Freemason Street is the highway which, more than any other, tells of olden times.  For though the downtown end of this lovely old thoroughfare has lapsed into decay, many beautiful mansions, dating from long ago, are to be seen a few blocks out from the busier portion of the city.  Among these should be mentioned the Whittle house, the H.N.  Castle house, and particularly the exquisite ivy-covered residence of Mr. Barton Myers, at the corner of Bank Street.  The city of Norfolk ought, I think, to attempt to acquire this house and preserve it (using it perhaps as a memorial museum to contain historical relics) to show what has been, in Norfolk, as against what is, and to preach a silent sermon on the high estate of beauty from which a fine old city may fall, in the name of progress and commercial growth.

To the credit of Norfolk be it said that old St. Paul’s Church, with its picturesque churchyard and tombs, is excellently cared for and properly valued as a pre-Revolutionary relic.  The church was built in 1730, and was struck by a British cannon-ball when Lord Dunmore bombarded the place in 1776.  Baedeker tells me, however, that the cannon-ball now resting in the indentation in the wall of the church is “not the original.”

When I say that St. Paul’s is properly valued I mean that many citizens told my companion and me to be sure to visit.  I observe, however—­and I take it as a sign of the times in Norfolk—­that an extensive, well-printed and much illustrated book on Norfolk, issued by the Chamber of Commerce, contains pictures of banks, docks, breweries, mills, office buildings, truck farms, peanut farms, battleships, clubhouses, hotels, hospitals, factories, and innumerable new residences, but no picture of the church, or of the lovely old homes of Freemason Street.  Nor do I find in the booklet any mention of the history of the city or the surrounding region—­although that region includes places of the greatest beauty and interest:  among them the glorious old manor houses of the James River; the ancient and charming town of Williamsburg, second capital of the Virginia colony, and seat of William and Mary College, the oldest college in the United States excepting Harvard; Yorktown, “Waterloo of the Revolution”; many important battlefields of the Civil War; Hampton Institute, the famous negro industrial school at Hampton, nearby; the lovely stretch of water on which the Monitor met the Merrimac[3]; the site of the first English settlement in America at Jamestown, and, for mystery and desolation, the Dismal Swamp with Lake Drummond at its heart.  But then, I suppose it is natural that the Chamber of Commerce mind should thrust aside such things in favor of the mighty “goober,” which is a thing of to-day, a thing for which Norfolk is said to be the greatest of all markets.  For is not history dead, and is not the man who made a fortune out of a device for shelling peanuts without causing the nuts to drop in two, still living?