USA > Georgia > Floyd County > Rome > A history of Rome and Floyd County, State of Georgia, United States of America; including numerous incidents of more than local interest, 1540-1922, Volume I > Part 76
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I have been hoping, and am hoping yet, that the lonesome little school of the tribe we have here will reform and sign up for life in the HE-man league, challenge success and fortune on their own merits and add luster and renown to the family names and con- nections instead of swashbuckling around in a circle and trying to collect dividends enough to live off the capital of the good name left them by two- fisted, fighting and successful fathers.
Considerable preliminary prepara- tion will have to be made before we can stage the first snipe party. I have heretofore said that snobbery is a mental disease, and there are several types of it, and each case demands a different treatment.
There is the political snob who be- lieves that by reason of his inherited preferment, or superior ability and qualifications, he is entitled to all the political honors in sight. This chap is afraid to let anybody else advance or advantage in any place or position for fear it would in some way inter- fere with himself. He quietly stabs his most promising neighbor on every occasion.
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To handle this bird we would have to get some of my pals in Washington to wire him to come on to the capitol and sign a receipt for the Rome post- office or take a place as assistant to Charles Evans Hughes, Secretary of State. We would have to give him a big torchlight parade before he left, and otherwise in a most public man- ner show our appreciation of his great- ness. Also we would have a mighty big reception committee meet him at the Union station, as well as a bunch of correspondents to tell the world how it all came out.
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Then we have in some unfortunate spots in this big world the financial snobs who get themselves attached to a little 2x4 bank of some kind, with about enough capital to finance a good Chinese laundry and work themselves up into the conviction that they are Napoleons of finance. These are the beauty boys.
For this kind we would have some of the bunch in New York wire them that their distinction as bank executives and renowed financial abilities had attracted the attention of Wall Street and that they had been elected presi- dent of the National City Bank (the New York National City Bank) to succeed Jim Stillman and that they were requested to report as early as possible to take charge of "the biggest bank in America."
Now we would have to give this bug a big banquet where he could hear his praises sung as he has murmured them to himself since his first infection, and appoint a committee to go with him and see him at last enter upon his own; also to rescue him from the ob- servation ward of Bellevue hospital following the close of his argument with the bank officers.
The social snob is of course the catch-as-catch-can champion of all the snobs on earth. He has been one of the chief nuisances of civilization ever since the Mayflower bumped its nose against Plymouth Rock. He has added to the gaiety of all nations, and we have a very few specimens of him left, the age of social democracy notwith- standing.
He has a brain about as big as a hummingbird's and the nerve of a Fatty Arbuckle. He is a third or fourth sprout sprung from a good strong original stock that went to seed in the last generation and left only this fibrous sprig that is not strong enough or hardy enough to ever reach maturity.
We would have to tip the boys off down in Atlanta, or Athens, to recog- nize his social position and superior- ity by giving a big reception in his honor to which would be invited all the exclusive social queens and raging social lions of the state. Would he fall? Say, will a hobo take chicken pie?
Also we have the church snob. The sleek, smiling, pawing and parading hypocrite who wants to pose as the one big, controlling church leader. He arrays himself in his cutaway of Prince Albert, gets to church before
anybody else, takes charge and gives general directions to all comers. He can't be comfortable in a seat where he will not hold the spotlight all the time; he stands around the walls, goes from one department of the services to another, frowns on some things and smiles his approval on others. His ambition is to have the world recog- nize and acknowledge him as the lead- er of some big influential church and congregation.
This class of snob is as jealous and envious of every possible competitor for church honors as a first violinist is of the orchestra leader. He would murder the best Christian on earth for getting in his way if he just dared to.
I have never tried to handle one of these snobs and must work out a pro- gram. I have wanted to slay a few of then.
But, George, be patient; this cam- paign is on to stay. There is no room in the good old world for anybody these days except real men, working men, accomplishing men and unselfish men, and if there are others they must reform or emigrate .- Sept. 20, 1921.
TOWN ANALYSIS. By Robt. H. Clagett.
