bama, the locomotive met the train which was bringing "Age-Heralds"
to Atlanta. A copy of the paper was secured. The "Constitution" men then
broke into a telegraph office and wired the whole story in to their
paper, with the result that the "Constitution" was out with it before
the Birmingham papers reached Atlanta.

Atlanta was at that time a town of only about 40,000 inhabitants, but
the "Constitution," in the days of Howell and Grady, had a circulation
four times greater than the total population of the city--a situation
almost unheard of in journalism. Something of the breadth of its
influence may be gathered from the fact that in several counties in
Texas, where the law provided that whatever newspaper had the largest
circulation in the county should be the county organ, the county organ
was the Atlanta "Constitution."

An Atlanta lady tells of having called upon Grady to complain about an
article which she did not think the "Constitution" should have printed.

"Why did you put that objectionable article in your paper?" she asked
him.

"Did you read it?" he inquired.

"Yes, I did."

"Then," said Grady, "that's why I put it there."

Grady and Howell always ran a lively sporting department. Away back in
the days of bare-knuckle prize fights--such as those between Sullivan
and Ryan, and Sullivan and Kilrain--a "Constitution" reporter was always
at the ringside, no matter where the fight might take place. For a
newspaper in a town of forty or fifty thousand inhabitants, a large
percentage of them colored illiterates, this was real enterprise.

A favorite claim of Grady's was that his reporters were the greatest
"leg artists" in the world. He used to organize walking matches for
reporters, offering large prizes and charging admission. This developed,
in the middle eighties, a general craze for such matches, and resulted
in the holding of many inter-city contests, in which teams, four men to
a side, took part. One of the "Constitution's" champion "leg artists"
was Sam W. Small, now an evangelist and member of the "flying squadron"
of the Anti-Saloon League of America.

The most widely celebrated individual ever connected with the
"Constitution" was Joel Chandler Harris, many of whose "Uncle Remus"
stories--those negro folk tales still supreme in their field--appeared
originally in that paper. In view of Mr. Harris's achievement it is
pleasant to recall that there was paid to him during his life one of the
fine