Julian Street

“ Birmingham—The thin veil of smoke from far-off iron furnaces softens the city's serrated outlines
At night the scene from the Highlands is even more spectacular, for at brief intervals the blowing of a converter in some distant steel plant illuminates the heavens with a great hot glow, like that which rises and falls about the crater of a volcano in eruption. Thus the city's vast affairs are kept before it by day in a pillar of cloud, and by night in a pillar of fire. Iron and steel dominate Birmingham's mind, activities and life. ”

“ The fact that a man may shut off his motor and coast downhill from his home to his office in the lower part of Birmingham, is not without symbolism. Birmingham is all business. If I were to personify the place, it would be in the likeness of a man I know—a big, powerful fellow with an honest blue eye and an expression in which self-confidence, ambition, and power are blended. Like Birmingham, this man is a little more than forty years of age. Like Birmingham, he has built up a large business of his own. ”

“ It is perhaps as much like Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia as any other, and that resemblance is of the slightest, for Mount Vernon Place has a quality altogether its own. It has no skyscrapers or semi-skyscrapers to throw it out of balance; and though the structures which surround it are of white stone, brown stone, and red brick, and of anything but homogeneous architecture, nevertheless a comparative uniformity of height, a universal solidity of construction, and a general grace about them, combine to give the Place an air of equilibrium and dignity and elegance. ”

“ The symbol for every city should be a goddess, forever in her prime.
Among southern cities Richmond is the grande dame; she is gray and distinguished, and wears handsome old [Pg 621] brocades and brooches. Richmond is aquiline and crisp and has much "manner." But though Charleston is actually the older, the wonderful beauty of the place, the softness of the ancient architectural lines, the sweet scents wafting from walled gardens, the warmth of color everywhere, gives the place that very quality of immortal youth and loveliness which is so rare in cities, and is so much to be desired. ”

“ Near the old courthouse, which rears itself so handsomely at the summit of a series of terraces leading up from the street, are a number of old sand roads which must be to-day almost as they were in the heyday of the river's glory, when the region in which the courthouse stands was the principal part of the city—the days of heavy drinking and gambling, dueling, slave markets, and steamboat races. These streets are not the streets of a city, but of a small town. ”

“ I do not mean merely that they love them. The thing of which I speak is beyond family feeling, beyond the respect of youth for age. It is a strong, superb sentiment, something as great as it is subtle, which floods the South, causing it to love and reverence its old ladies collectively, and with a kind of national spirit, like the love and reverence of a proud people for its flag. ”

“ The ride through Florida is tedious. The miles of palmettoes, with leaves glittering like racks of bared cutlasses in the sun, the miles of dark swamp, in which the cypresses seem to wade like dismal club-footed men, the miles of live-oak strung with their sad tattered curtains of Spanish moss, the miles of sandy waste, of pineapple [Pg 593] and orange groves, of pines with feathery palm-like tops, above all the sifting of fine Florida dust, which covers everything inside the car as with a coat of flour—these make you wish that you were North again. ”

“ Nor are the vehicles and street crowds, altogether in consonance, as yet, with the fine office buildings of the city, for many of the motors standing at the curb have about them that gray, rural look which comes of much mud and infrequent washing, and the idlers who lean against the rich façades of granite and marble are entirely out of the picture, for they look precisely like the idlers who lean against the wooden posts of country railroad station platforms. ”

“ It was on this drive that my disillusionment concerning the fall and winter climate of the South began, for, wearing two cloth overcoats, one over the other, I yet suffered agonies from cold. The sun shone down upon the open automobile in which we tore along, but its rays were no competitors for the biting wind. Through lap robes, cloth caps, and successive layers of clothing, and around the edges of goggles, fine little frozen fangs found their way, like the pliable beaks of a race of gigantic, fabulous mosquitoes from the Arctic regions. ”

