Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

“Oh, I didn’t say it was disagreeable, did I? It wasn’t at all; at least it _is_ not. Quite otherwise, really.”

“Well, Cora, you are the only person I know who can get into a dreadful scrape and have a lovely time there.”

“That’s because I feel so much at home. And then, some way, even if the scrape is personally painful I can enjoy its picturesqueness objectively, you know. That’s the way with this one. Personally it was very painful to be placed in such a position, especially with such people, you know.”

“No, I don’t know, but I’m dying to. I only live to hear your adventures. I never could have stood this sprained ankle if you had not come in to refresh me with your hairbreadth escapes. You are a perfect Sinbad.”

“Now you need not poke fun at me. Queer things do happen to me and I thought you liked to hear about them.”

“Why, I do, I do. I was just telling you how I liked it.”

“Well, you may thank your poor little ankle for preventing you from sharing this adventure, because if you had been able to walk I should have invited you to go to the Valley of Diamonds with me, and then I wonder what you would have done with that conscience of yours?”

“What are you talking about? I suppose you have been entering Tiffany’s vaults?”

“Not exactly—and it wasn’t a Valley of Diamonds, but a Valley of Matinee Tickets, which is quite as remarkable as anything Sinbad saw.”

“Don’t prelude so much. I am harrowed to the last degree.”

“I’ll tell you the whole story.” Cora shook her broad hat back over her tawny hair, dropped down upon a stool and clasped her hands about her knees. Mabel settled herself in the Morris chair with a sigh of satisfaction and anticipation.

“Well, you know this is the 28th of the month. That means I’ve been absolutely broke for a week.”

Mabel accepted this axiom and told her to go on and not be slangy.

“And doubtless you know too that ‘The Golden Quest’ has been running all week at Howards?

“I should think I did know it. I’ve been reading the papers every morning and eating my heart out in bitterness and tears. I’d give my eyes to see that third act. They do say she has the most gorgeous costumes in America, and her voice—”

“Oh, yes, her voice, but lots of people have voices. Not many of us have quarts of diamonds, and I was wild to see those, and I hadn’t a cent except the quarter Uncle Joe gave me when I had my first tooth pulled. That always stands between me and starvation and I like to keep it there; besides, the tickets were two dollars. I could not go to Daddy after the affair of The Gold Buckles, and I felt a certain delicacy in approaching the cook on the subject. I was thinking of selling my new shoes when Laura’s note came saying six of us were to lunch with her Saturday. I thought that would make me forget myself during the worst time and keep me from pawning my gold handled umbrella.

“Saturday came and I rode down to Laura’s, trying to avoid the posters. It was an awfully nice luncheon and Geraldine wore her new green. Beautiful dress but it makes her look bunchy. Well, any way we had just gotten to mushroom timbales—don’t you love timbales? I wonder how they make them—. Well, we were at timbales when the ’phone rang and the maid said someone wanted me. It was Mary, our cook, and she said a messenger boy had just brought some theater tickets and should she send them to me or was I coming back before the matinee. My heart leaped within me, but I calmed myself by considering that they were probably tickets for Stereopticon Views of Palestine, for Aunt Myra is always sending me that kind of thing. So I managed to contain myself sufficiently to ask details. My dear, can you imagine the tumult and wild joy raised in my bosom when Mary read over the tickets and found they were for ‘The Golden Quest’ and there were six of them? I told her to send them to Laura’s and then I tore back to the dining room. You should have heard the shrieks of jubilation. We beat the table with our forks and sang the opening chorus. Six tickets and six girls and all in our happy clothes, the matinee only an hour off and they had all wanted to see it as much as I. When the first wild burst was over, it occurred to me to wonder where the tickets came from. At first they seemed a direct answer to prayer, but I began to think there must be a more palpable source. It wasn’t Daddy. He had not forgiven me enough yet to be so horribly generous. And the only other person was Aunt Myra and she is old fashioned and Presbyterian.”

“What has that to do with it, Cora?”

“Why, it means she regards me as a raging heathen and never shows me any consideration as her niece, but a great deal of attention as a soul to be saved. She sends me little books and a weekly paper, and when a missionary visits her house she invites me over. She hopes to show me the beauties of a Higher Life, but it only sets me against Presbyterianism, because all the missionaries make noises with their soup and it must be awful to belong to a church like that.”

“Cora, you are a disgrace to a civilized family. And besides, it may after all have been your aunt that sent the tickets, hoping to win you through kindness.”

“Mabel, you rave! Aunt Myra regards the theater as the clearest manifestation of the Evil One on earth, and her saintly little Caddie is not allowed to look at a poster. A nephew is visiting them now, and I dare say they are taking him to the midweek lectures on Genesis in the Light of Arabian Topography. I know Aunt hopes to win him to her church, as he has heaps of money and they need a new chapel. As he belongs to her side of the family I suppose he trots along, and perhaps leads the experience meeting. I should not wonder if he wears a lawn tie in the morning,—that is a special mark of sanctity, you know.”

“Cora, I refuse to listen to you. You don’t know a thing about real church life, so leave it alone and go back to your matinee.”

