Southern Stories Part 3

"Come yere," Julius Caesar repeated, and made a dive for him. The turkey spread his tail. Oh, didn't he run!

"Now I've got yer!" the wicked Jericho Bob cried, and thought he had captured the fowl; when with a shriek from Jericho Bob, as the turkey knocked him over, the Thanksgiving dinner spread his wings, rose in the air, and alighted on the roof of the freight-car.

The turkey looked down over the edge of the car at his enemies, and they gazed up at him. Both parties surveyed the situation.

"We've got him," Julius Caesar cried at last, exultantly. "You git on the roof, and ef you don't kitch 'im up thar, I'll kitch 'im down yere."

With the help of the wash-tub, an old chair, Julius Caesar's back, and much scrambling, Jericho Bob was hoisted on top of the car. The turkey was stalking solemnly up and down the roof with tail and wings half spread.

"I've got yer now," Jericho Bob said, creeping softly after him. "I've got yer now, sure," he was just repeating, when with a deafening roar the express-train came tearing down the road.

For what possible reason it slowed up on approaching the freight-car n.o.body ever knew; but the fact remains that it did, just as Jericho Bob laid his wicked black paw on the turkey's tail.

The turkey shrieked, spread his wings, shook the small black boy's grasp from his tail, and with a mighty swoop alighted on the roof of the very last car as it pa.s.sed; and in a moment more Jericho Bob's Thanksgiving dinner had vanished, like a beautiful dream, down the road!

What became of that Thanksgiving dinner no one ever knew. If you happen to meet a traveling turkey without any luggage, but with a smile on his countenance, please send word to Jericho Bob.

Every evening he and Julius Caesar Fish stand by the broken-down fence and look up and down the road, as if they expected some one.

Jericho Bob has a turn-up nose and bow-legs. Julius Caesar still wears his dress-coat, and both are watching for a Thanksgiving dinner that ran away.

HOW WE BOUGHT LOUISIANA

BY HELEN LOCKWOOD COFFIN

It is a hard matter to tell just how much power a little thing has, because little things have the habit of growing. That was the trouble that France and England and Spain and all the other big nations had with America at first. The thirteen colonies occupied so small and unimportant a strip of land that few people thought they would ever amount to much. How could such insignificance ever bother old England, for instance, big and powerful as she was? To England's great loss she soon learned her error in underestimating the importance or strength of her colonies.

France watched the giant and the pygmy fighting together, and learned several lessons while she was watching. For one thing, she found out that the little American colonies were going to grow, and so she said to herself: "I will be a sort of back-stop to them. These Americans are going to be foolish over this bit of success, and think that just because they have won the Revolution they can do anything they wish to do. They'll think they can spread out all over this country and grow to be as big as England herself; and of course anybody can see that that is impossible. I'll just put up a net along the Mississippi River, and prevent them crossing over it. That will be the only way to keep them within bounds."

And so France held the Mississippi, and from there back to the Rocky Mountains, and whenever the United States citizen desired to go west of the Mississippi, France said: "No, dear child. Stay within your own yard and play, like a good little boy," or something to that effect.

Now the United States citizen didn't like this at all; he had pushed his way with much trouble and expense and hard work through bands of Indians and through forests and over rivers and mountains, into Wisconsin and Illinois, and he wished to go farther. And, besides, he wanted to have the right to sail up and down the Mississippi, and so save himself the trouble of walking over the land and cutting out his own roads as he went. So when France said, "No, dear," and told him to "be a good little boy and not tease," the United States citizen very naturally rebelled.

Mr. Jefferson was President of the United States at that time, and he was a man who hated war of any description. He certainly did not wish to fight with his own countrymen, and he as certainly did not wish to fight with any other nation, so he searched around for some sort of a compromise. He thought that if America could own even one port on this useful river and had the right of Mississippi navigation, the matter would be settled with satisfaction to all parties. So he sent James Monroe over to Paris to join our minister, Mr. Livingston, and see if the two of them together could not persuade France to sell them the island of New Orleans, on which was the city of the same name.

