CHAPTER XXVI.
RALEIGH AND JOSEPHUS DANIELS Jedge Crutchfield give de No'th Ca'lina nigger frown; De mahkets says ouh tehapin am secon'-rate, An' Mistuh Daniels, he call Raleigh his hum town.
-- I wondah what kin be de mattuh wid ouh State?
Just as it is the fashion in the Middle West to speak jestingly of Kansas, it is the fashion in the South to treat lightly the State of North Carolina.

And just as my companion and I, long ago, on another voyage of discovery, were eager to get into Kansas and find out what that fabulous Commonwealth was really like, so we became anxious, as we heard the gossip about the "Old North State," to enter it and form our own conclusions.

The great drawback to an attempt to see North Carolina, however, lies in the fact that North Carolina is, so to speak, spread very thin.

It has no great solid central city occupying a place in its thoughts and its affairs corresponding to that occupied by Richmond, in its relation to Virginia.

Like Mississippi, it is a State of small towns and small cities.