This hour [said Grady] little needs the loyalty that is loyal to one section and yet holds the other in enduring suspicion andestrangement. Give us the broad and perfect loyalty that loves and trusts Georgia alike with Massachusetts—that knows no South, no North, no East, no West; but endears with equal and patriotic love every foot of our soil, every State in our Union.
This hour [said Grady] little needs the loyalty that is loyal to one section and yet holds the other in enduring suspicion andestrangement. Give us the broad and perfect loyalty that loves and trusts Georgia alike with Massachusetts—that knows no South, no North, no East, no West; but endears with equal and patriotic love every foot of our soil, every State in our Union.
Grady could not only write and say stirring things; he could be witty. He once spoke at a dinner of the New England Society, in New York, at which General Sherman was also present.
"Down in Georgia," he said, "we think of General Sherman as a great general; but it seems to us he was a little careless with fire."
Nor was Grady less brilliant as managing editor than upon the platform. He had the kind of enterprise which made James Gordon Bennett such a dashing figure in newspaper life, and the New York "Herald" such a completenewspaper—the kind of enterprise that charters special trains, and at all hazards gets the story it is after. Back in the early eighties Grady was running the Atlanta "Constitution" in just that way. If a big story "broke" in any of the territory around Atlanta, Grady would not wait upon train schedules, but would hire an engine and send his men to the scene. Once, following a sensational murder, he learned that the Birmingham "Age-Herald" had a big story dealing with developments in the case. He wired the "Age-Herald" offering a large price for the story. When his offer was refused Grady knew that if he could not devise a way to get the story, Atlanta would be flooded next day with "Age-Heralds" containing the "beat" on the "Constitution." He at once chartered a locomotive and rushed two reporters and four telegraph operators down the line toward Birmingham. At Aniston, Alabama, the locomotive met the train which was bringing "Age-Heralds" to Atlanta. A copy of the paper was secured. The "Constitution" men then broke into a telegraph office and wired the whole story in to their paper, with the result that the "Constitution" was out with it before the Birmingham papers reached Atlanta.
Atlanta was at that time a town of only about 40,000 inhabitants, but the "Constitution," in the days of Howell and Grady, had a circulation four times greater than the total population of the city—a situation almost unheard of in journalism. Something of the breadth of its influence may be gathered from the fact that in several counties in Texas, where the law provided that whatever newspaper had the largest circulation in the county should be the county organ, the county organ was the Atlanta "Constitution."
An Atlanta lady tells of having called upon Grady to complain about an article which she did not think the "Constitution" should have printed.
"Why did you put that objectionable article in your paper?" she asked him.
"Did you read it?" he inquired.
"Yes, I did."
"Then," said Grady, "that's why I put it there."
Grady and Howell always ran a lively sporting department. Away back in the days of bare-knuckle prize fights—such as those between Sullivan and Ryan, and Sullivan and Kilrain—a "Constitution" reporter was always at the ringside, no matter where the fight might take place. For a newspaper in a town of forty or fifty thousand inhabitants, a large percentage of them colored illiterates, this was real enterprise.
A favorite claim of Grady's was that his reporters were the greatest "leg artists" in the world. He used to organize walking matches for reporters, offering large prizes and charging admission. This developed, in the middle eighties, a general craze for such matches, and resulted in the holding of many inter-city contests, in which teams, four men to a side, took part. One of the "Constitution's" champion "leg artists" was Sam W. Small, now an evangelist and member of the "flying squadron" of the Anti-Saloon League of America.
The most widely celebrated individual ever connected with the "Constitution" was Joel Chandler Harris, many of whose "Uncle Remus" stories—those negro folk tales still supreme in their field—appeared originally in that paper. In view of Mr. Harris's achievement it is pleasant to recall that there was paid to him during his life one of the finest tributes that an author can receive. As with "Mr. Dooley" of our day, he came, himself, to be affectionately referred to by the name of the chief character in his works. "Uncle Remus" he was, and "Uncle Remus" he will always be. Mr. Harris's eldestson, Julian, widely known as a journalist, is said to have been the little boy to whom "Uncle Remus" told his tales.
Though there is, as yet, no public monument in Atlanta to Joel Chandler Harris, the "Wren's Nest," his former home, at 214 Gordon Street, is fittingly preserved as a memorial. Visitors may see the old letter box fastened to a tree by the gate—that box in which a wren built her nest, giving the house its name. It is a simple old house with the air of a home about it, and the intimate possessions of the author lie about as he left them. His bed is made up, his umbrella hangs upon the mantelshelf, his old felt hat rests upon the rack, the photograph of his friend James Whitcomb Riley looks down from the bedroom wall, and on the table, by the window, stands his typewriter—the confidant first to know his new productions.
The presence of these personal belongings keeps alive the illusion that "Uncle Remus" has merely stepped out for a little while—is hiding in the garden, waiting for us to go away. It would be like him, for he was among the most modest and retiring of men, as there are many amusing anecdotes to indicate. Once when some one had persuaded him to attend a large dinner in New York, they say, he got as far as New York, but as the dinner hour approached could not bear to face the adulation awaiting him, and incontinently fled back to Atlanta.