“With gleesome heart, my dear. After I had cut Aunt Myra off my list of possible donors I was absolutely at a loss, and we girls just decided to believe in fairy godmothers, when the boy came with the tickets. How we gloated over that little envelope. I pulled them out, and Mabel—they were box-seats—six seats, box-seats to “The Golden Quest.” Talk about your Valley of Diamonds! We were all dazed and felt as if we were enchanted. It is such a beautiful thing to have your dreams come true in that miraculous way, though to be sure I had no more dreamed of box-seats than I had dreamed of the Koh-i-nor in my new hat. We wondered more than ever, and took turns looking at the tickets for some revealing clue. They were good bona-fide tickets, but that was all. There was no card, no name, no hint; even the envelope was the theater one with just the address scribbled over the ads. on the outside.

“Well, we didn’t care and scrambled into our things and hied us to the theater, while the girls chanted my praises and sang pæans of rejoicing and gratitude. The theater was full when we arrived and everybody was in her most gorgeous things, and we were the haughtiest ever when the usher showed us to our box. Our box! Why, we acted as if we’d always had it for the season. There was a little delay, for some reason, that gave me time to think. The mystery of the tickets puzzled me and was beginning to worry me a little, too. What if there was some mistake and I had rushed into all this with my usual mistaken velocity! The responsibility made me feel a little queer, Mabel, honestly. If it had not been such a frightfully extravagant thing I wouldn’t have thought so much of it. But not many people send thirty dollar tickets around promiscuously among the deserving poor. The girls were as gay as larks, but I couldn’t let myself go some way. They could afford to be gay. They were simply guests, but I,—whose guest was I? It was sort of getting on my nerves when a little diversion came. Six dashing young men came into the theater and stood talking to the usher. They were quite different from the men about here and created a sensation. Any one could see they were strangers and we all wondered where they got their beautiful clothes. One seemed to be the head of the party and he was having quite a lengthy consultation with the usher, so we had a good look at them. We were staring with all our eyes, I dare say, when suddenly that first young man lifted his head from talking to the usher and looked straight into our box—looked not casually and accidentally but deliberately and prolongedly, Mabel, and I began to feel my hat was wrong when he turned back to the usher and shook his head decidedly. Then the usher looked at us and my heart jumped right up into my new stock. It was something about those awful tickets and perhaps there was something the matter and they would come and turn us out of the box. What would the girls do to me and what would the people think and who was that man and who was responsible for the tickets? I was beginning to wish I had never heard of “The Golden Quest” and was sure I couldn’t stand it till the third act, when the usher and the man turned around and went out to the box office. Something was going to happen. What could I do? Here were the five girls at the heights of bliss and anticipation, and here was I in the depths of anxious misery, and there were the five young men staring coolly around, waiting for their friend, and there was the man out at the box office probably demanding that I be seized and turned with my friends into the streets. But what could I do? It wasn’t my fault, for the tickets had been sent to me, surely. Perhaps they had been stolen and sent to me as a revenge from some inhuman enemy. I thought of everything, Mabel, and then the man came back, collected his friends and the whole party with their usher at their head, came down the side aisle toward our box. I had just time to arrange my sad story and be thankful I had on my best hat when they reached the curtains of our box. I started up, but, Mabel, they went right on to the next box and sat down. I breathed again, but not very freely, for surely that man knew something about our box, or was my guilty conscience causing me hallucinations? Yet why guilty? What had I done? Apparently the worst was over now, but I was not at ease and thought the incident might at any moment repeat itself with different results. There was a blare of orchestra and the curtain went up; after one hurried glance at the stage I glued my eye to the door again. Fifteen minutes passed and nothing happened and so I turned around—turned to look into the interested eyes of the man in the other box. Perhaps he was a detective and watching me, but he didn’t look a bit like that, though he had quite a different look from the one a man ordinarily gives a girl in a pretty hat. My hat was very pretty—you remember the big black one—but it didn’t justify, the inquiring interest with which he regarded me. Yet he did not stare. Really he did not, Mabel, but was very decent. I looked at the stage now but sort of felt him there some way, and had a little feeling about the door, too, so I wasn’t very comfortable. When the curtain went down on the first act I expected to have a swarm of irate claimants for the box swoop down upon me, but not a soul appeared, and surely no one would come after that. I took the little envelope out of my bag and looked at it again. Nothing but 1229 Second on it—in pencil—. That was our number all right. Then something struck me. It was just 1229 Second, and ours is 1229 West Second. But after all that could make little difference, as heaps of our things come out marked that way and there is rarely a mistake, as Aunt Myra’s, by some freak of fate, is 1229 East Second, and everybody knows us both and knows which is which. The only accident that ever happened was that awful thing about Mme. Durant and the bridesmaid’s hat—you remember that? That incident made me notice the address, but I could not explain the mystery that way, for no theater tickets like these could ever have been sent to Aunt Myra’s respectable door. These were the things I pondered and puzzled while the play went merrily on. I didn’t see or hear much of it and I don’t believe that man in the box saw much more. He seemed to be pondering something, too.

