How often it occurs that the great work a man set out originally to accomplish, is lost sight of, by future generations, in contemplation of other achievements of that man, which he himself regarded as of secondary importance.

In 1733, the year in which General Oglethorpe started his Georgia colony, there were more than a hundred offenses for which a person might be hanged in England; Oglethorpe's primary idea in founding the colony was to provide a means of freeing debtors from prison, and giving them a fresh start in life; yet it is as the man responsible for the laying out of the beautiful city of Savannah, that Oglethorpe is probably most widely remembered to-day.

Oglethorpe was a first-rate soldier. He defeated a superior Spanish force from Florida, and successfully resisted attacks from the Indians. Also, he was a man whose ethical sense was in advance of his period. He did not permit slavery in Georgia, and it was not adopted there until he went back to England. In planning Savannah he was assisted by a Charleston engineer named Bull, for whom the chief street of Savannah is named. The place is laid out very simply; it has rectangular blocks and wide roads, with small parks, or squares, at regular intervals. There are some two dozen of these small parks, aside from one or two larger parks, a parade ground, and numerous boulevards with double roadways and parked centers, and the abundance of semi-tropical foliage and of airy spaces, in Savannah, gives the city its most distinctive and charming quality—the quality which differentiates it from all other American cities. Originally these parks were used as market-places and rallying points in case of Indian attack; now they serve the equally utilitarian purposes of this age, having become charming public gardens and playgrounds. One of them—not the most important one—is named Oglethorpe Square; but the monument to Oglethorpe is placed elsewhere.

Madison Square, Savannah, is relatively about as important as Madison Square, New York, and though smaller than the latter, is much prettier. It contains a monument to Sergeant Jasper, the Revolutionary hero who, when the flag was shot down from Fort Moultrie, off Charleston, by the British, flung it to the breeze again, under fire. Jasper was later killed with the flag in his arms, in the French-American attempt to take Savannah from the British. Monterey Square has a statue of Count Pulaski, who also fell at the siege of Savannah. Another Revolutionary hero remembered with a monument is General Nathanael Greene who, though born in Rhode Island, moved after the war to Georgia where, in recognition of his services, he was given an estate not far from Savannah. "Mad" Anthony Wayne, a Pennsylvanian by birth, also accepted an estate in Georgia and resided there after the Revolution.

An interesting story attaches to Greene's settlement in Georgia. The estate given to him was that known as Mulberry Grove, above the city, on the Savannah River. The property had previously belonged to Lieutenant-governor John Graham, but was confiscated because Graham was a loyalist. Along with the property, Greene apparently took over the Graham vault in Colonial Cemetery—now a city park, and a very interesting one because of the old tombs and gravestones—and there he was himself buried. After a while people forgot where Greene's remains lay, and later, when it was decided to erect a monument to his memory in Johnson Square, they couldn't find any Greene to put under it. However, they went ahead and made the monument, and Lafayette laid the cornerstone, when he visited Savannah in March, 1825. Greene's remains were lost for 114 years. They did not come to light until 1902, when some one thought of opening the Graham vault. Thereupon they were removed and reinterred in their proper resting place beneath the monument which had so long awaited them. That monument, by the way, was not erected by Savannah people, or even by Southerners, but was paid for by the legislature of the general's native Rhode Island. When the remains were discovered, Rhode Island asked for them, but Savannah, which had lost them, also wanted them. The matter was settled by a vote of Greene's known descendants, who decided almost unanimously to leave his remains in Savannah.

The foundation of the general's former home at Mulberry Grove may still be seen. It was in this house that Eli Whitney invented the cotton-gin. Whitney was a tutor in the Greene family after the general's death, and it was at the suggestion of Mrs. Greene that he started to try and make "a machine to pick the seed out of cotton." It is said that Whitney's first machine would do, in five hours, work which, if done by hand, would take one man two years. This was, of course, an epoch-making invention and caused enormous commercial growth in the South, where cotton-gins are as common things as restaurants in the city of New York. Which reminds me of a story.

A northern man was visiting Mr. W.D. Pender, at Tarboro, North Carolina. On the day of the guest's arrival Mr. Pender spoke to his cook, a negro woman of the old order, telling her to hurry up the dinner, because he wished to take his friend down to see the cotton-gin. "You know," he explained, "this gentleman has never seen a cotton-gin."

The cook looked at him in amazement.

"Lor'! Mistuh Penduh," she exclaimed. "An' dat man look like he was edjacated!"

