Studies in the South

X.

INDUSTRIAL AND BUSINESS INTERESTS.

THE industry or labor of Mississippi appeared, in many places at least, to be in a less satisfactory condition than that of most other Southern States. It was pretty clear that the negroes were often cheated out of their wages, and that they were sometimes roughly and severely treated on the plantations ; while they, in turn, were restless in various portions of the State, and somewhat turbulent, idle, and dishonest. In the “ black districts ” the white women were really afraid of the negroes, and apparently with good reason, judging from the frequent accounts of assaults on women by negroes. Where the white people are roughest and most given to violence the negroes exhibit similar traits. Probably these facts should not be regarded as standing in the relation of cause and effect, so much as in that of similar results proceeding from like causes operating upon both races. In the towns of Mississippi and near them, the negroes have improved, and are still advancing in civilization ; but in the regions in which the blacks greatly outnumber the whites, I could see little sign of any effort or tendency toward improvement. To remain for a few days in the heart of a black district always gave me a strong feeling of remoteness from the world of civilized life. I was irresistibly impressed by the vastness of the mass and multitude of a race alien, animal, half savage, easily made sullen or aroused to fury. It was not an agreeable feeling. One could see that, from their great preponderance in numbers, the negroes had a half-unconscious, half-conscious, animal, instinctive sense of their superior strength, just as, while one wolf flees in fear from a man, a hundred wolves will face him impudently and aggressively. I felt that the problem of this part of the South was not so much political as social, industrial, and moral.

MARDI GRAS.

I saw the Mardi Gras festivities in New Orleans. The weather was very fine; the number of visitors in the city was said to be greater than ever before, and the spectacle more interesting and beautiful than on any former occasion. To me the objects of greatest interest were the people themselves. The vast crowds were wonderfully well behaved. There was some drinking, of course, and I saw a few arrests. But the police were efficient in a quiet, unobtrusive way, and there was apparent everywhere a sunny cheerfulness and spirit of good-natured enjoyment, which are always potent to banish ill-temper and turbulence. The hospitality to Northern military organizations and other invited guests was most cordial and profuse. The illumination at night on the principal streets was very fine. The spectacle, as such, seemed to me to be, if judged by any high standard, rather heavy, and lacking in the quality of illusion. Perhaps this could not well be otherwise in a street procession. The scenes and tableaux from the Norse mythology had a kind of splendor and magnificence in the equipages and trappings, which greatly impressed most spectators. I found myself in a party of Texan merchants and members of the legislature, who had so wild a desire to know what it was all about that I was compelled to keep up a running comment or explanation during the whole time of the passing of the procession. I can testify that some Southern people have a thirst for information which ought to satisfy the most exacting.

I tried to learn what is the real significance of Mardi Gras, and the reason for maintaining this annual holiday and exhibition. Perhaps I am wrong, but I judge that the whole matter has a practical business basis. It brings a throng of strangers to New Orleans each year, and these visitors necessarily spend considerable money in the city ; so that the festivity is pecuniarily profitable to many classes of the citizens. There were but few maskers on the streets, and I saw little evidence of gayety; only cheerful, social enjoyment of a holiday. The female personages in the historical and mythological tableaux are represented by men in women’s dress. I attended two masked balls on the same night. As I entered the hall where the first was held, an officer approached, with a bow, and said in the politest manner, “ You will please allow me to ascertain whether you have any weapons about your person.” “ Certainly,” said I; and he ran his fingers lightly and quickly over my various pockets, and bowed to me to pass on. I remained here a part of the night, and then went to the hall where the other ball was given. When I presented my ticket, a policeman laughingly asked, “ Ye have n’t any big pistol about ye, have ye?” “No,” I said, “but you can see for yourself; ” and the process of search was repeated. The first ball was very stately and formal, and, it seemed to me, a trifle heavy and dull. It was warm, and the dancers, especially the ladies, found their masks oppressive. The other ball was of a very different character, as it was, I suppose, intended to be. The abandon grew wilder and wilder as the night passed, till the dance was, as to dress and behavior, as licentious as it could well be without becoming something else than a dance.

What I found most interesting and picturesque in New Orleans was a stroll through the old French Market, with a breakfast there. It affords glimpses of a life not native to the soil anywhere else in our country, with features attractive both to the artist and to the student of civilization ; but its old charm is not likely to be long retained.

NEGRO LABORERS IN LOUISIANA.

The organization and entire condition of labor on the great sugar plantations of Louisiana appeared to me to be superior to anything that I found elsewhere connected with Southern agriculture. The employers were evidently masters of the situation. They seemed to be just in their treatment of their laborers, and competent to direct and control them. One great feature of superiority, as compared with agricultural labor in other regions of the South which I visited, was that in the sugar country of Louisiana everybody paid cash, and there was no ruinous credit system. This impressed me as something wonderful, and scarcely possible, after the universal exhibition of the evils of the credit system (or, as it should be called, the debt system) in all the other Southern States. The negro laborers appeared to be cheerful, contented, and industrious. Each of them had as much good land for himself as he could cultivate, —from one to five acres on some of the plantations, — and they used the horses belonging to the plantations to do their own plowing.