Whenever anybody residing in a town or city undertakes the analysis of the characteristics and peculiari- ties of the place, he is sure to create considerable comment. Such analyses provide the focus for a subject of con- versation that almost everybody de- lights in-a subject in which they themselves are the characters to be talked about. Lee Langley, ex-newspa- per man and clever writer, has started such conversation in Rome by his re- cent articles in which he undertook to reveal some of the characteristics of Rome and Romans, neither shunning the bad nor withholding the good.
In our opinion Lee Langley's articles have been good for Rome, because they have set many people to talking about their town and analyzing their rela- tionship to it. Anything that causes such retrospection is healthful. Ro- mans who have read his articles may or may not agree with them. He does not seem to care about that. We
cannot agree with all that he has writ- ten, if he intended to leave the im- pression that some of the things he said are applicable to Rome alone, be- cause it has been our observation that the worst characteristics he attributed to this town are with equal verity ap- plicable to all Southern towns of sim-
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ilar size and environment. To us distinct characteristic of Rome is its similarity to other smaller Southern cities.
In substance Mr. Langley said in a good natured way that to become a Roman it is necessary for a person either to be born into that high estate, marry into it or buy himself into it. To a certain extent the same thing may be said of any other city, North or South-if he meant by that to rank high in social, political or business cir- cles one must achieve his position through the good will of the inhabi- tants of the place in which he dwells. It has been our experience that it is very easy to become just any kind of Roman one has the desire to become, provided he has sufficient intelligence, social grace, business ability and in- dividual personality to deserve the po- sition or recognition that he aspires to.
Rome is not a Utopia. Nor is there a Utopia anywhere in the United States or any other country on the face of the earth. We have our ob- jectionable characteristics, which in most instances are the same as the ob- jections that may be pointed out in any other town in this section of the United States. Likewise, we have our admir- able features, some of which, it is pleasing to contemplate, are not to be found in all other places. If we have any criticism to make of the town that we have chosen as our future abode, it is that it is too much like other towns in which we have dwelt. What we would like to see happen is that Rome become so distinctly different from other towns either in good or bad qualities, if you please, that she will attract extraordinary attention.
As was said at the outset of this ed- itorial, Lee Langley has done a good service by setting us to thinking about ourselves. He did it in a good natured way, and if there was anything writ- ten that offended anybody we feel that he did not intend to do that or care whether he did or not. What we would like to see transpire here is that all inhabitants of this town-old-timers and new-comers, men and women, boys and girls, merchants and tradesmen, professional men and manufacturers alike-consider themselves Romans in every sense of the word and deport themselves in the manner that they think Romans should act.
The manner, then, in which the ma- jority deport themselves, will be ac- ceputed as the Rome Spirit and all who do not conform thereto will be aliens, because have we not the classic
admonition that when in Rome one should do as Rome does? If there be anyone among us who can change our ways sufficiently to cause a majority to conform to his idea of what is the proper way, that new way will become the Rome way for better or for worse. If there be any immediate improve- ment in prospect, it lies in an endeavor to make Rome different from any other small city in the South .- July 12, 1921.
"BOLSHEVIK" DINNER RULES. By Jack D. McCartney.
Every sport has its rules, even the social sport, and it is unwise to vio- late any of these strict regulations.
When asked to take your hostess out to dinner, were you ever penal- ized with a cold glance for being off side? Did you ever invite two young ladies to the same party and find yourself playing doubles, when you had meant it to be only a single court? Did you ever play all the courses at a formal dinner and find you had the wrong iron left for the last shot? Have you ever tried to steal home with your wife on second floor and your mother- in-law on third? If so, you will ap- preciate these few random but im- portant rules, and use them as an amateur in good standing, says a writer in the Kansas City Times.
1. Approach a formal dinner party as you would a railroad track, with its "Stop, Look and Listen," sign. You stop eating, look hungry and listen to the conversation of the experienced lady next to you who ate at home first. 2. To save embarrassment, never attend the wrong party or the wrong funeral. Imagine looking into the face of the host or the corpse, as the case may be, and finding him a perfect stranger.
3. Caution your wife ahead of time to avoid dwelling on your ordinarily huge appetite. Your hostess may in- sist on your taking a second helping of the pickled turnips or some such dish.
