* * * * *

At Roswell, Georgia, a sleepy little hamlet in the hills, not many miles from Atlanta, stands Bulloch Hall, where Martha ("Mittie”) Bulloch, later Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, mother of the President, was born.  Roswell was originally settled, long ago, by people from Savannah, Darien, and other towns of the flat, hot country near the coast, who drove there in their carriages and remained during the summer.  After a time, however, three prosperous families—­the Bullochs, Dunwoodys, and Barrington Kings—­made their permanent homes at Roswell.

Bulloch Hall is one of those old white southern colonial houses the whole front of which consists of a great pillared portico, in the Greek style, giving a look of dignity and hospitality.  Almost all such houses are, as they should be, surrounded by fine old trees; those at Bulloch Hall are especially fine:  tall cedars, ancient white oaks, giant osage oranges, and a pair of holly trees, one at either side of the walk near the front door.

Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., and Mittie Bulloch met here when they were respectively seventeen and fifteen years of age.  A half sister of Miss Mittie had married a relative of the Roosevelts and gone from Roswell to live in Philadelphia, and it was while visiting at her home that young Roosevelt, hearing a great deal of the South, conceived a desire to go there.  This resulted in his first visit to Bulloch Hall, and his meeting with Mittie Bulloch.  On his return to the North he was sent abroad, but two or three years later when he went again to visit his relatives in Philadelphia, Miss Mittie was also a guest at their house, and this time the two became engaged.

Save that the Bulloch furniture is no longer there, the interior of the old Georgia residence stands practically as it was when Theodore Roosevelt and Mittie Bulloch were married in the dining room.  Through the center, from front to back, runs a wide hall, on either side of which is a pair of spacious square rooms, each with a fireplace, each with large windows looking out over the beautiful hilly country which spreads all about.  It is a lovely house in a lovely setting, and, though the Bullochs reside there no longer, Miss Mittie Bulloch is not forgotten in Roswell, for one of her bridesmaids, Miss Evelyn King, now Mrs. Baker, still resides in Barrington Hall, not far distant from the old Bulloch homestead.

CHAPTER XXXIII

ALIVE ATLANTA

An army officer, a man of broad sympathies, familiar with the whole United States, warned me before I went south that I must not judge the South by northern standards.

“On the side of picturesqueness and charm,” he said, “the South can more than hold its own against the rest of the country; likewise on the side of office-holding and flowery oratory; but you must not expect southern cities to have the energy you are accustomed to in the North.”