With Trotwood
Lo, a faint blush runs trembling alongThrough the air,And the soul of the thrush bursts full into songEverywhere.There’s a throbbing and pulsing—the birth of a bloom—Uplifting of purpose—out-shutting of gloom—A radiancy rising of song and perfume—And of prayer.O listlessness sweet—O yearnings that spreadAll about—(As memories that meet in the eyes of the deadLong shut out—)There’s an infinite longing, a gleam and a glowOf sapphire above and emerald below,A bursting of buds, a melting of snow—And of doubt.—John Trotwood Moore.
Lo, a faint blush runs trembling alongThrough the air,And the soul of the thrush bursts full into songEverywhere.There’s a throbbing and pulsing—the birth of a bloom—Uplifting of purpose—out-shutting of gloom—A radiancy rising of song and perfume—And of prayer.O listlessness sweet—O yearnings that spreadAll about—(As memories that meet in the eyes of the deadLong shut out—)There’s an infinite longing, a gleam and a glowOf sapphire above and emerald below,A bursting of buds, a melting of snow—And of doubt.—John Trotwood Moore.
Lo, a faint blush runs trembling alongThrough the air,And the soul of the thrush bursts full into songEverywhere.There’s a throbbing and pulsing—the birth of a bloom—Uplifting of purpose—out-shutting of gloom—A radiancy rising of song and perfume—And of prayer.O listlessness sweet—O yearnings that spreadAll about—(As memories that meet in the eyes of the deadLong shut out—)There’s an infinite longing, a gleam and a glowOf sapphire above and emerald below,A bursting of buds, a melting of snow—And of doubt.
Lo, a faint blush runs trembling along
Through the air,
And the soul of the thrush bursts full into song
Everywhere.
There’s a throbbing and pulsing—the birth of a bloom—
Uplifting of purpose—out-shutting of gloom—
A radiancy rising of song and perfume—
And of prayer.
O listlessness sweet—O yearnings that spread
All about—
(As memories that meet in the eyes of the dead
Long shut out—)
There’s an infinite longing, a gleam and a glow
Of sapphire above and emerald below,
A bursting of buds, a melting of snow—
And of doubt.
—John Trotwood Moore.
—John Trotwood Moore.
Trotwood’s Department this month will discuss the old-time negro, chiefly, all brought about by a correspondent who writes asking that he discuss it.
The old-time darky is sui generis, and I sometimes fear his race is almost extinct. The modern darky is no more like his ancestors, so far as individuality is concerned, than the Greek of to-day resembles those who fought around the walls of Troy. In other words, the modern Negro has “caught on,” and there is now little difference between him, save in the eternal negro that is in him, and any other class that he happens to run with. The Negro of to-day may be divided into two great classes; he is either a “nigger” or a “coon,” a vagabond, a shiftless, worthless fellow, who lives to-day and lets to-morrow take care of itself; or else he is a school teacher, a preacher, a fairly good mechanic, a good farm hand and a peaceable, inoffensive citizen who will bear uncomplainingly injustices under which a white race would rush to arms. These two classes make up the Negro race, and between them they have managed to eliminate the old-time darky we used to know and love. Out of a thousand darkies of the present day, perhaps one old-time darky may be found; but even he may not be found fit for character study. My observation is that it is extremely rare to find one who gives us any idea upon which to build a story or a poem.
The fact is, darky stories are always nine-tenths white and one-tenth Negro. They are nine-tenths art, as most good stories are, and one-tenth nature; but all so nicely blended that the art—as all real art is—is concealed in the colors of the natural. And yet these stories are true to nature—in fact so natural that we fail to see where the natural ceases and the art begins. The darky who told about “Marse Chan” was the same who told of “Unk Eden’ro and Meh Lady.” They are all a clever white man who knows the darky as a mariner knows the sea, imitating the darky and making for him a story. Joel Chandler Harris was wiser in making one darky—Uncle Remus—tell all of his, and they therefore sound more natural. He was also wise in selecting the nursery yarns of “Brer Rabbit” and “Brer Fox,” for in telling them the darky is at his best. On the whole, I expect that Harris is the greater interpreter of the two, but this need not necessarily follow, because the Virginia and the Georgia darkydiffer very much in dialect just as the Tennessee darky differs from either of the others. Especially is this true of the Middle Tennessee darky who happened to belong to the wealthier class of white people. For every Negro is a born imitator.
In writing Negro dialect, then, these facts must be borne in mind, for, as I said, there are provincialisms in the Negro language, as in the white. The cracker dialect of Georgia differs from the mountain dialect of Tennessee, and so the darky language in Georgia differs much from that in Tennessee.