4. When seated uncomfortably against the leg of a table at one of these narrow apartment house festive boards, never kick irritably against what you believe to be the obstruction. It is just possible the leg may be that of the lady opposite.
5. The sport of seating ladies at a dinner party is the most hazardous of all. The procedure urgently re- quires the detailed instructions which follow.
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The whole matter might be sim- plified and accidents avoided, if cus- tom were not so fixed. For instance, the show method of seating the per- formers would be splendid. The butler, serving as interlocutor, should move to the piano, directly all the guests are in the dining room and at their chairs. Then he should call out in a loud, clear voice: "Ladies, be seated !" (Chord) . All then would sink into their chairs with pleasing unanimity, the hostess would give friend husband the cue for that humorous little monologue of his, after which he, in turn, should ad- dress a guest with, "And where were you last night, Mr. Bones?" and all would go rattlingly.
Then there is the military method. Guests form in column of twos and troop in to the tune of a stirring march on the phonograph. Reaching a position in rear of their chairs the host commands, "In place, halt!" The following commands then are given in quick succession : "Chair with the right hand grab!" "One pace to the left, march !" "Chairs to the rear, march!" "Take seats" and "Come and get it!"
Custom, however, almost precludes such efforts. Hence it is a question of best way-old style.
The alert gentleman will not always scat the lady on his right, not if he is a judge of weights. Pick the lighter lady. Then, if the chair and the lady miss connection, the resulting crash will not be so noisy and even may be drowned with a loud guffaw.
The lady to be seated maneuvers the chair behind her. If she insists on standing too long, waiting for the hostess to sit or counting to see if there are thirteen at the table, the time has come for action. Drawing the chair still farther back to gain a start, rush it toward the lady, strik- ing her at the bend of the knees with the chair and taking her by surprise. That is a most important factor, the surprise element. It avoids that pos- sibility, already mentioned, of her get- ting out of control and crashing.
With the lady once in the chair, the clever gentleman will propel it instantly toward the festive board. Some of the sex is just tricky enough to attempt to rise again if given an opportunity. Speed foils 'em. Don't cut down the momentum for fear of pushing the lady's chair too far for- ward. She will rebound from the edge of the table nicely.
If the gentleman has followed in- structions thus far faithfully, he will find the lady safely parked at her place and undoubtedly somewhat wind- ed from caroming off the table. Before she can regain the power of speech, the alert gentleman will have an op- portunity of making most lusty inroads on the soup, relishes and even part of the fish course, unhindered by the de- mands of conversation .- Tribune-Her- ald, Jan. 16, 1921.
A MONKEY DOES HIS BIT. By W. S. Rowell.
As a result of a very unusual in- jury-particularly for a ruling sov- ereign-he King of Greece is dead from the bite of a pet money. King Alexander had ruled but a short while, -- about three years, in fact. He was placed on the throne when former King Constantine was deposed by the allies, on account of his pro-German activities. He had been a mere figure- head, possessing no real power, and there is, therefore, no reason for any disturbance in Greece on that account.
King Alexander was the nephew of the former German Emperor, as are, of course, his brothers, one of whom, Prince Paul, has just been elected his successor by the Greek parliament. The new sovereign is the third son of Con- stantine, and is a man of about the same calibre as Alexander, and will be just about as much of a king, which will be very little .- Tribune-Herald, Oct. 27, 1920.
WHEN WOMEN GO TO VOTE. By W. S. Rowell.
Well, won't it be worth going miles to see-when women stalk up to the courthouse to vote! In the first place, lack of experience will embarrass them to some extent. They won't know where to go nor what to do. But the aver- age woman is quick to catch on and we don't anticipate much trouble in this regard.
The woman will start upstairs to the voting place, and be as mad as pepper if some man should perchance be in front of her, for naturally all women feel that they should go in front of the men. Then, by the time she gets fairly started, an election manager will call her back, and tell her that she must first find out if she is registered. If she IS, she will be given a ticket with a number on it and if she is not, there will be the dickens to play in explaining to her
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why she can't vote because she is not registered.
