It is worthy of note too that he interpreted with the same patience and thoroughness the music and the poetry of the negro. Russell was a lyrist with the gift of intuition and improvisation; Harris was a deliberate recorder. The songs he wrote are not literary adaptations, nor are they framed after the conventional minstrel pattern. They are reproductions. In his first introduction to _Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings_ he wrote: As to the songs, the reader is warned that it will be found difficult to make them conform to the ordinary rules of versification, nor is it intended that they should so conform. They are written, and are intended to be read, solely in reference to the regular invariable recurrence of the cæsura, as, for instance, the first stanza of the Revival Hymn: Oh, whar | shill we go | w'en de great | day comes | Wid de blow | in' er de trumpits | en de bang | in' er de drums | Hoy man | y po' sin | ers 'll be kotch'd | out late | En fine | no latch | ter de gold | en gate | In other words, the songs depend for their melody and rhythm upon the musical quality of _time_, and not upon long or short, accented or unaccented, syllables. I am persuaded that this fact led Mr. Sidney Lanier, who is thoroughly familiar with the metrical peculiarities of negro songs, into the exhaustive investigation which has resulted in the publication of his scholarly treatise on The Science of English Verse. Nowhere else does one come so completely into the feeling of negro music as in Harris. In "The Night Before Christmas," in _Nights with Uncle Remus_, a latter-day "Sir Roger de Coverley Paper," we feel the tone of it: His voice was strong and powerful, and sweet, and its range was as astonishing as its volume. More than this, the melody to which he tuned it, and which was caught up by a hundred voices almost as sweet and as powerful as his own, was charged with a mysterious and pathetic tenderness. The fine company of men and women at the big house--men and women who had made the tour of all the capitals of Europe--listened with swelling hearts and with tears in their eyes as the song rose and fell upon the air--at one moment a tempest of melody, at another a heart-breaking strain breathed softly and sweetly to the gentle winds. The song that the little boy and the fine company heard was something like this--ridiculous enough when put in cold type, but powerful and thrilling when joined to the melody with which the negroes had invested it: