How far a story like this is original, and how far a mere reflection of familiar wonder stories, is purely a matter of speculation. When the old mammies would tell the tales of Br'er Rabbit and Br'er Fox to the master's children, these in turn would no doubt repeat the fairy tales which they had read in books or heard from their parents' lips. The magic mirror is as old as literature. The inability to restore the stolen voice is foreshadowed in the _Arabian Nights_, when the "Open Sesame" is forgotten. The act of catching the voice has a simplicity which stamps it as original, the only analogy of which I can at present think being the story of later date, of the words which were frozen silent during the extreme cold of an Arctic winter, and became audible again the following summer when they had thawed out. _Modern Culture_, May 1901 CHARLES W. CHESNUTT STORIES, NOVELS, & ESSAYS _The Conjure Woman The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line The House Behind the Cedars The Marrow of Tradition Uncollected Stories Selected Essays_ * * * * * THE LIBRARY OF AMERICA THE CONJURE WOMAN The Goophered Grapevine Po' Sandy Mars Jeems's Nightmare The Conjurer's Revenge Sis' Becky's Pickaninny The Gray Wolf's Ha'nt Hot-Foot Hannibal THE WIFE OF HIS YOUTH AND OTHER STORIES OF THE COLOR LINE The Wife of His Youth Her Virginia Mammy The Sheriff's Children A Matter of Principle Cicely's Dream The Passing of Grandison Uncle Wellington's Wives The Bouquet The Web of Circumstance The House Behind the Cedars The Marrow of Tradition Uncollected Stories Dave's Neckliss A Deep Sleeper Lonesome Ben The Dumb Witness The March of Progress Baxter's Procrustes The Doll White Weeds The Kiss SELECTED ESSAYS What Is a White Man? The Future American Superstitions and Folk-Lore of the South Charles W. Chesnutt's Own View of His New Story, _The Marrow of Tradition_ The Disfranchisement of the Negro The Courts and the Negro Post-Bellum--Pre-Harlem _Chronology_ _Note on the Texts_ _Notes_ End of Project Gutenberg's The Conjure Woman, by Charles W. Chesnutt