will remain impersonal. And not the most dramatic drawing of a poilu by Daumier himself could satisfy the present popular craving to hear the story of war which the greatest of modern wars has awakened.

The public will turn to the agencies which supply the pictorial drama. War pictures will again become a profitable and frequent subject particularly at the Royal Academy and the French salons. Because for a generation the majority of every population will be the wives or widows, the mothers or offspring of soldiers, these war pictures will have a more genuine popularity and a wider public than Detaille's or Messonier's. More painters will be impelled to paint them, because more painters will return from this war than from any other with no capital save their medals and their memories, and faced with the necessity of retrieving interrupted careers at the first opportunity. Their war pictures by reviving immediate memories of heroism and death, will move their spectators, perhaps profoundly, and create the illusion of being great works of art. They will, inevitably, receive

medals, be commissioned by the state, presented to the state. If America cannot produce them, we will import them and present them to our museums, where it will probably be as difficult to dislodge them as their present counterparts, "The Defense of Champigny" or "Washington Crossing the Delaware".

Ultimately they will descend to the lumber-room. And if the generation which sees them disappear from its galleries still reads "Under Fire" or "Men in War", it will find the type of its heroes in the print-room-under "School of Daumier-see Steinlen and Forain". Possibly by then the fulllength sisters of the goddesses on our postage stamps and silver dollars, holding in one hand the Cathedral of Rheims instead of the scales of Justice or a cornucopia, will also have disappeared from the walls of state capitols and public libraries, replaced by the more decorative patterns of searchlights and winging planes. And these will tell the ultimate story of this war: that in making war we filled the earth with horror, but filled the heavens with wonder and kept them beautiful.

Once upon a time, just after he had been particularly outraged by some biographical and doting wife, a certain anonymous man came to the conclusion that that would be a highly desirable rule which, on the death of a famous personage, should bar each and all of his immediate relatives from the writing of his biography. A biography, so he considered with Boswell, should, above all, be a true portrait, should give us the shadows as well as the lights; and relatives, so he considered on his own account, and in spite of the example of Lockhart, are entirely too close to their subject to get the proper perspective. They make one incredulous by their praise and suspicious by their silences.

The difficulty with a generalization of this sort is that just when one has it all set up and ready for habitation, along comes a particular instance and brings it crashing to the ground. And so in the present case. The biographer here, Julia Harris, is the daughterin-law of the man whose story she has to tell, and yet she tells that story modestly, discreetly, with fine literary skill, and there is no hint in her work of either of the faults of which complaint has been made. And at the end the reader feels that he knows Joel Chandler Harris, the man, as well as if he had for years been a neighbor of his in West End, and taken many a trip with him behind the mules on the old street-car running between

Excerpts from "The Life and Letters of Joel Chandler Harris", by Julia Collier Harris. Illustrated, with frontispiece in color. $5.00. Printed in advance of publication through the courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Company.

his home and the "Constitution" office.

Of course, it will be no surprise to the innumerable admirers of "Uncle Remus" to learn that his creator was a greatly lovable man; and yet we cannot but reflect that many an author whose work has drawn readers to admire, and perhaps even to love him, was in real life far from being either admirable or lovable. Such, happily, was not the case with Joel Chandler Harris, and a significant note of the present work, a note which tells more than pages of direct laudation, is that throughout the book the biographer speaks of him simply as "father".

As was remarked above, this biography errs in neither of the two ways in which such books commonly err. To begin with, the author deals at once and straightforwardly with a matter which she might easily have glossed over-the facts of her subject's parentage.

"The Harris family was a prominent one in middle Georgia, and had wellknown connections in that part of the State; so it can readily be imagined that consternation overtook the relatives of 'Lady Sensible' when she conceived a fancy for a man inferior in station and education. The common mistake of vociferous opposition was made in this instance; the spark of preference was fanned into the flame of love, and Mary Harris separated herself from her family, left her home in Newton County, and accompanied the man of her choice to Putnam. The details of the days that followed are meager and confused, and Mary Harris's story, from this point until after

the birth of her child and her desertion by its father, partakes of the nature of legend."

and visit their friends in the slave quarters. Old Harbert and Uncle George Terrell were Joel's favorite

family has this to say:

"Uncle Remus's' father was an Irishman, and from him the boy inherited his bright blue eyes and his sense of humor. The young Irishman worked near 'Miss Mary's' home as a day-laborer, and it seems certain that his humble calling and his lack of ambition were the causes of the family's objection. The boy's father knew, of course, of the bitter opposition of 'Miss Mary's' family, and that he would never be received or recognized by them; and old friends say he was not strong enough to stand up under such conditions. At any rate, he left Putnam within a short time of his child's birth and was never again seen there.

"'Miss Mary' was a woman of rare mental qualities. My father used to say she was the smartest woman he ever knew. Her strength of character equaled her strength of intellect, and when she awakened to her mistake in casting in her lot with a man so lacking in courage and loyalty she put aside all romantic notions, took up her burden, and staked all on her boy. She discarded his father's name and gave her family name to Joel, and no one ever heard her mention his father again."

Harris early began his apprenticeship to journalism. While still less than fourteen years of age he became connected as printer's boy with "The Countryman", a newspaper published on a near-by plantation, and it was here, "when the work and play of the day were ended, and the glow of the lightwood knot could be seen in the negro cabins, Joel and the Turner children would steal away from the house

chimney corners he listened to the legends handed down from their African ancestors-the lore of animals and birds so dear to every plantation negro. And sometimes, while the yellow yam baked in the ashes, or the hoecake browned in the shovel, the negroes would croon a camp-meeting hymn or a corn-shucking melody. The boy unconsciously absorbed their fables and their ballads, and the soft elisions of their dialect and the picturesque images of their speech left an indelible imprint upon the plastic tablets of his memory."

