arduous responsibilities are those of pleasure seeking and curious notions.
Though having touched both Florida and Texas, I had never been as far south as the crescent city at the mouth of the Mississippi, so that on this trip it was my object to appease an insatiable desire by thoroughly acquainting myself with the natural and historical charms of this quaint old Southern city, and particularly witness the festivities of the Mardi Gras.
In picturing New Orleans in phantasm, I had always had a conception of a beautiful city of Spanish architecture, dotted with churches and cathedrals whose chimes pealed sweetly overhead, and along whose flagstone streets the beautiful Creole belles vied in angelic accord with their more dusky sisters, the quadroons; darkies rolling cotton bales on the levee, their negro melodies interspersed with the deep sonorous steam-boat whistles on the wide-spreading river; haunts of the vendetta and the mafia; southern homes shaded by palmetto, whose confines exhaled in fragrant quintessence the aroma of magnolia; dusky “Dinahs” in red bandannas
picking cotton, as the old negroes thrummed the banjoes near the cabin where the pickaninnies played around the door. These were my early impressions of the gulf-cities of “Dixie-land,” and how many are there who have seen the dramatization of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” or read George W. Cable’s stories of the Creoles of Louisiana, who have not pictured just such scenes as these?
On my arrival at Washington, D. C., the sun shone bright in southern warmth, in combative contrast to the bleak sweeping winds of the north, and, having ample time in which to reach New Orleans before the beginning of the Mardi Gras season (St. Valentine’s Day), I decided to see some of the points of interest overlooked on previous visits to the capital. One in particular was the trip to the tomb of General Washington, at Mount Vernon, a short but very beautiful ride by steam-boat on the Potomac River.
During this period two weighty questions were being handled by the silver-tongued orators of the Senate,—namely, the ratification of the peace treaty and the retention of
the Philippine Islands. For three days I attended this session of Congress to hear the elucidating arguments on these subjects, as propounded by Senators Foraker, Hoar, Tillman and Vest, who seemed to handle in arbitrary opposition the burden of the questions. These debates were exceedingly interesting, the eloquent orators at times becoming so animated as to cast parliamentary rules asunder, and occasionally requiring the necessity of being rapped to order by the Speaker of the House.
After spending several pleasant days in Washington, I journeyed to the Pennsylvania Railroad station to catch my train on the “Sea-board Air Line” for the city of Atlanta. While having my ticket validated for berth reservation, a very military-looking soldier appeared at the window of the ticket-office and made inquiries regarding a train for Atlanta, Georgia. Having been recently mustered out of the service, I sought to learn the fellow’s regiment; addressing him interrogatively, I was informed that he had enlisted in Philadelphia, and was en route to Fort McPherson, Georgia, to join
the Third United States Cavalry. Although the fellow appeared very military, he said this was his first enlistment, but that he had just stepped out of the stirrups of a saddle in the Indian Territory, where his experience as a cowboy he related in a most interesting manner. Boarding the train together, we were ere long engaged in a hand of “seven up,” as the wheels clipped off the miles at the rate of forty-eight per hour.
At Columbia, South Carolina, the train was boarded by a large number of soldiers of the Second Tennessee Volunteer Infantry, who had recently been mustered out with their regiment, and were en route to their respective destinations. Two sergeants—namely, Clark and Gautrell, two very agreeable fellows—joined us in a sociable game of cards. Although they had served in a Tennessee regiment, their homes were in Georgia. The conversation from this point on was all war talk and “broncho-busting.” The cavalryman’s interesting anecdotes of branding and roping cattle, the tedium of the “round-up,” the vigilance necessary in protecting calves from the howling