Frank L. Stanton, poet laureate of Georgia, and ofthe "Constitution," joined the "Constitution" staff through the efforts of Mr. Harris, one of whose closest intimates he was. Speaking of Mr. Harris's gift for negro dialect, Mr. Stanton told me that there was one negro exclamation which "Uncle Remus" always wished to reproduce, but which he never quite felt could be expressed, in writing, to those unfamiliar with the negro at first hand: that is the exclamation of amazement, which has the sound, "mmm—mh!"—the first syllable being long and the last sharp and exclamatory.
Mr. Stanton has for years conducted a column of verse and humorous paragraphic comment, under the heading "Just from Georgia," on the editorial page of the "Constitution." Some idea of the high estimation in which he is held in his State is to be gathered from the fact that "Frank L. Stanton Day" is annually celebrated in the Georgia schools.
Mr. Stanton began his newspaper career as a country editor in the town of Smithville, Georgia. Mr. Harris, then a member of the "Constitution's" editorial staff, began reprinting in that journal verses and paragraphs written by Stanton, with the result that the Smithville paper became known all over the country. Later Stanton moved to Rome, Georgia, becoming an editorial writer on a paper there—the "Tribune," edited at that time by John Temple Graves, if I am not mistaken. Still later he removed to Atlanta, joined the staff of the "Constitution," and started the department which has now continued for more than twenty-five years.
Joel Chandler Harris used to tell a story about Stanton's first days in the "Constitution" office. According to this story, the paper on which Stanton had worked in Rome had not been prosperous, and salaries were uncertain. When the business manager went out to try to raise money in the town, he never returned without first reading the signals placed by his assistant in the office window. If a red flag was shown, it signified that a collector was waiting in the office. In that event the business manager would not come in, but would circle about until the collector became tired of waiting and departed—a circumstance indicated by the withdrawal of the red flag and the substitution of a white one. According to the story, as it was told to me, reporters on the paper were seldom paid; if one of them made bold to ask for his salary, he was likely to be discharged. It was from this uncertain existence that Stanton was lured to the "Constitution" by an offer of $22.50 per week. When he had been on the "Constitution" for three weeks Mr. Harris discovered that he had drawn no salary. This surprised him—as indeed it would any man who had had newspaper experience.
"Stanton," he said, "you are the only newspaper man I have ever seen who is so rich he doesn't need to draw his pay."
But, as it turned out, Stanton was not so prosperous as Harris perhaps supposed. He was down to his last dime, and had been wondering how he could manage toget along; for his training on the Rome paper had taught him never to ask for money lest he lose his job.
"Well," he said to Harris, "I could usesomeof my salary—if you're sure it won't be any inconvenience?"
Those familiar with the works of Mr. Stanton, Mr. Harris, and James Whitcomb Riley, Indiana's great poet, will perceive that certain similar tastes and feelings inform their writings, and will not be surprised to learn, if not already aware of it, that the three were friends. Mr. Stanton's only absence from Atlanta since he joined the "Constitution," was on the occasion of a visit he paid Mr. Riley at the latter's home in Indianapolis. The best of Stanton's work must have appealed to Riley, for it contains not a little of the kindly, homely, humorous truthfulness, and warmth of sentiment, of which Riley was himself such a master. Among the most widely familiar verses of the Georgia poet are those of his "Mighty Like a Rose," set to music by Ethelbert Nevin, and "Just a-Wearying for You," with music by Carrie Jacobs Bond. "Money" is a verse in hilarious key, which many will remember for the comical vigor of the last three lines in its first stanza:
When a fellow has spentHis last red centThe world looks blue, you bet!But give him a dollarAnd you'll hear him holler:"There's life in the old land yet!"
When a fellow has spentHis last red centThe world looks blue, you bet!But give him a dollarAnd you'll hear him holler:"There's life in the old land yet!"
Richly humorous though Stanton is, he can also reach the heart. The former Governor of a Western State picked up Stanton's book, "Songs of the Soil," and after reading "Hanging Bill Jones," and "A Tragedy," therein, commuted the sentence of a man who was to have been executed next day. One hopes the man deserved to escape. In another case an individual who was about to commit suicide chanced to see in an old newspaper Stanton's encouraging verses called "Keep a-Goin'," and was stimulated by them to have a fresh try at life on earth instead of elsewhere.
