Its metropolis, Charlotte, had, by the 1910 census, less than 35,000 inhabitants; its seaport, Wilmington, a little more than 25,000; its capital, Raleigh, less than 20,000; its beautiful mountain resort, Asheville, fourth city in the State, less than 19,000.
I hasten to add that the next census will undoubtedly show considerable growth in all these cities.

In Raleigh I found every one insistent on this point.

The town is growing; it is a going place; a great deal of new building is in progress; and when you ask about the population, progressive citizens are prepared to do much better by their city than the census takers did, some years ago.

They talk thirty thousand, instead of twenty, and they are ready with astonishing statistics about the number of students in the schools and colleges as compared with the total population of the city--statistics showing that though Raleigh is not large she is progressive.

Which is quite true.
I recollect that Judge Francis D.Winston, former Lieutenant Governor of the State, United States District Attorney, and the most engaging raconteur in the Carolinas, contributed a story to a discussion of Raleigh's population, which occurred, one evening, at a dinner at the Country Club.
"A promoter," he said, "was once trying to borrow money on a boom town.
He went to a banker and showed him a map, not of what the town was, but of what he claimed it was going to be.