406 LI2T3 ON THE MISSISSIPPI.

CHAPTEE XLV.
SOUTHERN SPO&TS
IN the North one hears the war mentioned, in social conversation,
once a month; sometimes as often as once a week; but as a distinct
subject for talk, it has long ago been relieved of duty. There are
sufficient reasons for this. Given a dinner company of six gentlemen
to-day, it can easily happen that four of them—and possibly five—
were not in the field at all. So the chances are four to two, or five
to one, that the war will at no time during the evening become tht
topic of conversation ; and the chances are still greater that if it
become the topic it wiL remain so but a little while. If you add six
ladies to the company, you have added six people who saw so little of
the dread realities of the war that they ran out of talk concerning
them years ago, and now would soon weary of the war topic if you
brought it np.
The case is very different in the South. There, every man you
meet was in the war 3 and every lady you meet saw the war. The
war is the great chief topic of conversation. The interest in it is
vivid and constant; the interest in other topics is fleeting. Mention
of the war will wake up a dull company and set their tongues going,
when nearly any other topic would faiL In the South, the war is
what A.D. is elsewhere : they date from it. All day long you hear
things 'placed* as having happened since the waw; or du'in* the
"vrKw 9t or befb* "the waw ; or right aftah the waw ; or 'bout two yeahs
or five yeahs or ten yeahs befo1 the waw or affcab the waw. It shows
how intimately every individual was visited, in his own person, by
that ta-emendous episode. It gives the inexperienced stranger a better