Alphabet File page 379
Both Waveland and Bay St. Louis were early astir this morning, if, indeed they were not astir all night. There was a big garden party which was generally attended, and what with people returning from this and other evening entertainments, late arrivals trying to find the yachts to which they belonged, and yachts joining the anchored fleet off Nicholson Avenue, there was no little noise and "hubbub" all night.
As often as a new yacht would arrive the others in the fleet would salute her with bombs and rockets, deafening reports and blinding flashes of brilliant colored lights making sleep anywhere along the coast practically impossible.
The picture presented by the fleet was a dazzlingly beautiful one, some of the boats sending up fireworks looking like miniature volcanoes of vari-colored lights.
After the saluting had ceased the early visitors had begun to arrive, and then there was the clatter of wagons along the road and chattering upon every gallery as the newcomers talked about the incidents of their nocturnal journey just completed.
Then the people who had charge of the refreshment booths, which were numerously distributed along the coast, began their preliminary work, and as the purple and orange and crimson of the liveliest days it had ever experienced. After dawn there was a dead calm, and then a light breeze from the land sprung up, tempering the intense heat for those aboard the yachts, while those ashore were fairly smothered with atmosphere and temperatures that were absolutely oppressive.
As the forenoon wore on a freshening breeze sprang up and as the blue waters of the Gulf began to dance in sun-gilt ripples the yachts were spreading their snowy sails and gliding about as restlessly and as gracefully as a flock of pigeons. The intense heat seemed to have been suddenly driven off away inland, and the atmosphere of the Gulf coast assumed that delightfully cool, fresh quality that has made the pretty villages scattered along the Mississippi Sound among the most desirable of seaside resorts, North and South.
This has turned out to be in all respects a glorious day on the Gulf Coast. Never has such a regatta been seen in the South, and it has been seldom indeed that such a large and fashionable assembly has been brought for any social or sporting event anywhere in the Gulf States. Bay St. Louis and Waveland appear to be extremely popular this season at any time, but the promoters of the regatta can congratulate themselves upon having succeeded in having interesting and an unusually large number of people, not only from points along the Coast and New Orleans, but from comparatively remote portions of Mississippi, Texas, Alabama and Tennessee.
Along fully four miles of beach this morning there were the liveliest pictures, painted in nature's brightest colors, and the idea of restful quiet supposed to pervade a seaside resort during the hot season seemed for the time at least hopelessly banished. It seemed as if everybody was keeping "open house" for the day, and from one and all of the beautiful homes overlooking the blue water of the Gulf hearty welcomes were being extended to visitors from all parts of the Gulf States. Everybody who had a home in Waveland or Bay St. Louis was entertaining visitors, and many of them must have had their houses considerably overcrowded.
Hon. L. O'Donnell was one at whose house everybody had occasion to call, and if anyone appeared inclined to pass by he was apt to be halted by the hospitable master of "Arncliff" and urgently pressed to enter and make himself thoroughly at home. Comm. Emile O'Brien was another who would not let an acquaintance pass unheeded, and his cordial invitation was always warmly seconded by the Commodore's venerable mother, an ideal lady of the good old school. Mr. John Fell, at Rose Hill, well up the Waveland coast, commanding a view of the Sound's shore all the way to Pass Christian, was with his daughters, son and daughter-in-law, entertaining numbers of visitors who strolled through the splendid orchard, fed the fish in the well-stocked fish pond (where the occupants were so tame that they would eat out of one's hand), and then enjoyed the delightful sea breeze from the broad gallery which surrounds an ideal seaside home.
These, however, were only some of the entertainers of the thousands of visitors which flocked to the Gulf coast yesterday and to-day. Every one had visitors, whether they happened to be old friends or comparative strangers, and it is safe to say that everybody who visited Waveland or Bay St. Louis yesterday or to-day, must have felt himself singularly at home from the moment he landed.
