CHAPTER LX

FINALE

Yonder the long horizon lies, and there by night and day The old ships draw to home again, the young ships sail away; And come I may, but go I must, and if men ask you why, You may put the blame on the stars and the sun and the white road and the sky!

--GERALD GOULD.

It is good to look about the world; but always there comes a time when the restless creature, man, having yielded to the call of the seas and the stars and the sky, and gone a-journeying, begins to think of home again. Even were home a less satisfactory, a less happy place than it is, he would be bound to think of it after so long a journey as that upon which my companion and I had spent so many months. For, just as it is necessary for a locomotive to go every so often for an overhauling, so it is necessary for the traveler to return to headquarters. The fastenings of his wardrobe trunk are getting loose, and the side of it has been stove in; his heels are running down in back, his watch needs regulating, his umbrella-handle is coming loose, he is running out of notebooks and pencils and has broken a blade of his knife in trying to open a bottle with it (because he left his corkscrew in a hotel somewhere along the way). His fountain pen has sprung a leak and spoiled a waistcoat, his razors are dull, his strop is nicked, and he has run out of the kind of cigarettes and cigars he likes. One lens of his spectacles has gotten scratched, his mail has ceased to reach him, his light suits are spotted, baggy and worn, and his winter suits are becoming too heavy for comfort as the spring advances. His neckties are getting stringy, he has hangnails and a cough; he never could fix his own hangnails, and he cannot cure his cough because the bottle of glycerine and wild cherry provided for just such an emergency by the loved ones at home, got broken on the trip from Jacksonville to Montgomery, and went dribbling down through the trunk, ruining his reference books, three of his best shirts, and the only decent pair of russet shoes he had left. The other shoes have been ruined in various ways; one pair was spoiled in a possum hunt at Clinton, North Carolina--and it was worth it, and worth the overcoat that was ruined at the same time; two pairs of black shoes have been caked up with layers and layers of sticky blacking, and one pair of russets was ruined by a well intentioned negro lad in Memphis, who thought they would look better painted red. His traveler's checks are running low and he is continually afraid that, amid his constantly increasing piles of notes and papers, he will lose the three books in each of which remains a few feet of "yellow scrip"--the mileage of the South--which will take him on his return journey as far as Washington.

Nor is that all. The determining factor in his decision to go home lies in the havoc wrought by a long succession of hotel laundries--laundries which starch the bosoms of soft silk shirts, which mark the owner's name in ink upon the hems of sheer linen handkerchiefs which already have embroidered monograms, which rip holes in those handkerchiefs and then fold them so that the holes are concealed until, some night, he whips one confidently from the pocket of his dress suit, and reveals it looking like a tattered battle-flag; laundries which leave long trails of iron rust on shirt-bosoms, which rip out seams, tear off buttons, squeeze out new standing collars to a saw-tooth edge, iron little pieces of red and brown string into collars, cuffs, and especially into the bosoms of dress shirts, and "finish" dress shirts and collars, not only in the sense of ending their days of usefulness as fast as possible, but also by making them shine like the interiors of glazed porcelain bathtubs. But the greatest cruelty of the hotel laundry is to socks. It is not that they do more damage to socks, than to other garments, but that the laundry devil has been able to think of a greater variety of means for the destruction of socks than for the destruction of any other kind of garment. He begins by fastening to each sock a cloth-covered tin tag, attached by means of prongs. On this tag he puts certain marks which will mean nothing to the next laundry. The next laundry therefore attaches other tin tags, either ripping off the old ones (leaving holes where the prongs went through) or else letting them remain in place, so that, after a while, the whole top of the sock is covered with tin, making it an extraordinarily uncomfortable thing to wear, and a strange thing to look at. There is still another way in which the laundry devil tortures the sock-owner. He can find ways to shrink any sock that is not made of solid heavy silk; and of course he can rip silk socks all to pieces. He will take silk-and-wool socks of normal length, and in one washing will so reduce them that you can hardly get your foot into them, and that the upper margins of them come only about an inch above your shoe-tops. People who have no business to do so, are thus enabled, when you are seated, to see the tops of your socks and to amuse themselves by counting the tin tags with which they are adorned. Also, the socks, being so short, become better pullers than the garters, so that instead of the garters holding the socks up, the socks pull the garters down. This usually occurs as you are walking up the aisle in church, or in the middle of a dance, and of course your garter manages to come unclasped, into the bargain, and goes trailing after you, like a convict's ball and chain.

For a time you can stand this sort of thing, but presently you begin to pine for the delicate washtub artistry of Amanda, at home; for vestments which, when sent to the wash, do not come back riddled with holes, or smelling as though they had been washed in carbolic acid, or in the tub with a large fish.

So, presently, you fold up your rags like the Arabs, fasten your battered baggage shut as best you can, put it on a taxi, and head for the railway station. No train ever looks so handsome as the home-bound train you find there. No engineer ever looks so sturdy and capable, leaning from the window of his cab, as the one who is to take you home.

Up through the South you fly, past many places you have seen before, past towns where you have friends whom you would like to see again--only not now! Now nothing will do but home! Out of the region of magnolias, palmettoes and live-oaks you pass into the region of pines, and out of the region of pines into that of maples and elms. At last you come to Washington.... Only a few hours longer! How satisfyingly the train slips along! You are not conscious of curves, or even of turning wheels beneath you. Your progress is like the swift glide of a flying sled. Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, Trenton. Nothing to do but look from the car windows and rejoice. Not that you love the South less, but that you love home more.

"I wonder if we will ever go on such a trip as this again?" you say to your companion.

"I don't believe so," he replies.

"It doesn't seem now as though we should," you return. "But do you remember?--we talked the same way when we were coming home before. What will it be two years hence?"

"True," he says. "And of course there's Conan Doyle. He always thinks he's never going to do it any more. But in a year or so Sherlock Holmes pops out again, drawn by Freddy Steele, all over the cover of 'Collier's.' Not that your stuff is as good as Doyle's, but that the general case is somewhat parallel."

"Doyle has killed Holmes," you put in.

"Yes," he agrees, "and several times you've almost killed me."

Then as the train speeds scornfully through Newark, without stopping, he catches sight of a vast concrete building--a warehouse of some kind, apparently.

"Look!" he cries. "Isn't it wonderful?"

"That building?"

"Not the building itself. The thought that we don't have to get off here and go through it. Think what it would be like if we were on our travels! There would be a lot of citizens in frock coats. Probably the mayor would be there, too. They would drive us to that building, and take us in, and then they would cry if we refused to go to the fourteenth floor, where they keep the dried prunes."

The train slips across the Jersey meadows and darts into the tunnel.

"Now," he remarks hopefully, "we are really going to get home--if this tunnel doesn't drop in on us."

And when the train has emerged from the tunnel, and you have emerged from the train, he says: "Now there's no doubt that we are going to get home--unless we are smashed up in a taxi, on the way."

And when the taxi stops at your front door, and you bid him farewell before he continues on his way to his own front door, he says: "Now you're going to get home for sure--unless the elevator drops."

And when the elevator has not dropped, but has transported you in safety to the door of your apartment, and you have searched out the old key, and have unlocked the door, and entered, and found happiness within, then you wonder to yourself as I once heard a little boy wonder, when he had gone out of his own yard, and had found a number of large cans of paint, and had upset them on himself:

"I have a very happy home," he said, reflectively. "I wonder why I don't seem to stay around it more?"

* * * * *

[Illustration: Charleston is the last stronghold of a unified American upper class; the last remaining American city in which Madeira and Port and _noblesse oblige_ are fully and widely understood, and are employed according to the best traditions]

[Illustration: "Railroad ticket!" said the baggageman with exaggerated patience. I began to feel in various pockets]

[Illustration: Can most travellers, I wonder, enjoy as I do a solitary walk, by night, through the mysterious streets of a strange city?]

[Illustration: Coming out of my slumber with the curious and unpleasant sense of being stared at, I found his eyes fixed upon me]

[Illustration: Mount Vernon Place is the centre of Baltimore. Everything begins there, including Baedeker]

[Illustration: If she is shopping for a dinner party, she may order the costly and aristocratic diamond-back terrapin, sacred in Baltimore as is the Sacred Cod in Boston]

[Illustration: Doughoregan Manor--The house was of buff-colored brick. It was low and very long, with wings extending from its central structure like beautiful arms flung wide in welcome]

[Illustration: I began to realize that there was no one coming; that no one had opened the door; that it had begun to swing immediately upon my saying the word "ghosts"]

[Illustration: Harpers Ferry is an entrancing old town; a drowsy place piled up beautifully yet carelessly upon terraced roads clinging to steep hillsides]

[Illustration: "What's the matter with him?" I asked, stopping]

[Illustration: When I came down, dressed for riding, my companion was making a drawing; the four young ladies were with him, none of them in riding habits]

[Illustration: Claymont Court is one of the old Washington houses. But in all its history it has never been a happier home or a more interesting one than it is to-day]

[Illustration: Chatham, the old Fitzhugh house, now the residence of Mark Sullivan. Washington, Madison, Monroe, Washington Irving, Lee and Lincoln have known the shelter of its roof]

[Illustration: Monticello stands on a lofty hilltop, with vistas, between trees of neighboring valleys, hills, and mountains]

[Illustration: Like Venice, the University of Virginia should first be seen by moonlight]

[Illustration: One party was stationed on the top of an old-time mail-coach bearing the significant initials "F.F.V."]

[Illustration: The Piedmont Hunt Race Meet--There is a distinct note of histrionism about many of the rich Americans who "go in for" elaborate ruralness, and there is a touch of it, also, about ultra-"horsey" people]

[Illustration: The southern negro is the world's peasant supreme]

[Illustration: The Country Club of Virginia, out to the west of Richmond, is one of the most charming clubs of its kind in the United States]

[Illustration: Judge Crutchfield--a white-haired, hook-nosed man of more than seventy, peering over his eyeglasses with a look of shrewd, merciless divination]

[Illustration: Negro women squatting upon boxes in old shadowy lofts stem the tobacco leaves]

[Illustration: THE JUDGE: What did he do, Mandy?

THE WIFE: Jedge, he come bustin' in, an' he come so fas' he untook de do' off'n de hinges!]

[Illustration: Some genuine old-time New York ferryboats help to complete the illusion that Norfolk is New York]

[Illustration: "The Southern Statesman who serves his section best, serves the country best."]

[Illustration: St. Philip's is the more beautiful for the open space before it, and the graceful outward bend of Church Street in deference to the projecting portico]

[Illustration: Or, opposite St. Philip's, a perfect example of the rude architecture of an old French village; stucco walls, tinted and chipped, red tile roofs and all]

[Illustration: In the doorway and gates of the Smyth house, in Legaré Street, I was struck with a Venetian suggestion]

[Illustration: Nor is the Charleston background a mere arras of recollection. It exists everywhere in the wood and brick and stone of ancient and beautiful buildings, in iron grilles and balconies unrivalled in any other American city....]

[Illustration: Charleston has a stronger, deeper-rooted city entity than all the cities of the middle west rolled into one]

[Illustration: The interior is the oldest looking thing in the United States--Goose Creek Church]

[Illustration: A reminder of the Chicago River--Atlanta]

[Illustration: With the whole Metropolitan Orchestra playing dance music all night long]

[Illustration: The office buildings are city office buildings, and are sufficiently numerous to look very much at home]

[Illustration: The negro roof-garden, Odd Fellows' Building, Atlanta]

[Illustration: I was never so conscious, as at the time of our visit to the Burge plantation, of the superlative soft sweetness of the spring]

[Illustration: The planters cease their work]

[Illustration: Birmingham--The thin veil of smoke from far-off iron furnaces softens the city's serrated outlines]

[Illustration: Birmingham practices unremittingly the pestilential habit of "cutting in" at dances]

[Illustration: Gigantic movements and mutations, Niagara-like noises, great bursts of flame like fallen fragments from the sun]

[Illustration: A shaggy, unshaven, rawboned man, gray-haired and collarless, sat near the window and uttered convincing imitations of the sounds made by chickens, roosters, pigs, goats and crows]

[Illustration: Gaze upon the character called Daniel Voorhees Pike! Observe the manliness with which he thrusts his pink little hands deep in the pockets of his--or somebody's--pantaloons!]

[Illustration: The houses were full of the suggestion of an easy-going home life and an informal hospitality. (Back yard of the former home of General Stephen D. Lee.)]

[Illustration: Her hands looked very white and small against his dark coat. He was gazing down at them, his features distorted by a shockingly sentimental smile]

[Illustration: As water flows down the hills of Vicksburg to the river, so the visitor's thoughts flow down to the great spectacular, mischievous, dominating stream]

[Illustration: Over the tenement roofs one catches sight of sundry other buildings of a more self-respecting character, and, far off, the cupola of Vicksburg's old stone court house]

[Illustration: Vicksburg negroes. Whether drowsing in the sun, doing a little stroke of work, or sitting gabbling on the curbstone, they were upon the whole as cheerful and comical a lot of people as I ever saw]

[Illustration: In some of the boats negro fish-markets are conducted, advertised by large catfish dangling from posts and railing]

[Illustration: The old Klein house, standing amid lawns and old-fashioned gardens on the bluff overlooking the river]

[Illustration: Citizens go at midday to the square where they buy popcorn for the squirrels and pigeons--Memphis]

[Illustration: Hanging in the air above the middle of the stream]

[Illustration: These small parks give Savannah a quality which differentiates it from all other American cities]

[Illustration: The Thomas House in Franklin Square in which Lafayette was entertained]

[Illustration: You will see them having tea, and dancing under the palm fronds of the cocoanut grove, when the electric lights begin to glow in the luminous semi-tropical twilight]

[Illustration: Cocktail hour at The Breakers]

[Illustration: Nowhere is the sand more like a deep warm dust of yellow gold; nowhere is there a margin of the earth so splashed with spots of brilliant color; nowhere is water less like water, more like a flowing waste of liquid emeralds and sapphires edged with a thousand gleaming flouncing strings of pearls]

[Illustration: The couples on the platform were "ragging," their shoulders working like the walking-beams of side-wheelers]

[Illustration: Harness held together by that especial Providence which watches over negro mendings]

[Illustration: It was a very jolly fair, with the usual lot of barkers and the usual gaping crowd]

[Illustration: The mysterious old Absinthe House, founded 1799]

[Illustration: St. Anthony's Garden, where duels originating at the quadroon balls were fought]

[Illustration: Courtyard of the old Orleans Hotel]

[Illustration: The little lady who sits behind the desk is more than ninety-five years old, and came to New Orleans as the bride of Antoine]

[Illustration: The lights are always lowered at Antoine's when the spectacular Café Boulot Diabolique is served]

[Illustration: Passing between the brilliantly illuminated buildings, under festoons of electric lights the Mardi Gras parades, with their floats, their bands, their torch-bearers, their masked figures, are glorious sights for children from eight to eighty years of age]

* * * * *

Transcriber's Notes.

Page 82: changed "Ridgleys" to "Ridgelys" (of present Ridgelys)

Page 83: changed "her serious, eyes" to "her serious eyes"

Page 138: Added missing word "we" (said as we were about to leave)

Page 161: removed hyphen from "one-course" (prescribed one course)

Page 169: changed "not" to "now" (now know that I did)

Page 172: added missing quotation mark (such a long telegram.")

Page 209: changed "Virgina" to "Virginia" (in Virginia, save,)

Page 217: changed "it" to "in" (harm in it)

Page 217: added missing quotation mark (raised with niggers around him."")

Page 245: removed superfluous quotation marks from end of two lines (Yass, Jedge, drunk. _Always_ drunk.) (he come so fast he untook the do' off'n de hinges; den 'e begins--")

Page 283: added missing quotation mark (you very definitely don't.")

Page 287: changed "Okrakoke" to "Ocracoke" (legend around Okracoke)

Page 295: changed "seem" to "see" (them to see him)

Page 328: changed "new York" to "New York" (New York "Sun,")

Page 334: changed "coffe" to "coffee" (coffee, hot and iced.)

Page 355: changed "maried" to "married" (were married in the dining room)

Page 438: changed "corporaton" to "corporation" (corporation I have scandalously)

Page 449: changed "constructon" to "construction" (With the construction)

Page 450: changed "conversatons" to "conversations" and "wth" to "with" (telephonic conversations with a)

Page 453: changed "objectons" to "objections" (brushed aside our objections.)

Page 514: changed " to ' ("'Yes,' said Ed.)

Page 518: added missing quotation mark (town in the Southwest.")

Page 521: changed "repreduction" to "reproduction" (is a photographic reproduction)

Page 527: changed "crusing" to "cruising" (was still cruising in the South)

Page 528: added missing word "a" (officer of a naval vessel.)

Page 532: changed "stading" to "standing" (and silver standing on the)

Page 538: added missing word "ago" (years ago he conducted)

Page 542: added missing quotation mark (innumerable squirrels.")

Page 590: changed "redout" to "redoubt" (last redoubt held)

Page 631: changed "hardly" to "hardy" (hardy pioneers from Canada,)

Page 640: added missing ) ("mosquito bar.") The)

Page 649: changed "This, situation is" to "This situation is" (This situation is)

Page 649: changed "may" to "my" (it was my chance)

Page 655: added missing quotation mark (the Jolly Roger.")

Page 657: changed "well-know" to "well-known" (too well-known "Last)

Page 669: changed "is" to "it" (that it bears the relation)

Page 670: changed "that" to "than" (even than the pageants)

Page 734: changed "coconut" to "cocoanut" in image caption (palm fronds of the cocoanut grove,)