WHILE HIS SON was at college, John, more prone than ever to
the "blues" and the indulgence of his weaknesses, had fallen
victim to the general economic collapse of the early 'seventies:
His last acre of land went in 1873. Haplessly he joined the be-
ginning exodus from land to city, moved to Augusta and there
opened a combined boarding house and bar. ¹

The change did not please Tom at all. When a friend, whose
father had bought the fine house John had built after the war,
called on Tom at the new establishment, he appeared embar-
rassed and did not ask his friend in. ² Furthermore, he did not
feel at home in the city. "I was a stranger in the city," he wrote,
"and my clothes and my manner advertised me as a raw coun-
try boy." Vainly he tramped the streets of Augusta that summer
seeking work, but work he could not find. It was the first of
many rebuffs he was to receive from the city. Unlike his father
--he recoiled, as he always did, back to the country. This time
it was to the real country.

Having found no work by September, he gathered up his
books and sold them at public auction. "As each volume was
cried off . . ." he said, "a great gulp rose in my throat." That
night he made some memoranda for a "letter to T [heodosia?]."
"Youth," he said, "is bidding me goodbye forever. . . . Tomor-

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