stand patiently 66 bundles of soiled clothes upon their heads; or a man with a great stack of home-made, unpainted, and splint-bottomed chairs, out from among the white legs and rungs of which his black visage peers curiously; or urchins under baskets of flowers poised like crowns. Troops of little black boys, bare-footed, bare-headed, and ragged "to a degree," as a certain English novelist is fond of expressing it, go about carrying bags in which they gather up rags in a manner wholly different from the New York chiffoniers. At certain corners stand farmers in scant clothing of homespun, and the most bucolic of manners, waiting for some one to buy for a dollar, or even half a dollar, the little load of wood piled up on the centre of a home-made wagon so diminutive that two men could walk away with the whole affair, while a third carried the mule under his arm. It is great fun, too, to go to the post-office after the arrival of the noon mails from the North. The office closes its windows, although it is in the middle of the day, and devotes itself to the task of distribution. Meanwhile a crowd ac--everything out of time and miserable, cumulate-mostly the rabble who get a letter about once in four weeks, but mixed up of all sorts-and amuse themselves by making remarks not always complimentary to the rule of the office, or On certain days you will hear the beating of triangles, and have your attention attracted to the red flag of the curb-stone auctioneer, whose volubility will be heard above the din of traffic. These out-of-door auctions are always amusing, and the crowd of negroes, "poor whites," and loungers that they gather afford an interesting study to the lover of physiognomy. It is like a bit of the Bowery or Chatham Street turned out of doors: but the articles sold are more miscellaneous and wretched. You may buy worn-out stoves and tables, second-hand bacon, muddy croquet sets, rubber hose of one kind and cotton hose of quite another, canary-birds, hat racks, baby carriages, old fruit jars, clothing, bath tubs, straw sun - bonnets and hats, squirrel cages, carpets, books, bedclothes made "befoh de wah," sweetoil, saws, crockery, iron garden settees, ice-cream freezers, saddles, window-sashes from a pair of snuffers to a horse and wagon alive and harnessed. As yet Atlanta has no market-house; but it is proposed to build one at an early day, which shall be supported upon arch es over the railway tracks between White- | to give it a wide berth. Just as your foot hall and Broad streets. This would util- is upon the first stair, out leaps a whiskize (and handsomely too) a waste space; broom and begins upon you. Now you but if a locomotive should explode its must shout your menaces in language boiler under there, wouldn't the rise in strong if you would be saved. Escaped breadstuffs be so sudden as to disturb the this, you meet a fiend at the first landmarket? ing. You watch him firmly grasping a brush as you approach, but you are ready. Fixing upon him your eagle eye, you say, "Lift that whisk-broom but one inch, and I pitch you down stairs!" You turn your head as you go past, and never relax the deadly gleam of your eye until he is far behind. Finally you reach your room, and the porter opens the door, sets down your baggage, raises the curtains, glances at the toilet arrangements, and being satisfied, civilly retires to the door, hesitates, seems to be trying to remember something, and softly asks, "Would you you like to have your coat-" while out of his pocket steals the handle of a broom. The heavy match-box is nearest, and it flies, while you look for the iron poker with one hand and feel for your pistol with the other. But the imp is used to this, and has prudently vanished. You bolt the door, and find yourself in possession of the field; but he is the real victor, and until you either maim him for life or pay generous tribute of dimes, the brush fiend will torment, and the spirit of whisk-brooms refuse to be laid. Another event of the traveller's life in Atlanta, which may or may not be amusing, is his contact with the brush fiend. This imp, or rather this species of imp, for there are many individuals, finds its home at the hotel, and there lies in wait for the unwary tourist, as the spider crouches in quiet anticipation of its muscine meal. You enter the door and walk half way across the marble floor, when you feel a gentle stroke upon your shoulders, and turn your head to see an uplifted whisk in the hand of a darky, who grins in a conciliatory manner. But you harden your heart, proceed to the register, and lend your autograph in support of the eminent respectability of the house to which that much-blotted book is supposed to testify. The flourish is not yet from under your pen, when your modest hand-bag is seized, and down comes a broom upon your coat tail. A look fails to arrest the brush, and you flee. At the foot of the stairway is a shadowy corner. You are unsuspicious, not having yet learned THE BRUSH FIEND. A points of interest for a stranger. The Barracks are commodious, and the officers' quarters, surrounded by neat gardens and hidden in masses of honeysuckle and wistaria, form attractive homes. succession of regiments has held them, and they have bewailed when orders came sending them to the frontier, or transferring their post to some fever-haunted garrison on the sea-coast. At present the Fifth Artillery are stationed here, and making themselves agreeable to the citizens, who find the presence of the garrison pleasant as well as profitable. From the Barracks, which are upon high ground, a wide and enchanting landscape spreads northward before the eye, terminating in the pale outlines of Tennessee mountains, where Lookout, Mission Ridge, Resaca, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga recall such exciting memories. Near by towers the lofty double peak of Kenesaw Mountain, scene of the most severe fighting of the whole Atlanta campaign; and my companion, captain of a Confederate battery, has a bloody incident to tell of each landmark as he guides my eye over the wide expanse of this vast field of battle. Imagination alone must fill the distance with the action which his stories relate; but as he explains the method of advance, the successive retreats and conquests by which the lines of attack were narrowed more and more upon the beleaguered city, the evidences of war become more apparent, and we can bring the remains of hostile operations actually before the eye, helping the fancy to picture the stirring scenes. Down there in the valley stretches a long, low, irregular embankment, not yet overgrown with grass. That is the inner line of intrenchment which surrounded the city. Beyond it, appearing now and then in the second growth of woods, here lost in a valley, there enlarging into a fort upon a commanding