SIGHTS. *ui
Jackson Declining Lee's Invitation to Dinner—with Thanks.
Jackson Apologising for a Heavy Defeat.
Jackson Reporting a Great Victory.
Jackson Asking Lee for a Match.
It tells one story, and a sufficient one; for it says quite plainly
and satisfactorily, * Here are Lee and Jackson together.' The artist
would have made it tell that this is Lee and Jackson's last interview
if he could have done it. But he couldn't, for there wasn't any way
to do it. A good legible label is usually worth, for information, & ton
of significant attitude and expression in a historial picture. In Borne,
people with fine sympathetic natures stand up and weep in front of
the celebrated * Beatrice Cenci the Day before her Execution.' Jt
shows what a label can do. If they did not know the picture,
they would inspect it unmoved, and say, * Young girl with hay fever;
young girl with her head in a bag.'
I found the half-forgotten Southern intonations and elisions as
pleasing to my ear as they had formerly been. A Southerner talks
music. At least it is music to me, but then I was born in the South.
The educated Southerner has no use for an r, except at the beginning
of a word. He says * honah,* and * dinnah,' and * Gove'nuh/ and
* befo* the waw,' and so on. The words may lack charm to the eye,
in print, but they have it to the ear. When did tihe r disappear
from Southern speech, and how did it come to disappear f The custom
of dropping it was not borrowed from the North, nor inherited from
England. Many Southerners—most Southerners—put a y into occa-
sional words that begin with the k sound. For instance, they say Mr.
K'yahtah (Carter) and speak of playing k'yahds or of riding in the
k'yahs. And they have the pleasant custom—long ago fallen into
decay in the North—of frequently employing the respectful *Sir.
Instead of the curt Yes, and the abrupt No, they say * Yes, Sub '
*No,Suh.'
But there are some infelicities. Such as * like' for * as,* and the
addition of an * at * where it isn't needed. I heard an educated gentle-
man say, * Like the flag-officer did.* His cook or his butler would
have said, * Like the flag-officer done.* You hear gentleniexi say,
* Where have you been at?* And here is the aggravated iorra—
heard a ragged street Arab say it to a comrade: * I was a-ask'n* Tom