Who was to take upon himself this formidable task? Not the negro, but the mulatto. I have remarked before that two of the characters in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" are portraits, Marie St. Claire and Ophelia; an essential addition must be made to that observation. The mulatto, George Harris, son of a white father and a negro mother, is evidently carefully drawn from nature. And to my mind this Harris, despite the title of the book, is the centre of interest of the whole story; and indeed it is with this character that the conclusion of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is concerned. Uncle Tom, the full-blooded negro, dies; he succumbs to the torture inflicted by his fiendish master; Harris, on the contrary, escapes and triumphs over his tormentor. This contrast is significant, it is a fundamental idea of the book.

The pure negro, childish, with few wants, easily satisfied, trampled upon for thousands of years by alien races, would never have brought the unspeakable sufferings of slavery to the light of day. The defenders of the system had shadow of right on their side when they pointed to the exuberant cheerfulness of the negroes, to their unfailing vitality, to their affection for their owners, to the indisputable fact that many

of them would not accept the proffered freedom, assigning the Biblical reason, "I love my master."

The crying injustice of slavery was first felt and expressed in all its enormity by colored persons of mixed blood, like Harris; the blood of a masterful nature inherited from the father rebelled against a slave's fate, and was not to be pacified either by kind treatment or by the lash.

"My master!" cried George, when, out of sheer malice, his owner degrades him from a mechanic to a field-hand, "and who made him my master? That is what I think of-what right has he to me? I'm a man as much as he is. I'm a better man than he is. I know more about business than he does; I am a better manager than he is; I can read better than he can; I can write a better hand-and I've learned it all myself, and no thanks to him-I've learned it in spite of him; and now what right has he to make a dray-horse of me to take me from things I can do, do better than he can, and put me to work that any horse can do? have been careful, and I have been patient, but it's growing worse and worse; flesh and blood can't bear it any longer.

I

And this George Harris, when he attains.

freedom and a competence, devotes himself to the service of the negro, in spite of the fact that he could pass for a Spaniard or an Italian, so little characteristic of the black are his features.

"I feel somewhat at a loss as to my future course," he writes to a friend. "True, as you have said to me, I might mingle in the circles of the whites in this country, my shade of color is so slight and that of my wife and family scarce perceptible. Well, perhaps on sufferance, I might. But, to tell you the truth, I have no wish to.

"My sympathies are not for my father's race, but for my mother's. To him I was no more than a fine dog or horse; to my poor heart-broken mother I was a child; and though I never saw her, after the cruel sale that separated us, till she died, yet I know she always loved me dearly. I know it by my own heart. When I think of all she suffered, of my own early sufferings, of the distresses and struggles of my heroic wife, of my sister-sold in the New Orleans slavemarket-though I hope to have no unchristian sentiments, yet I may be excused for saying I have no wish to pass for an American, or to identify myself with them.

"It is with the oppressed, enslaved African

race that I cast in my lot; and, if I wished anything, I would wish myself two shades darker rather than one lighter."

How these words written sixty years ago have been verified! If George Harris was then a creature of the imagination, he has to-day found embodiment in the negro leader W. E. Burghard Du Bois. One must read what William Archer has to say of that eminent man,* to see how profoundly Harriet Beecher Stowe had penetrated into the heart of the negro problem.

4. JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS.-The soul of the American negro has been most vividly presented to us by Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1906), the author of "Uncle Remus." Uncle Remus is the old negro who relates stories about the fox and the rabbit to the son of the house.

In Puritan households the negroes represent the natural, or, as theologians term it, the "creature" element in the family; the children always sought refuge from parental chastisement in Juno's or Cæsar's loving and unquestioningly wide-opened arms. It is to this loyal relationship between the slaves and the children of the house that we owe that wonderful children's book, "Uncle Remus."

*Through Afro-America," London, 1911.

"Brer Fox" and "Brer Rabbit" live in a constant feud, and the fox always gets the worst of it. As an illustration let me reproduce the delicious story of the "Tar-Baby":

THE WONDERFUL TAR-BABY STORY "Didn't the fox never catch the rabbit, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy the next evening.

"He come mighty nigh it, honey, sho's you bawn -Brer Fox did. One day atter Brer Rabbit fool 'im wid dat calamus root, Brer Fox went ter wuk en got 'im som tar, en mix it wid some turkentine, en fix up a contrapshun what he call a Tar-Baby, an he tuk dish yer Tar-Baby an he sot 'er in de big road, en den he lay off in de bushes fer ter see what de news waz gwineter be. And he didn't hatter wait long, nudder, kaze bimeby here come Brer Rabbit pacin' down de road-lippity-clippity 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 Tar-Baby, 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'toms seem ter segashuate?' sez Brer Rabbit, sezée.

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