The old hotel was built with a wing or extension at each end, which formed with the main building three sides of a square. There was no attempt at landscape gardening; not even a rosebush or an oleander decorated the little court. No plaster Apollos and Dianas such as were seen peeping about the shrubbery of the various cottages (like the De Blancs’ and Ducayets’) that dotted in those days the old bayou road, and were considered so very decorative, but plain sand and scrub such as meet my eye to-day on this little frequented part of the Florida Gulf Coast. There was no beach driving or riding of gay people then—none here now.

I fly back to the summer of ’49, and live again with the young girls who made life one long summer’s day. We walked the pier, the image of one before my eyes now, to the bath-houses in muslin dresses. Bathing suits were hideous, unsightly garments, high neck, long sleeves, long skirts, intended for water only! The young girls returned under parasols and veils. How decorous! No baigneuse decolletée to be seen on the beach. Our amusements were simple and distinctly ladylike. There was no golf or tennis, not even the innocent croquet, to tempt the demoiselles to athletics, so they drifted more to the “Lydia Languish” style.

There was no lack of beaux who came, more than enough to “go round,” by the Saturday boats, in time for the weekly hop—danced all Saturday night and returned to weekly drudge (as they called it) in the city. The bonbons and flowers they brought vanished and faded long before the little boat with its freight of waving hats and handkerchiefs faded in the twilight of a summer Sunday.

Also there come to my dream two dainty Goodman sisters, wonderful and most accommodating musicians they were. One was already affianced to her cousin, George Nathan. He was a prosperous business man at that time. I doubt if even his name is known among his thrifty race in New Orleans to-day. He carried off his accomplished wife to Rio Janeiro, and made his home in that country, which was as far away to us then, as the North Pole is to-day. The younger sister met that summer at the Pass and eventually married E. C. Wharton, an attaché of the Picayune, whose articles were signed “Easy Doubleyou.” He was soon dancing attendance on the pretty, curly haired girl. I remember how he wandered around with pad and pencil, and we girls were horribly afraid of being put in the Picayune. No reason for fear, as it was before the dawn of the society page and personal column. The Whartons drifted to Texas during the war, and at Houston they found already a host of stranded Louisianians; but “Easy Doubleyou” had a government appointment of some kind. The rest of us were simply runaways.

There, too, was Dick Taylor, propelled in a wheel chair over that hotel veranda, an interesting convalescent from severe illness, or perhaps a wound, I do not recall which, his valet so constant in attendance that we wondered how the young man ever got an opportunity to whisper sweet nothings into the ear of lovely Myrtle Bringier—but he did! And that was the fourth engagement of the season that culminated in marriage, which signalizes the superior advantages of a hotel veranda, and most especially that of dear old Pass Christian. Dick Taylor had a magnetic personality, which overshadowed the fact (to paraphrase a Bible text) he was the only son of his father, and he the President.

In New York some years ago “The Little Church Around the Corner,” still garnished with its wealth of Easter lilies and fragrant with spring bloom, threw wide its portals for the last obsequies of this loved and honored Confederate general. In that throng of mourners was one who had known him in his early manhood on the veranda of that old Pass Christian hotel, and whose heart had followed his career with ever-increasing admiration and veneration even unto the end. I lay aside my old picture forever. Alas! it remains “only a dream at the best, but so sweet that I ask for no more.”

XXI
OLD MUSIC BOOKS

I wonder how many old ladies start to go through an unused hall closet, to make room for an accumulation of pasteboard boxes too good to throw away, and hampers too strong to discard, and in that long-closed closet, which a junk man with push-cart is waiting to help clear out, find a treasure, long since buried under piles of trash, mourned for, and, as in the case of many departed things, at length given up for lost—then forgotten. In just such a dark closet, from beneath a pile of old magazines (what they were kept and stored for goodness knows) and crazy bits of bric-a-brac, that nobody but a junk man (not even Salvation Army men, who are getting to be mighty choosy, by the way) would cart off, I found two bruised music books.

One dated back to 1847, when I was a schoolgirl in New Haven, and played with great éclat “La Fête au Couvent” quadrilles, purchased of Skinner & Co., Chapel Street. Chapel Street still exists, but Skinner & Co. are buried in the dust of more than sixty years. I cannot play “La Fête au Couvent” or any other fête now, but I can close my eyes and see the lovely young girls in the school music room whirling away to the music of the inspiring cotillion. Alas! Alas! Time has whirled every one of them away and stiffened the nimble fingers that danced so merrily over the keys.