AS THE TRAIN carried Scarlett northward that May morning in 1862, she thought that Atlantacouldn’t possibly be so boring as Charleston and Savannah had been and, in spite of her distastefor Miss Pittypat and Melanie, she looked forward with some curiosity toward seeing how the town had fared since her last visit, in the winter before the war began.

　　Atlanta had always interested her more than any other town because when she was a childGerald had told her that she and Atlanta were exactly the same age. She discovered when she grewolder that Gerald had stretched the truth somewhat, as was his habit when a little stretching wouldimprove a story; but Atlanta was only nine years older than she was, and that still left the placeamazingly young by comparison with any other town she had ever heard of. Savannah andCharleston had the dignity of their years, one being well along in its second century and the otherentering its third, and in her young eyes they had always seemed like aged grandmothers fanningthemselves placidly in the sun. But Atlanta was of her own generation, crude with the crudities ofyouth and as headstrong and impetuous as herself.

　　The story Gerald had told her was based on the fact that she and Atlanta were christened in thesame year. In the nine years before Scarlett was born, the town had been called, first, Terminus andthen Marthasville, and not until the year of Scarlett’s birth had it become Atlanta.

　　When Gerald first moved to north Georgia, there had been no Atlanta at all, not even thesemblance of a village, and wilderness rolled over the site. But the next year, in 1836, the State hadauthorized the building of a railroad northwestward through the territory which the Cherokees hadrecently ceded. The destination of the proposed railroad, Tennessee and the West, was clear anddefinite, but its beginning point in Georgia was somewhat uncertain until, a year later, an engineerdrove a stake in the red clay to mark the southern end of the line, and Atlanta, born Terminus, hadbegun.

　　There were no railroads then in north Georgia, and very few anywhere else. But during the yearsbefore Gerald married Ellen, the tiny settlement, twenty-five miles north of Tara, slowly grew intoa village and the tracks slowly pushed northward. Then the railroad building era really began.

　　From the old city of Augusta, a second railroad was extended westward across the state to connectwith the new road to Tennessee. From the old city of Savannah, a third railroad was built first toMacon, in the heart of Georgia, and then north through Gerald’s own county to Atlanta, to link upwith the other two roads and give Savannah’s harbor a highway to the West. From the samejunction point, the young Atlanta, a fourth railroad was constructed southwestward to Montgomeryand Mobile.

　　Born of a railroad, Atlanta grew as its railroads grew. With the completion of the four lines,Atlanta was now connected with the West, with the South, with the Coast and, through Augusta,with the North and East. It had become the crossroads of travel north and south and east and west,and the little village leaped to life.

　　In a space of time but little longer than Scarlett’s seventeen years, Atlanta had grown from asingle stake driven in the ground into a thriving small city of ten thousand that was the center ofattention for the whole state. The older, quieter cities were won’t to look upon the bustling newtown with the sensations of a hen which has hatched a duckling. Why was the place so differentfrom the other Georgia towns? Why did it grow so fast? After all, they thought, it had nothingwhatever to recommend it—only its railroads and a bunch of mighty pushy people.

　　The people who settled the town called successively Terminus, Marthasville and Atlanta, were apushy people. Restless, energetic people from the older sections of Georgia and from more distant states were drawn to this town that sprawled itself around the junction of the railroads in its center.

　　They came with enthusiasm. They built their stores around the five muddy red roads that crossednear the depot. They built their fine homes on Whitehall and Washington streets and along the highridge of land on which countless generations of moccasined Indian feet had beaten a path calledthe Peachtree Trail. They were proud of the place, proud of its growth, proud of themselves formaking it grow. Let the older towns call Atlanta anything they pleased. Atlanta did not care.

　　Scarlett had always liked Atlanta for the very same reasons that made Savannah, Augusta andMacon condemn it. Like herself, the town was a mixture of the old and new in Georgia, in whichthe old often came off second best in its conflicts with the self-willed and vigorous new. Moreover,there was something personal, exciting about a town that was born—or at least christened—thesame year she was christened.

