stock fair which, in one year, surpassed any other held in the South, and secured the grand circuit of races, on the other side she is careless about hospitals and charities; and whereas, on the one side, she has raised millions for the building of two new universities (which, by the way, would be much better as one great university, but cannot be, because of sectarian domination), on the other, she is deficient as to schools; and again, whereas she is the only secondary city to have an annual season of Metropolitan grand opera (and to make it pay!) she is behind many other cities, including her neighbors, New Orleans and Savannah, in caring for the public health.

I am by no means sure that the regular spring visit of the Metropolitan Grand Opera Company may be taken as a sign that Atlanta is peculiarly a music-loving community.  Indeed, I was told by one Atlanta lady, herself a musician, that the city did not contain more than a thousand persons of real musical appreciation, that a number of these could not afford to attend the operatic performances, and that opera week was, consequently, in reality more an occasion of great social festivity than of devout homage to art.

“Our opera week,” she told me, “bears the same relation to the life of Atlanta as Mardi Gras does to that of New Orleans.  It is an advertisement for the city, and an excuse for every one to have a good time.  Every night after the performance there are suppers and dances, which the opera stars attend.  They always seem to enjoy coming here.  They act as though they were off on a picnic, skylarking about the hotel, snap-shotting one another, and playing all manner of pranks.  And, of course, while they are here they own the town.  Caruso draws his little caricatures for the Atlanta girls, and Atlanta men have been dazzled, in successive seasons, by such gorgeous beings as Geraldine Farrar, Alma Gluck, and Maria Barrientos—­not only across the footlights of the auditorium, mind you, but at close range; as, for instance, at dances at the Driving Club, with Chinese lanterns strung on the terrace, a full moon above, and—­one year—­with the whole Metropolitan Orchestra playing dance music all night long!”

Another lady, endeavoring to picture to me the strain involved in the week’s gaieties, informed me that when it was all over she went for a rest to New York, where she attended “a house party at the Waldorf”!

* * * * *

Of all Atlanta’s undertakings, planned or accomplished, that which most interested my companion and me was the one for turning a mountain into a sculptured monument to the Confederacy.

Sixteen miles to the east of the city the layer of granite which underlies the region stuck its back up, so to speak, forming a great smooth granite hump, known as Stone Mountain.  This mountain is one of America’s natural wonders.  In form it may be compared with a round-backed fish, such as a whale or porpoise, lying on its belly, partly imbedded in a beach, and some conception of its dimensions may be gathered from the fact that from nose to tail it measures about two miles, while the center of its back is as high as the Woolworth Building in New York.  Moreover, there is not a fissure in it; monoliths a thousand feet long have been quarried from it; it is as solid as the Solid South.