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ful instructors. Still there is some degree of elementary progress toward the training of mind flowing from the system. And its benefits are enlarged in every locality where local appropriations by counties or cities are made, and in proportion to the extent of such supplement of the State school fund.

Still the system generally over the State does not meet the demands of popular education, and schools of all grades are maintained by the people as formerly. All the towns and villages maintain good schools for the whites, and many of them also for the blacks, the expenses of which are paid by the patrons and employers. But there are fewer country schools than formerly; and a large proportion of those seeking even academic education. who reside on farms, distant from the towns, are required to incur the expense of boarding in addition to tuition.

In addition to the numerous academies, male and female and mixed, and of the respective races separate from each other, there are numerous chartered colleges, most of them in successful operation. Georgia was the first State in the world to charter and put in operation a college for the graduation of females. The Southern female college was chartered at Macon in 1836, and afterwards changed to Wesleyan female college. This example has been followed by all the States, and by numerous like charters and institutions established under them in this State. But this, the oldest, is the most extensive in appointments for varied instruction, and has much the largest patronage of any similar school in the state. But many of the others have ample faculty, buildings, and arrangements for high grade of education, and have large patronage.

The Georgia female college, and Madison female col

lege are located at Madison; the Southern female college and La Grange female college, at La Grange; the Southern Masonic female college, at Covington; Furlow Masonic female college, at Americus; Andrew female college, at Cuthbert; Young female college, at Thomasville; Monroe female college, at Forsyth; Houston female college at Perry; Lucy Cobb female college at Athens; College Temple (female college), at Newnan; Columbus female college, at Columbus; Le Vert female college, at Talbotton; West Point female college, at West Point; Conyers female college, at Conyers; Gainesville female college, at Gainesville; Cherokee Baptist female college, and Rome female college, at Rome; Dalton female college, at Dalton; Griffin female college, at Griffin; Georgia Baptist seminary, at Gainesville. Gordon institute is a flourishing college for males and females located at Barnesville.

The University of Georgia, formerly Franklin college, the oldest male college in the state, located at Athens; Mercer university, located first at Penfield, Green county, and afterwards at Macon; Oxford, located at Oxford, Newton county; Bowden college, located at Bowden, Carroll county; and Pio-Nino, located near Macon, are the five male colleges for the white race. The Atlanta university, located at Atlanta, is a flourishing college for the males and females of the colored race. The Georgia medical college at Augusta, the Atlanta medical college at Atlanta, and the Savannah medical college at Savannah are popular institutions for the graduation of physicians. The Lumpkin law school, connected with the university of Georgia for the graduation of attorneys-at-law.

There are in addition to these, several commercial and business colleges, and branch colleges of the University

of Georgia at Dahlonega, Milledgeville, Thomasville and Cuthbert.

PRINTING AND PUBLICATIONS.

There are fourteen daily newspapers. Two in each of the cities of Savannah, Augusta, Macon, Columbus, Griffin and Atlanta; one in Rome, and one in Albany; and one hundred and twenty weekly papers, varying largely in size as well as patronage, distributed over the state, in eighty-five of the larger towns, cities, and villages. They are in matter and aims diversified and miscellaneous, most of them more or less political; some devoted mainly to religion, some to agriculture, others, literary. But all devoted to progress and improvement, and as a system constitute one of the most efficient, extensive, and cheap methods of popular education. Most of them have job offices connected with them, which make printing, aside from publication, a lucrative business in many places. There are publishing houses in Savannah, Macon, and Atlanta, and in each a medical journal.

SOCIETIES.

The agriculturists have a State agricultural society composed of representatives of the numerous county societies, holding semi-annual conventions in different sections of the State. There is also a State horticultural society, and a central organization composed of representatives of local societies of the Patrons of Husbandry, called the State Grange. The ritual of this order is secret. There are numerous local literary societies in addition to the Georgia Historical Society located at Savannah.

The social and benevolent orders are numerous, having local societies and state organizations, whose existence

and aims are public, but having secret rituals and exclusive meetings. Principal among them are Masons, Odd Fellows, Good Templars, Sons of Malta, Knights of Honor, and Knights of Pythias, having numerous local lodges or societies, representatives of which constitute the Grand or State Lodges. There are also State associations of the press, of teachers, and of physicians, having annual meetings. The North Georgia Fair and Stock Association is located at Atlanta, and a State fair is held annually, under the auspices of the State agricultural society, alternately at Macon and Atlanta. Besides there are many fair grounds well improved and extensively patronized under societies and associations in every part of the State, located at the central towns. There is also a State horticultural society.

CHAPTER I.

MY CONTEMPORARIES.-1857.

Georgia, the state of my nativity and ancestry, is great in physical resources of wealth, and in capabilities of development and improvement in mind and morals; and therefore, in the means of rearing and maintaining a population, great in number and power; and deserves more prominence and distinction than she has, for the high grade of true merit she has already reached in her public officers, and men of leading minds in science, literature, the church, and learned professions of law and physic. The deplorable want of tangible and convenient historic description and record is a crying evil at this period when I, one of her humble citizens, reach the period of observation and meditation upon men and things around me. Hence, I begin, in this crude method, to lay up in store my own conclusions of the men among whom, and of the times in which, I live.

The literature of this, as of every past age, must in great part be the product of private fortune, prompted and carried on at the behest of individual ambition and by individual enterprise. Literary persons, who have no exchequer except what the world returns for their valuable contributions, live and die poor as to all that money can purchase. The abundance of luxury and ease which gold can, and usually does, provide for its owners is not favorable to the toil and labor that a pure and exalted literature requires. The hope of their comforts may stimulate the pursuit, but their possession supplants the desire

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