The girl lived in this
house. She was not exactly pretty, nor was her figure beautiful in the
usual sense; yet it was beautiful, all the same, with a sort of
long-limbed, supple, aristocratic aliveness. Most of all there was about
her a great fineness--the kind of fineness which seems to be the
expression of generations of fineness. She was the granddaughter of a
general in the Civil War, the great-granddaughter of an ambassador, the
great-great-granddaughter of a Revolutionary hero, and though one could
not but be thankful that she failed of striking resemblance to the
portraits of these admirable ancestors, nevertheless it seemed to me
that, had I not known definitely of their place in her family history, I
might almost have sensed them hovering behind her: a background,
nebulous and shadowy, out of which she had emerged.
Memphis, upon the other hand, will always be to me a lively modern
debutante. I vision her as dancing--dancing to Handy's ragtime
music--all shoulders, neck, and arms, and tulle, and twenty-dollar satin
slippers. Atlanta, too, is young, vivid, affluent, altogether modern;
while as for Birmingham, she is pretty, but a little strident, a little
overdressed; touched a little with the amiability, and the other
qualities, of the _nouveau riche_.
The beauty of New Orleans is of a different kind.
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