Among other old houses characteristic of Savannah, are the Scarborough house, the Mackay house, the Thomas house in Franklin Square (also known as the Owens house), in which Lafayette was entertained, and the Telfair house, now the Telfair Academy.  The Telfair and Thomas houses were built by the architect who built the Habersham house, and it is to be hoped that they will never go the way of the latter mansion.

In 1810, about the time these houses were built, Savannah had 5,000 inhabitants; by 1850 the population had trebled, and 1890 found it a place of more than 40,000.  Since then the city has grown with wholesome rapidity, and attractive suburban districts have been developed.  The 1910 census gives the population as 65,000, but the city talks exuberantly of 90,000.  Well, perhaps that is not an exaggerated claim.  Certainly it is a city to attract those who are free to live where they please.  In fall, winter and spring it leaves little to be desired.  I have been there three times, and I have never walked up Bull Street without looking forward to the day when I could go there, rent an old house full of beautiful mahogany, and pass a winter.  Not even New Orleans made me feel like that.  I feel about New Orleans that it is a place to visit rather than to settle down in.  I want to go back to New Orleans, but I do not want to stay more than a few weeks.  I want to see some people that I know, prowl about the French quarter, and have Jules Alciatore turn me out a dinner; then I want to go away.  So, too, I want to go back to Atlanta—­just to see some people.  I want to stay there a week or two.  Also I want to go to St. Augustine when cold weather comes, and bask in the warm sun, and breathe the soft air full of gold dust, and feel indolent and happy as I watch the activities about the excellent Ponce de Leon Hotel; but there are two cities in the South that I dream of going to for a quiet happy winter of domesticity and work, in a rented house—­it must be the right house, too—­and those cities are, first Charleston; then Savannah.

The Telfair Academy in the old Telfair mansion was left, by a member of the family, to the city, to be used as a museum.  Being somewhat skeptical about museums in cities of the size of Savannah, not to say much larger cities, especially when they are art museums, I very nearly omitted a visit to this one.  Had I done so I would have missed seeing not only a number of exceedingly interesting historic treasures, but what I believe to be the best public art collection contained in any southern city.

The museum does, to be sure, contain a number of old “tight” paintings of the kind with which the country was deluged at the time of the Chicago World’s Fair, but upstairs there is a surprise in shape of an exhibition of modern American paintings (the best paintings being produced in the world to-day) showing brilliant selection.  I was utterly amazed when I found this collection.  There were excellent