Joel Chandler Harris wrote the introduction to "Songs of the Soil." Other collections of Stanton's works are "Songs of Dixie Land," and "Comes One With a Song." The danger in starting to quote from these books—which, by the way, are chiefly made up of measures that appeared originally in the "Constitution"—is that one does not like to stop. I have, however, limited myself to but one more theft, and instead of making my own choice, have left the selection to a friend of Mr. Stanton's, who has suggested the lines entitled "A Poor Unfortunate":
His hoss went dead, an' his mule went lame,He lost six cows in a poker game;A harricane come on a summer's dayAn' carried the house whar he lived away,Then a earthquake come whenthatwuz goneAn' swallered the land that the house stood on!An' the tax collector, he come roun'An' charged him up fer the hole in the groun'!An' the city marshal he come in viewAn' said he wanted his street tax, too!Did he moan an' sigh? Did he set an' cryAn' cuss the harricane sweepin' by?Did he grieve that his old friends failed to callWhen the earthquake come and swallered all?Never a word o' blame he said,With all them troubles on top his head!Not him! He climbed on top o' the hillWhar stan'in' room wuz left him still,An', barrin' his head, here's what he said:"I reckon it's time to git up an' git,But, Lord, I hain't had the measles yit!"
His hoss went dead, an' his mule went lame,He lost six cows in a poker game;A harricane come on a summer's dayAn' carried the house whar he lived away,Then a earthquake come whenthatwuz goneAn' swallered the land that the house stood on!An' the tax collector, he come roun'An' charged him up fer the hole in the groun'!An' the city marshal he come in viewAn' said he wanted his street tax, too!
Did he moan an' sigh? Did he set an' cryAn' cuss the harricane sweepin' by?Did he grieve that his old friends failed to callWhen the earthquake come and swallered all?Never a word o' blame he said,With all them troubles on top his head!Not him! He climbed on top o' the hillWhar stan'in' room wuz left him still,An', barrin' his head, here's what he said:"I reckon it's time to git up an' git,But, Lord, I hain't had the measles yit!"
Among those who have been on the staff of the "Constitution" and have become widely known, may be mentioned the gifted Corra Harris, many of whose stories have Georgia backgrounds, and who still keeps as a country home in the State where she was born, a log cabin, known as "In the Valley," at Pine Log, Georgia; also the perhaps equally (though differently) talented Robert Adamson, whose administration as fire commissioner of the City of New York was so able as to result in a reduction of insurance rates.
Atlanta reporters, it would seem, run to the New York Fire Department, for Joseph Johnson, who preceded Mr. Adamson as commissioner, was once a reporter on the Atlanta "Journal." The latter paper used to belong to Hoke Smith. It was at one time edited by John Temple Graves, who later edited the Atlanta "Georgian," and is now a member of the forces ofWilliam Randolph Hearst, in New York. The late Jacques Futrelle, the author, who went down with theTitanic, was a Georgian, and worked for years on the "Journal." Don Marquis, one of the most brilliant American newspaper "columnists," now in charge of the department known as "The Sun Dial" on the New York "Evening Sun," was also at one time on the "Journal," as was likewise Grantland Rice, America's most widely read sporting writer. Lollie Belle Wiley, whose poetry has a distinct southern quality, is, I believe, a member of the "Journal's" staff. As the eminent Ty Cobb once wrote a book, it seems fair to mention him also among Georgian authors, though so far as I know he never worked on an Atlanta paper. And if Atlanta's three celebrated golfers have not written for the papers, they have at least supplied the sporting page with much material. Miss Alexa Sterling of Atlanta, a young lady under twenty, is one of the best women golfers in the United States; Perry Adair also figures in national golf, and Robert T. ("Bobby") Jones, Jr., who was southern champion at the age of fourteen, is, perhaps, an unprecedented marvel at the game—so at least my golfing friends inform me.
The continued militancy of the "Constitution," under the editorship of Clark Howell, who sits in his father's old chair, with a bust of Grady at his elbow, is evidenced not only by its frequent editorials against lynching, but by its fearless campaign against another Georgia specialty—the "paper colonel." The ranks of the"paper colonels" in the South are chiefly made up of lawyers who "have been colonelized by custom for no other reason than that they have led their clients to victory in legal battles." Some of the real colonels have been objecting to the paper kind, and the "Constitution" has bravely backed up the objection.
The liveliness of journalism in Georgia does not begin and end in Atlanta. The Savannah "Morning News" has an able editorial page, and there are many others in the State. Some of the small-town papers are, moreover, well worth reading for that kind of breeziness which we usually associate with the West rather than the South. Consider, for example, the following, in which the Dahlonega (Georgia) "Nugget," published up in the mountains, in the section where gold is mined, discusses the failings of one Billie Adams, the editor's own son-in-law:
On Saturday last, Billie Adams and his wife waylaid the public road over on Crown Mountain, where this sorry piece of humanity stood and cursed while his wife knocked down and beat her sister, Emma. He is a son-in-law of ours, but if the Lord had anything to do with him, He must have made a mistake and thought He was breathing the breath of life into a dog.He is too lazy to work and lays around and waits for his wife to get what she can procure on credit, until she can get nothing more for him and the children to eat. Recently he claimed to be gone to Tennessee in search of work. Upon hearing that his family had nothing to eat, we had Carl Brooksher send over nearly four dollars' worth of provisions. In he came and sat there and feasted until every bite was gone. But this ends it with us.There are a lot of people who have sorry kinfolks, but in thisinstance if there were prizes offered, we would certainly win the first.Last year, thinking he would scare his mother-in-law and sister-in-law off from where they live, so he could get the place, he shot two holes through their window, turned their mule out of the stable, and tried to run it into the bean patch, besides hanging up a bunch of switches at the drawbars. Then their fence was set afire twice. This is said to be the work of his wife. Then, after carrying home meat, flour, lard, and vegetables to eat for her mother and sister, he whipped the latter because she refused to give him two of the wagon wheels.The city made a case against both for the whipping, and the wife, although coming to town alone frequently during the day, brought her baby and everything to the council room, plead guilty and was fined one and costs. Billie didn't appear, but if he stays in this country Marshal Wimpy will have him, when all these things will come to light, both in the council chamber and grand jury room.