I looked over the account-books of the managers of some of the large sugar farms, and transcribed many pages. I see that the first name on one of the lists is that of a negro. He worked fourteen days for his employer in January, at eighty-five cents per day. The next name is that of a white man. He worked eight and a half days, at eighty cents per day. A negro boy, ten years old, received thirty cents per day, and supported himself and his mother. A first-class plowman was paid eighty-five cents per day ; a negro carpenter a dollar and a half per day, and his board, all the year round ; a negro blacksmith, two dollars per day and board all the year; a stableman, twenty-five dollars per month. The negroes had all the chickens and vegetables about their cabins that they wanted, and many had cows of their own.

Almost everywhere in Louisiana I found a few negroes who were saving money and investing it in land. I saw one black man in Ibberville Parish who had fifteen hundred dollars in the bank. The more industrious and thrifty negroes discouraged their own people from having anything to do with politics, saying that work would do them “a heap more good.” I talked with one negro who was regarded in all the region near him as a leader among his people. He rented a sugar plantation, and employed many laborers, some of them white men. As I had learned that he had an idea of trying to improve the colored people, I asked him whether he tried to give them the right kind of education and advice about their political duties. He frowned, and asked me whether I ever got anything " out o’ politics.” He said, “ We 've been through it all hyah. I’m ready to fight anybody for anything that ’s worth fightin’ for. But when a nigger gits politics into his head he’s a mighty po’ han’ in the fiel’.” We had considerable talk. I had wondered at first at a certain asperity of manner, which I very rarely encountered in the South, among people of either color. Everybody seemed to wish to talk. But this man told me that he thought at first I was gwine to talk ’bout politics to de han’s ; an’ I wonder what de cap’n done sen’ ye hyah fuh.”

I told him that I did not care to talk with the hands, and that the captain had sent me to him because I wished to talk with some colored man who understood what was good for his own race. This seemed to mollify him, and he went on : " I thinks ’bout that a grea’ deal. S’pose I goes to de Norf to wuk for you, cunnel. You has big cotton-mill, or a plantation ; you don’ make sugar up dere ?” “ No,” said I, “ not this kind.”

“ Well, I wuks fuh you, an’ you an’ de oder big men, you ’ten’s to de politics. I don’ know nuffin ’bout ’em; no mo’ ’an a dam fool. Ef you makes good laws for yo’ se'f, I’s gwine to do well enough, an’ don’t you fergit it. I’s gwine to wuk.” He was a little excited by his own eloquence or earnestness. He seemed conscious of it, and said nothing more for a few moments; and then added, as if dismissing the subject, “ Ef white men do well for theirselves hyar, we hain’t nothin’ to fin’ fault on.”

In Louisiana everybody told me that the negroes were improving as laborers ; at any rate, all old Southerners said so. This reminds me that throughout the South the harshest critics of the negro whom I met were Northern men, — men who had gone down there to work sugar plantations, grow cotton, etc. These men, being pushing, sharp, and energetic, after the Northern fashion, are always disposed to keep the negro laborers “ up to their work.” The negroes do not like to work for them. They require a steadiness of application and exertion of which the negro in general does not appear to be capable. He can work hard for a while “ by spurts,” or on a race, especially in a crowd, and if he is allowed to sing while at work. But for quiet, solitary, constant toil a first-rate white laborer is, I think, superior to almost any negro. The Northern men in the South are, as compared with Southern men, very exacting as employers. They are stern and impatient with their “hands,” and usually irritate and confuse the negroes. Southern men are, usually, not at all exacting as employers of agricultural labor; they are not accustomed to being prompt or steadily industrious themselves, and they value their own ease too much to engage in any contest with the peculiar “ ways ” or traits of the negro. Thus, the “ shiftlessness,” the slowness, the inefficiency, the habit of taking things so leisurey, as if one had infinite time at his command, — the features of the average negro life and character which are so exasperating to the energetic Northerner, — are accepted or recognized by most Southern people as something inevitable, like the course of the seasons, not to be accelerated or interfered with to any profitable end. I think I saw nobody in the South, white or black, except a few leading business men in the cities, who could do anything in fifteen minutes. It is not natural to hurry in that part of the world. I talked with a queer old man, in the pine woods in North Carolina, who had observed the restlessness of most Northern people when they first came to the South. He said they always acted “as ef they was hung on wires, an’ somebody was jerkin’ on ’em;” but Southern people “ know how to take their time, an’ plenty on it.” In reply I made the usual sage remarks about differences of character as affected by climate and environment in general, and concluded with the opinion that life in the South during the time of a few generations would change the Yankee blood and temperament, and produce a race of people who could “ go slow ” on occasion. “ Yes, yes,” said he ; “ that’s so, young man, that’s so. I’ve seen ’em. It takes ’em jest about three weeks.” If you give the negroes time, — to say nothing farther regarding these traits in the character of the white people, — they, going on in their large, slow, inorganic way, will accomplish important results in the course of the year. Exertion seems less necessary or desirable to dwellers in Southern lands than to Northern people. A distinguished American author has said that a man could be happy sitting in a chair, in the open air, all day, in Venice, and that if one wishes to work he should not stay there too long.