　　The night before had been wild and wet with rain, but when Scarlett arrived in Atlanta a warmsun was at work, bravely attempting to dry the streets that were winding rivers of red mud. In theopen space around the depot, the soft ground had been cut and churned by the constant flow oftraffic in and out until it resembled an enormous hog wallow, and here and there vehicles weremired to the hubs in the ruts. A never-ceasing line of army wagons and ambulances, loading andunloading supplies and wounded from the trains, made the mud and confusion worse as they toiledin and struggled out, drivers swearing, mules plunging and mud spattering for yards.

　　Scarlett stood on the lower step of the train, a pale pretty figure in her black mourning dress, hercrêpe veil fluttering almost to her heels. She hesitated, unwilling to soil her slippers and hems, andlooked about in the shouting tangle of wagons, buggies and carriages for Miss Pittypat. There wasno sign of that chubby pink-cheeked lady, but as Scarlett searched anxiously a spare old negro,with grizzled kinks and an air of dignified authority, came toward her through the mud, his hat inhis hand.

　　“Dis Miss Scarlett, ain’ it? Dis hyah Peter, Miss Pitty’s coachman. Doan step down in dat mud,”

　　he ordered severely, as Scarlett gathered up her skirts preparatory to descending. “You is as bad asMiss Pitty an’ she lak a chile ‘bout gittin’ her feets wet. Lemme cahy you.”

　　He picked Scarlett up with ease despite his apparent frailness and age and, observing Prissystanding on the platform of the train, the baby in her arms, he paused: “Is dat air chile yo’ nuss?

　　Miss Scarlett, she too young ter be handlin’ Mist’ Charles’ onlies’ baby! But we ten’ to dat later.

　　You gal, foller me, an’ doan you go drappin’ dat baby.”

　　Scarlett submitted meekly to being carried toward the carriage and also to the peremptorymanner in which Uncle Peter criticized her and Prissy. As they went through the mud with Prissysloshing, pouting, after them, she recalled what Charles had said about Uncle Peter.

　　“He went through all the Mexican campaigns with Father, nursed him when he was wounded—in fact, he saved his life. Uncle Peter practically raised Melanie and me, for we were very youngwhen Father and Mother died. Aunt Pitty had a falling out with her brother, Uncle Henry, aboutthat time, so she came to live with us and take care of us. She is the most helpless soul—just like asweet grown-up child, and Uncle Peter treats her that way. To save her life, she couldn’t make up her mind about anything, so Peter makes it up for her. He was the one who decided I should have alarger allowance when I was fifteen, and he insisted that I should go to Harvard for my senior year,when Uncle Henry wanted me to take my degree at the University. And he decided when Mellywas old enough to put up her hair and go to parties. He tells Aunt Pitty when it’s too cold or toowet for her to go calling and when she should wear a shawl. … He’s the smartest old darky I’veever seen and about the most devoted. The only trouble with him is that he owns the three of us,body and soul, and he knows it.”

　　Charles’ words were confirmed as Peter climbed onto the box and took the whip.

　　“Miss Pitty in a state bekase she din’ come ter meet you. She’s feared you mout not unnerstan’

　　but Ah tole her she an’ Miss Melly jes’ git splashed wid mud an’ ruin dey new dresses an’ Ah’d‘splain ter you. Miss Scarlett, you better tek dat chile. Dat lil pickaninny gwine let it drap.”

　　Scarlett looked at Prissy and sighed. Prissy was not the most adequate of nurses. Her recentgraduation from a skinny pickaninny with brief skirts and stiffly wrapped braids into the dignity ofa calico dress and starched white turban was an intoxicating affair. She would never have arrived atthis eminence so early in life had not the exigencies of war and the demands of the commissary departmenton Tara made it impossible for Ellen to spare Mammy or Dilcey or even Rosa or Teena.

　　Prissy had never been more than a mile away from Twelve Oaks or Tara before, and the trip on thetrain plus her elevation to nurse was almost more than the brain in her little black skull could bear.

　　The twenty-mile journey from Jonesboro to Atlanta had so excited her that Scarlett had beenforced to hold the baby all the way. Now, the sight of so many buildings and people completedPrissy’s demoralization. She twisted from side to side, pointed, bounced about and so jounced thebaby that he wailed miserably.

