Every variety of climate, pace, and people is to be found in this
great tract of country which has for its flag the Stars and Stripes,
and any variety of taste ought to be capable of being gratified within
its confines. If I were to come to live on this side of the Atlantic I
think I should elect to settle in a Southern city. New York has many
attractions; it has drawn to it, vortex-like, much of the best that is
bright, able, active, powerful, but, vortex-like, the life swirls,
spinning ceaselessly at a terrific rate, in that noisy city of unrest.
Chicago accentuates the worst features of life in New York while
having few of its compensations, and the large cities in the East and
centre are blends of the life of both diluted with dulness. San
Francisco is a thing apart--the air of the Pacific seems to blow
different impulses on the people, and great and glorious air and
climate and scenery are there, bracing with the breeziness of the
West. Florida and the shores of the Gulf of Mexico are too near the
tropics for my taste, tending towards hammock-basking too much.
Give me a Southern city, say in Georgia; and I have one in my mind's
eye. There the people do not live so fast as to have no time to enjoy
their life, while they have all that makes life enjoyable. Successful
effort is my nearest approach to a definition of what constitutes
happiness. There, there is every scope for various effort. The city
and country around are still in process of active growth. "Fecundity"
is writ large across the surface of the State, on fields, in mills, in
mines. All the men are busy the livelong day. Here it is different
from in England; you do not find a large section of men who spend the
day either at various kinds of sport, at cricket, or loitering
listlessly about the clubs. An idle man would be a solitary of his
own sex. But it is not the material conditions that constitute the
chief attraction of life in a Southern city, excellent as they are;
the principal charm of the South is the character of the people
themselves. There is an undefined flavour of old-world politeness and
courtesy perfuming their environment The bow of a Southern gentleman
does not appear to be the jerk of a string-pull; it suggests having
been learned remotely from the bow that brought the sword projecting
through the long coat-tails as the hat was removed from the powdered
wig.
There is an indefinite something that tells one that all these people
have had grandfathers and grandmothers, instead of as in New York,
where the suggestion is that they are the offspring of stock-market
tickers or have been shot into the world through a pneumatic tube.
That almost universal formula in America on a man being introduced
bears here a real significance, "I am glad to meet you, Mr. Blank."
The English equivalent is "How-d-do?" and, although inarticulate,
there is frequently a silent suggestion of the phrase, "Bored to meet
you," "Awfully bored to meet you." In the South they are glad to meet
and welcome the stranger at their gates, and he must be hard to please
if he does not have a good time within them.
The general rule that the men are at work all day has its effect in
various ways on the life of the community. The social life differs
from that of England in many marked features, in none more than in the
part played by the Southern girl. At the first reception given by the
mother of the young _débutante_, the men of the set in which she is to
move are presented to her, and tacitly it is a presentation to them,
by the mother, of what she holds most tenderly precious; to them, in
trust in their honour, in full confidence in their courtesy, and,
although their hearts are covered with the immaculate shirt-front of
latter-day conventionality, with as full reliance on knightly service
as if that stiff shirt were the armour of the day of chivalry. This
social feature or condition of things strikes me as especially
admirable. It strikes me as so infinitely preferable to the constant
espionage of chaperonage, so much more above board and honourable
towards both the young men and girls alike. They can go driving, to a
theatre--where boxes are much more open and less like bathing-machines
than ours--to lunch in the big club-room--an annexe to the exclusively
male portion to which ladies are admitted--and will be driven to and
from a dance, and will receive afternoon calls without a chaperon.
Results point overwhelmingly to its success from every point of view.
A breach of that code of conduct which needs not to be written would
mean eternal social damnation. It is being perpetually borne in on me
what a much better time the American girl has than our English
sisters, and in many ways she deserves to have it so. If the man keeps
horses and carriages so that he may take her out for drives in the
afternoon, bring her to the theatre, take her to and from dances, if
he keeps her supplied with flowers to an extent unknown Englandwards,
if he is constantly giving dinner-parties and supper-parties for her,
it is because she is worthy of it all and more.
To begin with, she is never _blasée_; and, thank goodness, it is not
yet considered in America "good form" to appear _blasé_, even if one
is not. Being full of interest and constantly _au courant_ with
events, she is always companionable, and is able to talk intelligently
of many things. Being gifted with a heaven-sent sense of humour, she
is never dull; and what closer bond of social sympathy is there than a
sense of humour in common? In conversational fence the thrust and
parry of her play is as quick and keen as her touch is true and light,
and through it all ripples a sunny Southern gaiety that is as fond of
giving pleasure or amusement as she is readily susceptive of either.
But be not tempted in this summer region, O wanderer from the chilly
North, to wear your heart upon your sleeve for the sun to shine on,
or else she will pluck it off, saying, with laughing eyes, that it is
no place for it, and she will put it with a row of probably half a
dozen already on hers, and from time to time she will pick morsels
from it at her pleasure; and the reason that it does not hurt more is
because of the prettiness of her lips.
It is when one meets the mothers of these girls that one sees whence
comes their charm; an old-world queenliness of motherhood, mingling
with warm-hearted cordiality, renders them immediately as lovable as
their daughters.
The billion-dollar trust is very adollarable, and so is the Tobacco
and Standard Oil and the rest; but in the assets of the nation, more
valuable, to my mind, is the heirloom of the tradition of gentle
manners and cordial kindliness held so well in trust by the people of
that city of the South.