Gerald H. Thayer. The Cotton-Tail Rabbit among Dry Grasses and Leaves. Opaque watercolor with touches of translucent watercolor and graphite on smooth-textured paper-surfaced pulp board, 1904, Brooklyn Museum, NY. Public domain.
There were many days when the animals did not think about the kingship. They thought of their games and their tricks, and would play them from the rising to the setting of the sun.
Now, at that time, the little rabbit was known as a very clever fellow. His tricks, his schemes, and his funny little ways caused much mischief and at times much anger among his woodland cousins.[1]
At last the wolf made up his mind to catch him and give him a severe punishment for the many tricks he had played upon him.[2]
Knowing that the rabbit could run faster than he, the wolf called at the home of the dog to seek his aid. “Brother dog, frisky little rabbit must be caught and punished. For a nice bone will you help me?” asked the wolf.
“Certainly, my good friend,” answered the dog, thinking of the promised bone.
“Be very careful, the rabbit is very clever,” said the wolf as he left.
A day or so later while passing through the woods the dog saw the rabbit frisking in the tall grass. Quick as a flash the dog started after him. The little fellow ran and, to save himself, jumped into the hollow of an oak tree. The opening was too small for the other to follow and as he looked in he heard only the merry laugh of the frisky rabbit, “Hee, hee! hello, Mr. Dog, you can’t see me.”
“Never mind, boy, I will get you yet,” barked the angry dog.
A short distance from the tree a goose was seen moving around looking for her dinner.
“Come, friend goose, watch the hollow of this tree while I go and get some moss and fire to smoke out this scamp of a rabbit,” spoke the dog, remembering the advice of the wolf.
“Of course I’ll watch, for he has played many of his schemes upon me,” returned the bird.
R. Metzeroth. Rabbit standing on hind legs. Lithograph, circa 1853-1856, Library of Congress.
When the dog left, the rabbit called out from his hiding place, “How can you watch, friend goose, when you can’t see me?”
“Well, I will see you then,” she replied. With these words she pushed her long neck into the hollow of the tree. As the neck of the goose went into the opening the rabbit threw the dust of some dry wood into her eyes.
“Oh, oh, you little scamp, you have made me blind,” cried out the bird in pain. Then while the goose was trying to get the dust from her eyes the rabbit jumped out and scampered away.
In a short while the dog returned with the moss and fire, filled the opening, and, as he watched the smoke arise, barked with glee, “Now I have you, my tricky friend, now I have you.” But as no rabbit ran out the dog turned to the goose and saw from her red, streaming eyes that something was wrong.
“Where is the rabbit, friend goose?” he quickly asked.
“Why, he threw wood dust into my eyes when I peeped into the opening.” At once the dog knew that the rabbit had escaped and became very angry.
“You silly goose, you foolish bird with web feet, I will kill you now for such folly.” With these words the dog sprang for the goose, but only a small feather was caught in his mouth as the frightened bird rose high in the air and flew away.
Stafford, A. O. “The Dog and the Clever Rabbit,” IN THE UPWARD PATH: A READER FOR COLORED CHILDREN, ED. MYRON T. PRITCHARD AND MARY WHITE OVINGTON, 109-12. HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, 1920.
A. B. Frost. Br’er Rabbit. Watercolor, ca. 1881-1928, Collection of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, MA. Public domain.
[1] Rabbits are usually trickster characters in African, African-American, and Native American Culture. Br’er Rabbit, for example, is a trickster that recurs in many stories from the oral traditions of enslaved communities from the Southern United States.
[2] There are three recognized species of American wolf: the gray wolf, the eastern wolf, and the American red wolf.
Contexts
This short story was included in The Upward Path: A Reader for Colored Children, published in 1920 and compiled by Myron T. Pritchard and Mary White Ovington. The volume’s foreword states that, “to the present time, there has been no collection of stories and poems by Negro writers, which colored children could read with interest and pleasure and in which they could find a mirror of the traditions and aspirations of their race.”
Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:
scamp: A good-for-nothing, worthless person, a ne’er-do-well, “waster”; a rascal. Also playfully as a mild term of reproof.
Resources for Further Study
Overview of tricksters in African American literature..
Robert S. Duncanson. Valley Pasture. Oil on canvas, 1857, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Melvin and H. Alan Frank from the Frank Family Collection. Public domain.
When April’s here and meadows wide
Once more with spring’s sweet growths are pied,
I close each book, drop each pursuit,
And past the brook, no longer mute,
I joyous roam the countryside.
