"Can't help it. Hardware Convention. Everything taken." Over my shoulder I heard from my companion a sound, half sigh, half groan, which echoed the cry of my own heart. "I felt this coming!" he murmured. "Didn't you notice all these people with ribbons on them? There's never any room in a hotel where everybody's wearing ribbons. It's like a horse show. They get the ribbons and we get the gate." "Surely," I faltered, "you can let us have one small room?" "Impossible," he answered brightly. "We've turned away dozens of people this evening." "Then," I said, abandoning hope, "perhaps you will suggest some other hotel?" I once heard a woman, the most perfect parvenu I ever met, speak of her poor relations in a tone exactly similar to that in which the clerk now spoke the names of two hotels. Having spoken, he turned and passed behind the partition at one end of the marble counter. My companion and I stood there for a moment looking despondently at each other. Then, without a word, we retreated through that gorgeous lobby, feeling like sad remnants of a defeated Yankee army. Again we motored through the bright streets, but only to successive disappointments, for both hotels mentioned by the austere clerk were "turning 'em away." Our chauffeur now came to our aid, mentioning several small hotels, and in one of these, the Granada, we were at last so fortunate as to find lodgings. "It begun to look like you'd have to put up at the Roden," the chauffeur smiled as we took our bags out of the car and settled with him. "The Roden?" "Yes," he returned "Best ventilated hotel in the United States." Next day when the Hotel Roden was pointed out to us we appreciated the witticism, for the Roden is--or was at the time of our visit--merely the steel skeleton of a building which, we were informed, had for some years stood unfinished owing to disagreements among those concerned with its construction. As for the Granada, though a modest place, it was new and clean; the clerk was amiable, the beds comfortable, and if our rooms were too small to admit our trunks, they were, at all events, outside rooms, each with a private bath, at a rate of $1 per day apiece. Never in any hotel have I felt that I was getting so much for my money. Next morning, after breakfast, we set out to see the city. Having repeatedly heard of Birmingham as the "Pittsburgh of the South," we expected cold daylight to reveal the sooty signs of her industrialism, but in this we were agreeably disappointed. By day as well as by night the city is pleasing to the eye, and it is a fact worth noting that the downtown buildings of Atlanta (which is not an industrial city) are streaked and dirty, whereas those of Birmingham are clean--the reason for this being that the mills and furnaces of Birmingham are far removed from the heart of the town, whereas locomotives belch black smoke into the very center of Atlanta's business and shopping district.