I have never been in Venice, but I saw many places in the South that appeared to resemble it closely in these respects.

“ THE OLD TIMES.”

In various parts of Louisiana I found many people who had lived on some of the great plantations before the war, and heard their accounts of the peculiar life of the inhabitants of some of these rich, retired regions in the interior of the State. The planters had considerable wealth, for that time, and they and their families lived a life of “elegant, refined leisure,” with little business or care except pleasure and happiness. All supplies for the plantations came from New Orleans merchants. Once a year the young ladies had bonnets, and sometimes gowns, from Paris. Visits and parties and balls were the events of life. The young people had a good education ; many of them were sent to Northern schools, but the South had good schools and colleges in those days. I do not doubt that it seemed to the people living it a pure and innocent life, happy and wholesome, and so natural and stable that it was likely to go on forever.

“ We did not know it was wrong,” said an accomplished woman to me, one day. “ No one had ever told us it was all wrong, or that we were going on gayly toward an awful destruction. We knew no world but our own. We thought we were very happy, and we meant to be good. We were much attached to our people, — the negroes, I mean, — and they were happy, too, then. We heard sometimes of low, miserable wretches who abused their negroes, and how we despised them ! ”

“ Would you rather have it all back, that old time and that beautiful life, if you could ? ” I asked.

“ Oh, no ; I think it is just like one of the great changes, revolutions, that we read about in history. It all had to be, I should think, and so it must be there is a Providence in it; it must be for the best, in some way.”

After a pause, she went on : “I disposed of the war in that way, you see, and then I could be reconciled to it. We had our losses, too. My only brother,— there is his portrait,” and she pointed to a life-size likeness of a handsome, boyish-looking young fellow in an officer’s uniform, — “ he died in prison, at Elmira, New York. We were up there afterward, but we could not find his grave. Excuse me,” she said, as her voice broke a little, “ I did not blame anybody about the war; did not hate anybody for it. I thought I understood the war — well, in away. You know, perhaps, what I mean. It was too large, too awful a thing to hate anybody for.”

“ Now,” said she, “ you were on the other side, and I am talking to you almost as if you were on ours, or as if the war were away back in history.” I bowed, and she immediately resumed : “ But what happened after the war — some of it— I could not understand. I did not know where to put it, or how to classify it. It seemed like something which could not be, and yet was. Did you — did the North — wish us " —and she became pale with agitation — “ did the North wish us to regard black men as we regard white men, — as our companions and friends ? ”

“No, my dear madam; I assure you, we never wished that.”

She looked at me keenly, with a troubled expression on her face, and exclaimed, “ But let us not talk of that! ”

This lady is the wife of a merchant in one of the smaller towns on Bayou Teche. The plantation which was her home before the war is but four miles away. We rode out and looked over it. It had passed out of the possession of her family, and was owned by a young man from Pennsylvania, who had erected a smart, Northern-looking frame house, with narrow verandas, — a mistake in that climate. He and his wife received us cordially, but, I thought, with a little embarrassment. As we drove away from the house, the Southern lady — my hostess in the village — said, “ I wished you to see the place. I do not like to come here, because that young man and his wife are sorry for me, I think. It was awkward, at first, and one day the young woman cried, and said she felt as if I ought to be the lady of the house. But I laughed at her, and told her not to feel so, as I did not grudge her the place.”

The two families go to the same church, and both the women are interested in regard to the morals of the young negroes around them. I thought this a good instance of a practical kind of reconstruction.

DRINKING HABITS.

There seemed to be more drinking of intoxicating liquors by the better class of people than I have seen anywhere in the North, but I cannot say positively that this is true. Southerners are, however, certainly more social, public, and effusive with their drinking than Northern men are. I was constantly asked to drink, on the railroads, in the streets, and at the hotels. I rode in the smoking-car during the night after leaving New Orleans for the West, and just across the aisle sat a gigantic Texan. He drank from a large bottle more than half a dozen times, and each time as he took it out he first held it across toward me, and politely invited me to drink. His courtesy was unwearied, though I always declined. Almost everybody else in the car drank, — men, women, and children, — and although nobody was drunk, we had an extremely social and hilarious night. Of course, as was always the case in the smoking-car, a considerable number of the passengers were negroes. They were generally the most quiet portion of the company, but they sang occasionally, and quite drowned the conversation and the noisy laughter. The negroes commonly made themselves very much at home in the smoking-car, and it often seemed that the whites, rather than they, were there by sufferance.