Look, here the violets shy abide
And there the mating robins hide—
How keen my senses, how acute,
When April’s here!
And list! down where the shimmering tide
Hard by that farthest hill doth glide,
Rise faint sweet strains from shepherd’s flute,
Pan’s pipes and Berecynthian lute.[1]
Each sight, each sound fresh joys provide
When April’s here.
Fauset, Jessie. “Rondeau,” IN THE UPWARD PATH: A READER FOR COLORED CHILDREN, ED. MYRON T. PRITCHARD AND MARY WHITE OVINGTON, 120. HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, 1920.
[1] Berecynthos was a place in Phrygia, an ancient Anatolia district. An 1863 translation of Virgil’s The Aeneid includes the lines: “The timbrels and the Berecynthian lute / Of the Idaean mother summon you.”
Contexts
“Rondeau” was included in The Upward Path: A Reader for Colored Children, published in 1920 and compiled by Myron T. Pritchard and Mary White Ovington. The volume’s foreword states that, “to the present time, there has been no collection of stories and poems by Negro writers, which colored children could read with interest and pleasure and in which they could find a mirror of the traditions and aspirations of their race.”
Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:
lute: A stringed musical instrument, much in vogue from the 14th to the 17th centuries, the strings of which are struck with the fingers of the right hand and stopped on the frets with those of the left.
Pan: [The name of] the god of flocks and herds of Greek mythology, usually represented with the horns, ears, and legs of a goat on the body of a man.
rondeau: A short poem of medieval French origin, normally consisting of thirteen octosyllabic lines, in which only two rhymes are employed throughout and with the opening words used twice as a refrain. This poem is written in this verse form.
Resources for Further Study
Fauset was the literary editor of The Crisis, the NAACP’s official magazine, from 1919 to 1926. In this role, she championed the work of African American authors like Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Anne Spencer, among others.
Beltway Poetry Quaterly includes a few other poems by Fauset, who also wrote essays and novels.
Contemporary Connections
A historical marker in Pennsylvania commemorates the home where Jessie Fauset died in 1961.
Willard Metcalf. “Poppy Field (Landscape at Giverny).” Oil on canvas, 1886, Collection of J. Jeffrey and Ann Marie Fox. Public domain.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow[2]
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark the graves where black men lie;[3]
Their souls, long wafted to the sky,
Look down upon the earth below.
E’en while we mourn their loss, we see
Their brothers hanged upon a tree
By whom they saved. Their pain fraught cry[4]
Mounts up to those who stand on high,
And watch the scarlet flowered sea
In Flanders fields.
In Flanders Fields they shall not sleep!
No! For their murdered kin they keep
A vigil through the day and night,
'Til God Himself shall snatch from sight
Such scenes as make our heroes weep
In Flanders fields.
TAYLOR, ORLANDO C. W. “IN FLANDERS FIELDS,” IN THE DUNBAR SPEAKER AND ENTERTAINER, ED. ALICE MOORE DUNBAR-NELSON, 144. NAPERVILLE, ILL: J. L. NICHOLS & CO., 1920.
[1] Taylor’s poem references “In Flanders Fields,” a famous memorial poem written by Canadian officer John McCrae during the First World War. McCrae’s original poem helped establish the red poppy as the flower of remembrance.
[2] Flanders Fields, which spans across sections of Belgium and France, was the site of several World War I battlefields.
[3] According to the U.S. Department of Defense, more than 380,000 African-Americans served in the Army during World War I.
[Unidentified African American soldier in uniform with First Army shoulder insignia and campaign hat in front of painted backdrop]. Gelatin silver print, 1918-1919, Library of Congress. Public domain.
[4] During 1882 and 1968, 4,743 people were lynched in the U.S. Of them, 3,446 were African Americans.
Contexts
The Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer‘s dedication reads: “To the children of the race which is herein celebrated, this book is dedicated, that they may read and learn about their own people.” In the foreword, Leslie Pinckney Hill, an African American educator, writer, and community leader who graduated from Harvard University in 1903, criticizes the one-sidedness of prevailing reading courses: “In vain may you search their pages—those pages upon which all our reading has been founded—for anything other than a patronizing view of that vast, brooding world of colored folk—yellow, black and brown—which comprises by far the largest portion of the human family.” Hill further writes that Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s book seeks to prove “that the white man has no fine quality, either by heart or mind, which is not shared by his black brother.”