Several years later, as an aftermath of the Civil War, "The Countryman" suspended publication, and young Harris was obliged to seek his fortunes elsewhere. And so the story runs on, tracing his journalistic progress from paper to paper and town to town, till in 1876 he joined the staff of the Atlanta "Constitution", where he remained as editorial writer for twentyfour years. There followed several years of comparative leisure, and then in 1906 came the foundation of the "Uncle Remus's Magazine", of which he was the editor till his death, in his sixtieth year, on July 3, 1908.

In character, Harris manifested throughout life two traits, both sufficiently rare in themselves, and yet often found together: he was very modest as to his own worth and achievements, and, like another Georgian who later on made his mark in literature, O. Henry, he was extremely shy. Many amusing stories are told of his diffidence in meeting strangers, of the methods he took to avoid functions and formal gatherings; and he could never be induced to make a speech of

any kind or to read from his own books, even to children. At various times he received liberal offers to go on the platform-with Mark Twain, James Whitcomb Riley, G. W. Cablebut what Twain called his "immortal shyness" always stood in the way, and the following incident is typical:

"Early in 1905, father received a notification from the University of Pennsylvania of the desire of that institution to honor him with a degree; but while he was appreciative of the distinction offered him, he could not bring himself to appear in person and claim it."

Harris's attitude toward his work was equally unusual.

"The great popular success of the legends was a matter of strange surprise to their author. It was 'just an accident', he said, and added: 'All I did was to write out and put into print the stories I had heard all my life'.

"When asked by an interviewer if any particular negro suggested the quaint and philosophic character which he had built up into one of the monuments of modern literature', he replied:

"He was not an invention of my own, but a human syndicate, I might say, of three or four old darkies whom I had known. I just walloped them together into one person and called him 'Uncle Remus'. You must remember that sometimes the negro is a genuine and an original philosopher.'

"On being asked how the legends happened to be put into book form, their author continued:

""The representative of a New York publisher came to see me, and suggested an 'Uncle Remus' book. I was astonished, but he seemed to be in earnest, and so we picked out of the files of the 'Constitution' enough matter for a little volume, and it was printed. To my surprise, it was successful'."

If Harris looked askance at the literary estimate placed upon his work— he always spoke of himself as being merely "a cornfield journalist"-he was equally averse to its scientific implications.

"The book was favorably noticed in every paper of any importance in the country, and scientific publications devoted columns to its value as a contribution to folk-lore.

"The stress laid upon this aspect of the stories always amused father. He once had occasion to write a review of some folk tales of the Southwest, and in this connection he said:

"First let us have the folk-tales told as they were intended to be told, for the sake of amusement-as a part of the art of literary entertainment. Then, if the folklorists find in them anything of value to their pretensions

let it be picked out and preserved, with as little cackling as possible.'

"Certainly "Uncle Remus' was capable of following his own advice, for the quality most conspicuously absent from the tales is pedantry.

"It is but fair to say that ethnological considerations formed no part of the undertaking which has resulted in the publication of this volume,' wrote the author in the introduction to the 'Songs and Sayings'. Nevertheless, he had most carefully investigated the genuineness of all the tales, and in every case had sifted out the variants and had taken pains to retain the version which seemed to him most characteristic, after which he proceeded to give it 'without embellishment and without exaggeration"."

Concerning the "Uncle Remus" Tales, the biographer sets forth much interesting information, and among other things gives us the following characteristic item:

"I have been asked many times if my husband, the eldest son of the family, was 'the little boy' of the stories. He was not; and, strangely enough, father never told these stories to his own or any other children. His rôle was to record, not to recount."

As for the chorus of praise that poured in from all sides on the man who was later to become known as "the most modest author in America", "such appreciations as this and others from his colleagues were, of course, gratifying to father, who, nevertheless, in his almost incredible humility, was skeptical of all praise. But the tributes that pleased him most were those that came from children or from men and women who found their childhood memories revived by these legends of the old plantation".

Despite Harris's diffidence he had in him a vein of practical joking, as this

incident, told by a friend of his youthful days in Savannah, will show:

"Another night, when we were returning from our work, just as we met near the entrance to the house, we saw another boarder approaching from the opposite direction. Harris's quick suggestion was: 'Let's have some fun. Take hold of Berryman's arms.' I took hold of one arm and Harris took hold of the other, and together we 'assisted' our friend upstairs. There was no limit to our noise, but our friend Berryman protested in vain. Harris kept up a succession of loud orders to the supposedly intoxicated boarder: 'Berryman, keep quiet; you will wake up all the boarders!' 'Berryman, put down that umbrella, it's not raining in the house!' So up to the fourth floor continued the disorderly procession, and from all indications there might have been half a dozen persons 'assisting' poor sober Mr. Berryman up the stairs. From the start, the martyr saw that expostulations were vain, so quietly contented himself with accepting the situation until he was released."

These

Throughout the book a great many of Harris's letters are reproducedletters simple, kindly, sane, humorous, like the man who wrote them. range from the love-letters he wrote the young lady who afterward became his wife (which are equally charming and sensible) to those to famous men and women, his admirers. But it is in his correspondence with children, both his own and others, that his nature is most fully revealed, and these particular letters contain a great deal of profound, if gentle, wisdom.

In a letter to one of his sons he says:

"By being as nice and as clever as you know how to be you can always