“At last the thing was over and the crowd trooped out—among them the five young men and _the_ man. You would have called him _the_ man, too, Mabel, for he was quite different from the rest. Such shoulders and such a carriage! He held his head as if he were commanding an army or a yacht. Yet when we passed them in the corridor outside the box he bowed with such respectful humility. He was awfully impressive, but I was too much troubled to consider him long.

“The girls were wild with enthusiasm, so I suppose the play was really good. Anyway the girls were so full of admiration and adjectives that it was very easy to slip away from them a minute. I stepped to the box office and inquired about those tickets. The man was very polite, but didn’t know anything except that they had been ordered by ’phone to be sent to that address. They had been sent, but the man who said he had ordered them arrived shortly before the matinee and said they had not come. The usher assured him they must have been delivered for they had been presented just a few minutes before, and he showed the man the box. Whereupon the man paid for the tickets and procured another box. The man in the box office was very calm about it as he had his money, but I wasn’t. I told him I had gotten the tickets by mistake and must pay for them. He said he had been paid. I tried to show him I must pay, but he seemed to think me very foolish and said if I paid anyone I must pay the man who bought the tickets. I said that was what I wanted to do, but couldn’t he do it for me. He said he couldn’t as he had no idea who the man was or where he could be found. But if I could get the address he would gladly forward the money through the theater. He had begun to look as if he thought it a joke, so I had to be satisfied with that and went back to the girls.”

“But, Cora, what would you have done if he had said, ‘Oh, yes; Mr. Z. is one of our regular patrons. If you will give me the money I’ll give you a receipt and reimburse him.’ You didn’t have your chatelaine full of bills, did you? I suppose you would have passed your gold handled umbrella through the window and given that to the man as a token of your grateful esteem.”

“I haven’t the remotest idea what I would have done if he had asked for the money. As it was, I became from that hour a man-hunter. It has its fascinations as a pastime but is discouraging in its results. My method has its limitations. My only hope is that he can’t escape the girls long and I’ll soon hear of him again. I’m praying I may hear of him before I meet him face to face. Wouldn’t it be ghastly, Mabel, if at a crush some time my hostess should suddenly confront me with this man—and he would cry, ‘This is the young person who defrauded me of thirty dollars worth of matinee tickets?’ Only I know he would never denounce me openly. He would just wither me with silent scorn. Yet he didn’t look withering Saturday. Why on earth didn’t he give me a chance to straighten things out then and there?”

“Yes, it would have been so much more comfortable if he had demanded an explanation as the curtain went down and your guests turned to thank you. No, Cora, I think he did the only thing to do and did it beautifully. His effacement of himself shows he has a heart of gold. Most men would have left some chance to be thanked, any way. Still, it is embarrassing for you. However, I would not look too hard for him till my next allowance came. Your father would never understand this delicate situation.”

“Father! Heavens, no! Not a soul knows but you and the box office man, and I know you understand, don’t you, dear? Isn’t it awful—but isn’t it interesting? I wish you could have seen the man. And I do wish your ankle was well enough to permit of your going about with me, for I know I shall faint when I see him again.”

Cora glanced at her absurd little watch, and jumped to her feet. “Goodness, nearly five, and I’m due at Aunt Myra’s for dinner at seven. It is to meet that nephew of hers and a missionary or two, probably. I hate to waste the time, because if I were somewhere else I might get a clue to my man.”

“So you haven’t met the nephew yet?”

“No, indeed; Aunt wanted to give Caddie a good chance at him first, because she wants Caddie to have what is left after he builds the chapel. As if I would look at the solemn prig.”

“How do you know he is a prig?”

“Because Aunt Myra likes him. Caddie won’t look at him, either, though, because her eyes are full of that downy little theologue, and all Aunt Myra’s talk against worldliness is going to rebound upon her own head. Is that a mixed metaphor? Anyway, Caddie has set her affections on things above and wouldn’t look twice at a million. Good-bye, dear. This burst of confidence has eased my nerves wonderfully, and I’ll come again the instant I find a clue and tell you all about it. You are the only relative I have that does not think me shocking, and I love you—good-bye.” An airy kiss and she was gone, leaving a faint suggestion of violets behind her fluttering veils.

It was half past nine the next morning and Mabel was having coffee and rolls in bed when in rushed Cora, radiant, glowing, and evidently bursting with news.

Mabel rose on her elbow.

“Cora, you have found him!”

Cora settled herself in a fluffy pink heap on the foot of the bed.

“Now, it’s not fair unless you let me tell you the whole affair just as it happened.”

“All right, but do hurry.”

“Well,” began Cora, then paused long enough to remove her hat carefully, toss it beside her on the bed, and pat her little fingers over the most obstreperously crinkly waves around her face. “Well,” she said, “when I got home last night I began right away to dress for Aunt Myra’s. Daddy sent word to tell her he couldn’t come because a business friend had just arrived. Daddy’s friends always arrive just about an hour before Aunt Myra’s dinners. I think he keeps a corps of them just for such emergencies. Then I was nearly late trying to decide whether I’d wear that black chiffon that I can’t afford to throw away just yet, or my sweet new pale green and make the missionaries dream of other worlds than theirs. I finally decided on the green because the other fastens in the back and Jane had a terrible toothache. So I wore the green, and of course that horrid little opal pin Aunt Myra gave me, but it didn’t show much.