Another item in Savannah history is that John Wesley came over about the middle of the eighteenth century to convert the Indians to Christianity. It was not until after this attempt, when he returned to England, that he began the great religious movement which led to the founding of the Methodist Church. George Whitfield also preached in Savannah. Evidently Wesley did not get very far with the savages who, it may be imagined, were more responsive to the kind of "conversion" attempted in South Carolina, by a French dancing-master, who went out from Charleston in the early days and taught them the steps of the stately minuet.

Another great event in Savannah history was the departure from that port, in 1819, of the City of Savannah, the first steamship to cross the Atlantic. If I may make a suggestion to the city, it is that the centennial of this event be celebrated, and that a memorial be erected. Inspiration for such a memorial might perhaps be found in the simple and charming monument, crowned by a galleon in bronze, which has been erected in San Francisco, in memory of Robert Louis Stevenson. A ship in bronze can be a glorious thing—which is more than can be said of a bronze statesman in modern pantaloons.

More lately Savannah initiated another world-improvement: she was the first city to abolish horses entirely from her fire department, replacing them with automobile engines, hook-and-ladders, and hose-carts. That is in line with what one would expect of Savannah, for she is not only a progressive city, but is a great automobile city, having several times been the scene of important international automobile road races, including the Grand Prize and the Vanderbilt Cup.

Nor is there want of other history. The Savannah Theater, though gutted by fire and rebuilt, is the same theater that Joseph Jefferson owned and managed for a time, in the fifties; in the house on Lafayette Square, now occupied by Judge W.W. Lambdin, Robert E. Lee once stayed, and Thackeray is said to have written there a part of "The Virginians."

A sad thing was happening in Savannah when we were there. The Habersham house, one of the loveliest old mansions of the city, was being torn down to make room for a municipal auditorium.

The first Habersham in America was a Royal Governor of Georgia. He had three sons one of whom, Joseph, had, by the outbreak of the Revolution, become a good enough American to join a band of young patriots who took prisoner the British governor, Sir James Wright. The governor's house was situated where the Telfair Academy now is. He was placed under parole, but nevertheless fled to Bonaventure, the Tabnall estate, not far from the city, where he was protected by friends until he could escape to the British fleet, which then lay off Tybee Island at the mouth of the Savannah River, some eighteen miles below the city. This same Joseph Habersham, it is said, led a party which went out in 1775 in skiffs—called bateaux along this part of the coast—boarded the British ship Hinchenbroke, lying at anchor in the river, and captured her in a hand-to-hand conflict. Mr. Neyle Colquitt of Savannah, a descendant of the Habershams, tells me that the powder taken from the Hinchenbroke was used at the Battle of Bunker Hill. After the war, in which Joseph Habersham commanded a regiment of regulars, he was made Postmaster General of the United States. The old house itself was built by Archibald Bulloch, a progenitor of that Miss "Mittie" Bulloch who later became Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., mother of the President. It was designed by an English architect named Jay, who did a number of the fine old houses of Savannah, which are almost without exception of the Georgian period. Archibald Bulloch bought the lot on which he built the house from Matthew McAllister, great-grandfather of Ward McAllister. When sold by Bulloch it passed through several hands and finally came into the possession of Robert Habersham, a son of Joseph.

The old house was spacious and its interiors had a fine formality about them. The staircase, fireplace and chandeliers were handsome, and there was at the rear a charming oval room, the heavy mahogany doors of which were curved to conform to the shape of the walls. To tear down such a house was sacrilege—also it was a sacrilege hard to commit, for some of the basement walls were fifteen feet thick, and of solid brick straight through.

Sherman's headquarters were on the Square, just south of the De Soto Hotel, in the battlemented brick mansion which is the residence of General Peter W. Meldrim, ex-president of the American Bar Association, and former Mayor of Savannah.

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 canvases by Childe Hassam, Ernest Lawson, George Bellows, and other living American painters whose work, while it is becoming more and more widely appreciated each year, is still beyond all but the most advanced and discriminating buyers of paintings. I went into ecstasies over this collection, and I said to myself: "Away down here in Savannah there is some one buying better paintings for a little museum than the heads of many of the big museums in the country have had sense enough or courage enough to buy. This man ought to be 'discovered' and taken to some big museum where his appreciation will be put to the greatest use." With that I rushed downstairs, sought out the curator, and asked who had purchased the modern American pictures. And then my bubble was pricked, for who had they had, down there, buying their pictures for them, but Gari Melchers! Naturally the pictures were good!

