Lanterns On The Levee - Recollections Of A Planter's Son (Hardcover)

desire to reminisce arises not so much I think from the number of years you may happen to have ac cumulated as from the number of those who meant most to you in life who have gone on the long journey. They were the bulwarks, the bright spires, the strong places. When they have gone, you are a little tired, you rest on your oars, you say to yourself There are no witnesses to my fine little fury, my minute heroic efforts. It is better to remember, to be sure of the good that was, rather than of the evil that is, to watch the spread and pattern of the game that is past rather than engage feebly in the present play. It was a stout world thus far, peopled with all man ner of gracious and kindly and noble personagesthese seem rather a pygmy tribe After a while, particularly if you have cut no very splendid figure in the show, indul gence in this sort of communing becomes a very With some addicts it takes the form of dreaming silently the best way, I fear and these are mostly women with others, of conversation, and these are mostly old men very tiresome unless you are one too but the most aban doned of the whole lot insist they must write it all down, and of them am I. So while the world I know is crashing O to bits, and what with the noise and the cryings-out no man could hear a trumpet blast, much less an idle eve ning reverie y I will indulge a heart beginning to be fret ful by repeating to it the stories it knows and loves of my own country and my own people. A pilgrims scriptone mans field-notes of a land not far but quite unknown valueless except as that man loved the country he passed through and its folk, and except as he willed to tell the truth. How other, alas tliari telling itCONTENTS i-The Delta 3 n Delta Folks 16 m Mur and Nain 25 iv-Mdre and Pdre 35 v Playmates 46 vi-A Side-Show Gotterdammerung 56 vn A Small Boys Heroes 65 vra Learning from Teachers 76 K Sewanee 92 x-A Y0ar Abroad 105 xi Ai fce Harvard Law School 113 xn The Return of the Native 125 xra-rfo BoWom RazZ on Top 140 xiv-1914-1916 156 xv T i Peewee Squad 169 xvi Getting to the Front 184 xvn At the Front 201 xviii The Ku Klux Klan Comes and Goes 225 xrx-Hell and High Water 242 xx-The Flood of 1927 249 xxi Planters, Share-Croppers, and Such 270 xxn Fode 285 xxm A Note on Racial Relations 298 xxiv For the Younger Generation 810 xxv A Bit of Diary 322 xxvi - Jackdaw in the Garden 332 xxvn Home 344 Lanterns on the Levee