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Chapter XIV
HOLLYWOOD— THE BAND OF HOPE
>^~X~URING the preceding winter chance had landed us ( I J one day from an old-fashioned stern-wheeled steamer
:^^-y at a small town on the banks of the Mississippi. It was a typical small river town of the South. On the low, muddy foreshore, shacks, roosting temporarily till the next flood should sweep them away or built on flat barges which would float in case of danger, were clustered among the trees which hid the high dyke, called in Southern parlance the levee. The road winding up over this dyke gave us a sudden view over the little township of more stable houses clustered under its shelter. It looked sedate enough, but the skipper of the steamer had told us that most of the principal inhabitants were under arrest, an informer having sold the whereabouts of all the private stills hidden in the surrounding swamps.
The local hotel might well have been designed for a film of Huckleberry Finn. In the rough lounge heavily booted men lolled in rocking-chairs, their feet higher than their heads. They spent their leisure in shooting with infallible accuracy plug-stained saliva into the big brass spittoons, or, bowing perhaps to American hygienic ideals, in sterilizing it at once against the hot sides of the tall, sizzling stove. Their talk was of lumber. As a variation to this solemn subject they chaffed a pretty girl, daughter of the proprietor, who, working industriously with her needle, sat among them, a complacent target for their clumsy compliments and doubtless a lure for custom. The men voiced what seemed to be a town grievance,
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