The girl who loved the land

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THE

GIRL WHO LOVED THE LAND

BY

MAI RIGHTOR MASON

THE CENTRAL BOOK CO.

Nashville, Tenn.

COPYKIGHT, 1917 BV

MAI RIGHTOR MASON

AUTHOR’S NOTE.

Poised there like an eagle at Teneriffe,

I gazed over a scene so fair :

Rivers glinted in the sunlight,

Dark hills in the background bare;

Vast lay the valley for commerce;

Smoke from myriad smokestacks boiled;

There trailed the mighty railways,

Stamping the power of toil.

This third verse of a poem in a Western newspaper aroused a demonstration. I knew a story I could tell these empire builders on that Western plain bordering on the Mississippi, of a man and his bride in the days when the earth was young and day bound with enthusiasm. Joel Craig and his bride, Mary Putnam, left the home mooring at Marietta, Ohio, in a flatboat and floated out into the river and on down into the Mississippi and on to the land of the French.

After the Louisiana Purchase, Nicholas Rochester came as a surveyor into the fertile river basin and laid out the county and built his home, taking as his wife the daughter of Joel Craig. Around the fireside the family heard the story of the pioneer. “The Girl Who Loved the Land,” who is the heroine of this story, felt the stirring of this great future with ardent youth.

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Contents

Chaptek. Page.

I. The Young Surveyor 7

11 . The Land of Dixie 16

III. Education

The war cloud lifted, and peace folded her wings in the waning fires. The debt of war was thrown off and the empire confiscated, absolved.

What struck this wild terror at the heart of the nation seemingly at peace? The assassin's bullet had killed the emancipator. He paid the price of her liberty and sank at Pompey's pillar of progress a martyr. Chaos was again seated in the halls of a progenitor, the factor of regenerating systems, evolving triumphs unknown to civilization, but preserved on this soil where freedom's banner waves. The cords were cut and were gathered not again, for they lay dormant in the master's brain and, like the Atlantic cable in the early years of construction, were in the bottom of the sea, amid the swirl of the ocean's tempest of unrest, unresponsive and silent.

The Johnson administration was grossness. Congress passed over his veto laws of reconstruction. Fifteen million dollars was expended to locate homes and firesides for the dark race. But land sharks grasped the results. Repeated failure stared it in the face, and the plan was at last declared impracticable. The black roamed the South homeless, leaderless, hungry — a menace.

Progenitorship was the demand. But the South again extended a helping hand, and labor's price was now paid to field hands. A feeling of self-respect and self-help was generated among the negroes, and slowly the problem of the ages was being solved.

The war cloud lifted, trade was resumed, and commerce perched industriously on the marts of the South with renewed zeal. Tenfold enterprises were energized ; rebuilding was continued with redoubled effort ; the alluvial soil, having rested, threw up luxurious harvests ; the sunshine fell again on a loving, hospitable people too kind to harm, too able to repine. School systems were inaugurated. White and black alike sought education. Taxes were paid alike on the acre of the white man and the acre of the black man, and doors swung open on the hinges of the plan. The foremost educators were obtained. The roots of a forefather's progeny took root in the warm soil, throwing up tendrils, shooting into strength and robustness tense in fiber. The trained minds of this propelling developed an untaught republic wherever it rested or took dwelling place. So the years of recuperation passed onward.

The Rochester family were among the peers of this realm which fed and fattened. The elder son graduated and entered Harvard. The daughter, three years his junior, stood competitive examinations and entered Vassar. The younger daughter, Dixie, had attained her junior year; but her parents released her from school life for a half year to visit the Old World, which seemingly her nature demanded in formative study. Her Cousin Athenia, of Natchez, would accompany her abroad. The invitation from the cousin, the Earl of Aberdeen, included them both.

**A letter,” said Colonel Rochester, holding it up in his hand, ‘^informs me that the jetties will be sold. Uncle Craig has a munificent offer from Eads for our invention and demands my immediate presence. If you have Dixie ready, wife, she may go with me. It will be dreary for the little girl to take the trip alone.”

''Her wardrobe was sent in last week. Her form is as mature, the dressmaker wrote, as Lucille's. Rowing her boat and horseback-riding have made her mature early."

