santa Claus and his hook were so numerous that I was deeply touched and it was more difficult for me to smile than to weep. My gifts were chosen with love and discretion, many of them being things useful for a wanderer over the face of the earth like myself. When the last remembrance, a silver book marker was fished out of the chimney I said, “Now, no more gifts, or I shall be undone.” Injustice or unkindness has always a hardening tonic effect upon me, but kindness, ah! that is different, it touches me and makes me weak—it is what I most value in life.

But with all the affection and friendliness of my dear ones in Washington—Sam, Lois, and Mary, and my other dear Mary, and Bee, and my sister Minnie, so clever, so capable, so kind and unselfish, with the executive ability of a statesman and the courage of a soldier—I could not seem, even in the midst of these happy influences to get any better in health, so I decided to act on Mary Clark's advice and go into Miss Sylvester's Nursing Home for a rest cure.

The evening that I arrived there, feeling desperately lonely and depressed, just as I got out of the carriage a brisk-looking cheerful fox terrier ran affectionately to me, stood upon his hind legs, thrust his icy nose in my hand and said, “Don't be downhearted, I am going to stand by you, whatever happens.” He then whisked round and disappeared, and when I went into the house and to my room, he was sitting in the middle of my bed, with his pink tongue hanging out, smiling most cheerily.

The nurse said, “I am sorry, but you will have to send your dog away, we do not admit dogs to the Home.” “He is not my dog,” I said, “he is just a sympathetic soul who has come to give me courage.” The sympathetic soul, however, had decided on the necessity of remaining permanently and he sat perfectly rigid, growling, and showing his teeth when requested to go. In the end, the cab driver was called upstairs and led him away. He cast a regretful glance at me, which seemed to say, “I am astonished that you have refused my kind offices. I had intended to stay here and comfort you.” And, indeed, my last hope seemed to vanish with him.

I cannot imagine anything more trying for a restless, independent human being than the first week of a rest cure. To give yourself, your mind, your body, your desires, your wishes all completely into the hands of someone else is so difficult. It requires strength of will to endure it. My one consolation was my secret plan of a solitary elopement. Every day during my rest I intended to dress myself in the afternoon, quietly slip away, and appear unexpectedly at Mary Clark's; and without my saying a word Miss Sylvester divined my intention. She said she never entered the room without expecting to find me gone. The next week the régime was easier to bear; the week after that I liked it; and the fourth week I was full of regret at leaving.

Miss Sylvester, a Johns Hopkins graduate, is an ideal nurse, calm, firm, not affected by any untoward symptoms and having much experience in nervous diseases. She understands perfectly how to treat patients suffering from them. I could not have believed it possible for anyone to have gained as much benefit from treatment as I did from that rest cure, and yet I did not take it as intelligently as I would a second one. I was not reconciled to the rigid rule of seeing no one, and writing no letters and just being an obedient child, and I struggled to the very end against my cold-water packs. Two a day, forty minutes altogether in a cold sheet, and yet nothing was more beneficial to my raw and blistered nerves than this lingering application of cold water. When I have time I am going back to take another rest cure, and no patient that Miss Sylvester has ever had will be so docile, so obedient, as I.

I went back for a few days to Chevy Chase before going to Virginia. Sam always came to my room in the early morning for our coffee together. “Are you dressed?” he asked. “No, not yet,” I said. “Well, put on your kimono and I'll come in.” We then began our usual long talk, and I remembered to enquire one day what had become of our old housekeeper.

“Is Josephine still living?” I asked him.

“No,” he said, “she died some years ago. The fact is, she never fully recovered from her affair with Silas Bundy.”

“Poor thing,” I said, “before that time she had never looked at a man.”

“What a misfortune,” said Sam, “that in her middle age she should fall entirely, helplessly, violently and jealously in love with Silas Scipio Bundy.” And as we drank our coffee, Josephine's love affair came vividly back to me.

She was a bright-skinned mulatto who lived with us from the time we started housekeeping in Washington. Her pretty face was perfectly round, with bright dark eyes, wavy, not kinky, hair, and when she smiled her teeth were dazzlingly white. Being fat and hopelessly lazy, to compensate for her worthlessness she made herself diplomatically and flatteringly agreeable and she was, when necessary, extremely capable. There was no regularly appointed place in the house for her, but she was generally filling in some hiatus. If the cook was suddenly taken ill, Josephine went into the kitchen and we revelled in excellent meals. If the housemaid left at a moment's notice she took charge of the bedrooms. If the butler decamped without warning, Josephine waited at the dining-room table, never forgot the salt, or the pepper, or the mustard, or the clean napkins; arranged the flowers with an understanding hand and all went well until the new servant arrived.

Generally speaking, she was a sort of useful maid, sewing a little, answering the door a little, brushing clothes, cleaning shoes; and sitting with her hands restfully folded, waiting patiently until the time came to quit work. Her great attraction was her dependableness and her domesticity, for she was consistently lazy—her fondest lover could not deny that. She cared nothing whatever for people of her own colour, she rarely ever went to church, she never went out in the evening, and was as much a fixture in the house as one of the chairs or tables.

When Sam was born, a much belated, but altogether welcome little brother, Josephine became his devoted nurse. In that capacity she was as excellent as in all others. She did not wear out the baby's patience with too many clean pinafores, or a too clean face, but she made his childhood entirely happy. He could go out in the morning in the garden and make mud pies all day if he liked. If he refused to change his dress in the evening she took his supper to the nursery and regaled him with enchanting stories until he went to sleep. He was certainly the most adorable child I ever saw, with deep sapphire-blue appealing eyes, a tow head, a little round face and a rare irresistible smile. Of course he had his own way in everything, but he was unspoilable.

All my people have an intense love of animals; in Sam it is almost a mania. At one period he had guinea pigs, prairie dogs, three chickens, two hens and a rooster, a frog, a fox terrior, spotted Japanese mice, and a good-sized alligator of unusually rapid growth. Of all his family he loved the alligator best. When he and the alligator were about the same size, he used to carry him upstairs from the kitchen to the bathroom in the evening for his swim. At almost every step he walked on the alligator's tail, and we always expected to see him enter the bathroom minus a hand or an ear, but strange to say, this almost wooden animal seemed to have developed a human heart, and he really looked at his master with eyes quite watery with affection.

At this time, when Sam was about six, Josephine had moved down permanently into the kitchen as cook, and was not in the least disturbed by prairie dogs in one corner, guinea pigs in the other, chickens walking in and out, the fox terrier always under heel, and the alligator generally asleep in the largest and most comfortable chair.

She still retained the old habit of never going out of the house so how she met Silas Bundy remained for ever a profound secret, but that she did meet him is a tragic certainty. Every Thursday evening for about six months, Silas Bundy in elaborate attire called upon Josephine, who, for the first time in her life really cleaned up the kitchen, arrayed herself in a stiffly starched calico dress, put a table cover over the large table in the centre of the room, and under this shoved the cages of the various animals, and arranged a delicious supper for the tall black plumber. Sam said he hid himself under the table with the animals on several occasions, but he never noticed any tenderness between Silas and Josephine. They conversed in a distant manner with very large words of their own composition. Josephine said she was glad she “war n't skittish as the animals, who were always in competual motion.” Silas ate his supper and then rose to go, saying, “Miss Josephine, I suttenly will see you dis nex' comin' Thursday evening if I live an' nothin' happens.” And Josephine answered, “Mr. Silas, I suttenly will be mighty sorry if anything wuz to happen.”

On St. Valentine's Eve Josephine got a valentine, one of the good old-fashioned kind with two splendid red hearts pierced by a gilt arrow and upheld by robust, be-ribboned cupids who balanced pink toes on a cushion of forget-me-nots. All this loveliness was surrounded by a heavy wreath of vivid pink roses, and underneath was written in violet ink:

Sam told me that for many days, even in the middle of cooking dinner, Josephine would get out her valentine, pull the string that made the wreath come forward and the hearts overlap, and breathe a deep sigh of ecstasy, then put it back with a few stray bits of dried vegetables into her table drawer until the next blissful moment to look at it arrived; and ever afterwards it was her most treasured possession.

Never going out and never spending any money for many years, Josephine had saved a considerable sum and was quite well off for a woman in her position, so Silas was an impatient bridegroom and the future bride fixed an early wedding day. All the family gave her useful and excellent presents: linen sheets and pillow cases, a quantity of towels, nice curtains, kitchen utensils, and to these mother added a whole set of bedroom furniture.

Then a day came when all the meals were full of red pepper and absolutely uneatable. Also the bride elect was seen to go restlessly up and down stairs at least a dozen times—a thing that had never occurred in all the years she had lived with us. After supper she and a very cruel plaited black cowhide whip with an end of knife-like sharpness, which some friend had sent Sam from Texas, disappeared together. A “grapevine telegram” had reached her about Silas, and she waddled off to verify it. Perhaps she was not greatly surprised to find him sitting in a small cosy house with a very black lady by his side, presumably his wife, or as the darkies say, “a lady friend.” Josephine was a very large woman, extremely muscular and strong. She had never been the least bit angry in all her life, but now that she was roused, there was an enormous accumulation of temper on hand and she was like an elephant gone amok.

She stormed the room of the Silas Bundys', gave him a cut with the keen lash of the whip across the face, severing the skin from the flesh, nearly blinding him. She then touched up Mrs. Silas, who ran screaming into the yard; and after the Silas Bundys there followed through the open door a perfect avalanche of china, glass, pictures and furniture. George Washington and Lincoln were ruined for ever by splinters of glass which scratched their faces. Silas and Mrs. Bundy were also gashed and bleeding from cut-glass goblets thrown with unerring aim. Then Josephine went upstairs; and the wardrobe of Mrs. Bundy, torn and fluttering in the breeze, with jugs and basins and ripped-up mattresses, looking-glasses, Silas Bundy's best clothes tattered and torn to bits, and pillows emptied of their feathers, all wildly descended through the window into the garden.

The frightened screams of the Bundys, or the crash of falling furniture, or the clouds of feathers floating out upon the night attracted the notice of the police, and eventually they arrived at the gutted house, arrested Josephine, and with tufts of feathers clinging to their fine uniforms, escorted her home at ten o'clock for mother to go her bail. If a miracle had been performed, the family could not have been more surprised. That the quiet, sweet-tempered, amiable and conservative Josephine should have wounded and beaten husband and wife and demolished the contents of an entire house was unbelievable, incomprehensible. The policemen said the wreck looked like the work of a cyclone or tornado. Josephine's eyes were of a deep red and the black whip which she carried was quite moist and had a suspicious substance clinging to it that might have been and probably was human skin.

When the day for her trial came, Josephine, escorted by mother, went to court. A good lawyer was employed for the defence. Silas and Mrs. Bundy, with their wounds neatly dressed, appeared against her. Our lawyer made an excellent defence, giving a short account of the blameless and amiable existence of the faithful servant, and her many years of devoted service. He described in glowing terms the blackguardism of the would-be bigamist, sitting there in smug complacency by the side of his already one too many wife. Mother was genuinely anxious, for she really loved poor sorry Josephine.

The Judge, an old friend of the family, with a sense of humour, turned to her and said, “Josephine Paschal, what have you got to say for yourself?” Josephine, the poor violent, destructive, faithful elephant, looked at the Judge with imploring eyes, the corners of her mouth turned down like a yellow baby about to cry, and for a moment made no answer. Then bursting into tears, she covered her face with her nice clean apron, rocked her huge bulk violently backwards and forwards and said, “I ain't got nothin' to say, 'ceptin' I wants my Silas Bundy—I des wants my Silas Bundy, my Silas Bundy.”

The whole court room was convulsed with laughter, but Josephine got off without even a fine, while Silas Bundy left the court a vainer man than when he entered it.

I said, after I had finished my coffee, “How it all comes back to me now, although I have n't thought of it for years! Poor Josephine!”

“And,” said Sam, “although Josephine continued to be a splendid cook, the light of her life had gone out for ever with Bundy. I don't think she was ever quite the same again. One night when the alligator had grown too big for me to carry upstairs, she carried him up for me, put him in the bathtub and absent-mindedly turned on the hot water and he was scalded to death. Then my heart was quite broken. For there never was such a temperamental alligator, so affectionate, so sensible, and so handsome. Poor Josephine, she never saw Bundy again, but she was faithful to the family until her death.”

WE talked over various places for my after cure, and I decided on Charles Town, West Virginia. I had heard of its quaintness, and old-time charm, and I knew the weather would be real West Virginia weather, crisp, frosty, and delicious. Luckily for me my faithful Bee had not the heart to let me go alone, and arranged that we should take the afternoon train which reached Charles Town about six o'clock. Dr. Venning met us at the station and advised Miss Anna Hughes's Sanatorium. Usually it is a place for active work, as many operations are performed there, but at the moment it was unusually quiet.

I had a delightful bedroom, a little sitting-room, and a bathroom all on the first floor. The weather was not too cold for us to walk and drive about the country. Bee is born to understand and love the whole animal world, but horses are her first favourites, and she is an excellent whip. When she went to the stable the livery man, in the process of harnessing the horse to the buggy, said, “You 've got a good horse here; Maud ain't got but one fault in the world and that she can't help.”

“What 's that?” said Bee.

THOMAS NELSON PAGE has served his country well. He built at a propitious moment a bridge between the North and the South. The first great arch was laid with those touching pages of realism, Marse Chan.' At that time a gulf, not of bitterness, but of coldness and indifference, separated us. He spanned it with stories of the Old South, so true to life, so gracious, so full of tenderness that the hearts of the North understood—and warmed toward us. We were grateful for their appreciation, - and the bridge was builded. When I read Marse Chan' to Henry Ward Beecher, he said, “I should regret the War less if Marse Chan' had been spared; Page must be a first-rate fellow to have written that story.”

He is more than “a first-rate fellow”—he is a high-minded gentleman, and a staunch American. How patriotically he expresses his enthusiasm:

It was said before the War that one letter of introduction to Charleston would give you twenty-five dinners, and twenty-five letters in New York would give you one dinner. Dinners are, alas, more difficult to give in Charleston now, as the present-day negro does not approve of late hours, but the hearts of the people are as hospitable as ever.

We arrived in that beautiful white city on Saturday, and I had no sooner delivered my letters of introduction than cards were left accompanied by invitations (such a pretty, charming attention), to occupy various pews in St. Michael's, a quaint, interesting church of English architecture, very reminiscent of St. Martin's in the Fields in London. The old-fashioned pews are so high they almost hide the occupants, and the sweet chime of bells, like the horses of St. Mark's in Venice, have journeyed far, as in 1782 Major Traille of the British Army, carried them as a trophy of war to London. In 1783 they were re-shipped to Charleston, replaced in the steeple, and once more rang out their silvery peals.

THERE is no function historically more delightful or interesting in America than Charleston's St. Cecilia balls. The society began in 1737 with a concert given on a Thursday, St. Cecilia's day, and comprised originally a number of earnest musical amateurs who soon became ambitious and paid a large salary to the chef d'orchestre, who in 1773 received five hundred guineas a year. The arts and graces declined, however, as the years went by, giving place perforce to more practical interests. Fewer men had time for the study of music, and when President Monroe accompanied by John C. Calhoun, his Secretary of State, visited Charleston, it was decided that St. Cecilia must give a ball in lieu of a concert. Since then, except during the War, there has been no interruption of the three balls given every winter by the St. Cecilia Society. The members are elected by the society and it is no uncommon thing for the father, grandfather, and great-grandfather of an applicant to have been members before him. Mrs. Ravenel says, “If a new resident, or a family recently brought into notice, there will be inquiry, perhaps hesitation and a good backing will be desirable. When a man is elected the names of the ladies of his household are at once put upon the list and remain there forever, changes of fortune affecting them not at all. The members elect the Vice-President, Secretary and Treasurer and Board of Managers; the managers continue from year to year, vacancies occurring only by death, the eldest manager becoming President and Vice-President in due order.”

The invitations are in themselves quite unique, for every name on them has figured in history before and during the Revolution, bringing back memories of the old picturesque life of the plantation gone to come no more. Edward Rutledge, one of the present managers, is a descendant of John Rutledge who wrote so heroically to Moultrie in 1776: “General Lee wishes you to evacuate the Fort. You will not do so without an order from me. I will cut off my right hand sooner than write it.—J. RUTLEDGE.”

Joseph W. Barnwell, my escort to supper, a handsome clean-shaven barrister, with dark humorous eyes is a descendant of “Tuscarora Jack,” a favourite hero of my childhood, chiefly I think on account of his name, although he was a daring, resolute fighter in the wars with the Indians. Another of the family, Robert Woodward Barnwell, a member of the Convention at Montgomery, gave the casting vote which made Jefferson Davis President of the Confederacy. But every name,—Middleton, Porcher, Vander Horst, Sinkler, Stony, Barker, Ravenel—is honoured in the history not only of the State of Carolina, but of America, and these splendid names have been as nearly as possible preserved in the invitations of the St. Cecilia's Society by the election of sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons throughout the centuries. They are as gallant gentlemen as their great-grandfathers and even in the present-day balls a trace of the old order exists. No sitting out on stair-steps or hiding away in corners is allowed at these historic parties.

“WHY on earth do you go to Savannah?” said a very old lady in Charleston with thick white hair majestically rolled back from her forehead, and her wrinkled hands adorned with quaint diamond rings, relics of her ancestors before the Revolution. “You won't see anything there except Jews and Yankees.”

“Jews,” I said, “are a wonderful race. Look at the artists and musicians, authors and financiers they have given us, and for me they have been among my best and most serviceable friends. At the close of the Confederacy Mrs. Clement Clay could not have got to Washington to plead for the life of her husband, except for the whole-hearted kindness of a Jew. Don't you remember what she wrote in her memoirs:

“ ‘The middle of November had arrived ere, by the aid of Mr. Robert Herstein, a kindly merchant of Huntsville—may his tribe increase’—(and so say I)—‘who advanced me one hundred dollars, (and material for a silk gown to be made when I should reach my destination), I was enabled to begin my journey to the Capital,’—A distinguished Jew at a grand party in London was once my escort to supper and I ate so many olives he asked me if I was a Jewess.”

ALTHOUGH fine gentlemen in Virginia refused as late as 1820 to breed the mule, he has become since that date almost as much of an institution in the South as the palm leaf fan.

After the war, in 1865, a cousin of mine who had gallantly served his turn in the Confederate army returned to his home in Georgia. He had left a pretty little white house of two storeys, with balconies stretching across the front, overgrown with flowering vines. At the rear there was a neat stable, a smoke-house, a wash-house by the never-failing old spring, a big barn which held enough hay to feed the cattle for the winter, and all the usual comfortable outhouses of a Southern plantation. His place lay directly in the path of Sherman's march to the sea. He returned in his ragged grey clothes, with a tarnished star on his collar, and the bridle of a big gaunt mule over his arm, to find even the land blackened by fire. The only evidence of former habitation was a handful of salt under one of the charred logs of the smoke-house.