The drinking habit appeared to bring the two races nearer together, socially and in good feeling. Of course, white men do not so often ask negroes to drink with them as they ask each other; but it is a very common thing to see a group of white men drink together, and then, if there is a single negro near them, the man with the bottle holds it out toward the sable brother, and says, heartily, “ Have some ? ” The invitation is always accepted. If a white man happens to be dry, something that occurs not infrequently, he does not disdain an invitation to drink because it is proffered by a negro. I never observed that my refusal to drink produced any unpleasant feeling, except, perhaps, once. As I was entering a theatre in New Orleans, to attend a ball, a gentlemanly looking man, somewhat intoxicated, asked me to drink with him. When I declined, as politely as possible, he appeared to be displeased, and invited me aside, saying that he wished to speak to me; but I asked him to excuse me, and passed on, the ticket seller at the same time warning me by a look not to remain. I thought that men under the influence of liquor seemed to be less pugnacious or ill-tempered than in the North.

AN OLD TOWN.

San Antonio! One feels and sees here that he is under alien skies, and among people somewhat unlike— well, say New Englanders, at least. Everybody talks a little Spanish and a little Indian, and a great deal more of a speech which is neither one thing nor another. There are Indians and Mexicans everywhere in the streets. Here I encountered the first beggar I ever saw on horse — or rather mule — back. He was riding a mule which was not very much larger than a sheep, and was a fat, contented-looking Mexican cripple, who took off his hat, and offered up a devout prayer for each benefactor who dropped a coin into it. I gave him a tribe for the picturesqueness of his appearance, reflecting, also, that if half the stories I heard about Texas were true I might need his prayers before I got out of the country. There was a great deal of business in San Antonio, and money was plenty. The town is not supported, or its business sustained, in very large measure, by the productive industries of the surrounding country ; but vast quantities of goods and supplies of all kinds are bought there by people who are going farther West, — though, of course, the stock-raising in the adjacent region is one source of the business and wealth of the town.

It is not in every way a pleasant place in which to do business. If a merchant should go there and open a new store, and attend to his own affairs in a quiet way, as in other parts of the country, he would soon find that his course was beset with great difficulties. The men already engaged in trade of the same kind would regard him as an intruder; they would resent his having come in without their permission as something not to be tolerated, an impudence requiring prompt punishment, and they would soon “ run him out.” I do not mean that he would be assaulted, or subjected to personal violence; but the old merchants would conduct a kind of “ crusade ” against him by inducing all their friends, and everybody whom they could influence, to let the new man alone, — to buy nothing of him, and give him no accommodation or recognition of any kind. Such proscription in business matters appeared to be more marked and vigorous than I had ever observed elsewhere. If a new man wishes to gain a footing in trade, he must first go about the town, and expend considerable sums of money with the men already established there, either by liberal purchases of their goods, or in suppers, wines, and entertainments for them. Then he will have their permission, and may proceed with his business.

The Cuero people warned me about San Antonio, as I was on my way thither, as a cut-throat kind of place, one of the worst towns in Texas; while the San Antonio newspapers called the attention of immigrants and travelers to the fact that Cuero tolerated a class of desperadoes who were a terror and disgrace to all that part of the State. Each of these towns thinks well of itself, and the people of both speak with severity of the “ bad places ” in other parts of the State. “ But here,” the leading citizens said every where,— “ here things are just as quiet and peaceable and decent as they are anywhere in the world.” One may easily see what is the real state of society behind these conflicting representations. Old Texas has changed very considerably. There was a time when the inhabitants themselves recognized the fact that nearly all of them were fugitives from justice in the older States, who had “left their country for their country’s good,” and their own, and had found a convenient refuge in the “ unchartered freedom ” of society in the Lone Star State. In those days they regaled each other with stories of the misadventures which had rendered emigration convenient, and regarded a man as a cheat and a sneak who would not own to having been the object of the special solicitude of the sheriff, when he left his old home. A friend of mine, who was led to the State long ago by a mere wild, roving disposition, told me that he was unable to get into “ good society ” there while he pretended to have been an honest man; and was at last obliged to confess that he had beaten his grandmother nearly to death, in Ohio, and was compelled to flee the country.

But even Southwestern Texas is now much like other parts of the United States ; that is, there are churches and schools, and the other features of a settled and regular civilization, in all the towns. There are Northern and Eastern people everywhere, and those who seek for good society, and have any qualification for admission to its privileges, can find it there as readily as in the older States. The standards are not so much lower or easier as many people imagine. On the other hand, there is a rough, wild life, which is more prominent than in most Eastern communities, and it is very easy to get into its current. Drinking and gambling saloons and houses of ill-fame await silly and undisciplined youth on every hand. Many a young man has gone there with high hopes, and with money which he expected to form the foundation of a fortune, and has lost all in a single night’s debauch.