　　Scarlett longed for the fat old arms of Mammy. Mammy had only to lay hands on a child and ithushed crying. But Mammy was at Tara and there was nothing Scarlett could do. It was useless forher to take little Wade from Prissy. He yelled just as loudly when she held him as when Prissy did.

　　Besides, he would tug at the ribbons of her bonnet and, no doubt, rumple her dress. So shepretended she had not heard Uncle Peter’s suggestion.

　　“Maybe I’ll learn about babies sometime,” she thought irritably, as the carriage jolted andswayed out of the morass surrounding the station, “but I’m never going to like fooling with them.”

　　And as Wade’s face went purple with his squalling, she snapped crossly: “Give him that sugar-tit inyour pocket, Priss. Anything to make him hush. I know he’s hungry, but I can’t do anything aboutthat now.”

　　Prissy produced the sugar-tit, given her that morning by Mammy, and the baby’s wails subsided.

　　With quiet restored and with the new sights that met her eyes, Scarlett’s spirits began to rise a little.

　　When Uncle Peter finally maneuvered the carriage out of the mudholes and onto Peachtree Street,she felt the first surge of interest she had known in months. How the town had grown! It was notmuch more than a year since she had last been here, and it did not seem possible that the littleAtlanta she knew could have changed so much.

　　For the past year, she had been so engrossed in her own woes, so bored by any mention of war,she did not know that from the minute the fighting first began, Atlanta had been transformed. Thesame railroads which had made the town the crossroads of commerce in time of peace were now of vital strategic importance in time of war. Far from the battle lines, the town and its railroadsprovided the connecting link between the two armies of the Confederacy, the army in Virginia andthe army in Tennessee and the West And Atlanta likewise linked both of the armies with the deeperSouth from which they drew their supplies. Now, in response to the needs of war, Atlanta hadbecome a manufacturing center, a hospital base and one of the South’s chief depots for thecollecting of food and supplies for the armies in the field.

　　Scarlett looked about her for the little town she remembered so well. It was gone. The town shewas now seeing was like a baby grown overnight into a busy, sprawling giant.

　　Atlanta was humming like a beehive, proudly conscious of its importance to the Confederacy,and work was going forward night and day toward turning an agricultural section into an industrialone. Before the war there had been few cotton factories, woolen mills, arsenals and machine shopssouth of Maryland—a fact of which all Southerners were proud. The South produced statesmenand soldiers, planters and doctors, lawyers and poets, but certainly not engineers or mechanics. Letthe Yankees adopt such low callings. But now the Confederate ports were stoppered with Yankeegunboats, only a trickle of blockade-run goods was slipping in from Europe, and the South wasdesperately trying to manufacture her own war materials. The North could call on the whole worldfor supplies and for soldiers, and thousands of Irish and Germans were pouring into the UnionArmy, lured by the bounty money offered by the North. The South could only turn in upon itself.

　　In Atlanta, there were machine factories tediously turning out machinery to manufacture warmaterials—tediously, because there were few machines in the South from which they could modeland nearly every wheel and cog had to be made from drawings that came through the blockadefrom England. There were strange faces on the streets of Atlanta now, and citizens who a year agowould have pricked op their ears at the sound of even a Western accent paid no heed to the foreigntongues of Europeans who had run the blockade to build machines and turn out Confederatemunitions. Skilled men these, without whom the Confederacy would have been hard put to makepistols, rifles, cannon and powder.

　　Almost the poising of the town’s heart could be felt as the work went forward night and day,pumping the materials of war up the railway arteries to the two battle fronts. Trains roared in andout of the town at all hours. Soot from the newly erected factories fell in showers on the whitehouses. By night, the furnaces glowed and the hammers clanged long after townsfolk were abed.

　　Where vacant lots had been a year before, there were now factories turning out harness, saddlesand shoes, ordnance-supply plants making rifles and cannon, rolling mills and foundries producingiron rails and freight cars to replace those destroyed by the Yankees, and a variety of industriesmanufacturing spurs, bridle bits, buckles, tents, buttons, pistols and swords. Already the foundrieswere beginning to feel the lack of iron, for little or none came through the blockade, and the minesin Alabama were standing almost idle while the miners were at the front. There were no iron picketfences, iron summerhouses, iron gates or even iron statuary on the lawns of Atlanta now, for theyhad early found their way into the melting pots of the rolling mills.