A few negroes agreed to work on the chance of a cotton crop. He then cut down from the primeval forest near by enough logs to make a rude cabin, and to this home he brought his wife and three little children to begin life over again. Their sole and only dependence was Satan, a mule who in the first place had inherited from his mother a defiant, reckless, suspicious mind, and, in the second, had begun life under the management of a rather cruel negro. Consequently, his disposition was early made sour, resentful, and pessimistic.

Almost in his colthood the war came on, and he changed the negro for another master and the strenuous life of a hard-worked Union mule. His indifference to calamity caused him always to place himself in the front of the battle, and he was very soon shot in one of his hind legs. With his excellent constitution, he rapidly recovered, and was later captured by the Confederate artillery. With them he served until the end of the war, his disposition getting daily more cranky, and his views of life more saturnine. Every time he hauled a heavy gun it always gave his lame leg a recurrent pain. He had no faith in the goodness of man, either white or black. He had no affection for any human being and was filled with bitterness and cunning. If a horse or a mule stood too near him he invariably left the mark of either his teeth or his hoofs somewhere about the unfortunate animal, and though of enormous size, he had the agility of a cat in his movements.

More than one negro had to be taken to the hospital with literally a terrible sinking of the stomach after one of the mule's hind feet had been planted there violently and unexpectedly. His feet, indeed, as he had no hands, were against every man, and he felt that every man was against him. Anything more resentful, more hopeless or full of scorn and wickedness than Satan could not be found in the world. Even his splendid strength and robust health never lifted the black clouds that environed his sad mule estate. He rarely lifted his voice, but when he did his “heehaw” was full of satanic rage.

This was the capital that my cousin brought home from the war.

One of the negroes, whose business it was to load the waggon with logs for Satan to haul from the woods to the former site of the house, said, “Dat mule suttenly am got de right name. Dere could n't a been one found better suited to him, an' he look like it too. Dere ain't no time when he can't show de white ob his eye, an' he jes' curl up his lip at you and frof at de mouf if you speak to him, like his whole soul wuz full ob hate. He suttenly is a scornful mule. Sometimes he eben scorns de fodder, but I will say he can do 'bout three times de work of an' ordinary mule, an' dere 's one thing to be said 'bout him, he will work. It seem like to me he got some secret sorrow, an' he des tries to fergit it by his job, 'cause if he took it into his head not to work, it would be des like gettin' one of dese here ellifants to move.”

And early and late Satan and the Major were up and stirring—three o'clock in the morning often found them ploughing. “The Lord tempers the wind to the shorn lamb”—sometimes. There certainly never was such a crop as those first years of cotton and corn. Every acre yielded two bales, and the silky gold of the myriads of corn tassels promised a rich harvest for the autumn.

A little smoke-house had been built, and the Major had bought several pigs that were being fattened for the winter's hams and bacon. They were allowed to run at large, and had made a deep crescent-shaped hole under the logs at the back of the house. One joyous day for Satan the Major was obliged to go to Atlanta and he was given a holiday. Such a thing had not happened to him since he ran by the side of his mammy, and he became quite active and gay. He ran round the fields kicking his heels in the air, and finally lay down to take a good wallow, but unfortunately he stuck his great head in the hollow place under the smoke-house and had n't enough horse sense, being a mule, to get it out again. There he lay screaming and kicking and floundering about, with his legs flying round like the arms of a windmill. No negro dared to go near those horrible heels that were ready to destroy anything within range.

Jenny Lilly, the Major's wife, attracted by the noise, came out of the house and her imagination at once projected the consequences of this scene. It meant future desolation—the mule would die, for there was no way of extricating him, the splendid cotton crop and all those plumes of corn tassels would mean nothing. How could they get the bales of cotton to Atlanta? How were the bushels of corn to be hauled to the railroad? And success seemed so near—even the new frame house was just in sight. She covered her face with her hands and cried like a child. What could be done?

Then an idea occurred to her. She went into the smoke-house and, regardless of the curling lips and wild eyes of the mule, she seized his head and with superhuman strength pushed it until it just escaped the logs. Satan was free! Her arms were covered with blood and she was almost in a fainting condition. As for Satan, one of the negroes wanted to shoot him at once and put him out of his agony. The whole side of his long head was torn and bleeding; the bare flesh could be seen; one eye, apparently, was blind, and there he stood, a horribly skinned, maimed, and dangerous creature.

Jenny's greatest attraction was her soft, pretty, caressing voice. She fearlessly went quite near the poor suffering creature, and began to condole with him, “Oh honey,” she said, “oh honey, don't die and ruin us.” It was the first time in his life he had heard that word and it sounded very sweet to his ears. “ Honey,” how different from “damned beast.” But what was to be done? One negro had already gone to the house and loaded a pistol. “Miss Jinny,” he said, “dere ain't no use in de worl' tryin' to do nothin' wid dat mule, he des boun' to die. De wedder is so hot, his head will mortify in a day. Dere ain't no more use in tryin' to sabe him, den dere would be, to 'spect a cool stream ob water to come out ob dis here dry rock.”

But a woman is usually dauntless and resourceful in the interest of the man she loves. Miss Jinny pictured the Major coming home in his old grey soldier clothes—he still wore his uniform minus the star and epaulets—and the death of Satan would be a too cruel and horrible blow to him. Who would break the news? And something had touched Satan; some chord in his memory had been awakened; perhaps as a colt a little darkey had given him a bit of bread and honey. Now, with his great head sore and bleeding he was standing quite still, tortured but evidently thinking.

Miss Jinny went fearlessly up to him, took him by the mane, and led him to the little log house. There was a long window opening into the kitchen. She placed him near it and when she went in she took a pone of corn bread, recklessly covered it with butter, and held it out to Satan. He put his huge head through the window, and bit by bit she fed him. Then she gave him a drink of cold water. By this time the flies had begun to settle on the bare flesh. Miss Jinny then filled a bucket with fresh water and sponged the wound gently, oh so gently, scraped an old linen sheet into a square of lint, put it all over the raw flesh, made an enormous linseed poultice and laid it comfortingly over the lint. Strange to say, Satan stood perfectly still while the poultice, quite a yard long and three quarters of a yard wide, was gently but firmly bound around his big head.

For two weeks or more Miss Jinny was up day and night, stirring linseed and poulticing that great, black, stubborn head. Never during that time did he attempt to bite her, nor was he in any way vicious. At the end of the fortnight he gave the first instance of his reformation; he put his black nose on her hand and kept it there for quite a minute. This was in appreciation of a beautiful sort of mule baby talk, that had been evolved for his condition. He could not at first believe that any human being had such a sweet voice and such a sweet nature, and so much confidence in mules. When he heard, “Hold still honey, poor good honey, Miss Jinny would n't hurt her old mule for all the world,” he felt his life-long cynicism flowing away like honey. At last the climax was reached when the nine months old baby was lifted up, and put his soft arms around Satan's neck, bubbled, cooed, kissed the white star on his forehead, and laughed and tried to poke his finger in Satan's eye. There was only one visible, for the poultices were still over the other.

He was a changed mule; all his black bitter moods had softened, his faith in human nature was awakened, his love of mankind was fast being developed. At any rate there was one woman, slim and tall, with a sweet anxious face, gentian-blue eyes and hands never idle, who worked from daylight until dark, for whom Satan could really have died. When his convalescence was over and he began to work again and was put back into the plough, he kept one weather eye on that magic window, outside of which he had stood for so many hot and feverish days, and where he had found gentle hands, and heard for the first time in his life words of sympathy and tender love.

The moment the plough stopped he turned, gently trotted to the kitchen, put his huge head in the window, and patiently waited for his Miss Jinny. Every night he had his little pone of corn bread and butter or an autumn apple or some little delicacy. He even pretended to have a taste for bananas, notwithstanding he considered them a most effeminate fruit, without the least flavour, but then Miss Jinny and the children ate them, that was enough. Whatever they offered him, like Adam with the apple, “he did eat.”

The next year when the second crop came, there was enough money to buy a basket phaeton. Satan actually allowed Miss Jinny to harness him to it, although he found it a most trivial affair, and drive to the nearest little town, about three miles distant and back again.

After his recovery he had a great deal more white hair than the star on his forehead, as it had grown in patches of black and white all over his long head. With his gay harness and jingling bells, everyone stopped to look at him, but Miss Jinny did n't mind, for she said that after the Major and her children, Satan was really first in her affections. She petted him, called him “Satan-honey,” “Satan-angel,” and to the day of his death he was allowed to stand with his head in the kitchen, while he ate his evening meal.

His heart had been unearthed, his affections had been developed, and this had made him the gracious and tolerant mule that he had become. He was even amiable towards the darkies. The ploughman said, “I tell you what it is, Miss Jinny's bin dat mule's salvation. He 's bin on de mourners' bench shoutin' an' gone an' got religion. 'Tain't nothin' else could a done it. Whenever he see her he do jes' like de glory ob God done shine on him. Maybe mules is got souls; I tell you I b'lieve dis one is, he 's gone sho' nuff from de sinner to de saint. Why you can even rely on him, an' dat ain't natchul for no mule. Eve'y day I watches him, spectin' a outbreak, but it ain't come yit. Maybe it never will. An' his eye is des as sof' as a dove.”

When they could afford a cook and the negro woman first came, Satan showed some of the old spirit and gave the tip of her ear one small nip. But perhaps it was just as well, as she was the greatest “borrower” in the neighbourhood, and the Major and Miss Jinny, at that time could not afford to have little sacks of coffee, and sugar and flour and jugs of molasses carried away. Satan had sound instincts after all; he brayed triumphantly and kicked up his legs with joy when the cook left, and Miss Jinny again handed him his corn bread.

He lived to be very old, his teeth were all worn away, and he could no longer chew. Miss Jinny with her own hands made him delicious corn mashes; the children wove daisy chains for his neck, and basking in consideration and love, he forgot all the sorrows of his youth in the happiness of his old age (oh, thrice happy mule)! and met a gentle death with calmness and fortitude. The last words he heard were Miss Jinny's blessed ones of long ago, “Oh, honey, don't die.” And he would have lived for her if he could, but he was old and weak; his time had come. The children, big boys now, built a paling fence round his grave and cut on a little block of limestone: “Here lies Satan, Miss Jinny's old Angel Mule. He combined all the virtues of a mule and a horse. His family loved him. August 1875.” And although he was only a black devil of an outcast mule, Love never worked a greater miracle than when he gave Satan a gentle trusting heart.

Last summer a group of gentlemen went hunting in Maine. One night around the camp-fire a prize was offered to the man who could tell the best animal story. That delightful lover of all animal nature, Thompson Seton, was to be the umpire, and the prize was a set of his delightful books. Dr. Venning of West Virginia won it with the following story:

A retired gentleman jockey [he said], living near Charleston, a mighty good fellow of an inventive turn of mind, had been lucky in his dealings with a man in Saratoga who had won several races with Virginia bred horses. One day going through a field he noticed a negro ploughing with a young, agile, good looking, intelligent black mule which, when unhitched from the plough, instead of going home by the road with the other mules, leaped a six foot fence with a “hee” and with an exultant “haw” alighted on the other side, nimbly trotted over the field, with a regular professional gait, took another fence, and was eating his oats, almost before the other mules had started by the regular road. The gentleman jockey turned to the ploughman and said, “Don't put that mule in the plough again; I see glory and fame awaiting him in the North.” He then sent for a veterinary surgeon, renowned for the skill with which he used the knife, and told him to fashion the mule's ears and tail according to the pattern of a thoroughbred horse. This was done. The cuts healed quickly, he was clipped and curried until he looked like a piece of shining satin, and although his head was somewhat long and his nose rather flat, this was not noticed when he was in rapid motion, leaping into the air like a deer, and taking any fence that came.

When his training was finished the man from New York was invited to come down and inspect the wonderful jumper. He came, and the mule, untrue to the traditions of his race, behaved not with contrariness, but quite as a thoroughbred steeplechaser. He ran like a steam engine round the track, and a five-barred hurdle seemed to him a positive joy. The Northern sportsman, tremendously surprised said, “He 's fast, but there 's something queer about him. His head looks to me very bony; and is n't one ear a trifle longer than the other?” The Virginia jockey said, “My dear fellow, you 're not running his head, it 's his legs you are after. Did you ever see anything like him?” “No,” said the man, “I never did.” So he agreed to pay ten thousand dollars for the wonderful steeplechase horse, and he was sent on a special train to Saratoga.

The day of the races came, and he won everything. When the horses were put in line he stood at the head, waiting for the blue ribbon to be placed on his proudly arched neck, victory in his eye and pride written all over him, when suddenly he seemed to collapse, his head dropped down with a humbleness of which even the least respecting cab horse would not be guilty, his big upper lip curved back, showing all of his mule teeth, and the air was filled with an agonised bray. “Hee-haw, hee-haw, hee-haw.” The blue ribbon in the judge's hand waved as if a Texas norther had struck it. The dread secret was out, and the horse was submerged in the mule.

IN Florida, that land of flowers and of birds, it is said the mocking-birds sing more sweetly than anywhere else in all the world.

On a mellow summer afternoon, when even the air, hushed to stillness, seemed waiting, there lay dying in a long, low, white cottage covered with trumpet flowers and honeysuckle, a little child. Her father and mother, bowed with grief, were kneeling by the bedside and her negro Mammy stood over her, with all her strength turned to pain, listlessly moving a palm leaf fan. Outside the window grew a splendid live-oak, the noble tree that inspired Sidney Lanier's exquisite appeal:

From its branches came the silver note of a mocking-bird. He sang with crystalline sweetness, as if to pour out his pure heart in one last gush of melody. It was thrillingly, appealingly tender, then piercingly triumphant, and finally victoriously exultant.

In the midst of his silent grief the father could not endure those tuneful, iridescent dew-drops of sound; he arose from his knees and went out into the garden to frighten the bird away. As he stood under the tree the notes mounted higher and still higher, up! up! up! until they floated away into blue ether and then seemed to break all together into one exultant chord of soul-stirring harmony. There was a moment of profound silence, then the bird dropped dead at his feet. He picked it up and went into the house to find the negro Mammy closing the blue eyes of his little girl, and he placed the dead bird in the little dead hand. Was it, he wondered, the song of an angel or the song of a bird?

One bitter cold winter day, long ago in New York, an accumulation of homesickness flooded my soul, and I determined to drop my work and hear the mocking-bird sing once more. Going to Texas by train was too expensive for me in those days, so I went by boat, and was luckily accompanied by my friend Phœbe, a most agreeable companion, and by far the wittiest woman I have ever known, for her wit was innocent, gay, impersonal, infectious, and never hurt a human being in the world.

We left New York in a driving snowstorm, and in two days we were sailing into perpetual sunshine with the Atlantic as calm as a lake. The only fellow-passenger that I recollect was a girl baby, a very beautiful child about a year old, with little soft, gold rings of hair all over her head, dark eyes with black fringes, a dimple in either cheek and in her chin, and the gayest, happiest little laugh I have ever heard.—“There are only three things real on all the earth, Birth, Mother love and a little child's Mirth.”—She was travelling alone with her nurse, a worried-looking, but very kind negro mammy who told us the child's history.

Her father, a young clergyman, had died of consumption leaving a family of five children. It was not long before the mother developed the same disease. Before her death she wished to see all her little flock cared for, and so, one by one, she had given them away to people who wished to adopt them, and a lady from Key West was going to take the last one, the baby. What sorrow it must have been to the Spartan mother to give up that dimpled darling before the end came!

When we arrived at Key West, although in December, it was the most heavenly summer day, and in the dusk of the evening we saw myriads of roses lifting their pink-and-white and scarlet buds and blossoms in the soft, dewy air. The first three people to board the boat were the baby's new family. First came a lady, dark, tall, and vigorous, with quick, capable movements, dressed in a black tailor-made gown. She wore a little black hat on her abundant hair, and carried a charming bouquet of Cloth of Gold roses in her hand. Walking quickly to the nurse she said, “Is this my baby, my little Margaret?”

She took the child in her arms with a most beautiful, close maternal embrace and, turning, called to her husband, “Harry, come quickly, our daughter has arrived!” A tall gentleman, with an indulgent smile, stepped across the deck followed by three sturdy, dark rather shy little boys. “Hurry up, boys,” said the lady, “here is your little sister, come and kiss her.” And all the boys stood in a row while the little, golden-haired child cooed, made fluttering noises, and held out her arms towards the eldest, who carried her off the boat, the mother and father, the two younger boys, and the nurse, following. It was such a pretty, attractive picture, particularly after New York, where children are not convenient and often are not wanted even by their own parents.

And, oh, what a night of nights we spent at Key West! The boat cast anchor on account of our heavy cargo, and we did not leave until the next morning at nine o'clock. Phoebe and I—dear, witty Phoebe, who is now waiting for me on the other side—went up on deck to sit for an hour or two, but the glory of the night was so great, so stupendous, so wonderful that we never went below until seven o'clock next morning. There was a full moon of such penetrating radiance that we could see the clear sapphire colour of the sky, with occasional clouds of silver floating across it, and the sea was like an enormous looking-glass, reflecting all the glories of the world. Phoebe said, “I understand now

The sapphire chalice of the heavens, studded with glittering stars, and the silver clouds were all reflected in its smooth glittering surface, and there were many flying fish of purple, of azure and silver, leaping out of the still water, like amphibious butterflies, leaving a shower of diamonds in their wake. As the morning dawned, the wind came up out of the sea and rippled a thousand little foam-crested waves into being, and on each one rode a tiny, opalescent craft in full sail, of pink and gold, and mauve and orange, for a shoal of flying fish were floating out to deep water for their morning swim.

There was a glow of rose in the East, at first of the palest pink then gradually deepening and, inch by inch, the sun began to push his luminous head up into this rainbow world of marvellous colour. But the moon, in her sea of blue, shone bravely on, till at last there was a silver moon in a sapphire sky in the West, and a golden sun in a roseate sky in the East. Between the sunshine and the moonshine there was a great dividing bridge of thousands of little clouds, making an immense path of translucent opalescent enamel, like the scales of a giant silver fish, some of them pink, and some of them silver, and some of them gold. And the blue, blue water was so clear we could look down into its depths and see, shining on the golden sand, a lost bit of silver. Far away to the South, the flying-fish were disappearing like fairy shallops of mother-of-pearl. To the right lay Key West, embowered in flowers, a little white, smokeless town (for there were no chimneys, save those of the kitchens). A bright wind came up and freshened all the world, and we went downstairs permeated and intoxicated with the vivid beauty of that scene.

It was something of which painters have dreamed. It was Turner's visions quickened into air, and light, and harmony. All that he ever imagined or painted of subtle, pellucid, penetrating, soul-satisfying, transparent colour was in this marvellous picture of Key West.

My mother and grandfather always loved Florida, and my mother talked of it continually, but I am sure neither one of them ever saw anything so beautiful as my unforgotten night and morning there. And it is Florida that has produced the American song best known to all the world.

