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viiiINTRODUCTION.of the Hon. Pompey Smash and his literary descendants,and different also from the intolerable misrepresentationsof the minstrel stage, but it is at least phoneticallygenuine. Nevertheless, if the language ofUncle Remus fails to give vivid hints of the reallypoetic imagination of the if itnegro fails to ; embodythe quaint and homely humor which was his mostprominent characteristic if it does not;suggest a certainpicturesque sensitiveness a curious exaltation ofmind and temperament not to be defined by wordsthen I have reproduced the form of the dialect merely,and not the essence, and my attempt may be accounteda failure. At any rate, I trust I have been successfulin presenting what must be, at least to a large portionof American readers, a new and by no means unattractivephase of negro character a phase which may beconsidered a curiously sympathetic supplement toMrs.Stowe's wonderful defense of slavery as it existed inthe South. Mrs. Stowe, let me hasten to say, attackedthe possibilities of slavery with all the eloquence ofgenius but the same;genius painted the portraitof theSouthern slave-owner, and defended him.A number of the plantation legends originally appearedin the columns of a daily newspaper The AtlantaConstitutionand in that shape they attracted theattention of various gentlemen who were kind enoughto suggest that they would prove to be valuable contributionsto myth-literature. It is but fair to say that