In traveling about the country, and especially in the South, I have been
impressed with the wisdom of the character in Owen Wister's delightful
story of "The Virginian," who when another man applied an unspeakable
name to him leveled a revolver in the speaker's face, and said, "When
you call me that, say it with a smile!" (I quote from memory.) A moment
on the road is made cheerful or difficult by the manner in which things
are said, and the wanderer's homesickness is either relieved or deepened
by the manner of a chance remark, which brings cheer if it be smiling,
and a deeper sense of loneliness if it be otherwise.
Throughout the South I have never felt quite so far away from home as in
some parts of New England less than a hundred miles from my own
rooftree, and I think that this is due largely to the positive effort on
the part of the average Southern man or woman to maintain the
traditional courtesy and hospitality of the South toward the stranger
within its gates. It is only semi-occasionally that one finds in some
sour-natured relic of other days any other attitude than that of smiling
welcome, and even with the thermometer ranging close to the zero mark I
have learned why the Southland is in spirit anyhow the "Land of Roses."
It must be admitted, however, that when the departure from the attitude
of cordiality is made it is done thoroughly, and with a sort of reckless
truculence which the wary traveler will be wise to ascribe solely to its
individual source.
In the winter and spring of 1913 there was a great deal of work cut out
for me in the Southern territory, and during my travels there, which
involved the crossing and recrossing of every State in the section
except Kentucky, from the Atlantic coast to the Mexican border, I
encountered much in the way of human experience that is delightful to
remember, and very little that I would rather forget. It was upon this
trip that two incidents occurred which showed very clearly the
difference between a cutting retort smilingly administered and that
other kind of peculiarly rasping repartee, born of a soured nature that
has confirmed its acid qualities by pickling itself in a mixture of
equal parts of gloomy self-sympathy over fancied wrongs, and--well, not
grape juice.
There is a kind of tonic dispensed in certain of our prohibition States
by licensed drugstores and carried by suffering patients in small black
bottles, secreted in their hip pockets, like deadly weapons--which
indeed they are (whence, possibly, we get the term "hipped" as
descriptive of the ailment of the sufferer)--which does not exactly
mellow the disposition of the consumer, whatever glow it may impart to
his countenance.
One morning I found myself on my way from Natchitoches, in Louisiana, a
lovely survival of a picturesque old French trading post, a perfect home
of roses, both human and floral, which will ever remain a garden spot in
my memory, to Shreveport. It was in the middle of May, and the whole
country was a delight to the eye, with its lovely greens and lush spring
coloring. I was returning from a lecture before the State Normal School,
and while sitting in the smoking car enjoying my weed was introduced to
a gentleman (I use the word carelessly, and without positive
conviction) whom everybody had been calling "Judge." I am glad to say
that I did not catch his last name. I do not even know whether or not he
was really a judge, or, if he were, what he was a judge of. He reminded
me more of the judges I have read of in fictional humor than any I have
ever seen on the bench, and from his general attitude toward his fellows
on the train I gained a tolerably clean-cut impression that he tried his
"cases" in solitary state, rather than in that more open fashion which
is such a bad example to the young, and productive of that ruinously
extravagant disease known as "treating." I may be doing the man an
injustice, but I am none the less trying to sketch him as I saw him. He
had the manner and manners of the solitary reveler, and the generally
"oily," but not suave, quality of his makeup confirmed my impression
that any love of temperance he might manifest was purely academic, or,
as one of our leading statesmen might put it, "largely psychological."
Desirous of starting things along pleasantly after my introduction to
the judge, I remarked upon the marvelous beauty of the country.
"Everything is beautifully green about here," I said. "It is a positive
pleasure to look out on those lovely fields."
"Glad you like 'em," said the judge, helping himself to a generous
mouthful of tobacco.
"Well, you see," said I, "I come from Maine, Judge, and I am
particularly fond of the spring, and we don't get ours until late. I
guess," I added, "that in respect to that we are about a month and a
half behind you people down here."
"Yes," said he explosively, "_and, by God! you are fifty years behind us
in every other respect!_"
It was a kindly and tactful remark, and I was duly edified. If he had
said it smilingly, I should have been happier, and would have been
inclined to enter upon a half-hour of jovial banter on the subject of
the respective merits of our several States; but there was a truculent
self-confidence about his honor's "atmosphere" that foreshadowed little
in the way of a satisfactory issue had I ventured to carry the
discussion further. I simply withdrew within myself, like a turtle,
finished my cigar in silence, and returned to my seat in the chair car,
convinced that in whatever line of action the judge was really an
expert--law, history, economics, or what-not--he at least knew how to
put a cork in a bottle, and jam it in so tight that nothing could get
out of it--I being the bottle.
[Illustration: "Yes, and you are fifty years behind us in every other
respect!"]
As I sat for the rest of my journey in that chair car my mind reverted
to another incident that had occurred two months earlier. The inviting
causes were similar; but the party of the second part was a very
different sort of individual. The judge was said to be prosperous, the
owner of many acres of fertile sugar land, and had, or so I was
informed, a professional income of fifteen thousand dollars a year. One
would think he could have afforded to be genial under such conditions.
The other was a man bent and broken under the stress of his years and
his trials, coming home, after a lifetime of failure, to pass his
remaining days, manifestly few in number, amid the scenes of his youth.
What few locks were left him were gray, and he limped painfully when he
walked. He had served on the Confederate side during the war, and still
carried with him the evidences of sacrifice.
I met him on the railway platform at a little junction town in Southern
Tennessee. I was en route to a small college town in Upper Mississippi.
We had had a long and tedious wait upon the fast decaying station
platform, hoping almost against hope that at least day before
yesterday's train would come along and pick us up, whatever might be the
fate of the special combination of wheezy engine and spring-halted cars
due that morning. As I nervously paced the dragging hours away I noticed
this old fellow limping anxiously about, making over and over again of
everybody he met the same inquiry as to the probable arrival or
non-arrival of our train; and now and then he would hobble with
difficulty over to a small soap box, with a slatted top, which stood
just outside the baggage room, in which there was imprisoned a poor,
shivering, and I fancy hungry, little fox terrier, whining to be let
out.
"Never mind, Bobby," the old man would whisper through the slatted top
of the box. "'Taint gwine to be much longer now. We'll be home soon."
The kindly attitude of the old man toward the unhappy little animal
touched me more deeply than his own poverty-stricken condition, and so,
yielding to a friendly impulse, I stood by him for a moment and spoke to
him.
"It's a long wait," said I.
"Oh, well," he said cheerfully, straightening himself up stiffly, "it's
so near the end I ain't complainin'. I been waitin' fohty yeahs for
this, Brother."
"Forty years?" I repeated.
"Yes, suh," he replied, "fohty long yeahs, suh. I ain't been home since
the end o' the wah, suh. An' now I'm comin' back, an' I reckon after I
git thar thar ain't a gwine to be but one mo' journey, suh, befo' I'm
through."
[Illustration: I knew that I had met a "Southern Gentleman."]
"You mean--" I began.
"I'm comin' home to die, suh," he said. "Not that I'm a gwine to be in
any hurry to do it," he added, with a winning smile, "but I'm tiahed o'
wanderin', an' what's left o' my time hyah, suh, 'll pass mo' pleasantly
back among the old scenes."