A little time ago six Southern people were dining in a pretty house in London, and one of them announced that he had crossed the Suwanee River between Texas and Louisiana. The other four jeered at the assertion, but at the same time were absolutely vague as to the geography of this river. In spite of the world-wide reputation of the song which makes so pathetic an appeal to many great singers and has become to one famous vocalist her favourite encore, there was but one person at the table who knew the situation of the Suwanee River, which has its source in southern Georgia and flows south through Florida into the Gulf of Mexico, and her knowledge came not from a map but from an unforgotten story.

A friend of mine, [she said], a well-known fisherman from the North, went to Florida for Tarpon fishing. He said that one night the boat was floating down a small, narrow stream with giant trees meeting overhead so closely that they completely shut away even the starlight. Suddenly the boat turned and they entered a broad, shining river. The moon had just risen, that radiant Southern moon that illumines the darkest shadows, and turns everything to purest silver. There were primeval trees on each side of the bank which threw black shadows on the water, and the grey moss was of such luxuriant length that some of it dipped into the silvery ripples. It was a scene of marvellous beauty, while a hundred different perfumes—honeysuckle, night-blooming jessamine, wild roses, rain lilies, oleander, magnolias, pink mimosa and myriads of orange blossoms —were wafted from the shore.

The gentleman drew a long breath and rejoiced that he was alive, and alive in that particular spot. The boatman, a Florida cracker, could neither read nor write; he knew nothing of the world nor in the world, but that he was a fisherman. My friend turned and asked him what river it was.

“This,” he answered, “is the Suwanee River.”

“What!” said my friend, “the Suwanee River, the river that is beloved of all the world and has been the inspiration of an unforgotten song?”

“I ain't never heard of no song, but sho' 'nuff it 's the Suwanee River.”

My friend said, “You have never heard the song with which Christine Nilsson, the greatest singer in the world, has brought tears to the eyes of thousands of people? You never heard, ‘ 'Way Down Upon The Suwanee River?’ ”

“No, I ain't never heard it, and I ain't never heard of it,” said the man.

“Well,” said my friend, “you are not to go to your grave, my good man, without hearing it. I have never sung before in my life, but I am going to sing it to you now.”

And he raised his voice and sang,

“Well,” said the man, with indifference. “I ain't never heard the song before and I don't care if I never hear it agin.”

I suggested to my friend that perhaps it was the way he sang it, but he said: “No, I was inspired and am sure I sang it quite beautifully; it is simply that a river, like a man, is not a prophet in his own country.”

THE “Crescent City” is no meaningless name, for the Mississippi in its constant movement has shaped the banks where New Orleans lies into a half-moon, and this Spanish, French, Creole city preserves to a very great extent its romantic atmosphere. Its distinctive charm and character remain French. There is no slightest reminder of the Pilgrim Fathers in its warmth and colour, but a suggestion of the mail-clad Spaniard who came in quest of glory, and the sanguine Frenchman, believing in visions of the seven fabled Cities of Gold. With the Spanish knights came dark-eyed beauties with fan and mantilla, and from France ladies with powdered hair, high-heeled shoes, music, song, and dance. The English Cavalier came later, followed by the Colonial squire with his comfortable fortune and his slaves. But already, the gay and witty Latin gentleman, the man of adventure, had set his seal on Louisiana, and to-day, even in the midst of its advance and progress, the foreign spirit, the delightful atmosphere of the past lingers in the lap of the present.

The Southern woman has always been distinguished for her spirit and self-possession. When New Orleans fell in 1862 and all was wild excitement and tumult, a very pretty lady with dark eyes, a white dress and rose-wreathed hat, was gracefully and coquettishly walking along the banquette, her sweet face quite placid and undismayed.

“What,” she said, stopping to speak to a soldier, “is the latest order?”

“They say,” was the answer, “that General Butler is going to imprison women, if they do not behave themselves.”

Her lip curled in scorn.

“How very gauche of him,” she observed, “this timid General who fears a petticoat.”

“Take care, Madame,” said the soldier, “I shall have to arrest you.”

“Really,” said the lady, “that would not be very polite of you. I hope you will permit me to change my gown first. What would you like me to wear in prison?”

“It would be an impertinence for me to advise you,” said the Northerner. “If I was n't a soldier and a despised Yankee, I might add ‘in any gown you would be gracious in my eyes.’ ”

“Perhaps,” said the lady, “I may give you an opportunity of saying that to General Butler in my defence. Meanwhile, why are those boys and men screaming, yelling, and running?”

“Madame,” said the soldier, “a shell has burst over their heads or under their feet.”

“Indeed,” she said, “how very unpleasant for them! Au revoir, monsieur; pour vos nouvelles mille remercîments.” And, turning, she adjusted her rose-coloured parasol, making one cheek pinker than the other, and holding up her dainty skirt, walked composedly and gracefully away.

The soldier looked after her and said, “Game, by gad, game all through.”

And the courage of the Southern woman has not grown less with her modern development and advancement, in which New Orleans compares most favourably with other cities of the Union. The Sophie Newcomb College for the higher education of women, founded by Mrs. Josephine Louise Newcomb as a memorial to her daughter, is a department of the Tulane University. The endowment is magnificent, making it one of the richest colleges in America, with a power for development possible in any direction. Mrs. Sneath, a lady originally from the West, who is greatly interested in the college, where her daughter received her education, was my cicerone. The buildings are beautifully located and there is every comfort and convenience within their ample space. The long kitchen, spotlessly clean and complete, with every modern cooking utensil, and a cordon bleu to give lectures and practical demonstrations, sends forth accomplished academic cooks. It seems to me that, with servants daily becoming more scarce, cooking is far more necessary for women than a course in the classics. From kitchen to garden was but a step. The walks and courts are ample grassy places, shaded by fine oaks with their long pendants of grey moss, and the girls when not in their classes lead a free, open-air, athletic life.

Professor Elsworth Woodward showed us through the art department, where there were many original specimens of pottery. A large plaque of shaded Chinese blue with fine broad-leaved magnolia blossoms was worthy of any cabinet, and one piece of embroidery would certainly have aroused the enthusiasm and inspired the gifted pen of Ruskin. It was a scarf, the groundwork of which was of an old gold natural silky flax, woven with a round thread in a diamond pattern, and either end was heavily embroidered in a conventional design of crêpe myrtle. The deep colour of the pink and the delicate form of the flower and foliage lend themselves to a most happy decoration. The lady who made it planted and grew the flax, gathered and spun the threads, wove them into linen, watched and waited for the flower to blossom, and while she breathed its faint perfume copied it with her needle. It is a most exquisite and original piece of work. The landscapes, the glorious sunsets, a perfect feast of colour, the tropical and semi-tropical foliage of Louisiana, are all inspirations to the artist, and that department of Newcomb College under the enthusiastic direction of Professor Woodward will go far in its development.

Another institution, the Christian Woman's Exchange, is not endowed, but has nevertheless since 1881 worked itself into an important success, and has bought its own buildings. Besides the business of exchange and embroidery it provides excellent lunches, both for ladies of fashion and the working women. New Orleans is, with every reason, proud of having erected the first statue in America to a woman, a humble Irish heroine who could neither read nor write, and whose only signature was a cross. But she made her sign in memory of Him Who said, “Suffer little children to come unto Me and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

Margaret Haughery began life as a chamber-maid. She saved money, and, having been brought up on a farm, bought “a dun cow,” sold the milk, made a beginning in this way, saved more money, and invested in a small bakery. The bread was excellent; she was prompt in her delivery and prospered, until at last the little bakery developed into an immense money-making affair worked by steam, which yielded her a fortune. But from the moment she began to prosper she began to give. Her heart was not the heart of a mother whose love is centred only in her own children; she was one of those gifts from God, a universal mother to the lonely children in a hard world. All orphans, those poor and friendless little ones found in her a tender mother who worked early and late to provide for their needs and give them homes. She had good business capacity and succeeded in her various enterprises. She built St. Vincent's Orphan Asylum facing the Square. What joy it must have given her big heart to see the foundations laid! She helped to build St. Elizabeth's Industrial Home for Girls, and when she died the whole of her fortune was distributed among different charities for the children whom she loved so well.

Although Margaret was a good Catholic, her intelligence was too large for sectarianism. Jews and Protestants were alike to her—they were little, they were helpless, they were babies,—she gave from her largesse to them all. Her will, leaving the whole of her savings to New Orleans orphanages and homes, was signed with her blessed mark, a cross, and now, like the beautiful Elizabeth, Austria's murdered Queen, who sits looking ever toward the towering mountains she loved so well, Margaret's face is turned toward the windows of her Orphanage, and the children stand at twilight look back and say, “There is dear Margaret. I wish I might have known her.” And the very marble seems to smile. The face is rugged and broad, but strong and kind and even distinguished, as every face must be that is illumined by a divine spirit from within. She is plainly dressed and wears a crochet shawl, her Sunday best, made by tiny fingers that, but for her, might have perished by the wayside. Keep guard, dear mother's heart, over those helpless ones who are taught by the gentle nuns always to remember you in their innocent prayers.

Another great work in New Orleans had its beginnings in the humble endeavour of a woman to help a fellow-creature. A circus had come to town, and, although the animals were well trained and there were clever riders and acrobats, the show had been a dead failure. The last day came, the circus was disbanded, and the pleasant smell of sawdust lingered in the air. The manager had said good-bye, and these strolling players were free to find what occupations they could. Fate sat smiling and turning over in her roguish, inventive mind what should result from this sad little failure. Then she clapped her hands and laughed, as she saw the largest night school in New Orleans arising from that soiled heap of tarnished, spangled, torn tarletan and cast-off finery.

One of the performers, a young athlete of twenty-five, a fine specimen of manhood, had awakened to the fact that he wanted to do more than exhibit his muscles to the multitude. If he only had a little more education, he thought, he would try for a place in the Civil Service, settle down to steady occupation, and have a home of his own with regularity and certainty in his life.

As he wandered about he saw a sign, “Day School for Girls.” Why not here as well as anywhere? He walked up the path. He rang the bell, and a girl came to the door. She was delicate and crippled, but the self-sacrificing soul of the universal mother shone from her tender eyes. He humbly answered the look, and knew he had found succour. In short, broken sentences he told his simple little story—how he had run away from home as a boy, joined a circus, and had no education. “Could she, would she help him?” And she said impulsively, “Certainly I can and will help you.”

Then she considered that all her days were occupied, her time being closely divided between teaching in her own seminary and the Normal School. The man said, “I have no money, not a penny; you will even have to give me a spelling-book.” And the girl answered, “I 'll manage that, but I 'm poor too. I work all day teaching and have only my nights free. Can you come then?”

Of course he could, and he was only the first of a steady stream that began to flow, ever broadening, through the wide-opened heavenly door. Her willing maternal hands began to lift the thick heavy veil of ignorance from the poor and needy and to let in, little by little, the light upon their dark benighted way.

With her hard work all day, her crippled frame and over-active brain, sometimes the weak body was tired, but she worked on, undaunted in spirit, widening her scope of influence, until there was scarcely a corner in New Orleans where it was not felt, and where the name of Sophie Wright was not honoured and known. Volunteers came to help in the noble work, and only two conditions were exacted of the pupils—they must be unable to attend day schools on account of being employed during the hours when they were open, and they must be too poor to pay for lessons.

In the meantime her own school, the Home Institute, had prospered. Her pupils were well-to-do girls; she did her duty strictly by them, but her struggling, ignorant men and needy boys were her real children. They were creatures to whom she was necessary. She was their helpful, spiritual mother and teacher. She was giving them the means through education to earn their bread and to better themselves. Jews, Gentiles, Catholics and Protestants, the school was open to all. Grown men came to learn their A, B, C's, boys to improve their arithmetic, young men to learn mechanical drawing. And frail, crippled, with no rich patrons, Sophie Wright dared Fate. She fearlessly borrowed the money for her night school at eight per cent. compound interest. She bought a larger house. Her guardian angel hovered ever near her. The day school prospered. She put all the money into books, maps, and articles necessary for the night school, and even with her constant outlay she reduced her debt one-half, until the yellow fever swept New Orleans. Then she turned her schoolhouse into a dispensary to which food, clothes, old linen and medicines were sent for distribution, and there she stayed except when on her tours through the afflicted city.

When the frost came to kill the detestable stegomyia, the poisonous striped mosquito, and the fever was finally routed, Sophie Wright was face to face with ruin. Apparently neither her own school could go on, nor the night school, which was so dear to her heart. But Heaven again befriended her. A banker took over her mortgage and lent her ten thousand dollars, while two men interested in her school each promised two thousand dollars a year. Before the yellow fever came she had had three hundred pupils in her night school; before the end of the following year she had a thousand. And she not only had room for them, but clean books, stout desks, good maps, and forty teachers to assist her. There were European teachers who understood foreign languages to instruct the raw immigrants, and now girls were also admitted to certain departments. The course was enlarged to algebra, geometry, calculus, shorthand, mechanical drawing, bookkeeping and history. All sorts and conditions of students came—clerks, machinists, typesetters, errand boys, post office boys, newsboys, bootblacks, and, finally, the “Spasm Band,” a group of nameless waifs who sold papers by day and made night hideous with horrible noises. Stale Bread, the leader, had decided that Slowfoot, Pete, Warm-gravy, Zu-Zu, and Rum-Punch must be educated. They however, proved too wild even for Miss Sophie's strong will to subdue, and only Stale Bread remained until he could read, then, sadly enough, blindness blotted out the newly acquired letters from his sight. But the night school prospered, although the debt of ten thousand dollars still remained, until a cheque for the amount, accompanied by a loving cup—a tribute from New Orleans to its Best Citizen a woman,—was presented to the founder of the night school, Sophie Wright.

Sometimes there does seem to be, even on this earth, a law of compensation. It has come to Sophie Wright, who was born in 1866 at a time when the South was poorest. At the age of three, becoming a cripple from a fall, she spent six years strapped in a chair. It must have been a time of pure torture for this child to remain inactive, with her eager questioning mind, desiring to drink thirstily from the fount of knowledge. Afterwards she completed her education in five years and opened a little school for girls. If she had been strong and well, she would in all probability have married, and whether happier for her or not, it certainly was better for the world, that she should have entered the arena of public life and have become the intellectual mother of so many neglected children. She gave one thousand, five hundred and eighty-one pupils to the city of New Orleans when she turned over her night school to its care, and, like all mothers who send their children out into the world, she has her lonely moments. But honours are still showered upon her. The Girls' High School in New Orleans has just received the name of “The Sophie Wright School,” and to all who know her she stands for the absolute triumph of Mind over Matter, the unanswerable evidence of a valiant soul conquering and surmounting the dragging flesh, and presenting an argument for the soul's immortality to the unbelieving.

And though New Orleans can strike a serious note, it is a gay-hearted city. New York is too hurried even to smile, London on the sunniest day can only look complacent and cheerful, but New Orleans can riotously laugh. During the carnival, Rex, its king, is the merriest, maddest, gayest of all living monarchs. Mardi Gras makes even the most melancholy citizen cheerful. The people love the carnival and never grow tired of it, for it means colour, light, music and movement. When I saw the wonderful frescoes of Goya in Madrid, they brought back memories of the rich Spanish colours—the orange and rose, purple and red, gold and green—of the New Orleans Carnival.

What an experience it is for the young—a lifting of life's practical veil, a veritable peep into long-lost fairyland. The mystery that surrounds this merry function is more alluring still. Rex and his Broow flower, the blossom of laughter invented by himself—the very mention of him brings back merriment forgotten, and that jolly king is, above all, the most gallant monarch in the world, for, even more than his kingdom, he loves chivalry and beauty and youth. To-night he gives the ever dear and always entrancing story of Cinderella. The Prince, brave in velvet, satin, gold lace, silken hose and diamond garter, is surrounded by his gallant gentlemen-in-waiting. The selfish Mamma and Papa and the Ugly Sisters are arrayed in purple and fine linen. The Fairy Godmother, with her pointed hat, starched ruff, and quilted petticoat, leans on her magic staff, and a crowd of girls, like fluttering white doves, await the Prince and the slipper:

There is only One for that enchanted slipper, and she, the youngest of them all, sits dreaming and unconscious of the high rank that in a moment kind Fate is about to bestow upon her. Among the ladies-in-waiting a charming, eager, dainty maiden has a tender hope of the coming honour her sister may receive. She remembers now that months ago a gallant knight was extremely solicitous as to the size of her sister's shoe. Why? What reason had he? Her heart beats to suffocation. Her sister is from Virginia; it is rare that an outside girl is chosen as the Queen of Beauty. New Orleans favours first her own fair daughters. But her sister is so lovely, so sweet, so exquisite—surely she is “Queen of all the rosebud garden of girls.” She looks lovingly at that fair proud head; perhaps—?

The music sounds importantly; the Prince and his precious trophy, the little glass slipper covered in overlapping, iridescent spangles, sparkling with the rainbow's every hue, has started on his quest. Anxiety brings the Fairy Godmother a little forward; she looks first at one girl, then at another. No, not this pretty foot, nor this, nor this. The Ugly Sisters can only balance the fairy slipper upon one toe and fan their masks in vexation. Their rage makes the house rock with laughter.

It is easy to laugh to-night. What a pretty ankle! But no, the little glass slipper goes farther afield. The anxious Godmother almost points her wand, but it would n't be fair, and it only trembles in her hand. Look! the Prince has paused; is it the beautiful face uplifted to his? No! He kneels to a still more beautiful girl, and lifts an astonished little foot to his knee; his equerry bends over and delicately adjusts the folds of silk in modest place. The glass slipper fits; it is on, Cinderella is found!

The music gives a splendid blare of triumph. For a moment the scene for Cinderella is blurred, the lights blend together in rose, gold, blue and silver. Then her own generous sister (not one of the plain ones) touches her lovingly on the shoulder, saying, “Steady, dear Princess, your crown awaits you.” The Prince takes her hand, assists her to rise; gentlemen-in-waiting reverently bearing the insignia of her rank advance. In a second all the front of her simple white gown glitters with jewels, splendid diamonds encircle her throat and wrists, a crown of rubies and pearls is placed on her abundant hair, a court train of ermine and velvet is attached by ropes and tassels of glittering stones to her shoulders. She is no longer Cinderella, but a veritable shimmering Princess of Fairyland. The future Consort, this gallant Cavalier and Prince by her side, has lightly kissed, with his beautiful pink, wax lips, her hand and gently placed it on his arm.

