It is, however, a musical effect, not an intellectual one. The words have often little relevance to anything profound, and at best are childish. There is generally a keynote which murmurs through the whole of the song, the function of the basso-profundo who provides a river of harmony like life itself, and the tenors and baritones and the shriller voices move on this flowing base like ships. On the rivers the slaves loved to sing as they rowed their masters, using most aptly the beat of the oars and the swish of the water, while the man who stood at the helm and steered was usually the deep bass. One of the most unforgettable melodies is “O, Listen to the Lambs!” The tenors seem to imitate flocks of innumerable sheep and lambs all crying to one another, while the basso-profundo is the irrelevance of “I want to go to Heaven when I die,” continually repeated in subterranean mumbling and whispers—— O listen to the la-ambs All a-cry ... in’. All a-cry ... in’. An’ I wan’ to go to Hebn w’en I die! “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “Go Down, Moses,” “Didn’t Hear Nobody Pray,” “The Walls of Jericho,” and many others are assuredly famous. These and many other phenomena give indications of a distinctive Negro point of view, and of an incipient broad-based popular culture. A sympathetic study will always give evidence that can be set against the point of view that the Negro is nothing, or an animal, or a scamp at best, or a shame to the species. I was sitting in the gardens at Baltimore in the shade of a giant plane tree one day when out came a mixed class of Negro boys and girls and a young eager colored master of about twenty-five. The girls were luxuriant “flappers” of every hue of polished ebony; the boys were spindle-legged and spry and bullet-headed. They all examined plants and trees and caterpillars and flowers under the informing tutelage of the master. They were as noisy and vivacious as a flock of birds that has suddenly lighted on a plain. They minded no outsider. But a tall white man passed them, and I saw on his face a look of unutterable contempt. “Learning botany” said he to me in a stage whisper. “They’ll know as much about it to-morrow morning as pigs.” IV IN TENNESSEE