is stunted artist-soul
under the most adverse circumstances. He saw the sweet pinks under a
blue sky, or observed the fading violets and the roses that fall, as he
passed to a tryst under the oak trees of a forest, and wrought these
things into his songs of love and tenderness. Friendless and otherwise
without companionship he lived in imagination with the beasts and birds
of the great out-of-doors; he knew personally Mr. Coon, Brother Rabbit,
Mr. 'Possum and their associates of the wild; Judge Buzzard and Sister
Turkey appealed to his fancy as offering material for what he supposed
to be poetic treatment. Wherever he might find anything in his lowly
position which seemed to him truly useful or beautiful, he seized upon
it and wove about it the sweetest song he could sing. The result is not
so much poetry of a high order as a valuable illustration of the
persistence of artist-impulses even in slavery.

In some of these folk-songs, however, may be found certain qualities
which give them dignity and worth. They are, when properly presented,
rhythmical to the point of perfection. I myself have heard many of them
chanted with and without the accompaniment of clapping hands, stamping
feet, and swaying bodies. Unfortunately a large part of their liquid
melody and flexibility of movement is lost through confinement in cold
print; but when they are heard from a distance on quiet summer nights
or clear Southern mornings, even the most fastidious ear is satisfied
with the rhythmic pulse of them. That pathos of the Negro character
which can never be quite adequately caught in words or transcribed in
music is then augmented and intensified by the peculiar quality of the
Negro voice, rich in overtones, quavering, weird, cadenced, throbbing
with the sufferings of a race. Or perhaps that well-developed sense of
humor which has, for more than a century, made ancestral sorrows
bearable finds fuller expression in the lilting turn of a note than in
the flashes of wit which abundantly enliven the pages of this volume.
There is one lyric in particular which, in evident sincerity of feeling,
simple and unaffected grace, and regularity of form, appeals to me as
having intrinsic literary value:

She hug' me, an' she kiss' me,
She wrung my han' an' cried.
She said I wus de sweetes' thing
Dat ever lived or died.

She hug' me an' she kiss' me.
Oh Heaben! De touch o' her han'!
She said I wus de puttiest thing