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son, told him the truth of his parentage, and commanded that he give her one-half of the monthly allowance from his uncle, Judge Driscoll, upon penalty of her exposing his real identity.

In a flash of anger Roxy says: "You call me names, en as good as spit on me when I comes here po' en ornery en 'umble, to praise you for bein' growed up so fine en handsome, en tell you how I used to nuss you en tend you en watch you when you 'uz sick en hadn't no mother but me in de whole worl', en beg you to give de po' ole nigger a dollah for to git her som'n' to eat, en you call me names-names, dad blame you. Yassir, I gives you jes one chance mo', and dat's now, en it las' on'y a half second-yo hear?'

"Didn't I change you off, en give you a good fambly en a good name, en made you a white gen'l'man en rich, wid store clothes onen what did I git for it? You despised me all de time, en was al'ays sayin' mean hard things to me befo' folks, en wouldn't ever let me forgit I's a nigger-en-en-'"

Under the threat of exposure Tom shared his allowance with his mother for a while.

One day Tom was kicked like a dog by an Italian, but instead of striking back, had the Italian fined in the police court for assault. Judge Driscoll was deeply humiliated to find this show of cowardice in his family, and he promptly vindicated the family name by challenging the Italian and wounding him in a duel.

When Roxy heard of this event she looked in her son's face with measureless contempt and said, "'En you refuse' to fight a man dat kicked you, 'stid o' jumpin' at de chance. En you ain't got no mo' feelin' den to come en tell me, dat fetched sich a po' low-down ornery rabbit into de worl'. Pah, it makes me sick. It's de nigger in you, dat's what it is. Thirty-one parts o' you is white, an on'y one part nigger, en dat po' little one part is yo' soul. 'Tain't wuth savin'; tain't wuth totin' out on a shovel en throwin' in de gutter. You has disgraced yo' birth. What would yo' pa think o' you? It's enough to make him turn in his grave.'

...

"Whatever has come o' yo' Essex blood? Dat's what I can't understan'. En it ain't on'y jist Essex blood dat's in you, not by a long sight-'deed it ain't. My great-great-great-gran'father en yo' great-great-great-great-gran' father was Ole Cap'n John Smith, de highest blood dat Ole Virginny ever turned out, en his great-great-gran'mother or somers along back dah, was Pocahontas de Injun queen, en

her husban' was a nigger king outen Africa-en yit here you is, a-slinkin' outen a duel en disgracin' our whole line like a ornery lowdown hound. Yes, it's de nigger in you.'

"She sat down on her candle-box and fell into a reverie. Tom did not disturb her; he sometimes lacked prudence, but it was not in circumstances of this kind. Roxanna's storm gradually went down, but it died hard, and even when it seemed to be quite gone, it would now and then break out in a distant rumble, so to speak, in the form of muttered ejaculations. One of these was, 'Ain't nigger enough in him to show in his finger-nails, en dat takes mighty little-yit dey's enough to paint his soul.'"

Pretty soon Tom was again overwhelmed with gambling debts and in danger of losing his inheritance through the discovery of the fact by his uncle. Systematic burglary in the town had failed to retrieve his losses.

In order to save her son from possible disinheritance, Roxy agreed to allow her son to sell her into slavery, provided he sold her in the up-country. Tom accepted this proposition with alacrity and sold his mother for $600 but, contrary to her explicit injunctions, he sold her down the river.

After suffering everything but death from overwork and ill-treatment on a slave plantation, Roxy, in revenge, assaulted her cruel overseer and fled in disguise to St. Louis. Here she met her son, Tom, who had seen the advertisement of her running away, and who also had seen her master and was in the act of assisting him to recover her.

When Roxy had wrung this confession from Tom she turned to him and, with scornful gaze, exclaimed, “What could you do? You could be Judas to yo' own mother to save yo' wuthless hide. Would anybody b'lieve it? No-a dog couldn't. You is de low-downest orneriest hound dat was ever pup'd into dis worl'-en I's 'sponsible for it' and she spat on him. He made no effort to resent this."

The climax of Tom's career was the assassination of his benefactor, the uncle, to whose property he was heir. Tom was attempting to steal money to pay his gambling debts. The opportunity seemed to be propitious one night when his uncle, who had been examining his chest. of valuables, fell asleep in his chair. As Tom reached for the chest the uncle awakened, the men grappled and in the struggle the uncle was stabbed to death.

No character in fiction was ever painted in more repulsive coloring

than that of this mulatto, Tom. He was a liar, coward, ingrate, hypocrite, and murderer all in one lump.