The music plays a passionate throbbing waltz. Is she dancing, she wonders, or merely floating in air? Her cheeks are aflame, her eyes are glittering blue-steel stars, her lips are rose-leaves parted over pearls, all her emotional nature awakened, she is transcendently lovely. Hold high, Queen of Beauty, the Beaker of Life and drink; drain every drop of its intoxicating nectar to-night, for it is filled to the brim with mystery, music, laughter, light, gaiety, youth (you are barely eighteen), rose-red beauty and awakening love. Perhaps your future betrothal and wifehood lie just behind that handsome impenetrable mask, for those gloved hands are wonderfully tender, guiding you through the mazes of the dance. And no matter, dear Cinderella, what sorrow the Fates hold in store for you, this is your supreme hour. You are Queen of the World, and yours is not the dull Kingdom of Inheritance, but the unlimited Kingdom of the Imagination. It is given you with lavish hand, for you are all the gods love—glad youth, sweet beauty, unconscious innocence. Dance, dance, until you are breathless, go home with a happy heart in the saffron dawn. And, without his mask, to-morrow the Prince will come to woo.

ALL my first memories of New Orleans are those of pure delight. When my father, on our way North to place me in a boarding-school, stopped a fortnight there, he was very busy attending to the famous Gaines case, and Mrs. Delgado offered to take care of the lonely little girl who was staying at the hotel. This lady belonged to the ancien régime, and was a very grande dame indeed. Her complexion was pale, she had dark hair, clearly cut aquiline features, very beautiful soft dark Creole eyes, and her hands and feet were exquisitely shaped and very small. In later years when she grew stout those tiny feet refused their office and she ceased to walk, going everywhere in her carriage. She dressed exquisitely, and her house was no less perfect. As the walls were very thick, and the floors covered with white matting, it was quite cool even in very warm weather, and throughout, the rooms were pervaded with an odour of eau de cologne, which Mrs. Delgado used with lavish profusion.

It was in New Orleans that I had my first feast of the theatre, and it was, I am sure even now, an exceedingly good bill, for Joe Jefferson was starring in The Cricket on the Hearth. I already knew the story by heart, and everything in life faded away from me, except the sight of the people that I loved so well really living, speaking, and unfolding their romance before my absorbed and intense vision.

After the theatre I remember my dear father stopped at a little café on Canal Street and got us each a saucer of gumbo, a dish for which New Orleans is famous. Okra is a poetic and historic plant, as it grew in luxuriance along the banks of the Nile in 50 B.C. Caesar, Mark Antony, and Cleopatra ate of it, and it is not only a succulent vegetable, with its tender green pod, but it is worthy of being grown in the handsomest flower garden, for its lovely bell-shaped blossom of thick canary-coloured petals, ending where they join the stem in a deep rich shade of garnet. Gumbo is not, as many people suppose, a vegetable, but is a very thick soup made from a combination of young boiled chicken and okra, flavoured with a soupçon of garlic, and well seasoned with salt, pepper, and rich, fresh butter—an unforgettable delicacy. Thackeray found the name so amusing that he gave it to his negro in The Virginians.

In one greenhouse in England this plant is grown, for Lord Ashburnham brought the seed back with him from Egypt, and at a time when I was ill, a little package arrived from Ashburnham Place, and when I opened it, lo and behold, to my surprise and grateful joy, there was a box of okra, the fresh green pods looking exactly as if they had been grown in Louisiana.

In the French Quarter, which was not far from the house of Mrs. Delgado, a young negress kept a little stand, where she sold pecan pralines, and a tiny bouquet of single pinks went with each package of the nut candy. She had the most charming animated manners and an insinuating smile, but she only spoke a sort of patois French which I did not understand. Her dress was of dark blue cotton, sprinkled with little white dots, and she wore a white fichu, a string of red coral beads round her neck, and on her head a gay plaid handkerchief.

Another interesting personality whom I never forgot was a tall man with soft brown eyes and brown whiskers. He wore the Confederate grey, and the little button of the Southern Cross of the Confederacy on the lapel of his coat. His shirt was spotlessly clean, with cuffs which he turned back, and he played a triangle to attract customers. He carried a fascinating large blue box strapped across his broad shoulders, and when he lowered it there was a fine assortment of pretty wafer biscuits of many charming colours. The topmost of them had an icing of pale green, pink or mauve, while there were others without any icing at all, and they were all as crisp and toothsome as it was possible for wafers to be. But the little musical triangle, which he played as if a grasshopper sang faint far-away tunes, was much more seductive to me than the wafers. My black Mammy played the instrument, and the moment I heard the slight sweet notes I ran quickly down the stairs and was out in the street to make a selection from his wares, for the musician always gave his little customer “lagnieppe”—an extra wafer. Other children, too, loved the triangle, and the wafers and the vendor. I made one or two charming friends through his introduction. One little girl who lived two streets beyond Mrs. Delgado had long, much admired, keenly-envied yellow curls, and before we parted she gave me a lock of her hair.

When I went back to New Orleans I looked for my old friend. Now the brown whiskers would be white, I knew, and the erect shoulders carrying the box would be bent; but he was gone. I did find the negro woman still selling pecan pralines, her head as white as cotton. She is of a great age, and has grown peevish and impatient; her manners are not so good nor her smile so sweet as in years gone by. And since then she has learned some half-dozen words of English.

I went to the Hotel De Soto on my arrival, to be near my life-long friend, the Major. He said, “I want to introduce you to the manager of the hotel.” And, bringing forward an exceedingly good-looking young man, he presented him as Mr. Alexander, who asked, “Were n't you Miss Betty Paschal, of Texas?”

“Yes,” I replied, “a good while ago I was Miss Betty Paschal, of Texas.”

He said, “ My name is John Alexander, and we come from the same town of Austin.”

“Then,” I said, “you are a relation of Dr. Alexander, our old doctor who was with my mother when I was born.”

He said, “I am his grandson.”

“Not the little Johnnie Alexander, ” I asked, “whom I remember as a child being shot in the wrist?”

He held out his right hand. The wrist was scarred and considerably broader than the other, and I had seen that wound dressed. His father was a chemist in Austin, and this baby, just learning to walk, was standing on the counter holding out his arms to his grandfather when a desperado walking down the street, jerked out his pistol and shot at a man standing in the back of the shop. The bullet missed the man but hit the baby. My aunt's house was nearest to the chemist's, he was brought in to have the wound dressed, and I remember running to the kitchen to get a jug of warm water for the doctor. The boy who shot him was not more than sixteen years old and this was the beginning of a career of crime. He subsequently took the lives of a number of men and at least three women, beginning with a young vaudeville actress, who fell in love with him, and after he had left her, tried to see him. He told her if she ever came near him again he would shoot her. One morning at a hotel in San Antonio she went to his bedroom door and opened it. He was lying in bed with a pistol by his side, which he picked up, aimed deliberately at her, and she fell dead, shot through the heart.

Johnnie Alexander made my stay at the Hotel De Soto pleasant and comfortable. And my faith in the old-time negro was refreshed and revived, for the Major has, what before the war was called a “body servant.” John is quite black, with very kind, amiable, foxy eyes. He is extremely neat, has a good figure and, dressed in the Major's well cut cast-off clothes, he makes quite a fine appearance. He came to my room the morning after my arrival and said, “De Major sent me to say dat while you is here, I am to come two or three times a day to see if dar' s anything I kin do for you.”

I said, “I am sure there is, John.”

“De Major was talkin' dis mornin' des like he was gwine ter give me to you, but he can't give me to nobody, he can only loan me. I told him he can loan me to you des as much as he likes, but de Major can't get rid ob me,” he said with a chuckle, “not ef he was to try.”

“You must take good care of the Major,” I replied, “because he is getting on, you know, in years.”

“Don't say dat, for de Major is jes' as full of ambition as he kin be,” he said, “an' he suttenly is got a gallant heart. Even when he got de gout he puts on dem shiny shoes ob his (I suttenly does make de Major's shoes shine like a crow's wing), an' he won't even let me tie 'em up for him, he is des as ambitious as he kin be, and not only is he got a gallant heart, but he is got a gallant young heart.”

I said, “That is what I have heard, John.”

John chuckled loudly and said, “I tell you what it is, I am proud ob de Major. When I sends him out in de mornin' dere ain't no young blade in New Orleans what is any better turned out, den what de Major is. I don't let no speck nor spot stay on him, not a minute, I tell you what, when he is walkin' down de street even right young girls turns dere heads to look at de Major.”

I said, “John, I 'm afraid you are leading the Major into temptation.”

John gave a loud guffaw.

“No 'm,” he said, “I ain't don dat but sometimes he 's right hard to manage.”

“John,” I said, “I want a laundress, and I have six pairs of gloves to be cleaned.”

“Yassum,” he said, “I knows des de best kind of a cleaner, and I know a laundress what can make your clothes look des like new.”

When John returned with my clothes and gloves, I came to the conclusion that he himself was my laundress and also my glove cleaner. The gloves were enormously stretched, a good deal more soiled than when I sent them, and the charge for cleaning was forty cents a pair.

“John,” I said, “is n't that an awful price for gloves?”

He replied, “Yassum, 'deed it is, and I jes' talked wid dat woman wid such eloquence dat she 's gone out ob bisniss, an' I 'spect she 's gone clean away from New Orleens. I never did give any woman such a dressin' down an' a trouncin' wid my tongue as I give dis here same woman.”

“Look at my clothes,” I said, “they are very badly done. I heard that laundresses in New Orleans were so good.”

“Yassum,” he said, “dey is good, but dis woman done los' her husband. He died des as she was beginning to wash your close an' de poor creature's in sich grief I could n't bear to scol' her so I jes' brought 'em along. I 'spect dem close was sprinkled wid tears.”

I paid for the clothes and I paid for the tears, but I made up my mind that John had better confine his offices to the Major. I could not, however, get rid of his assiduous attentions. And one morning he told me, with a great look of expectation in his eyes, that he was going to be married in four days. I knew what the look meant quite well—a wedding present. “Why, John,” I said, “I thought you were a confirmed old bachelor.”

“So I is, Miss Betty,” he said (he had dropped the Madam and got to an affectionate “Miss Betty”), “but de Major don't like my runnin' roun', and you know a man is des 'bleeged to run 'round, lessen he 's married. De Major is one of dese here moral men, he say men oughter to stay home in de evenin's, so I 'm gwine to git a home to stay in. I don't want to git married, I'm des marryin' to please de Major. An' hits one of dese here sensible kind ob marriages too. De lady what I am gwine ter marry is 'bout de bes' cook in New Orleens, she can wash wid any ob dese here French women, and she 's des as neat as a pin 'bout de house; but I must be bringing down dat pineapple what I got fur you.”

When John brought down the pineapple it was stale and over-ripe. I don't think he had been to market for it, but had bought it from a huckster on the street for three cents.”

“John,” I said, “is n't this pineapple rather a poor one for a good marketer to buy?”

He said, “Yassum, Miss Betty, dat 's de Major's fault. I done tole him to let me go to market an' he done sent me to one ob dese fruit shops kept by a Italian, an' dere ain't no 'pendence in de roun' world to be put in dese here furriners. You can't trust 'em for a single minute. De pineapple what I said I 'd take was all right, but dis here man done change it for another, when he put it in de bag. I thought you was in a hurry, so I did n't take it back, I des cut it up.”

And never once did he supply me with fresh fruit. The Major confided to me that his only grievance against John was his extraordinarily bad memory when it came to accounts, his laxity in putting down on paper any money that he spent and his never bringing back a receipted bill. But there was never anything in the world like the diplomatic excuse which John always had ready. I gave him two dollars as a wedding present, but the Major has since written to tell me of the postponement of the marriage. All the employees in the Major's office had given him sums of money and by the time he is again to be married a second contribution will be levied. Never have I seen anyone who understood the art of flattery better than John. Every morning he told me I was much younger and better looking than the day before; that his happiness would be complete if I should decide to live in New Orleans; that the climate agreed with me, that everybody in the hotel loved me, that the Major's spirits and appetite had improved since I came, in fact every conceivable amiable lie possible of invention he heaped upon me. He supplied me with withered flowers and stale fruit. He kept me waiting for my clean clothes and gloves; he cheated me out of my change and was hours in doing any small errand. Nevertheless, I had a sort of easygoing liking for him; he was so very transparent, so really without guile.

One afternoon I was sitting in the hotel waiting for him to return from the post-office when I noticed coming down the corridor a clean-shaven, rather stout, kindly looking man carrying in one hand a lily and in the other an exquisite rose. He stopped, saying, “Lady, may I present this flower to you?” and handed me the rich red rose.

“Perhaps you do not know this variety,” he said; “it is a difficult one to find, for they are going out of fashion. It is the Napoleon rose and was at one time a great favourite in New Orleans, where as you know, Napoleon's memory is still warmly cherished. This is the rose which he asked to have sent to St. Helena from France, and he planted it there with his own hands. See what a marvellous flower it is; observe the tenderness of the stem; look at the perfect petals,—they seem to be cut out of ruby velvet,—and note how this single blossom perfumes all the air. It is a pity that more attention is not given to these roses, because they grow rarer every year. I present this to you in memory of Napoleon.”

I said, “I accept it from you and from him. You seem to be fond of flowers.”

“Yes,” he said, “flowers are my friends. I go to a flower shop every morning to regale my soul and to provide myself with a little perfumed friendship for the day. If I had to do without my cup of coffee or without my rose, I would give up my coffee.”

THE history of New Orleans is a series of the most romantic and delightful episodes, connecting this fascinating city with the great romances of the world. Where can a more beautiful story be found than that of this latter-day Romeo and Juliet, who lived in 1712?

The Duke of Brunswick, Wolfenhüttel, was the father of a daughter called Charlotte. She was beautiful, tall and slight, with a regal crown of fair hair. She sang charmingly, was very accomplished, possessed a most tender, sympathetic nature, perfect health, high spirits, and at the same time she was docile and obedient. Naturally every one in the little duchy loved her. Attached to her father's court was a handsome young Frenchman, the Chevalier d'Aubant, a man of a passionate yet faithful temperament—oh, rare combination!

It had not been necessary for these two exquisitely attuned human beings to speak of love; they felt it, it surrounded them, it was in the air and in the flowers, and it bloomed with exotic radiance in their two young hearts. D'Aubant would have been an acceptable suitor in her father's eyes, for he was not only a man of family but he possessed a small fortune, and life was charming, quiet, dignified, and quite happy in this pretty Lilliputian court. But unfortunately for these devoted lovers an unexpected traveller appeared in Brunswick in the person of Alexis, the eldest son of Peter the Great, the heir apparent to the crown, who had been a great disappointment to his father.

He was unbelievably stupid, cruel, and wicked. There was no vice in which he had not steeped himself—the palace and the hovel were alike to him. His father was in despair that such a being was to become the future ruler of the millions of people whom he had made every effort to enlighten and elevate, and as a last resource he sent Alexis on a long journey.

While he was the guest of the Duke of Brunswick he fell in love with the charming, aristocratic young Princess Charlotte. Alexis wrote home to the Czar, and Peter received the news with joy. He had heard of the beauty, the virtue, the charm of Charlotte, and a hope sprang up in his heart that her noble character and example might have an influence upon his impossible son. A message was conveyed at once to the Duke of Brunswick to demand his daughter's hand in marriage.

Being a tender father, his heart was filled with sorrow for the future of his sensitive, carefully-reared daughter, but he did not dare to refuse, knowing that Peter the Great was of all things an unrelenting despot.

It was only necessary to look into the cowardly eye of Alexis to know his brutal character, and there were no rejoicings at the wedding. It was a most pathetic affair, and Charlotte, who had done her father's bidding and sacrificed herself that the duchy and the power of the Duke of Brunswick might remain unimpaired, clung to her father like a drowning woman, and had to be lifted from his arms into the carriage.

Six powerful, wild Mazeppa horses were waiting to speed the bride and bridegroom to Russia to the great Court of St. Petersburg, and a rough escort of Cossacks surrounded the travelling coach. There was one who rode like mad, always ahead of the others, with his thick, shaggy Tartar cloak pulled down close over his head and ears. Occasionally he turned and came back to the carriage door, and whenever he did so Charlotte leaned forward, as though to touch his friendly cloak. This Cossack was, of course, d'Aubant, who was following her into Russia with a broken heart.

After the betrothal of Charlotte was announced, he had scarcely spoken and never smiled, but he made that rough journey possible for her, for whenever the horses were unruly his hand was the first to restrain them, and he was always rendering the Princess some slight service. Once she slipped in getting out of the carriage. Blessed moment! for one brief second he held her lightly in his arms. When he put her down this hooded Cossack swayed like a tree in the forest that is swept by a mighty tornado.

On the entrance of the bridal pair to St. Petersburg the bells rang out one hundred chimes, the people shouted until their throats were hoarse, and a dozen military bands gave forth inspiring music to welcome the beautiful bride of Alexis to the imperial city. The faithful Cossack rode ahead and stood by the door with humble mien as the tall, beautiful woman passed by him. That night her faithful German maid carried him a letter; the words were brief, but there was some comfort in them. She wrote:

This letter contained another paper. It was a passport signed by the Emperor, and it gave to the Chevalier d'Aubant the right to leave the empire at his own convenience. At dawn the following day d'Aubant was far beyond St. Petersburg, and eventually he arrived in Paris.

But he was always sad and restless, and in 1718 he was appointed Captain in the colonial troops that were starting for Louisiana. On his arrival there he was stationed in New Orleans, and although a favourite with men and officers, for his manner was exquisitely gentle and polite and his face expressed resignation, yet there was always a sorrowful look in his eyes and he evidently preferred solitude to the gaiest and most brilliant company.

Near New Orleans was a small village of friendly Indians, and a road called the “Bayou Road” ran through a primeval forest, connecting the little village with the French settlement. D'Aubant became a favourite with the Indians, and they gave him permission to build a rural hut on the outskirts of their village. It was fashioned of fragrant cedar logs with a thatched palmetto roof, and was furnished with rustic chairs and tables. Above the mantelpiece of one room was a remarkable picture in a heavy carved gilt frame—a full-length portrait of a wonderfully beautiful girl. She was dressed in flowing white and the face was that of an innocent virgin; a great coil of fair hair crowned her proud head, and her deep blue eyes, filled with melancholy, gazed upon a pointed crown which, instead of lying on a cushion, rested crushingly upon a human heart.

This picture must have been painted from memory by d'Aubant, who was something of an artist, for the likeness to the Princess Charlotte was faithful and living, as if a man had wielded the paint-brush with his soul. Whenever he could be spared from his military duties, all his time was spent in adoring this lifelike portrait, which was tended like a shrine. Great pots of mimosa and magnolia and crêpe myrtle stood before it, roses and lilies filled rude but beautifully shaped vases of clay made by the Indians; and the little room was fragrant with cedar and aromatic with the odours of the South, while a small lamp burned perfumed oil below the crown and the heart, and cast a soft light on the face of d'Aubant's great lady.

Through all the long years he had not communicated with her except to send her a magnolia leaf with “May 16th” written upon it—a date which neither of them could forget, because she had danced with him on that day for the first time at the ball given on her birthday in the far-off duchy of Brunswick; and there were two names marked upon the leaf—“D'Aubant” and “New Orleans.”

