American Adventures Part 57

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 st.u.r.dy 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 pa.s.s into the region of pines, and out of the region of pines into that of maples and elms. At last you come to Was.h.i.+ngton.... 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?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: Charleston is the last stronghold of a unified American upper cla.s.s; the last remaining American city in which Madeira and Port and _n.o.blesse oblige_ are fully and widely understood, and are employed according to the best traditions]

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

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

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mount Vernon Place is the centre of Baltimore. Everything begins there, including Baedeker]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Dough.o.r.egan 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]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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"]

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: "What's the matter with him?" I asked, stopping]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Claymont Court is one of the old Was.h.i.+ngton houses. But in all its history it has never been a happier home or a more interesting one than it is to-day]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Chatham, the old Fitzhugh house, now the residence of Mark Sullivan. Was.h.i.+ngton, Madison, Monroe, Was.h.i.+ngton Irving, Lee and Lincoln have known the shelter of its roof]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Monticello stands on a lofty hilltop, with vistas, between trees of neighboring valleys, hills, and mountains]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Like Venice, the University of Virginia should first be seen by moonlight]

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The southern negro is the world's peasant supreme]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Judge Crutchfield--a white-haired, hook-nosed man of more than seventy, peering over his eyegla.s.ses with a look of shrewd, merciless divination]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Negro women squatting upon boxes in old shadowy lofts stem the tobacco leaves]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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!]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Some genuine old-time New York ferryboats help to complete the illusion that Norfolk is New York]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The Southern Statesman who serves his section best, serves the country best."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: St. Philip's is the more beautiful for the open s.p.a.ce before it, and the graceful outward bend of Church Street in deference to the projecting portico]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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]

[Ill.u.s.tration: In the doorway and gates of the Smyth house, in Legare Street, I was struck with a Venetian suggestion]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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....]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Charleston has a stronger, deeper-rooted city ent.i.ty than all the cities of the middle west rolled into one]