hands, and can, with crowding, employ 3,000.
Surely it will have place for one more, then! I am impressed with its
grandeur as it rises, red-bricked, with proud, straight towers toward
its centre--impressed and frightened by its insistent call as it rattles
and hums to me across the one-sixteenth of a mile of arid sand track. At
one side Christianity and doctrine have constructed a church: a second
one is building. On the other side, at a little distance, lies Granton,
second largest mill. All this I take in as I make my way Excelsiorward.
Between me and the vast mill itself there is not a soul. A thick, sandy
road winds to the right; in the distance I can see a black trestle over
which the freight cars take the cotton manufactures to the distant
railroad and ship them to all parts of the world. Beyond the trestle are
visible the first shanties of the mill town.

Work first and lodgings afterward are my goals. At the door of Excelsior
I am more than overwhelmed by its magnificence and its loud voice that
makes itself so far-reachingly heard. There is no entry for me at the
front of the mill, and I toil around to the side; not a creature to be
seen. I venture upon the landing and make my way along a line of freight
cars--between the track and the mill.

A kind-faced man wanders out from an unobserved doorway; a gust of roar
follows him! He sees me, and lifts his hat with the ready Southern
courtesy not yet extinct. I hasten to ask for work.

[Illustration: "MIGHTY MILL--PRIDE OF THE ARCHITECT AND THE COMMERCIAL
MAGNATE"

"Charnel house, destroyer of homes, of all that mankind calls hallowed;
breeder of strife, of strike, of immorality of sedition and riot"]

"Well, thar's jest plenty of work, I reckon! Go in that do'; the
overseer will tell you."

Through the door open behind him I catch glimpses of a room enormous in
dimensions. Cotton bales lie on the floor, stand around the walls and
are piled in the centre. Leaning on them, handling them, lying on them,
outstretched, or slipping like shadows into shadow, are the dusky shapes
of the black Negro of true Southern blood. I have been told there is no
Negro labour in the mills. I take advantage of my guide's kind face to
ask him if he knows where I can lodge.

"Hed the measles? Well, my gyrl got 'em. Thar's a powerful sight of
measles hyar. I'd take you-all to bo'd at my house ef you ain't 'fraid
of measles. Thar's the hotel." (He points to what at the North would