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Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings

by Joel Chandler Harris

Pages
about 195
Category
Literature & Fiction
Language
English
Reading time
3.6 h at 250 wpm
Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 2 h at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

I am expected to supply a preface for this new edition of my first book--to advance from behind the curtain, as it were, and make a fresh bow to the public that has dealt with Uncle Remus in so gentle and generous a fashion. For this event the lights are to be rekindled, and I am expected to respond in some formal way to an encore that marks the fifteenth anniversary of the book. There have been other editions--how many I do not remember--but this is to be an entirely new one, except as to the matter: new type, new pictures, and new binding.

But, as frequently happens on such occasions, I am at a loss for a word. I seem to see before me the smiling faces of thousands of children--some young and fresh, and some wearing the friendly marks of age, but all children at heart--and not an unfriendly face among them. And out of the confusion, and while I am trying hard to speak the right word, I seem to hear a voice lifted above the rest, saying "You have made some of us happy." And so I feel my heart fluttering and my lips trembling, and I have to how silently and him away, and hurry back into the obscurity that fits me best.

Phantoms! Children of dreams! True, my dear Frost; but if you could see the thousands of letters that have come to me from far and near, and all fresh from the hearts and hands of children, and from men and women who have not forgotten how to be children, you would not wonder at the dream. And such a dream can do no harm. Insubstantial though it may be, I would not at this hour exchange it for all the fame won by my mightier brethren of the pen--whom I most humbly salute.

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