The woman will then take the ticket handed her by the manager and go on up stairs. When stopped by another manager at the top, she will protest against giving up the ticket she has in order to receive another that she knows nothing about. But after ar- gument this will be settled.
Then she won't want to go into the booth to fix her ticket, and she is not going to let any mere man fix it, be- cause it's no man's business how she votes, and she don't want them to know anyway.
After having fixed her own ticket in her own way (probably having scratched the candidates she wanted to vote for), she looks around and sees the ballot box. After some dis- cussion she will hand the ticket to the manager, who will call out her name and a number. This will bring on more talk; she will want to know why her name is called out without her consent and what the number is for
This having been satisfactorily ex- plained, she will start out the way she came and when barred by a police of- ficer, there'll be another long discus- sion coupled with protests. Finding that she cannot go out the way she came in she will follow the advice of the officer and go out the way pointed out. All of which she will consider totally unnecessary, and something of an insult.
It is our opinion that women will go to the polls in twos or threes, dress- ed in the height of fashion, in order to create an impression on the men standing around the polls. Of course, the men will be duly impressed.
When the returns come in and they find that their candidates are defeated, a mighty howl will go up, fraud, cheating, bribing and swindling will be charged. They will declare that they will never go to the polls again, to be cheated out of their rights by unfair counters, and they won't go again until another elections rolls around .- Oct. 30, 1920.
WOMEN LIKE WINNERS. By W. S. Rowell.
It is a natural factor in the fem- inine make-up that women like win- ners, and it is well that they do-it acts as an additional incentive to men to put things over.
Women are tender - hearted, of
course; they'll stand by an unfortu- nate man, one who is in real trouble, be he husband, brother or friend, to the last extremity-they are always the friend of the disabled or oppressed, but among men possessing all their faculties, they want winners.
We do not believe this is due to selfishness or hard-heartedness. We believe that it is implanted in the woman nature to make men work harder and fight fiercer. Take a strong, healthy man, in possession of all his faculties, he had better succeed in his undertakings if he expects to win the favor of women. They think he's got no business losing, and he has not.
We are not criticizing women for liking winners; in fact, we rather ad- mire their perspicacity, and as stated above, this quality in their natures fre- quently acts as an incentive for men, stirring their energies and ambitions to greater and higher things.
"DEAR SIR."
By W. S. Rowell.
There are some old-fashioned cus- toms that do not fit into the modern scheme o things-they are out of date, and apparently silly. One of these is the custom of beginning all letters with "dear sir" or "dear mad- am." It is true that this is polite, and people should always be polite. But when a man or woman writes to his or her deadly enemy, and uses the pro- noun "dear," it is inconsistent, to say the least.
We don't know how this custom started; it was probably in the dark ages, when language had a different nieaning from that of the present. In some instances it may have been in- tended as sarcasm; it certainly has that effect in a great many instances. We have often wondered why this par- ticular form of address is used. It would have been just as reasonable to say "gentle sir," "kind sir" or "hated sir" as the circumstances seemed to warrant. But just why men started the fashion of always address- ing each other as "dear sir" and stuck to it whether appropriate or not we have never been able to understand.
In a great many instances, for a man to address another as "dear sir" amounts to about the same thing as two rivals kissing each other when they meet. They hate each other to such an extent that their lips should burn on touching, yet they kiss and smile most sweetly. This is equally
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as out of place as addressing every man you write to as "dear sir."
We don't know any reason why you should not say "miserable sir" if that should fit the occasion, or "fat sir" or "lean sir." Why not address each person you write to under an appro- priate designation? What is the use in calling a man "dear" when you hate him like a fish ?- Dec. 3, 1920.
AT HOME-COMING, OCT. 14, 1920. From Judge Wright's Address of Wel- come.
"Rome's Who's Who contains every- body, with one man as good as another. There are roses in Rome whose petals wave a welcome of pink and white and red to our distinguished visitors. Out in the Flat Woods there are sweet potato patches containing the same 'possum tracks which long ago beck- oned us to the hunt, and the whip- poorwills call not today 'Whip-poor- wil' but 'Welcome Home.' Everybody is happy at your coming, and only the skies are blue."