In one room of the building, on the ground floor, is a collection of fine old furniture, etc., which belonged to the Telfair family, including two beautiful mantelpieces of black and white marble, some cabinets, and a very curious and fascinating extension dining-table, built of mahogany. The table is perfectly round, and the leaves, instead of being added in the middle, are curved pieces, fitting around the outer edge in two series, so that when extended to its full capacity the table is still round. I have never seen another such table.

Also I found many interesting old books and papers passed down from the Telfairs. One of these was a ledger with records of slave sales.

In a sale held Friday, October 14, 1774, Sir James Wright, the same British governor who was presently put to flight, purchased four men, five women, nine boys, and one girl, at a total cost of £820, or about $3,280. Sir Patrick Houston bought two women at £90, or $450. The whole day's sale disposed of thirty-five men, seventeen women, twenty-seven boys and ten girls, at a grand total of £3206, or roughly between nine and ten thousand dollars.

The Telfairs were great planters. Among the papers was one headed "Rules and Directions to be strictly attended to by all overseers at Thorn Island Plantation." This plantation was on the North Carolina side of the river, and was owned by Alexander Telfair, a brother of Miss Mary Telfair who gave the Academy to the city. Dates which occur in the papers stamp them as having been issued some time prior to 1837. Here are some of the regulations:

Certain negroes are mentioned by name:

Bull Street, the fashionable street of the city, is a gem of a street, despite the incursions made at not infrequent intervals, by comparatively new, and often very ugly buildings. Every few blocks Bull Street has to turn out of its course and make the circuit of one of the small parks of which I have spoken, and this gives it charm and variety. On this street stands the De Soto Hotel, which, when I first went to Savannah, years ago, was by all odds the leading hostelry of the city. It is one of those great rambling buildings with a big porch out in front, an open court in back, and everything about it, including the bedchambers, very spacious and rather old fashioned. Lately the Savannah Hotel has been erected down at the business end of Bull Street. It is a modern hotel of the more conventional commercial type. But even down there, near the business part of town, it is not confronted by congested cobbled streets and clanging trolley cars, but looks out upon one of the squares, filled with magnolias, oaks and palms. But another time I think I shall go back to the De Soto.

The building of the Independent Presbyterian Church, on Bull Street, is one of the most beautiful of its kind in the country, inside and out. It reminds one of the old churches in Charleston, and it is gratifying to know that though the old church which stood on this site (dedicated in 1819) burned in 1889, the congregation did not seize the opportunity to replace it with a hideosity in lemon-yellow brick, but had the rare good sense to duplicate the old church exactly, with the result that, though a new building, it has all the dignity and simple beauty of an old one.

Broughton Street, the shopping street, crosses Bull Street in the downtown section, and looks ashamed of itself as it does so, for it is about as commonplace a looking street as one may see. There is simply nothing about it of distinction save its rather handsome name.

Elsewhere, however, there are several skyscrapers, most of them good looking buildings. It seemed to me also that I had never seen so many banks as in Savannah, and I am told that it is, indeed, a great banking city, and that the record of the Savannah banks for weathering financial storms is very fine. On a good many corners where there are not banks there are clubs, and some of these clubs are delightful and thoroughly metropolitan in character. I know of no city in the North, having a population corresponding to that of Charleston or of Savannah, which has clubs comparable with the best clubs of these cities, or of New Orleans. When it is considered that of the population of these southern cities approximately one half, representing negroes, must be deducted in considering the population from which eligibles must be drawn, the excellence of southern clubs becomes remarkable in the extreme. Savannah, by the way, holds one national record in the matter of clubs. It had the first golf club founded in America. Exactly when the club was founded I cannot say, but Mr. H.H. Bruen, of Savannah, has in his possession an invitation to a golf club ball held in the old City Hall in the year 1811.

The commercial ascendancy of Savannah over Charleston is due largely to natural causes. The port of Savannah drains exports from a larger and richer territory than is tapped by Charleston, though new railroads are greatly improving Charleston's situation in this respect. Savannah is a shipping port for cotton from a vast part of the lower and central South, and is also a great port for lumber, and the greatest port in the world for "naval stores." I did not know what naval stores were when I went to Savannah. The term conjured up in my mind pictures of piles of rope, pulleys and anchors. But those are not naval stores. Naval stores are gum products, such as resin and turpentine, which are obtained from the long-leafed pines of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Florida. The traveler through these States cannot have failed to notice gashes on the tree-trunks along the way. From these the resinous sap exudes and is caught in cups, after which it is boiled, there in the woods, and thus separated into turpentine, resin and pitch. Vast quantities of these materials are stored on the great modern docks of Savannah. It is said that owing to wasteful methods, the long-leafed pine forests are being rapidly destroyed, and that this industry will die out before very long because the eager grabbers of to-day's dollars, having no thought for the future, fail to practise scientific forestry.

