the recipient thanked the giver in a loud voice, knowing the old woman to be somewhat deaf.  At the moment she spoke, the woman in hiding reached up and caught her rival’s voice, and clasping it tightly in her right hand, escaped unseen, to her own cabin.  At the same instant the afflicted woman missed her voice, and felt a sharp pain shoot through her left arm, just below the elbow.  She at first suspected the old woman of having tricked her through the medium of the red rose, but was subsequently informed by a conjure doctor that her voice had been stolen, and that the old woman was innocent.  For the pain he gave her a bottle of medicine, of which nine drops were to be applied three times a day, and rubbed in with the first two fingers of the right hand, care being taken not to let any other part of the hand touch the arm, as this would render the medicine useless.  By the aid of a mirror, in which he called up her image, the conjure doctor ascertained who was the guilty person.  He sought her out and charged her with the crime which she promptly denied.  Being pressed, however, she admitted her guilt.  The doctor insisted upon immediate restitution.  She expressed her willingness, and at the same time her inability to comply—­she had taken the voice, but did not possess the power to restore it.  The conjure doctor was obdurate and at once placed a spell upon her which is to remain until the lost voice is restored.  The case is still pending, I understand; I shall sometime take steps to find out how it terminates.

How far a story like this is original, and how far a mere reflection of familiar wonder stories, is purely a matter of speculation.  When the old mammies would tell the tales of Br’er Rabbit and Br’er Fox to the master’s children, these in turn would no doubt repeat the fairy tales which they had read in books or heard from their parents’ lips.  The magic mirror is as old as literature.  The inability to restore the stolen voice is foreshadowed in the Arabian Nights, when the “Open Sesame” is forgotten.  The act of catching the voice has a simplicity which stamps it as original, the only analogy of which I can at present think being the story of later date, of the words which were frozen silent during the extreme cold of an Arctic winter, and became audible again the following summer when they had thawed out.

Modern Culture, May 1901

CHARLES W. CHESNUTT

STORIES, NOVELS, & ESSAYS

The Conjure Woman

The Wife of His Youth and
Other Stories of the Color Line

The House Behind the Cedars

The Marrow of Tradition

Uncollected Stories

Selected Essays_

* * * * *

THE LIBRARY OF AMERICA

THE CONJURE WOMAN

The Goophered Grapevine
Po’ Sandy
Mars Jeems’s Nightmare
The Conjurer’s Revenge
Sis’ Becky’s Pickaninny
The Gray Wolf’s Ha’nt
Hot-Foot Hannibal