Until the Stone Mountain Memorial is completed, Atlanta’s most celebrated monument will continue to be that of Jack Smith.  The Jack Smith monument stands in Oakland Cemetery, not over the grave of Jack Smith, but over the grave that local character intends some day to occupy.  Mr. Smith is reputed to be rich.  He built the downtown office building known as “The House that Jack Built.”  As befits the owner of an office building, he wears a silk hat, but a certain democratic simplicity may be observed in the rest of his attire, especially about the region of the neck, for though he apparently believes in the convention concerning the wearing of collars, he has a prejudice against the concealing of a portion of the collar by that useless and snobbish adornment, the necktie.  Each spring, I am informed, it is his custom to visit his cemetery lot and inspect the statue of himself which a commendable foresight has caused him to erect over his proposed final resting place.  It is said that upon the occasion of last season’s vernal visit he was annoyed at finding his effigy cravated by a vine which had grown up and encircled the neck.  This he caused to be removed; and it is to be hoped that when, at last, his monument achieves its ultimate purpose, those who care for the cemetery will see to it that leafy tendrils be not permitted to mount to the marble collar of the figure, to form a necktie, or to obscure the nobly sculptured collar button.

CHAPTER XXXIV

GEORGIA JOURNALISM

In journalism Atlanta is far in advance of many cities of her size, North or South.  The Atlanta “Constitution,” founded nearly half a century ago, is one of the country’s most distinguished newspapers.  The “Constitution” came into its greatest fame in the early eighties, when Captain Evan P. Howell—­the same Captain Howell who commanded a battery at the battle of Peachtree Creek, in the defense of Atlanta, and who later called, with his son, on General Sherman, as already recorded—­became its editor, and Henry W. Grady its managing editor.  Like William Allen White and Walt Mason of the Emporia (Kansas) “Gazette,” who work side by side, admire each other, but disagree on every subject save that of the infallibility of the ground hog as a weather prophet, Howell and Grady worked side by side and were devoted friends, while disagreeing personally, and in print, on prohibition and many other subjects.  Grady would speak at prohibition rallies and, sometimes on the same night, Howell would speak at anti-prohibition rallies.  In their speeches they would attack each other.  The accounts of these speeches, as well as conflicting articles written by the two, would always appear in the “Constitution.”

Of the pair of public monuments to individuals which I remember having seen in Atlanta, one was the pleasing memorial, in Piedmont Park, to Sidney Lanier (who was peculiarly a Georgia poet, having been born in Macon, in that State, and having written some of his most beautiful lines under the spell of Georgia scenes), and the other the statue of Henry W. Grady, which stands downtown in Marietta Street.