Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/497

 . 25, 1862.] horses, spangled finery, and clownish antics, is, perhaps, their strongest attraction. One came up the river from New Orleans while I was at Memphis. It was a complete circus, with ring, boxes, pit and gallery, a full stud and company, all propelled by steam. It steamed from town to town along the thousands of miles of the Mississippi and its branches, staying a day or two at one place, and weeks at another. When its great steam organ, which could be heard three miles, announced its arrival at Memphis, the whole juvenile and negro population was on the qui vive. I was visiting at the residence of a gentleman, two miles in the country. In came Harry, a handsome black boy, fat and lazy, who would go to sleep, currying his horse or over his rake in the garden, with his—“Please, massa, de circus am come.”

“Well, Harry, suppose it has come, what then?”

“Please, massa, give me a pass to go and see it.”

“A pass, ay? but who is to pay?”

“Oh! I’se got two bits for de ticket.”

So the good-natured massa filled up a blank pass, which would allow Harry to be abroad after nine o’clock at night, without being taken up by the police.

Harry was hardly out of the library before there came another visitor, a black little nursery maid, some twelve or fourteen years old.

“Please, massa,” said she, in the familiar wheedling way of children and slaves, “Harry’s goin’ to de circus.”

“And you want to go, too?”

“Yes, please, massa.”

“I am afraid you will get into trouble. It’s a good way, and you will be out late.”

“Oh! no, massa; I won’t get into no trouble, I won’t, indeed: I’ll keep by Harry, please, massa!”

“Have you got any money?”

“No, massa; you please give me two bit, massa.”

Of course, the two bits came, and with them another pass for the circus.

The wealth and importance of the cities of Southern America are not to be estimated by their population. Memphis, in its palmiest day, had less than twenty thousand population, but the wealth and business were immense. There were five daily papers, and many other periodicals. The stocks of goods were large, the commercial buildings spacious, the style of living fast and luxurious.

A European traveller is astonished to see so well-dressed, and in many respects, so well-bred a people given over to such a vile habit as the constant and profuse chewing of tobacco, with its disgusting accompaniments. The floors of rail cars are deluged, the parlors of hotels and cabins of steamboats are covered with huge spittoons. The floor of the court-house in Memphis was covered more than an inch deep in saw-dust, and when the audience at the theatre applauded with stamping of feet and canes, the dust that rose from the floor was an impalpable tobacco powder, which set the whole house sneezing. The nastiness of this horrid American custom could scarcely have a stronger illustration. I remember another instance, however, of a more ludicrous character. A crowded western audience was listening in breathless silence to a popular speaker; and the only sound that could be heard in the pauses of his declamation, was a rapid, heavy, and continuous shower of tobacco-juice that fell upon the floor, all over the hall, and soon rendered it a broad lake. In the hush of a deep tragedy, in a New York theatre, there comes up the crackling sound of hundreds of persons eating pea-nuts—a sound like that of a great drove of hogs eating acorns in a western forest; but the pattering shower of tobacco-juice is the strangest noise, as well as the most disgusting. But the traveller must learn to overlook national peculiarities, and not to condemn a people for one or two singularities.

Memphis was, and I hope still is, a beautiful city. As usual, in America, there are churches in abundance. The finest were the Episcopalian and Roman Catholic, standing near neighbours, with rector and priest on the most friendly terms. Then came the Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, &c. There is also a very handsome Jews’ synagogue, where I heard an eloquent discourse, by a famous Rabbi from Cincinnati, and some very fine music.

The planters, professional men, and merchants, whose villas beautify the suburbs for miles, were full of lavish Southern hospitality. No one could expect to find in a new country so many beautiful and luxurious houses. One of the most beautiful places near the city was a Dominican convent and academy, where I got a good view of a hundred or more young misses, mostly planters’ daughters, sent here to be educated in this sylvan paradise, by the white-robed daughters of St. Dominic. Four-fifths of them were Protestants, but a large portion of the youth of the South are educated in Jesuit Colleges, and the female convents of various religious orders.

Slavery, as seen by the traveller in the South, presents only its softest and most amiable aspects. There is something fascinating in the respect with which every white person is treated, and the obsequious alacrity with which he is served. Every negro, to whomsoever he may belong, must be respectful and obedient to any white person. The superiority of race is asserted and acknowledged. If there are hardships and cruelties in this servitude, they are rarely seen by a stranger. The negroes are careless and happy, or stolid and stupid. Some are trusted with untold gold—some, I am sure, rule their masters and mistresses, and have things pretty much their own way. The servants of old families, where generations of black men have served generations of whites, have all the pride of family and ancestry, and look down with aristocratic contempt upon the common niggers of the nouveaux riches. That Slavery has either a strong fascination, or some redeeming features, may be judged from the fact that English, Irish, and the Northern American emigrants to the South, whatever their former opinions, generally follow the customs of the country, and become the owners of slaves.