1861.]

THE MISSISSIPPI STATE HOUSE.

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CHAPTER VI.

-My business in this State

Made me a looker-on here in Vienna.-MEASURE FOR MEASURE

I whipped me behind the arras, and there heard it agreed upon.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

JACKSON, MISS., April 1, 1861.

THE Mississippi State House, upon a shaded square in front of my window, is a faded, sober edifice, of the style in vogue fifty years ago, with the representative hall at one end, the senate chamber at the other, an Ionic portico in front, and an immense dome upon the top. Above this is a miniature dome, like an infinitesimal parasol upon a gigantic umbrella. The whole is crowned by a small gilded pinnacle, which has relapsed from its original perpendicular to an angle of forty-five degrees, and looks like a little jockey-cap, worn jantily upon the head of a plethoric quaker, to whom it imparts a rowdyish air, at variance with his general gravity.

The first story is of cracked free-stone, the front and end walls of stucco, and the rear of brick. As you enter the vestibule two musty cannon stand gaping at you, and upon one of them you may see, almost any day, a little darkey" sound asleep. Whether he guards the gun, or the gun guards him, opens a wide field for conjecture.

66

Ascending a spiral stairway, and passing along the balustrade which surrounds the open space under the dome, you turn to the left, through a narrow passage into the representative hall. Here is the Mississippi Convention.

At the north end of the apartment sits the president,

82

VIEW OF THE REPRESENTATIVE HALL.

[1861. upon a high platform occupying a recess in the wall, with two Ionic columns upon each side of him. Before him is a little, old-fashioned mahogany pulpit, concealing all but his head and shoulders from the vulgar gaze. In front of this, and three or four feet lower, at a long wooden desk, sit two clerks, one smoking a cigar.

Before them, and still lower, at a shorter desk, an unhappy Celtic reporter, with dark shaggy hair and eyebrows, is taking down the speech of the honorable member from something or other county. In front of his desk, standing rheumatically upon the floor, is a little table, which looks as if called into existence by a drunken carpenter on a dark night, from the relics of a superannuated dry-goods box.

Upon one of the columns at the president's right, hangs a faded portrait of George Poindexter, once a senator from this State. Further to the right is an open fire-place, upon whose mantel stand a framed copy of the Declaration of Independence, now sadly faded and blurred, a lithographic view of the Medical College of Louisiana, and a pitcher and glass. On the hearth is a pair of ancient andirons, upon which a genial wood fire is burning.

The hypocritical plastering which coated the fireplace has peeled off, leaving bare the honest, worn faces of the original bricks. Some peculiar non-adhesive influence must affect plastering in Jackson. In whole rooms of the hotel it has seceded from the lath. Judge Gholson says that once, in the old State House, a few hundred yards distant, when Sargeant S. Prentiss was making a speech, he saw "an acre or two" of the plastering fall upon his head, and quite overwhelm him for the time. The Judge is what Count Fosco would call the Man of Brains; he is deemed the ablest member

1861.]

GENERAL AIR OF DILAPIDATION.

83

of the Convention. He was a colleague in Congress of the lamented Prentiss, whom he pronounces the most brilliant orator that ever addressed a Mississippi audience.

On the left of the president is another fire-place, also with a sadly blurred copy of the great Declaration standing upon its mantel. The members' desks, in rows like the curved line of the letter D, are of plain wood, painted black. Their chairs are great, square, faded mahogany frames, stuffed and covered with haircloth. As you stand beside the clerk's desk, facing them, you see behind the farthest row a semi-circle of ten pillars, and beyond them a narrow, crescent shaped lobby. Halfway up the pillars is a little gallery, inhabited just now by two ladies in faded mourning.

In the middle of the hall, a tarnished brass chandelier, with pendants of glass, is suspended from the ceiling by a rod festooned with cobwebs. This medieval relic is purely ornamental, for the room is lighted with gas. The walls are high, pierced with small windows, whose faded blue curtains, flowered and bordered with white, are suspended from a triple bar of gilded Indian

arrows.

Chairs of cane, rush, wood and leather seats-chairs with backs, and chairs without backs, are scattered through the hall and lobby, in pleasing illustration of that variety which is the spice of life. The walls are faded, cracked, and dingy, pervaded by the general air of mustiness, and going to "the demnition bow-wows" prevalent about the building.

The members are in all sorts of social democratic positions. In the open spaces about the clerk's desk and fireplaces, some sit with chairs tilted against the wall, some upon stools, and three slowly vibrate to and fro in pre

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A FREE AND EASY CONVENTION.

[1861.

Raphaelite rocking-chairs. These portions of the hall present quite the appearance of a Kentucky bar-room on a winter evening.

Two or three members are eating apples, three or four smoking cigars, and a dozen inspect their feet, resting upon the desks before them. Contemplating the spectacle yesterday, I found myself involuntarily repeating the couplet of an old temperance ditty :

"The rumseller sat by his bar-room fire,

With his feet as high as his head, and higher,"

and a moment after I was strongly tempted to give the prolonged, stentorian shout of "B-o-o-T-s!" familiar to ears theatrical. Pardon the irreverence, O decorous Tribune! for there is such a woful dearth of amusement in this solemn, funereal city, that one waxes desperate. To complete my inventory, many members are reading this morning's Mississippian, or The New Orleans Picayune or Delta, and the rest listen to the one who is addressing the Chair.

They impress you by their pastoral aspect-the absence of urban costumes and postures. Their general bucolic appearance would assure you, if you did not know it before, that there are not many large cities in the State of Mississippi. Your next impression is one of wonder at their immense size and stature. Of them the future historian may well say: "There were giants in those days."

All around you are broad-shouldered, herculeanframed, well-proportioned men, who look as if a laugh from them would bring this crazy old capitol down about their ears, and a sneeze, shake the great globe itself. The largest of these Mississippi Anakim is a gigantic planter, clothed throughout in blue homespun.