The old Christmas traditions are likewise kept up. On Christmas day the negroes come flocking up to the house for their gifts. Their first concern is to attempt to cry "Christmas gift!" to others, before it can be said to them--for according to ancient custom the one who says the words first must have a gift from the other. CHAPTER XXXVII A YOUNG METROPOLIS An observer approaching a strange city should be "neutral even in thought." He may listen to what is said of the city, but he must not permit his opinions to take form in advance; for, like other gossip, gossip about cities is unreliable, and the casual stranger's estimate of cities is not always founded upon broad appreciations. But though it is unwise to judge of cities by what is said of them, it is perhaps worth remarking that one may often judge of men by what they say of cities. I remember an American manufacturer, broken down by overwork, who, when he looked at Pompeii, could think only of the wasted possibilities of Vesuvius as a power plant, and I remember two traveling salesmen on a southern railroad train who expressed scorn for the exquisite city of Charleston because--they said--it is but a poor market place for suspenders and barbers' supplies. There are those who think of Boston only as headquarters of the shoe trade, others who think of it only in the terms of culture, and still others who regard it solely as an abode of negrophiles. In the case of the chief city of Alabama, however, my companion and I noticed, as we journeyed through the South, that reports were singularly in accord. Birmingham is too young to have any Civil War history. Her history is the history of the steel industry in the South, and one hears always of that: of the affluence of the city when the industry is thriving, and hard times when it is not. One is invariably told that Birmingham is not a southern city, but a northern city in the South, and the chief glories of the place, aside from steel, are (if one is to believe rumors current upon railroad trains and elsewhere), a twenty-seven story building, Senator Oscar Underwood, the distinguished Democratic leader, and the Tutwiler Hotel. Even in Atlanta it is conceded that the Tutwiler is a good hotel, and when Atlanta admits that anything in Birmingham is good it may be considered as established that the thing is very, very good--for Birmingham and Atlanta view each other with the same degree of cordiality as is exchanged between St. Louis and Kansas City, Minneapolis and St. Paul, San Francisco and Los Angeles.