“Yes, and a fine mind in the fine body," he said. “I was over at the high school several days ago. Her essay was too deep for ordinary range. If she has her opportunity, she will write. Her professor says that her mind is masculine and her decisions strong. If she had been a boy" — and the Colonel sighed — “I would have trained her for the stock market."

“The professor was anxious for her to take this trip. Travel, he said, when the mind is receptive, brings one into living touch with the real and artistic, idealizing its pupil. Her portrayal will be stronger, richer in substance, in developing nature's talent. She delights in lofty altitudes. She was reciting “Prisoners of Chillon" on the balcony last night, and her voice had every inflection of trained elocution," her mother said.

“Children of the home should have the artistic craving satisfied. It is the well of desire; it has its demands and leads on to fruition," her father replied, knowing his child and offering all he could understand and supply.

The trunks were sent to the wharf. The father and daughter took the night packet for Natchez, where Uncle Abraham and Athenia would join them on the down-river trip. They reached this destination in several days and were joined by the remainder of the party on the way to New Orleans.

“Well, Russell, you have brought quite a girl this trip. Only but a few years since Dixie was in pinafores. And Lucille has entered Vassar, and the boy Harvard ! You are getting to be an old man, eh?" asked Abraham Rochester of his nephew.

“Hardly. Not a gray hair in my head. Too busy to get 24 old. Am getting the children ready to take my place, though, if I tire. The South is no place to rest; it is too alive with possibilities. Several more centuries will find it as polished as the comer stone of a palace; and it can take all the polish, Athens or Rome,” he said, looking at the girls. “So you and Waldo Putnam Craig will sell the jetties to Eads? That is a bad move. I would sink them first. What is the matter with Waldo? Are the displacements too numerous? It has saved me more money on reloading cargoes than it pays in revenue, I guess. But the offer is bagatelle. The government will pay Eads a couple of millions when he gets things running smoothly. Put every dollar you can get in the thing. It will pay.”

“It would draw a princely revenue if Uncle Craig could attend to it properly; but the displacements need constant watching until the currents are controlled, and he has decided to sell.”

“Eads saved his money on the ironclads he built during the war, but this steel bridge which he will build at St. Louis will pay more. It will be a fine thing, and it is much needed. Well, cotton prices are at the top notch; but in this fluctuation men do not know where they are, and it keeps one jumping to watch the thing. Last week, you know, it went sailing in the air. The next day the bottom dropped out. They unloaded on the market, and a plunger sent it again to the skies and left for New Mexico. He should have been lynched, as we did our overseers when they killed a negro.”

“We have got another battle to fight with the trusts when the planter's price is doubled, thrown into a pool. It binds throngs too tight for anything but world fight. A man cannot run business on margins.”

The packet reached New Orleans at daylight. The party left the boat at seven o’clock for the hotel, taking breakfast uptown. A carriage was engaged for the young ladies to view the city until the ship left, at 4 p.m. The two cronies walked rapidly up the street to Bond. The attractive city lay before them in early summer dress like a queen, at the entrance to the Gulf, with its heterogeneous shipping, as kaleidoscopic as the port of Algiers, as cosmopolitan as London. The French Quarter was quaint in its attractiveness. The Spanish and South Sea elements afforded material of pleasurable interest to the world traveler. Boulevards two hundred feet wide made Dixie lean out of the window of the carriage in wonderment. The twenty- foot plat running through the center, set with palms and umbrageous flora, was incomparable in its ornamentation. Parks and driveways fell under the raptured gaze of Dixie’s artistic eye, filled to the brim with desire for her homeland to obtain the mellowness of the Florentines in ideal plans for city decoration. The architecture of public buildings, churches, and the noble thoroughfares lined with magnificent palaces of nabobs left naught to be desired.

IV. An Ocean Voyage

**Good-by now, my little Dixie. Enjoy your Old-World tour. It stole my heart. I am glad it is my opportunity to send you to see its wonders. Cram to the limit. We shall go over it again when you return.”

Her father took her in his arms as if his child were too precious to relinquish even to the sights of the Old World, over which romance had woven her golden mesh. Her eyes streamed with tears. How she loved him who lavished all his heart's treasures on his family, ideal in its beauty of protection !

