Part 2

Fairfax Sevier, less than two years older than his sister, Virginia, was a handsome, brilliant, lovable young fellow, endeared to her by the same qualities and the same odd unexpected little lapses and weak spots which endlessly charmed and perplexed her in her father.

The general was a peculiarly high-minded, honorable man, with all in his character that makes for good citizenship. He had brought through a youth which was not without its little scattered patches of wild oats, and a famously dare-devil military career during the Civil War, an unpollutable vein of childlike innocency. It was not that he failed to see evil, or to know it and understand it. But he saw and knew these things as a child does, intelligent, but unsoiled.

His most marked characteristic was a determined disposition to meddle with the affairs of no human creature, to refuse authority, because it implied responsibility; to let—as he felicitously phrased it—every fellow go to the devil his own gait.

This trait made him, among his children, always more a brother than a parent, and was most amusingly displayed during their infancy and childhood. He would stand aloof from a small offender who was weltering defiantly in infantile crime. Bending his handsome head, he would look from his very considerable height down to the little sinner before him, and addressing it in the most confidential tone of perfect equality, remark:

“You’re making a pretty mess of things there; now, aren’t you? Think you want to bust that, do you? Do you know, you’re going to be mighty sorry when you get done this business? And like enough your mother’ll spank you, too.”

When, as had occurred twice of late, Fair was led to participate in wild sprees, this was scarcely the father to whom an appeal for assistance or the exercise of salutary authority would be addressed. Virginia could hear him saying, with a flash of those big dark eyes, “Well, well, Ginnie, I can’t keep him in a glass case, just because he happens to be my son. Let him see the folly of it. Let him find out whether he wants to be a drunkard or not. Every man must do that for himself. Your conclusion—or mine—that he doesn’t want to do this sort of thing, isn’t valid. It could not be incorporated into his character. He must be free to make some selection of his own.”

Arrived at the cabin, a belated, waning moon showed them the little hut, dark and silent. “I boun’ y’ Marse Fair done break dat lamp. Hit ’uz burnin’, time I lef’,” muttered the old man.

The sound of their wheels brought a dusky, straggling group to the gate. The nucleus of this group was Uncle Vete’s last wife, a round-faced young mulatto woman, with a baby in her arms. About her churned and bobbed a tribe of various sizes, part of them clinging to her skirts and whimpering sleepily.

Cindy was a cheerful soul, with a giggle ready to burst forth upon the slightest provocation, or no provocation at all. Virginia glanced in distress at the baby. “Oh, Cindy,” she cried, “poor little thing! Why, it’s too bad for you to be out here in the night air with that young child.”

“He ain’t des’ so overly turrible young, Miss Fa’ginny,” returned Cindy with her comfortable chuckle. “De big chillen mo’ skeerter dan whut he is.”

Virginia, full of indignation, sprang from the carriage. “Tek keer, honey!” cautioned Uncle Vete, as she hurried through the yard. “Dey’s th’ee o’ my youngest sleepin’ dah un’neath dat ’simmon tree.”

Avoiding the slumberers beneath the persimmon, Virginia made directly for the door.

“Hol’ on! Hol’ on! My precious chile! Yo’ gwine get yo’se’f shot!” urged Vete. Cindy screamed, and all the children who were awake began to wail in concert.

Like a sensible girl, Virginia stood aside from the panels, back where the heavy logs protected her. (“An’ one dem shots might sail th’oo de chinkin’ des’ easy ez not!” Cindy whimpered.) She struck on the door and cried, “Fair—Fairfax! Open this door!”

The answer came in the form of a bullet.

At the report, Cindy uttered a yell so efficient and comprehensive that Virginia supposed her no less than mortally wounded. The children, even those lying so soundly asleep on the ground that they had not been wakened when Virginia stepped almost upon them, rose up and fled to their mother’s wide-spread, sheltering arms, like a brood of alarmed chickens fleeing from a hawk.

“Eph’um! Bandoline! Baxter! Pearline! Commodory? Whey is you-all—whey is you-all? Oh, Lawdy! _Lawdy!_ I is got mo’ child’en dan dis! I _knows_ I’s got mo’ child’en dan whut dis is! Young Marse done kill some on ’em!” rose Cindy’s excited shriek.

There came a second shot, before Virginia rapped again, crying angrily, “It is I, Virginia. Put up your pistol and open the door!”

After a very long silence within the hut. “I ’spects dey done napped off,” mildly suggested Uncle Vete. Virginia was preparing to knock again, when a little gust of wind arising, the door swung silently open, showing that it had been unbarred for some time.

Virginia stepped into the room, carrying one of the carriage lamps and unheeding Uncle Vete’s caution to “Go easy, honey, an’ holler ’fo’ you git inside, so dey know who comin’.”

