WHO "S DAT?
DOWN SOUTH
Pictures by
RUDOLF EICKEMEYER, JR.
With a Preface by
JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS
Neio York R. H. RUSSELL, Publisher igoo
A CYPRESS SWAMP.
Copyright, 1900
Robert Howard Russell
HERE is a feeling in the minds of those who are
familiar with the course and development of our
national history, from the colonial period down to the
present time, that the most inviting as well as the most
accessible field of American romance is to be found in
the Southern States of the Union. This feeling has
a most substantial basis in fact, for it is in the old slave States, on the
cotton, tobacco and rice plantations, that the most startling contrasts and
contradictions whirled and swarmed, dancing, as it were, a perpetual
morris-dance, while the rest of the world looked on with wonder or
interest, with admiration or indignation.
Here cavalier and covenanter joined hands to resist the aggressions of
monarchy; here was a rampant and raging love of liberty existing side by
side with human slavery; here were to be found culture, refinement, learn-
ing, the highest ideals of character and conduct, the most exacting standards
of honor in private and official life, and the most sensitive insistence on
justice and right, all touching elbows with an ignorance dense and bar-
barian. Here for the first and perhaps for the last time in the history of
civilization were to be found aristocracy and democracy knocking about
the country (as the saying is) arm in arm, hail-fellows-well-met. Here,
too, was the hospitality, hearty, simple and unaffected, living next door to
desperate feud.
It is contrasts and contradictions such as these, and the possibilities
lurking behind them, that romancers take for their material; and it is in
such a field as this that the novelists proper find the atmosphere and color
necessary to give harmony and vitality to their character creations. Here
is not only the background, but all the details necessary to the building of
romance and reporting the essence of human life; all the accessories, all
the particulars are here.
A critic was saying the other day that we lack in this republic the
atmosphere necessary to the production of really great fiction, and he cited
the reader to the old world, where there are ruins of castles, and ivy-
covered wrecks of an older civilization. But it is clear that the citation
is not to the ruins and wrecks, but to the historic associations which they
recall. What we have lacked hitherto is not the necessary atmosphere,
but the eyes capable of perceiving it in the fulness of its beauty. Fortu-
nately there are very recent evidences going to show that the trained eyes
and the inspired hands have arrived upon the scene.
Meanwhile, an artist of the camera has been looking about in the South
for the picturesque and has succeeded in finding it in all sorts of out-of-the-
way places. He has found it even in what is homely and commonplace.
The result is the series of photographic representations embodied in this
volume. Ordinarily the camera is but a reporter of facts, altogether
devoid of imagination, but the pictures herein reproduced show the camera
is a very susceptible instrument in the hands of one who has a feeling for
the artistic. A happy selection, not only of character and scene, but of
the apt moment, has enabled him to present here a series of most remark-
able photographs. The most striking of them give wide wings to the
imagination, and the most familiar, such as the lonely path through the
cotton-patch, possess a charm that cannot be defined. It is possible to
believe that the man behind the instrument was both a poet and an artist.
JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS.
RETURNING FROM THE FIELDS.
THE LONELY
PATH.
THE PLANTATION WELL.
POUNDING
RICE.
THE GREAT HOUSE.
AUNT CHLOE.
UNCLE
ESSICK.
GABE.
STRIPPING THE CANE.
THE SWEET POTATO PATCH.
A STILL OCTOBER DAY.
"CRAPS" IN THE FIELD.
UNLOADING THE COTTON.
THE
GIN.
A CABIN.
OLD UNCLE NED.
SOLID
COMFORT.
THE DAY'S WORK DONE.
AUNTIE MAHALIE'S HALF ACRE.
THE POOL.
ASKING THE WAY.
'dISSOO
CURIOSITY.
THE NEW SOUTH.
THE OLD
WELL.
WASH DAY ON THE PLANTATION.
MINDING "BUDDER.
THE WIDOW'S PATCH.
THE DYING EMBERS.
THOUGHTS
OF
OTHER
DAYS.