“Aunt received me with her usual sanctimonious frigidity and inquired after my health. We sat in stony silence for a few minutes. Caddie was sitting by the window but there were no missionaries about. Finally the clock struck seven. We had waited only three minutes but I was already frozen to my chair. When the clock struck Aunt Myra turned to Caddie and said:

“‘Where is your cousin Robert?’

_I_ should have asked if I were my cousin’s keeper, but Caddie is meek and said he had been detained down town and was dressing, she thought.

“‘Your cousin seems to have no regard for a regular family life,’ said Aunt accusingly, and stalked out, evidently to drag the culprit to his dinner. I knew by the way she shoved the relationship off on Caddie that she didn’t approve of her nephew, and so I thought he might prove a possible person, after all.

“The minute Aunt had closed the door after her Caddie rushed over to me and began to whisper. She is a sweet little thing, but suppressed beyond belief.

“‘Oh, Cousin Cora,’ she said, ‘I have been dying to tell some one and you will be just the one to understand. It is the most exciting thing! Poor Cousin Robert isn’t a bit like us and he has a dreadful time with Mamma. He hasn’t been brought up in our way, but lives in New York in such a worldly family, and he doesn’t think anything of dancing and the theater, and he even plays cards. He seems very nice, though, and as long as that is the way he was taught I don’t know that he is to blame. But Mamma preaches at him all the time and he escapes whenever he can politely, because he is always considerate, even when Mamma is the worst. He has been lovely to me and I told him all about Clifford and he is going to help us. Well, he told me his troubles, too. A lot of his college friends came through here the other day and he couldn’t invite them to the house, because he knew Mamma wouldn’t approve of them, so he gave a little lunch down town somewhere and invited them to go to some play. He ’phoned for the tickets early in the morning and they were to come here, but they didn’t come, so he said he would get them at the theater. Well, Cora, he got home just in time for dinner and was so excited, and afterwards he took me into the library and told me all about it. There was some mistake about the tickets for they had been used already and the people were in the box—,’ Mabel, it would sound awfully silly for me to tell you all she said he said.”

“Go on,” said Mabel, sternly; “I must hear all.”

“Well, Caddie said he said it was the mistake of his life for it showed him the sweetest girl in the world. And then she told me a lot of stuff like that and wound up by asking me if I’d help her find the girl for him, because he had vowed he would spend the rest of his life looking, if necessary, and if she helped him he would see that Clifford had the new chapel. She was explaining it all to me when in came her Cousin Robert. He stopped short, and I was the color of that cushion. Caddie didn’t notice, but introduced us and told Mr. Page that she was sure I could help him in his search, as the girl was probably in my set. He looked hard at me and said he thought I might be able to help him—and, Mabel, I was awfully glad I had on that green. And Caddie said, ‘Tell Cousin Cora what the girl was like, Robert,’—and Mabel, that man had the brazen effrontery to do it. He looked me straight in the eye and told me what he thought of my hair and eyes and nose and even my clothes. And Aunt Myra came in and was displeased. Caddie had told her something of the matinee experience, and Aunt said severely, ‘Are you still discussing that impudent creature at the theater? I should think it would have been enough to have seen her at such a place without her being there on stolen tickets!’ So we dropped the matinee girl, to my infinite relief. When I rose to go home Mr. Page insisted upon accompanying me and told Aunt Myra he hoped to interest me in the plans for the chapel. And on the way home, Mabel, he didn’t allude to the matinee and I hated to drag it in. He kept talking about that chapel and said he wanted me to help him with the architect’s plans, as he wished my opinion on it because I might have to go there some time. He expected to. I suppose he was just talking to kill time. He said he was nearly dead from an excess of virtue that came from staying with Aunt Myra a week, and wouldn’t I please, as one heathen to another, ask him to tea? So he is coming this afternoon, Mabel. What do you think of it all, anyway?”

“I think it is beautiful and just what I always expected, Cora, and I shall order my hat of Mme. Durant.”

“O, you horrid thing!” and Cora buried her rosy face in the counterpane.

THE OLD ORDER PASSETH.

BY GRACE McGOWAN COOKE.

I can’t read, yit I knows de Book,
As you won’t never know it.
“You reads a chapter every day?”
Well, honey, you don’t show it.

Now, gal, you lay it by, an’ sing
De hymn I loves de best,
‘Bout de wicked cease dey troublin’,
An’ de weary be at rest.

De wicked—dat’s dese new style folks,
Pleased wid de things dey see,
Wid ruffled caps an’ uppish ways,—
And de weary—dat is me!

SOURCES OF SOUTHERN WEALTH.

By Austin P. Foster.

