Southern Stories

by Various

  THE CITY THAT LIVES OUTDOORS

  BY W. S. HARWOOD

  When the wind is howling through the days of the mad March far up in thelands where snow and ice thick cover the earth, here in this city thatlives outdoors the roses are clambering over the "galleries" and thewistaria is drooping in purplish splendor from the low branches of thetrees and from the red heights of brick walls.

  The yellow jonquils, too, are swelling, and the geraniums are throwingout their scarlet flame across wide stretches of greensward, while theviolets are nodding at the feet of the gigantic magnolias, whose hugeyellowish-gray buds will soon burst into white beauty, crowning thisnoblest of flower-bearing trees.

  It is a strange old city, this city that lives outdoors--a city rich inromantic history, throbbing with tragedy and fascinating events, abeautiful old city, with a child by its side as beautiful as the mother.The child is the newer, more modern city, and the child, like theparent, lives out of doors.

  The people seem to come into closer touch with nature than the people ofmost other portions of the land. The climate, the constant invitation ofthe earth and sky, seem to demand a life lived in the open. This citythat lives outdoors is a real city, with all a city's varied life; butit is a country place as well--a city set in the country, or the countrymoved into town.

  For at least nine months in the twelve, the people of this rare old townlive out of doors nearly all the waking hours of the twenty-four. Forthe remaining three months of the year, December, January, and February,they delude themselves into the notion that they are having a winter,when they gather around a winter-time hearth and listen to imaginarywind-roarings in the chimney, and see through the panes fictitious andspectral snow-storms, and dream that they are housed so snug and warm.But when the day comes the sun is shining and there is no trace of whiteon the ground, and the grass is green and there are industrious budsbreaking out of cover, and the earth is sleeping very lightly.Open-eyed, the youngsters sit by these December firesides and listen totheir elders tell of the snow-storms in the long ago that came so very,very deep--ah, yes, so deep that the darkies were full of fear and wouldnot stir from their cabins to do the work of the white people; whensnowballs were flying in the streets, and the earth was white, and the"banquettes," or sidewalks, were ankle-deep in slush.

  All the long years of the two centuries since this old city was born, amighty river has been flowing by its doors, never so far forgetting itspurpose to live outdoors as to freeze its yellow crest, stealing softlypast by night and by day, bearing along the city's front a vast commerceon down to the blue waters of the Gulf, and enriching the city by itscargoes from the outer world and from the plantations of the upperriver. Strangely enough, the great yellow river flows above the city,its surface being nearly thirty feet above the streets in time of flood.It is held in its course by vast banks of earth.

  THE SPANISH DAGGER IN BLOOM.]

  It is a cold, drear March where the north star shines high overhead; buthere, where it seems suddenly to have lost its balance and to havedropped low in the brilliant night, March is like June. It is Juneindeed, June with its wealth of grasses, its noble avenue ofmagnolias, its great green spread of live-oaks--most magnificent ofSouthern trees; June with its soft balm, and its sweet sunshine, and itsperfume-laden air. And if you have never seen the pole star in the skyof the north, where the star is almost directly over your head, youcannot realize how strange a sight it is to see it so low in the sky asit is here.

  There is a large garden in this city--it is, in fact, a part of the cityproper. It was once a beautiful faubourg, now known as the GardenDistrict, where the people live outdoors in a fine old aristocratic way,and where all the beauty in nature seen in the other sections of thecity seems to be outdone. Very many rare old homes are in this gardenregion, with its deep hedges and ample grounds, inclosed in high stonewalls, and a wealth of flowers and noble courts and an aboundinghospitality. But what, after all, are houses to a people that livesoutdoors? Conveniences only; for such a people, better than houses arethe air of the open, the scent of the roses, the blue of the Southernsky, the vast, strong sweep of the brilliant stars!

  If we pause here along this street where run such every-day things aselectric street-cars, we shall see on one side of the splendid avenue asmooth-paved roadway for the carriages, on the other a course for thehorsemen, and in the center a noble inner avenue of trees set in avelvet-like carpet of grass; and here and there along the way, almost intouch of your hand from the open car window, appears the Spanish dagger,with its green, sharp blades and its snowy, showy plume. Not far awaystands a lowly negro cabin, where the sun beats down hot and fierce upona great straggling rose-bush, reaching up to the eaves, beating back therays of the sun defiantly and gaining fresh strength in the struggle. Onsuch a bush one day I counted two hundred and ninety roses.

  This city which lives outdoors must play most in the open, and in itsnoble park, with its vast stretches of bright green, here empurpled bymasses of the dainty grass-flower, there yellowing with the sheen of thebuttercup, one finds the tireless golf-players leisurely strolling overthe links; from yonder come the cries of the boys at ball; and in thefarther distance you may see through the frame-like branches of agiant live-oak the students of a great university hard set at agame of tennis. And yet--is it the air, or the race, or thetraditions?--something it is which makes the sportsmen, like the spring,seem slow to move.

