southwestern literature that bring in prickly pear. No active-
minded person who reads any one of these three samples will
ever again look at prickly pear in the same light that he
looked at it before he read. Yet prickly pear is just one of
hundreds of manifestations of life in the Southwest that
writers have commented on, told stories about, dignified
with significance.

Cotton no longer has the economic importance to Texas
that it once had. Still, it is mighty important. In the minds
of millions of farm people of the South, cotton and the boll
weevil are associated. The boll weevil was once a curse; then
it came to be somewhat regarded as a disguised blessing--in
limiting production.
De first time I seen de boll weevil,
He was a-settin' on de square.
Next time I seen him, he had all his family dere--
Jest a-lookin' foh a home, jest a-lookin' foh a home.

A man dependent on cotton for a living and having that
living threatened by the boll weevil will not be much interested
in ballads, but for the generality of people this boll
weevil ballad--the entirety of which is a kind of life history
of the insect--is, while delightful in itself, a veritable story-
book on the weevil. Without the ballad, the weevil's effect
on economic history would be unchanged; but as respects
mind and imagination, the ballad gives the weevil all sorts
of significances. The ballad is a part of the literature of
the Southwest.