Now Napoleon was the ruler of France, and he was dreaming dreams and seeing visions in which France was the most important power in America, because she owned this wonderful Mississippi River and all this "Louisiana" which stretched back from the river to the Rockies. He already held forts along the river, and he was planning to strengthen these and build some new ones. But you know what happens to the plans of mice and men sometimes. Napoleon was depending upon his army to help him out on these plans, but his armies in San Domingo were swept away by war and sickness, so that on the day he had set for them to move up into Louisiana not a man was able to go. At the same time Napoleon had on hand another scheme against England, which was even more important than his plans for America, and which demanded men and money. Besides this, he was shrewd enough to know that he could not hold this far-away territory for any long time against England, which had so many more s.h.i.+ps than France. He suddenly changed his mind about his American possessions, and nearly sent Mr. Monroe and Mr. Livingston into a state of collapse by offering to sell them not only New Orleans but also the whole Province of Louisiana.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP OF THE

UNITED STATES

SHOWING

THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE

AND OTHER

ACCESSIONS OF TERRITORY.]

There was no time to write to President Jefferson and ask his advice, and this was before the days of the cable; so Monroe and Livingston took the matter into their own hands, and signed the contract which transferred the Louisiana territory to the United States for a consideration of $15,000,000. They were severely criticized by many of their own countrymen, and they had some doubts of their own about the wisdom of their action. You see, n.o.body knew then that corn and wheat would grow so abundantly in this territory, or that beyond the Mississippi there were such stretches of glorious pasture-lands, or that underneath its mountainous regions were such mines of gold, silver, and copper. Americans saw only the commercial possibilities of the river, and all they wanted was the right of navigating it and the permission to explore the unknown country to the westward.

But Jefferson and Monroe and Livingston builded better than they knew.

All this happened a hundred years ago; and to-day that old Louisiana territory is, in natural resources, the wealthiest part of the whole United States. Without that territory in our possession we should have no Colorado and no Wyoming, no Dakotas, or Nebraska, or Minnesota, or Montana, or Missouri, or Iowa, or Kansas, or Arkansas, or Louisiana, or Oklahoma, or Indian Territory.

For all these reasons we owe our most sincere and hearty thanks to the patriotic and far-sighted men who were concerned in buying this territory for the United States.

THE CITY THAT LIVES OUTDOORS

BY W. S. HARWOOD

When the wind is howling through the days of the mad March far up in the lands where snow and ice thick cover the earth, here in this city that lives outdoors the roses are clambering over the "galleries" and the wistaria is drooping in purplish splendor from the low branches of the trees and from the red heights of brick walls.

The yellow jonquils, too, are swelling, and the geraniums are throwing out their scarlet flame across wide stretches of greensward, while the violets are nodding at the feet of the gigantic magnolias, whose huge yellowish-gray buds will soon burst into white beauty, crowning this n.o.blest of flower-bearing trees.

It is a strange old city, this city that lives outdoors--a city rich in romantic history, throbbing with tragedy and fascinating events, a beautiful old city, with a child by its side as beautiful as the mother.

The child is the newer, more modern city, and the child, like the parent, lives out of doors.

The people seem to come into closer touch with nature than the people of most other portions of the land. The climate, the constant invitation of the earth and sky, seem to demand a life lived in the open. This city that lives outdoors is a real city, with all a city's varied life; but it is a country place as well--a city set in the country, or the country moved into town.

For at least nine months in the twelve, the people of this rare old town live out of doors nearly all the waking hours of the twenty-four. For the remaining three months of the year, December, January, and February, they delude themselves into the notion that they are having a winter, when they gather around a winter-time hearth and listen to imaginary wind-roarings in the chimney, and see through the panes fict.i.tious and spectral snow-storms, and dream that they are housed so snug and warm.

But when the day comes the sun is s.h.i.+ning and there is no trace of white on the ground, and the gra.s.s is green and there are industrious buds breaking out of cover, and the earth is sleeping very lightly.

Open-eyed, the youngsters sit by these December firesides and listen to their elders tell of the snow-storms in the long ago that came so very, very deep--ah, yes, so deep that the darkies were full of fear and would not stir from their cabins to do the work of the white people; when s...o...b..a.l.l.s were flying in the streets, and the earth was white, and the "banquettes," or sidewalks, were ankle-deep in slush.