Charlotte's future destiny was settled by that magnolia leaf. Her finer nature, her exquisite refinement, her virtue, her religion had only served to exasperate and annoy Alexis. He could not change her, he could not lower her pure morality, and finally his irritation developed into brutality, for the constant injustice of a cruel man towards a delicate woman inevitably ends in hatred.

Thinking of the most refined insult which he could put upon her, Alexis conceived the idea of compelling Charlotte to receive at court a kitchen wench, with whom he had an open liaison,—a broad-faced, broad-hipped person, who could neither read nor write, of low intellect and coarse instincts which matched his own. He knew, of course, that Charlotte would decline to receive her, as she did with firmness, spirit, and dignity. As the last words of refusal left her pure lips he rushed at her with the infuriated cry of a wild animal, his mouth foaming with rage. He called her all the names of his loathsome vocabulary. He tore her fair hair, and doubling up his great fists knocked her down, beating her until she was senseless. And in all that court neither nobleman nor gentlewoman dared to interfere, for Alexis was their despotic and merciless master. It was, however, the beginning of the end for him. He was losing control of himself, and not many years afterwards Peter the Great, justified in his own eyes and acting, as he said, for the good of Russia, with his own hands put his inhuman son to death.

During the maniacal attack on Princess Charlotte, the Countess of Königsmark had made a step towards her friend as if to rescue her, for she alone had the complete confidence of the Princess, and served her with loyalty and a great love. At this time in St. Petersburg there was a wonderful apothecary, who had developed his talents under the encouragement of Peter the Great until it was said that he could almost raise the dead. Certainly, like Friar Laurence, he could successfully put the living into a deathlike sleep, and Charlotte, with the aid of her friend the Countess of Königsmark, obtained from him a little phial. The Princess had borne all that she could bear and yet live; if death came she would welcome it. And she had taken the desperate resolve when she awoke to join d'Aubant in that far-away land, kind alike to aristocrat and to numbered convict.

The Countess of Königsmark brought the draught, and, with a prayer to God for mercy, the Princess Charlotte eagerly drank it. Then she felt

The funeral of Charlotte was even more magnificent than the sumptuous fête of welcome to St. Petersburg. There was a great gilded hearse with waving sable plumes, a sound of muffled drums, an impressive cathedral service of barbaric music and clouds of incense, the intoning of many gorgeously-robed priests, and then the quiet of the vault. Through it all Charlotte slept her deathlike sleep, with her hands crossed and cold in their waxlike rigidity.

The face of the Countess of Königsmark was white and fixed with anxiety. She had much to do; permission had been granted her to sit by the side of her beloved friend, and there in the chill vault she waited for the blue lips to change to a soft rose, for the stiffened eyelids to relax to mobility, for the proud eyes to open once more upon this tragic world.

When Charlotte woke she was weak and needed wine and food, but Hope warmed her heart to life and a sense of elation gave her palsied limbs strength. She belonged to herself now, and to no other. The Princess Charlotte was dead.

All Europe rang with the news, but a woman, young, beautiful, nameless and free, lived; a woman carrying deathless fidelity in her heart, a woman whose soul whispered to another soul thousands of leagues away of a winged love and a swift meeting.

Simply attired, with a few jewels and a well-filled purse, Charlotte issued from the tomb, nameless, unknown, but warm, living, and happy. In 1721 two hundred immigrants arrived in New Orleans, among them a beautiful, highbred woman, with an imperial crown of fair hair. She had never spoken her name, and, though her manners were gentle and unassuming, she unconsciously commanded those about her, and they, as unconsciously recognising her as one above them, obeyed. Instinctively they felt her to be a creature singled out by the gods for the fulfilment of an extraordinary destiny.

On arriving at New Orleans, she said she had a letter to the Chevalier d'Aubant, and she was told he was in his rural retreat near the settlement, but that it would not be necessary for her to go so far, as a dozen willing knights offered to carry him her message. She, however, declined their offers, asking only for a humble guide, and a black-eyed, silent Indian led her to the forest.

ON my way to the plantation of The Magnolias to visit my friend Mary Davis, I stayed over night at Port Gibson, a delightful little place, all valleys and soft rolling hills, with a wide, grassy main street shaded by a fine avenue of cotton trees, clothed in the tender, vivid green of early spring. The cool umbrella-shaped trees, called the Pride of China, were just beginning to open their purple and amethyst blossoms, perfuming the air with their unforgetable pungent odour. In my childhood a big China tree with its wide-spreading, cool branches grew just outside my Aunt Elizabeth's window. How often have I seen her in the early morning, in a fresh white wrapper, stretch out her pretty, round arm, and gather a lavender blossom for her belt. So I have double reason for my love of this beautiful tropical tree,—the dear memory that it holds for me and the charm of its own beauty.

Port Gibson is more than merely a pretty town; it is the birthplace of that short-lived, remarkable Southern genius, Irwin Russell, lawyer (who though a minor, was admitted to the bar after a brilliant examination, by special act of the legislature), wanderer, traveller, author, and above all poet. I tried to find the house where he was born, but the people I asked knew nothing of it. In spite of his having modelled his poetic style on Burns and the English poets, he was able to emancipate his mind from tradition and was really the first American author who truthfully described the life and character of the negro. There has been nothing ever written more full of movement, more vivid and lifelike than “Fiddling Josie,” in “Christmas Night in the Quarters”:

What character, what understanding, what reality, what go, is in this inspired jingle. The first appreciative helping hand extended to him was that of the Scribners, who have always befriended the South, and they published many of his poems. He only wrote when impelled by inspiration and everything he left will live. He died at twenty-six, still a boy, but tired of life and glad to rest.

While I was waiting at the station for the train, which of course, in Southern fashion, was quite an hour late, a neat, well-dressed, pleasant-faced woman spoke to me. She was expecting her husband, who was, she told me, “a travelling man.” She pointed to a pretty white cottage on the hill and said she had so little to do, only her housework and the clothes for herself and two little girls to make, that to occupy her “idle hours” she had taken to chicken farming. Yet it is said that Southern women are lazy! Fancy a woman having “idle hours” with her own housework to do and dressmaking for three people. “And how,” I asked her, “have you succeeded with your chickens?” “Remarkably well,” she said, “too well. I have more chickens than I want and about two hundred eggs a day.” I advised her to send them to New Orleans. She said she had not thought of that.

Port Glass, the next station from Port Gibson, was five miles from the plantation of The Magnolias. Mary had arranged in case of my arriving unexpectedly that a neighbour was to drive me over. When I got out at Port Glass, which is really only a good-sized store, I heard a loud “Hello!” and a gentleman came flying across the field and gave me the welcome of an old friend, saying I was to come to his house for a mid-day dinner, and then he would drive me to the plantation in his buggy and deposit me with Mary. “I hope you are going to be with us a long time,” he said. “Miss Mary has only been here a few weeks; the plantation is too lonesome for her since she lost her mother.” We had arrived by this time at his flower-wreathed gate and there I saw the sweetest mortal in the world—a smart little maiden of three, in white frock, red shoes, and a little white sunbonnet flecked with scarlet spots. It was a case with us of love at first sight; the little woman gave me the warmest embrace and nestled close in my arms. And how proud she was of her gay morocco shoes! They were of the same colour as those of Madame Octavia Levert, the celebrated Southern beauty, who was such a belle in the forties. Mrs. Clay has described her as creating a veritable sensation at a ball in a lemon-coloured satin gown, a wreath of coral on her dark braids, and coral morocco shoes. Imagine a belle of 1913 being garbed in such simple fashion! Her dress must be embroidered with diamonds and pearls, with satin slippers and pearl rosettes to match. Fashionable ladies of the present day would scorn morocco slippers, even for the bath.

The immediate land about Mary's house is four thousand acres in extent. It is four miles from the border of the plantation to her front door. My host made a short cut by taking the back road, and at last we reached The Magnolias, a charming white house with many windows, green blinds, and an ample gallery running across the wide front. Mary was just finishing her toilet and her buggy was waiting to go to Port Glass to meet me. What a welcome she gave me! For, lo, these many years I had been promising to come, and as they rolled relentlessly on Mary had at last given up all faith in my promises, but Scipio, never. Mary is not older than I am, perhaps she is even younger, but she belongs more to the past, having lived so much with her mother who had received the old-fashioned romantic Southern education. This accomplished lady played the guitar, sang pretty, old-fashioned ballads to the end of her life, and spoke French with a delightful Southern accent. She read a great deal of poetry, knew Marmion and The Lady of the Lake by heart, had exquisite manners, and was delicately pretty. She even figured in a Book of Beauty of famous Southern women. Living in the days when there were hosts of servants to do everything, she knew nothing about the practical or domestic part of life until after the death of her husband, when she began to manage her own plantation.

Scipio, the foreman, was born on The Magnolias and except for one or two trips to Vicksburg he has never left the plantation. He can neither read nor write but nevertheless he is a black gentleman and a very intelligent man. He loves in theory the great world, and pictures of London particularly delight him. When I send the Illustrated London News to Mary, with dukes and duchesses in glad array standing in the grounds of Buckingham Palace at a garden party, Scipio's face is wreathed in smiles, he fairly gloats over them. But he loves a ball better. Mary had a lovely photograph of Queen Alexandra in a ball gown, which mysteriously disappeared. She at once suspected that Scipio had borrowed it, and when she issued an edict saying that the photograph must be recovered, it suddenly reappeared one morning and Scipio looked pensive all that day.

I met Mary in New York on her annual shopping tour. With her grand manner one might have thought that she had a portly negro coachman and footman waiting outside in a barouche for her numerous parcels, instead of having to use like other strap-hangers a crowded Sixth Avenue street car. I faithfully promised her then that this time in America I would visit The Magnolias. But for twenty-five years this promise had been given and not kept, so naturally she was somewhat doubtful of my intentions and she said more than once to Scipio, “I don't believe Miss Betty's coming.” Scipio never failed to answer confidently, “Yes, she will, Miss Mary.” “What makes you think so?” Mary asked. “Why, Miss Mary,” he said (looking at my photograph), “she has got one of dem unforgittin' faces. Look at dem eyes and de square set of dat jaw. She 's gwine to come, and you better be gittin' ready for her, I tell yo' dat right now.”

Even in all the years when Mary ceased expecting me Scipio kept faith, and when I wrote to her from New Orleans saying I would be with her in a few days and she told him, he said, “Well, thank de Lawd, we suttenly will be gittin' de news from London now. Dat 's what makes me say what I do say. Take dese people wid de unforgittin' faces an' sooner or later you can always depen' on 'em.”

The day before my arrival he noticed an engraving of Queen Victoria at the time of her coronation and said to his mistress, “Miss Mary, I 'm gwine to bring dat picture of de Queen from de hall upstairs and hang it over de mantelpiece in Mrs. O'Connor's room; it will make her feel more at home and she won't be so lonesome for England.” Mary said Scipio regarded me as an intimate friend of the Queen, and she had never been able to disillusion him of the idea.

He is getting a little grey now; it troubles him, and he said, “Miss Mary, I 'm gwine ter have a black silk cap to wear at de table, 'cause Mrs. O'Connor is sho' not to like grey hair.”

“Why not?” said Mary. “She has grey hair of her own.”

But Scipio was firm. He said:

“Nem-mine, she 's sho' not to like grey hair on a ole nigger.”

So at dinner the night I arrived, the big silver candelabra, brilliantly burnished, holding half-a-dozen candles each, were lighted in my honour, and Scipio, in spotless white linen vest and coat, black trousers, and a neat black silk skull-cap, waited at table with old-fashioned courtesy.

Next day Mary proposed that we should drive to an adjoining plantation which had recently been bought by some people from the West. Scipio looked very gloomy when told to harness up the buggy. He said, “Miss Mary, you don' want ter know dat 'ar person. She 's common.”

Mary said, “Why, I saw the lady in church. She 's quite a nice looking woman.”

“Dat don't make no diffunce,” said Scipio; “I tell you, Miss Mary, she ain't yo' kine.”

“How do you know that?” said Mary.

“A woman what don't know de faces of her own flowers ain't wuth knowin'. An' dis here one don't know de Duchess of Luxemburg from Marshal Niel. She don't know a picayune from a Cherokee rose. She don't know love-lies-bleedin' from heartsease.”

NEW TOWN LANDING is only a mile from The Magnolias, and Mary offered to go with me to Natchez, which would give us a day and a night on the river. The landings on the Mississippi are not landings in the builders' or architects' sense of the word, for, if nature and the river do not make it, there is no landing at all, and at New Town the bank of the river is so steep that it makes the bridge almost perpendicular. With the deep brown water flowing beneath and not even a rope to offer a sense of protection, my courage failed me for a moment; but the captain and chief mate ran up the plank, each gave me his arm, and with my eyes fixed on the blue sky, I found myself quickly deposited on deck. Mary, even more tremulous than I, followed me with the same assistance.

There are now comparatively few passengers travelling on these boats. The bends of the river, Palmyra Lake, and the many landings where oil, bacon, meal, flour, corn, ploughs, rakes, spades, and cotton are unloaded, extend a journey of two hours by rail into one of a day and a night by water. When I was a little girl and my father brought me North to place me in a boarding school, it was not so long after the war but that some of the splendid steamers still plied their way up and down the Mississippi. We were a week on board and, child as I was, that mighty, uncontrolled river even then held a wondrous charm for me, and I recollect the week of dancing and singing and laughter and light and the gay people who only went to bed at rosy dawn.

It was the last week in September, and the autumn sunshine was of a most luminous gold. At night the river was a veritable diamond-studded lake, while flaming torches lighted the splendid dark forests standing in their myriad hosts on the banks, and soft winds stole northward to us from the Gulf of Mexico, bringing the sweetest odours of honeysuckle and orange-groves, and the tonic breath of the pines. We could almost hear the rustle of the lime trees on the banks. The “roustabouts,” or porters, were up all night, as we stopped at the various landings, where we deposited barrels of molasses and flour, cornmeal, sugar, coffee, whisky and brandy, kegs of salt fish and pickles, and, for the richer planters, all sorts and kinds of delicious condiments. The rousters, like the jinriksha men, descend from one generation to another. Tall, black, muscular, healthy, hearty, abnormally strong specimens of manhood, they can pick up a barrel weighing one hundred and ninety-six pounds and sling it on their shoulders as easily as an ordinary man would handle a baseball.

As soon as the sun went down, the banjo began to give out its song as the night jessamine gives out its perfume. One tall, dandified negro silenced the voices on the deck above, as he picked up his banjo and sang:

I remember still every detail of our journey and my first impressions of that wonderful stream of mystery and charm, the slow-winding Mississippi—that river unique in all the world, which can boast of a duel fought on account of a sneering remark made about its greatness.

The authentic story says that about forty years ago the Chevalier Tomasi, a very learned man, an academician, who was living in New Orleans, published a statement about this river. He said that technically he could stop the river, make it deeper, or restrict it within scientific boundaries. A fiery Creole remarked to Tomasi that he was too sanguine about the management of the Mississippi, as it was a very headstrong stream, as changeable, as uncertain, and as fascinating as a woman. Apparently, the Creator of the universe had rules for everything in the world except that unique body of water, which was a law unto itself. To this remark Tomasi gave a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders, and said with a sneer, “Oh, you Americans know nothing of the geographical world; there are rivers in Europe so much larger than the Mississippi that they make it by contrast a mere creek.” The Creole replied, white with rage, “Sir, I will never, as a Louisianian, permit the great Mississippi to be insulted in my presence.” And he accompanied the remark with the flirt of a glove in the Chevalier's face.

A challenge was the consequence. Seconds were chosen, and the party repaired to the famous duelling ground of the day, where the Creole wounded Professor Tomasi, mortally, it was thought. Soon afterwards, however, the Chevalier appeared in the street with a bandage about his jaw. He had lost a good deal of blood, and was very pale. When asked about the duel, he stripped off the bandage and it was seen that the sword of the defender of the Mississippi had passed across his mouth from one cheek to the other. The Chevalier said, “I live, as you see, scarred for life, and my antagonist lives. That is the fault of your miserable American steel. My sword, when I gave him a deadly thrust, bent as if it were made of lead.” But there was no one to defend American steel, and the Chevalier did not fight a second duel.

And, although my time was limited, the allurement of the mighty river called to me like the voice of a siren. There are many fine plantations to be seen. The banks can boast of primeval forests rich in game of every description. One huntsman on board said he and a party of friends, ten or twelve men, had killed twenty-nine black bears in one day. There are numbers of trappers living in the woods who make a good income out of skunk and otter, beaver and coon, and the much-desired grey squirrel.

Nevertheless, the life along the river is as intimate as that of the Thames. Every planter knows the estate of every other planter, and the familiar history for generations of each family. “Davis Bend” is named for the master of Brierfield, the plantation of Jeff Davis; “Ashfield” belongs to Lady Ritchie, who married Sir James Ritchie; and “Limerick” is so-called in honour of an Irish family.

Although it was dusk a tall beacon light announced the landing of “Hard Times,” a misnomer it seems, as the owner was a millionaire, and travelled up and down the river to superintend nine plantations. He lived during the winter at “Winter Quarters.”

“Yes,” said Mary to the Captain, “there shines the beacon at ‘Hard Times’ and all the family are dead. I remember when I was going there to visit Mrs. Gillespie she wrote to tell me that her husband would meet me at the landing. She had gathered seventy varieties of roses that day, to glorify the house for my coming.”

“She loved roses, then,” I said.

“Oh,” said Mary, “she was the sweetest, daintiest creature; she loved everything that was beautiful.”

“They were about the richest people on the river,” remarked the Captain.

“And yet,” said Mary, “the early years of their married life were dreadfully overshadowed. Mrs. Gillespie lost her first three children. When they died Mr. Gillespie would allow no hand to touch them but his own; he even carried the little coffins in his arms to the grave. Then came the last son, Jack, and he lived to grow up and was very handsome and clever and charming, but he, too, died young.”

THERE has never been a country in the whole world where the flower of friendship has blossomed so luxuriantly, or breathed such a sweet perfume as in the South. The whole conditions of life have lent themselves to the growth of this grateful and blessed plant. Before the war, the opulent hospitality, the many servants, the rigid line drawn between the upper and the lower classes led to constant intermarriage between the old families, and to an intimacy so close as virtually to establish a kinship. Then came those terrible years of bloodshed that prostrated and impoverished the entire land, but they brought out the tenderness, loyalty, inborn pride, and endurance of the Southern character. Through all the darkened atmosphere burned a clear white flame, as strong and pure and steady as though lighted by the hand of a saint on a holy altar—the light of friendship. There was no luxurious comfort or material benefit now, only self-sacrifice, unspoken tenderness, and sympathy silently expressed—words would have brought tears, and for a proud heart and soul a covering is necessary. So, poor and weary and sad and broken, the South was still richer in love than any other country. War had devastated the land; the flowers in the garden were dead; but the flower of friendship, watered by long years of blood and tears, bloomed brighter than ever, for sentiment is indestructible. And to-day, nearly half a century since the war, this tender plant still blooms hardily and tropically in the South. The thick leaves rustle and move to announce the coming of this rich blossom of the heart.

