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 are squeezed to minimum size, to the accompaniment of
negro chants, are exceedingly interesting.
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