When one looks at the Alamo and the Old Cathedral, and reads again the story of the siege and the massacre in 1836, it is easy to reproduce, in imagination, those scenes and the wild surroundings of that time. But, looking at the city as it is now, one is inclined to push the date of these savage occurrences further back into the past. Forty-five years seems scarcely long enough for all the changes that have taken place in the building up of so large a town. Much of the Alamo still stands intact. It is a long, narrow building, two stories high, — part of it, at least, — and is built of stone, with walls four feet thick. The rude carvings on the front have been battered and broken by cannon-shot. It is now used as a store or warehouse. A portion of the Old Cathedral, of similarly heavy and durable construction, stands a little distance away. In the upper story of a building adjoining the Alamo, an elderly Frenchman had a very interesting museum of stuffed animals, all of them inhabitants of this region. There were enormous specimens of the puma, or “ Mexican lion,” wild-cats, wolves, and other beasts of prey. The serpents were of a size to shake the nerves of timid immigrants. Some of the rattlesnakes were five feet long, and as thick as a man’s leg. When I spoke of their great size, the Frenchman politely informed me that he had some which were much larger; but I told him those I had seen would do very well for me, and that, if I should settle there, I should not care to have larger snakes. “ Will monsieur have also one museum of ze animals ? ” he inquired, with much interest.

There were not so many negroes at San Antonio as I had found at other places, but some of them were intelligent and superior men. I could see that it was not a pleasant town for them. There was a strong and general feeling against a negro’s being well dressed, self-respecting, and prosperous ; a harsh and fierce kind of contempt for him ; a feeling that he should be a menial, and nothing else, —a creature to be kicked, cuffed, and cursed, treated just as caprice or impulse might dictate, without responsibility or obligation on the part of those who should choose to maltreat him. I do not mean that the best people exhibited such a disposition regarding colored men, but it was the average and prevalent spirit of the place. If a negro behaves with propriety, lives quietly, makes money, and dresses well, many of the foreigners and Northern men say, “ That damned nigger’s puttin’ on airs. He must be taken down a little, and made to know his place.” The favorite method of accomplishing this object is by a brutal assault, two or three armed men setting upon a negro, and beating him to insensibility. They prefer that a colored man should be an idle, drunken, worthless vagabond

The railroad men in Southwestern Texas are nearly all Northern men, — the engineers, conductors, bridge and tank builders, etc. Many of the firemen and brakemen are from Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama. I had much conversation with men of all these classes, as everybody was communicative in the extreme. There was much more sociability in the cars, on steamboats, in hotels, and at all public places than is usual in the North. Some of the railroad men were young fellows from the Northern and Eastern States, who, liking their work and the country in Texas, had brought their wives thither, and were boarding at the hotels, or were taking houses and going to housekeeping for themselves. At San Antonio I became acquainted with two such young people from Michigan. The young man had been building bridges and tanks on the railroads for two or three years, and had recently sent for his sweetheart. She came down to meet him at Austin, and they were married at once. She was a spirited girl, and was ready to “make the best of everything,” as she said ; but she was a little homesick, and did not greatly enjoy hotel life. The insects of the country were a source of disquiet to her. She turned pale at the supper-table when some one foolishly told a story about a scorpion, and her husband said, “ She’s afraid of bugs an’ things. We boarded at an old hotel up the road for two weeks, an’ my wife could n’t sleep, because she saw some roaches scallyhootin’ around whenever she went up-stairs. They was as big as turtle-doves are at home.”

As we ran out from New Orleans toward Houston, we stopped at a waystation for supper. When we returned to the train, after our repast, a tall, goodlooking young negro had come in, and had sat down in the seat just across the aisle from mine, which “ belonged ” to the Texan who so often invited me to drink with him. As we were to have an all-night ride, each of us of course wished to keep a whole seat for himself, if it could be done conveniently. So my Texan neighbor had left his overcoat “ to hold the seat,” and when he came back and found the negro there he good-naturedly remarked, “ Well, I reckon you may take som’ers else.” We were in the smoking-car, but the negro rose, without demur, and, taking his bundle, stood by the door as the train started off. The Texan went on to say, still addressing the negro, lying down meanwhile so as to fill the whole seat, “ I ain’t a goin’ to set with you. I ’m a democrat.” “ Well,”, said the negro, “ I’m a radical, an’ I would n’t set with you ef you wanted me to.” “Yes,” the white man replied, “ I ’lowed you was a radical. I expect you ’re a good man, but you can’t set with me.” To this the negro retorted, “ You need n’t make a fuss ; I’m not a-goin’ to make you stand up because you ’re a democrat.” “ Well,” the other went on, “ ef ye had n’t got up. I ’d a-made yer.” At this the negro glared on him savagely, but said nothing. A seat was offered him, but he declined it, saying that he should get out at the next station.

I had learned that my Texan friend was chief of police in one of the larger towns of the State, and when, some time afterward, I found myself in his city, with an hour to spare, I thought I would go to see him, feeling certain of a cordial greeting as an old acquaintance. In this I was not mistaken. I found him in his office. He was very glad to see me again, and opened his desk and took out a bottle, remarking as he did so, “ No use to ask ye to drink, I reckon. Won’t you take somethin’ this time ? ” I said no, with thanks, and he asked, “ How’ve you ben makin' it? How do ye like the country ? ” I had told him, when we separated before, that I was from New England. After some talk of my travels, I asked him why he made the negro get up and leave the seat at Jeannerette.

