Here I am in “Ne Awleens,” where creoles and crocodiles grow. At least, here is all that is left of me. Umbrella, railroad ticket, handkerchief, necktie fastener, appetite, digestion, etc., were lost on the way. My valise was carried away in my car, which was quietly detached from the train at Montgomery while I was walking about the station hunting for my appetite. However, I inquired and ran about and caught the runaway car and recovered my bag and my appetite, but not my umbrella. An honest umbrella does not exist. Who remembers ever having had a lost one come back, or a found one go back? My return ticket was taken up by the conductor at bedtime but was not returned to me in the morning when I arrived in Birmingham. It was discovered on the floor in the train, and left at the ticket office at New Orleans by a stranger. New Orleans has one more honest man than our other large cities, which are diseased spots on the earth’s surface, where human parasites predominate.
However, the railway officials are not the only absent-minded men in the South. The hotel clerk at Birmingham charged me for four days instead of two. I should merely have considered the hotel a high-priced one had not a friend told me that he had been charged for three days instead of two. But after being corrected, my bill was as much too small as at first it was too large. The clerk was made in Birmingham where everything is done by machinery. To get the best service it was necessary to know how to run him. He was one of those original characters who do everything differently—and indifferently.
When I went to breakfast the morning after the banquet, I ordered nothing but coffee and rolls. The negro waiter, who was another original, evidently had also been up late the night before, for when I gave my order he gaped frightfully, and I dodged. He filled it (not his mouth) correctly, but took it to a fat man at the next table, who had ordered a real American breakfast and who scorned to accept mere coffee and rolls, although he looked as if he needed much less breakfast than I did. I then ordered a glass of water without any ice in it, and this was also taken to the large gentleman, who was an ice drinker and refused it. When I had drunk my coffee, glanced at my rolls and paid my bill, my change also went to the stranger; but it also was not enough for him. If I had ordered a large breakfast and had thus made the waiter work, or if I had carried a pistol within sight, he would probably have brought things to me when he forgot to whom they belonged. He bore me no ill-will, however. He was a good waiter, as are all Southern waiters, if only one knows how to keep them awake and interested, and excuse mistakes. I think we will have to send some of our colored waiters from the North down there.
The Southerners are, however, far ahead of us in hospitality, and it is in keeping with this virtue that they drink too often. I do not think that they drink for the sake of drinking, as often as do many of our Northern indulgers, nor do they often drink to get drunk. They drink to be hospitable and encourage one another and whet their appetite. Whether they are thus socially farther advanced than we, and we will follow them, or whether the comparatively large percentage of abstainers in the North is an advance, and they will follow us, is a conundrum. I suppose that they really drink out of conservatism. To abstain would be too radical a change. If liquor could have been emancipated with the slaves and sent over the border to Canada, where they use it to warm their toes and melt their tongues, it would have been better for the South and for us. Perhaps the increase in the consumption of beer in the United States may become our salvation. It means less alcohol and less drunkenness, more gemütlichkeit and less strenuous conviviality, more hobnob livers and fewer concrete kidneys.
There is hope, however, for Southerner and Northerner and Canadian if we may credit an observation of Sydney Smith, made in England a hundred years ago. While speaking of the improvements he had observed during his lifetime he said:
“I forgot to add ... that even in the best society one third of the gentlemen at least were always drunk.”
The following quotation of Edward Eggleston is taken from an editorial in American Medicine, January 27, 1906:
“It was estimated early in the eighteenth century that about one building in every ten in Philadelphia was used in some way for the sale of rum, and in Massachusetts, Governor Belcher was afraid that the colony would ‘be deluged with spirituous liquors.’”
How comforting for us to know that our ancestors, from a temperance standpoint, were worse than we are, and that our children in the natural course of events will be better than we are.