Overheard a rather humorous remark of a local celebrity, Clayt Robson by name, one evening in the lobby of the Kimball house. Robson is a well-known Georgian lobbyist and political boss, who is considered a power in the present state administration. Clayt jokingly spluttered to a group of friends that “I was twenty-one years old and grown-up before I knew that ‘damned Yankee’ was two words.”
My visit to Atlanta brought to memory a conversation I had with Cole S. Blease, former governor of South Carolina, about four years ago. The governor very kindly invited me to his suite in the Selwyn hotel at Charlotte, N. C., to partake of his private twenty-year-old stock. While “killing” the quart of medicine, the subject of Atlanta came to the front. Here is the Bleasian description of the South’s largest city, as nearly as I can remember:
“Atlanta is a hell-hole of perdition. It is no place for a virtuous woman or an honest man.”
I cannot quite agree with Mr. Blease, for Atlanta treated me royally. The girlies here I found to be of true Southern stock—very shy and rather demure. I once heard the late “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman remark that the only family tree he could boast was that the women were virtuous and the men reasonably brave. From my cursory observations this description fairly fits Atlanta.
From Atlanta our next stop was Jacksonville. Went for a joyride here, which ended in a thrilling though harmless smashup. Upon picking myself from out the wreckage, I thanked the kindly doctor for a safe delivery. Which calls to mind these lines by Lincoln, or some other noted personage:
Oh why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
As he rides in his swift-flying car like a cloud,
A break in the axle, a bust in the tire,
He passeth from life to the heavenly choir.
* * *