In the undeveloped resources of the South lie dormant the possibilities of fortune that “far surpass the wealth of Ormus or of Ind.” For more than two centuries the incomparable climate and soil of this section have commanded the admiration of the world; and during this period fortunes were amassed purely by agriculture, mainly in the last century by cotton, and were handed down from father to son, until the corner stone of the industrial system was wrenched loose by a fratricidal war, and anarchy for a time supervened. As Henry Watterson pithily puts it: “The whole story of the South may be summed up in a sentence: She was rich, and she lost her riches; she was poor and in bondage; she was set free, and she had to go to work; she went to work, and she is richer than ever before.”

Yet what a change from the happy years of ante-bellum prosperity, when the South was by far the wealthiest section of the country, to the desolation, the poverty and the criminal oppression of reconstruction times! After four years of the most sanguinary strife in the history of the world the Southern soldier took up the battle of existence and of maintenance and of rehabilitation. Let Henry W. Grady tell the situation:

“What does he find when, having followed the battle-stained cross against overwhelming odds, dreading death not half so much as surrender, he reaches the home he left prosperous and beautiful? He finds his house in ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves free, his stock killed, his barn empty, his trade destroyed, his money worthless; his social system, feudal in its magnificence, swept away; his people without law or legal status; his comrades slain, and the burdens of others heavy on his shoulders. Crushed by defeat, his very traditions gone; without money, credit, employment, material training; and besides all this, confronted with the gravest problem that ever met human intelligence—the establishing of a status for the vast body of his liberated slaves.

“What does he do—this hero in gray with a heart of gold? Does he sit down in sullenness and despair? Not for a day. Surely God, who had stripped him of his prosperity, inspired him in his adversity. As ruin was never before so overwhelming, never was restoration swifter. The soldier stepped from the trenches into the furrow; horses that had charged Federal guns marched before the plow, and fields that ran red with human blood in April were green with the harvest in June; women reared in luxury cut up their dresses and made breeches for their husbands, and, with a patience and heroism that fit women always as a garment, gave their hands to work.”

None but people whose civilization has never had its equal in chivalric power and grace, whose ability of mind and strength of heart were derived from the purest Anglo-Saxon blood, could have restored their fortune and excelled the material welfare of its past as have the people of the South within the short expanse of forty years.

In its struggles for advancement the South has known, and still knows, two problems:

First, its duty to an inferior, dependent race; and second, its duty to industrial development.

In its conscious and its unconscious evolution and in its conscious and its unconscious solutions of these problems the South has been favored by certain material and climatic advantages:

It possesses by nature the fairest and richest domain on the face of the earth. Here we find a vast stock of the materials proper for the art and ingenuity of man to work upon; treasures of immense worth, concealed from the ignorant aboriginal red man, unknown or neglected by the planter, and utilized only within the last thirty years. Now the rocks are disclosing their hidden gems; huge mountains of iron and coal and limestone, of lead and zinc and marble and phosphate, are pouring forth vast stores; and more than one-half the timber wealth of the entire country is found within the Southern states conserved in virgin forests and reserved for the present and for the coming generations. The South produces two-thirds of the cotton of the world. The water power is enormous and perennial, and the commercial situation relative to the world is unequalled. Of the four essentials to all industries, therefore, iron, wood, cotton and motive power, the South is abundantly blessed. Add to these a perfect climate and a fertile soil which yields every product of the temperate zone, and who shall deny to the South the primacy in the years to come?

The remarkable results effected in the South since the war between the States have been attained principally in the last twenty-five years. Statistics, which are often dry and uninteresting, in this case prove the argument most conclusively.

The wages paid to factory hands in the South, which in 1880 were $75,900,000, had risen to $249,413,150 in 1900, and are now $350,000,000 annually.

The capital invested in manufacturing in the South in 1880 was $257,000,000; in 1900, $1,153,002,368, and now $1,500,000,000, annually, and rapidly increasing.

The value of its manufactured products in 1880 was $457,400,000; in 1900, $1,463,643,177, and now $2,000,000,000.

In the last twenty-five years the increases of other important products were:

Pig iron from 397,000 tons to 3,000,000 tons.

Coal from 6,000,000 tons to 45,000,000 tons.

Phosphate (since 1890), from 750,000 tons to 3,000,000 tons.

Railroad mileage, from 20,600 miles to 55,000 miles.

Cotton, from 5,757,397 bales to 12,162,000 bales.

The grain crop (corn, wheat, oats and rye), from 431,000,000 bushels to 791,000,000 bushels.

These facts are impressive, convincing and full of hope for the future.

The value of the staple crops—corn, wheat, oats, Irish potatoes, rye and hay—in 1904 was $542,121,000; the value of the other farm crops was $550,000,000; and the value of the cotton not less than $515,000,000, besides the cotton seed, amounting to $50,000,000 more. All this amounts to an aggregate sum of $3,657,121,000, earned annually by the South from the sources indicated, not including the lumber and other raw material, which, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, leave the South annually for all the parts of the habitable globe.

