ethod in my discussion of the
Negro Folk Rhymes. In the foregoing I have endeavored to take the
friendly reader for a walk through this new and strange garden of
Rhymes, and I now extend an invitation to him to come into the Study
Room for a more critical view of them.

When one enters upon the slightest contemplation of Negro Folk Rhyme
classification, and is kind-hearted enough to dignify them with a claim
to kinship to real poetry, the word _Ballad_ rolls out without the
slightest effort, as a term that takes them all in. Yes, this is very
true, but they are of a strange type indeed. They are Nature Ballads,
many of them, in the sense as ordinarily used. In quite another sense,
however, from that in which Nature Ballad is ordinarily used, about all
Folk Rhymes are Nature Ballads.

I do not have reference to the thought content, but have reference to
what I term Nature Ballads in form. Permit me to explain by analogy just
what I would convey by the term Nature Ballad in form.

All Nature is one. Though we arbitrarily divide Nature's objects for
study, they are indissolubly bound together and every part carries in
some part of its constitution some well defined marks which characterize
the other parts with which it has no immediate connection. To
illustrate: the absolutely pure sapphire, pure aluminic oxide,
crystallized, is commonly colorless, but we know that Nature's most
beautiful sapphires are not colorless, but are blue, and of other
beautiful tints. These color tints are due to minutest traces of other
substances, not at all of general common sapphire composition. We call
them all sapphires, however, regardless of their little impurities which
are present to enhance their charm and beauty. Likewise, all animal life
begins with one cell, and though the one cell in one case develops into
a vertebrate, and in another case into an invertebrate the cells persist
and so all animal life has cellular structure in common. Yet, each
animal branch has predominant traits that distinguish it from all other
branches. This same thing is true of plants.

Nature's method, then, of making things seems to be to put in a large
enough amount of one thing to brand the article, and then to mix in, in
small amounts, enough of other things to lend charm and beauty without
taking the article out of its general class.

This is that which goes to make Negro Folk Rhymes Nature Ballads in
form. They are ballads, but all in the midst of