　　Here along Peachtree Street and near-by streets were the headquarters of the various armydepartments, each office swarming with uniformed men, the commissary, the signal corps, the mailservice, the railway transport, the provost marshal. On the outskirts of town were the remountdepots where horses and mules milled about in large corrals, and along side streets were the hospitals. As Uncle Peter told her about them, Scarlet felt that Atlanta must be a city of thewounded, for there were general hospitals, contagious hospitals, convalescent hospitals withoutnumber. And every day the trains just below Five Points disgorged more sick and more wounded.

　　The little town was gone and the face of the rapidly growing city was animated with never-ceasing energy and bustle. The sight of so much hurrying made Scarlett, fresh from rural leisureand quiet, almost breathless, but she liked it. There was an exciting atmosphere about the place thatuplifted her. It was as if she could actually feel the accelerated steady pulse of the town’s heartbeating in time with her own.

　　As they slowly made their way through the mudholes of the town’s chief street, she noted withinterest all the new buildings and the new faces. The sidewalks were crowded with men inuniform, bearing the insignia of all ranks and all service branches; the narrow street was jammedwith vehicles—carriages, buggies, ambulances, covered army wagons with profane driversswearing as the mules struggled through the ruts; gray-clad couriers dashed spattering through thestreets from one headquarters to another, bearing orders and telegraphic dispatches; convalescentslimped about on crutches, usually with a solicitous lady at either elbow; bugle and drum andbarked orders sounded from the drill fields where the recruits were being turned into soldiers; andwith her heart in her throat, Scarlett had her first sight of Yankee uniforms, as Uncle Peter pointedwith his whip to a detachment of dejected-looking bluecoats being shepherded toward the depot bya squad of Confederates with fixed bayonets, to entrain for the prison camp.

　　“Oh,” thought Scarlett, with the first feeling of real pleasure she had experienced since the dayof the barbecue, I’m going to like it here! It’s so alive and exciting!”

　　The town was even more alive than she realized, for there were new barrooms by the dozens;prostitutes, following the army, swarmed the town and bawdy houses were blossoming withwomen to the consternation of the church people. Every hotel, boarding house and privateresidence was crammed with visitors who had come to be near wounded relatives in the bigAtlanta hospitals. There were parties and balls and bazaars every week and war weddings withoutnumber, with the grooms on furlough in bright gray and gold braid and the brides in blockade-runfinery, aisles of crossed swords, toasts drunk in blockaded champagne and tearful farewells.

　　Nightly the dark tree-lined streets resounded with dancing feet, and from parlors tinkled pianoswhere soprano voices blended with those of soldier guests in the pleasing melancholy of “TheBugles Sang Truce” and “Your Letter Came, but Came Too Late”—plaintive ballads that broughtexciting tears to soft eyes which had never known the tears of real grief.

　　As they progressed down the street, through the sucking mud, Scarlett bubbled over withquestions and Peter answered them, pointing here and there with his whip, proud to display hisknowledge.

　　“Dat air de arsenal. Yas’m, dey keeps guns an’ sech lak dar. No’m, dem air ain’ sto’s, dey’sblockade awfisses. Law, Miss Scarlett, doan you know whut blockade awfisses is? Dey’s awfisseswhar furriners stays dat buy us Confedruts’ cotton an’ ship it outer Cha’ston and Wilmin’ton an’

　　ship us back gunpowder. No’m, Ah ain’ sho whut kine of furriners dey is. Miss Pitty, she say dey isInlish but kain nobody unnerstan a’ wud dey says. Yas’m ‘tis pow’ful smoky an’ de soot jes’ ruinin’

　　Miss Pitty’s silk cuttins. If frum de foun’ry an’ de rollin’ mills. An’ de noise dey meks at night!

　　Kain nobody sleep. No’m, Ah kain stop fer you ter look around. Ah done promise Miss Pitty Ahbring you straight home. … Miss Scarlett, mek yo’ cu’tsy. Dar’s Miss Merriwether an’ Miss Elsinga-bowin’ to you.”