“ Why,” he said, “ do ye s’pose I’d make myself equal with a nigger ? Ef I’d a set with him, would n’t you think I was no better ’n a nigger ? ”

“ No,” said I ; “ I don’t know that I should look at it that way.”

“ Well, now,” said he, as he put his feet upon the table, “ tell us how you fellers up there would do in such a case. How do you look at it there ? ”

I told him that Northern people had no desire for special association with negroes, but that I thought if we were really superior people we need not take much pains to show it, except, perhaps, by being obliging to everybody ; and I asked him who he thought was about the greatest man in the world. He “ allays ’lowed General Washington wuz, mebbe, or General Lee.” Then I asked if he supposed that General Lee would have been afraid that people would think he was about the same as a nigger, if he sat down by one. He understood, and laughed heartily as he answered, Oh, but General Lee was a heap bigger man than I am.” Then he added, “ Oh, you know, I wanted the seat. I had n’t nothin’ agin the nigger. You know, I told him I expected he was a good man.”

We had considerable talk, and he appeared glad to learn that the “ nigger equality ” which the North believes in is that justice shall be equally within the reach of every human being under our flag. “ I ain’t nothin’ to say agin that,” was his reply. At the close of the conversation, when I told him that I was not certain that Northern men in general would treat the negroes any better than Southern men do, if all the circumstances were the same, he exclaimed, “ Durned ef I don’t believe you ’re as honest as any of us ! ”

I looked over a great deal of territory in Texas; going from San Antonio to New Braunfels, Austin, Hearne, Palestine, Longview, Mineola, Dallas, Sherman, and various other points, with frequent excursions across the country, away from the railroads. I received the impression of a vigorous life in the State, of a great country in the aggregate, which yet includes much of poverty, indolence, and other features of a somewhat unsettled and uncertain life.

LODGINGS IN LITTLE ROCK.

I passed a day in Little Rock, the capital of Arkansas. It is a place of considerable business and capital, but the streets were extremely dirty, and the grounds about the State House had a wonderfully shabby and neglected appearance. The legislature was then in session, and I went in to see the representatives of the people of Arkansas. (Everybody in the Southwest says — and always has said — Arkansaw.) They were a fine-looking body of men, and were doing their work with an appearance of dignity and decorum, joined with good temper, which strongly attracted and interested me. I was in several similar assemblies, and, so far as I could observe, Southern men, in such public bodies, appeared to be characterized by decorous good humor. They always seemed to be comfortable, as if their business did not irritate them.

The negroes in Little Rock, and in that region, were not in a very promising condition. Many of them were idle and indisposed to labor, and there was a great deal of work done by white men which would naturally belong to the negroes, if they would do it. There is much good country in Arkansas, but it is often unhealthy along the streams, where much of the richest land lies. The State has hardly attracted the attention it deserves. I found many Northern people in Little Rock. Some of them were not of much advantage to the place, while others were doing well in business. I could not learn that there had recently been any trouble between the races there, but labor in that part of the country was not so well organized, or so prosperous, as in the sugar regions of Louisiana.

While traveling northward and eastward through Texas, I had “ got acquainted ” with a poor fellow who had been ten years in the State, having gone out there with his young wife, soon after their marriage, from Alabama. He had “lived all over the State, on highlands and lowlands, and had been sick everywhere.” He had finally given up the struggle with ill-fortune in Texas, and was on his way back to the old home in Northern Alabama, with barely money enough to carry him thither, “ and with nothin’ in the world to show fer all my work in Texas,” he said, “ but these six children.” He was an excellent representative of a large class of “ poor whites ” found almost everywhere in the South. Not very well equipped by nature, in any respect, for the struggle of life, he was discouraged, and the little spirit he had ever possessed was exhausted by his long experience of sickness and failure. He knew little more than a child of the great world or its ways, and was painfully conscious of his ignorance and helplessness. He was afraid of everybody, and yet longed to trust every one, and to have somebody always to guide him and instruct him. The conductor on the train, a Northern man, was extremely harsh to him, which added to his distraction. I felt sorry for him and for his wife, who was a true and helpful consort and mother to the extent of her powers, but was not greatly superior to her husband.

We reached Little Rock very late at night, and this family had to wait till morning for a train. They could not remain at the railway station, and when they tried to find means of conveyance up town an army of hackmen and “ runners ” descended upon them, and, as I saw, were about to take all the money the poor fellow had, or nearly all, so that he could not have reached home. It occurred to me that instead of going to a hotel, as I had intended, I would go along with this family, and learn what a Little Rock cheap lodging-house might be. So I dispersed the hackmen, took the business upon myself, and, having dragooned one young fellow into some measure of reason and justice, led the way to “ a very good place,” as the driver declared, “ and as cheap as any.”