But at last Negro dialect devolves itself not so much in spelling—in dialect—as in mannerism. This is the fatal mistake which many writers make who have not been raised among Negroes and who seem to think that bad spelling and certain other forms of spelling make Negro dialect. No one should attempt a Negro story who is not thoroughly familiar with his ground, and then not unless he can tell a good story anyway. In other words, he must be an artist in that line, he must have a calling for story-telling, he must be able to create a great deal out of very little. For in Negro stories, as in all others, one fact, one glimpse is often sufficient for a whole story, as often one remark, aye, one word, shows us more plainly a person’s character than if we had spent years in studying him.
In Negro dialect, then, it is mannerism and not spelling that counts, for the fraud is quickly detected if the article be not genuine. The present darkies of Puck, Judge and other comic papers, and often even the stories in magazines, bear no more resemblance to the real article than dried apples do to the real fruit.
I know of nothing that misses the mark further, unless it be these same comic papers’ drawings of the Negro. These really represent nothing, and the “Mister Johnsings” darky and the darky that ends everything in a broad “ah” may be the product of Northern tenement houses, but his kinfolks down here would not know him if they met him in the road.
But as far as bad spelling is concerned, all dialect writers use more of it than is necessary. As a matter of fact, the Middle Tennessee darky, or he of the Black Belt of Alabama, who has been raised by educated white people, or been thrown much in their society, speaks much more correctly than the uneducated whites. For the Negro is nothing, as I said, if not an imitator; and of all people he loves to imitate the better class of whites. He has, therefore, caught fairly well their pronunciation of all common words, their tone and inflection. The real fun occurs in the use of his words and the incongruous relations he places them in. But the poor white—the ignorant, uneducated white—is not an imitator, but a creator, and some of the creations are enough to make us want to call out the National Guard to save the king’s English. For instance: “I taken a walk,” “I taken a drink,” “I taken my corn to mill.” This invariable use of the past participle for the past tense by the unlettered white is never used by the darky. He will say: “I tuck a drink,” “I tuck a walk,” which is much nearer right than the first named. “No, thank you, I wouldn’t choose any,” is the ignorant white’s way of declining a dish at a meal. He loves the subjunctive mood better than the indicative, as his invariable “Might you pass me them molasses?” shows. The darky will never make such mistakes as these. He is an imitator, pure and simple, and he never imitates that kind of a white man.
The truth is, there is and always has been, a strong antipathy—nay, positive aversion—between the poor white and the darky. Any trouble between the two races in the South is always between these two classes. The old-time Southerners of the better class, who owned the darky, or whose fathers owned him, are his best friends and staunchest supporters. But for them I sometimes think the poor white, with his ignorant, prejudiced ways and his natural hatred of the Negro would drive the darky out of the country. As it is, the better classes are for him, because they know him and have been raised with him and know him to be faithful and true and admirably adapted as a laborer to the country. The so-calledNegro problem in the South exists more in the minds of writers of the Thomas Dixon order and in newspapers than in the land itself. And what there is of it will be solved forever and effectually the day the great tide of immigration is turned southward.
And not any good can come to the South in the yellow novels which Thomas Dixon is writing. That they are not literature goes without argument; but a novel may not be literature and yet may sell, just as oleomargarine may be colored deep saffron and passed for butter. As literature, then, they will deceive no one except, perhaps, the young who read them and know no better. And this is to be regretted, because there is danger always of the young growing up with false ideas of literature as well as of life, and they may imitate him. There are Dixons in every age of literature. They run from Smollett to the House of Mirth. They take advantage of the sores under the collar of the Galled Jade of Things to put money in their purse. They die and their stuff dies with them. They live as long as they do because the world has many people who would rather look at a sore than a star.
To the older people of the South, who really knew what the Ku Klux was before he fell under the magnifying glass of national politics and became the distorted Behemoth upon which to make political capital, the lime-lighted melodramas of Mr. Dixon bring only smiles. The thing originated in the fun-loving plethora of the surcharged idleness of a summer afternoon among a healthy lot of grown-up boys out for a lark and to frighten newly-freed Negroes. Silence and a mystery appals any Negro. It was a mystery and it rode in sheeted silence. It proved more effective than a shotgun to send prowling Negroes to bed. It meant “ghostes” and if a Negro has any religion in his bones it is the religion of ghostes. It was so effective that it grew and was used as an admirable and effective means of a superior race under the bayonet of their conquerors, to maintain the racial integrity against the flood of freed and elevated slaves. It owes its magnified proportions entirely to the red paint of politics. Then, as with lynchings now, the busy and better people of the South gave it neither their salvos nor their sanction. They were too intent upon planting cotton, developing their great mines and rebuilding their country. It was a half-mystic, half-lawless, much-talked-of lodge of half-necessary lawlessness, whose stock in trade was blood-and-thunder mystery and whose purchaser was ignorant, black Superstition.