“Hurry, Russ,” his uncle called. They broke away, running the length of the ship. The girls hurried to the deck to watch his departure. Kisses they sent him; their handkerchiefs they waved until his gray figure, standing on the wharf, was lost from view.

The next morning broke with a world of sunshine. The “chug, chug” of the ship's machinery made deep reverberations. The fresh wind, laden with a tonic surpassing in exhilaration, swept across their faces. The blue dome of heaven seemed like a vast camp. The inspiration of the sea fell like some invisible cloud of baptism.

Athenia and Dixie walked the deck arm in arm. The long-dreamed-of voyage was a realization. Delightedly they swept the sea range of long-sought desire, grateful for the ultimate.

“In early childhood I felt that I was the offspring of this mother of the billows, Athenia. Lord Byron revealed to me my birthright of the sea in his incomparable poem. I, too, revel in its billows and toss on its main.”

“You ship like a tar, Dixie,'’ Athenia said. “I never saw one ship so easily."

“The nature is the secret. If you are sea-born, you will sail your craft like a sailor," spoke the enthused girl.

“A new thought; to become inured to the rigors of the sea because of admiration is inexplainable, yet why not true?" replied Athenia. “The earth is full of characteristic natures. You and I are congenial nature lovers. The sea is our home, as well as the forests of the Southland. We revel in nature’s environments."

The ocean spoke to them in an unknown language, filling their hearts with incense from its own censer. The blue expanse rolled on before them, the whitecaps rolling insistently, scudding onward like human things. Its restlessness yielded to nature a satisfying response for soul sustenance.

The sun’s red globe lifted each morning out of the very deep and burned with liquid fire a pathway for the beams of its chambers. All day long they sailed in endless surges of water — no horizon, no dimension ; an endless, pathless continuity of sea.

June piled, scattered, redomed her pillars of cloud; even shimmered the vast expanse with an effulgence of raiment seen only when the sun sinks, burnishing its pathway with gold-tipped waves.

“Dixie, you so enjoy the day," exclaimed Athenia; “wait until the moon reaches full quarter. See the crescent in yonder sky ! No sight on earth is so glorious when it is full."

“The silent stars reflecting their distant light quiet my throbbing heart. If the imperiousness of this night queen demands my homage, I shall lay it down at her feet unstinted, worshipful," replied the girl.

The dinner gong sounded its rat-a-tat. They heard it echo and reecho into the deep — a musical alarum.

“I hear a musical sound reverberating in the deep caverns of the sea. Which way shall we go, Dixie?” asked the smiling Athenia.

‘‘Do the sea shells echo human sound ? They tell me that the Nereids placed the waves’ sounds only in the shells, and that if mortals listen they can hear the waves beat upon the shore, the tempest roar, and the mighty powers of the seas’ battlements toss in her caverns.”

“Let us follow the human element. It covets the morsels from its depths. The repast will elucidate the problem.” Athenia took Dixie’s arm as she finished her conclusion, and they found their way below to the repast of the hour.

But who sleeps late at sea? The gong sounded for early breakfast. So up they rose (leaving their lazy shadows in bed) to see the daylight break through the mists, to see it drop, masklike, from the face of day — a mystery too great to permit one to loll upon a pillow. The deck was crowded with travelers shrouded in long cloaks and hugging close to the railing. The sea brine swept across their faces. They drank of it heroically the first morning; the second morning, like a salt tar ; the third, like a tang, wind, and weather absorbent.

That morning Key West rose in the distance through the fog, lightening a human canvas of South Sea shipping, which was the meeting place of Neptune, a Cuban importing vessel, with which line the ship was connected.

“We will here meet Neptune, the vessel in which grandfather is interested. He desires us to make a call with him. The captain’s son, Carlos, is going to Madrid on our ship,” Athenia said as they watched the ingoing of the ship.

“Is he about our age ?” asked Dixie.

“He is older. He is one of the Cuban insurgents, and he has published something striking in the press. He is slated for a position in the embassy at Washington. His father expects him to arouse great feeling on the subject. He acts and speaks like a tragedian,^* said Athenia as the ship moored.