On Saturday last, Billie Adams and his wife waylaid the public road over on Crown Mountain, where this sorry piece of humanity stood and cursed while his wife knocked down and beat her sister, Emma. He is a son-in-law of ours, but if the Lord had anything to do with him, He must have made a mistake and thought He was breathing the breath of life into a dog.
He is too lazy to work and lays around and waits for his wife to get what she can procure on credit, until she can get nothing more for him and the children to eat. Recently he claimed to be gone to Tennessee in search of work. Upon hearing that his family had nothing to eat, we had Carl Brooksher send over nearly four dollars' worth of provisions. In he came and sat there and feasted until every bite was gone. But this ends it with us.
There are a lot of people who have sorry kinfolks, but in thisinstance if there were prizes offered, we would certainly win the first.
Last year, thinking he would scare his mother-in-law and sister-in-law off from where they live, so he could get the place, he shot two holes through their window, turned their mule out of the stable, and tried to run it into the bean patch, besides hanging up a bunch of switches at the drawbars. Then their fence was set afire twice. This is said to be the work of his wife. Then, after carrying home meat, flour, lard, and vegetables to eat for her mother and sister, he whipped the latter because she refused to give him two of the wagon wheels.
The city made a case against both for the whipping, and the wife, although coming to town alone frequently during the day, brought her baby and everything to the council room, plead guilty and was fined one and costs. Billie didn't appear, but if he stays in this country Marshal Wimpy will have him, when all these things will come to light, both in the council chamber and grand jury room.
The scandal of newspaperdom in Georgia is, of course, Tom Watson, who publishes the "Jeffersonian"—a misnamed paper if there ever was one—in the town of Thomson. Many years ago, when Edward P. Thomas, now assistant to the president of the United States Steel Corporation, was a little boy in Atlanta, complaining about having his ears washed; when Theodore D. Rousseau, secretary to Mayor Mitchel of New York, was having his early education drilled into him at the Ivy Street school; when Ralph Peters, now president of the Long Island Railroad, had left Atlanta and become a division superintendent on the Panhandle Road; when the parents of Ivy Ledbetter Lee were wondering to what college they would send him when hegrew to be a big boy; when Robert Adamson was a page in the Georgia Legislature—as long ago as that, Tom Watson was waving his red head and prominent Adam's apple as a member of the State House of Representatives. In the mad and merry days of Bryanism he became a Populist Member of Congress. He was nominated for vice-president, to run on the Populist ticket with Bryan. Later he ran for president on the ticket of some unheard-of party, organized in protest against the "conservatism" of the Populists. Watson's paper reminds one of Brann and his "Iconoclast." Reading it, I have never been able to discover what Watson wasfor. All I could find out was what he was violently against—and that is almost everything. He is the wild ass of Georgia journalism; the thistles of chaos are sweet in him, and order in any department of life is a chestnut burr beneath his tail.
There has been great rejoicing in Atlanta over the raising of funds for the establishment there of two new universities, Emory and Oglethorpe. Emory was founded in 1914, as the result of a feud which developed in Vanderbilt University, located at Nashville, Tennessee, over the question as to whether the institution should be controlled by the Board of Bishops of the southern Methodist Episcopal Church, or by the University trustees, who were not so much interested in the development of the sectarian side of the university. The fight was taken to the courts where the trustees won. As a result, Methodist influence and support were withdrawn from Vanderbilt, which thenceforward became a non-sectarian college, and Emory was started—Atlanta having been selected as its home because nearly a million and a half dollars was raised in Atlanta to bring it there.
Oglethorpe is to be a Presbyterian institution, and starts off with a million dollars.
This will give Atlanta three rather important colleges, since she already has the technical branch of the University of Georgia, the main establishment of whichlocated at Athens, Georgia, is one of the oldest state universities in the country, having been founded in 1801. (The University of Tennessee is the oldest state university in the South. It was founded in 1794. The University of Pennsylvania, dating from 1740, is the oldest of all state universities. Harvard, founded in 1636, was the first college established in the country; and the only other American colleges which survive from the seventeenth century are William and Mary, at Williamsburg, Virginia, established in 1693, and St. John's College, at Annapolis, dating from 1696.)