When in Vicksburg I met Harris Dickson for the first time, and the flower of friendship quickly bloomed for us. Perhaps an aid to our rapid understanding was his relief in finding that I did not answer to the description given him by a passenger who had crossed on the steamer with a namesake of mine. She described me as a “lady who wore a green satin dress, gave lectures on the Celtic language, and was surrounded by admirers of the opposite sex.” Harris Dickson found me wearing a reliable English blue serge, surrounded by solitude, very eager to listen,—to learn and not to lecture. After some days he asked me what I thought was a peculiar question.

“Have you a green satin dress?”

“No,” I said, “but if you like a green satin dress I can get one.”

“And,” he asked, “do you lecture on the Celtic language?”

“I lecture on nothing,” I said, “and the only thing I know on the subject is that when George Moore was temporarily an enthusiastic Irishman he issued an edict to his sister-in-law for his two nephews to learn the Celtic language under pain of disinheritance.”

“Then,” said he, “you were not the lady who crossed the Atlantic in a green satin dress, delivered a lecture on Celtic lore, and was vastly admired by my sex?”

“No,” I said, “I have no lore. I know too much for the professional charmer, too little for the intellectual man, and nothing for the politician, so my friends among your exacting sex are few.”

“Then where,” he said, “do I come in?”

“You,” I said, “are already in, through the open door of the South.”

We talked together for two days, almost without ceasing. I told him of my temerity in writing a book about the South.

“My only equipment is twenty-five years of homesickness,” I explained.

He looked kind and encouraging. “Well, never mind,” he said. “Your equipment might be worse. Write the book; have it typed with wide margins; send it here and I will look it over and give you any suggestions that occur to me.”

“Do you mean to say,” I asked, “that you are going to edit my book?”

He smiled. “That 's what it looks like,” he answered. And the bud of the flower of friendship burst into grateful blossom. Why should a busy, talented writer offer to take such infinite trouble? Because he recognised in me a woman of the old South, the South of appeal, of helplessness, while he is a man of the young South, the South of helpfulness, of progress, and still, thank Heaven, of impulsive generosity.

While we walked about historic Vicksburg he said, “Would you like to see the old quarters where I began my career as a very youthful stenographer of twelve?”

I said, “Certainly I should, and I am sure you were quite a decent stenographer, even at that age.”

“Well, if I hadn't been,” he said, “they would have turned me down.”

“How I envy you people versed in stenography,” I said. “It is one of the most useful things in the world for every writer, every journalist, and every thinker. The mind receives no better drilling than the study of shorthand. It is woman's best friend, and it is no less useful to man.”

“You speak,” he said, “like a sage in a copy-book.”

In the meantime we had arrived at the Court-House, and as the court was not sitting we could wander over it at our own sweet will. The old janitor was at the door. Harris Dickson said, “You must stop and speak to him; he is one of the best-mannered gentlemen in the town.”

The Court-House is a fine classical building, and it had the quiet and restfulness about it of concentrated thought, and moreover there was the delightful odour of books and papers that I remember as a little girl, for I drove to court every morning with my father, who very often took me into one of the court-rooms for a few moments before he kissed me good-bye and sent me home with my mammy.

My father had the same passionate tenderness for me that George III gave to his little daughter, the Princess Amelia, and like her

“I THINK it would be a good plan for you,” said Harris Dickson a few days later, “to go to Atlanta and join a car there which is taking a delegation from the Agricultural Department through the country. It will be a splendid opportunity for you to see the fine work they are doing.”

“But,” I said, “Atlanta is sixteen hours at least from Vicksburg. They have n't invited me to go with them; they don't even know of my existence!”

“Oh,” he said airily, “they have asked me, and I will appoint you as a delegate in my place. They will be delighted to receive you. The cars stop wherever they are needed and the farmers bring up sick horses, cows, sheep, mules, pigs, and even chickens and ducks for a diagnosis. You will see all the methods of this splendid department of the Government which is rendering such a practical service to the farmer, gardener, shepherd, ranchman, the breeder of race horses, and the seedsman.”

I said, “Senator Morgan of Alabama used to tell a story against himself about seed. He had been for many years one of the most honoured men in the Senate, helping, encouraging, uplifting the South, winning back the confidence and the admiration of the North, working night and day at the knottiest of political problems, never sparing himself in the service of his State and his country. One day he received a brief letter from a farmer headed:

“Senator Morgan said, ‘At last, after many years, I know what I am. I thought I was a statesman; I find I am only a seedsman.’ ”

Harris Dickson said, “The Bible says, ‘the seed is the word of God,’ and seed can be an important factor in life, let me tell you. I know a Member of Congress whose sole claim to office is that he sends out seeds quite regularly. You had better go to Georgia and join those gifted seedsmen of the Agricultural Department.”

“No,” I said, “in spite of the possible hospitality which might be extended to me, the journey of sixteen hours is too long. Remember, I am not accustomed to the vast distances of my country as yet.”

“Then,” he said, “the next best thing for you is to pay a visit to Alfred Holt Stone at Dunleith. He is a Southern man who has written an excellent book on the American race problem, and he knows as much about the South as anybody in it.”

So he called up on the long-distance telephone and confident of Southern hospitality informed the gentleman that he was to expect a visitor. Mr. Stone was equal to the occasion and said he and Mrs. Stone would be delighted to receive me.

The next day I started for Dunleith, rather in a state of anxiety, for a plantation in the South even in these days can be primitive and uncomfortable, and there is a theory that literary people are never good managers or housekeepers. Mr. Stone met me at the station and dispelled all my fears at once. The buggy, a reminder of my childhood, was in perfect trim, and Charles (I subsequently learned his name), a shining, highly curried, well fed, knowledgeable grey horse, waited while his owner, a young, well-groomed man, with a resolute, Napoleonic face, gave me a warm hand of welcome.

“And now,” he said, “you are to stay on the plantation just as long as you like it. Mrs. Stone is delighted at the prospect of a visitor and Dickson told me over the telephone that we should have much to say to each other.”

When we got into the buggy Charles made good time in going homewards. How agreeably the plantation surprised me. There are 3500 acres under cultivation, planted in cotton and a modicum of alfalfa. There are about two hundred and fifty or three hundred negroes on the place, and a small colony of Italians. The little whitewashed houses range from two to four rooms, the fences are neat and trim, and there is a look of alert, intelligent, brisk, up-to-date management and continuous progress over every acre and every foot of the plantation. I found Mrs. Stone charming, and not only a model housekeeper but a most intelligent hostess. The house was originally an old-fashioned plantation house, but it has been greatly changed and improved. It has now several bathrooms with hot and cold water, acetylene gas, wide galleries surrounding it, and two libraries, one of them Mr. Stone's own particular work-room, while the second, containing an excellent selection of books, is the reading-room of the family. The walls are panelled in odorous pine and my room was the most charming one I occupied in America. The light maple furniture was the colour of the pine walls; there was an apple-green carpet on the floor, and all the little appointments of the room were lavender and green, giving a sense of coolness and freshness. The drawers of my dressing-table held large sachets of lavender; my bed was most luxurious, with an eiderdown quilt flowered in lilacs; the bathroom, with its tiled floor, white porcelain bath-tub and wash-basin, was, like so many American bathrooms, a pearl to be remembered. I went to bed early and laid me down with a thankful heart in a beautiful silence. Oh, that blissful silence! so deep that it penetrated my restless heart, wrapped me in a mantle of velvet peace, and gave me a night of childhood's unmoving sleep.

Mrs. Stone is a great believer in the Agricultural Department. She has raised three hundred agricultural chickens who abode not so very far from my window, and yet they never disturbed me, for they were well organised, calm, and collected birds. When the hens laid in the morning they gave a full-throated cackle to announce the egg; the rooster made a careless comment on it, and there the matter ended. They were so different from my brother Sam's next-door neighbour's chickens at Chevy Chase—the hens whenever they laid an egg went into loud, wild hysterics, while the rooster, too, seemed to be utterly unnerved and loudly astonished by the event.

So I have been advocating ever since I left the Stone plantation, that all who raise chickens send for pamphlets from the Agricultural Department and go exactly according to their directions. Even the roosters on the Stone plantation exercised judgment in their announcement of the dawn; at three o'clock in the morning they gave one soft crow in unison and then settled down to a well-bred silence;—not, as in other unscientific chicken yards, a faint crow at a quarter past three from a timid young bantam, followed five minutes later by the clarion call from a confident middle-aged rooster, and followed by hesitating echoes in different keys from other cocks until a quarter past four—an agonising hour of steady, unmusical, separated, trying, intermittent cock-a-doodle-doos.

I never ate canned peaches and fruits with such a fine flavour as those Mrs. Stone prepared herself, also according to the bulletins of the Agricultural Department. After a delicious, well-served lunch, when I went to my dainty green-and-purple bedroom the little black maid had unpacked my bag and everything was put neatly in place. We had already had driven around the plantation but Charles was put into requisition again and we went over to see the Italian settlement. It is on the edge of a thick, primeval forest. A strapping, black-eyed girl with broad shoulders, dressed in a stout linen blouse, a black skirt well pinned up over a heavy red wool petticoat, was ploughing with a strong, grey mule. She smiled benignly upon us as we approached and said “Good-morning.” Then she headed her mule in another direction so we had no conversation with her. Mr. Stone speaks of the Italians as sober, steady, excellent tenants, doing twice the work of negroes, but they hoard the money they make, and it does not circulate again on the plantation. Presumably it is sent over to Italy for investment, as it is generally said that Italians have a strong love of country and always hope to go home again.

We stopped at the long roomy store, where the negroes are supplied with all they can possibly want. It was a reminder of my childhood with the assortment of flowered muslins, brilliant calicoes, straw hats, gaily coloured quilts and counterpanes, shoes and slippers, brooms and dusters, china and glass, beads and fans, and lo and behold, a dream, a vision realised—a splendid black harness with bright, scarlet, shining blinkers. Now what in the world could be more becoming to a black mule, and set off his individual beauty so well, as sealing-wax red blinkers? I have always wanted a mule with red and black harness. If I live in the South again they shall both be mine.

And, indeed, if I were young enough to wait on fortune, I would cast my lot upon the Mississippi Delta with its wonderful rich black soil, where whatever is put into it must grow. It seems marvellous to be almost within hail of a large city like New Orleans, and to see miles and miles of really untouched primeval forest. Whenever Mr. Stone takes in two hundred or five hundred acres, or prepares the land for lease or sale, the trees are belted, afterwards burned and the ground is cleared. It is only five years since bears were a great nuisance on the plantation. I have always known they were mischievous creatures, with their little funny, twinkling eyes and their slily smiling faces which show a keen sense of humour. From some distant point of vantage they must have watched the negroes planting long, straight rows of cotton, cunningly waited for the tender plants to come up, when they carefully straddled across each row and unerringly trampled down every single shooting green leaf, just to show what can be done by a frolicsome bear with a lack of conscience.

Now, these beasts have retreated farther back into the woods leaving their vengeance to that dreadful, tragic pest, the boll-weevil. But the Agricultural Department is on his track, too; they know what the boll-weevil thinks, certainly what he eats, and before long they are sure to produce an epidemic for him and he will be exterminated. Already they are cleverly changing the seasons of cotton by planting the seed earlier and later, and have avoided his most prolific hour, and sometimes they avoid him altogether. And though at first seeming to bring bankrupt disaster in his wake the boll-weevil has not been an unmitigated evil, because he has proved to the South the possibility of other products beside cotton. Never have I seen such Jack-and-the-beanstalk alfalfa as on the Dunleith plantation, and never have I felt so exultant over the future of my own land, for nothing convinces like success.

Alfred Stone understands the negro, is the embodiment of reason in his attitude towards him, and is very hopeful of his future coupled with that of the white man in the South. He says: “It is the duty of every man who undertakes to study the race problem here, first to study the negro, just as we would the Chinese, the Italian, the Russian, or the Indian, in both his native and adopted homes, and without the bias, prejudice, or sentiment which in this country have for three quarters of a century rendered such attempted studies almost worthless.”

If the study of the negro were undertaken and carefully carried out by a number of intelligent men in the United States, and stringent laws passed for his moral and physical development, what a benefit it would be for all concerned. At the present time a race of vagabonds, shiftless, idle, and lazy, are growing up without direction, without discipline, without purpose; moving aimlessly from one plantation to another, seeking vainly a method of avoiding work. Any one interested in the negro can find much valuable information in Alfred Stone's The American Race Problem. His mind is naturally contemplative, just, and judicial. He was born and brought up in the South; and having for years given diligent study to the condition of the negro, and possessing the inestimable advantage of practical experience, his success has proved the result of his theories.

Now, even in the North, the negro franchise is acknowledged as having been a bitter mistake. Many of the negroes given a vote possess an intelligence scarcely above that of an observant chimpanzee. There is a story told of a field hand going to a circus and saying to a very big, black ape, “Good mawnin', sah.” The ape remained silent. “Why don't you talk to me, mistah?” the darkey said; “you looks jes' like my poor brer John, who is done dead.” The ape blinked sympathetically, but made no reply. Then the darkey's face broke into a smile, and he said, “You sho'ly is wise, sah; 'cause ef you said anything de white folks would cut off yo' tail, put a hoe in yo' hand, and set you to work plantin' cotton.”

As I was going to Dunleith plantation a negro passed down the car and he was enough like Mick, a friend of mine in London, to have been his brother. A good many years ago I went one afternoon to the Zoo with “the Bloke with the White Teeth.” (This was the name given to a friend from California who had helped to wait at a tea-party for some of my little slum friends in London by a little girl, a big-eyed, silent eater, who had made but one remark—“Tell the Bloke with the White Teeth to give me more cake.”) A cold, yellow fog obscured the sun and the air was full of a desperate chill. One of the keepers who knew me asked if we would like to see a baby chimpanzee. He said, “He is very ill; I 'm afraid he has pneumonia and is going to die. He has only been in the Zoo a month, and is just two years old.” We went into a little room, warmed to a tropical degree of heat, and there, lying on the bottom of his cage, with a bit of blanket thrown over him, even covering his head, lay the poor little black ape.

As the door was opened he turned down the blanket and looked at me with an expression of recognition in his one exposed eye. The keeper said, “It 's about time he took his medicine; I 'll give it to him.” As he unlocked the door and opened it, the poor creature gave one bound into my arms, locked his feet round my waist, laid his poor hot feverish head and his dribbling unclean nose on my fur collar, and gave a chuckle of satisfaction. I took out my pocket-handkerchief, and, while drying his nose, said to the keeper, “He thinks I am his mother. Whether I look like his mother or not I don't know, but evidently in his eyes I do.”

He took his medicine from my hand, and I nursed him for quite half-an-hour. “The Bloke with the White Teeth” said he did n't know how I could do it. Mick got well, and until he grew to manhood we were the most devoted friends.

I used very often to go to the Zoo to see him. He was always delighted at my coming, sat in my lap, kissed me, made a little boutonnière for my coat out of the straw of his cage, and really tried to talk. He was always charmingly polite, asking me to stay longer, and never failed to stretch out his long hands to catch hold of me as I went away. The keeper said, “You need n't be ashamed, madam, of Mick's affection; it 's honest. Not all the bananas nor all the nuts in London could buy one smile from him. He don't do any pretending, Mick don't.” Mick has now grown into a tall, slender, strong, very athletic young chimpanzee gentleman of sixteen; he is less interesting in his adolescence, and is shut off from the public by a wide plate of glass, so that after all our years of friendship we are separated. But if ever I saw a close relation of Mick's it was the negro who walked through the car the day I was leaving Dunleith.

All the time I was on the plantation my thoughts were constantly in England, for I knew I was seeing the possibilities of future homes for young Englishmen with or without capital, if they care to pitch their tents in the South. As Harris Dickson said to me, “There is a close sympathy between the men of the South and Englishmen. While in the Sudan I found their point of view of the negro and his management identical with our own.” There is nothing that makes so much for success as contentment, and friendliness, and our progress has not been so rapid as to do away with our English kinship.

Then, in our mild climate, only a very small capital is necessary. Fuel, heavy clothing, stoutly built houses, the expensive necessities of the North, are not needed in the South, and with ordinary industry and intelligence a man can always make his living, and even more. There is no country so rich in all the world as that wonderful Mississippi Delta. The air is delightfully quiet and tranquillising and with the improvements due to science it is quite possible to live with health the whole year on a plantation. The screens now universally used to keep out the flies and mosquitoes have done much towards establishing a sanitary condition, and bathrooms, quantities of ice, which is very cheap, fresh vegetables, and fine fruits all make life not only tolerable but pleasant during the summer.

A young Englishman who came from Yorkshire to Alfred Stone's plantation with a letter of introduction has been very successful, and any industrious man would have the same chance. Beginning with five hundred pounds capital, he could rent for one year or a term of years, as he pleased, forty or fifty acres of land at a rental varying from six to ten dollars an acre, according to the quality of the land and the improvements already made on it. If he takes up good land and pays eight dollars an acre for it, the rent is not due until the fall of the year, when he gathers his crop, so that he would not require to use any capital for that. He could easily handle this land with two good mules, which would cost five hundred dollars cash. Another hundred would more than cover the cost of his tools, planting seed, and small expenses. He would have to hire a “hand,” one man, to help him. This would cost him twenty dollars a month, or say two hundred and forty dollars for the year. He would want to set aside ten acres for his corn, garden patch, stable, etc., which would leave him thirty acres for his cotton crop. With anything like a normal season, he should make three hundred pounds of lint per acre. This would be nine thousand pounds, or eighteen bales of five hundred pounds each. If the price were good that fall, he might easily get fifteen cents a pound for his cotton, or seventy-five dollars a bale. This would give him thirteen hundred and fifty dollars for his crop. The seed from his eighteen bales would be about nine tons, worth, say, fifteen dollars per ton. This would be one hundred and thirty-five dollars. This would bring his total crop proceeds to fourteen hundred and eighty-five dollars. He would have planted eight acres in corn and should have two hundred and forty bushels as his crop.

The cash outlay on his crop would vary with prices. He would, however, begin with no corn for his mules, and their feed would cost him about one hundred dollars. This would be more than ample, and indeed it need not be so much. He might allow himself fifty dollars for extra help at a time when he and his one labourer could not do all that was necessary. The cost of hiring labour to pick one bale of cotton is about eight dollars, but he and his helper could do enough picking themselves to reduce the amount paid out to, say, five dollars per bale or ninety dollars. In fact it would, or should, be considerably less. If he has been able to go through until fall without a waggon, he will certainly need one in gathering his corn and hauling his cotton to the gin. This would cost him fifty dollars, and if he had a wife, he would want to pay fifty dollars for a good cow, or he could get one for less. He might also invest fifty dollars in hogs and chickens as a starter. Ginning his cotton would not cost him three dollars a bale, but, allowing that, the cost would be fifty-four dollars.

