Justin Winsor learned by experience that every printed document was worthy of preservation in the great library of Harvard University and we shall find that no contribution of a Mississippi pen is unworthy of our care. I may call your attention to the fact that much writing of real merit is of a fugitive character and appears only to sink back into the oblivion of musty files of country newspapers.

The first work, then, to which I should assign my student is the compilation of a bibliography of Mississippi literature. So far as I know there is no man who knows how many books have been written by our own authors. A confessedly incomplete list of my own compilation reveals the name of many a work the Mississippian of average intelligence has never so much as heard of. As has already been suggested, I should not confine the list to an enumeration of bound volumes. Every pamphlet a copy of which may be had, or the actual appearing of which is assured, ought to be listed in the Bibliography of Mississippi Literature. At the very outset of our labors, we are met with a problem that meets the student of the literature of every section of the United States. What constitutes a Mississippi book? Are we to proceed on the doctrine that once a Mississippian, always a Mississippian and include in our enumeration the books of every writer that has been in the State? If so, Jas. A. Harrison, a native born Mississippian, a Virginian by adoption, is to adorn our lists. Must we add all books written on Mississippi soil? If so, we are to include many volumes of Maurice Thompson, who spends his winters on the Gulf Coast, and dates his prefaces from Bay St. Louis. Are we to include works written by authors then legally residents of the state, afterwards citizens of other states? If so, Professors Bledsoe and Hutson are Mississippi authors. These questions must be settled before we can have an authoritative bibliography. It has been my custom to enumerate as ours, all books written by an author resident in Mississippi at the time of the writing of the volume.

After having completed the bibliography, the student would naturally turn his attention to the gathering of biographical facts connected with our own writers. Most of those who have made books have acquaintances still living. From them we must get the facts that will enable us to understand what has been written. The man wrote himself into his book, to be sure, and the facts of his life are the very best commentary on the book itself. It is a shame that we have neglected our own writers and that it was left to Professor Baskervill, a Tennessean, to give us the only adequate appreciation of Irwin Russell. But much is left to be done. The student who accumulates the recollections of Russell's friends and preserves them in the archives of the Historical Society will be doing a work worth while doing, a work which will grow in value as the years go by. This field of biographical study is practically untilled, tho we may cite as examples of how the work is to be done—Professor Baskervill's paper just mentioned, Bishop Galloway's study of Henry T. Lewis and Professor Lipscomb's account of Berryhill, the Poet.

After my student had acquired a surer touch in his progress from compiler of book-lists to painter of life-picture, he would already be prepared in literary appreciativeness to see and point out the fine poetry fossilized in the Indian names remaining in our state. It is worth while to make lists of all our Indian geographical names, to discover the meaning of the names so collected and if possible to find out the circumstances that led to these names being given to creek, to river, to hamlet, county, as may be. In some names there is, to be sure, little poetry. The fact that Shubuta means "sour meal" does not serve as a trumpet call to the writing of a sonnet; but where there is a lack of poetry the historical fact of name-origin still remains. Why may not some Mississippi Lanier sing into fame our rivers, as the Georgia Chattahoochee has been immortalized by its own poet?

Connected with Indian names the investigator will find Indian legends. A rich mine is sure to open before a diligent worker. The fact that there are different versions of the same legend makes the material all the more valuable as a field of study. The student of ethnography as well as the student of literature finds the history of the Biloxi Indians full of interest. There is poetry even in the naming of the legend of the singing waves of the Pascagoula. There are many and complicated stories connected with the driving of the Natchez Indians from their ancestral seats. Every year makes the collecting of these legends more and more difficult. The patriotic Mississippi student will see to it that they are not lost, but are gathered into the store house for use in days to come.

Joel Chandler Harris has done a wonderful work for Georgia and the Atlantic Coast in the collection of Lore. It cannot be that Uncle Remus had no kinsmen in Mississippi. Yet no one has sought to preserve these Mississippi versions of negro folk tales. It will be remarkable if these tales have not been influenced by Indian admixtures. No student has investigated the subject to find out whether Mississippi has its distinct group of Brer Rabbit stories and whether the distinctive quality of our group is due to contact with Indian legends. Surely nobody will suggest that the work is not worth while doing. With the disappearance of the Indian and the complete conventionalizing of the negro, the opportunity will have passed away.

Not less valuable to the collector of material for the use of the future maker of Mississippi literature is the full account of the doings of famous Mississippi outlaws. It may not be too soon to investigate the deeds of Murrell and his gang. If the story of his exploits is to become literary property it must be learned before all his contemporaries have passed off the stage of life. It is not too much to expect that the William Gilmore Simms which Mississippi will some day produce may find in the doings of Murrell material for a story that may compare with some of the wildest exploits described by the South Carolina writer. May he who is to portray the early life of our State be not too slow in the coming.

Who knows but that the Mississippi literary man whom we confidently expect and to whom we await to do honor—who knows but that he may belong to the school of Cable and of Murfree and may therefore wish to write in dialect. If the student have some philological training he may wisely prepare for the writer's coming by collection of word lists—of words heard in Mississippi but words that have no literary standing—words which are for the most part confined to the use of the illiterate. Dr. Shands has already collected a list along this line in his dissertation entitled Some Peculiarities of Speech in Mississippi. I am sure he is mistaken in thinking that any of his words are peculiar to Mississippi, but nevertheless his list is valuable as enumerating expressions that are to be heard in our state—words which he who tries to reproduce the speech of Mississippi illiterates may not be afraid to use.

The student of our literature may wisely include in the range of his studies all references to Mississippi to be found in the literature of other sections. Not only such references as those but all accounts of Mississippi in books of travel have a rightful place in the collections of him who would gather together the raw material from which literature may some day be woven.

To the writer of reminiscences the literary student looks with hopeful eye. From such an one may be had biographical data, personal traits, literary anecdotes—in fact all the ana which the literary student of this day delights in. The humble collector of this