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

84

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-0-0-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.

1861.] SOUTHERN ORATORS-ANGLO-AFRICAN DIALECT. 85

You might select a dozen out of the ninety-nine delegates, each of whom could personate the Original Scotch Giant in a traveling exhibition. They have large, fine heads, and a profusion of straight brown hair, though here and there is a crown smooth, bald, and shining. Taken for all in all, they are fine specimens of physical development, with frank, genial, jovial faces.

The speaking is generally good, and commands respectful attention. There, is little badinage or satire, a good deal of directness and coming right to the point, qualified by the strong southern proclivity for adjectives. The pungent French proverb, that the adjective is the most deadly enemy of the substantive, has never journeyed south of Mason & Dixon's line.

The members, like all deliberative bodies in this latitude, are mutual admirationists. Every speaker has the most profound respect for the honest motives, the pure patriotism, the transcendent abilities of the honorable gentleman upon the other side. It excites his regret and self-distrust to differ from such an array of learning and eloquence; and nothing could impel him to but a sense of imperious duty.

He speaks fluently, and with grammatical correctness, but in the Anglo-African dialect. His violent denunciations of the Black Republicans are as nothing to the gross indignities which he offers to the letter r. His "mo's," "befo's," and "hea's" convey reminiscences of the negress who nursed him in infancy, and the little "pickaninnies" with whom he played in boyhood.

The custom of stump-speaking, universal through the South and West, is a capital factory for converting the raw material into orators. Of course there are strong exceptions. This very morning we had an address from one member-Mr. D. B. Moore, of Tuppah county