With daylight there revealed itself an undulating village all in bloom in softest sunshine, the gentle sparkle of the waters of a bay landlocked by Deer Island; a village sleeping as it had slept for generations with untroubled surface; a people soft-voiced, unconcerned, easy going, indolent; the general store, the post office, the barber shop, the meat market, on Main Street, sheltered by ancient live oaks; the saloon near the depot, the one-man jail in the middle of the street back of the depot; shell roads in the village, wagon trails leading away into the hummock land; no “enterprise,” no “progress,” no booming for a “Greater Ocean Springs,” no factories, no anxious faces, no glare of the dollar hunter, no land agents, no hustlers, no drummers, no white-staked lonely subdivisions. Peace, peace, and the joy of comrades, the lovely nights of sea breeze, black pool of the sky oversprinkled with stars brilliant and uncountable.
Here in this haven, this peaceful quiescence, Louis’s nerves, long taut with insomnia, yielded and renewed their life. In two weeks he was well and sound. By day interesting rambles, little journeys of discovery in nook and byway, a growing desire to buy, which speedily floated as gossip concerning these Chicago millionaires, to the sharp ears of a Michigan Yankee who had settled there a while before, some miles to the eastward. He called. He said his name was Newcomb Clark, that he had been Speaker of the House in his State, and a volunteer Colonel in the Civil War.
“I came here for my health. I’ve cleared part of my land and built a house, but my wife is lonely, so far from town; we need neighbors more than trees. I’ve a fine piece of woodland. It’s pretty wild, now. But if you clear it of pines and undergrowth the live oaks will show. You can set your houses close to the road that runs along the shore. I’ll make the price right. Would you folks like to see it?”
Us folks certainly would like to see it right away. The trail wound up and down, crossed a bayou, then followed the shore, ascended a low bluff, following its edge, passing by some second growth at the left which gradually changed character, increased in height and density. Louis was becoming excited. At last the Colonel stopped, rose in his light wagon, and with a broad gesture as though addressing the House, he said: “This is my land.”
Louis clasped his hand to his heart in an ecstasy of pain. What he saw was not merely woodland, but a stately forest, of amazing beauty, utterly wild. Noncommercial, it had remained for years untouched by the hand of man. Louis, breathless, worked his way as best he could through the dense undergrowth. He nearly lost his wits at what he discovered; immense rugged short-leaved pines, sheer eighty feet to their stiff gnarled crowns, graceful swamp pines, very tall, delicately plumed; slender vertical Loblolly pines in dense masses; patriarchal sweet gums and black gums with their younger broods; maples, hickories, myrtles; in the undergrowth, dogwoods, Halesias, sloe plums, buckeyes and azaleas, all in a riot of bloom; a giant magnolia grandiflora near the front—all grouped and arranged as though by the hand of an unseen poet. Louis saw the strategy. He knew what he could do. He planned for two shacks or bungalows, 300 feet apart, with stables far back; also a system of development requiring years for fulfillment.
The Colonel made the price right, not over ten times what he paid. The deed ran thus: Beginning at a cross on a hickory tree at the beach, thence north, so many chains (a quarter mile), then east, etc., and south to the beach, with riparian rights, etc. The building work was let to a local carpenter. On 12 March, 1890, the comrades light-heartedly looking toward the future, made their way toward Chicago.
This reverie is written in memoriam. After eighteen years of tender care, the paradise, the poem of spring, Louis’s other self, was wrecked by a wayward West Indian hurricane.
’Twas here Louis did his finest, purest thinking. ’Twas here he saw the flow of life, that all life became a flowing for him, and so the thoughts the works of man. ’Twas here he saw the witchery of nature’s fleeting moods—those dramas gauged in seconds. ’Twas here he gazed into the depths of that flowing, as the mystery of countless living functions moved silently into the mystery of palpable or imponderable form. ’Twas here Louis underwent that morphosis which is all there is of him, that spiritual illumination which knows no why and nowherefor, no hither and no hence, that peace which is life’s sublimation, timeless and spaceless. Yet he never lost his footing on the earth; never came the sense of immortality: One life surely is enough if lived and fulfilled: That we have yet to learn the true significance of man; to realize the destruction we have wrought; to come to a consciousness of our moral instability: For man is godlike enough did he but know it—did he but choose, did he but remove his wrappings and his blinders, and say goodbye to his superstitions and his fear.
Arrived in Chicago, Louis at once went to work with his old-time vim. Important work was at hand in other cities as well as in Chicago. The steel-frame form of construction had come into use. It