There is a tendency in some parts of the South to use the terms "college" and "university" loosely. Some schools for white persons, doing little if anything more than grammar and high-school work, are called "colleges," and negro institutions doing similar work are sometimes grandiloquently termed "universities."
Atlanta has thirteen public schools for negroes, but no public high school for them. There are, however, six large private educational institutions for negroes in the city, doing high-school, college, or graduate work, making Atlanta a great colored educational center. Of these, Atlanta University, a non-sectarian co-educational college with a white president (Mr. Edward T. Ware, whose father came from New England and founded the institution in 1867), is, I believe, the oldest and largest. It is very highly spoken of. Atlanta and Clark Universities are the only two colored colleges in Atlanta listed in the "World Almanac's" tableof American universities and colleges. Clark also has a white man as president.
Spelman Seminary, a Baptist institution for colored girls, has a white woman president, and is partially supported by Rockefeller money. Morehouse College, for boys, has a colored president, an able man, is of similar denomination and is also partially supported by Rockefeller funds. Spelman and Morehouse are run separately, excepting in college work, on which they combine. Both are said to be excellent. Morris Brown University is not a university at all, but does grammar and high-school work. It is officered and supported by colored people, all churches of the African Methodist Episcopal denomination subscribing funds for its maintenance. Gammon Theological Seminary is, I am informed, the one adequately endowed educational establishment for negroes in Atlanta. It would, of course, be a splendid thing if the best of these schools and colleges could be combined.
Citizens of Atlanta do not, generally, take the interest they ought to take in these or other institutions for the benefit of negroes. To be sure, most Southerners do not believe in higher education for negroes; but, even allowing for that viewpoint, it is manifestly unfair that white children should have public high schools and that negro children should have none, but should be obliged to pay for their education above the grammar grades. Perhaps there are people in Atlanta who believe that even a high-school education is undesirable for thenegro. That, however, seems to me a pretty serious thing for one race to attempt to decide for another—especially when the deciding race is not deeply and sincerely interested in the uplift of the race over which it holds the whip hand. Certainly intelligent people in the South believe in industrial training for the negro, and equally certainly a negro high school could give industrial training.
Negroes are not admitted to Atlanta parks, nor are there any parks exclusively for them. Until recently there was no contagious-disease hospital to which negroes could be taken, and there is not now a reformatory for colored girls in the State of Georgia. Neither is there any provision whatsoever in the State for the care of feeble-minded colored children. And there is one thing even worse to be said. Shameful as are Georgia's frequent lynchings, shameful as is the State's indifference to negro welfare, blacker yet is the law upon her statute books making the "age of consent"ten years! Various women's organizations, and individual women, have, for decades, worked to change this law, but without success. The term "southern chivalry" must ring mocking and derisive in the ears of Georgia legislators until this disgrace is wiped out. Standing as it does, it means but one thing: that in order to protect some white males in their depravity, the voters of Georgia are satisfied to leave little girls, ten, eleven, twelve years of age, and upward, white as well as colored, utterly unprotected by the law in this regard.
I have heard more than one woman in Georgia intimate that she would be well pleased with a little less exterior "chivalry" and a little more plain justice. Aside from their efforts to change the "age of consent" law, leading women in the State have been working for compulsory education, for the opening of the State University to women, for factory inspection and decent child-labor laws. The question of child labor has now been taken in hand by the National Government—as, of course, the "age of consent" should also be—but in other respects but little progress has been made in Georgia.
From such cheerless items I turn gladly to a happier theme.
As I have said elsewhere in this book, many colored people in Atlanta are doing well in various ways. At Atlanta University I saw several students whose fathers and mothers were graduates of the same institution. Higher education for the negro has, thus, come into its second generation. More prosperous negroes in Atlanta are doing social settlement work among less fortunate members of their race, and have started a free kindergarten for negro children. Many good people in Atlanta are unaware of these facts, and I believe their judgment on the entire negro question would be modified, at least in certain details, were they merely to inform themselves upon various creditable negro activities in the city. The northern stranger, attempting to ascertain the truth about the negro and the negro problem,has to this extent the advantage of the average Southerner: prejudice and indifference do not prevent his going among the negroes to find out what they are doing for themselves.
The negro roof-garden, Odd Fellows' Building, AtlantaThe negro roof-garden, Odd Fellows' Building, Atlanta
At various times in my life chance has thrown me into contact with charities in great variety, and philanthropic work of many kinds. I have seen theoretical charities, sentimental charities, silly charities, pauperizing charities, wild-eyed charities, charities which did good, and others which worked damage in the world; I have seen organized charities splendidly run under difficult circumstances (as in the Department of Charities under Commissioner Kingsbury, in New York City), and I have seen other organized charities badly run at great expense; I have seen charities conducted with the primary purpose of ministering to the vanity of self-important individuals who like to say: "See all the good that I am doing!" and I have seen other personal charities operated (as in the case of the Rockefeller Foundation) with a perfectly magnificent scope and effectiveness.
