as, being the trees of the Atlanta
streets.

Baedeker gave Atlanta about 90,000 inhabitants in 1909, but the census
of 1910 jumped her up to more than 150,000, while the estimate of 1917
in the "World Almanac" credits her with about 180,000. Moreover, in the
almanac's list of the largest cities of the earth, Atlanta comes
twentieth from the top. It is my duty, perhaps, to add that the list is
arranged alphabetically--which reminds me that some cynic has suggested
that there may have been an alphabetical arrangement of names, also, in
the celebrated list in which Abou Ben Adhem's "name led all the rest."
Nevertheless, it may be stated that, according to the almanac's
population figures, Atlanta is larger than the much more ancient city of
Athens (I refer to Athens, Greece; not Athens, Georgia), as well as such
considerable cities as Bari, Bochum, Graz, Kokand, and Omsk. Atlanta is,
in short, a city of about the size of Goteborg, and if she has not yet
achieved the dimensions of Baku, Belem, Changsha, Tashkent, or West Ham,
she is growing rapidly, and may some day surpass them all; yes, and even
that thriving metropolis, Yekaterinoslav.

As to the "healthy and bracing climate," I know that Atlanta is cool and
lovely in the spring, and I am told that her prosperous families do not
make it a practice to absent themselves from home during the summer,
according to the custom of the corresponding class in many other cities,
northern as well as southern.

Atlanta is one of the few large inland cities located neither upon a
river nor a lake. When the city was founded, the customs of life in
Georgia were such that no one ever dreamed that the State might some day
go dry. Having plenty of other things to drink, the early settlers gave
no thought to water. But, as time went on, and prohibition became a more
and more important issue, the citizens of Atlanta began to perceive
that, in emergency, the Chattahoochee River might, after all, have its
uses. Water was, consequently, piped from the river to the city, and is
now generally--albeit in some quarters mournfully--used. Though I am
informed by an expert in Indian languages that the Cherokee word
"chattahoochee" is short for "muddy," the water is filtered before it
reaches the city pipes, and is thoroughly palatable, whether taken plain
or mixed.

Well-off though Atlanta is, she would esteem herself better off, in a
material sense at least, had she a navigable stream; for her ch