Think of reading this poem out loud. Elocution (or public speaking) was a highly valued and widely taught skill in nineteenth-century America. In her introduction to the Dunbar Speaker, Alice Dunbar-Nelson offers some advice: “Before you begin to learn anything to recite, first read it over and find out if it fires you with enthusiasm. If it does, make it a part of yourself, put yourself in the place of the speaker whose words you are memorizing, get on fire with the thought, the sentiment, the emotion-then throw yourself into it in your endeavor to make others feel as you feel, see as you see, understand what you understand. Lose yourself, free yourself from physical consciousness, forget that those in front of you are a part of an audience, think of them as some persons whom you must make understand what is thrilling you–and you will be a great speaker.”
Clinton Briggs, an African American War World I veteran, was chained to a tree and shot by a group of white men in Arkansas in 1919 after replying that he lived in a free man’s country when a white woman told him that he was not allowed to walk on the sidewalk. His story is one among many.
Insincere crying crocodile. From The Collected Poems of Amos R. Wells (Boston: The Christian Endeavor World, 1921), 94. Public domain.
There once was a considerate crocodile Who lay on the banks of the river Nile, And he swallowed a fish with a face of woe, While his tears ran fast to the stream below. “I am mourning,” said he, “the untimely fate Of the dear little fish that I just now ate!” [1]
Wells, Amos R. “The Considerate Crocodile,” In The Collected Poems of Amos R. Wells, 94. Boston: The Christian Endeavor World, 1921.
[1] This poem explains the expression “crocodile tears,” meaning insincere sorrow or regret.
Contexts
Moral lessons are a common component of children’s literature. This poem is no exception. The author was a prolific Christian writer of works for adults and children. In 1921 he published The Collected Poems of Amos R. Wells under the imprint of the Christian Endeavor World, a magazine he edited. His works include books dealing with young people’s work, religious education, juvenile fiction, poetry, and devotional literature. The Christian perspective is pervasive and significant in much of the Western world. Listening to the stories and traditions of other religions, including indigenous faiths, will add depth to the conversation on the connection between ethics and environmental sustainability.
Learn more about the life and work of Amos R. Wells.
Contemporary Connections
Hypocrisy is alive and well in today’s society. This poem provides a humorous way to broach the topic with young people. This delightful poem can serve as a springboard to teach students about hypocrisy and how sincerity relates to ethics. Teachers could ask children to first interpret the poem and then share other examples of this kind of behavior and to explain why it is not good.
Lessons in morality and ethics can help teach children how to respond in a meaningful way to such problems as climate change. Climate change is a global concern, and therefore students must develop empathy for people who live in distant lands, such as Zimbabwe, whose lives are very different from their own. Anna Chitando’s article African Children’s Literature, Spirituality, and Climate Change examines the relevance of African children’s literature in contributing to the response to climate change and how traditional African folklore and children’s literature can teach children to respect the environment. Chitando observes that the global South, greatly impacted by climate change but poorly equipped to respond to the global North, is sounding the alarm. Two stories from the book Stories from a Shona Childhood by Charles Mungoshi, a leading Zimbabwean author, are featured in the article.
Mungoshi’s “The Slave Who Became Chief” portrays the importance of understanding indigenous approaches to the environment and emphasizes the importance of African spirituality in the face of climate change. In the story, a slave boy, Kakore, is able to save the kingdom from drought by praying for rain. The “Spirit of the Ashpit” is about a family living in a time of drought. The father is greedy and selfish; he pretends to care for his family but looks after only himself. The mother, Madiro, is an independent woman who takes matters into her own hands by praying to her female ancestors for help, despite a taboo against doing so as a woman. Madiro shows African women overcoming traditional African patriarchal constraints.
Early twentieth-century Rosh Hashanah Greeting Card. Yeshiva University Museum. Public domain.
Our year begins with burnished leaves, That flame in frost and rime, With purple grapes and golden sheaves In harvest time. [1]
Our year begins with biting cold, With winds and storms and rain; The new year of the Jew grows old In strife and pain.
When others say the year has died, We say the year is new, And we arise with power and pride To prove it true.
For we begin where others end, And fight where others yield; And all the year we work and tend Our harvest field.
And after days of stormy rain And days of drought and heat, When those that toiled have reaped their grain, And all’s complete.