Nevertheless, of all the charities I have seen, of all the efforts I have witnessed to improve the condition of humanity, none has taken a firmer hold upon my heart than the Leonard Street Orphans' Home, for negro girls, in Atlanta.
The home is a humble frame building which was used as a barracks by northern troops stationed in Atlantaafter the Civil War. In it reside Miss Chadwick, her helpers, and about seventy little negro girls; and it is an interesting fact that several of the helpers are young colored women who, themselves brought up in the home and taught to be self-supporting, have been drawn back to the place by homesickness. Was ever before an orphan homesick for an orphans' home?
Miss Chadwick is an Englishwoman. Coming out to America a good many years ago, she somehow found Atlanta, and in Atlanta somehow found this orphanage, which was then both figuratively and literally dropping to pieces. Some one had to take hold of it, so Miss Chadwick did. How successful she has been it is hard to convey in words. I do not mean that she has succeeded in building up a great flourishing plant with a big endowment and all sorts of improvements. Far from it. The home stands on a tiny lot, the building is ramshackle and not nearly large enough for its purpose, and sometimes it seems doubtful where the money to keep it going will come from. Nevertheless the home is a hundred times more successful than I could have believed a home for orphans, colored or white, could be made, had I not seen it with my own eyes. Its success lies not in material possessions or prosperity, not in the food and shelter it provides to those who so pitifully needed it, but in the fact that it is in the truest and finest sense ahome, a place endowed with the greatest blessings any home can have: contentment and affection.What Miss Chadwick has provided is, in short, an institution with a heart.
How did she do it? That, like the other mystery of how she manages to house those seventy small lively people in that little building, is something which only Heaven and Miss Chadwick understand.
But then, if you have ever visited the home and met Miss Chadwick, and seen her with her children, you know that Heaven and Miss Chadwick understand a lot of things the rest of us don't know about at all!
To walk with the morning and watch its rose unfold;To drowse with the noontide lulled in its heart of gold;To lie with the night-time and dream the dreams of old.—Madison Cawein.
To walk with the morning and watch its rose unfold;To drowse with the noontide lulled in its heart of gold;To lie with the night-time and dream the dreams of old.
—Madison Cawein.
A man I know studies as a hobby something which he calls "graphics"—the term denoting the reaction of the mind to certain words. One of the words he used in an experiment with me was "winter." When he said "winter" there instantly came to me the picture of a snowstorm in Quebec. I saw the front of the Hotel Frontenac at dusk through a mist of driving snow. There were lights in the windows. A heavy wind was blowing and as I leaned against it the front of my overcoat was plastered with sticky white flakes. The streets and sidewalks were deep with snow, and the only person besides myself in the vision was a sentry standing with his gun in the lee of the vestibule outside the local militia headquarters.
If my friend were to come now and try me with the word "spring," I know what picture it would call to mind. I should see the Burge plantation, near Covington, Georgia: the simple old white house with its rose-clad porch, or "gallery," its grove of tall trees, its carriage-house, its well-house, and other minor dependencies clustering nearby like chickens about a white hen, its background the rolling cottonfields, their red soil glowing salmon-colored in the sun. For, as I was never so conscious of the brutality of winter as in that evening snowstorm at Quebec, I was never so conscious, as at the time of our visit to the Burge plantation, of the superlative soft sweetness of the spring.
I was never so conscious, as at the time of our visit to the Burge plantation, of the superlative soft sweetness of the springI was never so conscious, as at the time of our visit to the Burge plantation, of the superlative soft sweetness of the spring
In seasons, as in other things, we have our individual preferences. Melancholy natures usually love autumn, with its colorings so like sweet sad minor chords. But what kind of natures they are which rejoice in spring, which feel that with each spring the gloomy past is blotted out, and life, with all its opportunities, begins anew—what kind of natures they are which recognize April instead of January as the beginning of their year I shall not attempt to tell, for mine is such a nature, and one must not act at once as subject and diagnostician.
So long as I endure, spring can never come again without turning my thoughts to northwestern Georgia; to the peculiar penetrating warmth which passed through the clothing to the body and made one feel that one was not surrounded by mere air, but was immersed in a dry bath of some infinitely superior vapor, a vapor volatile, soothing, tonic, distilled, it seemed, from the earth, from pine trees, tulip trees, balm-of-Gilead trees, (or "bam" trees, as they call them), blossoming Judas trees, Georgia crabapple, dogwood pink and white, peach blossom, wistaria, sweet-shrub, dog violets, pansy violets, Cherokee roses, wild honeysuckle and azalia, and theevanescent green of new treetops, all carried in solution in the sunlight. By day the brilliant cardinal adds his fine note of color and sound, but at night he is silent, and when the moon comes out one hears the mockingbird and, it may be also, two whippoorwills, one in the grove near the house, one in the woods across the road, calling back and forth. Then one is tempted to step down from the porch, and follow the voices of the birds into the vague recesses of a night webbed with dark tree shadows outlined in blue moonlight.
Small wonder it is, if, as report says, no houseparty on a southern plantation is a success unless young couples become "sort of engaged," and if in a region so provocative in springtime under a full moon, a distinction is recognized between being merely "engaged," and being engagedto be married.
One Georgia belle we met, a sloe-eyed girl whose reputation not only for beauty but for charm reached through the entire South, had, at the time of our visit, recently become engaged in the more grave and permanent sense.
"How does it seem?" a girl friend asked her.
"I feel," she answered, "like a man who has built up a large business and is about to go into the hands of a receiver."
Such ways as those girls have! Such voices! Such eyes! And such names, too! Names which would not fit at all into a northern setting, relatively so hard and unsentimental, but which, when one becomes accustomed to them, take their place gracefully and harmoniouslyin the southern picture. The South likes diminutives and combinations in its women's names. Its Harriets, Franceses, Sarahs, and Marthas, become Hatties, Fannies, Sallies and Patsies, and Patsy sometimes undergoes a further transition and becomes Passie. Moreover, where these diminutives have been passed down for several generations in a family, their origin is sometimes lost sight of, and the diminutive becomes the actual baptismal name. In one family of my acquaintance, for example, the name Passie has long been handed down from mother to daughter. The original great-grandmother Passie was christened Martha but was at first called Patsy; then, because her black mammy was also named Patsy, the daughter of the house came to be known, for purposes of differentiation, as Passie, and when she married and had a daughter of her own, the child was christened Passie. In this family the name May has more recently been adopted as a middle name, and it is customary for familiars of the youngest Passie, to address her not merely as Passie, but as Passie-May. The inclusion of the second name, in this fashion, is another custom not uncommon in the South. In Atlanta alone I heard of ladies habitually referred to as Anna-Laura, Hattie-May, Lollie-Belle, Sally-Maud, Nora-Belle, Mattie-Sue, Emma-Belle, Lottie-Belle, Susie-May, Lula-Belle, Sallie-Fannie, Hattie-Fannie, Lou-Ellen, Allie-Lou, Clara-Belle, Mary-Ella, and Hattie-Belle. Another young lady was known to her friends as Jennie-D.
The train from Atlanta set us down at Covington, Georgia, or rather at the station which lies between the towns of Covington and Oxford—for when this railroad was built neither town would allow it a right of way, and to this day each is connected with the station by a street car line, either line equipped with one diminutive car, a pair of disconsolate mules, and a driver. Covington is the County seat, a quiet southern town, part old, part new, with a look of rural prosperity about it. Stopping at the postoffice to inquire for mail we saw this peremptory sign displayed:
When the window is down don't bang around and ask for a stamp or two.—J. L. Callaway, Postmaster.
When the window is down don't bang around and ask for a stamp or two.
—J. L. Callaway, Postmaster.
As the window was down we tiptoed out and went upon our way, driving through Oxford before going to the plantation. This town was named for Oxford, England, and is, like its namesake, a college town. A small and very old Methodist educational institution, with a pretty though ragged campus and fine trees, is all there is to Oxford, save a row of ante-bellum houses. One of them, a pleasant white mansion, half concealed by the huge magnolias which stand in its front yard, was at one time the residence of General Longstreet. The old front gate, hanging on a stone post, was made by the general with his own hands—and well made, for it is to-day as good a gate as ever. Corra Harris lived at onetime in Oxford; her husband, Rev. Lundy H. Harris, having been a professor at the college.
Though plantation life has necessarily changed since the war, I do not believe that there is in the whole South a plantation where it has changed less than on the Burge plantation. In appearance the place is not as Sherman's men found it, for they tore down the fences and ruined the beautiful old-fashioned garden, and neither has been replaced; nor, of course, is it run, so far as practical affairs are concerned, as it was before the War; that is to say, instead of being operated as a unit of nine-hundred acres, it is now worked chiefly on shares, and is divided up into "one mule farms" and "two mule farms," these being tracts of about thirty and sixty acres, respectively, thirty acres being approximately the area which can be worked by a man and a mule.
Practically all the negroes on the place—perhaps a hundred in number—are either former slaves of the Burge family, or the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of slaves who lived on the plantation. That is one reason why the plantation is less changed in spirit than are many others. The Burges were religious people, used their slaves kindly, and brought them up well, so that the negroes on the plantation to-day are respectable, and in some instances, exemplary people, very different from the vagrant negro type which has developed since the War, making labor conditions in someparts of the South uncertain, and plantation life, in some sections, not safe for unprotected women.
The present proprietors of the Burge plantation are two ladies, granddaughters of Mrs. Thomas Burge, who lived here, a widow, with a little daughter, when General Sherman and his hosts came by. These ladies frequently spend months at the plantation without male protectors save only the good negroes of their own place, who look after them with the most affectionate devotion. True, the ladies keep an ugly looking but mild mannered bulldog, of which the negroes are generally afraid; true also they carry a revolver when they drive about the country in their motor, and keep revolvers handy in their rooms; but these precautions are not taken, they told me, because of any doubts about the men on their place, their one fear being of tramp negroes, passing by.
Of their own negroes several are remarkable, particularly one old couple, perfect examples of the fine ante-bellum type so much beloved in the South, and so much regretted as it disappears.
During the period of twenty years or more, while the owners were absent, growing up and receiving their education, the whole place, indoors and out, was in charge of Uncle George and Aunt Sidney. The two lived, and still do live, in one wing of the house—over which Aunt Sidney presides as housekeeper and cook, as her mother, Aunt Liddy, did before her. Aunt Liddy died only a short time ago, aged several years over a hundred. Uncle George supervises all the business of the plantation, as he has done for thirty or forty years. He collects all rents, markets the crops and receives the payments, makes purchases, pays bills, and keeps peace between the tenants—nor could any human being be more honorable or possess a finer, sweeter dignity. As for devotion, when the little girls who were away returned after all the years as grown women, every ribbon, every pin in that house was where it had been left, and the place was no less neat than if the "white folks" had constantly remained there.
Before Georgia went dry it was customary for negroes of the rougher sort to get drunk in town every Saturday night. Drunken negroes would consequently be passing by, all night, on their way to their homes, yelling and (after the manner of their kind when intoxicated) shooting their revolvers in the air. Every Saturday night, when the ladies were at home, Uncle George would quietly take his gun and place himself on the porch, remaining there until the last of the obstreperous wayfarers had passed.
Uncle Abe and Uncle Wiley are two other worthy and venerable men who live in cabins on the place. Both were there when Sherman's army passed upon its devastating way, and both were carried off, as were thousands upon thousands of other negroes out of that wide belt across the State of Georgia, which was overrun in the course of the March to the Sea.
"Ah was goin' to mill wid de ox-caht," Uncle Abe told me, "when de soljas dey kim 'long an' got me. Deytol' me, 'Heah, nigga! Git out dat caht, an' walk behin'. Whenitmovesyoumove; whenitstopsyoustop!' An' like dat Ah walk all de way to Savannah [two hundred and fifty miles]. Den, after dat, dey took us 'long up No'th—me an' ma brotha Wiley, ovah deh."
I asked him what regiment he went with. He said it was the Twenty-second Indiana, and that Dr. Joe Stilwell, of that regiment, who came from a place near Madison, Indiana ("Ah reckon de town was name Brownstown"), was good to him. An officer whom he knew, he said, was Captain John Snodgrass, and another Major Tom Shay.
"All Ah was evvuh wo'ied about aftuh dey kim tuck me," he declared, "was gittin' somep'n t' eat. Dat kinda put me on de wonduh, sometahmes, but dey used us all right. Dr. Pegg—him dat did de practice on de plantation befo' de Wah—he tol' de niggas dat de Yankees would put gags in deh moufs an' lead 'em eroun' like dey wuz cattle. But deh wa' n't like dat nohow. I b'longed to de Secon' Division, Thuhd B'gade, Fou'teenth Co' [corps]. Cap'n Snodgrass, he got to be lieutenant-cuhnel. He was de highes' man Ah evuh hel' any convuhsation wid, but Isawall de gennuls of dat ahmy."
Uncle Wiley is older than Uncle Abe. He was already a grown man with three children when taken away by some of Sherman's men. He told me he was with the Fifty-second Ohio, and mentioned Captain Shepard.
The two brothers got as far as Washington, D. C.
"We got los' togedduh in de U. S. buildin' in dat city,"said Uncle Wiley. "De President of de U. S. right at dat tahme he was daid. He was kill', Ah don' s'pose it wuz a week befo' we got to Wash'n, D. C."
"How did you happen to come all the way back?" I asked.
"Well-l," ruminated the old man, "home was always a-restin' on mah min'. Ah kep' thinkin' 'bout home. So aftuh de Wah ceasted Ah jus' kim 'long back."
Many of the old plantation customs still survive. A little before noon the bell is rung to summon the hands from the cotton fields. Over the red plowed soil you hear a darky cry, a melodious "Oh-oh-oh!" as wild and musical as the cries of the south-Italian olive gatherers. The planters cease their work, mules stand still, traces are unhooked from singletrees, and chain-ends thrown over the mules' backs; then the men mount the animals and ride in to the midday meal, the women trudging after. Those who rent land, or work on shares, go to their own cabins, while those employed by the hour or by the day (the rate of pay is ten cents an hour or seventy-five cents a day) come to the kitchen to be fed. Nor is it customary to stop there at feeding negroes. As in the old days, any negro who has come upon an errand or who has "stopped by" to sell supplies, or for whatever purpose, expects to stay for "dinner," and makes it a point to arrive about noon. Thus from sixteen to twenty negroes are fed daily at the Burge plantation house.