　　Scarlett vaguely remembered two ladies of those names who came from Atlanta to Tara to attendher wedding and she remembered that they were Miss Pittypat’s best friends. So she turned quicklywhere Uncle Peter pointed and bowed. The two were sitting in a carriage outside a drygoods store.

　　The proprietor and two clerks stood on the sidewalk with armfuls of bolts of cotton cloth they hadbeen displaying. Mrs. Merriwether was a tall, stout woman and so tightly corseted that her bustjutted forward like the prow of a ship. Her iron-gray hair was eked out by a curled false fringe thatwas proudly brown and disdained to match the rest of her hair. She had a round, highly coloredface in which was combined good-natured shrewdness and the habit of command. Mrs. Elsing wasyounger, a thin frail woman, who had been a beauty, and about her there still clung a fadedfreshness, a dainty imperious air.

　　These two ladies with a third, Mrs. Whiting, were the pillars of Atlanta. They ran the threechurches to which they belonged, the clergy, the choirs and the parishioners. They organizedbazaars and presided over sewing circles, they chaperoned balls and picnics, they knew who madegood matches and who did not, who drank secretly, who were to have babies and when. They wereauthorities on the genealogies of everyone who was anyone in Georgia, South Carolina andVirginia and did not bother their heads about the other states, because they believed that no onewho was anybody ever came from states other than these three. They knew what was decorousbehavior and what was not and they never failed to make their opinions known—Mrs. Merriwetherat the top of her voice, Mrs. Elsing in an elegant die-away drawl and Mrs. Whiting in a distressedwhisper which showed how much she hated to speak of such things. These three ladies dislikedand distrusted one another as heartily as the First Triumvirate of Rome, and their close alliance wasprobably for the same reason.

　　“I told Pitty I had to have you in my hospital,” called Mrs. Merriwether, smiling. “Don’t you gopromising Mrs. Meade or Mrs. Whiting!”

　　“I won’t,” said Scarlett, having no idea what Mrs. Merriwether was talking about but feeling aglow of warmth at being welcomed and wanted. “I hope to see you again soon.”

　　The carriage plowed its way farther and halted for a moment to permit two ladies with basketsof bandages on their arms to pick precarious passages across the sloppy street on stepping stones.

　　At the same moment, Scarlett’s eye was caught by a figure on the sidewalk in a brightly coloreddress—too bright for street wear—covered by a Paisley shawl with fringes to the heels. Turningshe saw a tall handsome woman with a bold face and a mass of red hair, too red to be true. It wasthe first time she had ever seen any woman who she knew for certain had “done something to herhair” and she watched her, fascinated.

　　“Uncle Peter, who is that?” she whispered.

　　“Ah doan know.”

　　“You do, too. I can tell. Who is she?”

　　“Her name Belle Watling,” said Uncle Peter, his lower lip beginning to protrude.

　　Scarlett was quick to catch the fact that he had not preceded the name with “Miss” or “Mrs.”

　　“Who is she?”

　　“Miss Scarlett,” said Peter darkly, laying the whip on the startled horse, “Miss Pitty ain gwineter lak it you astin’ questions dat ain’ none of yo’ bizness. Day’s a passel of no-count folks in distown now dat it ain’ no use talkin’ about.”

　　“Good Heavens!” thought Scarlett, reproved into silence. That must be a bad woman!”

　　She had never seen a bad woman before and she twisted her head and stared after her until shewas lost in the crowd.

　　The stores and the new war buildings were farther apart now, with vacant lots between. Finallythe business section fell behind and the residences came into view. Scarlett picked them out as oldfriends, the Leyden house, dignified and stately; the Bonnells’, with little white columns andgreen, blinds; the close-lipped red-brick Georgian home of the McLure family, behind its low boxhedges. Their progress was slower now, for from porches and gardens and sidewalks ladies calledto her. Some she knew slightly, others she vaguely remembered, but most of them she knew not atall. Pittypat had certainly broadcast her arrival. Little Wade had to be held up time and again, sothat ladies who ventured as far through the ooze as t............