It is built on undulating grounds; and the streets are lighted
  by electricity at a cost of $32,470 per annum.

As I left the hotel there was a race riot.  Down upon me charged a company of freedmen, or Arabs, or Zulus, armed with—­no, I saw with relief that they were not rifles, but whips.  And I saw dimly a caravan of black, clumsy vehicles; and at the reassuring shouts, “Kyar you anywhere in the town, boss, fuh fifty cents,” I reasoned that I was merely a “fare” instead of a victim.

I walked through long streets, all leading uphill.  I wondered how those streets ever came down again.  Perhaps they didn’t until they were “graded.”  On a few of the “main streets” I saw lights in stores here and there; saw street cars go by conveying worthy burghers hither and yon; saw people pass engaged in the art of conversation, and heard a burst of semi-lively laughter issuing from a soda-water and ice-cream parlor.  The streets other than “main” seemed to have enticed upon their borders houses consecrated to peace and domesticity.  In many of them lights shone behind discreetly drawn window shades; in a few pianos tinkled orderly and irreproachable music.  There was, indeed, little “doing.”  I wished I had come before sundown.  So I returned to my hotel.

In November, 1864, the Confederate General Hood advanced against Nashville, where he shut up a National force under General Thomas.  The latter then sallied forth and defeated the Confederates in a terrible conflict.

All my life I have heard of, admired, and witnessed the fine marksmanship of the South in its peaceful conflicts in the tobacco-chewing regions.  But in my hotel a surprise awaited me.  There were twelve bright, new, imposing, capacious brass cuspidors in the great lobby, tall enough to be called urns and so wide-mouthed that the crack pitcher of a lady baseball team should have been able to throw a ball into one of them at five paces distant.  But, although a terrible battle had raged and was still raging, the enemy had not suffered.  Bright, new, imposing, capacious, untouched, they stood.  But, shades of Jefferson Brick! the tile floor—­the beautiful tile floor!  I could not avoid thinking of the battle of Nashville, and trying to draw, as is my foolish habit, some deductions about hereditary marksmanship.

Here I first saw Major (by misplaced courtesy) Wentworth Caswell.  I knew him for a type the moment my eyes suffered from the sight of him.  A rat has no geographical habitat.  My old friend, A. Tennyson, said, as he so well said almost everything: 

  Prophet, curse me the blabbing lip,
  And curse me the British vermin, the rat.

Let us regard the word “British” as interchangeable ad lib.  A rat is a rat.

This man was hunting about the hotel lobby like a starved dog that had forgotten where he had buried a bone.  He had a face of great acreage, red, pulpy, and with a kind of sleepy massiveness like that of Buddha.  He possessed one single virtue—­he was very smoothly shaven.  The mark of the beast is not indelible upon a man until he goes about with a stubble.  I think that if he had not used his razor that day I would have repulsed his advances, and the criminal calendar of the world would have been spared the addition of one murder.