"Well, you see, they have a net, and one stands on one side and one on the other—yes, ma'am, there can be two on each side—and one serves. What? Yes, he hits the ball over the net, and it has to go in the opposite court on the other side, and then if that one doesn't send it back—Yes, the court is marked with lines—why, that counts fifteen. The next count is thirty. What? No, ma'am, I don't know why they count that way. No, it's just the way they do in lawn tennis. If your opponent has nothing, why, they call that 'love.' Yes, that's it—l-o-v-e—just the same as when anybody's in love. No, ma'am, I don't know why.... So that's the way they count.
"No, ma'am, the lines are boundaries. You have to stand in a certain place and hit the ball in a certain place.... No, I don't mean that way. You've got to hit it so it lands in a certain place; and the one that's playing against you has to hit it back in a certain place, and if it goes in some other place, then you can't play it any more. Oh, no! Not all day. I mean that ends that part, and you start over. You just keep on doing like that."
But though it was apparent that he considered his explanation complete, the lady at the other end of the wire was evidently not yet satisfied, and as he began to struggle with more questions we left the shop and went to the Gilmer Hotel to see if any mail had come for us.
The Gilmer was built by slave labor some years before the war, and was in its day considered a very handsome edifice. Nor is it to-day an unsatisfactory hotel for a town of the size of Columbus. Its old brick walls are sturdy, and its rooms are of a fine spaciousness. Downstairs it has been somewhat remodeled, but the large parlor on the second floor is much as it was in the beginning, even to the great mirrors and the carved furniture imported more than sixty years ago from France. Most of the doors still have the old locks, and the window cords originally installed were of such a quality that they have not had to be renewed.
The Gilmer was still new when the Battle of Shiloh was fought, and several thousand of the wounded were brought to Columbus. The hotel and various other buildings, including that of the former Female Institute, were converted into hospitals, as were also many private houses in the town.
Though there was never fighting at Columbus, the end of the war found some fifteen hundred soldiers' graves in Friendship Cemetery, perhaps twoscore of the number being those of Federals. The citizens were, at this time, too poor and too broken in spirit to erect memorials, but several ladies of Columbus made it their custom to visit the cemetery and care for the graves of the Confederate dead. This movement, started by individuals—Miss Matt Moreton, Mrs. J. T. Fontaine, and Mrs. Green T. Hill—was soon taken up by other ladies of the place and resulted in a determination to make the decoration of soldiers' graves an annual occurrence.
In an old copy of the "Mississippi Index," published at the time, may be found an account of the solemn march of the women, young and old, to the cemetery, on April 25, 1866—one year after Robert E. Lee's surrender—and of the decoration of the graves not only of Confederate but of Federal soldiers. It is the proud boast of Columbus that this occasion constituted the first celebration of the now national Decoration Day—or, as it is more properly called, Memorial Day.
It should perhaps be said here that Columbus, Georgia, disputes the claim of Columbus, Mississippi, as to Memorial Day. In the Georgia city it is contended that the idea of decorating soldiers' graves originated with Miss Lizzie Rutherford, later Mrs. Roswell Ellis, of that place. The inscription of Mrs. Ellis' monument in Linwood Cemetery, Columbus, Georgia, states that the idea of Memorial Day originated with her.
It seems clear, however, that the same idea occurred to women in both cities simultaneously, and that, while the actual celebration of the day occurred in Columbus, Mississippi, one day earlier than in Columbus, Georgia, the ladies of the latter city may have been first in suggesting that Memorial Day be not a local celebration, but one in which the whole South should take part.
The incident of the first decoration of the graves of Union as well as Confederate soldiers appears, however, to belong entirely to Columbus, Mississippi, and it is certain that this exhibition of magnanimity inspired F. W. Finch to write the famous poem, "The Blue and the Gray," for when that poem was first published in the "Atlantic Monthly" for September, 1867, it carried the following headnote: