But over and above everything else he has an honest and hearty and not unfounded pride in Georgia, and a sort of masonic affiliation with every person, animal, institution, custom—in short, thing—that can be called Georgian. He may not always stand for culture, but he does always stand for patriotism, state and national. He loves success, strength, straight forwardness, and the solid virtues generally,—neither is he averse to the showy ones,—but above all he loves virtue in action. Though possessed of a strong, clear intellect, he is more particularly a man of five senses, of which he makes as good use as he can. He may not always taste the sweetness or see the light of the highest civilization, but he has a good healthy appetite for life. In fine, the Georgian is the Southerner of all others who comes nearest to being a normal American. There are, to be sure, varieties of Georgians, and different phases of civilization are represented in different sections of the state, but the features of character that make for uniformity are more numerous and important than those that make for divergence. The various elements that compose the population—original settlers, incomers from Virginia and the two Carolinas—seem to have been fused, save perhaps on the coast about Savannah, rather than to have preserved their individuality, and the result is the typical Georgian, energetic, shrewd, thrifty, brave, religious, patriotic, tending in the extremes of society to become narrow and hard, or self-assertive and pushing.
The Floridian on the one hand, and the Alabamian on the other, may be fairly described as modified Georgians. Florida, being a comparatively new state, settled under great difficulties and by various stocks, has not until recent years played any great part in Southern history, and even now represents little that is suggestive of an indigenous civilization. This is not true of Alabama, save of the mineral region in the northern part of the state; but the Alabamian, while a distinct personality, has