From the Response of Col. John Tem- ple Graves.
"When I think of Rome I recall the dearest period of my existence. Once a Roman, always a Roman. It is bet- ter to be a Roman than a king. This is the land of the Indians and the pioneer pale-face, the land of memory and dreams. I learned to ride a horse in Rome; I learned to ride a bicycle in Rome; I have taken a header from all the hills of Rome into the purling waters of the Etowah, the Oostanaula and the Coosa."
A BASHFUL BRIDEGROOOM .- The following story, taken from the scrap book of the late John M. Gra- ham, of Tennessee, now in the posses- sion of a good lady of Rome, is re- printed from the Rome News of some date in 1921. Prudish persons should not read beyond these introductory lines; all others are cordially invited to wade in:
"Senator Sebastian, of Arkansas, was a native of Hickman County, Tenn. On one occasion a member of Congress was lamenting his own bash- fulness and awkwardness. 'Why,' said the Senator from Rackensack, ‘you don't know what bashfulness is. Let me tell a story, and when it is through I will stand the bob if you don't agree that you never knew anything about bashfulness and its baneful effects.
"'I was the most bashful boy west of the Alleghenies. I wouldn't look at a girl, much less speak to a maiden. But for all that I fell desperately in love with a sweet, beautiful, neighbor girl. It was a desirable match on both sides and the folks saw the drift and fixed it up. I thought I should die just thinking of it. I was a gawky, country lout some 19 years old. She was an intelligent, refined and fairly well educated girl in a country and at a time when girls had superior ad- vantages, and were therefore superior in culture to the boys. I fixed the day as far off as I could have put it. I lay awake in a cold perspiration as the time drew near, and shivered with agony as I thought of the terrible or- deal.
" 'The dreadful day came. I went through with the program somehow in a dazed, confused, mechanical sort of way like an automaton booby through a supper where I could eat nothing, and through such games as "possum pic," "Sister Phoebe" and all that sort of thing. The guests one by one de- parted and my hair began to stand on end. Beyond the awful curtain of Isis lay the terrible unknown. My blood grew cold and boiled by turns. I was in a fever and then an ague, pale and flushed by turns. I felt like fleeing to the woods, spending the night in the barn, or leaving for the West never to come back.
"'I was deeply devoted to Sally,- loved her harder than a mule can kick, but that dreadful ordeal, I could not, I dared not, stand it. Finally the last guest was gone, the bride retired, the family repaired to bed, and I was left alone, horror of horrors,-alone with the old man. "John," said he. "you can take that candle. You will find your room right over this. Good night, John, and may the Lord have mercy on your soul," and with a mischievous twinkle in his fine gray eyes the old man left the room. I mentally said "Amen!" to his "Heaven help you," and when I heard him close a distant door, staggered to my feet and seized the farthing dip with a nervous grasp. I stood for some minutes contemplating my terrible fate and the inevitable and speedy doom about to overwhelm me. I knew that it could not be avoided, and yet I hesitated to meet my fate like a man. I stood so long that three love letters grew on the wick of the tallow dip, and a winding sheet was decorating the sides of the brass can- dlestick.
"'A happy thought struck me.
I
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hastily climbed the stair, marked the position of the landing and the door of the bridal chamber. I would have died before I would have disrobed in that holy sanctuary, where awaited me a trembling and beautiful girl, a blushing maiden, "clothed upon" with her own beauty and modesty, and her snowy robe de nuit. The thought was that I could make the usual prep- arations outside in the hall, blow out the light, open the door and friendly night would shield my shrinking mod- esty and bashfulness, and grateful darkness at least mitigate the horror of the situation. It was soon done. Preparations for retiring were few and simple in Hickman, although con- sisting of disrobing, and owing to scarcity of cloth in those days man was somewhat near the Adamic state when he was prepared to woo sweet sleep.
" 'The dreaded hour had come. I
was ready. I blew out the light, grasped the door knob with a deathly grip and nervous clutch. One moment and it would be over! One moment and it wasn't over, by a darned sight!
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