It was nearly midnight when we reached the boarding-house. It had two rooms on the lower floor, and two above. The front room down - stairs was the dining-room, filled with chairs and long tables. Back of this was a small room which served as the kitchen, and as bedroom for the proprietor and his family. There was but one bed in it, and in this, when we arrived, the man of the house, his wife and three children, were sleeping. The man arose to receive us, and ushered us at once into the kitchen ; then he lighted a lamp, and awoke his wife and eldest daughter, a well-grown girl of fifteen, who got up and dressed, as we waited for some arrangement for providing us with places for the remainder of the night. It was found that there was one vacant bed up-stairs, and this was assigned to the Texan family. They said in the morning that they had slept well, having been very tired. I was given a coverlet and a place on the floor, at the side of the cooking-stove, in the kitchen, just about large enough for my accommodation. I put my satchel under my head for a pillow, lay down on one half of my coverlet and drew the other over me, and was soon sleeping soundly, although the night was chilly and the room open and cold.

There was a litter of puppies, with their mother, on a bed of their own on the floor just back of my pillow, and in the night, some time, I was awakened by one of the puppies climbing over the satchel and over my face, and trying to find a place in my bed. Probably the little beast had been sleeping “on the outside,” and had found it cold. I slapped him with some emphasis, whereupon he tumbled back over the satchel to his mother. He howled piteously, and the other puppies howled in chorus, while their mother whined sympathetically. But I went to sleep again, and when I next awoke the woman of the house and her daughter were getting breakfast, and I found the climate torrid enough.

This family was from Illinois. They were “glad to see somebody from the North.” and, as an expression of their pleasure, charged us more than the most exorbitant Southerner would have asked. I paid my own bill without grumbling, feeling that the experience and opportunity for observation had been worth the amount demanded ; but I would not see my Texan friend imposed on, so I made them reduce his bill to just proportions. The poor, kind-hearted fellow ! When at last I saw him on the cars, with a fair prospect of reaching his home without further detention, he was so grateful ! He urged me to go on with him, and “ stay a few weeks ; ” said his father had plenty of everything, and they would all be glad to see me, and to do anything for me. I did not doubt it, but could not command time for such a visit; so we said good-by.

Few things in my travels in the South were more pleasant, or more interesting, than the voyage down the Red River from Shreveport to the Mississippi. It was pleasant, to begin with things purely personal, to have a bed a little longer than the railway car seats, in which I had done most of my sleeping for some months before ; and the food and table appointments and service were the best I found in the South. The boat did not undertake a regular passenger business, nor did it run on any time schedule. The captain warned me of this before we left Shreveport. “ We are due everywhere,” said he, “ only when we arrive.” The freight was mostly cotton, cotton seed, and bacon, with some corn, hay, wood, staves, hoop-poles, etc. The boat sometimes waited at landings for several hours, while freight was brought in and loaded, and I had time for short excursions into the country at various points. The people of both races have the “ ways,” manners, and general characteristics of a new or frontier region. They talk loudly in the streets and in the fields, are extremely hospitable and accommodating, and very improvident.

I found a good many hard-working white people on small plantations along the river, some Northern families, but most of them natives of different Southern States. Most of them might make money, probably, but they buy too many things, and live too expensively ; many of them devoting all that should be saved for the future to entertaining their friends and neighbors. The visiting is excessive, and amounts to a vice and dissipation. A whole family will often go in the morning, and stay all day ; and if the neighbor or friend who is to be visited lives some miles away, the visit often extends to several days, lasting till the larder is empty. The hospitality to a stranger is so earnest, and almost forcible, that it is difficult to leave a neighborhood after a stay of only a few hours.

The negroes like to work on railroads and boats, and great numbers of them are thus employed in all parts of the South. Wherever there is a train employed in conveying materials for repairs, or for building bridges, the negroes, women as well as men, are very fond of riding up and down the country “on de ’struetion train,” as they call it. The captain with whom I came down had been “ in the Red River business,” as he said, for many years, sometimes running on the Mississippi, farther up. He told me that for a few years after the war the negroes in that region were entirely unsettled, and were, most of them, constantly going from place to place, with a vague notion that something wonderful was going to be done for them. “ They thought life was goin’ to be jest a big circus.” Many of them were powerfully influenced by superstition. Their preachers were every now and then receiving revelations, and the older negroes, the religious ones, continually saw signs “ in the heavens an’ the yea’th.” Many felt that “ de judgment day was a-comin’ ; ” others held that the black people were to have this country “ fuh deh own,” and believed that the white people would have to work for them.

He said the negroes had done as well as could rightly be expected of them, but they were not like white people, and we ought not to expect that they ever would be. “ Still,” he continued, “ they are not like they was before the emancipation, and I reckon they may change more and more ; but they will never be like white men.” He thought it “nature” for negroes to steal, — “don’t know ’s I blame them very much,” — and said that “ to require a negro to have forethought, and to lay up something for the future, is very hard on him; is like requiring a child to bear all the cares of an old, grown-up person. But it may do them good, after a while.”

