30                   Joseph Katz and Lillian B. Gilkes

reason to believe that Budd was to join her in starting that new
life. Most likely the gambling was a way to build their nest egg.
But there wasn't time: the winter stroke was followed by another
the next autumn, and Cora was dead. On her tombstone, Budd
had carved "Cora E. Crane | 1868-1910." He himself died in
Jacksonville on 18 March 1925.

Back in Jacksonville sixty years later, Cora is not entirely for¬
gotten. The copestone that outlines her grave has sunk below the
surface of the earth, but the grave itself is well tended. Rumors
still are recalled about her. The Court, and Ernest C. Budd: they
had lain together; there was a child; Cora pretended it came from
one of her girls and adopted it—all nonsense. Old men still claim
to have known Cora and Budd, or pretend to have known them,
but they are getting older and fewer. Of course no one no^v in
Jacksonville was one of Cora's girls or one of her clients, nor was
in any way related to any of them, but many people know that
they belonged to other peoples' families. The Court itself was
razed, and its land turned into a parking lot; the few bawdy houses
of its time that survive mostly have become slum dwellings which
puzzle their inhabitants because of all those small bedrooms. One
day the rumors will have completed their gradual transmogrifica¬
tion into conflicting but unassailable facts. But in Jacksonville
thirty-four postcards have been accidentlv preserved to allow a
glimpse into the human past. Probably there still is more. We
think so, and we think they can be found."

^ Under the late Roland Baughman and again under Kenneth A. Lohf, Special
Collections of the Columbia University Libraries has earned the gratitude of
scholars for its unusual hospitality and aid. As partial acknowledgment of his
debt, Katz has given photographs he made of the thirty-four cards to the library.