"How does it seem?" a girl friend asked her.

"I feel," she answered, "like a man who has built up a large business
and is about to go into the hands of a receiver."

Such ways as those girls have! Such voices! Such eyes! And such names,
too! Names which would not fit at all into a northern setting,
relatively so hard and unsentimental, but which, when one becomes
accustomed to them, take their place gracefully and harmoniously in the
southern picture. The South likes diminutives and combinations in its
women's names. Its Harriets, Franceses, Sarahs, and Marthas, become
Hatties, Fannies, Sallies and Patsies, and Patsy sometimes undergoes a
further transition and becomes Passie. Moreover, where these diminutives
have been passed down for several generations in a family, their origin
is sometimes lost sight of, and the diminutive becomes the actual
baptismal name. In one family of my acquaintance, for example, the name
Passie has long been handed down from mother to daughter. The original
great-grandmother Passie was christened Martha but was at first called
Patsy; then, because her black mammy was also named Patsy, the daughter
of the house came to be known, for purposes of differentiation, as
Passie, and when she married and had a daughter of her own, the child
was christened Passie. In this family the name May has more recently
been adopted as a middle name, and it is customary for familiars of the
youngest Passie, to address her not merely as Passie, but as Passie-May.
The inclusion of the second name, in this fashion, is another custom not
uncommon in the South. In Atlanta alone I heard of ladies habitually
referred to as Anna-Laura, Hattie-May, Lollie-Belle, Sally-Maud,
Nora-Belle, Mattie-Sue, Emma-Belle, Lottie-Belle, Susie-May, Lula-Belle,
Sallie-Fannie, Hattie-Fannie, Lou-Ellen, Allie-Lou, Clara-Belle,
Mary-Ella, and Hattie-Belle. Another young lady was known to her friends
as Jennie-D.

The train from Atlanta set us down at Covington, Georgia, or rather at
the station which lies between the towns of Covington and Oxford--for
when this railroad was built neither town would allow it a right of way,
and to this day each is connected with the station by a street car line,
either line equipped with one diminutive car, a pair of disconsolate
mules, and a driver. Covington is the County seat, a quiet southern
town, part old, part new, with a look of rural prosperity about it.
Stopping at the postoffice to inquire fo