I imagine that most of us, at one time or another, expect to set the world on fire. So we start what we consider a nice little blaze and stand back to see it spread. For we think the world is as dry as a stack of hay in a drought—only needing our little of flame to start it going. We find the world more like a soggy swamp. It does not flare up—our little blaze strikes the wet spots, and not having heat enough to dry out the water it comes to an end. who have been among the tribes of Africa say that the most wonderful thing to the average savage is the simple act of striking a match. These men and their ancestors have for centuries obtained fire only after long and patient rubbing of two sticks together. Often many hours of this were needed before they could obtain even a glow at the end of a stick, and then nurse it into flame. Here at one scratch this “magic stick” produced the effect of hours of hard ! One savage stole a box of matches and undertook to “show off” before his friends. He could start the little flame of the match well enough, but he tried to make a fire out of big logs or damp sticks, direct from the match. Of course, the little match flame could only spread to things of its own size. You cannot jump flame from a to a giant log unless the latter is full of oil or .  
Two things have brought that to mind recently. My young friend, Henry Barkman, came the other day with an which he was to deliver before some political society. When a man is well satisfied with his own literary production, he goes about shedding the evidence of his . When you come to be as old as I am, you will recognize the signs. I knew Henry felt that he had produced a world-beater—one of those great bursts of mental flame which every now and then set the world on fire. Yet no honest person, except perhaps his mother or sister or sweetheart, would imagine that society would stumble or even pause for an instant at its delivery. Henry would deliver it with a loud voice and many gestures, and then wait for the world to blaze up. When there was no blaze he would feel that he had been casting pearls before swine, when in truth he had thrown his match into a soggy pile of large sticks, where it for a moment and then out. Youth cannot understand how long years of are required to split and splinter those big sticks and dry them out with the fire of faith before the match can start the blaze, and then in after years the man who throws in the match gets the credit which belongs to the patient workers, who have been silently splitting and drying the wood. I tried to tell Henry that when Lincoln delivered his speech at Gettysburg few people realized that it was to become a classic. A new generation with the power to look back through the of the years was needed to give it a full place in the American mind. Henry could not see it. When did youth ever know the back-looking vision of age? It is a wise thing that youth must ever look ahead.
 
I had all these things in mind as we came to the last lap of our journey to Starkville, Miss. That pleasant town lies west of the Mobile & Ohio Railroad—on a side road of its own. When I went there 37 years ago the track wound on through what seemed like a , with here and there a negro cabin. Now it seemed like one continuous stretch of farm villages or blue grass pastures. In former years the streets of Starkville were just ribbons of mud or dust, as the seasons . I knew a man who came to town in November and bought an empty . He could not haul it home until the following April, so deep was the mud. Now the main street was as smooth and solid as Broadway, and firm stone roads branched out into the country in all directions. The streets were thickly lined with cars. Here, as in Kentucky, I saw men riding on genuine saddle horses, which quickly along like a rocking-chair on four legs. It seemed like a moving-picture show taken from some old fairy tale, and it is no wonder that the years fell away and I went back in memory to those old days.
 
It was in 1883 that I was graduated at an agricultural college and went down to “reform and uplift the South.” Since then I have heard the or spirit of such a wildcat enterprise variously called “cheek,” “gall,” “nerve,” “assurance” or “foolishness,” with various strong adjectives pinned to the latter! Yet, looking back upon it now, I feel that while perhaps all these terms were appropriate, they do not cover the essential thing. I had a smattering of such science as could be taught in those days. I had a great faith in the power of education to lift men up and set them free. A few years before I had given up the thought of ever being anything except an ordinary workman, because I had had no training which fitted me to do anything well. It seemed to me that the agricultural college had given me almost the help which came to the man with the darkened mind. Who could blame youth for feeling that the great joy and power of education could actually remove mountains of depression and trouble? I had been told that the chief assets of Mississippi were “soil, climate, character and the determination of a proud and well-bred race to train their hands to !” That was surely in line with my stock of material assets, and so I came to set the South on fire with ambition and vision.
 
Well do I remember the day I walked into the little brick building where The Southern Live Stock Journal was printed. Colonel O’Brien and Hill looked me over. Colonel O’Brien was tall and straight—every inch a soldier. Sergeant Hill was short and fat. You would not think it, but he was with Forrest when they captured Fort Pillow. Sergeant Hill’s remark was:
 
“Another one of them literary cranks, I’ll bet.”
 
Colonel O’Brien was more practical.
 
“Come out and feed the press and then fold these papers.”
 
And almost before I knew it my job of uplifting the South was on. I suppose you might call me a “useful citizen.” I fed the press, set type, swept the office, did the mailing, acted as fighting editor, tried to sing in the church , taught “elocution,” pitched baseball on the town nine and filled columns of the paper with soul-stirring editorials. At least, they stirred me if they had no effect upon any other reader. Those were the days when living was a joy. Some days there would be a little run of and perhaps a big advertisement would come. Now and then some ball club would come to town and our boys would send them home in defeat and disgrace. These occasions were bright spots on the calendar, but they were as nothing in the bright of youth to the great editorials I ground out at that and shaky table in the corner. Among other things I broke a labor strike in that town, alone and unassisted. It was the talk of the town, but to me it seemed a very poor thing............