landscape, atmosphere, simplicity, circumstance--all
surroundings and conditions--VERITABLE--everything
rural and dialectic, no less than the simple,
primitive, common, wholesome-hearted men and women
who so naturally live and have their blessed being
in his stories, just as in the life itself. This is the
manifest work of the true dialect writer and
expounder. In every detail, the most minute, such
work reveals the master-hand and heart of the
humanitarian as well as artist--the two are indissolubly
fused--and the result of such just treatment
of whatever lowly themes or characters we can but
love and loyally approve with all our human hearts. Such masters
necessarily are rare, and such ripe
perfecting as is here attained may be in part the
mellowing result of age and long observation,
though it can be based upon the wisest, purest
spirit of the man as well as artist.

With no less approval should the work of Joel
Chandler Harris be regarded: His touch alike is
ever reverential. He has gathered up the bruised
and broken voices and the legends of the slave,
and from his child-heart he has affectionately
yielded them to us in all their eery beauty and
wild loveliness. Through them we are made to
glorify the helpless and the weak and to revel in
their victories. But, better, we are taught that even
in barbaric breasts there dwells inherently the sense
of right above wrong-equity above law-and the