From a photograph taken when Mr. Page was serving as Ambassador at

Rome.

fix up a contrapshun w'at he call a Tar-Baby, en he tuck dish yer TarBaby en he sot 'er in de big road, en den he lay off in de bushes fer ter see w'at de news wuz gwineter be. En he didn't hatter wait long, nudder, kaze bimeby here come Brer Rabbit pacin' down de road-lippityclippity, clippity-lippity-dez ez sassy ez a jay-bird. Brer Fox, he lay low. Brer Rabbit come prancin' 'long twel he spy de Tar-Baby, en den he fotch up on his behime legs like he wuz 'stonished. De TarBaby, she sot dar, she did, en Brer Fox, he lay low.

"Mawnin'!' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee 'nice wedder dis mawnin','

sezee.

"Tar-Baby ain't sayin' nuthin', en Brer Fox, he lay low.

"How duz yo' sym'tums seem ter segashuate?' sez Brer Rabbit,

sezee.

"Brer Fox, he wink his eye slow, en lay low, en de Tar-Baby, she ain't sayin' nuthin'."

This book was followed by Nights with Uncle Remus (1883), another fine batch of tales based on Afro-American folk-lore and superstitions. No other writer has challenged Harris's supremacy in this field. Various later collections of Uncle Remus stories contributed more entertaining material to the legends and traditions gathered in the earlier volumes. Harris also told some good stories about "moonshiners" and the degenerate "cracker" type of humanity found in the Southern mountain districts. All this spinning of yarns was, for Harris, a mere diversion in the busy life of a journalist, but it established Uncle Remus as one of the few outstanding creations in American literature.

Irwin Russell (1853–1879), a native of Port Gibson, Miss., made similar use of negro dialect and tradition of the extreme South. He wrote in verse, and is recognized as the first poet to treat adequately the rich store of material afforded by the superstitions, the ignorance, and the quaint humor of

the more primitive type of American negro. Thus in "De Fust Banjo" he explains that the favorite musical instrument of the negro was first made on the Ark; obviously Ham was the inventor:

Now Ham, de only nigger whut was runnin' on de packet,
Got lonesome in de barber-shop, an' c'u'dn't stan' de racket;
An' so, fur to amuse he-se'f, he steamed some wood an' bent it,
An' soon he had a banjo made de fust dat wuz invented.

Another poem, "Precepts at Parting," abounds in racy humor in the advice of an old negro to his son who is leaving the plantation to become a waiter on a river steamboat. The poem concludes with this sage counsel:

But nebber git airy: be 'spectful to all de white people you see;
An' nebber go back on de raisin' you's had from your mammy an' me.
It's hard on your mudder, your leabin'-I don't know whatebber she'll

do;

An' shorely your fadder'll miss you-I'll alluz be thinkin' ob you.

Well, now I's done tol' you my say-so. Dar ain't nuffin more as I knows

'Cept dis: don't you nebber come back, sah, widout you has money an clo'es.

I's kep' you as long as I's gwine to, an' now you an' me we is doneAn' calves is too skace in dis country to kill fur a prodigal son.

Russell's most important poem, "Christmas Night in the Quarters" (1878), has been compared to Burns's "Cotter's Saturday Night," or to Whittier's "Snow-Bound," for its fidelity to the humble life it depicts. After a restless, wayward life, Russell died in New Orleans at the early age of twenty-six. His poems were edited with an introduction

by Joel Chandler Harris in 1888, but a better collected edition was brought out in 1917.

22. Henry W. Grady (1851-1889), most notable of the later Southern orators, was born in Athens, Ga. His boyhood was spent during the turmoil of the Civil War, in which his father perished. After receiving his education at the University of Georgia and the University of Virginia, he became a journalist. He soon won a reputation for his sunny, optimistic disposition during the depressing years of reconstruction. In 1879 he purchased an interest in The Atlanta Constitution, and helped to make that notable paper still more influential. His most famous oration, "The New South," was delivered in 1886 before the New England Society of New York City. In it he contrasted the triumphal return of the Northern forces at the end of the Civil War with the sad home-coming of the Southern armies:

Let me picture to you the footsore Confederate soldier, as, buttoning up in his faded gray jacket the parole which was to bear testimony to his children of his fidelity and faith, he turned his face southward from Appomattox in April, 1865. Think of him as ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted, enfeebled by want and wounds, having fought to exhaustion, he surrenders his gun, wrings the hands of his comrades in silence, and lifting his tear-stained and pallid face for the last time to the graves that dot old Virginia hills, pulls his gray cap over his brow and begins the slow and painful journey.

What does he find-let me ask you who went to your homes eager to find, in the welcome you had justly earned, full payment for four years' sacrifice-what does he find when, having followed the battlestained cross against overwhelming odds, dreading death not half so much as surrender, he reaches the home he left so prosperous and beautiful? He finds his house in ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves free, his stock killed, his barns empty, his trade destroyed, his money worthless, his social system, feudal in its magnificence, swept away; his peo