Oh then, when God has kept his word, In peace we end our year. Our fruit is certain from the Lord. We shall not fear. [2]
SAMPTER, JESSIE E. “THE JEWISH YEAR.” IN AROUND THE YEAR IN RHYME FOR THE JEWISH CHILD, 12. NEW YORK: BLOCH PUBLISHING COMPANY, 1920.
[1] There are four “new year” observances in the Hebrew calendar: one for civil purposes, one for certain agricultural laws, one for animals, including people, and one for trees. Rosh Hashana (September 6 in 2021) is the formal New Year holiday and celebrates the creation of humans.
[2] The Hebrew year ends after the harvest.
Contexts
Zionism was established as a political organization in 1897 under Theodor Herzl, and was later led by Chaim Weizmann. Jessie E. Sampter was American Zionism’s foremost educator during the time between WWI and WWII. She organized Hadassah’s School of Zionism, training young leaders for Zionist girls’ clubs and adult speakers for Hadassah and the general Zionist organizations, including the Federation of American Zionists. As a young woman from an assimilated Jewish family, Sampter became a spiritual seeker and eventually a passionate Zionist. She was also a pacifist and a poet, with a special interest in educating Jewish children. This poem was published in a collection of her poems for children, organized around the theme of the important events on the Jewish calendar, which is different than the one commonly used in the United States.
Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:
Zionism: Originally: a movement among Jewish people for the re-establishment of a Jewish nation in Palestine. Later: a movement for the development and protection of the state of Israel.
Hadassah: An American Zionist women’s organization, founded in 1912, which contributes to welfare work in Israel.
Definition from Dictionary.com:
Hadassah: a benevolent organization of Jewish women founded in New York City in 1912 by Henrietta Szold and concerned chiefly with bettering medical and educational facilities in Israel, forwarding Zionist activities in the U.S., and promoting world peace.
Learn more about the history of American women in the Zionist movement.
Contemporary Connections
Zionist issues continue to be polarizing throughout the world. Israel and Palestine are engaged in perpetual conflict that contributes to the political instability in the Middle East. Seeds of Peace is an organization with the goal of bringing students and educators from both sides of the conflict together. They believe that through education and dialogue new leaders will develop with shared goals and mutual respect. This brief video explains their philosophy and their mission.
Bauscher’s Seed & Plant Guide. Chromolithograph, 1899, Library of Congress.
As a quiet little seedling,
Lay within its darksome bed,
To itself it fell a-talking,[1]
And this is what it said:
"I am not so very robust,
But I'll do the best I can,"
And the seedling from that moment,
Its work of life began.
So it pushed a little leaflet,
Up into the light of day,
To examine the surroundings,
And show the rest the way.
The leaflet liked the prospect,
So it called its brother, Stem,
Then two other leaflets heard it.
And quickly followed them.
To be sure, the haste and hurry,
Made the seedling sweat and pant;
But almost before it knew it,
It found itself a plant.
The sunshine poured upon it,
And the clouds, they gave a shower;
And the little plant kept growing,
Till it found itself a flower.
Little folks, be like the seedling,
Always do the best you can,
Every child must share life's labor,
Just as well as every man.
And the sun and showers will help you,
Through the lonesome, struggling hours,
Till you raise to light and beauty,
Virtue's fair, unfading flowers.
Roger Williams University, Nashville, Tennessee, Academic Class. Photograph, 1899, Library of Congress.
DUNBAR, PAUL LAURENCE. “THE SEEDLING,” IN THE DUNBAR SPEAKER AND ENTERTAINER, ED. ALICE MOORE DUNBAR-NELSON, 19-20. NAPERVILLE, ILL: J. L. NICHOLS & CO., 1920.
[1] A-prefixing is a distinctive feature of Southern American White English, particularly Appalachian English. Scholars argue that it may have originated among settlers from southern England.
Contexts
The Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer‘s dedication reads: “To the children of the race which is herein celebrated, this book is dedicated, that they may read and learn about their own people.” In the foreword, Leslie Pinckney Hill, an African American educator, writer, and community leader who graduated from Harvard University in 1903, criticizes the one-sidedness of prevailing reading courses: “In vain may you search their pages—those pages upon which all our reading has been founded—for anything other than a patronizing view of that vast, brooding world of colored folk—yellow, black and brown—which comprises by far the largest portion of the human family.” Hill further writes that Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s book seeks to prove “that the white man has no fine quality, either by heart or mind, which is not shared by his black brother.”
