American Adventures Part 37

After a time my companion and I put in a few questions about the State of Mississippi. Boiled down, the princ.i.p.al information we gathered was as follows:

By the 1910 census Mississippi had not one city of 25,000 inhabitants.

Meridian, with 23,000, was (and probably still is) her metropolis, with Jackson and Vicksburg, cities of about 20,000 each, following. The entire State has but fifteen cities having a population of 5000 or more, so that, of a total of about a million and three-quarters of people in the State (more than half of them colored), only about one-tenth live in towns with a population of 5000 or over.

After a little visit the conductor went away. Now and then a man would leave us and get off at a station, or some new pa.s.senger would join our group. Presently I found myself thinking about dinner, and asked a man wearing an electric-blue cap if he knew what provision was made for the evening meal.

Before he could reply the train boy, who had come into the smoking room a few minutes before, piped up. He was a train boy of a type I had supposed extinct: the kind of train boy one might have encountered on almost any second-rate train twenty years ago,--a bold, impudent young smartaleck, full of insistent salesmanship and obnoxious conversation.

He declared that dinner was not to be had, and that the only sustenance available en route consisted in the uninviting a.s.sortment of fruit, nuts, candy, and sweet tepid beverages contained in his basket.

Fortunately for us, the man we had addressed knew better.

"What do you want to lie like that for, boy?" he demanded. "You know as well as I do that the brakeman takes on five boxes of lunch at Covin."

"Well," said the boy, with a grin, "I gotta sell things, ain't I? The brakeman hadn't oughta have that graft anyhow. _I'd_ oughta have it. He gets them lunches fer two bits and sells 'em for thirty-five cents." Far from feeling abashed, he was pleased with himself.

"Folks is funny people," remarked a man with a weather-beaten face who sat in the corner seat, and seemed to be addressing no one in particular. "I know a boy that's going to git hung some day. And when they've got the noose rigged nice around his neck, and everything ready, and the trap a-waitin' to be sprung, why, then that boy is goin' to be so sorry for hisself that he won't hardly know what to do. He'll say: 'I ain't never had no chance in life, I ain't. The world ain't never used me right.' ... Yes, folks is funny people."

After this soliloquy there occurred a brief silence in the smoking room, and presently the train boy took up his basket and went upon his way.

"You say they take on the lunches at Covin now?" one of the pa.s.sengers asked of the man in the electric-blue cap.

"Yes."

"What's become of old man Whitney, over to Fayetteville?"

"They used to git lunches off of him," replied the other, "but the old man wasn't none too dependable. Now and then he'd oversleep, and folks on the 5 A.M. out of Columbus was like to starve for breakfast."

"Right smart shock-headed boy the old man's got," put in another. "The old man gives 'im anything he wants. He wanted a motorcycle, and the old man give 'im one. Then he wanted one of them hot-candy machines; they cost about two hundred and fifty dollars, but the old man give it to 'im just the same."

"The kid went to San Francisco with it, didn't he?" asked the man with the electric-blue cap.

"He started to go there," replied the former speaker, "but he only got as fur as Little Rock; then he come on back home, and the old man bought 'im a wireless-telegraph plant. Yeaup! That boy gets messages right outa the air--from Washington, D.C., and Berlin, and every place. The Govamunt don't allow 'im to tell you much of it. He tells a little, though--just to give you a notion."

So, through the five-hour ride the conversation ran. Several times the talk drifted to politics and to the European War, but the politics discussed were local and lopsided, and the war was all too clearly regarded as something interesting but vague and remote. On the entire journey not one word was spoken indicating that the people of this section had the least grasp on any national question, or that they were considering national questions, or that they realized what the war in Europe is about--that it is a war for freedom and democracy, a war against war, a war to prevent a few individuals from ever again plunging the world into war. Nor, though the day of our entry into the war was close at hand, had the idea that we might be forced to take part in the conflict so much as occurred to any of them.

They were not stupid people; on the contrary, some of them possessed a homely and picturesque philosophy; but they were not informed, and the reason they were not informed has to do with one of the chief needs of our rural population--especially the rural population of the South.

What they need is good newspapers. They need more world news and national news in place of county news and local briefs. In the whole South, moreover, there is need for general political news instead of biased news written always from inside the Democratic party, and sandwiched in between patent medicine advertis.e.m.e.nts.

CHAPTER XLI

A MISSISSIPPI TOWN

It was dark when, after a journey of one hundred and twenty miles at the rate of twenty miles an hour, we reached Columbus, a city which was never intended to be a metropolis and which will never be one.

Columbus is situated upon a bluff on the east bank of the Tombigbee River, to the west of which is a very fertile lowland region, filled with plantations, the owners of which, a century ago, founded the town in order that their families might have churches, schools, and the advantages of social life. As the town grew, a curious but entirely natural community spirit developed; when a gas plant, water works, or hotel was needed, prosperous citizens got together and financed the enterprise, not so much for profit as for mutual comfort.

