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E. K. Means: Is This a Title? It Is Not. It Is the Name of a Writer of Negro Stories, Who Has Made Himself So Completely the Writer of Negro Stories That His Book Needs No TitleMeans, E. K. (Eldred Kurtz)

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E. K. Means: Is This a Title? It Is Not. It Is the Name of a Writer of Negro Stories, Who Has Made Himself So Completely the Writer of Negro Stories That His Book Needs No Title

Name: E. K. Means: Is This a Title? It Is Not. It Is the Name of a Writer of Negro Stories, Who Has Made Himself So Completely the Writer of Negro Stories That His Book Needs No Title
Author: Means, E. K. (Eldred Kurtz)

Means, E. K. (Eldred Kurtz)

African Americans -- Fiction; Short stories, American

When these tales were first published in the _All Story Weekly_, many
readers declared that they were humorous. Nevertheless, I hold that
a story containing dialect must necessarily have many depressing
and melancholy features. But dialect does not consist of perverted
pronunciations and phonetic orthography. True dialect is a picture in
cold type of the manifold peculiarities of the mind and temperament.
In its form, I have attempted to give merely a _flavor_ of the negro
dialect; but I have made a sincere attempt to preserve the essence of
dialect by making these stories contain a true idea of the negro’s
shrewd observations, curious retorts, quaint comments, humorous
philosophy, and his unique point of view on everything that comes to
his attention.

The Folk Tales of Joel Chandler Harris are imperishable pictures of
plantation life in the South before the Civil War and of the negro
slave who echoed all his master’s prejudice of caste and pride of
family in the old times that are no more.

The negroes of this volume are the sons of the old slaves. Millions of
them live to-day in the small Southern villages, and as these stories
indicate, many changes of character, mind, and temperament have taken
place in the last half-century through the modifications of freedom and
education.

This type also is passing. In a brief time, the negro who lives in
these pages will be a memory, like Uncle Remus. “Ethiopia is stretching
out her hands” after art, science, literature, and wealth, and when the
sable sons of laughter and song grasp these treasures, all that remains
of the Southern village negro of to-day will be a few faint sketches in
Fiction’s beautiful temple of dreams.

  E. K. MEANS.




CONTENTS


                                                                  PAGE
  FOREWORD                                                         iii

  THE LATE FIGGER BUSH                                               1

  HOODOO EYES                                                       39

  THE ART OF ENTICING LABOR                                         72

  THE CRUISE OF THE MUD HEN                                         92

  TWO SORRY SONS OF SORROW                                         127

  MONARCH OF THE MANACLE                                           186

  ALL IS FAIR                                                      214

  HOODOO FACE                                                      274




ILLUSTRATIONS


                                                                 PAGE

  “BOO-HOO,” SCOOTIE WAILED. “AW! SHUT
  UP,” THE OLD MAN SNAPPED                              _Frontispiece_

  “I’SE DE BRAYING JACK-ASS OF GEORGIA, AN’
  NO NIGGER IN TICKFALL CAIN’T COMB
  MY MANE”                                                          58

  “COLONEL GAITSKILL TELEPHONED ME THAT
  YOUR POCKETS WERE FULL OF MONEY”                                  86

  WHEN THE BOAT STOPPED                                            110

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E. K. Means: Is This a Title? It Is Not. It Is the Name of a Writer of Negro Stories, Who Has Made Himself So Completely the Writer of Negro Stories That His Book Needs No Title

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