Joel Chandler Harris is at home in a neat cottage of the familiar Southern type, which nestles near the bosom of a grove of sweet gum and pine trees in the little village of West Point, about three miles from the heart of the “Southern Chicago,” as Georgians delight to call Atlanta. In the grove a mocking-bird family sings. Around the house are a few acres of ground, which are carefully cultivated. In one corner graze a group of beautiful Minerva-eyed Jerseys. At one side of the house hives of bees are placed near a flower garden sloping down to the street, which passes in front of the house several rods distant. At the foot of the road is a bubbling mineral spring, whose sparkling water supplies the needs of the household. A superb English mastiff eyes with dignified glance the casual visitor whose coming is apt to be announced by the bark of two of the finest dogs in the country, one a bulldog, the other a white English bull-terrier. Mr. Harris’s neighbors are few, but one who is his closest friend calls for mention. It is Mr. Evan P. Howell, whose manor is across the way. He is a member of a distinguished Georgia family, whose name is known at the North through Howell Cobb, a former Secretary of the Treasury. Mr. Howell himself has become known to the general public as having declined the Manchester Consulate to retain his present position as chief editor and owner of the Atlanta _Constitution_, in whose pages, by Mr. Howell’s persuasion, Uncle Remus made his first appearance. The interior of the cottage is simple and unassuming. Bric-à-brac and trumpery “articles of bigotry and virtue” are absent. The places they generally occupy are taken up with wide windows and generous hearths. Of literary litter there is none. There are few books, but they have been read and re-read, and they are the best of books. The house is not a library, a museum, nor an art-gallery, but it is evidently a home in which children take the place of inanimate objects of devotion.