Fair’s companion lay sprawled upon the gay patchwork quilt of Cindy’s best bed. He was, or pretended to be, sleeping heavily. The hack driver would have to be called if he was to be roused and gotten into the vehicle.

At the table, his head among half-filled and empty glasses, and the wreck of a poker game, sat Fairfax Sevier. Virginia went with averted eyes past the bed to her brother, and shook him by the shoulder.

“Buddy,” she said huskily, “Buddy, dear, I brought a hack out for you. Can you walk to it?”

“Who’s goin’—take care—Parke? Parke’s been drinkin’,” explained poor Fair, with something like a whimper.

Virginia turned to the bed; and contempt fell cool upon her suffering. A face in drunken slumber is not calculated to command respect, even to win much sympathy.

The girl took the shock like the daughter of warriors that she was. “Does Parke Winchester drink now?” she inquired, finally, of the negro.

Again Vete stole that quick, side-long glance at her. “I ain’t never knowed de time Marse Parke quit,” he returned finally. “He might fool de white folks ’bout hit, but he ain’t take dat trouble wid de niggers. Him an’ Marse Fair been at my house mo’ dan onct lately.”

Parke, then, had not only never given up his drinking; he had been actually initiating Fairfax Sevier into the great and inglorious guild of topers, while he deceived the sister with promises that he would find who it was Fair drank with and look after the boy.

She was free; but not yet could her heart rise to the knowledge. The bowed, boyish figure before her, the degradation of that sleeper upon the negro’s poor bed—these left her very pitiful. “He’ll be quiet and behave himself now, Uncle Vete.” she said; “I’ll take Fair with me—we can’t move him,” indicating Winchester. “Let him sleep.”

“O, yassum, yassum. He be all right in de mawnin’. He been all right ternight, ef I could jest er got hol’ ’er ’im. Dishyer negoshulatin’ wid ’er man th’oo er do’, an’ him er doin’ his talkin’ wid er gun, hit’s unsartin kin’ er wuyck.”

Still in a daze Virginia picked up a pistol from the floor, turned the cylinder to see that it was unloaded, and dropped it into the pocket of Parke’s light overcoat.

At the action, Fair showed his first consciousness of her presence “You’ll get yourself shot one—these days, Virginia,” he muttered, half irritably, half penitently. “—’dvise you—let such things ’lone.” And one could not have said whether he meant, by this, her present handling of the firearm itself, her former reckless demand that he open the door, or her presence on such a scene.

Uncle Vete assured Virginia that he would look after Parke for the night, and would see that he reached home in the morning. She gently declined the old man’s offer to return to town with her, and promised to send Beelzebub out by Sam, Cindy’s eldest, who was acting as house-boy at the Sevier home. The drive in the night air, and Virginia’s presence somewhat sobered her brother. “Does dad know?” he asked, as they neared home.

“I didn’t wake him,” responded Virginia.

Fair turned, as he lay with his head against her shoulder. He was beginning to be deathly sick—the end of all Fair’s essays at drinking. “You’re a good girl, Virginia. Mighty good girl. I reckon you’ll get your reward in heaven.”

But, driving home under the stars, freed from a self-imposed bond, warned that she might in future protect this well-beloved sinner whose head lay on her breast, ready now to accept the love of the man she loved, with no shadow on her conscience—Virginia felt that she had her reward here, now and in this world.

THE SPINNER.

BY ELOISE PICKETT.

Wearied to death of my thoughts! Is there none, in this epoch of wondrous wares, Will sell me a fair, sweet dream?

I summoned my spirit, this morn, to be chid For her endless weaving of gloom; But she lifted me retrospective eyes, Burning and dry (for the tears, dammed back, Have found them a pool in my heart); Her face was wan, and her mouth was set In the hard, thin line of resolve. And I left unsaid my stern rebuke, But her answer cried loud in her mien: “_I_ weave; but the warp and the woof are thine; Thou madest them yesterday.” And so I watch, with sickening hope, As her busy fingers ply ’Mongst threads from the throbbing Other Days, And wisps from the ominous Days to Come, And skeins from the stagnant Now.

Wearied to death of my thoughts! Is there none, in this epoch of cunning skill, Can weave me thought-fabrics fair?

MEN OF AFFAIRS

Joseph W. Bailey.

One of the most youthful members of the government’s gravest and most august legislative body is Senator Joseph W. Bailey, a typical representative of the biggest, the breeziest and the most untrammeled, if not the most patriotic and progressive commonwealth in the Union. A natural leader, an orator of plausibility and power and a politician of resource and acumen, he is besides admittedly one of the ablest constitutional lawyers in public life.

Though a native of Mississippi and a legal product of Cumberland University, Tennessee, Senator Bailey is a Texan seemingly to the manner born. He looks, speaks, thinks and feels Texas, and having won his spurs so creditably in the congressional jousts his people have gratefully recognized his talents by entrusting him with the higher responsibilities of senator.

