Numerous are the striking pictures which he brings before the eye by one single stroke of the pen. Nor does Father Ryan conjure with the emotions merely to quicken and to stir for the moment. Indeed, he does not seem conscious of that which he has done and so greatly done; he merely sings out his soul in low refrain and leaves his melody lingering in the air. Ryan was patriotic to the core. In the thunderous years of the great Civil War his pen was busy with the ink of patriotic fire, but the aftermath of the war was more aptly suited to his nature. When in her night of sorrow, the South was a land of mounded graves, within which slept a generation of young heroes, while blackened chimneys stood sentinel over them, and while the monuments of the South were only heaps of charred ruins, and her once fair fields were littered with wreck and disaster, these appealed to our lyrist with unwonted force. The spirit of his Hibernian blood was invincible, and when embodied in a stream of poetic fire it illuminated scenes which else were dreary and desolate. From out the environment of darkness and ruin, his spirit sought the solace which the future must bring in recognition of principle, and thus he sang. Thousands who differed with Father Ryan religiously, honored him as a gifted singer. He has but scant recognition in the literary history of the country, but this is to be expected. He was largely a poet of locality, both geographically and religiously, and wrote not so much for others as for his own pastime, but Alabama owes him much as her greatest poet. Because of the genuine merit inhering in his verse, and because of the unquestioned worth attaching to his productions, he is easily the file leader of the literary spirits of Alabama. JAMES R. POWELL The presentation of the name of Colonel Powell suggests a turning point in the history of the state. A new era had dawned of which Colonel Powell was an exponent. The long agitation with which the country was rocked for decades, had culminated in bloody conflict which was waged to exhaustion. The turbulence of rehabilitation represented in the struggles of reconstruction had followed, and now the eyes of the people were once more turned to the ways of peace and re-established prosperity. Resources practically immeasurable were untouched in the soils and mountains of a great state, and public thought began to peer into the future with a longing for tranquil prosperity. A class of men represented by the subject of this sketch was in demand, and, as is always true, when the demand exists for men they are to be found. Thus appeared this pioneer at the threshold of a new era.