All the long years of the two centuries since this old city was born, a mighty river has been flowing by its doors, never so far forgetting its purpose to live outdoors as to freeze its yellow crest, stealing softly past by night and by day, bearing along the city's front a vast commerce on down to the blue waters of the Gulf, and enriching the city by its cargoes from the outer world and from the plantations of the upper river. Strangely enough, the great yellow river flows above the city, its surface being nearly thirty feet above the streets in time of flood.

It is held in its course by vast banks of earth.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SPANISH DAGGER IN BLOOM.]

It is a cold, drear March where the north star s.h.i.+nes high overhead; but here, where it seems suddenly to have lost its balance and to have dropped low in the brilliant night, March is like June. It is June indeed, June with its wealth of gra.s.ses, its n.o.ble avenue of magnolias, its great green spread of live-oaks--most magnificent of Southern trees; June with its soft balm, and its sweet suns.h.i.+ne, and its perfume-laden air. And if you have never seen the pole star in the sky of the north, where the star is almost directly over your head, you cannot realize how strange a sight it is to see it so low in the sky as it is here.

There is a large garden in this city--it is, in fact, a part of the city proper. It was once a beautiful faubourg, now known as the Garden District, where the people live outdoors in a fine old aristocratic way, and where all the beauty in nature seen in the other sections of the city seems to be outdone. Very many rare old homes are in this garden region, with its deep hedges and ample grounds, inclosed in high stone walls, and a wealth of flowers and n.o.ble courts and an abounding hospitality. But what, after all, are houses to a people that lives outdoors? Conveniences only; for such a people, better than houses are the air of the open, the scent of the roses, the blue of the Southern sky, the vast, strong sweep of the brilliant stars!

If we pause here along this street where run such every-day things as electric street-cars, we shall see on one side of the splendid avenue a smooth-paved roadway for the carriages, on the other a course for the hors.e.m.e.n, and in the center a n.o.ble inner avenue of trees set in a velvet-like carpet of gra.s.s; and here and there along the way, almost in touch of your hand from the open car window, appears the Spanish dagger, with its green, sharp blades and its snowy, showy plume. Not far away stands a lowly negro cabin, where the sun beats down hot and fierce upon a great straggling rose-bush, reaching up to the eaves, beating back the rays of the sun defiantly and gaining fresh strength in the struggle. On such a bush one day I counted two hundred and ninety roses.

This city which lives outdoors must play most in the open, and in its n.o.ble park, with its vast stretches of bright green, here empurpled by ma.s.ses of the dainty gra.s.s-flower, there yellowing with the sheen of the b.u.t.tercup, one finds the tireless golf-players leisurely strolling over the links; from yonder come the cries of the boys at ball; and in the farther distance you may see through the frame-like branches of a giant live-oak the students of a great university hard set at a game of tennis. And yet--is it the air, or the race, or the traditions?--something it is which makes the sportsmen, like the spring, seem slow to move.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FAR IN THE PINEY WOODS.]

And here even the palms grow outdoors in the city yards. And should you go past the city's limits, and yet within seeing distance of its blue-tiled housetops, you will find the palms growing rank in the great swamps, which you must search if you care to hunt for the languid alligators--palms growing so thick and rank that it is quite like looking into some vast conservatory, with the blue dome of the sky for gla.s.s. And here grow the magnolias in their wild, barbaric splendor of bloom, and the live-oaks, mighty of girth and spread, draped in somber gray moss as if for the funeral of some G.o.d of the deep green wood. At the fringe of the swamp, tempting you until near to jumping into the mora.s.s after them, are the huge fleurs-de-lis, each gorgeous blossom fully seven inches across its purple top.

To the north, somewhat apart from the reach of the treacherous river, lie the health-giving piny woods, and along the big, sullen stream the sugar plantations, some of them still the home of a lavish hospitality, some of them transformed into mere places of trade, where thrift and push have elbowed out all that fine gallantry and ease and ample hospitality of an earlier day--that hospitality which will ever remain a leading characteristic of the people. To be a Southern man or a Southern woman and to be inhospitable--that is not possible in the nature of things.