“That is Southern and natural, but this is sounding. Shall I make applause'' — clapping her hands — “an event, an episode, a culmination of events? Shall we robe ourselves in fitting attire to meet this prince of the royal house?" asked the imperturbable Dixie.

“He is in the line of destiny, my fair cousin. He is prearranged to fight the battles of the oppressed, and it behooves you to relinquish all preconceived claims and behave yourself with seeming indifference, if it breaks your heart," answered the friend of the insurgent.

“Ah! my charming cousin, it is a ruse, a case of ‘hands off.' This is a concoction to quiet the blood of victors which makes us both akin. Shall I not be allowed to converse at all with this specie of Cuban tragedy, this liberator?" insisted Dixie tragically.

They donned fitting attire and followed their respected escort for the call. The affability of the family placed the young people at once on a friendly footing. They were refreshing and unstinted in hospitality. They stood on the deck and noted the transfer of the cargo, Dixie exclaiming at the ease in which the transfer was made by the negroes.

“It seems strange, Mr. Migruil, with what ease the cargo is handled by the negroes. We do not have such extreme grace in our American negro."

“Beg pardon, mademoiselle; they are Spaniards. Look more closely at the faces and bearing," said Carlos Migruil, the son of the Cuban captain.

“Every one is a king. They have long, keen faces and are proud. It is strange that the Spanish nation is considered sluggish. Such facility with which they handle the cargo one seldom sees. It is little burden they make of it,'' said Dixie.

“They are learning the Western power of labor. The utility of man’s strength is arousing dormant energy. But Spaniards are characteristically domineering and repulsive in intercourse. Socially, it is the decadence of the most polished nation on earth,” he told her.

“I breathe slowly, I gasp for utterance, if bad manners show a decadence of culture. What shall our nation do? It is our oppressor. We fight the battle of the defenseless,” spoke Dixie.

“It is the incipient stage in your land where such grossness occurs. Ego is in the superlative degree. When base metals mix with fine gold, the edges will gradually come through the eye of the needle,” Migruil felt it necessary to speak.

“Democracy’s fine arts are dormant in republican fads, crippling fine stock with world license, formerly in the ascendant. What shall we do for clean stock to meet the demand of the peerage at home and abroad, if we do not keep up the grade ?” asked Dixie with upturned, serious face.

“They have inaugurated schools of culture now to finish the females of our best families, to accept defunct moral peerage. The Western girls must wear crowns and become countesses. It is their mission,” he said.

“Our social conditions are aspersed because so many of our chief men live abroad, the stamping ground of our masters of commerce. A relinquishment should make Congress pucker its eyebrows more than the eternal tariff. Furthermore, Congress should lay a tariff on every dollar which they take abroad, which would make them stay at home long enough to make the price of the imperishable estate, and a little duke thrown in with the ancient castle,'^ said democratic Dixie.

*‘You lay claim to diplomacy, and it is your rightful inheritance. We anticipate great denouement from such astuteness developed so early in life. Shall we meet on the floors of Congress and pass some regular up-to-date preservatory bills?” asked the Cuban insurgent slated for the Washington embassy.

“That will be an extra study abroad to learn tactics. Since you have inspired my soul to such a degree, my country may employ me,” she said.

The ship lifted anchor, rounded the Cape, and left behind them the Gulf, the strongest body of water, commercially, in the Western world. The young people debated at supper that evening on its exports beside the Mediterranean Sea. Young Migruil asked Mr. Rochester his opinion. “What are the exports annually? Are we in line to vie with the ancient sea, Monsieur Rochester?”

“Ask me in the twentieth century, my young friend. It is not debatable. Your eagerness to expand your wings gives the Gulf little opportunity to attain her commercial ascendancy. There is no laggard life in our pushing claims. Our industry-making will eclipse moss-grown history in a few years, when tremendous cities develop from the monster markets which our resources afford, fashioning giant industries. The world will tour to see our colossal success. Egypt, Italy, and Greece will be left to the shade of the centipede,” the elder said affirmatively.

“Ah! a ringing blow to classical beggary; but it is true that they make much of ancient art, neglecting the inherent talent which is the rightful stimulative. It has been smothered out with the dole of sight-seers. The whole of the illustrious nations are colossal ruins, subjects of world-wide jeer,’* young Migruil said.