The above items would total twelve hundred and eighty-four dollars. His crop has brought fourteen hundred and eighty-five dollars, which leaves him a balance of two hundred and one dollars, with his mules, tools, waggon, cow, hogs, and chickens paid for, and more than enough corn on hand to do away with the item of mule feed next year. There has been nothing put down for household and living expenses, medical attention, and incidentals. These can be in large measure just what he makes them. If he and his wife have health, with chickens and a garden his actual cash outlay may be small. To make things balance, he might cover it with the two hundred and one dollars which he had left above.

I see that I have omitted the rent, so to make things plain it is better to begin at the beginning:

In other words, he could defray the entire cost of equipping himself, making his crop, living, etc., out of his capital of $2500.00 and still have $500.00 left plus the proceeds of his crop, which I have put at $1485.00.

He could even manage with only one thousand dollars on the same amount of land, by simply using his capital for equipment and getting his supplies from an advancing merchant to be paid for out of his crop at the end of the season. Of course all such figures are subject to the variations incident to fluctuations of prices of cotton and seed, on the one hand, and of what he has to buy on the other, but this will give a fairly good idea, I hope, of the general situation and its possibilities.

Much information has been given to me by a man who started with no capital at all and has made his success on money borrowed at a rather high rate of interest. Very good land is to be had at from thirty to seventy dollars an acre. Newcomers are advised by planters of experience to rent land rather than to buy until they know the ropes. The Yazoo-Mississippi Delta is a section of land embracing some six thousand square miles lying between the Yazoo and the Mississippi rivers, and extending north from the confluence of those streams just above Vicksburg—and although I am a woman, if I had vigorous health I would pitch my tent on the Yazoo. The virgin soil is as black as tar; things planted there grow like enchantment—alfalfa yields six crops a year.

Corn is very successfully grown, and the peanut industry is bringing the farmers a large revenue. Peanuts are more dependable than cotton and more remunerative. The yield is running from twenty to fifty bushels an acre, and in many instances even higher. The price paid in the neighbourhood by the mills is from eighty cents to a dollar a bushel. Even were the price to go as low as sixty cents a bushel, which contingency might arise through over-production, it would still be a good crop.

The peanut is a wonderfully grateful product to raise; every bit of it can be used; even the residue or cake is ground into meal which is said to be superior to cottonseed meal, and is devoured with avidity by hogs without the injurious effect experienced from cotton-seed meal. For cooking, dressings, salads, soaps, and compounds, peanut oil is superior to cotton-seed oil. In fact a chemical analysis shows very nearly the same properties in peanut oil and olive oil. The peanut hay has been found to be a valuable feed for horses, sheep, and cattle. The crop does not draw heavily on the fertility of the soil, like clover and other greedy collectors of nitrogen, carbonic acid gas, etc. The rotted plant may also be used as a fertiliser. The market for peanuts is a large one, not confined to the mills making oil and peanut butter, for candy makers, confectioners, and the humble “corner peanut stand” consume large quantities. And brokers are kept busy supplying the ever-increasing demand. After passing through the hands of the peanut cleaner, the peanut sheller, the peanut-butter manufacturer, the total paid out for peanuts in various forms amounts to $35,000,000 annually. A practical plea for the peanut is that two great financiers and one leading theatrical manager began life as little boys by selling paper bags of peanuts. And the Commissioner of Agriculture says the South is entering upon the greatest era of prosperity it has known since the Civil War. Now is the time to buy land which for the moment is depreciated by the boll-weevil, for in another two years it will have doubled and trebled in value.

Douglas Jerrold said there were three kinds of liars, “Liars, damned liars, and statistics.” I don't believe much in statistics—truthful, frank, reliable people have quite different statistics—but I have seen the South, and I left it full of wonder and enthusiasm.

MY hero is not Napoleon, nor Nelson, nor Washington, nor Lee, nor even that great and good man, Stonewall Jackson, whose beautiful, prophetic words can never be forgotten—“Order A. P. Hill to prepare for battle. Tell Major Hawkes to advance the commissary train. Let us cross the river and rest in the shade.” He was only a private in the Confederate army, who died with steadfast eyes and a rope round his neck.

Towards the close of the war, in 1863, General Bragg was in command at Missionary Ridge. Before he could dispose of his army to advantage in any direction it was necessary for him to have a plan of the Federal army in Tennessee. Three scouts were selected who had before done valuable service, and they were informed by General Bragg of the extreme danger of the duty, and were asked if they were willing to undertake it, if need be, to the tragic end. They replied they were. He noticed a young, handsome, eager lad, listening with great attention to his orders. When he had finished speaking, the boy, Sam Davis, came up to him and said, “General Bragg, I should very much like to be your fourth scout.”

“Don't you think you are rather young for such a dangerous mission?” General Bragg asked.

The boy smiled cheerfully and said, “Well, try me.”

The next day the four scouts started off together, and Sam Davis, with almost miraculous quickness, obtained all the information required. He found out that the Federal army in middle Tennessee was likely to move from Nashville to Corinth, and reinforce the army at Chattanooga. He got an exact account of the number of regiments and the whole of the artillery in the 16th Corps, and, what was even more remarkable, he got complete maps of the fortifications at all the principal points, including Nashville, and an accurate report of the entire Federal army in the whole of Tennessee.

Sam Davis was so pleased with his rapid success that he wanted the praise and sympathy of the person he loved best in the world, his young sweetheart, to whom he was engaged to be married; and he recklessly stopped to visit her. A small company of Federal cavalry saw a grey uniform enter a little rose-covered house, and they followed him as he came out. But their horses were jaded by a long march, while Sam Davis was mounted on a thoroughbred Kentucky mare, and he rushed past them on the roads he knew so well, making a detour, and they lost him in the sheltering darkness.

The Seventh Kansas Cavalry, however, were scattered over his entire course, and while he was resting the next day in a scrub thicket at Pulaski, trying to conceal himself, a squad of soldiers belonging to the Seventh Cavalry discovered his hiding-place and captured him and his horse. They proceeded to take him to General Dodge, who was in command at Pulaski, only a mile and a half distant. When the frank, handsome, fearless, gay-spirited lad, in his shabby grey uniform, stood before the General, he was immediately prepossessed in his favour. At that moment there was no evidence against him, but when they unbuckled Davis's saddle a fat budget of papers was discovered under the seat, and upon examination, General Dodge found that all the information given, the number of regiments, the movements of the artillery in the 16th Corps, the reinforcements from Nashville to Corinth, and to Chattanooga, the fortifications at Nashville, the fine maps, and the perfectly accurate report of the whole Federal army in Tennessee, had been furnished Davis by a member of his own staff, and that probably the man who stood at his right hand was a traitor of the deepest dye. A captured map was a copy of the very one he carried in his pocket.

He said, “Davis, you evidently have a good friend at court?” Davis made no reply. “I could have sworn to trust my life to every officer at my table, but the information which you have, could only have been given you by a friend. Young man, I must have the name of your informer.” Davis was still silent, with, as General Dodge could see, a steadfast gleam of danger in his eye. There was no weakening there. And, at all costs, it was necessary to have the name of the traitor. “You will,” he said, “without any court-martial have your freedom the moment you speak or write down the name of the man who has betrayed me.” And he handed Davis a pencil and a sheet of paper. “Write it,” he said, “if you cannot speak it.”

Davis gave back a clean sheet of paper and the pencil to General Dodge, and for the first time spoke, in a quiet, even voice. “General Dodge,” he replied, “when I undertook this duty from my commanding officer, General Bragg, I did it with a full knowledge of what the consequences might be. I cannot give you the information you want.”

The General said, “You are very young. Life must hold a good deal for you. Think over the situation for five minutes and speak again. I positively must have the information I am asking from you.”

Davis answered without hesitation, “Honour requires no thought; it comes from”—he lifted his hand and pointed upward—“God. I can only repeat that I cannot give the information.”

General Dodge said, “If you persist in this silence you know, of course, that, as a soldier, I must call a court-martial, and then the matter passes out of my hands.”

“I know that,” Davis replied. “I am a soldier myself; I don't criticise military methods. Call your court-martial.”

General Dodge said, “It is with extreme regret that I am forced to such a measure. I am giving you your chance now; it won't be repeated later.”

“A court-martial will give me a death sentence,” said Davis, “but not even death will make me betray my word. We are both soldiers doing our duty. When the last moment of my life comes, I shall have acted fair to God and to myself.”

By this time the young soldier's spotless honour and unassailable loyalty had deeply moved General Dodge, and he began to plead with genuine emotion to the boy to be saved. But Davis, his young face set in noble lines, said, “General Dodge, I have never lied or broken my word in my life; I will willingly die now rather than do it. My mind is firmly made up. A court-martial may condemn me, but do not expect me to betray my trust. I will never do it, never.”

A court-martial was then called. General Dodge was filled with regret, thinking that the very man who furnished Davis with the information was probably at that moment giving him his death sentence. It seemed too horrible. The execution was delayed while enquiries were made about Davis and his family. It was found that an old friend of his mother was living in Pulaski. General Dodge sent for her and said to her, “Talk to the boy about his home and about his mother. He looks to me, with all his courage and his steadfastness, a sort of mother's boy. Surely at twenty he is not going to sacrifice his life to save a traitor. I don't know who the man is who gave him the information, but he is n't worth the death of Sam Davis.”

The lady used all her eloquence; she repeated what General Dodge had said; she spoke of his mother's devotion to him, of her love, and of the close bond that existed between them, and she asked if he realised that he was never to see her again and of the great grief he was to give her.

“Why,” said the young man, crying like a little child, “my mother is the person who taught me never to lie and to keep my word. She will grieve, I know, not to see me again, but I will never betray the man who gave me the information, and he knows it. It is n't only the other man I am saving. How could I live through all the years and despise the man I have to live with, Myself? How could I wake through the nights and remember the man I lied to and condemned? No, I will die with honour; I will never live dishonoured. God knows I will not.”

The lady returned to General Dodge and repeated her conversation, and they both wrung their hands with helplessness.

On Friday, Davis was handcuffed, and he walked steadily and sat down on his coffin with the fresh-faced look of a boy who has slept well and is the possessor of a glorious conscience.

General Dodge had passed a sleepless night and was awake long before the condemned man. He called his staff together and ordered them to the place of execution, hoping that even at the last moment Davis would speak, or the man who had furnished Davis with his information would be touched by the boy's great valour, and that he might still be saved.

A rope was placed around his neck by hesitating hands; the lines of quiet determination in the exalted face deepened. There stood the martyr of all ages.

“Wait!” The voice of General Dodge rang out like a pistol shot. “Davis, in the name of God, give me the name of your informant! Your horse is waiting for you. Look, she is there in the thicket, and here is your escort to carry you back to your own lines in safety. One word, and you are a free man.”

Davis turned his young head, and looked longingly at the horse. “Queenie, old girl,” he called; the mare whinnied, the boy's eyes filled with tears. Then he smiled and with his handcuffed hands gently touched the rope around his neck and said: “General Dodge, this is my badge of freedom. I have only one life, and I give it for honour. Take it.”

A FRIEND in New Orleans asked me, “Betty, what has pleased you most in America?”

“That,” I said, “is a big question. So many things have pleased me—the faithfulness of my old friends; the generous hospitality of my new ones; the brilliant blue skies; the scent of the familiar flowers. And, then, I am not altogether displeased with myself—when I see how quickly I have fallen into the patient ways of the South, I know that my very being is rooted here. For instance, I engage a negro seamstress to come on Monday for two days' mending. She turns up on Thursday, having highly inconvenienced me. I welcome her with a smile and listen sweetly to her absurd, mendacious excuses. I engage a woman to wash my hair on Tuesday. She turns up on Friday. I make no reproaches, but sit down, thankful to have her arrive at all. I make my washerwoman swear to bring me a white dress on Thursday evening. I say, ‘You know, Emily, I 'm not like people living in America, I have n't many washing clothes, and only one white dress, and I really and truly need it. You won't disappoint me, will you?’ ‘No, indeed, Miss Betty, I won't, I 'll suttenly bring you dat dress Thursday, maybe Wednesday night; 't ain't much to wash.’ The following Monday comes before she brings my dress—and I am quite amiable. I only say, ‘Emily, how could you have disappointed me so?’ And she says, ‘I could n't help it, the weather 's bin so hot dat I des could n't git here.’ And I have seen so quickly how useless complaint is. You simply must exercise patience and philosophy. It would be like getting into a rage with an irresponsible child to quarrel with a present-day darkey, and yet how terrible it is not to have the slightest authority over these foolish grown-up black children! In the cotton South, where negroes can make enough money picking cotton in the summer to exist in idleness in the winter, no servant will sleep in the house at night, and every housekeeper wakes up with an anxious heart in the morning. If she hears the kitchen fire being raked out she gives a little sigh of relief, for she knows that, with the slightest excuse, or no excuse at all, both the cook and the housemaid will stay at home if they feel disinclined to work.

Mary Clark's cook in Washington told her she was going to the hospital for an operation and would be gone for two or three weeks. Mary was all sympathy and help. What the woman did was to take a place with one of Mary's friends to find out whether she liked the place, but as she did n't she returned in a week, saying the doctor could n't find her appendix. Every Southern woman now has to know how to build a fire and cook and clean a house, and nurse, and sew, and above all she learns quick resource and cheerful philosophy. A race of Old Reliables, or Young Reliables, are developing a wonderful power of endurance, forbearance, and fortitude in the South. Harris Dickson's “Busy Day” speaks more eloquently than many political tracts of the trials and long-suffering of Southerners; and though he has, with gifted pen, rendered the negroes into humorous photographs, they are none the less sore trials and ceaseless aggravations.

We all have our limitations, our prejudices, our opinions, which are occasionally founded upon simple instincts, regardless of facts; but it is a question whether these opinions are of sure value. There are also those clever, twisted, contrary intellects, with a point of view so foreign to their own country that they seem to belong to another nationality.

Mark Twain said of himself that he was a “de-Southernised Southerner.” Certainly he had little sympathy or taste for the South, and nowhere does he show it more prominently than in his assertion that Sir Walter Scott was in a great measure responsible for the Civil War.

Then [he says] comes Sir Walter Scott with his enchantments, and by his single might checks this wave of progress and even turns it back; sets the world in love with dreams and phantoms; with decayed and swinish forms of religion; with decayed and degraded systems of government; with the sillinesses and emptinesses, sham grandeurs, sham gauds, and sham chivalries of a brainless and worthless long-vanished society. He did measureless harm; more real and lasting harm, perhaps, than any other individual that ever wrote.

Most of the world has now outlived a good part of these harms, though by no means all of them; but in our South they flourish pretty forcefully still. Not so forcefully as half a generation ago, perhaps, but still forcefully. There, the genuine and wholesome civilisation of the nineteenth century is curiously confused and commingled with the Walter Scott Middle Age sham civilisation, and so you have practical common sense, progressive ideas, and progressive works mixed up with the duel, the inflated speech, the jejune romanticism of an absurd past that is dead, and out of charity ought to be buried. But for the Sir Walter Scott disease, the character of the Southerner—or Southron, according to Sir Walter's starchier way of putting it—would be wholly modern, in place of modern and mediæval mixed, and the South would be fully a generation further on than it is.

“It was Sir Walter that made every gentleman in the South a major, or a general, or a colonel, or a judge before the war; and it was he also that made these gentlemen value these bogus decorations. For it was he that created rank and caste down there, and also reverence for rank and caste, and pride and pleasure in them. Enough is laid on slavery, without fathering upon it these creations and contributions of Sir Walter.

“Sir Walter had so large a hand in making Southern character as it existed before the war, that he is in great measure responsible for the war. It seems a little harsh towards a dead man to say that we never should have had a war but for Sir Walter; and yet something of a plausible argument might, perhaps, be made in support of the wild proposition. The Southerner of the American Revolution owned slaves, so did the Southerner of the American Civil War; but the former resembles the latter as an Englishman resembles a Frenchman. The change of character can be traced rather more easily to Sir Walter's influence than to that of any living thing or person.”

I THINK no city in the South has a larger number of agreeable and cultivated women than Louisville, Kentucky. Without a realisation of it, perhaps, they have always lived where the standard of literature is high. For Henry Watterson, editor of the Courier-Journal, is one of the most brilliant and versatile journalists in America. His editorials are an education, his style is always scholarly, and he writes with force, tenderness, and charm. Nothing can be more poetic than his description of the great hunter Daniel Boone's discovery of Kentucky:

He came afoot, and was followed by a little troop of heroes and poets like himself. I say heroes and poets for, stirred by the fine frenzy of true poetry and the adventurous daring of true heroism, they set out upon an enterprise which brought forth an epic. Nature herself seemed conscious of the coming of an important embassy, and put on her richest apparel to receive it. The pomp of all the heraldries in the world could not have furnished out a splendider fête than that which waited these humble ministers and envoys in buckskin. It was when the June skies were softest and the June fruition was at its full; when the elm and the maple vied with one another which should show itself the more hospitable and magnificent; when the welcoming bluebirds' call was clearest and sweetest, that the mysterious pathway through the forest which had opened day after day, not like the fabled avenue in the enchanted garden, but like the track pointed out to Christian by divine inspiration, brought the little band to an elevation from which its members beheld, for the first time, the land they had come so far to see. Moses, stretching his weary eyes from Pisgah into Canaan, was not gladdened and refreshed by a lovelier prospect. It was, Boone declares in his autobiography, “a second paradise.”

Mrs. Clay in A Belle of the Fifties, gives a description Henry Watterson as a boy:

MY first day in Richmond was almost as busy and as full of change as one of “Old Reliable's” days. I got up early and a friend called to go with me to select a hat. We saw one in a window and I said, “That 's what I want.” We went in, I tried it on, and bought it. From the moment we left the hotel until the hat was mine only ten minutes elapsed. After that we walked down a beautiful street, where a noted belle once lived, who, in Southern fashion, was secretly engaged to three men at the same time.

“They all lived in different towns,” my friend said, “but belonged to the same club in Richmond. Fate brought them together one night, and under the influence of mint juleps of a particular concoction and strength they became confidential, and finally found out that each one had the same sweetheart. They resolved upon a plan of action, and determined to teach her a lesson, so next morning they all went together to call upon her. She entered the parlour looking so beautiful and fresh in her white muslin dress and little white shoes, that each man forgave her and hoped he was the fortunate one. The spokesman hesitated and stuttered, and, looking at her corn-flower blue eyes and crown of golden hair, he altered the severity of his speech and said, ‘We are all engaged to you, and we all love you desperately, and we have all come to ask, with charity to all and malice to none, which one of us is it to be?’

“She looked very mischievous but at the same time very tender, and said: ‘Well, gentlemen, there is a fourth. I have been ficklewise, but please forgive me. This time I am in love.’

“ ‘May we,’ said the spokesman, ‘ask who is the happy fourth?’

“ ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he is John Gates.’

“ ‘The Dev—I beg your pardon,’ said the second lover. ‘This is a surprise. Do you think you will make a good clergyman's wife?’