In these ante bellum times the planters used to make annual journeys to Mobile and New Orleans, going by boat on the Tombigbee and taking their crops and their families with them. After selling their cotton and enjoying themselves in the city, they would load supplies for the ensuing year upon river boats and return to Columbus, where the supplies were transferred to their vast attic storerooms.

Though their only water transportation was to the southward, they did not journey invariably in that direction, but sometimes made excursions to such fashionable watering places as the Virginia Springs, or Saratoga, to which they drove in their own carriages.

When, in the early days of railroad building, the Mobile & Ohio Railroad was being planned, the company proposed to include Columbus as one of its main-line points and asked for a right of way through the town and a cash bonus in consideration of the benefits Columbus would derive from railroad service. Both requests were refused. The railroad company then waived the bonus and attempted to obtain a right of way by purchase. But to no purpose. The citizens would not sell. They did not want a railroad. They were prosperous and healthy, and they contended that a railroad would bring poor people and disease among them, besides killing farm animals and causing runaways. The company was consequently forced to make a new survey, and when the line was built it pa.s.sed at a distance of a dozen miles or more from the city.

Gradually dawned the era of speed and impatience. People who had hitherto been satisfied to make long journeys in horse-drawn vehicles, and had refused the railroad a right of way, now began to complain of the twelve-mile drive to the nearest station, and to suggest that the company build a branch line into the town. But this time it was the railroad's turn to say no, and Columbus was informed that if it wished a branch line it could go ahead and build it at its own expense. This was finally done at a cost of fifty thousand dollars.

With the construction of the branch line, carriages fell into disuse and dilapidation, and many an old barouche, landau, and brett pa.s.sed into the hands of the negro hackmen who were former slaves of the old families. Among these ex-slaves the traditions of the first families of Columbus were upheld long after the war, and it thus happened that when, a few years since, a young New Yorker, arriving for a visit in the town, alighted from his train, he was greeted by an ancient negro who, indicating an equally ancient carriage, cried: "Hack, suh! Hack, suh!

Ain't nevah been rid in by none but the Billupses."

Not every young man from the North would have understood this reference, but by a coincidence it was at the residence of Mrs. Billups that this one had come to visit.

Neither as to hack nor habitation were my companion and I so fortunate as the earlier visitor. Our conveyance was a Ford, and the driver warned us, as we progressed through shadowy tree-bordered streets, that the Gilmer Hotel was crowded with delegates who had come to attend the State convention of the Order of the Eastern Star. Nor was his warning without foundation. The wide old-fashioned lobby of the Gilmer was hung with the colors of the Order and packed with Ladies of the Eastern Star and their ecstatic families; we managed to make our way through the press only to be told by the single worn-out clerk on duty that not a room was to be had.

Unlike the haughty clerk who had dismissed us from the Tutwiler Hotel in Birmingham, the clerk at the Gilmer was not without the quality of mercy. Overworked though he was, he began at once to telephone about the town in an effort to secure us rooms. But if this led us to conclude that our problem was thereby in effect solved, we discovered, after listening to his brief telephonic conversations with a series of unseen ladies, that the conclusion was premature. Though there were vacant rooms in several private houses, strange stray males were not desired as lodgers.

Concerned as we were over our plight, my companion and I could not help being aware that a young lady who had been standing at the desk when we came in, and had since remained there, was taking kindly interest in the situation. Nor, for the matter of that, could we help being aware, also, that she was very pretty in her soft black dress and corsage of narcissus. She did not speak to us; indeed, she hardly honored us with a glance; but, despite her sweet circ.u.mspection, we sensed in some subtle way that she was sorry for us, and were cheered thereby.

After a time, when the clerk seemed to have reached the end of his resources, the young lady hesitantly ventured some suggestions as to other houses where rooms might possibly be had. These suggestions she addressed entirely to the clerk--who, upon receiving them, did more telephoning.

"Have you tried Mrs. Eichelberger?" the young lady asked him, after several more failures.

He had not, but promptly did so. His conversation with Mrs. Eichelberger started promisingly, but presently we heard him make the d.a.m.ning admission he had been compelled repeatedly to make before:

"No, ma'am. It's two men."

Then, just as the last hope seemed to be fading, our angel of mercy spoke again.

"Wait!" she put in impulsively. "Tell her--tell her I recommend them."

Thus informed, Mrs. Eichelberger became compliant; but when the details were arranged, and we turned to thank our benefactor, she had fled.

Mrs. Eichelberger's house was but a few blocks distant from the Gilmer.

She installed us in two large, comfortable rooms, remarking, as we entered, that we had better hurry, as we were already late.

"Late for what?" one of us asked.

"Didn't you come for the senior dramatics?"

"Senior dramatics where?"

"At the I.I. and C."

"What is the I.I. and C?"

At this question a look of doubt, if not suspicion, crossed the lady's face.