American Adventures: A Second Trip 'Abroad at home'Street, Julian
General
American Adventures: A Second Trip 'Abroad at home'
Street, Julian
Southern States -- Description and travel; Southern States -- Social life and customs
Two million dollars is the sum spoken of to cover the total cost, and
one of the finest things about the plans for raising this money is that
contributions from the entire country are being accepted, so that not
only the South, but the whole nation, may have a share in the creation
of a memorial to that dead government which the South so poetically
adores, yet which it would not willingly resurrect, and in the
realization of a work resembling nothing so much as Kipling's conception
of the artist in heaven, who paints on "a ten-league canvas, with
brushes of comet's hair."
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
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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