Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1924-04-05

often heard it laughed at. But in this l
have only shared the fate of all the pro-
iectors, for it has uniformly been the Gus
tom Of every country to ridicule even the
greatest inventions until use has proved
their utility"
But while Augusta claimed her geniuses,
her statesmen, generals, and even poets. as
| we'll rich merchants, the regions beyond
| were verify a wildsome west. Savannah, of
| course, breathed an air ancestral, shared by
her daughters of the colonial hearth; but
| Macon was yet to spring from a log fort
| lanta an Indian trail across forest-coye~ed
hills, marked the far future of Peachtree
street. I'm a melting-pot such as Georgia
was in 1875" says John Donald Wade, lit
| is hardly possible that there was any rigid
social qualification. Virginians who had
been friends even of Madam Washington
herself knew that to attain political promi-
nence it was necessary to have the votes of
ones neighbors; and besides that, it is hard
| for the most stiff-necked aristocrat who is
in trouble, to repel the kindly advances of
man whose chief contamination lies in
that he is ungrammatical in speech and ig-
norant as to his ancestry. If a neghbor
had bad luck and got behind with his crop,
you went over and helped him plow it. II
his barn was burned, you sent him load of
corn. If he wanted to build a. house or
clear a piece of ground, you would help
also. He would do much for you. Peo-
pie were good natured, simple, and after
the manner of frontiersmen, astonishingly
f1eeced by man who collected money from
them on the ground that he was to buy for
them from a factory in Ohio some spy
glasses that would enable them to see far
into the earth" Those were the merry days
of corn-shuckings, when there would be mu-
sic, dancing horse racing, much eating and
matches with beeves for prizes, and school
exhibitions, and withal much marrying
happy time "to be learned about nowhere
so accurately and entertaningly as in Long
streets own descriptions of it,
While fortunate lads like Gus Longstreet
were sent to institutions such as DR.. Moses
WaddeTs famous school at Wilmington, South
Carolina or to Richmond Academy itself, the
rank and file appear to have taken the ques-
~ oF A
is told of certain citizens calling upon a
wandering pedagogue, who had applied for
pupils, to spell "coffee." The ttinerant be-
gan "k-a-u-g-h-p by" Whereupon the citi
zen: "Well, well, he's got larnin' shore
He's spelled it without usin letter that be-
longs to it. He'll do, don't want to ak any
however, came many true builder of the
commonwealth. With what effectiveness, too,
the leaders OF those pioneer days turned
their purpose to higher education is attested
by this, that within the first four decades of
the nineteenth century arose the State Uni
versity, Emory, Mercer, and Wesleyan; all
done So we'll.
Young Mr.. Longstreet went to Yale, width
er John C. Calhoun and numbers of other
Southrons had gone before him. In his own
class of forty-six men, four were from Geor
gia. His bographer interestingly remarks
that the Southern boy going North to college
in 1911 probably did not feel the transplant
ing as much as the Southern boy going North
a century later, Notwithstanding that the lat
ter found the War Between the States largely
forgotten and found also the intersectional
bonds of the railway far closer and more
numerous than those of stage-coach and pony
express could ever have been. Economically
the structure of Georgia and that Of Con-
necticut were much nearer one in 1911 than
they were a hundred years later. Politically
this was true also" Some one should write
the story Ct early Georgia's New England
strains. The Puritan settlement of Liberty
county; the election of DR.. Josiah Meigs a
native of Connecticut, as first president OF
the University at Athens the States strong
federalist leanings up to the late Eighteen
Fifties; and her contradictory politics, traces
of which still suryye-these are suggestive
Of multitudes Of facts which research, no
doubt, would discover. Mr.. Wade points