In the morning a low and unkempt land, the railroad trestling its way over morass and swamp and bayou on long timber structures and many times threading sluggish yellow southern rivers by larger bridges. Between these a sandy mainland—thick forests of pine with increasing numbers of live-oaks holding soft moss aloft—at last the outskirts of a town. Other folk might gather their luggage together, the vision of a distant place with its white spires, the soft gray fog that tells of the proximity of the open sea blowing in upon them, held us at the window pane. A river showed itself in the distance to the one side of the train, with mast-heads dominating its shores; another, lined with factories stretched upon the other side. After these, the streets of the town, a trolley car stalled impatient to let our train pass—low streets and mean streets of an unmistakable negro quarter, the broad shed of a sizable railroad station showing at the right.
"Charleston, sah," said the porter. Remember now that he had been a haughty creature in New York and Philadelphia, ebon dignity in Baltimore and in Washington. Now he was docility itself, a courtesy hardly to be measured by the mere expectation of gratuity.
The first glimpse of Charleston a rough paved street—our hotel 'bus finding itself with almost dangerous celerity in front of trolley cars. That unimportant way led into another broad highway of the town and seemingly entitled to distinction.
"Meeting street," said our driver. "And I can tell you that Charleston is right proud of it, sir," he added.
Charleston has good cause to be proud of its main highway, with the lovely old houses along it rising out of blooming gardens, like fine ladies from their ball gowns; at its upper end the big open square and the adjacent Citadel—pouring out its gray-uniformed boys to drill just as their daddies and their grand-daddies drilled there before them—the charms of St. Michael's, and the never-to-be-forgotten Battery at the foot of the street.
We sped down it and drew up at a snow-white hotel which in its immaculate coat might have sprung up yesterday, were it not for the stately row of great pillars, three stories in height, with which it faced the street. They do not build hotels that way nowadays—more's the pity. For when the Charleston Hotel was builded it entered a distinguished brotherhood—the Tremont in Boston, the Astor and the St. Nicholas in New York, Willard's in Washington, the Monongahela at Pittsburgh, and the St. Charles in New Orleans were among its contemporaries. It was worthy to be ranked with the best of these—a hotel at which the great planters of the Carolinas and of Georgia could feel that the best had been created for them within the very heart of their favorite city.
We pushed our way into the heart of the generous office of the hotel, thronged with the folk who had crowded into Charleston—followers of the races, just then holding sway upon the outskirts of the town, tourists from the North, Carolinans who will never lose the habit of going to Charleston as long as Charleston exists. In due time a brisk and bustling hotel clerk—he was an importation, plainly, none of your courteous, ease-taking Southerners—had placed us in a room big enough for the holding of a reception. From the shutters of the room we could look down into Meeting street—into the charred remnants of a store that had been burned long before and the débris never removed. When we threw up the window sash we could thrust our heads out and see, a little way down the street, the most distinctive and the most revered of all Charleston's landmarks—the belfried spire of St. Michael's. As we leaned from that window the bells of St. Michael's spoke the quarter-hour, just as they have been speaking quarter-hours close upon a century and a half.
We had been given the first taste of the potent charm of a most distinctive southern town.
*****
"... The most appealing, the most lovely, the most wistful town in America; whose visible sadness and distinction seem almost to speak audibly, speak in the sound of the quiet waves that ripple round her southern front, speak in the church-bells on Sunday morning and breathe not only in the soft salt air, but in the perfume of every gentle, old-fashioned rose that blooms behind the high garden walls of falling mellow-tinted plaster; King's Port the retrospective, King's Port the belated, who from her pensive porticoes looks over her two rivers to the marshes and the trees beyond, the live-oaks veiled in gray moss, brooding with memories. Were she my city how I should love her...."