The town, too, had a touch of the primitive South about it which I had not hitherto encountered. Memphis was as civilized and modern as any Northern city; but Vicksburg, with its steep-climbing streets, its cavernous, dimly-lighted shops, and its lounging outdoor life, had something of the air of an Italian hill-town. The principal hotel was a gaunt, dingy caravanserai, with no pretence to modernity about it. Here, and here only, I may say, I found the Northern allegation justified, that the South had lagged behind the age in things material.
An odd little incident brought home to me vividly the width of the empire of English literature. |Madrigals by the Mississippi.| At a street corner a sharp-featured Yankee youth, mounted on a large cart, was carrying on a book-auction, with a great deal of lively patter. As I passed, a familiar phrase fell upon my ear:
“And shallow rivers, by whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.”
I stopped and heard him read, not without understanding, the whole of Marlowe’s canzonet. It carried me back from the Mississippi to the Cherwell and the Chess; but what did it mean, I wonder, to the little crowd of loafers, half white, half black, that surrounded his stall? Then, with a little more patter, he modulated into
“As it fell upon a day
In the merry month of May,”
and I left him stumbling over the accentuation of
“King Pandion he is dead,
All thy friends are lapt in lead.”