Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/410

Rh virile manager of the N. Y., P. & N. Railroad, to take us to the first lock on the Dismal Swamp Canal, which runs into the Elizabeth river about seven miles from Norfolk. Just think of it! the entrance to the Dismal Swamp only seven miles from the busiest city in the South, a city that is destined to become one of the greatest commercial ports on the continent!

Let me stop here to moralize over this laggard among the great commercial cities, this voluntary Cinderella, who was born with the diadem on her brow, but allowed it to grow tarnished, and at last to be taken from her head by a less favored rival. Norfolk has vast advantages over any other seaport on the Atlantic coast. They are apparent to every observing stranger; but they have never been properly estimated or developed by her own. Norfolk could have led the van of all the Eastern cities in the race for commercial prosperity; but she let the breeze go past without unreefing her sails; and she saw the slower hulls of Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, and New Orleans, pass her under clouds of canvas and sail clean out of sight.

What is the matter with Norfolk? What ails Virginia, that she is not the proud mother of a greater New York? The possibilities of Norfolk have always been in full view. Thomas Jefferson,