The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1899-12-24

sum.
To brighten up the year at its close.
And so my wife-thoughtful woman,
told me that / had better start out and
see if | couldn't talk the good % 3ple out
of enough to make the .'randcli. dren
happy. The weather was unpropitious
and my old bones were grambling, but |
obeyed the maternal orders and went.
Inertia is Il great invention. The older
we grow the more inertia we have. When
| have stayed at home a few months, |
want to keep on staying there and it
nearly kills me to rouse mp ant 80 away
for even Il week. After | h, Nc gotten
on the road the harness seems 10 warm
me up, my inertia is brOi,Gr and new
scenes and people and friends absorb my
attention.
| have just returned from Alabama
from a second trip and the welcome home
has settled me down so calm and serene
that my inertia has begun to work and
I feel like l could never go away amy
more. The weather was against me some
what, but | reckon / sold enough talk to
run us through this Christmas. l hope
so, for it may be the last, and then
what then?
There is 4 wonderful difference between
the people of big cities and those of little
unpretending towns. BY request l vis-
tied Childersburg, village of a few hum
dred people, whom / did not find too busy
to talk to me; especially the old Confed-
crate veterans, whose grizzly beard and
settled features always mark them.
can tell them IA hundred yards off And
the common people heard him gladly"
sayeth the scriptures. Just so hive
found the ycomanry of our sunny south
land my most willing hearers. I
love them and love to talk to them, for
they have neither policy nor hypocrisy.
| am glad myself to belong to the middle
class and to mingle with them. Ar;sto-
cratic society has but few charms for me.
The sweetest poet who ever wrote a
verse said that Ahou Ben Ahdam was
placed high in heaven because he loved
his fellow men. That was his only ere
Dental
In Chldersburg the good people gath
cred at the academy that cost nothing
In fact not anything cost anything. and |
was most Hospitality entertained and left
with a kiss on the lips of a sweet tile
girl who recited a speech for me that
her aunt had taught her She was only a
little child. Before | left home ] had a
letter from Il cousin in Birmingham COR
daily inviting me to his house. saying
he would meet re ut the depct with a
brass band. Also another letter from a
lady friend, a widow. who said / must
come to her house and she would meet me
at the depot with open arms. When my
wife read them | asked where I had bet
ter 60, and she replied with peculiar en-
phasis, Go to Fred's."
Birmingham is a wonderful city and a
very beautiful one. A large clear, well
arranged depot receives you. Broad, well
paved streets and sidewalks delight you,
and magnificent commercial blocks as
t0nish ven. Everything has been planned
on a grand scale and everybody is busy
with trade and industries that seem to be
increasing and spreading out in every di-
rection. Thousands Of beautiful dwellings
adorn the highlands that environ the city
and hundreds are being built on new
streets that are being graded and paved
as fast as it is possible. There are
churches there that cost over 100000
each. Money, money, money. 1t is there
by the million ana keeps ON coming from
All points OF the country for investment.
Wealthy merchants from other cities
have planted branch houseE There and the
child is outgroWing the parent. All
around this center the whole face of the
earth is dotted with iron plants and their
fires are ever burning. 1T is a magnificent
sight to approach Birmingham by night
ard on either side of every railroad to
see the angry looking flames going up
from thousands of coke ovens and hum
dreds of smokesacks. 1t makes one
think Of Dante's Inferno and HaGes and
Pluto and He'll itself. Not very long ago
n tramp wandered out among the ovens
before they were fired and lay down to
sleep. During the night. when the fires
We're all aglow, he was found III danger
Gus proximity and was rudey punched
up, and when asked who he was and
where he came from, said: I was in
Birmingham yesterday and | reckon | got
drunk and | suppose | am in hell now
just as I've been eXpecting-no water
about here is there?"
| visited EnsIey, the Southern Pitts
burg, where the leviathan steel plants
are going up. There is a population now
OF Iu,OOO DilSS people operating Iue LUZ
naces and rolling mills and mining for
coal but the half has not been told, and
I'm afraid to tell what ! think | was
told about the plants that are going up
and are under contract to he completed
and in operation by LIST of April next.
Hundreds Of handsome cottages, all neat
~ finished and painted are now ready
and hundreds more going up for the work
men who are to man These immense
steel plants-one of which is to be the
largest i'm the United States, and | was
told that by the 1st of April these plants
at Ensley will require $4,000 men, and
they with their families would make up
population of 100000 people. There are
cluster of FIVE furnaces there now that
turn ont $50 tons of pig iron every day.
and these are not the half of them-and
the great steel plant is to make 5000
tons of steel every day. "Mirabile dictu."
Have ] got these figures down right. /
made some notes ON the back of an en-
veope and that's the way they read. |
know that the $4,000 operatives is right,
though another man said 10000. Not
long ago | retold story that a friend
told me about his hunting expeditions on
the Pan Handle region just after the