But after I had
crossed I continued to hate that gap. I hated it as I drove back to the
hotel, that afternoon, as I ate dinner that night, as I went to bed, and
in my dreams I continued to cross it, and to see the river waiting for
me, seeming to look up and leer and beckon. I woke up hating the gap in
the bridge as much as ever; I hated it down into the State of
Mississippi, and over into Georgia; and wherever I have gone since, I
have continued to hate it. Of course there isn't any gap there now. It
was covered long ago. Yet for me it still exists, like some obnoxious
person who, though actually dead, lives on in the minds of those who
knew him.
FARTHEST SOUTH
CHAPTER LI
BEAUTIFUL SAVANNAH
How often it occurs that the great work a man set out originally to
accomplish, is lost sight of, by future generations, in contemplation of
other achievements of that man, which he himself regarded as of
secondary importance.
In 1733, the year in which General Oglethorpe started his Georgia
colony, there were more than a hundred offenses for which a person might
be hanged in England; Oglethorpe's primary idea in founding the colony
was to provide a means of freeing debtors from prison, and giving them a
fresh start in life; yet it is as the man responsible for the laying out
of the beautiful city of Savannah, that Oglethorpe is probably most
widely remembered to-day.
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