Think of reading this poem out loud. Elocution (or public speaking) was a highly valued and widely taught skill in nineteenth-century America. In her introduction to the Dunbar Speaker, Alice Dunbar-Nelson offers some advice: “Before you begin to learn anything to recite, first read it over and find out if it fires you with enthusiasm. If it does, make it a part of yourself, put yourself in the place of the speaker whose words you are memorizing, get on fire with the thought, the sentiment, the emotion-then throw yourself into it in your endeavor to make others feel as you feel, see as you see, understand what you understand. Lose yourself, free yourself from physical consciousness, forget that those in front of you are a part of an audience, think of them as some persons whom you must make understand what is thrilling you–and you will be a great speaker.”
Resources for Further Study
The Library of Congress offers a set of primary sources that illustrate the reality of American children’s lives at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Blue Jay, from the Birds of America Series (N4) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes Brands. Commercial color lithograph, 1888, The Jefferson R. Burdick Collection, Gift of Jefferson R. Burdick. Public Domain.
It was a hot, sultry day in May and the children in the little school in Virginia were wearily waiting for the gong to free them from lessons for the day. Furtive glances were directed towards the clock. The call of the birds and fields was becoming more and more insistent. Would the hour never strike!
“The Planting of the Apple-tree” had no interest for them. Little attention was given the boy as he read in a sing-song, spiritless manner:
"What plant we in this apple-tree?
Buds, which the breath of summer days
Shall lengthen into leafy sprays;
Boughs where the thrush, with crimson breast,
Shall haunt and sing and hide her nest."[1]
The teacher, who had long since stopped trying to make the lesson interesting, found herself saying mechanically, “What other birds have their nests in the apple-tree?”
The boy shifted lazily from one foot to the other as he began, “The sparrow, the robin, and wrens, and—the snow-birds and blue-jays—”
“No, they don’t, blue-jays don’t have nests,” came the excited outburst from some of the children, much to the surprise of the teacher.[2]
When order was restored some of these brown-skinned children, who came from the heart of the Virginian mountains, told this legend of the blue-jay.
Long, long years ago, the devil came to buy the blue-jay’s soul, for which he first offered a beautiful golden ear of corn. This the blue-jay liked and wanted badly, but said, “No, I cannot take it in exchange for my soul.” Then the devil came again, this time with a bright red ear of corn which was even more lovely than the golden one.
This, too, the blue-jay refused. At last the devil came to offer him a wonderful blue ear. This one the blue-jay liked best of all, but still was unwilling to part with his soul. Then the devil hung it up in the nest, and the blue-jay found that it exactly matched his own brilliant feathers, and knew at once that he must have it. The bargain was quickly made. And now in payment for that one blue ear of corn each Friday the blue-jay must carry one grain of sand to the devil, and sometimes he gets back on Sunday, but oftener not until Monday.[3]
Very seriously the children added, “And all the bad people are going to burn until the blue-jays have carried all the grains of sand in the ocean to the devil.”
The teacher must have smiled a little at the legend, for the children cried out again, “It is so. ’Deed it is, for doesn’t the black spot on the blue-jay come because he gets his wings scorched, and he doesn’t have a nest like other birds.”
Then, to dispel any further doubts the teacher might have, they asked triumphantly, “You never saw a blue-jay on Friday, did you?”
There was no need to answer, for just then the gong sounded and the children trooped happily out to play.
School Children Before a Log Schoolhouse. Photograph, circa 1895, Library of Virginia Special Collections.
Fisher, Ruth Anna. “A Legend of the Blue Jay,” IN THE UPWARD PATH: A READER FOR COLORED CHILDREN, ED. MYRON T. PRITCHARD AND MARY WHITE OVINGTON, 218-19. HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, 1920.
[1] American nature poet and journalist William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) wrote “The Planting of the Apple-Tree,” a poem included in school readers like The Rand-McNally List of Selections in School Readers (1896) and Constructive English for the Higher Grades of the Grammar School (1915).
[2] Blue jays do build nests. However, according to the Audubon Society‘s website, they are very quiet and inconspicuous when around them.
Job, Herbert Keightley. Blue Jay Nesting, Kent, Connecticut. Lantern Slide, 1900, Trinity College Watkinson Library: Ornithology Lantern Slides.
[3] According to folktales and fables that circulated within enslaved communities in the antebellum American South, the blue jay was never seen on Fridays because on those days he was carrying sticks to the devil to pay his debt. In other stories, the bird acted as the devil’s helper or messenger. Some of these accounts appear in Ernest Ingersoll’s Birds in Legend, Fable and Folklore (1923), Martha Young’s Plantation Legends (1902), and others.
