I tell you, Dinah, jes' as shuh as you is standin' dar, When folks starts prayin', answer-angels drops down th'u' de a'r. YAS, DINAH, WHAR 'OULD YOU BE NOW, JES' 'CEPTIN' FUR DAT PRA'R? ____ Baltimore, 1875. Notes: The Power of Prayer; or, The First Steamboat up the Alabama As the title-page shows, `The Power of Prayer' is the joint production of Sidney and Clifford Lanier. The latter gentleman informs me that once he read a newspaper scrap of about ten lines stating that a Negro on first seeing a steamboat coming down the river was greatly frightened. Mr. Lanier then wrote out in metrical form the plot of `The Power of Prayer', substantially as we now have it, and sent it to his brother Sidney, who polished it up and published it under their joint names. Mr. Clifford Lanier had not seen the piece mentioned in the next paragraph, nor had his brother; but on being shown the piece, the former was of the opinion that his newspaper clipping must have been based on the work to which I turn, as it had already appeared and the incidents were so much alike. In the third chapter of `The Gilded Age' (Hartford, Conn., 1873) by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, there is a piece, `Uncle Daniel's Apparition and Prayer', so similar to `The Power of Prayer' that I quote it almost entire. Uncle Dan'l (a Negro), his wife, his young mistress, and his two young masters were sitting on a log by the Mississippi River one moonlight night a-talking. "Suddenly Uncle Dan'l exclaimed: `Chil'en, dah's sumfin a comin'!' "All crowded close together and every heart beat faster. Uncle Dan'l pointed down the river with his bony finger. "A deep coughing sound troubled the stillness, way toward a wooded cape that jutted into the stream a mile distant. All in an instant a fierce eye of fire shot out from behind the cape and sent a long brilliant pathway quivering athwart the dusky water. The coughing grew louder and louder, the glaring eye grew larger and still larger, glared wilder and still wilder. A huge shape developed itself out of the gloom, and from its tall duplicate horns dense volumes of smoke, starred and spangled with sparks, poured out and went tumbling away into the farther darkness. Nearer and nearer the thing came, till its long sides began to glow with spots of light which mirrored themselves in the river and attended the monster like a torch-light procession. "`What is it? Oh! what is it, Uncle Dan'l?' "With deep solemnity the answer came: "`It's de Almighty! Git down on yo' knees!' "It was not necessary to say it twice. They were all kneeling in a moment. And then while the mysterious coughing rose stronger and stronger and the threatening glare reached farther and wider, the negro's voice lifted up its supplications.