Uncle has put many a rose and never a thorn into life's flower-garden.

Being in Atlanta some years ago, when Mr. Harris was on the editorial
staff of the _Constitution_, I called up the office and asked if I
might speak to him. The gentleman who answered my call replied that
Mr. Harris was not in, adding the information that if he were he would
not talk through the telephone. I asked what time I should be likely
to find him in the office.

"He will be in this afternoon, but I fear that he would not see you if
you were the angel Gabriel," was the discouraging reply.

"I am not the angel Gabriel," I said. "Tell him that I am a lady--Mrs.
Pickett--and that I should like very much to see him."

"If you are a lady, and Mrs. Pickett, I fear that he will vanish and
never be found again."

Notwithstanding the discouragements, I was permitted to call that
afternoon in the hope that the obdurate Uncle Remus might graciously
consent to see me. I found him in his office in the top story of the
building, an appropriate place to avoid being run to covert by the
public, but inconvenient because of the embarrassment which might
result from dropping out of the window if he should have the
misfortune to be cornered. To say that I was received might be
throwing too much of a glamour over the situation. At least, I was not
summarily ejected, nor treated to a dissolving view of Uncle Remus
disappearing in the distance, so I considered myself fortunate. I told
him that I had called up by telephone that morning to speak to him.

"I never talk through the telephone," he said. "I do not like to talk
in a hole. I look into a man's eyes when I talk to him."

When Uncle Remus was fairly run to earth and could not escape, he was
quite human in his attitude toward his caller; his only fault being
that he was prone to talk of his visitor's work rather than his own,
and a question that would seem to lead up to any personal revelation
on his part would result in so strong an indication of a desire for
flight that the conversation would be directed long distances away
from Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby. He was a born story-teller, and
had not the made author's owl-like propensity to perch upon high
places and hoot his wisdom to the passing crowd. The expression
"literary" as applied to him filled him with surprise. He called
himself an "accidental author"; said he had never had an opportunity
of acquiring style, and probably should not have ta