I asked the captain, one day, at dinner, if he had ever been to the North. He replied that he had been in New York and Philadelphia, and added, “ I reckon if Northern people would come down hyar, they ’d make a heap o’ difference with this country, ef they did n’t git to be as easy-goin’ an’ slipshod as we are. They could make money down hyar, shore.” “ Perhaps they would take too much of the business,” I suggested, “ and crowd Southern men out.” “ Oh, well, let ’em,” he replied, and he dropped his knife and fork to speak with greater emphasis ; “ let ’em, ef they ’re smart enough. But I reckon this country’s big enough for us all.”

While on this boat I had much talk with a miner, who was on his way back to Georgia with his family, after a residence of many years in the mining regions of the Southwest. He had been living lately in a region “six hundred and eighty miles west ” of some place I had never heard of before. He had a dry, condensed style of narration, as if he had but a small stock of language on hand, and must make every word tell as much as possible. He thought the rough justice of the mining regions as good as any,— rather better, I suspected, than the more elaborate and uncertain methods of civilization ; and said the West was a good country for a man to mind his own business in. He liked life there, as a whole, but said the women and children got lonesome. I asked what people did there for amusement or entertainment. “ Same as they do in other civilized countries, o’ course,” he replied ; which, considering what he had told me of the wildness of life in that region, seemed so good an answer that I did not push my inquiries farther in that direction.

But he went on : “ Some dam fools hunts cinnamon bear, when they can’t find nothin’ else to do. Now a cinnamon bear allus minds his own business, an’ the old settlers out thar knows too much to meddle with ’em. It’s the young chaps ; they ’re mostly too fresh to keep long in that climit. Not long ago some English fellers come out thar, an’ they must have a big hunt. They wanted me to go along, cause I knowed the country, an’ they’d never seen no cinnamon bears. But I told ’em I had n’t lost no cinnamon bears, an’ had n’t no time to hunt up other people’s stock. Ef any o’ theirn was lost, it was all right for ’em to find ’em, but they must excuse me. Well, they went up in the foot-hills, an’ they had mighty good luck.”

Here he paused, but, knowing that it irritates such men to have a listener “ try to be so smart ” as to anticipate what they are going to say, I waited. “ Yes, mighty good luck! The bear knocked one hoss over a bank, an’ broke the feller’s leg an’ his collar-bone, an’ put his shoulder out o’ place. His hoss was hurt so they had to shoot it. ’Nother chap found his bear, too, an’ the bear chawed him up, an’ knocked him around with sich a looseness that he did n’t know which one of the brothers he was. The rest o’ the party had to git some Chinamen from a minin’ camp to bring the hunters into town on stretchers. So you see they foun’ their bears, an’ had fust-rate luck.”

I can imagine few things more restful to one tired and worn with the life of towns than a few weeks of travel on one of those Red River or Mississippi steamboats; provided, that is, that the weary individual does not require any exciting amusement or entertainment. The country looks wild and unfinished, and to an exacting tourist would be monotonous. There is scarcely anything that can be called scenery. We do not often see a definite landscape, with well marked features or outlines. Every town and landing gives us a new glimpse into the life of the region through which we are passing, and we can sometimes learn much that is of interest about a place in the hour or two during which the boat is taking on and discharging freight. At night I was often awakened by the noise of running out the bridge, or by the voices of the negroes who were waiting, or had to be summoned for the work of unloading and housing whatever was to be left at the place. As they begin their work, the negroes always set up a song, or chant, or recitative of some kind, as accompaniment to their labor. Some of these are very curious. It seems as if the negroes could not work without some such vocal stimulus. I often listened to them as the men handled iron bars in foundries, and while they were loading wood, cotton seed, and other articles on boats and cars, and as they were at their work as “ section hands ” on the railways. They always have a foreman, one of their own number, who directs their work and leads their song or chant. Sometimes he merely utters, in a high, sing-song tone, a constant succession of orders, to which the hands respond now and then as the work goes on; everything that is said is chanted, with a well-defined cadence and rhythm, often extremely musical and interesting : “ Ready now ! Give us light dar ! What do yo’ say now? All togedder dar ! ” and so on. Some of their songs or chants include queer, inarticulate shouts or cries and vocal explosions, — sounds which I am unable to represent by any combination of letters, but which, when softened by distance, are strangely impressive, and somehow made me think of strains which I have heard from some of the great singers. Perhaps they belong to a kind of savage, unwritten opera.

In Northeastern Texas, in Arkansas, and in Northwestern Louisiana I found that the merchants in many of the smaller towns felt insecure, on account of the frequency with which stores were robbed, safes blown open, etc., even in the day-time. In several instances, when they invited me into the small “office,” or space railed off at the rear of the store around the safe, I saw a double-barreled shot-gun, sometimes two of them, standing within easy reach of the desk. One gentleman told me that some one of the firm, or of the salesmen in the store, was always in or near the office, and that whenever strangers more than two in number entered the store, the man in the office began handling the weapons, so as to display them, or asking questions, or making remarks about their having been loaded. Another merchant said, “ Five or six men on horseback could clean us all out here ’most any day, unless we were ready for them.”