The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-02-14
By wiII T. sheehan.

dence.)-ort of fad there sometimes comes good--even a literary fad. The popular approval of that dainty sketch of Maurice Thompson. My Winter Gar den" proceeded not so much from its exquisite merit as from the faddish- ness of the public mind which was grasping after mature studies" 'Na. turs books" real and alleged. The Nature book and the Nature sketch Is running a close race for the favor of the masses with the tiresoms machine made Western story and the inevitable motor car story with all It's brassy. spurious smartness.
 But Maurice Thompson-h:s death seems only the other day,--was here on Mississippi Sound making his brave but unavaiIing fight against certain and insidious death It was the story of that other. a priest in the temple of Literature but higher up, Robert Louis Stevenson, living his life and making his fight in the splendid sun of Samoa and dreaming his dreams in the soft splendor of the tropical moonlight. The waves break upon the shores, the moonlight gilds beach and pillow, the ocacias bloom and the sea gulis sail lazily through the air, but the two, who sang of 1t, all the one m Sam0d, LnS OtncTr Ou A1tS1AoetRPt Sound, have drank in for the last time the beauty of it.
 Thompson's invalid home was at Bay St. Louis. A splendid promise was forbidden of fulfllment when disease set upon his kindly gentle genius. His rank Is high, for much of his work Is done with that thoroughness. with that exquisite finish which marks the man of genius. Alice of Old vincennes. G- ,~y. x4fn aF ana If will he read when other popular books of its time are dusty unused and forgotten.
 The Gulf Coast Is under obligations peculiar obligations, to the thorough artist, who knew nature and who read the writing in the grass. He gave q voice, not the first, but the latest to the Gulf Coast beauty, that indescrioaois fascination, with its whispered sug
 Restion of languorous Luxury and dreamy delight. To be sure he wrote of Bay st. Louis, and that is Mississippi. while Coden and hereabouts is Ala bama. But the difference Is only geo. graphical. There Is none other.
 This fascination of the sea--tbe trop- ic sea, with the glamour of it's sunlight the seduction of its waving breezes seizes each and every man, no matter how true a landsman he may be, lands man by heredity and environment. II is described--this fascination--or al | least suggested when Thompson writes A breezy headland curving paralle with the line of a fair horizon; some cat boats and Iuggers leaning agains the sky; a smell of ocacia whiskee along in broken puffs; q wanderint
 sound of uncertain quantity passint | between the white capped sea ana tn' | dusky pine woods afar: roses tossed | about on emerald sprays; great sei | birds swinging aioft--and in my win ter garden loafing under a youpon tree
 And now I loll drowsily by the Gui side. making notes of some gray peii
 cans striking mullet in the tepid sur
 waves five rods from the beach. Be
 side wall of shell concrete, crumbhnt
 and vine-matted, great rusty oranse' ! still hang on the trees. In the youpoi | overhead are masses of scarlet berries l temutinsly fresh and luscious In ap uearanee, but bitter as disappointment can be-"
 .;soiourning in such a region, one ha a sense of vague records upon recoro stamped in the soil. making it a soF | of poleinpest. where the old-time span tard, the daring Frenchman, the DUG
 cancer, the early colonist and the Ioroi? l mid-century planter have each traced his aspirations. and finally his charao teristic sign manual to attest his goo' faith or reckless defiance"
 l A pity it is that all the daintiness O | the sketch cannot be reproducedS for ! is quite as dainty as any bunch of pan | sies he ever gathered from his winter | garden. A bit is taken from 1t nere ah' there to give those who may never hav'
 felt it just what this call or the tropi | sea means, with its fringe of pines anS | flowers. ~ 1 Before the spaniard the Indian heard and answered it. The Spaniard cam'
 in its response and the memory or nj | stay and ownership Is written altke or | inc earthen and the western shores o | Mobile Bay IbePville, BienviIle, thell | predecessors and their successors neie | it to the French standard of the Louis ville. Bayou la Batre IS memory o their stay and no less so Is Coden, ant | Golden comes down as a souventor ol the French for 1t is a modern rendition of the name they applied to the serpen' tine bayou, which they called Coque d' l Inde. because of the hoeks Of Wlld tur' keys they found hereabouts.
 Spanish land grants, Spanish names
 and the queer, unique creatures whe
 are native and characteristic or th'
 older days brings back the time wheL Portersville Bay, the bayous and thF
 pine lands belonged to Spaln' even a' Cuba did the other day.
 The Indian was perhaps the greates' lover of nature that the world has ever known. They loved to gather here
 The spot was well beloved by them From further north in Alabama they convened here in spring and summer The waters about here, even as they are now, are the richest waters In the world in oysters. The richest oyster reef in the world swings around this bend in the coast of Mobile County. An enormous pile of oyster shells Is the visible evidence of the Indians love or this portion of the coast or 1ulr oL Mexico. The remains of it now are acres and acres in extent Notwith- standing that man with schooners and