y cash capital to about four hundred dollars. I still held
to my determination of going to college; so it was now a question of
trying to squeeze through a year at Harvard or going to Atlanta, where
the money I had would pay my actual expenses for at least two years.
The peculiar fascination which the South held over my imagination and
my limited capital decided me in favor of Atlanta University; so about
the last of September I bade farewell to the friends and scenes of my
boyhood and boarded a train for the South.

IV

The farther I got below Washington, the more disappointed I became
in the appearance of the country. I peered through the car windows,
looking in vain for the luxuriant semi-tropical scenery which I had
pictured in my mind. I did not find the grass so green, nor the
woods so beautiful, nor the flowers so plentiful, as they were in
Connecticut. Instead, the red earth partly covered by tough, scrawny
grass, the muddy, straggling roads, the cottages of unpainted pine
boards, and the clay-daubed huts imparted a "burnt up" impression.
Occasionally we ran through a little white and green village that was
like an oasis in a desert.

When I reached Atlanta, my steadily increasing disappointment was not
lessened. I found it a big, dull, red town. This dull red color of
that part of the South I was then seeing had much, I think, to do with
the extreme depression of my spirits--no public squares, no fountains,
dingy street-cars, and, with the exception of three or four principal
thoroughfares, unpaved streets. It was raining when I arrived and some
of these unpaved streets were absolutely impassable. Wheels sank to
the hubs in red mire, and I actually stood for an hour and watched
four or five men work to save a mule, which had stepped into a deep
sink, from drowning, or, rather, suffocating in the mud. The Atlanta
of today is a new city.

On the train I had talked with one of the Pullman car porters, a
bright young fellow who was himself a student, and told him that I was
going to Atlanta to attend school. I had also asked him to tell me
where I might stop for a day or two until the University opened. He
said I might go with him to the place where he stopped during his
"lay-overs" in Atlanta. I gladly accepted his offer and went with him
along one of those muddy streets until we came to a rather rickety
looking frame house, which we entered. The proprietor of the house
was a big, fat, greasy-looking