The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-03-08

other folks for two hundred and nifty
 years. I learned how to survey land and to lay off lots We sold no one less than forty acres.
 Most of the settlers buy forty or
 eighty acres, but a few have acquired
 as many as two hundred acres Col
 ored people now own twelve thousand l acres there. There are about two nun
 dred and fifty inhabitants m Mound l Bayou, the village of which l am may
 or. and about two thousand Tn the toWH' 1 We have perhaps ten stores ana snoPs' I should say that the business done ny 1 the colored establishments would l amount to at least thirty thousand dol
 lars a year, and this is not more than 1 half of our trade as there are two large 1 towns near Mound Bayou IS one nun 1 dred and four miles below Menpilis'
 and one hundred and sixteen ahoVe l Vicksburg. It is an agricultural com munity Our people raise cottah lo sell 1 and some food crops, but not as many
 of the latter as they ought we nave 1 large timber trade in oak ash, gum and hickory We have good churches and schools with high school taught by a graduate of Booker Washinstons s | school at Tuskeegee.
 We have passed the first stage m the ] development of such an enterprise as | ours That stage is to get the colored | people to buy land and to settle down. 1 Now we are approaching the second stage, where the people must be induced to take up intensified and diversified l c., A,, ,,,,1,,ptIipnG cnlOlP6 man
 does not need to hire out to any one for l more than two years, If he is good Tor anything he can get started for himself l by that time.
 "I am going back by the way of New i York said MT Montgomery, 50 as to | try and see Mrs Davis. l have not
 seen her since 1888, although letters | have frequently passed between us since | then. She is thoroughly consecrated 1 Christian woman. After the war she used to come frequently to the place and would spend hours in earnest con l lVersation with me about oui people and how they could best be helped. When ever any of our family have died, who were old enough so that she would know them, | have always written her
 and she has replied When MT. Davis died 1 wrote to her AfterWard I re- ceivedN letter from her in which she said that although she had received so lmany thousand letters of sympathy that it was quite impossible. for her to try to answer them, she felt bound to write to us. She wrote me again after Miss Winnie died, I had never seen Miss Winnie. She was born during the war, you know. That was why she was called the Daughter of the Contedera- cy.' Her mother had told me about her, and about her education. in which both
 she and Mr. Davis took great pride.
 We have turned around he said,
 moment later, and are going back to
 the city"
 l looked up The steamer had swung
 across a wide stretch of the bay and
 had turned hcmeward, Boston and the
 dome of the state House were before
 us
 There came to my mind at once, the picture of another State House that at
 Montgomery. Ala, standing like that of
 Boston, on a hill from which it over
 looks a beautiful city. Into the stone
 floor of the great portco is set a bronze
 star. placed there by the Daughters of
 the Conrederacy to mark the spot on
 which Jefferson Davis stood to take the
 oath of office at his inauguration.
 As I thought of these two capitals
 and of the story which had linked the
 two together in my mind, l wondered why this man who had been talking to me should seek to write fiction, when the real fife of which he can tell is SO
 wonderful. Boston Evening Tran script.