BATON ROUGE was clothed in flowers,like a bride--no,much more so;like a greenhouse.For we were in the absolute South now--no modifications,no compromises,no half-way measures.
The magnolia-trees in the Capitol grounds were lovely and fragrant,with their dense rich foliage and huge snow-ball blossoms.
The scent of the flower is very sweet,but you want distance on it,because it is so powerful.They are not good bedroom blossoms--they might suffocate one in his sleep.We were certainly in the South at last;for here the sugar region begins,and the plantations--vast green levels,with sugar-mill and negro quarters clustered together in the middle distance--were in view.And there was a tropical sun overhead and a tropical swelter in the air.
And at this point,also,begins the pilot's paradise:a wide river hence to New Orleans,abundance of water from shore to shore,and no bars,snags,sawyers,or wrecks in his road.
Sir Walter Scott is probably responsible for the Capitol building;for it is not conceivable that this little sham castle would ever have been built if he had not run the people mad,a couple of generations ago,with his medieval romances.The South has not yet recovered from the debilitating influence of his books.
Admiration of his fantastic heroes and their grotesque 'chivalry'doings and romantic juvenilities still survives here,in an atmosphere in which is already perceptible the wholesome and practical nineteenth-century smell of cotton-factories and locomotives;and traces of its inflated language and other windy humbuggeries survive along with it.It is pathetic enough,that a whitewashed castle,with turrets and things--materials all ungenuine within and without,pretending to be what they are not--should ever have been built in this otherwise honorable place;but it is much more pathetic to see this architectural falsehood undergoing restoration and perpetuation in our day,when it would have been so easy to let dynamite finish what a charitable fire began,and then devote this restoration-money to the building of something genuine.
Baton Rouge has no patent on imitation castles,however,and no monopoly of them.Here is a picture from the advertisement of the 'Female Institute' of Columbia;Tennessee.The following remark is from the same advertisement--'The Institute building has long been famed as a model of striking and beautiful architecture.Visitors are charmed with its resemblance to the old castles of song and story,with its towers,turreted walls,and ivy-mantled porches.'
Keeping school in a castle is a romantic thing;as romantic as keeping hotel in a castle.
By itself the imitation castle is doubtless harmless,and well enough;but as a symbol and breeder and sustainer of maudlin Middle-Age romanticism here in the midst of the plainest and sturdiest and infinitely greatest and worthiest of all the centuries the world has seen,it is necessarily a hurtful thing and a mistake.
Here is an extract from the prospectus of a Kentucky 'Female College.'
Female college sounds well enough;but since the phrasing it in that unjustifiable way was done purely in the interest of brevity,it seems to me that she-college would have been still better--because shorter,and means the same thing:that is,if either phrase means anything at all--'The president is southern by birth,by rearing,by education,and by sentiment;the teachers are all southern in sentiment,and with the exception of those born in Europe were born and raised in the south.Believing the southern to be the highest type of civilization this continent has seen,'the young KNOXVILLE,Tenn.,October 19.--This morning a few minutes after ten o'clock,General Joseph A.Mabry,Thomas O'Connor,and Joseph A.Mabry,Jr.,were killed in a shooting affray.
The difficulty began yesterday afternoon by General Mabry attacking Major O'Connor and threatening to kill him.
This was at the fair grounds,and O'Connor told Mabry that it was not the place to settle their difficulties.
Mabry then told O'Connor he should not live.
It seems that Mabry was armed and O'Connor was not.
The cause of the difficulty was an old feud about the transfer of some property from Mabry to O'Connor.Later in the afternoon Mabry sent word to O'Connor that he would kill him on sight.
This morning Major O'Connor was standing in the door of the Mechanics'National Bank,of which he was president.
General Mabry and another gentleman walked down Gay Street on the opposite side from the bank.O'Connor stepped into the bank,got a shot gun,took deliberate aim at General Mabry and fired.
Mabry fell dead,being shot in the left side.As he fell O'Connor fired again,the shot taking effect in Mabry's thigh.
O'Connor then reached into the bank and got another shot gun.
About this time Joseph A.Mabry,Jr.,son of General Mabry,came rushing down the street,unseen by O'Connor until within forty feet,when the young man fired a pistol,the shot taking effect in O'Connor's right breast,passing through the body near the heart.The instant Mabry shot,O'Connor turned and fired,the load taking effect in young Mabry's right breast and side.
Mabry fell pierced with twenty buckshot,and almost instantly O'Connor fell dead without a struggle.Mabry tried to rise,but fell back dead.The whole tragedy occurred within two minutes,and neither of the three spoke after he was shot.
General Mabry had about thirty buckshot in his body.