One-Crop Lives.
Alabama used to be a one-crop State. It grew nothing but cotton. It was sending west for meat and paying from twelve to thirty cents a pound when it could raise it at home for from two to five cents a pound. It was sending west also for hay at fifteen to twenty-six dollars a ton, hay which it might raise for one dollar and a half a ton. Alabama had the world's record for corn, two hundred thirty-two and one-half bushels an acre, and yet it was not raising corn on any large scale.
What Alabama has learned many an individual needs to discover. It pays to diversify our mental and spiritual crops, to read different kinds of books, to study various matters, to attempt different sorts of work. One-crop lives are likely to be uninteresting, lives at the mercy of circumstances, lives comparatively unproductive. "One thing I do," said Paul; but he accomplished his great single aim by means of one of the most varied and versatile lives ever lived. Let us all be Pauline Christians.