moment looking despondently at each
other. Then, without a word, we retreated through that gorgeous lobby,
feeling like sad remnants of a defeated Yankee army.

Again we motored through the bright streets, but only to successive
disappointments, for both hotels mentioned by the austere clerk were
"turning 'em away." Our chauffeur now came to our aid, mentioning
several small hotels, and in one of these, the Granada, we were at last
so fortunate as to find lodgings.

"It begun to look like you'd have to put up at the Roden," the chauffeur
smiled as we took our bags out of the car and settled with him.

"The Roden?"

"Yes," he returned "Best ventilated hotel in the United States."

Next day when the Hotel Roden was pointed out to us we appreciated the
witticism, for the Roden is--or was at the time of our visit--merely
the steel skeleton of a building which, we were informed, had for some
years stood unfinished owing to disagreements among those concerned with
its construction.

As for the Granada, though a modest place, it was new and clean; the
clerk was amiable, the beds comfortable, and if our rooms were too small
to admit our trunks, they were, at all events, outside rooms, each with
a private bath, at a rate of $1 per day apiece. Never in any hotel have
I felt that I was getting so much for my money.

Next morning, after breakfast, we set out to see the city. Having
repeatedly heard of Birmingham as the "Pittsburgh of the South," we
expected cold daylight to reveal the sooty signs of her industrialism,
but in this we were agreeably disappointed. By day as well as by night
the city is pleasing to the eye, and it is a fact worth noting that the
downtown buildings of Atlanta (which is not an industrial city) are
streaked and dirty, whereas those of Birmingham are clean--the reason
for this being that the mills and furnaces of Birmingham are far removed
from the heart of the town, whereas locomotives belch black smoke into
the very center of Atlanta's business and shopping district.

Moreover, the metropolis of Alabama is better laid out than that of
Georgia. The streets of Birmingham are wide, and the business part of
the city, lying upon a flat terrain, is divided into large, even
squares. From this district the chief residence section mounts by easy,
graceful grades into the hills to the southward. Because of these
grades, and the curving drives which follow the contours of the hills,
and the vistas of the l