While Senator Bailey is a virile product of the present and coming generation in the South he has not been inclined to relinquish the habits, dress and thought of the passing regime and his picturesque personality is doubtless as readily recognized by resident of and visitor to Washington as any other public character of the times. In no particular do his old-school propensities more emphatically display themselves than in his native love for rural life and natural objects. His chief hobby comprises the maintenance of an expansive estate whereon he rears the sportive thoroughbred, so dear to the heart of the rural Southerner, and whereon he spends in the open very much of his leisure time.

Senator Bailey is a close student of men, politics and affairs, and is of the South, social, though he has no taste for the conventional society of the city.

James D. Porter.

For nearly half a century has the Honorable James D. Porter figured eminently but modestly as a public servant politically, civilly and commercially. A native of Tennessee, in which State he has spent nearly all of his eventful life, he was born at Paris, in 1828, and was admitted to the bar in 1859. With a disposition toward the public service, from a State legislator he became a circuit judge, and from the bench he ascended to the gubernatorial chair, which he was twice called upon to occupy. His large and worthy talents coming to the notice of President Cleveland, he was invited during his first term to serve as Assistant Secretary of State, which he did with such satisfaction as to receive during the President’s second term his credentials as the government’s official representative to Chili, in which capacity he attracted attention by his tactful reestablishment of friendly relations between the two countries.

In the active commercial affairs of life he has been likewise prominent, being sometime president of the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railroad Company, and as a soldier of the gray he gallantly participated in many of the fiercest conflicts of the war as Adjutant General under General Frank Cheatham.

In 1901 he was selected by virtue of his wide experience in affairs, executive ability, character and attainments, as the most suitable head of the great Peabody benefaction to the cause of Southern education, and he is successfully rounding his period of long and devoted public service to the administration of this popular munificence as President of the Peabody Normal College and University of Nashville. With every assurance of early success he is now engaged in raising from the State of Tennessee, the City of Nashville, and by popular subscription, $250,000 which, when attained, will carry with it a permanent endowment of a million dollars from the Peabody estate. President Porter is a man of distinguished bearing and impressive address.

Joseph W. Folk.

Missouri’s young governor has received probably more free and favorable publicity than any other citizen of the Republic, and the public is so well informed as to his life and record that anything said of him here would be merely cumulative and by way of favorable repetition. It is gratifying to command the approval of friends and partisans, but it is a delicate and trying obligation to have to live up to the encomiums of non-partisans and erstwhile opponents. With nothing but good said of his ability and integrity, Governor Folk’s position in politics, which now has a decided national aspect, presents a most interesting field of speculation to the student of politics and affairs.

First coming into local prominence in St. Louis as an able and fearless criminal prosecutor whom a powerful and never-before-thwarted partisan political machine could not influence or intimidate, Governor Folk developed into national prominence through his relentless warfare upon the local boodling regime, his successes influencing municipal reforms throughout the country and rendering him so strong with the masses of statesmen regardless of political complexion, that they triumphantly elevated him to the gubernatorial station in the face of an otherwise astonishing landslide in the other direction.

Governor Folk is a native of Brownsville, Tenn., where he was born about thirty-seven years ago, and is a product of purely Southern environment, rearing and education. Graduating from the Vanderbilt University law school fifteen years ago, he started at about the lowest and roughest rung of the ladder, a struggling young country lawyer in his native town. In quest of opportunities more in keeping with his talents and ambitions, he soon joined the large Tennessee colony in St. Louis, not long thereafter attaining to some local notice as a political leader by being elected president of the representative Democratic organization.

It is truly said that all great human successes are a combination of fortuitous circumstance, and the genius to take advantage thereof. Governor Folk’s mastery of a complicated local situation wherein he represented a supposed hopeless political movement, turned seeming defeat into a brilliant victory, and he was elected District Attorney, since which time his record is known to the country at large.

Warren A. Candler.

A virile and dominant figure in Southern religious life is Rev. Warren Akin Candler, youngest bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Of a family probably second to none in Georgia from the standpoint of the prominence of its sons in public life in that State to-day, Bishop Candler was born forty-eight years ago in Carroll County. Educated at Emory College, from which he graduated with first honors in 1875, he immediately entered the ministry, ascending rapidly the ladder of ecclesiastical promotion from the humblest rural circuit to the most influential urban charge. From presiding elder of the Dahlonega and Oxford districts he served for two years in the editorial field as assistant editor of the _Christian Advocate_ in Nashville. In 1888 he was called to the very large activity of presiding over the destinies of Emory College, his _alma mater_, which institution enjoyed during the decade of his administration its highest period of strength and usefulness.

