erials with which their minds were stored, much as we do
to-day, and the result was a cycle of beast-fables--an Odyssey of the
brute creation. Of these the tales of Aesop are the best examples. The
beast-fable has never quite gone out of fashion, and never will so
long as men retain their world-wonder, and childishness of mind.
A large part of Gulliver's adventures belong to this class of
literature. It was only the other day that Mr. Kipling gave us his
_Just-so Stories_, and his _Jungle-Book_, each of which found an
immediate and secure place in the popular memory.

Mr. Chandler Harris, in his introduction to _Uncle Remus_, warns us
that however humorous his book may appear, "its intention is perfectly
serious." He goes on to insist on its historic value, as a revelation
of primitive modes of thought. At the outset, when he wrote his
stories serially for publication in _The Atlanta Constitution_, he
believed that he was narrating plantation legends peculiar to the
South. He was quickly undeceived. Prof. J.W. Powell, who was engaged
in an investigation of the mythology of the North American Indians,
informed him that some of Uncle Remus's stories appear "in a number of
different languages, and in various modified forms among the Indians."
Mr. Herbert H. Smith had "met with some of these stories among tribes
of South American Indians, and one in particular he had traced to
India, and as far east as Siam." "When did the negro or North American
Indian ever come in contact with the tribes of South America?"
Mr. Harris asks. And he quotes Mr. Smith's reply in answer to the
question: "I am not prepared to form a theory about these stories.
There can be no doubt that some of them, found among the negroes and
the Indians, had a common origin. The most natural solution would be
to suppose that they originated in Africa, and were carried to South
America by the negro slaves. They are certainly found among the Red
Negroes; but, unfortunately for the African theory, it is equally
certain that they are told by savage Indians of the Amazon's Valley,
away up on the Tapajos, Red Negro, and Tapura. These Indians hardly
ever see a negro.... It is interesting to find a story from Upper
Egypt (that of the fox who pretended to be dead) identical with an
Amazonian story, and strongly resembling one found by you among the
negroes.... One thing is certain. The animal stories told by the
negroes in our Southern States and in Brazil were brough