The most personal and in some respects the most important work which Mr. Harris has published since “Uncle Remus.” Many will read between the lines and see the autobiography of the author. In addition to the stirring incidents which appear in the story, the author presents a graphic picture of certain phases of Southern life which have not appeared in his books before. There are also new examples of the folk-lore of the negroes, which became classic when presented to the public in the pages of “Uncle Remus.” “The book is in the characteristic vein which has made the author so famous and popular as an interpreter of plantation character.”--_Rochester Union and Advertiser._ “Those who never tire of Uncle Remus and his stories--with whom we would be accounted--will delight in Joe Maxwell and his exploits.”--_London Saturday Review._ “Altogether a most charming book.”--_Chicago Times._ “Really a valuable, if modest, contribution to the history of the civil war within the Confederate lines, particularly on the eve of the catastrophe. While Mr. Harris, in his preface, professes to have lost the power to distinguish between what is true and what is imaginative in his episodical narrative, the reader readily finds the clew. Two or three new animal fables are introduced with effect; but the history of the plantation, the printing-office, the black runaways, and white deserters, of whom the impending break-up made the community tolerant, the coon and fox hunting, forms the serious purpose of the book, and holds the reader’s interest from beginning to end. Like ‘Daddy Jake,’ this is a good anti slavery tract in disguise, and does credit to Mr. Harris’s humanity. There are amusing illustrations by E. W. Kemble.”--_New York Evening Post._ “A charming little book, tastefully gotten up.... Its simplicity, humor, and individuality would be very welcome to any one who was weary of the pretentiousness and the dull obviousness of the average three-volume novel.”--_London Chronicle._ “The mirage of war vanishes and reappears like an ominous shadow on the horizon, but the stay-at-home whites of the Southern Confederacy were likewise threatened by fears of a servile insurrection. This dark dread exerts its influence on a narration which is otherwise cheery with boyhood’s fortunate freedom from anxiety, and sublime disregard for what the morrow may bring forth. The simple chronicle of old times ‘on the plantation’ concludes all too soon; the fire burns low and the tale is ended just as the reader becomes acclimated to the mid-Georgian village, and feels thoroughly at home with Joe and Mink. The ‘Owl and the Birds,’ ‘Old Zip Coon,’ the ‘Big Injun and the Buzzard,’ are joyous echoes of the plantation-lore that first delighted us in ‘Uncle Remus.’ Kemble’s illustrations, evidently studied from life, are interspersed in these pages of a book of consummate charm.”--_Philadelphia Ledger._