From every point of view there were BEAUTIFUL PICTURES. Looking off shore the waters of the sound, taking on as deep and rich a blue as do those of the world-famed Mediterranean, were dancing in the bright sunshine away out to the far-off horizon, which was only broken by the dim and hazy outline of Cat Island far on the left, and by here and there a tiny speck of snow-white sail flinging back the gleam of the sunlight, until it looked like a sinking daystar. Close at hand the yachting fleet lay, with their white sails flapping lazily in the fresh and breeze, while at intervals , as if chafing at the slow dragging of the morning hours, some half-dozen would quit their moorings and go darting in and out among the boats at anchor like so many white-winged sea gulls.
From the deck of any yacht in the fleet, looking shoreward, the picture was not less inviting. Far across the shoaling, broad beach, the limpid tide looked like a dancing amber flood, as it spread only a thin, flashing film over the bright yellow sand, and this stretched up to the rich green sward which, overlapping the abrupt bank, reached down to meet it. Then came a narrow, winding ribbon of white shellroad, along which glittering carriages were rolling lazily in the sunshine, and beyond this, behind snowy palings, the lovely seaside homes were half-hiding their red roofs and white walls in leafy bowers of richest verdure, enlivened and enriched with spangles of roses, magnolias, oleanders, and crepe-myrtles. From every gallery and window dainty summer costumes of the coolest and gauziest of fabrics, fluttering in the light breezes, told of beauty too rare for a pen picture, and too delicate to assert themselves in so broad a view, just as the exquisite wood violet fails to claim a place in the charms of a wide woodland landscape. Above and beyond the rich green settings of these summer homes rose sunlit clouds, with dark, steely entres and bases that looked as though the silver-white, billowy cloud masses that seemed boiling out of some great boiling mist-cauldron behind these dark clouds were suggestive of heat rather than storms.
All around the horizon ran this heavy cloud-belt. Here a column of sun-gilt mist rose out of it like a shadowy pillar of burnished copper, and there rose a great leaden bank like some fabled monster of aboriginal mythology just rising out of the sea; but overhead, all was deep, clear sunlit blue.
As the hour for the firing of the first signal gun approached, the scene became more and more animated. Thousands flocked to the beach, some taking up position in schooners anchored near the stake boat, others rowing about in skiffs, while many more, and by far the greatest number, filled the piers and summer houses along the shore. Among so many THOUSANDS OF SPECTATORS as found places in one or the other of these positions from which to view the race, anything like a complete list would be, of course, out of the question, but among those recognized here and there may be mentioned the following: Lieut. Gov. and Mrs. Parlange, Mrs. Walden, Miss Baxter of Pearlington, Mr. and Miss Wyley, of Texas; Mr. and Mrs. Farr, of Riverview; Mr. and Mrs. Roundtree, of Texas; Mr. and Mrs. J. McDonnell Jr., of New Orleans; Mrs. James DeBuys and family, Miss Annette Relf, Miss Evelyn Krumbhaar, Miss Bertha Krumbhaar, Miss Henriette Cummings, Misses Josie and Marie Cottreaux, Miss Zelia Logan, Miss Annie Schaeffer, Mrs. George Bright, Miss J.E. Wooten, of Memphis; Mrs. Archie Smith and Misses Lulu and Sadie Smith, of Smithland, La.; Mrs. Fanny Hunt, Mr. and Mrs. J. Butler, of Mississippi; Messrs. Fountaine, Craig, Gallegher, Charles Richardson, Mercer Patton, William Palfrey, Arthur and Harry Maginnis, Bainbridge Logan, George Bright, Blake, Dwyer, Stewart, Labouisse, DeBuys, Wooste, Mr. John Fell and family, Mr. Colden Fell and family, Mr. and Mrs. Alfred LeBlanc, Mr. Charles Williams, Mrs. Andrew Stewart, Mr. and Mrs. L. O'Donnell, Mr. and Mrs. Peter Helwege, Hon. E.A. O'Sullivan, Miss Mollie Cheney and the Messrs. Irby.