s, comes into the square with a basket
of corn. When he arrives all the pigeons see him and rush toward him in
a great flapping cloud, brushing past your face if you happen to be
walking across the square at the time. Nor is he the only one to feed
them. Numbers of citizens go at midday to the square, where they buy
popcorn and peanuts for the squirrels and pigeons--which, by the way,
are all members of old Memphis families, being descendants of other
squirrels and pigeons which lived in this same place before the Civil
War. One might suppose that the pigeons, being able to fly up to the
seventeenth floor windowsills of the Merchants' Exchange Building, where
men of the grain and hay bureau of the exchange are in the habit of
leaving corn for them, would prosper more than the squirrels, but that
is not the case for--and I regret to have to report such immorality--the
squirrels are in the habit of adding to the stores of peanuts which are
thrown to them, by thievery. Like rascally urchins they will watch the
peanut venders, and when their backs are turned, will make swift dashes
at the peanut stands, seizing nuts and scampering away again. Sometimes
the venders detect them, and give chase for a few steps, but that is
dangerous, for the minute the vender goes after one squirrel, others
rush up and steal more. It is saddening to find that even squirrels are
corrupted by metropolitan life!

In reviewing my visit to Memphis I find myself, for once, kindly
disposed toward a Chamber of Commerce and Business Men's Club. I like
the Business Men's Club because, besides issuing pamphlets shrieking the
glory of the city, it has found time to do things much more worth
while--notably to bring to Memphis some of the great American
orchestras.

A pamphlet issued by these organizations tells me that Memphis is the
largest cotton market in the country, the largest hardwood producing
market, the third largest grocery and jobbing market.

Cotton is, indeed, much in evidence in the city. The streets in some
sections are full of strange little two-wheel drays, upon which three
bales are carried, and which display, in combination, those three
southern things having such perfect artistic affinity: the negro, the
mule, and the cotton bale. The vast modern cotton warehouses on the
outskirts of the city cover many acres of ground, and with their gravity
system of distribution for cotton bales, and their hydraulic compresses
in which the bales