Upon the return of Simms he wrote to his friend at Copse Hill that no language could describe the suffering of Charleston.  He said that the picture of Irving, given him by Hayne, served a useful purpose in helping to cover the bomb-shell holes still in his walls.  “For the last three years,” he writes, “I have written till two in the morning.  Does not this look like suicide?” He mentions the fact that he shares with his two sons his room in which he sleeps, works, writes and studies, and is “cabin’d, cribbed, confined”—­“I who have had such ample range before, with a dozen rooms and a house range for walking, in bad weather, of 134 feet.”  The old days were very fair as seen through the heavy clouds that had gathered around the Master of Woodlands.

In 1870, June 11th, the bell of Saint Michael’s tolled the message that Charleston’s most distinguished son had passed away.  His funeral was in Saint Paul’s.  He was buried in Magnolia Cemetery, at the dedication of which twenty-one years earlier he had read the dedication poem.  The stone above him bears simply the name, “Simms.”

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.

“UNCLE REMUS”

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.