It was one of the thousand and one means a superior intelligence will always find to control inferior ignorance without butchering him in blocks or pens.
But in its rollicking and rankest days it was never as bad nor had it ever as strong a hold as lynching and homicide have to-day in all sections of the Republic. And it never saw the day when it was half as cruel or killed and flogged together in a month as many black Negroes as Southern cotton mills kill of the white poor children of the South in a day. Compared to the voiceless, swift-moving Juggernaut of the child-killing cotton mill, Ku Klux was the painted, grinning clown of a country show throwing rotten apples at a coon’s head stuck through a sheet!
And as to child-labor—hear this metaphor:
Deep in the hills lies the little stream which is the beginning of the river.
It is concealed in the ground that it may be protected, for so small is its beginning that a too-rough footstep might destroy it, a ruthless track might change it from the destiny of its way to the sea.
Growing, it creeps forth, but under leaf and mold, under the hanging vines and protecting shrubs and only when it is strong enough to resist all efforts to change its course does it flow out into the open and run the race of its life.
How careful is nature to protect all things which are young.
“Youth is not for work,” she says, and she writes it from the stars of the daisy field to the stars of heaven.
There is no flower which does not shelterits unblossomed buds, if necessary, even with thorns. The wild doe hides her fawn in the bush; the king of beasts hides his in the desert caverns.
Only man has decreed in his selfishness that his children must lose their childhood to the greed of gold.
As for the negro himself, here are some plain, never-lying, physiological, bred-in-the-bone truths about him which the sooner the world recognizes, the easier will the problem of his being be. The Negro is first and always an imitator. He cannot originate. He cannot go upward, save as he copies from the whites, and if that prop be removed, he will quickly go back into barbarism. There is something wanting in the Negro character—in the very fibre of his being—that says as plainly as God can say it of a race: “Thus far shalt thou go and no further.” And left to himself for centuries on the most fertile continent of the globe, he has remained to-day where he was at creation’s dawn. Egypt, Assyria, Greece, Rome, the Saxon—all these civilizations have been added to the world, and still the Negro remains as God made him.
There are some people who think they can improve on the Almighty’s plan. The Maker of All did not intend that the Negro should be a white man in a black skin, as some who are solving the Negro problem would think. If He had, He would have made him like the white man and given him that indefinable, inexplicable quality that makes the white man a doer of deeds, a fighter, an advancer, a dreamer, a conqueror. The Negro is none of these. He is merely a good natured, inferior man, a non-combative race, made for some purpose of labor, to be directed always by a superior mind, and in his highest development an imitator.
There has been so much said on the Negro problem lately that I have inadvertently, as it were, thrown out this. It is good for one to be set straight now and then, on first principles. It is easy for man to get all wrong if he starts out on a wrong hypothesis.
In a letter from a correspondent in Medicine Lodge, Kans., the other day, appears a sentence we have been looking for all our lives. “Facts, ideals and a thrill,” he says, “is a terse definition of every great story,” and he is kind enough to say that Trotwood’s fills the definition. “Facts, ideals and a thrill”—I should love to know just who originated that boiled-down recipe for real literature. If I might advise all of my writers (and I am called on daily by letters to help advise many of them), I would say adopt that motto and go write your story. As for us hereafter, we will nail it to our masthead and try to build up to it.
Another well-wisher suggests that we change the words on the title page from Farm, Horse and Home to The Southland—her land and her life. That is not bad, either. We publish this to let you know that we appreciate all such suggestions. We feel that you would not do it if you did not like us. And that is what we are here for—to get you to like us.
And here let us say that the next issue of Trotwood’s will inaugurate a long-cherished idea of its editor. Under the heading of “Trotwood’s Travels through the South,” in a special advertising departure we will visit various sections of our great Southland and tell what we saw. We wish to show to the world just what we have here in the newly awakened South, with all its natural wealth and its old ideals. Nor will we take this space from the body of Trotwood’s—it will be additional. Our first visit will be to the beautiful valley of the Tennessee, at the growing little city of Florence, Ala., the head of the Mussel Shoals. Last week the President signed a bill permitting a five million dollar company to harness the waste waters of the great shoals, giving power to the towns and cities within a radius of two hundred miles of it. We will show what that means and what chances there are in Florence, with all her resources. For the June number the cantaloupe-raising industry of Lawrenceburg, in Lawrence County, Tenn., has been selected—Lawrence County, where one hundred dollars and more per acre were cleared last year in her newly discovered improvementin the Rocky Ford cantaloupe, and lands are trebling in value. From issue to issue we will take different sections of the South, from Georgia to Texas. And as we go we propose to tell the history and the romance of it too. For what is a land without its romance? A woman without a love affair is more interesting.