Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1902-02-13


any sane man Of free estate and within
the favor of the law deliberately choose
to live in this far northwestern country!
A hundred times 1 have asked myself
this question, as my eyes have measured
the horizon that bounded these western
plains, and I ask it again today as / sit
in this semi-arctic city and scan the fro
zen fields glittering with snow and whist
ling with the razor-wind that seems
whetted for the marrow of every human
form that braves 1t.
Standing one day In a Chicago club
window and looking down upon the
countless thousands that throng the
streets of the great western metropolis,
a gentleman asked me what reflection
the crowded thOroughfares created in
my mind.
This" I answered promptly from my
upperinost thought; Where do all these
people come from, and how on earth can
they look cheerful so far away from
Atlanta?"
The remark was not intended to be
facetiolis. I spoke seriously from local
standpoint. and with the homing instinct
strong within me.
L have never been able to comprehend
the pioneer spirit. l travel 5000 miles
every year, for these ten years past and
the more / travel the more / yearn foI
home. The farther go and the more I
see of this big varied world the more
fixedly do my preferences and anections
cluster around that suburban Atlanta
which / call home and which seems to
me more and more the prototype Of that
better heaven to which our weary foot
steps press through mortal WEAKNESS to
peace and eternal rest.
There is no such thing as the "travel
habit with me. 1.-THE desire to 60 is
something which l never have and never
shall acquire. And all through these
summer DAYS / sit there in College Park
looking at the New York and New Or
leans flyers, flashing and laundering
north and east and south eand cross my
legs complacently and wish them vel
and thank God am not on them as they
"go."
/ suppose 1t Is a wise and beneficeni
provision of the Almighty that we love
best and cherish always the climate and
country in which we were reared. Nc
man, mountain-born, ever yet learned tC
love the plains as he loved the shadow OF
the everlasting hills. And perhaps it is
equally true that one whose life began
upon these expansive plains with the
horizon holding the sunset unbroken by
hill or tree, might feel suffocated and
cramped within the depths Of the Pied
mont region which seems to us Gods
own peculiar country.
Il
ALL"
one day a genial old gentleman. mellow
and sweet and rich, called to see me at
my hotel in a Vermont town under the
shadow of the White mountains. The
snow was foot deep, the mercury was
10 degrees below zero. and he came, a
mass of furs, muffied TO his ears in the
skins of the slaughtered animals Of his
frigid home.
I n,aY,fYtroH 80 him xxrhr a hts time
of life and with his ample means. he con-
tinued to brave the rigors of his northern
winters, when he might, at will, board a
sleeper and roll without change. to the
sunny Florida, where for nine days out
of ten he could sit unmuffied in the balmy
air and bask in genial,warmth and inhale
the fragrance of flowers and take age
softly and easily in the land of sunshine.
And he answered me as I answered the
club man of Chicago.
MY son. said he (you see / am yet a
young nam, ''if ! should go to Florida
should sigh for these white SHOWS and
these northern winters even as you are
signing now for your southern violets."
And so it goes, The vast and divine In
telligence that planned and evolved the
world has builded for US better than we
could have builded for ourselves. For If
all men thought as 1 do. these vast and
prolific plains. growing imperial in their
riches. filling the granaries of the repub-
lie with food and enriching the life of the
republic with splendid men, might have
been left to the red wolf and the whistling
wind.
The world has never lacked for pioneers.
And they have flocked and are flocking
vet to these northwestern states in thous-
ands-brave, hardy. resolute and strenu-
ous-a noble and splendid race Of men, to
whom the republic will one day acknowl-
edge the debt of an Industrial empire
plucked from the blizzards and the ice.
and Indispensable to the glory and the
prosperity of the union.
North Dakota has only $4,000 people-a
hundred thousand less than it's southern
sister of the same name.
But it is growing with astonishing vigor
and rapidity. Fargo is the metropolis of
the state. 1t Is really beautiful city Of
Il, 900 people, built up with stately struct-
ures and pulsing with life and hope and
progress-just such city as Atlanta was
four years after the civil war. made up of
people from everywhere, linked in the i'm
pulse of growth, and bound in the tie of
pioneers making a civilization for them
selves and for their children. Fargo is
about 800 miles north of st. Paul, and
generally about 10 degrees colder than the
sanity city Of the Minnesotas.
Grand Falls, the second city of the state,
is about 100 miles further north, and has
about $500 stirring, eager people, and has
two as fine hotels as one could expect to
see west of Chicago. The eastern half of
the state has been the most progressive
and is the most prosperous and populous,
but as the demands for land grow more
eager the drift is steadily westward and
the time will yet come when Bismarck.
the capital, will be in the center of the
state.
The region lying in the triangle be
tween Bismarck. Fargo and Grand Falls
is the birthplace and terminating center
of the blizzard which play periodical but
transient visits to the rest of the coun-
try. The billiards. are sectional and ig-
more the south which is not disposed tC
resent the snub. But the people are ma
tional and generous and as broad as the
sweep of these prGiries. 1t actually made