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Page 4
The committee solicitously offered him the position of managing
editor, humbly presenting an outline of the field that the publication
was designed to cover and mentioning a comfortable salary. The
colonel's lands were growing poorer each year and were much cut up by
red gullies. Besides, the honor was not one to be refused.
In a forty-minute speech of acceptance, Colonel Telfair gave an
outline of English literature from Chaucer to Macaulay, re-fought the
battle of Chancellorsville, and said that, God helping him, he would
so conduct The Rose of Dixie that its fragrance and beauty would
permeate the entire world, hurling back into the teeth of the Northern
minions their belief that no genius or good could exist in the brains
and hearts of the people whose property they had destroyed and whose
rights they had curtailed.
Offices for the magazine were partitioned off and furnished in the
second floor of the First National Bank building; and it was for the
colonel to cause The Rose of Dixie to blossom and flourish or to wilt
in the balmy air of the land of flowers.
The staff of assistants and contributors that Editor-Colonel Telfair
drew about him was a peach. It was a whole crate of Georgia peaches.
The first assistant editor, Tolliver Lee Fairfax, had had a father
killed during Pickett's charge. The second assistant, Keats Unthank,
was the nephew of one of Morgan's Raiders. The book reviewer, Jackson
Rockingham, had been the youngest soldier in the Confederate army,
having appeared on the field of battle with a sword in one hand and a
milk-bottle in the other. The art editor, Roncesvalles Sykes, was a
third cousin to a nephew of Jefferson Davis. Miss Lavinia Terhune,
the colonel's stenographer and typewriter, had an aunt who had once
been kissed by Stonewall Jackson. Tommy Webster, the head office-boy,
got his job by having recited Father Ryan's poems, complete, at the
commencement exercises of the Toombs City High School. The girls who
wrapped and addressed the magazines were members of old Southern
families in Reduced Circumstances. The cashier was a scrub named
Hawkins, from Ann Arbor, Michigan, who had recommendations and a bond
from a guarantee company filed with the owners. Even Georgia stock
companies sometimes realize that it takes live ones to bury the dead.
Well, sir, if you believe me, The Rose of Dixie blossomed five times
before anybody heard of it except the people who buy their hooks and
eyes in Toombs City. Then Hawkins climbed off his stool and told on
'em to the stock company. Even in Ann Arbor he had been used to
having his business propositions heard of at least as far away as
Detroit. So an advertising manager was engaged -- Beauregard Fitzhugh
Banks, a young man in a lavender necktie, whose grandfather had been
the Exalted High Pillow-slip of the Kuklux Klan.
In spite of which The Rose of Dixie kept coming out every month.
Although in every issue it ran photos of either the Taj Mahal or the
Luxembourg Gardens, or Carmencita or La Follette, a certain number of
people bought it and subscribed for it. As a boom for it, Editor-
Colonel Telfair ran three different views of Andrew Jackson's old
home, "The Hermitage," a full-page engraving of the second battle of
Manassas, entitled "Lee to the Rear!" and a five-thousand-word
biography of Belle Boyd in the same number. The subscription list
that month advanced 118. Also there were poems in the same issue by
Leonina Vashti Haricot (pen-name), related to the Haricots of
Charleston, South Carolina, and Bill Thompson, nephew of one of the
stockholders. And an article from a special society correspondent
describing a tea-party given by the swell Boston and English set,
where a lot of tea was spilled overboard by some of the guests
masquerading as Indians.
One day a person whose breath would easily cloud a mirror, he was so
much alive, entered the office of The Rose of Dixie. He was a man
about the size of a real-estate agent, with a self-tied tie and a
manner that he must have borrowed conjointly from W J. Bryan,
Hackenschmidt, and Hetty Green. He was shown into the editor-
colonel's pons asinorum. Colonel Telfair rose and began a Prince
Albert bow.
"I'm Thacker," said the intruder, taking the editor's chair--"T. T.
Thacker, of New York."
He dribbled hastily upon the colonel's desk some cards, a bulky manila
envelope, and a letter from the owners of The Rose of Dixie. This
letter introduced Mr. Thacker, and politely requested Colonel Telfair
to give him a conference and whatever information about the magazine
he might desire.
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