If, on the one hand, Tom's small part of Negro blood made him the monster that he was, on the other hand, his mother's greater part of Negro blood did not overcome in her the high intelligence and high spirit characteristic of the best type of Caucasian.

Mark Twain was not attempting to expound the laws of heredity but was merely portraying life as it is, including the eccentricities and tragedies of racial intermixture.

Pudd'nhead Wilson is all tragedy, and not the least of its tragic aspects is that the real Tom Driscoll, who was raised as a Negro slave, was so stamped with self-abasement that he could never feel at ease in white people's society and that the mulatto, Roxanna, with her keen intellect, resourcefulness, intensity of feeling, and courage, remained illiterate and always spoke in the worst Negro vernacular.

In Tom Sawyer Abroad there is a fine illustration of Negro superstition in the remarks of "Nigger Jim," when sailing down the Nile River, "Hit's de lan' of Egypt, de lan' of Egypt, an' I's 'lowed to look at it wid my own eyes. An dah's de river dat was turn to blood, an' I's looking at de very same groun' whah de plagues was, an' de lice, an' de frogs, an' de locus', an' de hail, an' whah dey marked de door-pos', an' de angel o' de Lord come by in de darkness o' de night an' sleu de first-born in all de lan' o' Egypt. Ole Jim ain't worthy to see dis day.'

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Trudging through the desert, Tom and Jim became thirsty, and while in search for water, there loomed before them three times the mirage of a very inviting lake. "Dey's been a lake an' somethin's happened, en' de lake's dead, en we's seen its ghos'; we seen it twiste, en dat's proof. De desert's ha'nted, it's ha'nted sho; Oh, Mars Tom, le's git outen it; I'd druther die den have de night ketch us in it again en de ghos' er dat lake come a-mournin' aroun' us en we asleep en doan know de danger we's in. She's dah agin, Mars Tom; she's dah agin; en I knows I's gwine to die; 'case when a body sees a ghos' de third time, dat's what it means.'

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In portraying Negro characters in his novels, Mark Twain had no thought of dealing with the Negro problem. Like a true artist, he pictured the Negroes as they appeared in real life, the good and the bad.

From a study of his writings some inferences might be drawn as to his general estimate of the Negro's intellectual and emotional endowments, but such inferences, however well-drawn, would merelv

show that he was influenced by the prevailing ideas of his time and would not justify the view that he was trying by propaganda either to raise or lower the Negro's rank among the races of mankind.

The one thing which may be confidently said of his attitude toward the Negro is that it was sympathetic. He saw under the black skin the pulsations of a human being, and he revolted against the institution of slavery, and every other form of degradation to which the Negro was subjected.

CHAPTER 38

WRITINGS OF SOUTHERN WHITES

Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus and Other Stories-Thomas Nelson Page, the Interpreter of the Virginia Slave-Dialect Stories of Ambrose Gonzales -Novels of Tom Dixon-James Lane Allen-Other Authors Dealing with the Negro

AMONG the Southern writers who have dealt with the Negro, the

name of Joel Chandler Harris is preeminent. He is the masterful interpreter of the Negro of the hinterland of Georgia, and the Carolinas. The dialect in which his Uncle Remus and other stories are written, is that of the hinterland Negro. The older and more quaint Negro dialect is found along the islands and lowlands of the coast among the Negroes who are descendants of the first slaves imported. In one of Mr. Harris's later publications, Nights with Uncle Remus, he attempts to give certain variants of the Uncle Remus stories in the coastal dialect, but he had no first-hand contact with the coastal people, and was not at home in handling their mode of thought and speech. The animal stories of Harris are transformations of the folk tales of the native African. These stories brought by the Negro slaves to America had to be modified to suit the animal life of the New World. Br'er Rabbit was substituted for the crafty gazelle; the fox or wolf was substituted for the leopard; the bear for the elephant, and so on.

Speaking of Mr. Harris's Uncle Remus, Gonzales says:: "These myths were known and told by Negro nurses to white children over all the Southern States, and in the West Indian Islands as well, but the artistry of Harris lay in the systematic understanding of children prompted by his kindly heart, and the human appeal of the tender relations of the little boy and the old Negro family servant was irresistible, not only to the children, but to those happy grown-ups who loved him.

"It is interesting to know that in the low country of South Carolina, instead of 'Br'er Rabbit' and 'Br'er Fox,' it is invariably 'Buh Rabbit 'en Buh Wolf.' Strange, too, because wolves must have been found in upper Georgia or Carolina for more than a hundred years after they

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