i
“Boo-hoo,” Scootie wailed.“Aw! shut up,” the old man snapped.
E. K. MEANS
Is this a title? It is not. It isthe name of a writer of negro stories,who has made himself so completelythe writer of negro stories that hisbook needs no title.ILLUSTRATED BY
KEMBLE
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1918
iii
Copyright, 1918
BY
E. K. MEANS
The Knickerbocker Press, New Yorkiv
To
ROBERT H. DAVIS
WHO TAUGHT ME HOW
AND
“ITTU”
WHO KEPT ME AT IT.v
Foreword.
The stories in this volume were written simplybecause of my interest in the stories themselvesand because of a whimsical fondness for the peopleof that Race to whom God has given two supremegifts,—Music and Laughter.
For the benefit of the curious, I may say thatmany of the incidents in these tales are true andmany of the characters and places mentionedactually exist.
The Hen-Scratch saloon derived its name fromthe fact that many of its colored habitués played“craps” on the ground under the chinaberrytrees until the soil was marked by their scratchingfinger-nails like a chicken-yard. The name Tickfallis fictitious, but the locality will be easilyrecognized by the true names of the negro settlements,Dirty-Six, Hell’s-Half-Acre, Shiny, Tinrow,—lyingin the sand around that rich andaristocratic little town like pigs around their damand drawing their sustenance therefrom.
Skeeter Butts’s real name is Perique. Periqueis also the name of Louisiana’s famous homegrowntobacco, and as Skeeter is too diminutive tobe named after a whole cigar, his white friendsvihave always called him Butts. Vinegar Atts is awell-known colored preacher of north Louisiana,whose “swing-tail prancin’-albert coat” has beenseen in many pulpits, and whose “stove-pipe,preachin’ hat” has been the target of many a stonethrown from a mischievous white boy’s hand.Hitch Diamond is known at every landing placeon the Mississippi River as “Big Sandy.”
When these tales were first published in theAll Story Weekly, many readers declared thatthey were humorous. Nevertheless, I hold thata story containing dialect must necessarily havemany depressing and melancholy features. Butdialect does not consist of perverted pronunciationsand phonetic orthography. True dialect is apicture in cold type of the manifold peculiaritiesof the mind and temperament. In its form, I haveattempted to give merely a flavor of the negrodialect; but I have made a sincere attempt topreserve the essence of dialect by making thesestories contain a true idea of the negro’s shrewdobservations, curious retorts, quaint comments,humorous philosophy, and his unique point ofview on everything that comes to his attention.