Excerpt from Uncle Remus and His Friends: Old Plantation Stories, Songs, and Ballads With Sketches of Negro Character A genial literary critic, of Boston, looking over the field of letters in this republic not many months ago, felt compelled to give utterance to a note of depression. What he saw was pleasing, perhaps, but not inspiring. The landscape appeared to be full of the impotent commotion that is seen in the neighborhood of ant-hills just before a shower. Small men were trying to play instruments much too large for them, while others were fiddling away with futile earnestness on one string. To crown all, Provinciality, with an amplitude at once motherly and American, spread her homespun frock over the scene. There was nothing new, nothing hopeful, and even those who had given signs of promise were returning to barren imitations of their early successes. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.