You, Dinah; ain't you 'shamed, now, dat you didn' trust to grace?
I heerd you thrashin' th'u' de bushes when he showed his face!
You fool, you think de Debble couldn't beat YOU in a race?

I tell you, Dinah, jes' as shuh as you is standin' dar,
When folks starts prayin', answer-angels drops down th'u' de a'r.
YAS, DINAH, WHAR 'OULD YOU BE NOW, JES' 'CEPTIN' FUR DAT PRA'R?

____
Baltimore, 1875.



Notes: The Power of Prayer; or, The First Steamboat up the Alabama


As the title-page shows, `The Power of Prayer' is the joint production
of Sidney and Clifford Lanier. The latter gentleman informs me
that once he read a newspaper scrap of about ten lines stating that a Negro
on first seeing a steamboat coming down the river was greatly frightened.
Mr. Lanier then wrote out in metrical form the plot of `The Power of Prayer',
substantially as we now have it, and sent it to his brother Sidney,
who polished it up and published it under their joint names.
Mr. Clifford Lanier had not seen the piece mentioned in the next paragraph,
nor had his brother; but on being shown the piece, the former
was of the opinion that his newspaper clipping must have been based
on the work to which I turn, as it had already appeared and the incidents
were so much alike.

In the third chapter of `The Gilded Age' (Hartford, Conn., 1873)