“ Would it not be equally logical to say that the man who serves himself best serves the country best? It is the theory of narrow sectionalism, and by implication, at least, the theory of individualism as well. And sectionalism and individualism are two of the great curses of the United States.
Compare with Mr. Daniels' words those of John Hay who, veiling fine patriotism beneath a web of delicate humor, said:
"In my bewilderment of origin and experience I can only put on an aspect of deep humility in any gathering of favorite sons, and confess that I am nothing but an American." ”

“ Like Monticello, the buildings of the University of Virginia are those of an intellectual, a classicist, a purist, and, like it, they might have been austere but for the warmth of their red brick and the glow of their white-columned porticos. But they are cheerful buildings, which, individually and as a group, attain a geometrical yet soft perfection, a supreme harmony of form and color.
The principal buildings are grouped about a large campus, called the Lawn, which is dominated by the rotunda, suggesting in its outlines the Pantheon at Rome. ”

“ THE CONFEDERATE CAPITAL
The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Richmond is the Boston of Virginia; Norfolk its New York. The comparison does not, of course, hold in all particulars, Richmond being, for instance, larger than Norfolk, and not a seaport. Yet, on the other hand, Boston manages, more than any seaport that I know of, to conceal from the visitor the signs of its maritime life; wherefore Richmond looks about as much like a port as does the familiar part of Boston. ”

“ Thomas's house stand extensive English-looking buildings of brick and stucco, which, viewed from a distance, suggest a beautiful country house, and which, visited, teach one that certain favored hounds and horses in this world live much better than certain human beings. One building is given over to the kennels, the other the stables; each has a large sunlit court, and each is as beautiful and as clean as a fine house—a house full of trophies, hunting equipment, and the pleasant smell of well-cared-for saddlery. ”

“ How many citizens of Chicago, of San Francisco, of Galveston, of Dayton have known the anguish of that first aftermath of hopelessness! How many citizens of Baltimore knew it that day! And yet how bravely and with what magic swiftness have these cities risen from their ruins! Was not Rome burned? Was not London? And is it not, then, time for men to learn from the history of other men and other cities that disaster does not spell the end, but is oftentimes another name for opportunity? ”

“ Many of the old plantation customs still survive. A little before noon the bell is rung to summon the hands from the cotton fields. Over the red plowed soil you hear a darky cry, a melodious "Oh-oh-oh!" as wild and musical as the cries of the south-Italian olive gatherers. The planters cease their work, mules stand still, traces are unhooked from singletrees, and chain-ends thrown over the mules' backs; then the men mount the animals and ride in to the midday meal, the women trudging after. ”

“ To hold a carnival such as New Orleans holds, a city must know how to be lively and playful without becoming drunk, without breaking barroom mirrors, upsetting tables, annoying women, thrusting "ticklers" into people's faces, jostling, fighting, committing the thousand rough vulgar excesses in which New York indulges every New Year's Eve, and in which it would indulge to an even more disgusting extent under the additional license of the mask. ”

“ Shall we ignore the French Market with its clean stalls piled with fresh vegetables, sea food, and all manner of comestibles, in [Pg 662] cluding filé for the glorious Creole gombo. Shall we not view the picturesque if sinister old Absinthe House, dating from 1799, with its court and stairway so full of mysterious suggestion, and its misty paregoric-flavored beverage, containing opalescent dreams? Shall we not go to Sazerac's for a cocktail, or to Ramos' for one of those delectable gin-fizzes suggesting an Olympian soda-fountain drink? Are we to ignore all these wonders of the city? ”

“ In my imaginary picture I see her yawning at eleven in the morning, when her negro maid brings black coffee to her bedside—such wonderful black coffee!—whereas, at that hour, I conceive San Francisco as having long been up and about her affairs. Even in the afternoon I fancy my New Orleans beauty as a little bit relaxed. But at dinner she becomes alive, and after dinner more alive, and by midnight she is like a flame. ”