Contexts
This short story was included in The Upward Path: A Reader for Colored Children, published in 1920 and compiled by Myron T. Pritchard and Mary White Ovington. The volume’s foreword states that, “[t]o the present time, there has been no collection of stories and poems by Negro writers, which colored children could read with interest and pleasure and in which they could find a mirror of the traditions and aspirations of their race.”
Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:
sing-song: To utter or express in a monotonous chant.
Resources for Further Study
Brief essay posted in The Conversation about the role of African American folklore in the preservation of history and cultural memory.
An overview of education in Virginia from 1869 to the present helps contextualize the school where Fisher’s story takes place. For example, under the Jim Crow system of education, “[o]ften transportation was provided to white schools but not to black ones. White teachers earned more money than black teachers, and male teachers were paid more than female teachers.”
A defense of the blue jay, a bird that “birders love to hate.”
Mule Barometer. Color zinc engraving and fiber, 1906, Library of Congress.
Now if you wish to travel fast
I beg you not to fool
With locomotion that's procured
Behind a Georgia mule.[1]
When I was teaching school in the backwoods of Georgia I had, one day, to attend to some business in Mudville, an embryo city about eleven miles from my school. Now you must know that a country school teacher can do nothing without first consulting his Board of Trustees; so I notified that honorable body that there was some business of vast importance to be attended to, and asked them to meet me on Friday afternoon; they all promised to be on hand “two hours b’sun.”[2] Friday afternoon, after school was dismissed, they came in one by one until they had all gathered.
As the chairman called the meeting to order, he said: “Bredren, de objick ob dis meeting is to consider de ways ob pervidin de means ob transposing de ‘fessar to Mudville.”[3] Now, by the way, the chairman of the Board was undoubtedly intended by nature for a smart man. He had a very strong weakness for using big words in the wrong place, and thought it his special duty to impress the “’fessar” at all times with his knowledge of the dictionary. Well, after much debate it was finally decided that “Brudder” Whitesides would “furnish the mule” and “Brudder Jinks de buggy” and that I should start early the next morning.
The next morning I was up quite early, because I wished to start as soon as possible in order to avoid the heat of the day. I ate breakfast and waited—six o’clock, seven o’clock, eight o’clock—and still that promised beast had not put in appearance. Knowing the proclivity of the mule to meander along as his own sweet will dictates, especially when the sun shines hot, I began to despair of reaching Mudville at all that day; but “Brudder” Jinks, with whom I boarded, seeing my melancholy state of mind, offered to hitch up Gypsy, an antiquated specimen of the mule, whose general appearance was that of the skeleton of some prehistoric animal one sees in a museum.
I accepted this proposition with haste, and repented at leisure.
I could see a weary, long-suffering look in that mule’s eye, and I could imagine how his heart must have sought the vicinity of his tail, when they disturbed his dreams of green fields and pleasant pastures, and hitched him to an old buggy, to encounter the stern realities of a dusty road. “Verily, verily,” I soliloquized, “the way of the mule is hard.” But, putting aside all tender feelings, I jumped into the buggy and grasping a stick of quite ample proportions began to urge his muleship on his way.
Nothing of much consequence hampered our onward journey except the breaking down of three wheels and the excessive heat of the sun, which great luminary seemed not more than ninety-five miles away.
I arrived at Mudville sometime between 12 [P.?]M. and 6 P.M. After having finished my business and having bountifully fed my mule on water and what grass he could nibble from around his hitching post, I bought a large watermelon and started for home. Before I was out of sight of the town, I began to have serious misgivings about reaching home before a very late hour. In the morning by various admonitions and applications of the hickory, I had been able to get my mule into a jog trot, but on the homeward journey he would not even get up to a respectable walk. Well, we trudged on for two hours or more, when to my dismay he stopped,—stopped still. As the hour was getting late and it was growing dark, I began advising him—with the hickory—that it was best to proceed, but he seemed to have hardened his heart, and his back also, and paid me no heed. There I sat—all was as still as the grave, save for the dismal hoot of the screech-owl.[4] There I was, five and a half miles from home with no prospect of getting there.