hill-top, is an outer line, and all about are scattered the little piles of earth thrown up at the rifle-pits, and the half-filled trenches which the pickets dug to protect themselves from sharp-shooters and stray cannon-shot. Georgia seems to have little desire to hide her scars. The red soil upturned by the soldier's spade contains no dormant seeds, and takes so slowly to a new planting that for fifteen years compassionate Nature has tried in vain to hide these marks of Mars under her mantle of herbage and wild shrubbery. Everywhere as you ride out of Atlanta you cross cordon after cordon of earth - works, pass through woods torn with round shot, where shells cut long pathways, and wander across fields sown with the leaden seed. Gradually the city is extending itself beyond these red lines of embankments, and in twenty years their scant remains will become curiosities to the traveller. In the rural districts, however, they bid fair to last a very long time. Five or six miles out on the Peach-tree Road, for example, is a fort crowning a hill, whose lines and angles and full height are as well preserved to-day as though the work was thrown up only yesterday. It saw no fighting, however. The tide of war swept by without coming under the range of its guns, and its symmetrical outlines were never trampled beneath the feet of a storming column. est garden, where an old lady was busy among her thorny pets. We stopped and talked with her a few moments. She told us she had one hundred and twenty-five kinds there, but that her rose garden now was nothing compared with its splendor On the other hand, some of the fields of the fiercest battles leave little to show of the strife and carnage once enacted over their sunny slopes. To the stranger's eye the city itself presents few marks of that tide of war which crept up to it, and finally surged so destructively across its whole | area. There are ruins in the suburbs of what were once stately mansions, that have never been rebuilt, and you see scattered about the lonely stone chimneys that stand as monuments of a fireside forsaken, and a roof-tree long ago thrown down or burned away. The city itself has been rebuilt, and the houses that survived the shelling are already becoming dignified with historical interest. Usually it is some very insignificant incident which preserves the recollection of the conflict in particular places. Atlanta is a region of roses. A lover of them never tires of peeping over the fences and pausing before the conservatories in this early May season, so rich in the superb blossoms. One day we came to a mod THE BUSINESS CENTRE OF ATLANTA. before the war. "We had to leave during the siege," she said; "the cannonading ruined the house, and the soldiers and all just spoiled my beautiful flower beds. I had a rare lily that was given to me by the royal gardener at Berlin, and that was killed; and I do believe, when I got back, of all the dreadful ruin, the loss of that flower hurt me the most." It was in 1865 that the citizens and merchants came back to their desolate homes. Only one building, of all the commercial part of the town, had survived the flames. Business had to be built up from the very foundation again, and the energy with which this task was attempted shows the strong faith Atlanta men feel in their lively town. One of the first to return was the present presi dent of the Board of Trade. He secured | The same is true of the canned meats of a cellar under the sole remaining building (on Alabama Street), paying $150 a month for its use, and began the produce and groceries trade, increasing his income by renting ground privileges of a few feet square on his sidewalk at $20 a month each. Soon the owner of a corner lot on Whitehall Street built a brick building containing two store-rooms. As soon as these were ready, our merchant and another moved in, paying $3000 a year rent each, and giving half of it in advance, in order to aid the proprietor to go on with his construction. (The accommodations WASHINGTON STREET, ATLANTA. which that $6000 a year was paid now rent | for $1500.) Thus by mutual help and enterprise, together with a vast amount of personal labor, the ruins were replaced by substantial business edifices, new hotels of magnificent proportions were erected, churches more lofty in gable and spire arose upon the sites of those destroyed, and the vacant streets were refilled with people. Atlanta became at once the distributing point for Western products, and now finds tributary to her a wide range of country. She handles a large portion of all the grain of Tennessee and Kentucky, besides much from the Upper Mississippi Valley. Much of the flour of the Northwestern mills comes into her warehouses, and thence finds its way southward and eastward. Chicago, St. Louis, and Cincinnati packinghouses: this is a very important item of her wholesale business. The provision men naturally were the first to obtain foothold in the new town. After them came the dry-goods people. Most of them began in a very modest way-brought their goods tied up in a blanket almost-yet now the jobbing trade in dry-goods alone amounts to some millions of dollars annually. No tobacco can be grown in the vicinity of Atlanta, hence she is without tobacco factories; but she used to handle an enormous quantity of it, and there are half a dozen firms who deal wholly in it now. It was found that Atlanta's dry, equable climate, consequent upon her great altitude, made this point the safest place to keep stores of the grateful plant: it would not mould, as it is liable to do in a damp atmosphere. A few years ago the revenue regulations were not as effective as at present. The practice of stencil-plating packages of tobacco afforded easy means of evading the payment of duty, and great warehouses here were stored with "blockade" tobacco, from which Uncle Sam had derived very little, if any, pocketmoney. Enormous profits accrued, but the introduction of the stamp system put a stop to this, though Atlanta was left a very large legitimate business in storing and selling tobacco at wholesale. Another source of prosperity to the city is cotton. The "cotton belt" of Georgia is a strip of country between here and Augusta. Years ago the land became exhausted, and the cultivation of cotton came to be of small account. Then followed the discovery of the guano islands of Peru, and the subsequent invention of artificial fertilizers having similar qualities to the natural manure. These superphosphates are manufactured mainly in Boston, and cost the farmer about forty dollars a ton. It was proved that by their use the worn-out cotton belt could be made to produce as bountiful crops in a series of five years as the Mississippi bottoms did; and, moreover, that cotton could be raised as far north as the foot of the Tennessee mountains. At |