must become a feeder for less favored commonwealths ; and 

 toward this end she may well lay plans to-day. Fortunate as she 

 is in her natural endowment, how many of her fellow citizens 

 beyond her borders know of Mississippi as a food-producing 

 State? The markets of the country display Oregon apples, Cali- 

 fornia raisins, Arizona pomegranates, Colorado cantaloupes, Louis- 

 iana n'ce, Florida Oranges, New Mexico grapes, Washington 

 potatoes, Michigan celery, New Jersey asparagus, and legion 

 other delectable productions crystallized in the memories of con- 

 noisseurs by the names of States or counties or valleys ; but how 

 seldom we find the name of Mississippi, a State more favored 

 than all the rest. Today the gourmet in Chicago or Cincinnati 

 either scans the menu in vain for that modern food of the gods, 

 okra, or is put off with a concoction two parts tomato the okra 

 so adapted to Mississippi that it grows easier than not, and if 

 planted on an acre would yield four times the product in potatoes 

 with five times the nutriment, pound for pound, and many times 

 the market- value. California may rival Mississippi in the prune 

 and outclass her in the orange ; but in okra Mississippi will excel 

 the rest of the world. And this is but a single product out of 

 many that might be noted! Consider just one more: The most 

 nutritious known food is the rich meat of nuts; and the finest 

 nut known is the paper-shell pecan which takes to Mississippi 

 soil so avidly that it can be eradicated only by much effort. 

 Surely the planter setting out on his career could not do better 

 than to put out a score of these trees in his least promising 

 quarter-acre; for by the time his son becomes a big school boy 

 he can harvest enough not merely to relieve the monotony of 

 a rural diet, but go far toward supporting the entire family dur- 

 ing the year in which the staple crops fail either in yield or in 

 price. 



So let Mississippians weigh as .they will the prospects for the 

 future; in the end the view must swing round in the direction of 

 steadily increasing prosperity, of growing population, of advanc- 



22 



