Let me say, then, that Memphis reminds me of St. Louis.  Like St. Louis, Memphis has charming society.  Like St. Louis she has pretty girls.  Like St. Louis she is hospitable.  And without particularizing too much, I may say that her streets remind me of St. Louis streets, that many of her houses remind me of St. Louis houses, and that her levee, with its cobbled surface sloping down to the yellow, muddy Mississippi, the bridges in the distance, the strange looking river steamers loading and unloading below, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, is much like the St. Louis levee.  So, if the reader happens to be unfamiliar with the physical appearance of St. Louis, he may, at all events, perceive that I have likened Memphis to a much larger city—­thus, (it seems fair to suppose) paying Memphis a handsome tribute.

Memphis has a definite self-given advantage over St. Louis in possessing a pretty little park at the heart of the city, overlooking the river; also she has the advantage of lying to the east of the great stream, instead of to the west, so that, in late afternoon, when the sun splashes down into the mysterious deserted reaches of the Arkansas flats, across the way, sending splatterings of furious color across the sky, one may seat oneself on a bench in the park and witness a stupendous natural masterpiece.  A sunset over the sea can be no more wonderful than a sunset over this terrible, beautiful, inspiring, enigmatic domineering flood.  Or one may see the sunset from the readingroom of the Cossitt Library, with its fine bay window commanding the river almost as though it were the window of a pilot-house.

The Cossitt Library is only one of several free libraries in the city.  There is, for example, a free library in connection with the Goodwyn Institute, an establishment having an endowment of half a million dollars, left to Memphis by the late William A. Goodwyn.  The Goodwyn Institute provides courses of free lectures, by well-known persons, on a great variety of subjects.  The library is designed to add to the educational work.  Books are not, however, loaned, as they are from the Cossitt Library, an institution to which I found myself returning more than once; now for a book, now to look at the interesting collection of mound-builder relics contained in an upper room, now merely because it is a place of such reposeful hospitality that I liked to make excuses to go back.

The library, a romanesque building of Michigan red sandstone, is by a southern architect, but is in the style of Richardson, and is one of the few buildings in that style which I have ever liked.  It was given to Memphis as a memorial to Frederick H. Cossitt, by his three daughters, Mrs. A.D.  Juilliard, Mrs. Thomas Stokes, and Mrs. George E. Dodge, all of New York.  Mr. Cossitt was born in Granby, Connecticut, but as a young man moved South and in 1842 adopted Memphis as his home, residing there until 1861.  At the outbreak of the Civil War he made an amicable division of his business with his partner, and removed to New York, where he resided until the time of his death.  Finding among his papers a memorandum indicating that he had intended to endow a library in Memphis, his daughters carried out his wish.