“As to those questions you ask me,” he said, as we were parting, “I read a’ticles upon them with great interest—oh yes, su’, with great interest and profit. But what is happening now is to me of mo’ impo’tance than what may possibly happen fifty years hence.
“You are going to Atlanta? Then you will see Judge Mansfield. He can tell you far more than I can on all these matters.”
I did see Judge Mansfield, and he did tell me more.
[36]. “The Hotel Chamberlin has a shooting preserve of 10,000 acres on the Chickahominy River (quail, duck, wild turkey, woodcock, snipe).”—Baedeker.
[37]. The ratio of instructors to pupils is as high as one to six.
[38]. It is related of him that, while sedulously instructing his men to take cover, he would deliberately “pitch his own tent under fire,” excusing himself on the ground that “the morale of the coloured troops required it—they would do anything for a man who showed himself superior to fear.”
[39]. This is also the view of Mr. W. B. Smith (“The Colour-Line,” p. 127), who says: “Then comes a race of mongrels of average mental powers higher than the lower breed, with exceptions little lower than the higher.” See p. 108.
XV
THE CITY OF A HUNDRED HILLS
The quaintly named “Seaboard Air Line” carries you from Birmingham to Atlanta, Georgia, for the most part through a region of fresh and woody highlands, with blue mountains on the southern horizon. The woods consist of pine and leaf trees about evenly mixed. Large tracts of them, unfortunately, have been ruthlessly hewn or burnt away—that crime against the future so prevalent in America.