"Young Marooners"; Dr. William Louis Jones, the wellknown scientist; Grant Wilkins, the well-known contractor and builder; Samuel D. Bradwell, the former State School Commisioner: Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, wife of the president of Princeton College; and scores of others, too numerous to mention. Dr. James Stacy, whose "History of Midway Church" appeared several years ago, enumerates eighty-one ministers of the gospel which have sprung from this noted communion: fifty Presbyterian, seventeen Baptist, thirteen Methodist and one Episcopalian.

Since the war the glories of old Midway church have departed, and little remains to recall the days when the devout worshipers for miles around gathered in the famous meeting-house. The property fell into the hands of the negroes after the war; but the Midway society organized by the descendants of the former members meets annually on the sacred precincts for the purpose of reviving the hallowed memories. The reverses from which the whole of Liberty county suffered just after the war grew out of the former prosperity of this section of Georgia in the old ante-bellum days. Some of the wealthiest planters of the State lived in Liberty county. They cultivated extensive acres and utilized numerous slaves. And the consequence was that after the war when the slaves were set free the blacks in Liberty county outnumbered the whites by heavy odds. At the commencement of the reconstruction period the whites began to leave the county in large numbers for other portions of the State. It was not long before this famous old county was almost completely de

serted by the whites; and on the floor of the General Assembly negro representatives responded to the roll-call of lawmakers. But things are now changing. The waste places are beginning to bristle with new life. Signs of returning prosperity are again visible, and old Liberty county may once more become the garden-spot of Georgia.

At present the chief interest connected with the famous meeting-house attaches to the old burial-ground in the immediate neighborhood. One of the principal objects of the Midway Society is to keep the sacred place in repair. Within the silent precincts of this little village of the dead repose the ashes of the old pioneer worshipers, sleeping under the pendant mosses of the ancient oaks. The worn-out shepherds and the tired flocks have long communed together in the moldering dust; but the echoes which they kindled in prayer and song and exhortation are still rising in rhythmic notes of harmony to blend with the music of the spheres.

Now and then an eccentric epitaph forces a smile to the lips of the vistor who tries to decipher the inscriptions on the old tombs. Rev. Cyrus Gildersleeve, who appears to have been the master-minstrel of the village choir, has inscribed this poetic tribute to his lamented spouse:

"She, who, in Jesus, sleeps beneath this tomb
Had Rachel's face and Leah's fruitful womb,
Abigail's wisdom, Lydia's faithful heart,

And Martha's care, with Mary's better part."

Among the tenants of the little graveyard are Governor Bronson, General Screven, General Stewart, Commodore John McIntosh, Senator John Elliott, Louis Le Conte,

the father of the great scientists, John and Joseph Le Conte, and himself an eminent scientist, and Rev. Augustus O. Bacon, the father of Senator Bacon. Some of the monumental structures of the little cemetery are quite imposing and reveal the refinement as well as the wealth which characterized the Midway community in the days long gone. But the most conspicuous object to be seen is an aged live oak which measures nineteen feet in circumference and produces an immense area of shade. It seems to keep watch over the heavy sleepers who lie beneath, and to whisper that whatever may be the fate of the historic old building which stands near by, “the past at least is secure."

CHAPTER III.

Georgia's Modern Prometheus.

C

ALLING down the fire of heaven has often been

the invocation of impassioned rhetoric. But not since the miraculous flames were kindled upon Mount Carmel has it been more completely the accomplishment of literal fact than when Governor James Jackson, in front of the old capitol building at Louisville, drew down the solar heat to consume the iniquitous records of the Yazoo fraud. The story of Prometheus is only Grecian fable, but the story of Governor Jackson is actual reality: an illuminated fact which closed the blackest chapter in the history of Georgia with perhaps the brightest incident to be found in the entire annals of the commonwealth.

The portrait of the old Governor which now hangs upon the walls of the present Capitol building in Atlanta, has doubtless been honored with more salutes of oratory than have all the assembled heirlooms put together; and few have been the dramatic occasions when feeling has been strong or excitement high when the gesture of some intense speaker has not pointed in eloquent apostrophe toward the canvas which holds the stern features of this beloved Georgian.