No wonder the South is prosperous! And an indubitable proof of its prosperity lies in its increase in the assessed valuation of its property. This increase since 1900 amounts to $1,000,000,000 for the fourteen states of the South. This is partly due to raised assessments, partly to increased prices for its products, but mainly to an increase of customary products and to new products. The increase in the wealth of the South, however, has been steady for the last twenty years, and in that time has aggregated more than $2,300,000,000.

What now is the magic spell which has wrought this abundant prosperity, the sesame by the pronouncing of which is opened the secret hiding place of Southern wealth? _Diversification_ is the word—diversification of crops and diversification of manufacturing and diversification of all industries. Cotton, though a puissant monarch, seated upon a throne, from which for reasons of perfect adaptability of soil and climate he can never be deposed, is not the only king who conducts a beneficent sway for the complex needs of an enterprising people.

The forest king rears his august head and stretches out his hands cornucopia-like from the Potomac to the Rio Grande and from the Gulf to the Ohio, inviting capital and effort to his virgin domains, which, if properly protected, will in the future be a source of perpetual and inestimable wealth; and which even now furnish to the South approximately $400,000,000 per annum.

Phosphate is another king whose sway within his narrow domain is as absolute as is that of cotton. The United States furnishes more than half the phosphate rock of the world, and of this the South supplies all but an inconsiderable quantity. This product, of vast consequences to the agriculture of this section, is a comparatively recent discovery. The active development of phosphate mining commenced in South Carolina in 1868; it was greatly stimulated by the discovery of large deposits in Florida in 1888, and has been attaining greater and ever greater proportions since the exploitation of the immense bodies of rich rock in Middle Tennessee.

And of like importance to cotton and phosphate is that modern industrial triumvirate, coal, iron ore and limestone. These essential elements in the production of pig iron are found in close juxtaposition in thousands of localities from Birmingham, Ala., to West Virginia. In the latter named state are twenty thousand square miles of coal; in Tennessee five thousand; in Alabama still more, besides the smaller fields of Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and Texas.

A few years ago Henry Watterson was criticised as visionary for his assertion that pig iron, which was then selling at Pittsburg at $20 to $25 per ton, could be profitably produced in the South at $10 per ton. Yet it has been sold on the market at Birmingham and other points at $7 per ton. This is rendered possible by the fact that two tons of iron ore, two tons of coal and one ton of limestone can be bought in the ground for an average of twenty cents a ton, or $1.00 for the whole. And the consequence is that Southern iron is offered in the English markets and on the Continent of Europe in competition with the whole world.

Besides the elements of wealth of prime importance, which have heretofore been mentioned, there are many others, the aggregate of which contributes materially to the riches of the South, such as cotton-seed, tobacco, rice, leather, fruits, vegetables, cattle, wool, fine horses and other live stock. But when all is said it is manufacturing which produces most wealth; it is manufacturing which the South most needs, and it is manufacturing which offers in the South a most attractive avenue for investment. Textiles should accompany and follow the production of cotton and wool. Steel should be made from pig iron and machinery from both. Fertilizers should be manufactured in close proximity to the phosphate rock; and furniture and fine finishing in contiguity to the forests.

In all these directions the South has done and is doing much. Twenty-five years ago Judge Kelley of Pennsylvania, “Pig Iron” Kelley, predicted the coming power of the South in industrial pursuits, and said, “The development of the South means the enrichment of the nation.” What though a cotton mill remove from New England to that region of the South which produces the staple; what though a furniture factory from Michigan seek the incomparable forests of the South, or a boot and shoe factory from any other section depart to the localities abounding in hides and tanning bark; their places will be taken by other industries, conducted by other men with new capital.

And the South has another source of wealth which has hitherto been unsuspected, one which means additional annual income by the hundreds of millions of dollars; one which represents a new industry in the economy of the world, and a new source of supply for an ever-increasing demand. It is the _production of sugar from the stalk of the common maize or Indian corn_. The inherent interest in such a surprising announcement and the far-reaching effects of the industry primarily upon the fortunes and the commerce of the South and secondarily upon those of the world, warrant, if they do not demand, a brief account of a discovery which means a new departure in several different directions:

Several years ago Prof. F. L. Stewart, the eminent scientist of Murrysville, Pa., discovered that, if the immature ears of corn be removed at nearly the roasting ear period, a physiological change then takes place in the plant. Its life is greatly prolonged and the vigor which was previously expended toward the maturing of the grain is thereafter directed toward the production of sugar, as certainly, as uniformly, and to as great an extent as is the case of the ripening sugar cane. As a consequence from twelve to fifteen per cent of sugar is then contained in the stalk, instead of the five or six per cent which it ordinarily possesses; and the yield is from 140 to 200 pounds of sugar to the ton, while each acre will produce from twelve to seventeen tons of trimmed stalks. And the cost of the production of sugar by the Stewart processes is only one and a half cents per pound, as against two and one-fourth cents from sugar cane and three cents from sugar beets.

And this is not all; the by-products are as valuable as the sugar. These are paper pulp, cellulose, fine charcoal, stock feed and preparations of value in the arts and sciences.

