This is, perhaps, as convenient a place as any in which to speak of certain points concerning various railroads in the South.  The Central of Georgia Railway, running between Atlanta and Savannah, instead of operating Pullmans, has its own sleeping cars.  This is the only railroad I know of in the country on which the tenant of a lower berth, below an unoccupied upper, may have the upper closed without paying for it.  One likes the Central of Georgia for this humane dispensation.  The locomotives of the Western & Atlantic carry as a distinguishing mark a red band at the top of the smokestack.  The Southern Railway assigns engineers to individual engines, instead of “pooling power,” as is the practice, I believe, on many railroads.  Because of this, engineers on the Southern regard the locomotives to which they are regularly assigned, as their personal property, and exercise their individual taste in embellishing them.  Brass bands, brass flagstaffs, brass eagles over the headlight, and similar adornments are therefore often seen on the engines of this road, giving the most elaborate of them a carnival appearance, by contrast with the somber black to which most of us are accustomed, and hinting that not all the individuality has been unionized out of locomotive engineers—­an impression heightened by the Southern Railway’s further pleasant custom of painting the names of its older and more expert engineers upon the cabs of their locomotives.

* * * * *

Some cities are like lumbering old farm horses, plugging along a dusty country road.  When another horse overtakes them, if they be not altogether wanting in spirit, they may be encouraged to jog a little faster for a moment, stimulated by example.  If, besides being stupid, they are mean, then they want to kick or bite at the speedier animal going by.  Some cities are like that, too.  If an energetic city overtakes them, they are not spurred on to emulation, but lay back their ears, so to speak.  Again, there are tough, sturdy little cities like buckskin ponies.  There are skittish cities which seem to have been badly broken.  There are old cities with a worn-out kind of elegance, like that of superannuated horses of good breed, hitched to an old-fashioned barouche.  There are bad, bucking cities, like Butte, Montana.  And here and there are cities, like Atlanta, reminding one of thoroughbred hunters.  There is a brave, sporting something in the spirit of Atlanta which makes it rush courageously at big jumps, and clear them, and land clean on the other side, and be off again.  Like a thoroughbred, she loves the chase.  She goes in to win.  She doesn’t stop to worry about whether she can win or not.  She knows she will.  And as the thoroughbred, loving large and astonishing achievement, lacks the humbler virtues of the reliable family carriage horse, Atlanta, it cannot be denied, has “les defauts de ses qualites.”  For whereas, on the side of dashing performance, Atlanta held a