“ A moment later we were roaring through the blackness of the Hudson River tunnel.
There is something fine in the abruptness of the escape from New York City by the Pennsylvania Railroad. From the time you enter the station you are as [Pg 12] good as gone. There is no progress between the city's tenements, with untidy bedding airing in some windows and fat old slatterns leaning out from others to survey the sordidness and squalor of the streets below. A swift plunge into darkness, some thundering moments, and your train glides out upon the wide wastes of the New Jersey meadows. The city is gone. ”

“ Many a house in Virginia, let alone the other States farther down the map, is without a furnace, and winter life in such houses, with their ineffectual wood fires, is like life in a refrigerator tempered by the glow of a safety match. As in Italy and Spain, so in the South it is often warmer outdoors than in; more than once during my southern voyage I was tempted to resume the habit, acquired in Capri, of wearing an overcoat in the house and taking it off on going out into the sunshine. ”

“ Least of all, do I like to be seen off by those who are dear to me. If the thing must be done, I prefer it to be done by strangers—committees from chambers of commerce and the like, who have no interest in me save the hope that I will live to write agreeably of their city—of the civic center, the fertilizer works, and the charming new abattoir. Seeing me off for the most practical of reasons, such gentlemen are invariably efficient. ”

“ As to whether it is best to see the city in everyday attire, or masked for the revels, that is a matter of taste, and perhaps of age as well. To any one who loves cities, New Orleans is always good to see, while to the lover of spectacles and fêtes the carnival is also worth seeing—once. The two are, however, hardly to [Pg 628] be seen to advantage simultaneously. To visit New Orleans in carnival time is like visiting some fine old historic mansion when it is all in a flurry over a fancy-dress ball. ”

“ Charleston is not great in population; it is not very great, as seaports go, in trade. [Pg 303] Were cities able to talk with one another as men can, and as foolishly as men often do, I have no doubt that many a hustling middle-western city would patronize Charleston, precisely as a parvenue might patronize a professor of astronomy; nevertheless, Charleston has a stronger, deeper-rooted city entity than all the cities of the Middle West rolled into one. This is no exaggeration. Where modern American cities strive to be like one another, Charleston strives to be like nothing whatsoever. ”

“ Seven persons touching fingertips can barely encircle the trunks of some of the live-oaks at Magnolia; there are camellias more than twenty feet high, and a rose tree nearly as large, but the great glory of the garden is its huge azaleas—ninety-two varieties, it is said—which, when they blossom in the spring, are so wonderful that people make long journeys for no other purpose than to see them. ”

“ It is fitting that last of all should be mentioned the man who views you with keen eye as you arrive in Baltimore, and who watches you depart. If you are in Baltimore he knows it. And when you go away he knows that, too. Also, during racing season, he knows whether you bet, and whether you won or lost. He is always at the station and always at the race track, and if you don't belong in Baltimore he is aware of it the instant he sets eyes upon you, because he knows every man, woman, child, and dog in Baltimore, and they all know him. ”

“ Even the smoke with which the skyscrapers are streaked is city smoke. Chicago herself could hardly produce smoke of more metropolitan texture—certainly not on the Lake Front, where the Illinois Central trains send up their black clouds; for Atlanta's downtown smoke, like Chicago's, comes in large part from railroads piercing the heart of the city. Where downtown business streets cross the railroad tracks, the latter are depressed, the highways passing above on steel bridges resembling the bridges over the Chicago River. ”

“ I am reminded of a talk I had with a negro whose strong legs turned the pedals of a wheel chair in which my companion and I rode one day through the Palm Beach jungle trail. It is a wonderful place, that jungle, with its tangled trunks and vines and its green foliage swimming in sifted sunlight; with its palms, palmettoes, ferns, and climbing morning-glories, its banana trees, gnarled [Pg 598] rubber banyans, and wild mangoes—which are like trees growing upside down, digging their spreading branches into the ground. ”