MAR 3 1903 



HOME AND FLOWERS 



YOL. XIII 



MAECH, 1903 



No. 5 



What the Old South Can Teach Us 



SIMPLICITY, CULTURE AND BEAUTY IN COLONIAL 



AND SOUTHERN LIFE 



CEPHAS SHEL'BURNE 



IN this busy, rushing, grasping day 

 of commerce Americans might find 

 much instruction and inspiration, and 

 learn a valuable lesson, if they would turn 

 for a moment once in a while to consider 

 the stately, generous and beauty-loving 

 order which marked the later colonial and 

 earlier national period of our history, par- 

 ticularly in the South. The present owes 

 a real debt to the South of the past and 

 to the early colonial period of our history 

 — a debt that cannot be ignored as long 

 as faith, courage, beauty, culture, and un- 

 selfish devotion and hospitality' may be 

 reckoned among a people's virtues. Sep- 

 arated from us by the chasm of the heroic 

 "late unpleasantness" and by four decades 

 of time, both the South and North have 

 entirely put the past behind them, except 

 in so far as both may learn from past 

 history. And the range is now long enough 

 for correct perspective. Shall we not 

 today find something sweet and sound in 

 the South that will 3'et be a powerful, 

 conservative influence in the republic? 

 "Will it not be strange," asks, a distin- 

 guished biblical scholar and an old-time 

 anti-slavery radical, "if we have to de- 

 pend, after all, upon the orthodox conser- 

 vatism of the South ?" 



The word "Southerner" carries with it as 

 distinctive traits and characteristics as the 



words Scotchman or Frenchman. Isolated 

 from the ultra-industrial spirit, undis- 

 turbed by "isms" of any sort, "born of a 

 stock that planted itself with like vigor 

 and purity nowhere else outside of its 

 island home," it was bred under separate 

 and unique conditions. And, though the old 

 South is a thing of the past, a new . era 

 of freedom has set in, and we are one peo- 

 ple and inseparable, the South has left 

 a legacy and memory invaluable to this 

 generation. 



The old Southern life and civilization 

 was full of power and inspiration. At 

 no other time perhaps in the history of 

 America do we find a period so fraught 

 with sincerity, openness and frankness of 

 manner, charm and graces of cultivation. 

 It was a time of simple faith, honesty, and 

 open simplicity. The voice of the scoffer 

 at religion was seldom heard and never 

 heeded in the Southland. There were no 

 disintegrating influences of modern skep- 

 tical thought. The conservatism of the 

 South refused to pipe to the mad dance 

 of the times. While this cultured gener- 

 ation is elsewhere framing artistic prayers 

 to an "eternal not ourselves" or asking un- 

 answerable questions of the "Unknow- 

 able,'^ and puzzling itself over "Two 

 Isaiahs," ever3^where in the Southland 

 there were, and are, earnest men and 



COPYRIGHT 1903, BY THE FLORAL PUBLISHING COMPANY. 



