Who can portray the possibilities of a country that has produced the Lees and Jacksons and the brilliant Gordon and the dashing Joe Wheeler, who is as gallant in the blue as he was glorious in the gray, and the impetuous and immortal Bedford Forrest, the Marshal Ney of the Confederacy? Who can portray the possibilities of a country which has produced the stalwart and sinewy men of the rank and file, who followed the stars and bars through the smoke and flame of every desperate battle and stepped proudly into history as the greatest fighters the world has ever known?—a country so richly blessed not only with brave men and beautiful women, but whose blossoming hills and fertile valleys are so generous and kind, and whose mountains are burdened with coal and iron and copper and zinc and lead enough to supply the world for a thousand years; whose virgin forests yet stand awaiting and sighing for the woodsman’s ax, and whose winding rivers flow clear and cool and make music as they go. It is the beautiful land of love and liberty, of sunshine and sentiment, of fruits and flowers, where the grape-vine staggers from tree to tree as if drunk with the wine of its own purple clusters; where peach and plum and blood-red cherries and every kind of berry bend bough and bush and glow like showered drops of rubies and pearls. It is the land of the magnolia and the melon, the paradise of the cotton and the cane. They tell us now that it is the new South, but the same old blood runs in the veins of these old veterans and the same old spirit heaves their bosoms and flashes in their eyes; the same old soldiers who wielded the musket long ago are nursing their grandchildren on their knees and teaching them the same old lessons of honor and truth, and the same old love of liberty. The mocking-bird sings the same old songs in the same old tree, and the brooks laugh and leap down the same old hollows. It is the same old South and we are the same old Southern people: There may be skies as blue, but none bluer; There may be hearts as true, but none truer. [Illustration: STONEWALL JACKSON. ] It is the same old land of the free and the same old home of the brave. It is the same old South resurrected from the dead, with the prints of the nails still in its hands and the scars of the spear still in its side. “I’m glad I am in Dixie, Look away! Look away! And live and die for Dixie, Look away! Look away! Look away down South in Dixie.”