Entered according to Act of Congress, April 22d, 1891, by Lowry and McCardle, in the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C.

A FEW WORDS PREFATORY.

It is the custom in the preface to a new book-"a custom more honored in the breach than the observance"-to set forth the causes which have induced the publication. The authors

of the present volume have nothing of the sort to offer in extenuation of their rash endeavor. They are without even the poor apology of "the solicitations of numerous friends," and the yearning desire to supply "a long-felt want," to "fill an aching void," so to speak.

It is not proposed to deprecate criticism of any sort, whether reasonable or unreasonable. In the free land of America critics do much abound, and they have the unquestioned right to criticise whatsoever and whomsoever they please.

The preparation of the volume now presented to the people of Mississippi has been a genuine labor of love. Each of the authors has spent the best years of his existence in the State. They have shared with their fellow-citizens the days of their prosperity and their years of poverty. They have rejoiced with them in their gladness, and have mourned with them in their long years of sorrow. Each is bound to the State by the dearest of human ties. Each has his dead reposing in her soil, and the hope of each is that when the last "tattoo" is sounded for them, they, too, may rest in the bosom of Mississippi beside those who have preceded them to the shadowy land of the hereafter.

If the authors know anything about the matter-and they think they do their dominant desire has been to perpetuate the memory of the sturdy pioneers of the State-those rugged, stalwart men of courage, patriotism and virtue, who laid the foundations, broad, deep and strong, of civil liberty, social order, sound morality, and who reared a splendid fabric of civilization in the land. Another desire has been to rescue from oblivion the names and deeds of a few men who have adorned and illustrated the annals of the State. Trusting that they have, in some small measure, succeeded in the ends aimed at, they