Requiem for a Nun

REQUIEM FOR A NUN 239

Negroes removed from Vicksburg; Negro leaders developed by these schools

intervened when in 1868 one 'Buzzard' Egglestone instigated the use of

troops to drive Governor Humphries from the executive offices and mansion;

in 1887 Jackson women sponsored the Kermis Ball lasting three days to

raise money for a monument to the Confederate dead; in 1884 Jefferson

Davis spoke for his last time in public at the old Capitol; in 1890 the

state's greatest convention drew up the present constitution;

And still the people and the railroads: the New Orleans and Great Northern

down the Pearl River valley, the Gulf Mobile and Northern northeast;

Alabama and the eastern black prairies were almost a commuter's leap and

a line to Yazoo City and the upper river towns made of the Great Lakes

five suburban ponds; the Gulf and Ship Island opened the south Mississippi

lumber boom and Chicago voices spoke among the magnolias and the odor of

jasmine and oleander; population doubled and trebled in a decade, in 1892

Millsaps College opened its doors to assume its place among the first

establishments for higher learning; then the natural gas and the oil,

Texas and Oklahoma license plates flitted like a migration of birds about

the land and the tall flames from the vent-pipes stood like incandescent

plumes above the century-cold ashes of Choctaw camp-fires and the vanished

imprint of deer; and in 1903.the new Capitol was completed-the golden

dome, the knob, the gleamy crumb, the gilded pustule longer than the

miasma and the gigantic ephemeral saurians, more durable than the ice and

the pre-night cold, soaring, hanging as one blinding spheroid above the

center of the Commonwealth, incapable of being either looked full or

evaded, peremptory, irrefragible, and reassuring.

In the roster of Mississippi names: Claiborne. Humphries. Dickson.

McLaurin. Barksdale. Lamar. Prentiss. Davis. Sartoris. Compson;

In the roster of cities:

JACKSON. Alt, 294 ft. Pop. (A.D.1950) 201,092.

Railroads: Illinois Central, Yazoo & Mississippi Valley, Alabama & Vicksburg,

Gulf & Ship Island.

Bus: Tri-State Transit, Vanardo, Thomas, Greyhound, DixieGreyhound, Tech e-Gr

reyhound, Oliver.

Air: Delta, Chicago & Southern.

Transport: Street buses, Taxis.

Accommodations: Hotels, Tourist camps, Rooming houses. Radio: WJDX, WTJS.