I began to coax my mule with some words which perhaps are not in the Sabbath School books, and to emphasize them with the rising and falling inflection of the stick across his back; but still he moved not. Then all at once my conscience smote me. I thought perhaps the faithful beast might be sick. My mind reverted to Balaam, whose beast spoke to him when he had smitten him but three times and here I had smitten my beast about 3,333 times. I listened almost in expectation of hearing say, “Johnson, Johnson, why smites thou me 3,333 times?”[5]
I got out of the buggy and looked at the mule; he gazed at me with a sad far-away expression in his eye, which sent pangs of remorse to my heart. I thought of the cruel treatment I had given him, and on the impulse of the moment I went to the buggy, got out my large, luscious melon, burst it open and laid it on the ground before the poor animal; and I firmly resolved to be a friend of the mule ever after, and to join the Humane Society as soon as I reached Atlanta.[6]
As I watched that mule slowly munching away at my melon, I began to wonder if I had not acted a little too hastily in giving it to him, but I smothered that thought when I remembered the pledge I had just taken. When he had finished he looked around with a satisfied air which encouraged me; so I took hold of his bridle and after stroking him gently for a moment, attempted to lead him off. But he refused to be led. He looked at me from under his shabby eyebrows, but the sad, far-away expression had vanished and in its stead was a mischievous gleam, born of malice afore-thought.[7] I remonstrated with him, but it only seemed to confirm his convictions that it was right for him to stand there. I thought of my melon he had just devoured; then I grew wrathy, and right there and then renounce all my Humane Society resolutions, and began to shower down on that mule torrents of abuse and hickory also, but all to no effect. Instead of advancing he began to “revance.” I pulled on the bridle until my hands and arms were sore, but he only continued to back and pull me along with him. When I stopped pulling he stopped backing, and so things went on for the space of about half an hour.
I wondered what time was. Just then the moon began to rise, from which I knew it was about 9 o’clock. My physical exertion began to tell on me and I hungered. Oh, how I hungered for a piece of that watermelon! And I hit the mule an extra blow as a result of those longings.
I was now desperate. I sat down on the side of the road and groaned; that groan came from the depths of my soul, and I know that I presented a perfect picture of despair. However, I determined to gather all my remaining strength for one final effort; so I caressed him up and down the backbone two or three times as a sort of persuader, then grasping the bridle with both hands, I began to pull, pull as hard as I had never pulled before and as I never hope to pull again. And he began to back. I continued to pull and he continued to back.
How long this order of things might have gone on I do not know, but just then a brilliant idea struck me so forcibly as to come near knocking me down. I took the mule out, and by various tying, buckling and tangling, I hitched him up again, upside down, or wrong side out, or, well, I can’t exactly explain, but anyhow when I got through his tail pointed in the direction I wanted him to go. Then I got back in the buggy and taking hold of the bridle began to pull, and he began to back; and I continued to pull, and he continued to back; and will you believe me, that mule backed all the way home! It is true we did not travel very fast but every time he would slow down, I would put a little extra force into my pull and he would put a little extra speed into his back. Ever and anon he would glance at me with that mischievous, malicious twinkle, which seemed to say “I’ve got you tonight,” and I would smile back a quiet, self-satisfied smile and give an extra pull.
But when we got home, that mischievous, malicious twinkle changed, and he looked at me in a dazed sort of way and I smiled back quite audibly. And do you know, that mule has been in a dark brown study ever since.[8] He is trying to get through his slow brain how I managed to make him pull me home that night.
As I jumped out of the buggy the clock struck twelve. And there at that solemn hour of the night, as the pale moon shed her silvery beams all around and as the bright stars peeped down upon me from the ethereal blue, and the gentle zephyrs wafted to me the odor of a hog-pen in the near distance, I vowed a vow, an awful vow, that so long as I breathed the vital air, never, no, never again, would I attempt to drive a Georgia mule.
Muybridge, Eadweard. Animal Locomotion: Mule. Photograph, c1887, Library of Congress.
Johnson, James weldon. “behind A Georgia mule,” in the upward path: a reader for colored children, ed. myron t. pritchard and mary white ovington, 66-72. harcourt, brace and howe, 1920.
[1] Mules are the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse. They are mostly infertile.
[2] Perhaps “before sundown.”
[3] ‘fessar: i.e. professor.
[4] The Eastern Screech Owl is Georgia’s most common owl. This strictly nocturnal bird is often more heard than seen.
