On the Battery in Charleston a monument commemorates the broken life of one who gave of his best to the city of his home and his love. Verily might he say: I asked for bread and you gave me a stone.
JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS
Seeing the name of Joel Chandler Harris, many people might have to stop and reflect a moment before recalling exactly what claim that gentleman had upon the attention of the reader. "Uncle Remus" brings before the mind at once a whole world of sunlight and fun, with not a few grains of wisdom planted here and there. The good old fun-loving Uncle has put many a rose and never a thorn into life's flower-garden.
Being in Atlanta some years ago, when Mr. Harris was on the editorial staff of the Constitution, I called up the office and asked if I might speak to him. The gentleman who answered my call replied that Mr. Harris was not in, adding the information that if he were he would not talk through the telephone. I asked what time I should be likely to find him in the office.
"He will be in this afternoon, but I fear that he would not see you if you were the angel Gabriel," was the discouraging reply.
"I am not the angel Gabriel," I said. "Tell him that I am a lady—Mrs. Pickett—and that I should like very much to see him."
"If you are a lady, and Mrs. Pickett, I fear that he will vanish and never be found again."
Notwithstanding the discouragements, I was permitted to call that afternoon in the hope that the obdurate Uncle Remus might graciously consent to see me. I found him in his office in the top story of the building, an appropriate place to avoid being run to covert by the public, but inconvenient because of the embarrassment which might result from dropping out of the window if he should have the misfortune to be cornered. To say that I was received might be throwing too much of a glamour over the situation. At least, I was not summarily ejected, nor treated to a dissolving view of Uncle Remus disappearing in the distance, so I considered myself fortunate. I told him that I had called up by telephone that morning to speak to him.
"I never talk through the telephone," he said. "I do not like to talk in a hole. I look into a man's eyes when I talk to him."