With a distinguished record in all vital departments of his church labors, Bishop Candler’s early elevation to the bishopric when barely past forty years of age was a merited and logical testimonial to his eminent capacity for religious leadership and organization. This exalted promotion came to him at the hands of the Baltimore Conference of 1898.

Besides being a pulpit orator of vigor and lucidity, Bishop Candler is a luminous expositor of secular themes and has rounded out a very busy career by producing several well-known religious and general publications, including a “History of Sunday Schools,” “Georgia’s Educational Work,” “Christus Auctor,” “High Living and High Lives,” and “Great Revivals and the Great Republic.”

Bishop Candler’s official residence is Atlanta.

Richmond Pearson Hobson, who contributes the following thoughtful paper to the MAGAZINE, is so well known to our readers that it is hardly necessary to say anything here by way of comment upon his eventful history. Since his retirement from the navy, Captain Hobson has devoted much attention to political affairs, and it is safe to predict that his services to the public will be marked by the earnestness and devotion to duty which brought him his well-merited fame as an officer in the United States navy.—ED.

COTTON AND WAR.

[Part of an address delivered by Mr. Hobson before the Cotton Growers’ Association last January.]

By Richmond Pearson Hobson.

The price of cotton, like other prices, is settled by the relation of supply and demand. In face of the sudden depression, due to the increased volume of supply in the large crop, we are liable to overlook and underestimate the importance of the factors influencing the demand. Sojourning about the world has convinced me that the factors of demand are more pliable and more accessible than those of supply. In truth, a single factor reducing demand, the war in the Orient, is responsible for depression amounting to from 7 to 8 cents a pound, while the total depression due to the big crop is scarcely more than 3 cents a pound.

Furthermore, the question of adjusting the supply for the next year, cannot be intelligently settled until after investigation of the probable demand.

Therefore, I invite your attention for a few minutes to the question of demand, and especially to the factor of war, since we are now in the presence of the great struggle in the Orient.

The old sources of demand, Europe and America, have gone on slowly increasing with the increase of population, and the rise of the standard of comfort, though a check was sustained by the outbreak of the Boer War, which saw a falling off of over one million bales in the consumption of the united commodities. This slow increase in demand has been more than balanced by the steady increase in supply, coming chiefly from the larger acreage and larger increase of commercial fertilizers in the South. Consequently, for several decades the price of cotton has had a steady trend downward. It was only when new demands came from new markets that the price started upward. The chief of the new markets are those of the Orient. Japan has made great strides in the cotton mill industry, until at the outbreak of the present war, she was consuming over $50,000,000 worth of cotton annually.

But more important even than Japan, has been the new market of China, which, when the present war came, amounted to $90,000,000 annually, chiefly coarse cotton goods, of which a large part has been furnished by Southern mills.

These two markets have come to consume more cotton than is produced by Alabama and Mississippi combined. It is not surprising, therefore, that in spite of the steadily increasing production, the price has steadily risen. The rise has been especially marked since the Boxer disturbances that were followed by a new impulsion in the opening up of China.

As great as this new market has become, it is only in its infancy.

If China were opened up, free to the commerce of all nations, its four hundred and thirty millions of industrial people, would rise from a five cent wage basis to a 20 cent, 30 cent, or even 40 or 50 cent basis, and the average man, instead of having his present outfit of about a half suit of cotton clothes, would have four or five whole suits, which are pulled on in multiple numbers, according to the coldness of the day. This would so increase the world’s demand for cotton that even with a 20,000,000 bale crop, the price could be hardly kept down to 20 cents per pound.

The picture here disclosed is not visionary. Thousands of Chinese worked under my inspection for months reconstructing gun-boats at Hong Kong. The above estimates of their industrial capacity are conservative. Knowing both peoples, I do not hesitate to say that the industrial capacity of a Chinaman is far greater than that of a Japanese, while there are over ten times as many Chinese as Japanese. Moreover, the facilities for communication are advancing. The eyes of the world have been thrown upon China, and the point of the wedge has been entered. A few decades can see marvelous growth in this young giant of a market. I estimate that before this century is half turned, China, properly opened up, will add more than $5,000,000,000 annually to the world’s commerce, and one of the chief staples of this commerce will be cotton, first the goods, then the raw materials, creating a consumption as great as that of all Europe combined.

But this greatest of all coming cotton markets is the most sensitive and the most exposed. When war broke out in the Orient last year, it was clear that Japan and Russia, under the exhaustion, would decline in buying power, and that the thriving cotton trade of Manchuria would be cut off entirely, while the fate of China might become involved and endanger the whole Chinese market. Consequently, the day after war was declared, cotton slumped 5 cents a pound, and started on its downward path, going off nearly 8 cents a pound before indications came in of the large crop, which brought about a further decline of about 3 cents a pound.