[5] Balaam is a non-Israelite prophet featured in the Bible’s Old Testament’s Book of Numbers. While riding his donkey on his way to Moab (modern Jordan), an angel that only his donkey could see blocked their way. When the animal refused to continue, Balaam beat it three times with a staff until the donkey addressed him and asked him why.
Anderson, Alexander. Balaam. Wood Engraving, 19th century, Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University, CT. Public Domain.
[6] Probably a reference to the American Humane Society, founded in 1877 to promote the humane treatment of children and animals.
[7] Premeditated; deliberate.
[8] A state of deep reverie or intense thought. The term “brown study” seems to have appeared first in the sixteenth century and came into regular usage in the nineteenth century.
Contexts
Weldon Johnson wrote this autobiographical piece during the Jim Crow Era, when Southern schools were racially segregated and extremely unequal. In addition to being a writer and an educator, Weldon Johnson was a civil rights activist and a leader of the NAACP.
Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:
coax: To influence or persuade by caresses, flattery, or blandishment.
ever and anon: Ever and again, every now and then; continually at intervals.
hamper: To obstruct the free movement of (a person or animal), by fastening something on, or by material obstacles or entanglements.
hickory: The wood of a North America hickory tree. Also, a stick or switch made of hickory (or sometimes another wood).
wrathy: Feeling, or inclined to, wrath; wrathful, very angry, incensed.
Photos accompanying story on “Little People of the Month,” The Brownies’ Book, January 1920. Left: Eugene Mars Martin. Middle: Lucile Spence. Right: Roderic Smith.
To Children, who with eager look
Scanned vainly library shelf and nook,
For History or Song or Story
That told of Colored Peoples’ glory,--
We dedicate The Brownies’ Book.
Fauset, Jessie. “Dedication.” The Brownies’ Book 1, no. 1 (January 1920): 32.
Contexts
When W. E. B. Du Bois began publishing The Brownies’ Book, the most prominent early twentieth-century publication aimed at African American children, he enlisted Jessie Fauset as the magazine’s literary editor. Fauset’s poem concludes the first page of poetry in the first issue; it reflects the absence of materials aimed at Black children during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period often called “the Golden Age of children’s writing.” In the United States, that period encompassed publications that included Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (1868-69) and L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), as well as bestselling magazines like St. Nicholas. The accompanying photo reflects the fact that World War I, in which many Black soldiers served—despite segregation in the military and terrible discrimination at home—had recently ended. Fauset’s poem reflects whimsically on the intellectual environment that children of color encountered everywhere they might “look.”
Beatitude, by Henriette Ronner-Knip, 1899. Public domain. Courtesy thegreatcat.org.
Louie! Louie! little dear!
Louie! Louie! Don’t you hear?
Don’t hold the cat up by her tail;
Its strength might of a sudden fail.
Then, oh, what a pity!
You would have a little kitty,
Wandering around all forlorn,
Of her pride and beauty shorn,
And not knowing what to do,
But to sit alone and mew;
For like a ship without a sail,
Would be a cat without a tail.
Cat sitting on a pillow. Henriette Ronner-Knip, 1904. Public domain. Courtesy thegreatcat.org.
Johnson, James Weldon.“The Tale of a Kitten.” The Brownies’ book 1, no. 1 (January 1920): 32.
Contexts
Johnson’s poem appeared in the first issue of the Brownies’ Book, joining poems by Georgia Douglas Johnson, William I. Wallace “(Aged twelve),” Robert Louis Stevenson, and the magazine’s poetry editor Jessie Fauset. World War I, in which many Black soldiers served—despite segregation in the military and terrible discrimination at home—had recently ended. Johnson was 48 years old when he published this poem, around the time he began serving as the NAACP’s (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Executive Secretary. Prominent in politics and the arts, he published Fifty Years & Other Poems in 1917, a collection for adults, three years before “The Tale of a Kitten” appeared. According to Rudolph P. Byrd, “From his father, James Johnson, born a freeman in 1830 in Richmond, Virginia, Johnson developed a love of reading. James Johnson gave his first-born a library comprised of children’s literature, which he kept until his death” (xvi).
Resources for Further Study
Byrd, Rudolph P., ed. The Essential Writings of James Weldon Johnson. New York: Modern Library, 2008. See Byrd’s introduction, xv-xvi.
Johnson authored “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” a song that became known as “the Negro National Anthem.” Its many contemporary contexts include Spike Lee’s 1989 film Do the Right Thing, Beyoncé concerts, and President Barak Obama’s inauguration in 2009.