  FAR IN THE PINEY WOODS.]

  And here even the palms grow outdoors in the city yards. And should yougo past the city's limits, and yet within seeing distance of itsblue-tiled housetops, you will find the palms growing rank in the greatswamps, which you must search if you care to hunt for the languidalligators--palms growing so thick and rank that it is quite likelooking into some vast conservatory, with the blue dome of the sky forglass. And here grow the magnolias in their wild, barbaric splendor ofbloom, and the live-oaks, mighty of girth and spread, draped in sombergray moss as if for the funeral of some god of the deep green wood. Atthe fringe of the swamp, tempting you until near to jumping into themorass after them, are the huge fleurs-de-lis, each gorgeous blossomfully seven inches across its purple top.

  To the north, somewhat apart from the reach of the treacherous river,lie the health-giving piny woods, and along the big, sullen stream thesugar plantations, some of them still the home of a lavish hospitality,some of them transformed into mere places of trade, where thrift andpush have elbowed out all that fine gallantry and ease and amplehospitality of an earlier day--that hospitality which will ever remain aleading characteristic of the people. To be a Southern man or a Southernwoman and to be inhospitable--that is not possible in the nature ofthings.

  A PICTURESQUE FRONT IN THE FRENCH QUARTER.]

  It is, when all is said and done, on the gallery that this city livesmost of its life--on the gallery even more than on the evening-throngedbanquette, which is the sidewalk of the North, or the boulevards, oreven the fragrant parks, where life flows in a fair, placid stream. Somethere must be who toil by day in shop, or at counter, or in dimaccounting-rooms, or on the floors of the marts where fortunes are madeand lost in sugar or cotton or rice. For such the gallery is a haven ofrest. If they must pass the earlier day indoors, for them the galleryduring the long, late afternoon, and the ghost of a twilight, and thelong evenings far into the starry night. The ghost of a twilightindeed--the South knows no other. Sometimes I have watched the long,splendid twilight come down over the wild Canadian forest--slowlydelaying; creeping up the low mountains; halting from hour to hour inthe glades below; shade after shade in the glorious sky of the westgradually merging into the dimness of the oncoming dusk; the momentspassing so slowly, the day fading so elusively, until, at last, wheneven the low moon has hung out its silver sign in the west and the starsare pricking through, it is still twilight along the lower earth. Andstill farther to the north, around the globe in the far upper Europe,with the polar circle below you, it is like living on a planet ofeternal day to
sit through the northern light and feel about you theall-pervasive twilight of the land of the midnight sun. But the night isso hasty here, and the day is swift; and between them runs but aslender, dim thread.

  OLD PLANTATION VILLA ON ANNUNCIATION STREET.]

  The gallery is a feature of every house in this city that livesoutdoors, be it big or little, humble or grand, or lowly or mean. It ison the first floor or the second, or even the third, though the third itseldom reaches, for few people care for houses of great height. Indeed,there are hundreds of homes of but one story, full of the costliesttokens of the taste of an artistic people. And the soil below is so likea morass that ample space must be left between floor and earth; while asfor cellars, I have heard of but two in all the great city. Thegallery may run around the entire house, flanked and set off by splendidpillars with capitals rich and ornate; it may run across one end of theresidence and be a marvel of rich ironwork, as fine as art andhandicraft can make it, with, mayhap, the figures of its field outlinedin some bit of color, as gold or green; it may be but a single cheapwooden affair, paintless, dingy, dilapidated, weather-worn, and stainedwith neglect; but a gallery it is still, an important social feature ofthis outdoor life.

  Over the gallery grow the roses; out near at hand a bignonia-vine liftsits yellow flare aloft and throws down a fluttering shower of bell-likeblooms, and all the air is heavy with the scents of the South. Sothrough the long evening the people sit upon the gallery and chat orread or sing or doze or plan or discuss their family affairs. By day thegalleries are protected with gay-colored awnings or those filmy wovensheets of reeds which keep out the glare and let through the light andthe fragrant breeze. Children make of the gallery a play-house; youngpeople here entertain their friends; the elders discuss the affairs of anation or dwell on that wonderful past through which this ancientSouthern city has come tumultuously down through the lines of Castilianand Saxon and Gaul.

  OLD SPANISH HOUSES.]

  If you should take your map of the United States and run your finger fardown its surface until it rested upon the largest city in all thebeautiful South, and the metropolis of a vast inner empire which holdstwo civilizations, one French-Spanish, one American, both slowly, veryslowly, merging through the centuries; or, better still, if you shouldstroll along the streets on a sweet March day, peering into its curiousquarters, watching the beautiful little children and the dark-eyed menand the gaily dressed women and all the throngs of people, city peoplewho can never long remain away from the green fields and the noble oldtrees and the scent of the roses--then you could not fail to hit uponthis charming old place, New Orleans--in many ways the most interestingof all the cities in America, the beautiful city that lives outdoors.