Preserve Tallulah Falls.
By Editor
An appeal comes to us from Mrs. Helen D. Longstreet, Gainesville, Georgia, for the preservation of Tallulah Falls, said to be the most sublime waterfall, or series of waterfalls, within the borders of America, almost rivaling Niagara in majesty, and outrivaling it in beauty. We learn from Mrs. Longstreet's communications that a commercial company has set itself to use the wonderful attraction for the gross and sordid purposes of commercialism, and Mrs. Longstreet is writing in protest of this. She is asking Americans from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Canadian border to the gulf, to protest against this desecration. Not only that, but the Tallulah Falls Conservation Association offers a prize of $500 for the best 2,000 word article on the duty of the American nation to conserve Tallulah Falls, which contest is open to every man, woman, and child in America, the officers of the Tallulah Falls Conservation Association alone excepted. If Mrs. Helen D. Longstreet were not barred by the fact that she is president of that association, we are sure she would win the prize. Her marvelously eloquent appeal—sympathetic, patriotic, pathetic, winning—certainly ought to stir the people of Georgia, and patriots everywhere who believe in sentiment, to do all possible to preserve this marvelous natural feature to the State and to America. Very touching is Mrs. Longstreet's appeal to the men who fought on each side in the recent Civil War. Here is a paragraph of her description: "Nor is this masterpiece of the Maker's handiwork in our Georgia mountains surpassed even by the famous cataract of Niagara. With one magnificent leap, the latter plunges with an ocean's roar into Lake Ontario. The majesty of the spectacle is indeed sublime, but the eye can take it in at a single glance. Not so with Tallulah. There are five separate and superb cataracts in this unrivaled gorge, each a miracle within itself, both of beauty and of song, each hidden from the other's view in the abyssal depths of this magnificent cañon. It requires five separate thrones to appease the majesty of this queen of waterfalls." We sincerely hope that Mrs. Longstreet and her association will be able to save the falls from the vandal hand of commercialism.