Here is food for thought indeed! How its application to the South enlarges, for it is the South which is destined to be the main beneficiary of this astounding discovery. Sugar cane cannot be grown successfully farther north than thirty degrees of latitude; the sugar beet cannot be grown successfully farther south than forty degrees of latitude. This leaves a broad strip of ten degrees of latitude, mainly in the South, in which sugar from cornstalks can be and will be produced in enormous quantities. The North cannot share in the profits of this industry, because its season is too short for the maturing of the sugar in the juice.

The effect of this industry will be a revolution in the raising of corn in the Southern states.

And what of the future of the South in its dealings with the countries of Central America and of South America? But a few miles of railroad are now needed to unite the two American continents, and but a few miles of canal will cleave them in twain—union and disunion in commercial harmony. Then will the South come into its own in the advantages of foreign commerce which will not be restricted to its trade with the western hemisphere. The Eastern and the Southern nations need everything that we produce. We need nearly everything that they produce, and in the ensuing reciprocity of the new order of things many indirections of the present laws of commerce shall be straightened.

And yet—shall it be said?—there are those who fear that, in the hurrying strife for wealth, the sterling qualities which characterized the old regime may become atrophied, if not entirely lost. Such fears are futile and unfounded. The present generation is not so immersed in its progress that it is unmindful of the patriotism and example of its forbears; it knows that the hope of the nation in former times rested in the South; that its leaders were the bearers of the ark of the covenant and the puissant directors of the policies of an entire country; to them and to their history, biography and traditions do the present leaders turn for inspiration toward the best achievement. And while industrial conditions have changed, the South needs her sons to-day as much as when she summoned them to the forum to maintain her political supremacy and when she called them to the field to maintain her honor. And they will never fail her.

SOCIETY OF THE FOREST.
(A STORY FOR CHILDREN.)

By M. W. Connolly.

AT MRS. FROG’S HOUSE.

On the bank of a clear lake that lay near the edge of a great forest lived a family in a house all its own. This family consisted of Mr. Frog and Mrs. Frog and a number of Baby Frogs. They lived very happily. The books say that frogs are tadpoles at first, and the books are right; but this is another family of frogs, as you shall see.

In the rear of their house stretched a marsh in the shallow waters of which grew reeds, rushes, willows and water lilies. Here and there a bulging gnarled and knotty cypress knee raised its head above the water. Here and there rotted an old log, moss-covered and sodden. Here and there lay a block of wood left behind by the hewers, a tuft of grass or a mound of earth.

Mr. Frog and Mrs. Frog and all the Baby Frogs visited this marsh.
]

Mr. Frog and Mrs. Frog and all the Baby Frogs visited this marsh every night. They were fond of music and they gave nightly concerts. When the sun slipped down behind the distant pines and tamarisks, and when the stars came out to glisten in the heavens, the entire family left their home and sought the marsh.

Mr. Frog always swam out to a cypress knee that rose a few inches above the water. It was broad and flat and he seemed to like to lie on it.

Mrs. Frog used to sit on a log near by and all the Baby Frogs crowded around her and tried to cuddle up to her. There was not room for all, but the tiniest Baby Frog used to hop up on her back and lie there until it was time to go home.

One of the Baby Frogs never mingled with the rest but hid himself away in a tuft of grass. They said he was “odd.” Why he preferred the grass I cannot say. He was morose and taciturn and probably wanted to be by himself.

On dark nights the concert did not begin early. Mr. and Mrs. Frog and all the Baby Frogs remained quiet and watched Will-o’-the-Wisp flash his lamp about; or they listened to the cry of the witch-dog far out in the marsh.

But my story deals with the moonlight nights, and on moonlight nights the singing began early and lasted until midnight. Some people will tell you that frogs sing all night and they sometimes do; but only sometimes. These same people tell you that frogs croak, but I say they sing and you can understand and enjoy their music quite as much as some of the grand operas.

Mr. Frog usually began. He had a deep bass voice of which he was very proud and when he flung out a rich tremolo, every one else hushed. You could hear him ever so far up the lakeside, and Mr. Peckerwood said he heard him on the other side of the lake.

Mrs. Frog once had a well-trained contralto voice of which she was a trifle proud; but of late years she had so many babies to croon for that she got out of practice and could not sing as she once could. She knew how to sing and she knew she couldn’t sing. And this night she sang worse than usual—she seemed out of sorts.

The “odd” Frog who went away to himself sang whenever he wanted to and in the funniest way. He did not try to make music but just rattled like an alarm clock. They let him alone because he was “odd.”

Another little Frog tried to sing, but he couldn’t. You would have laughed, I am sure, to have heard him try. His voice sounded like a piccolo into which someone was blowing who did not know how to play.

Another Baby Frog had a splendid tenor voice, but he was always trying to sing as his papa sang. The result was that he injured his tenor voice without ever learning to sing bass. People very often harm themselves by trying to do what they cannot do and by leaving undone that which they can do.

