Chapter 45

Chapter 45
Southern Sports

IN the North one hears the war mentioned, in social conversation,
once a month; sometimes as often as once a week; but as a distinct
subject for talk, it has long ago been relieved of duty. There are
sufficient reasons for this. Given a dinner company of six gentlemen
to-day, it can easily happen that four of them--and possibly five--
were not in the field at all. So the chances are four to two,
or five to one, that the war will at no time during the evening
become the topic of conversation; and the chances are still greater
that if it become the topic it will remain so but a little while.
If you add six ladies to the company, you have added six people
who saw so little of the dread realities of the war that they ran
out of talk concerning them years ago, and now would soon weary of
the war topic if you brought it up.

The case is very different in the South. There, every man you
meet was in the war; and every lady you meet saw the war.
The war is the great chief topic of conversation. The interest in it
is vivid and constant; the interest in other topics is fleeting.
Mention of the war will wake up a dull company and set
their tongues going, when nearly any other topic would fail.
In the South, the war is what A.D. is elsewhere: they date from it.
All day long you hear things 'placed' as having happened since the waw;
or du'in' the waw; or befo' the waw; or right aftah the waw;
or 'bout two yeahs or five yeahs or ten yeahs befo' the waw
or aftah the waw. It shows how intimately every individual
was visited, in his own person, by that tremendous episode.
It gives the inexperienced stranger a better idea of what a vast
and comprehensive calamity invasion is than he can ever get by reading
books at the fireside.

At a club one evening, a gentleman turned to me and said,
in an aside--

'You notice, of course, that we are nearly always talking about the war.
It isn't because we haven't anything else to talk about, but because nothing
else has so strong an interest for us. And there is another reason:
In the war, each of us, in his own person, seems to have sampled
all the different varieties of human experience; as a consequence,
you can't mention an outside matter of any sort but it will certainly
remind some listener of something that happened during the war--
and out he comes with it. Of course that brings the talk back to the war.
You may try all you want to, to keep other subjects before the house,
and we may all join in and help, but there can be but one result:
the most random topic would load every man up with war reminiscences,
and shut him up, too; and talk would be likely to stop presently,
because you can't talk pale