ing fast that
when, in 1910, the Federal census gave her but 131,000, she indignantly
demanded a recount, for she had been talking to herself, and had
convinced herself that she had a great many more than that number of
inhabitants. However, the census was taken again, and the first count
proved accurate.

CHAPTER L

MODERN MEMPHIS

To be charmed by the social side of a city, yet to find little to admire
in its physical aspect, is like knowing a brilliant and beautiful woman
whose housekeeping is not of the neatest. If one were compelled to
discuss such a woman, and wished to do so sympathetically but with
truth, one might avoid brutal comment on the condition of her rooms by
likening them to other rooms elsewhere: rooms which one knew to be
untidy, but which the innocent listener might not understand to be so.
By this device one may even appear to pay a compliment, while, in
reality, indicating the grim truth. In such a case, I, for example,
might say that this supposititious lady's rooms reminded me of those I
occupied on the second floor of the famous restaurant called Antoine's,
in New Orleans; whereupon the reader, knowing the high reputation of
Antoine's cuisine, and never having seen the apartments to which I
refer, might assume an implication very favorable.

Let me say, then, that Memphis reminds me of St. Louis. Like St. Louis,
Memphis has charming society. Like St. Louis she has pretty girls. Like
St. Louis she is hospitable. And without particularizing too much, I
may say that her streets remind me of St. Louis streets, that many of
her houses remind me of St. Louis houses, and that her levee, with its
cobbled surface sloping down to the yellow, muddy Mississippi, the
bridges in the distance, the strange looking river steamers loading and
unloading below, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, is much like the St.
Louis levee. So, if the reader happens to be unfamiliar with the
physical appearance of St. Louis, he may, at all events, perceive that I
have likened Memphis to a much larger city--thus, (it seems fair to
suppose) paying Memphis a handsome tribute.

Memphis has a definite self-given advantage over St. Louis in possessing
a pretty little park at the heart of the city, overlooking the river;
also she has the advantage of lying to the east of the great stream,
instead of to the west, so that, in late afternoon, when the sun
splashes down into the mysterious deserted reaches of the Arkansas
f