“ ‘It'll never do,’ said the spokesman. ‘You are a professional beauty, and professional beauties never marry clergymen. It is n't done.’

“ ‘I am going to do it,’ she said.

“ ‘And,’ said the third lover, who was rich, ‘John 's poor.’

“She flushed up and said: ‘I 'd marry him if he had n't a picayune.’

“ ‘Then,’ said the spokesman, ‘it 's the real article.’

“ ‘Yes,’ she said softly, ‘it 's just—Love.’

“Then they all wished her joy and went away. When they got outside the spokesman said: ‘Well, that 's a blow to my vanity. I 'm six-foot-two, and I 've got money. John Gates is a little insignificant creature, and, by Jove, she 's not only going to marry him, but she 's gone on him!’

“The second lover said: ‘You can't count on women; they fall in love with queer chaps.’

“The third lover said: ‘Have you heard about Nelly Smith? You know she 's been a belle for years, she must be thirty-five. The other night Tom Ridgely kissed her, and she looked at him as innocent as a baby, and said, “Do you know you are the first man that ever kissed me?” He said: “And you are the first woman I ever kissed. Will you marry me?” “No,” she said, “I don't want to marry a liar.” He said, “I don't know that I do either.” ’ ”

“And,” I asked, “did the beauty ever marry the preacher?”

“Oh yes,” said my friend, “she made a model clergyman's wife and had nine children, four beautiful daughters and five sons. For many years she kept her looks and her extraordinary charm. Her husband is a bishop now.”

“And what became of Nelly Smith and Tom Ridgely?” I asked.

“They got tired of being witty and got married too,” said my friend.

We walked a little way down Franklin Street, to see the old Lee mansion, a fine roomy house now occupied by the Historical Society. The Jewish tabernacle, with its great Moorish dome, glistened in the bright sunlight, and the long avenue of trees were in their earliest freshest dress of brilliant spring green.

My friend said: “This street reminds me that yesterday morning I met a negro girl here who had been a former maid of ours and had left us to get married. I stopped her and said: ‘Howdy, Jemima; is that your baby?’ ‘Yes Miss Mary, he 's my chile.’ ‘And what's his name?’ I asked. ‘Hallowed,’ she said. ‘Hallowed! I don't think I ever heard it,’ I said. ‘Why, yes, you is, Miss Mary, it 's tole us in de Lord's Prayer, “Hallowed be Thy name.” ’ Mary added, ‘Jemima had no idea of irreverence.’ ”

I laughed, and then my memory wandered back to poor little Joe, in Bleak House, who, when dying, faltered, “Hallowed be—Thy—dead.”

“The light is come upon the dark benighted way.” May the light shine upon the dark benighted way of the little piccaninny called in reverent absurdity, “Hallowed.”

My friend left me at the door of the Jefferson hotel, where I found Rosewell Page, my good friend of many years, waiting to wander about with me and show me Richmond of the present. I remembered it well in the past, for I spent three months there as a little girl with Mrs. Canby, when some years after the war her husband was in command of the military post. In the afternoon the General and I often used to go on long walks together, and he loved to stand before the beautiful old Capitol, whose noble architecture gave him extreme pleasure.

“You see here, Betty,” he would say, “the result of knowledge. Jefferson was a good classical scholar, and he suggested as a model of the Capitol the maison carrée of Nismes, an old Roman temple, and those old fellows who first made history there lived themselves up to the tradition of Roman Senators. At the Constitutional Convention of 1829-30, the two former Presidents of the United States, James Madison and James Monroe, and one future President, John Tyler, with Chief-Justice Marshall, Philip Pendleton Barbour, Benjamin Watkins Lee, and a number of illustrious men framed laws for the Constitution of the country. The illuminating idea of universal suffrage was born and went forth from behind those Ionic columns.”

Another point of interest for us was the equestrian statue of General Washington surrounded by his famous advisers— Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence; Chief-Justice John Marshall, who, my father always said, was almost the greatest lawyer that ever lived; Thomas Nelson, a diplomat by instinct, and a force in bringing the war of the Revolution to a successful close; Patrick Henry, the impassioned orator and leader of the Revolution; George Mason, another great jurist and the author of the Virginia Bill of Rights; and Andrew Lewis, whom General Washington considered a military genius.

“I tell you what it is, Betty,” General Canby said regretfully, “this war of brothers has been one of the most terrible things in history. Politicians made it, soldiers fought and deplored it, but it is something to have kept the Stars and Stripes—the flag of Washington and Jefferson—floating and inviolate over an undivided Union to the last. Virginia has a better right to it than anybody else, and she will come back loyally under its proud folds some day. Just now she is sick and sore, but the grandsons of these brave Confederate soldiers will even rejoice over her defeat. I sometimes see an old friend in the street who refuses to speak to me, but I can't blame him.” And the General sighed, for he had a tender, generous heart, and Mrs. Canby, a Southern woman, was filled with grief over the desolation of the South.

There was one native Virginian at Richmond who had no feeling against the Yankees. He was the pet coon of one of the officers of General Canby's staff, who had named him Aaraaf, from Poe's fantastic poem of “Al Aaraaf.” He used to say: “I found him

He had almost stepped on him while on a hunting expedition, on the plateau of a Blue Ridge mountain—a little soft, fluffy ball. He was such an amiable, tame coon, a fat grey and black beauty. Not having to forage for food, and always eating of the best—his favourite dish being oysters—his coat was beautiful, and his bright furtive eyes, widely surrounded by black circles, gave him quite a theatrical appearance. The wild animal had apparently been completely eliminated from Aaraaf, and like a dog he followed his master all over the barracks. If fortune ever smiles upon me and my vision is realised of a little home in Virginia, I, too, will have an Aaraaf.

It was in Richmond that I first met Mrs. Canby's friend, Mary Crook, the wife of General George Crook, the famous fighter of the Indians, who stopped on her way East for a little visit, and before she left our lifelong unbroken friendship was formed, although I did not see her again for many years.

“Where,” said Rosewell Page, “shall we go first?”

“To the old Capitol,” I said. “Let me refresh my eyes with its unforgotten stately beauty.”

“All right,” said Rosewell, “then we will spend an hour inside and take a look at the State Library.”

The statue of Washington by Houdon, which occupies the Rotunda of the State Capitol, is America's most precious possession. I love the way that Jefferson wrote to the Virginia Delegation of Congress after he had selected the sculptor—“He is the finest statuary of his age.” Houdon was four months at Mount Vernon, from October, 1785, until January in 1786, consequently he had ample time and opportunity to study the face and physique of Washington, who treated with equal justice and courtesy both artist and statesman. He wrote in 1785 to a friend:

“In for a penny on for a pound” is an old adage. I am so hackneyed to the touch of the painter's pencil that I 'm now altogether at their beck, and sit “like patience on a monument,” whilst they are delineating the lines on my face. It is a proof among many others of what habit and custom can accomplish. At first I was as impatient at the request and as restive under the operation, as a colt is of the saddle. The next time I submitted very reluctantly but with less flouncing. Now, no dray horse moves more readily to the shills than I to the painter's chair.

The figure is life-size, dressed in the Continental uniform; the hair is worn in a queue, and the face is proud, noble, and full of benignity and sweet reasonableness. But the mouth has the same firm grip of a death trap that I have noticed in the mouth of Parnell, Napoleon, and General Grant, a sort of tight-shut finality of expression that means “no yielding here.” The figure is beautifully proportioned, but the General was either slightly inclined to embonpoint, or the waistcoat was ill-fitting. This was probably the case, as he sent for his “cloaths” to a London tailor, who evidently had no exact measurement, as Washington wrote in 1763:

ALTHOUGH Becky Sharp plays her part so entrancingly in Vanity Fair that she overshadows every other character in the book, except, perhaps, poor Rawdon Crawley, the scene between Mrs. O'Dowd and the Major the night before the battle of Waterloo is not easily forgotten.

“I 'd like ye to wake me about half-an-hour before the assembly beats,” the major said to his lady. “Call me at half-past one, Peggy dear, and see me things is ready. Maybe I 'll not come back to breakfast, Mrs. O'D.” With which words, which signified his opinion that the regiment would march the next morning, the Major ceased talking and fell asleep.

Mrs. O'Dowd, the good housewife, arrayed in curl papers and a camisole, felt that her duty was to act and not to sleep at this juncture. “Time enough for that,” she said, “when Mick's gone.” And so she packed his travelling valise ready for the march, brushed his cloak, his hat, and other warlike habiliments, set them out in order for him, and stowed away in the coat pockets a light package of portable refreshments, and a wicker covered flask or pocket pistol, containing near a pint of a remarkably sound Cognac brandy of which she and the Major approved very much; and as soon as the hands of “the repayther” pointed to half-past one, and its interior arrangements (it had a tone quite equal to a cathaydral, its fair owner considered) knelled forth that fatal hour, Mrs. O'Dowd woke up her Major, and had as comfortable a cup of coffee prepared for him as any maid that morning in Brussels. . . . The consequence was, that the Major appeared on parade quite trim, fresh, and alert, his well-shaved rosy countenance, as he sat on horseback, giving cheerfulness and confidence to the whole corps. All the officers saluted her when the regiment marched by the balcony on which this brave woman stood and waved them a cheer as they passed; and I daresay it was not from want of courage, but from a sense of female delicacy and propriety, that she refrained from leading the gallant --th personally into action,

History repeats itself. The mould is altered but never broken. Mrs. Crook, like Mrs. O'Dowd, was a brave soldier, and she, too, could have led the --th into action. To the bravery and powers of endurance of a man, she united the generosity, the quick tenderness, and the self-abnegating love of the woman. She married General Crook at seventeen. After an ideal honeymoon, he was sent to San Francisco and was stationed in California in the Indian country, where it was quite impossible for his young wife to accompany him. But for these six months of enforced separation, Mrs. Crook spent her whole life in the army at her husband's side. She literally buckled on his sword every morning and unbuckled it every night. If they were stationed in the barren plains of Arizona or New Mexico, with only canned food to eat for the entire summer and boiled water to drink, Mrs. Crook never thought of going East. What General Crook could endure she endured cheerfully, uncomplainingly, and bravely until death parted them. And next to her husband she loved the army, having the good name, the courage, and the honour of the regiment quite as much, if not more, at heart than he had. There was no pretty, flighty, or imprudent young woman who ever went to Mrs. Crook for protection or help without getting it, and it was given with a generosity that even few men possess. She kept husbands and wives together by her devoted example in never leaving her own husband, and the camp, wherever it might be, was her home, the regiment her child.

When they were stationed in Chicago an order came from the War Department ordering General Crook to transfer all the Indians from the reservations in Illinois to the Indian territory, now the State of Oklahoma. The order was unnecessary, for they were industrious, prosperous, inoffensive, law-abiding, quiet citizens. Notwithstanding the fact that he was a celebrated Indian fighter, General Crook, curiously enough, liked the Indian, understood him, and was, above all, just to him. He said to Mrs. Crook: “Mary, the latest order from the War Department is going to take me out of the army.”

Her heart stood still with fear, but she said, “Why, George, you can't leave the army, you don't know anything else. You are a good soldier, but you could n't make a dollar a day at any other profession to save your life.”

General Crook said: “Nevertheless I am going to resign. I can fight the Indian, but I can't take advantage of him. I have never done a cowardly thing that I can remember, or one directly against my conscience. If I do this, I should be lowered in my own estimation, so I am going to send in my resignation.”

She said: “Why can't you write to the War Department and protest?”

“No,” he said, “I can't do that. I am a soldier and the War Department issues orders for its soldiers to obey. That is the first thing in a soldier's code—obedience. I could n't possibly write to the War Department. The only manly thing for me to do is to resign.”

She rejoined, “The only mad thing for you to do is to resign. George, think of our leaving the regiment! It is not to be contemplated for a moment.”

“That is just what is going to happen,” he said.

“Can't anything be done?” she asked.

“Well,” he said, “what about that God of yours that you are always telling me is so just and merciful? Where are your prayers?”

Mrs. Crook looked at him for a moment and said, “Do you realise, my dear, that you have been my god for so many years that I don't know whether I have a right to pray to the other one whom I loved and trusted as a child? And, now, you are going to do something to break my heart.”

He said, “You should be more familiar with your Bible. Don't you know it says, ‘Put not your faith in Princes,’ and adds—to cover the whole ground—‘nor in any man’?”

She said, “I have always remembered about the Princes.”

“Well,” said General Crook, “I am the other fellow, and I am going to resign.”

“No,” she said, “I will make one last effort. Have the carriage ready, and I will go to every clergyman in Chicago and beg of him to preach a sermon on the injustice of the Indians being removed to the Indian territory.”

The next day was Sunday, and Mrs. Crook, with her eloquence, her great heart, and her emotional appeal, had so wrought upon the feelings of the clergy that they thundered forth from the pulpit heartfelt condemnations against the contemplated injustice of the government. The order from the War Department was rescinded and Mrs. Crook saved a gallant soldier to the army.

She had the misfortune to outlive her husband, and her widowhood was one of the saddest things on earth. If she could have remained Colonel of the regiment it would not have been so empty, but to be bereft of George and the regiment too, that was indeed supreme loneliness. She wandered about America, and even got as far as Europe, trying to forget, but only learned to endure.

One afternoon Mrs. Labouchere was giving a party at Old Palace Yard. There was a distinguished concert first, with Patti as a “bright particular star,” and afterwards strawberries and cream. It was early in June, before the London frocks had time to lose their pristine freshness. Everybody looked their best, and it was a very gay and charming scene. Mrs. Harter particularly attracted Mrs. Crook. Her hair, exquisitely dressed, was surmounted by a tricorne hat with a bunch of white feathers; she wore a thin, gauzy gown bespangled with soft pink roses, a pink sash, and beautiful old ornaments of pearls and diamonds. She was a charming figure as she stood there, neat, trim, dainty, fashionable, and complete.

MY Utopian idea was to spend the summer in Washington, and yet I had a warning of what the weather was to be when the Thomas Nelson Pages gave a dinner to Chief Justice and Mrs. Lamar. The thermometer stood at,—well anything. The asphalt streets, having absorbed the heat, gave it out in large purgatorial waves, but with the windows all open, the dinner-table a long bed of cool, white and pink sweetpeas, a few blocks of ice and electric fans, to forget the weather was within the range of possibility. But we—the Pages, that boyish, popular woman, Belle Hagner, Rosewell, and I—wondered how, if the heat continued, we would survive Alfred Thom's party arranged to start the next evening for Gettysburg.

The sun next morning rose like a brazen copper shield. The heat never abated during the day, but neither did our courage. Mrs. Page provided us with a dozen palm-leaf fans, guidebooks, and literature appropriate to the occasion, and after dinner we drove to the station and entered a special car for Baltimore.

I had never been in one before and found it surprisingly comfortable. There were real bedrooms, with brass beds and proper furniture; a long observation room furnished in green, with luxurious chairs; and a fine dining-room with a kitchen adjoining, where a negro chef prepared frequent and tempting meals. Alfred Thom is a Virginian, a successful and brilliant lawyer, and the sort of man socially whom his hostess places at a dinner party next the woman she wants to be happy. We had not long finished dining, but like the little boy who when asked if he was hungry replied, “No, but, thank God, I 'm greedy,” we did justice to the supper of planked shad, soft-shell crabs, hot rolls, salad, and coffee which was served about nine o'clock.

I, like the streets of Washington, was so thoroughly baked that when we got out of the car at Baltimore there seemed no abatement in the temperature to me. But Florence Page has quick susceptibilities. She sniffed the air with her little nose, and said, “A change in the weather; it 's cooler.” And so it proved to be. The next morning was sunless, the sky a pearl grey, and the day an ideal one for our expedition. Charles Scribner and David Peyton had joined us at Baltimore, and a quick run brought us to Gettysburg, a pretty little clean village, which has its memories of the war. But we were too impatient to tarry there. A large char-à-banc, with a couple of strong horses, conveyed us to the great battle-field, and we got out at any point which specially interested us.

Tom Page, with field-glasses, was keenly observant. The battle-field contained vital interest to him, as he was at the moment finishing his life of General Lee. The guide had a stentorian voice, a steady flow of words, and such a rhythmical way of speaking that, although discoursing of battle and sudden death, he had rather a stultifying effect. I, at least, only heard from time to time the beginning or the end of lengthy descriptions.

He said: “The men who fought on the field of Gettysburg were among the bravest that ever faced the cannon's mouth. Not even Napoleon's Old Guard was more courageous than Longstreet's column as they marched across the fatal field to be shot and mangled by the murderous fire of the Union batteries. And Lee's men stood as firmly on the crest of Cemetery Ridge, as Wellington's battalions at the battle of Waterloo. Fifty years have passed since the Sixteenth Battle of the world was fought, but the daring deeds and desperate courage of the brave soldiers who lost and won that mighty contest will go sounding down through all the ages. In the spring of 1863, General Lee, emboldened by his many successes, determined to move his army into the North. The capital of Pennsylvania, used for organising and equipping troops, was the first objective point. Washington, the capital of the nation, was the second. And Gettysburg was felt to be the decisive battle of the war, for across the sea foreign powers waited to aid the South if they saw success ahead of her.” (Success can always get help, failure never, no matter how righteous the cause.)

“Freedom and Independence were visible to the eyes of the Confederate soldiers, when those inspiring words were blotted out by rivers of blood. Lee moved the main part of his army to Gettysburg by the Cumberland Valley—” the guide droned on. And then my imagination took flight and a battle appeared before me full of action and horror. I seemed to hear General Howard issuing an order to Colonel Biddle.

“Extend the line to the south!”

“Keep the enemy from flanking on the left!”

The Colonel gallops on his beautiful sorrel, well in front of his guns, his aide keeping close to his side. A shell whistles between them and swerves to the left. God! how steadily a headless man can ride! The aide drops from his mare, she gives a whinnying scream, staggers, and falls. A second shell has ploughed its way deep into her side. The Colonel scarcely pauses in his gallop, but hoarsely calls to his men:

“Move forward!—For - ward!”

“Guns to the front! Guns to the front!”

Look, the peak of his cap hangs down, his face is blue and bruised. He has been struck—no, it is only powder, from an empty shell.

“Battery gallop!” he orders.

The Federal troops behind him are being mowed down like corn; sharpshooters are in their rear; the Bucktail brigade, Biddle remembers, is new, and this is work for the soldier of experience. Eight guns are now galloping over the rough ground. A slow, vicious, chilling hiss, and a big shell flies along, explodes not a foot away from his horse, a piece of iron darts up in the air in front of him; his eyelashes are singed, he rides now in a cap without a visor. A long grey line to the left pours a steady, murderous fire. His men are confused; they are being killed, not singly, but in sixes and tens, making little mounds of piteous, bleeding humanity.

“Fire! Fire!” The guns roar, but when the smoke clears away only one gunner is left. A broad sheet of red flame comes unceasingly from the line of grey.