The Birmingham age-herald., 1921-01-16
IA FAIR MISSISSIPPIAN


 No fairer flower in the annals of his tory blooms and sheds it's lustre over all with whom acquaintance is made than the manhood and womanhood of that grand old state of Mississippi.
 From vicksbufg the Richardsons, the waddilIs the Henrys are names to con- iure with; from Aberdeen, the Sykeses, and the Houstons and the McQuistons and the Haughtons spell fame and wealth and from my own home town Columbus, on the banks of the Tombig- hee. the names of Jim Bell" of the long ago (my fathers closest friendDi Harrison Johnston, the Billupses and again the Sykses and the Humphries and the Morgans, the Hardys and stephen D. Lee, the Arnolds, and the Bankses are names that are known from Maine to Mexico-from north to south while at the capital, Jackson, the Greenes. the Millsaps, the Campbells, and the Coopers, the Lowrys and the Mitchells and the Saunders, are among the aristocrats whose names are on every lip.
 Julian Street, whose delightful American Adventures" pictured many southern towns in light which had never been shed upon them before, said of Columbus, that aristocratic and beautiful old town which is the queen of cities in that fair old state of Mis- sissippi:
 Until decade or two ago Columbus had, so far as I can learn, but TOUT streets possessing names-Main street. Market street, College street. and Cat fish alley--all the other streets being known as the street that Mrs. Biliips or Mrs. Sykes or Yrs. Humphries or Mrs. Somebody Else lives on.'"
 How that takes me back to my child hood days, whom used to trudge my little old way to the old Columbus Fe> male institute-lunch basket ana sztchel in hand, in fear and trembling to appear before Miss Street or Hrs. Poindexter, Birmingham's own Mrs. Vic tor Hanson's lovely kinswoman, with grammar, geography and arithmetic to De recited. Shades of the past, what do you suppose my beloved Miss Addie" (Mrs' Poindexter), would say to my gram mar nowadays, with all its deficien- eigs and misgivings|ittle old me with whom she 1abored so tenderly trying to drum into my untutored head the difference between a transi- tive and an intransitive verb, and to whom geography was always imposs.- ble. reminding me of the little story that lovely Mrs. John King Ottley, now of Atlanta, Cassie McCabe, herself one of the most brilliant stars which Co lunbus claimed), often tells.
 Mrs. ottley's little story has to dc with the teacher and the pupil and the question asked as to how many zones there are; the youngster becoming de- cidedly mixed on his grammar exam nations the day before, and with geo. graphy not even in the back of is head, said:
 1.-TWO, teacher, the masculine and the feminine; the masculine is always either temperate or incorporate, and the feminine is always either frisid ci torrid."
 Oh, beautiful golden days of the long ago-when fleeting. vacillatins youth cast it's mante1 upon us-and re- sponsibility and disappointment and sorrow and trouble had not even SC much as brushed the cheek of youth ir butterfly daintiness in passing, and life and love were sweet and ap. pealing.
 It was my beloved home town c1 Columbus which had the honor of in stituting the custom of decorating the soldiers graves perhaps two score cl more of the 1,5oo buried in Friendship cemetery being Federals, the late be- loved Miss Matt Morton, Mrs. J. T Fontaine and Mrs. Green T. Hill start, ing the movement-Decoratio Day or as it is now more properly called Memorial Day, although this honol was disputed later by Columbus, Ga.
 At any rate the incident of the frs