"Brer Tiger 'low, 'Hit's mighty good fer you dat I done had my dinner,
kaze ef I'd a-been hongry I'd a-snapped you up back dar at de creek.'
"Brer Rabbit say, 'Ef you'd done dat, you'd er had mo' sense in yo' hide
dan what you got now.'
"Brer Tiger 'low, 'I gwine ter let you off dis time, but nex' time I see
you, watch out!'
"Brer Rabbit say, 'Bein's you so monst'us perlite, I'll let you off too,
but keep yo' eye open nex' time you see me, kaze I'll git you sho.'"
[Illustration: BRER RABBIT AND THE TAR BABY
(Courtesy of D. Appleton & Co.)]
The glee of the negro in the rabbit's nonchalant bearing is humorously given in this paragraph:—
"Well, I wish ter goodness you could er seed 'im 'bout dat time. He went 'long thoo de woods ez gay ez a colt in a barley-patch. He wunk at de trees, he shuck his fisties at de stumps, he make like he wuz quoilin' wid 'is shadder kaze it foller 'long atter 'im so close; en he went on scan'lous, mon!"
The three books that contain the most remarkable of these tales are: Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings (1880), Nights with Uncle Remus (1881), Uncle Remus and His Friends (1892). In the volume, Told by Uncle Remus (1905), the same negro relates more stories to the son of the "little boy," who had many years before listened to the earlier tales. The one thing in these books that is absolutely the creation of Harris is the character of Uncle Remus. He is a patriarchal ex-slave, who seems to be a storehouse of knowledge concerning Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, Brer B'ar, and indeed all the animals of those bygone days when animals talked and lived in houses. He understands child nature as well as he knows the animals, and from the corner of his eye he keeps a sharp watch upon his tiny auditor to see how the story affects him. No figure more living, original, and lovable than Uncle Remus appears in southern fiction. In him Harris has created, not a burlesque or a sentimental impossibility, but an imperishable type, the type of the true plantation negro.
Harris also writes entertainingly of the slaves and their masters on the plantation and of the poor free negroes, in such stories as Mingo and Other Sketches (1884) and Free Joe (1887). He further presents a vivid picture of the Georgia "crackers" and "moonshiners"; but his inimitable animal stories, and Uncle Remus who tells them, have overshadowed all his other work, and remain his most distinctive and original contribution to American literature. These tales bid fair to have something of the immortality of those myths which succeeding generations have for thousands of years enjoyed.