SOUTHWARD HO!

3

I ON THE THRESHOLD

The scene is Chicago; the occasion, a luncheon-party at the Cliff-Dwellers’ Club. All the intellect and talent of the Middle West (I am credibly assured) are gathered round one long table. I mention to an eminent man of letters that I am going into the South.

“Well,” he says, “you are going into a country that is more foreign to me than most parts of Europe. I do not understand the Southern people, or their way of looking at things. I never feel at home among them. The one thing I have in common with them is a strong antipathy to the black man.”

This, of course, is only an individual point of view; but many other men are listening, and, while some nod assent, no one protests.

But here is another point of view. A few days later I met an old friend, a Philadelphian, who said, “I like the South and the Southerners. They are men of our own stock and our own tongue—even the ‘poor whites’ whom slavery and the hookworm have driven to the wall. In the 4North we are being jostled and elbowed aside by the foreigner, who murders our speech, and knows nothing and cares nothing about our history or traditions. Yes; give me the South. It is true that, intellectually, it scarcely exists. The Southerner may be living in the twentieth century, but he has skipped the nineteenth. His knowledge of literature, for instance, if he have any at all, stops at the Waverley Novels and ‘The Corsair.’ But I’m not sure that that isn’t part of the charm.”

4

Thus early did I learn that no two men can talk to you about the South without flatly contradicting each other.

It was evident that my plan must be simply to gather views and impressions as I went along, and trust to sifting and co-ordinating them later.

An invitation, equivalent to a command, called me to Washington. |Nearing the Colour-line.| For a whole day my slow train dragged wearily through Northern Ohio; and in the course of that day two young couples in succession got into my car, who interested me not a little. In each case it seemed to me that the girl had a streak of black blood in her, while the young man was in each case unimpeachably white. As to one of the girls, I was practically certain; as to the other I may have been mistaken. Her features were aquiline and she was uncommonly handsome; but the 

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