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which, an Institute of Technology, is modelled after that of Boston.

Well provided also is it with churches, which are both numerous and strong. One cannot spend a Sunday here without feeling that it is eminently a church-going city. All denominations flourish. The two largest bodies in the South are the Baptists and the Methodists. The former are well represented, as everywhere in Georgia; while the Methodists, if they will pardon the expression, "keep up steam at a tremendous rate. This is not meant as a flippant remark-for I could not speak lightly of a body which I greatly love and honor. From the day that Wesley preached in the American colonies, and laid the foundations of Methodism this side the Atlantic, his followers have been pioneers in carrying the Gospel into waste places. All honor to them for the courage and self-sacrifice with which they have gone before to prepare the way

of the Lord!

Dr.

Nor have the Presbyterians any reason to be ashamed, for their churches also are both numerous and strong. Dr. Barnett is now absent on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, sent by the generous kindness of a people who know how to appreciate one of the best of ministers. Strickler, like many others of the leading preachers of the South, had had his military discipline and experience. When the war broke out he was in College at Lexington, Virginia; and about the time that Stonewall Jackson left the Military Institute to enter on his memorable career, a number of the students formed a company, of which young Strickler was chosen captain, and fought in a number of battles, until at Gettysburg he was wounded and taken prisoner. It was, if I remember rightly, more than a year that he was confined at the North-a time that would be wearisome to most, but which he did not pass in

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A PRISONER LEARNS TWO LANGUAGES! idleness, for in it he applied himself to study, under the instruction of a learned fellow-prisoner, and it is said, made himself master of two languages! When at last he was exchanged and returned to Richmond, he and his fellowprisoners expected to be received with a joyous welcome; but as they steamed up the James river and came to the familiar landing, they were surprised at the absence not only of enthusiasm, but of people. The streets were almost deserted, ominous token of an impending flight. He slept there that night, paying (as he told me) seventyfive dollars for his lodging! (so worthless had the Confederate money become), and got out of the city by the first train the next morning, fortunately for himself, for in less than a week the crash came, and all the means of transportation were choked up by the mass of those fleeing from the city. This is the man, who, having endured hardness as a soldier, is now a soldier of Jesus Christ, with a manner so kindly and gentle that it is hard to realize that he ever led a charge on the field of battle! As a pastor he is greatly beloved by the large congregation to which he ministers, and respected by the whole community.

Georgia has vast natural resources, the materials in herself of great prosperity. In mineral wealth, in coal and iron, she is perhaps not the equal of her sister State, Alabama; but in products of the soil far richer: first of all in the fruits of the earth needed for man's subsistence : in a rice crop second only to that of South Carolina; and sweet potatoes, the food of the South, second only to that of North Carolina; while her cotton crop, second only to that of Mississippi, furnishes the staple of foreign commerce, that brings to her planters the money of the manufacturers of both New England and Old England.

With such elements of wealth, the credit of the State, if not quite so high as that of New York or Massachusetts,

THE GOVERNOR AND HIS OLD SOLDIERS.

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is higher than was that of any one of the States, or even of the National Government itself, before the war.

Apart from this, the government of the State is a good government-it is in good and honest hands, by which the laws are faithfully administered. The present Governor, General John B. Gordon, is the most popular man in the State, if not in the South-a popularity which he owes undoubtedly to his services in the war. The man who followed the fortunes of the Confederacy till the last hour, and stood by the side of General Lee when he surrendered at Appomattox, will never be forgotten by his soldiers. Nor does he forget them. If there be any class for which he feels most, it is Confederate soldiers, who are left penniless and destitute. The Union soldiers are provided for munificently by a government that is rich, and that scatters among the veterans nearly a hundred millions a year. But the soldiers of a Lost Cause have no National Government to look to nothing but State authority, and the charity of their old comrades, many of whom are as poor as they. Georgia gives a hundred dollars a year to each of her own soldiers who has lost a leg or an arm. But that is a pittance for those who have families dependent on them. Sitting in the Governor's room one day, he told of the destitution of old soldiers, scarred with wounds, unable to work, yet who had wives and children in absolute want. Almost every day they came to him with the same pitiful story. Only last week, he said, came in an old man, who began: Governor, I have not seen you since the war," and after telling the story of his life, said: "Now I am an old man, with seven daughters, and not money enough to buy a loaf of bread!" With this, said the Governor, "he sat down in that chair, and wept like a child." No wonder that the hero who has led these very men to battle, should be touched to the heart by the sorrows of his old compan

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THE QUESTION THAT FOLLOWS WAR.

ions-in-arms, and that it should be the dream of his life to establish a Confederate Soldiers Home, where these wrecks of the war should be saved from any further "going to pieces." He would not have them separated from their families, and put as pensioners in a kind of public almshouse, but be gathered in a number of homes, under a general management, where there should be some simple industries, by which they could do a little towards their own support. Thus they would be shielded from want, and be able to pass the evening of their days in quietness and peace.

Of such a governor Georgia may well be proud, and not less of his heroic wife, who for four years followed the camp, never being out of the sound of battle, when there was need for her womanly courage and devotion. Atlanta has many old soldiers, whom the South counts among her bravest and her best, and who, after being foremost in war, are now foremost in peace. The city and all the country round are full of stirring associations; and as we walk through these bustling streets, there seems almost a disaccord between this business activity and the mighty memories that gather, like dark clouds, on the surrounding hills. But so it is that the Dead Past is merged in the Living Present. As the centre of such a mingled life, where the Old South and the New South come together, Atlanta sets one thinking of the war, and of the terrible problem that it has left behind it; and so it is a good place to linger, while we consider the great question of Race which now confronts our American civilization.

CHAPTER IX.

THE BLACK BELT-THE DEAD LION-SPEAK GENTLY OF THE DEAD!

As I came up from the Gulf States, I had crossed the Black Belt-the portion of the South most densely populated by the black race. It is not a fixed zone, running between two parallels of latitude, but surges back and forth, like an ocean current where two seas meet, now rising and rolling on, and now falling back, as if sinking away into fathomless depths below; but covering all together a vast surface, reaching half way across the continent. In this enormous Belt there are places where the blacks form fifty, sixty, and even seventy and eighty, per cent. of the population. Along this line of deep shadows lies the great problem of American politics and American history.

So rapid has been the march of events that it is hard to realize that, within the memory of men still in their early prime, this was a population of slaves; that they were bondmen in the land of Egypt, out of which the Lord brought them, though not by the way of the Red Sea! What had seemed impossible was accomplished, not by insurrections, not by massacre, but by a struggle in