"Do you remember
where we are to be taken to-morrow?"

"Yes," I said. "To the Pringle house."

"Well," said he, "I just came in to ask you, as a favor, not to get off
any fanciful ideas that you may have thought up, about the way to spell
Pringle."

CHAPTER XXX

POLITICS, A NEWSPAPER AND ST. CECILIA

Charleston is very definitely a part of South Carolina. That is not
always the case with a State and its chief city. It is not the case with
the State and the City of New York. New York City has about the same
relation to New York State as a goldpiece has to a large table-top on
one corner of which it lies. Charleston, on the other hand, harmonizes
into its state setting, as a beautiful ancient vase harmonizes into the
setting afforded by some rare old cabinet. Moreover, Charleston's
individuality amongst cities is more or less duplicated in South
Carolina's individuality amongst States. South Carolina is a State as
definitely marked--though in altogether different ways--as Kansas or
California. It is a State that does nothing by halves. It has
rattlesnakes larger and more venomous than other rattlesnakes, and it
has twice had the disgraceful Cole Blease, otherwise
"To-hell-with-the-Constitution" Blease, as governor. For senator it has
the old war-horse Tillman, a man so admired for his power that, in our
easy-going way, we almost forgive his dives into the pork-barrel.
Tillman has been to South Carolina more or less what the late Senator
Hale was to his section of New England. Hale grabbed a navy yard for
Kittery, Maine (the Portsmouth yard), where there never should have been
a navy yard; Tillman performed a like service, under like circumstances,
for Charleston. Both are purely political yards. Naval officers opposed
them, but were overridden by politicians, as so often happens. For in
time of peace the army and the navy are political footballs, and it is
only when war comes that the politicians cease kicking them about and
cry: "Now, football, turn into a cannon-ball, and save your country and
your country's flag!" For obviously, if the flag cannot be saved, the
politicians will be without a "starry banner" to gesture at and roar
about.

Now, of course, with war upon us, any navy yard is a blessing, and the
Charleston yard is being used, as it should be, to the utmost. But in
time of peace the yard comes in for much criticism from the navy, the
contention being that it is not favorably located from a str