“Break your own chains ; we all will help. It will reveal more than all else the new nation’s power of purpose and will exalt personal industry,” Mr. Rochester said, concluding his repast and retiring from the table.

They came up the hatchway a few mornings after this conversation. Mr. Rochester was standing with two strange gentlemen looking northward with glasses in their hands, seemingly viewing something. The girls lifted their ship glasses, too, to view the outline of an embodied substance, tall, ghostlike.

“An iceberg !” Dixie cried.

“Come here,” Mr. Rochester called; “let me make you acquainted with my granddaughter and my niece, the Misses Rochester, Mr. Duroc and Mr. Marmaduke.”

They both bowed with deep respect, and Mr. Marmaduke offered his hand to his two countrywomen, remarking to Dixie : “We have been enjoying you as a good voyager. This is your first trip across the ocean, your uncle tells us. You are a good shipper.”

“I was bom to the surf,” Dixie answered.

“Ah ! a case of predestination. You will claim the extent of her borders with such a soul as that,” Mr. Marmaduke replied, looking to his gentleman companion for confirmation.

A sharp, shrill whistle startled the ship’s passengers, who immediately thronged the deck with white, scared faces. The ghostlike body was passing leagues away. The sudden lowering of the temperature chilled them; but the resplendent sun shone upon the crest of the iceberg, changing it to a crystal palace, a domed minaret — an awe-inspiring sight. 3 33

Ah, foghorn! ah, sea bells! That monster paid no attention to the fallacies of man. It was a sea traveler, white, colossal, supreme. He who rides the waves, greyhound or armored vessel, heeds your path, for it is marked with ruin. Fathoms deep below the sea sank two-thirds of the bulk from the Arctic.

They dipped “Old Glory'' in the sea. Had they not sighted a vessel? Had it not run its line long before Columbus discovered the Western Hemisphere? This navigator was cruising directly south. Ship after ship was sent to find the lost exploi*er; but the soft winds and wooing of the breeze in southern waters, Circe-like, perfumed with the incense from the isles of spice and magnolia bloom, blew its fragrant breath about it, and the huge giant lost consciousness and never returned to tell of the cruise.

The ship's photographer caught the strange ship just as the sun, bold armorer that he was, glinted down his spear. The picture was hung in the ladies' saloon and entitled “Trip of the Ancient Mariner."

A rally of passengers and introductions followed after the merciful escape from a salty sea burial. Several selections were sung. A chorus of voices rendered “The Eye on High." The sweetest tenor caught Dixie's ears. She bent her head the more directly to catch the sound and found that it came from the same gentleman she had that morning been introduced to. Some imp of fate turned his eyes directly on her face. They grew gloomy with invisible sorrow. The cadences fell to a lower chord. Too unhappy to linger near, she cast her cloak about her and went the length of the ship. The music, meant to dispel the averted catastrophe, fell on her sensitive nature with redoubled force, and her soul shivered in her body. The black cook, in big white cap and apron, his arms akimbo, stood directly in the way, listening to the music.

“What am ther matter wif 'ittle Miss Dixie? Yer am all scared out. Let Sam show you feesh in his 'frigerators,” he continued, pointing his hand upward ; “he watches.^’

The refrigerators were filled with a display of coats of gleaming mail, trout, bass, perch, and great catfish glittering in shining array — the negro artist delighted as a Rembrandt. He opened the fruit storage — golden-lipped figs bursting with tufted crests, pineapples, dates, oranges, bunches of rare bananas, and on cool green moss lay luscious bunches of grapes; vegetables of rich coloring and of the greatest abundance and variety, which only the tropical West Indies could produce.

“The warm tropics extract full due from nature, Sam, a wealth's store unsurpassed; nature is a prodigal spendthrift with the soil. You will be an importer some day, when you weary of the sea. You are a young man yet. Uncle says that you are the best judge of fruit in the South Sea trade," Dixie said to the family servant, who had been born and reared in her uncle's household.

“Yessum ; Sam help hisself some. He keeps his money in New York. He 'gin in little while. He knows fruit and wegetables — gude knowledge of tropics few men beat."

