At the reception given to Mrs. Jackson, Mrs. Stuart, Winnie Davis, and myself, Mr. Harris was invited to stand in line, but declined.  It would be difficult to imagine him as standing with a receiving party, shaking hands with the public.  He was asked to speak, but that was even less to be expected.  The nearest he ever came to making a speech was once when he sat upon the platform while his friend, Henry O. Grady, was addressing a large assemblage with all that eloquence for which he was noted.  When he had finished, the call for “Harris” came with great volume and persistency.  He arose and said, “I am coming,” walked down from the platform and was lost in the crowd.

[Illustration:  JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS At Home]

Uncle Remus wrote his stories at “Snap Bean Farm,” in West End, a suburb of Atlanta.  They filled his evenings with pleasure after the office grind was over.  If no one but himself had ever seen them, he would have been as happy in the work as he was when the public was delighting in the adventures of Br’er Wolf and Br’er B’ar.  In that cosy home the early evening was given to the children, and the later hours to recording the tales which had amused them through the twilight.

A home it was, not only to him but to all who came in friendship to see him in his quiet retreat.  There was no room in it for those whom curiosity brought there to see the man of letters or to do honor to a lion.  The lionizing of Uncle Remus was the one ambition impossible of achievement in the literary world.  For everything else that touched upon the human, the vine-embowered, tree-shaded house on Gordon Street opened hospitable doors.

* * * * *

Joel Chandler Harris was born in Eatonton, the county-seat of Putnam County, Georgia, and in his early days attended the Eatonton Academy, where he received all the academic training he ever had.  His vitally helpful education was gained in the wider and deeper school of life, and few have been graduated therefrom with greater honors.

At six years of age he had the good fortune to encounter “The Vicar of Wakefield,” than whom, it is safe to assert, no boy of such tender years had ever a better and more inspiring friend.  This beloved clerical gentleman led young Joel into a charmed land of literature, in which he dwelt all his life.

In the post-office at Eatonton was an old green sofa, very much the worse for wear, which yet offered a comfortable lounging place for the boy Joel, adapted to his kittenish taste for curling up in quiet retreats.  There he would spend hours in reading the newspapers that came to the office.  In one of them he found an announcement of a new periodical to be published by Colonel Turner on his plantation nine miles from Eatonton.  In connection with this announcement was an advertisement for an office boy.  It occurred to the future “Uncle Remus,” then twelve years old, that this might open a way for him.