All about Savannah, within easy reach by trolley, motor or boat, lie pleasant retreats and interesting things to see. The roads of the region, built by convict labor, are of the finest, and the convict prison camps are worth a visit. In the Brown Farm camp, living conditions are certainly more sanitary than in ninety nine out of a hundred negro homes. The place fairly shines with cleanliness, and there are many cases in which "regulars" at this camp are no sooner released than they offend again with the deliberate purpose of carrying out what may be termed a "back to the farm" movement. The color line is drawn in southern jails and convict camps as elsewhere. White prisoners occupy one barracks; negroes another. The food and accommodations for both is the same. The only race discrimination I could discover was that when white prisoners are punished by flogging, they are flogged with their clothes on, whereas, with negroes, the back is exposed. The men in this camp are minor offenders and wear khaki overalls in place of the stripes in which the worse criminals, quartered in another camp, are dressed. Strict discipline is maintained, but the life is wholesome. The men are marched to work in the morning and back at night escorted by guards who carry loaded shotguns, and who always have with them a pack of ugly bloodhounds to be used in case escape is attempted.

All the drives in this region are extremely picturesque, for the live-oak grows here at its best, and is to be seen everywhere, its trunk often twenty or more feet in circumference, its wide-spreading branches reaching out their tips to meet those of other trees of the same species, so that sometimes the whole world seems to have a groined ceiling of foliage, a ceiling which inevitably suggests a great shadowy cathedral from whose airy arches hang long gray pennons of Spanish moss, like faded, tattered battle-flags.

On country roads you will come, now and then, upon a negro burial ground of very curious character. There may be such negro cemeteries in the upper Southern States, but if so I have never seen them. In this portion of Georgia they are numerous, and their distinguishing mark consists in the little piles of household effects with which every grave is covered. I do not know whether this is done to propitiate ghosts and devils (generally believed to "hant" these graveyards), or whether it is the idea that the deceased can still find use for the assortment of pitchers, bowls, cups, saucers, knives, forks, spoons, statuettes, alarm-clocks, and heaven only knows what else, which were his treasured earthly possessions.

In Savannah, I have heard Commodore Tatnall, who used to live at Bonaventure, credited with having originated the saying "Blood is thicker than water," but I am inclined to believe that the Commodore merely made apposite use of an old formula. The story is told of one of the old Tatnalls that in the midst of a large dinner-party which he was giving at his mansion at Bonaventure plantation, a servant entered and informed him that the house was on fire. Whereupon the old thoroughbred, instead of turning fireman, persisted in his rÔle of host, ordering the full dining-room equipment to be moved out upon the lawn, where the company remained at dinner while the house burned down.

Most of the old houses of the plantations on the river have long since been destroyed. That at Whitehall was burned by the negroes when Sherman's army came by, but the old trees and gardens still endure, including a tall hedge of holly which is remarkable even in this florescent region. The old plantation house at the Hermitage, approached by a handsome avenue of live-oaks, is, I believe, the only one of those ancient mansions which still stands, and it does not stand very strongly, for, beautiful though it is in its abandonment and decay, it is like some noble old gentleman dying alone in an attic, of age, poverty and starvation—dying proudly as poor Charles GayarrÉ did in New Orleans.

The Hermitage has, I believe, no great history save what is written in its old chipped walls of stucco-covered brick, and the slave-cabins which still form a background for it. It is a story of baronial decay, resulting, doubtless, from the termination of slavery. Hordes of negroes of the "new issue" infest the old slave-cabins and on sight of visitors rush out with almost violent demands for money, in return for which they wish to sing. Their singing is, however, the poorest negro singing I have ever heard. All the spontaneity, all the relish, all the vividness which makes negro singing wonderful, has been removed, here, by the fixed idea that singing is not a form of expression but a mere noise to be given vent to for the purpose of extracting backsheesh. It is saddening to witness the degradation, through what may be called professionalism, of any great racial quality. These negroes, half mendicant, half traders on the reputation of their race, express professionalism in its lowest form. They are more pitiful than the professional tarantella dancers who await the arrival of tourists, in certain parts of southern Italy, as spiders await flies.