It was a great dinner served that day, a Thanksgiving dinner. Now the peril was past, and the spirits of the party had revived. A happier repast was never enjoyed. Some returned to the cabin for a game of cribbage. Many turned deckward. Athenia and Dixie and Carlos added their jollity to the party ere they reached the deck. Dixie was glad she had left her books beneath her rug, since literature's escape seemed probable; for “two's company, three a roomful," Gibson paints. Dixie was quite absorbed in sea views as she strolled forward on the deck, but presently she turned and found her accustomed seat.

“A voyage is companionship, not retirement,” a voice said at her elbow. She looked up and saw the inquiring gaze of Basil Marmaduke.

“Have I been selected on the entertaining committee? My services are obtainable, if necessary, and there are new fields to gather from,” replied the young woman.

“Thistle waste, you surmise. You have not wandered through the garden of Hesperides,” Marmaduke said.

“How can I decide whether the soil is as productive as the ancient gardens were — if the golden apples should be stolen by Hercules ?” She glanced at him immaturely, as a girl might. “Hercules appears to have lavished skill preparatory to his toil.”

“Well said, madam; and to so adroit a compliment I feel constrained to respond. He has strolled upon a species in the gardens which botany has not classified, so tropical that he fears, with much trepidation of daring, to analyze the wondrous specimen.” He looked at her with lighted eyes of keen gratification.

“What’s a man unless in white flannels?” Dixie inwardly thought. A rich four-in-hand flaunted in the breeze, and the daintiest silken shirt she noticed further as he stood before her in manhood’s years; his black eyes, black hair, and white teeth glittering even as the pearls on her string. Never had her girlhood’s eyes beheld so attractive a personality as the stranger who came to her for a tourist’s entertainment. She answered him hastily : “There is a flower I left in my father’s conservatory, the night-blooming cereus. Would it suggest to you a specimen?”

“Blooming in the daylight and sweetly, the night-blooming cereus means a soul born out of great sorrow and prickly because of the world sting/' he replied.

“I dare not gainsay your mature knowledge. The famous plant greatly interested us. My father brought it from Old Mexico. It was so peculiar in development that we placed it among botanical curiosities. It has no counterpart in all flora. So I shall bask all day long in sunshine and close my petals until the sun shines again/' she replied.

“And play your harp, talk books, travel, and dance the long evenings away until the ship makes her voyage."

“It is good of you to take your time with a child's entertainment. We only tease," said Dixie.

“Do not think me old. My thirty years are as a tale which is told. Years ago, when I was like you, the world was very dear. But I go back and forth ; no rest has my foot," he said sadly.

“A Rebel never surrenders his flag. The bravest deed of the South was to bind up the wounds of her soldiers, that no scars might be seen. I wear the white cross. How can I serve you ?" she inquired.

He looked at the girl, who knew nothing of progressive heart affairs, and moaned out his bitterness, saying : “I travel to wear out pain. The hour's amusement is mine."

“Out of the tomb lilies sprang; out of sorrow, hope. Man's destiny is masterful, creative; his soul reaches the eternal. What part have you had in the work of the age? Is your name inscribed on the tombs of the Athenians? Is the Trajan statue, pointing its marble to the sky, in your name ? What in your own beloved land commemorates your ideal gift to its aggrandizement?" Her voice sank low as she questioned, looking full into the face of her companion.

“Child, child, you have not dipped your soul in life's bitterness. Mine is twisted in its furnace,” he said pleadingly.

‘*Not in its crucible of existence, for the sorrows of the world lie deep. Could a woman’s hand minister to the pain?” she asked comfortingly.

“Some sorrows are too deep for a woman to reach. Time only wears out the sufferer. Would that I could take the remedy you propose! World diversity has been the only release,” he said mournfully.

“Hope sprang from the head of Pallas. In yonder land the great hearts of our forefathers gave all life, all hope — planted commerce in the wilderness. You are its inheritor. There is freedom there to work out man’s highest ideal, unbiased by king or creed. Is there not some fair temple to rear, some adornment of its cities, some plan of amelioration in the rough places, where the less fortunate walk the valleys of life, to cast blossoms? If some sacrifice, the pain would be forgotten in the remembered duty.”