The other singer was a Baby Frog with a beautiful soprano voice. And she sang, and sang her very best, whenever she was called on. Her singing was the talk of the whole neighborhood and, at night, when all the Baby Frogs were asleep, Mr. and Mrs. Frog used to talk of putting by something with which to send her abroad and have her voice cultivated. Whether they ever did so or not I cannot say.

The night of which I am telling you, Mr. Frog jumped into the water with a plunk and swam ashore, the rest following him. They returned home and Mrs. Frog soon had all the little Frogs tucked away in bed. Mrs. Frog was restless and nervous, for some reason. She would pick something off the dresser and lay it down again, mechanically. She would move a chair there, and in a moment set it elsewhere. She would fold her hands and sit down only to jump up in a few minutes and go hurriedly to do something quite unimportant.

Meantime Mr. Frog, who had been out, came stumbling in quite angry and demanded to know why the children had not brought in the kindling for the morning’s fire, saying that he should not be left everything to do. He did not notice the pained expression on Mrs. Frog’s face—people fail to see these things, sometimes—and he busied himself in closing up the house and fastening the doors and windows, after Mrs. Frog had shown him the kindling wood in the shadow of the ingle. Mrs. Frog retired, but Mr. Frog lay with his head in the doorway until daylight, and some say that he slept with one eye open. How any one found out I cannot tell, because Mr. Frog’s house was dark as pitch and only Mr. Owl could have seen; and Mr. Owl is too wise to tell anyone if he did. The reason Mr. Frog guarded the door is because Mr. Garter-snake lived in the neighborhood and Mr. Garter-snake is a prowler and likes to feast on Baby Frogs whenever he can find them. Mr. Garter-snake goes home at daylight and never ventures out unless it is going to rain, when he crosses the road in front of people to warn them to seek shelter. At daylight Mr. Frog turned in and slept until high noon. A bright fire was blazing on the hearth and Mrs. Frog was fixing breakfast, and the way she handled the skillets and spiders and sauce-pans, and at the same time urged the little Frogs to get ready for breakfast, was a caution.

Breakfast over and the things cleared up, Mrs. Frog was still restless. Sit still she could not. The Baby Frogs irritated her. She would go out and look about her in front of the door a moment, only to hurry back again for nothing. Her face was pale and her eyes shone unusually. Once she thought if she could scream it would do her great good. She was looking and acting strangely, but Mr. Frog did not notice anything. She announced her intention of going to visit Mrs. Rabbit who lived in the briar patch across the lake. Mr. Frog was a little surprised but made no objection, only observing that he hoped she would be home before sunset as he could do nothing with the Baby Frogs when they got sleepy; and that Mr. Moccasin-snake would be on the lookout for his supper as soon as it was dark.

Mrs. Frog put on her things and powdered her face. She looked at herself in the mirror a moment and then feverishly rushed to the bank and plunged in with a ker-plunk that could be heard a long distance. She kept deep under the water and would first swim this way and then that way; now to the right and then to the left, and she came to the surface a good distance from where she entered the water so that Mr. Moccasin-snake, if he had been on a log in the sun waiting for her, could not locate her. She looked back and saw Mrs. Turtle and Mr. Turtle asleep on a half-floating cottonwood stump, and then she struck out across the lake.

—put on her things and powdered her face.
]

She had not gone far when she began to feel better. Her nervousness and fever left her. She enjoyed a sense of freedom and liberty, and the cool, clear waters were as a health-giving and soothing anodyne to her. The sense of smothering and confinement which she found so oppressive at home had left her, and her spirit expanded and reveled in its new-found independence and she only regretted that Mr. Frog and the Baby Frogs were not with her to enjoy her raptures.

AT MRS. RABBIT’S HOUSE.

Arriving at the opposite bank, which she clambered up in no time, Mrs. Frog was feeling refreshed; she came to a road that fringed the lake, and, crossing this, she came to the briar patch. She went up and down the road, now entering one opening in the briar patch and then another, only to find that they were “blind” and that they led nowhere. One after another she entered these openings and had to come out again. She was about to give up the task and return home and she was soothing her disappointed feelings with the reflection that while she had not found Mrs. Rabbit and returned her call, she had enjoyed the outing immensely and had been benefited by the trip, when she saw a small opening nearly covered by hanging leaves. After some hesitation she entered this and found, to her great joy, that it was an arched pathway, well beaten by travel, which led to the home of Mrs. Rabbit. She followed this until she neared the house and saw Mrs. Rabbit standing in her front yard. Mrs. Frog saluted her cheerily but Mrs. Rabbit pretended that she was frightened and rushed in her house and hid in a heap in the darkest corner. Mrs. Frog followed her in, exclaiming: “La! Mrs. Rabbit, you need not hide. It is only Mrs. Frog that has come to see you and she is not going to hurt you.”

Mrs. Rabbit came out and said: “Why, Mrs. Frog, I am so glad to see you. I have been thinking of you and wondering if you never would come or if you had quite forgotten me. You are looking so well. I really believe, Mrs. Frog, that you are getting younger every day. I am sure you are getting better looking. How is Mr. Frog and the children—the dear things, how I would like to see them—how are they all?”