y old craft, giving
up my command of the captured slaver rather reluctantly.

MR. CHARLES W. CHESNUTT'S STORIES by W. D. Howells

The critical reader of the story called The Wife of his Youth, which
appeared in these pages two years ago, must have noticed uncommon traits
in what was altogether a remarkable piece of work. The first was the
novelty of the material; for the writer dealt not only with people who
were not white, but with people who were not black enough to contrast
grotesquely with white people,--who in fact were of that near approach
to the ordinary American in race and color which leaves, at the
last degree, every one but the connoisseur in doubt whether they are
Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-African. Quite as striking as this novelty of
the material was the author's thorough mastery of it, and his
unerring knowledge of the life he had chosen in its peculiar racial
characteristics. But above all, the story was notable for the
passionless handling of a phase of our common life which is tense with
potential tragedy; for the attitude, almost ironical, in which the
artist observes the play of contesting emotions in the drama under his
eyes; and for his apparently reluctant, apparently helpless consent
to let the spectator know his real feeling in the matter. Any one
accustomed to study methods in fiction, to distinguish between good and
bad art, to feel the joy which the delicate skill possible only from
a love of truth can give, must have known a high pleasure in the quiet
self-restraint of the performance; and such a reader would probably have
decided that the social situation in the piece was studied wholly from
the outside, by an observer with special opportunities for knowing it,
who was, as it were, surprised into final sympathy.

Now, however, it is known that the author of this story is of negro
blood,--diluted, indeed, in such measure that if he did not admit this
descent few would imagine it, but still quite of that middle world
which lies next, though wholly outside, our own. Since his first story
appeared he has contributed several others to these pages, and he now
makes a showing palpable to criticism in a volume called The Wife of
his Youth, and Other Stories of the Color Line; a volume of Southern
sketches called The Conjure Woman; and a short life of Frederick
Douglass, in the Beacon Series of biographies. The last is a simple,
solid, straight piece of work, not remarkable above many other
bi