a minor position in the Library of Congress at Washington, D. C. Although Dunbar wrote several volumes of short stories and two novels, he is most at home in his verse. And even here, his best work is not those straight, "literary English" pieces by which he set such store, but the racy rhymes written in negro dialect, alternately tender and mocking. Dunbar's first collection, Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896), contains many of his most characteristic poems. In an introduction, in which mention was made of the octoroon Dumas and the great Russian poet Pushkin, who was a mulatto, William Dean Howells wrote, "So far as I could remember, Paul Dunbar was the only man of pure African blood and of American civilization to feel the negro life æsthetically and express it lyrically. . . His brilliant and unique achievement was to have studied the American negro objectively, and to have represented him as he found him-with humor, with sympathy, and yet with what the reader must instinctively feel to be entire truthfulness." Lyrics of the Hearthside (1899) and Lyrics of Love and Laughter (1903) are two other volumes full of folk-stuff. And though the final Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow (1905) is less original, being crowded with echoes of all kinds of poetry from the songs of Robert Burns to the childhood rhymes of J. W. Riley, it contains a few of Dunbar's least-known but keenest interpretations. Dunbar died in the city of his birth, Dayton, Ohio, February 10, 1906. THE TURNING OF THE BABIES IN THE BED1 Woman's sho' a cur'ous critter, an' dey ain't no doubtin' dat. She's a mess o' funny capahs f'om huh slippahs to huh hat. 1 From Lyrics of Love and Laughter. Copyright, 1903, by Dodd, Mead & Company. Ef yo' tries to un'erstan' huh, an' yo' fails, des' up an' say: “D' ain't a bit o' use to try to un'erstan' a woman's way." I don' mean to be complainin', but I's jes' a-settin' down In de ve'y hea't o' midnight, w'en I's sleepin' good an' soun', I kin hyeah a so't o' rustlin' an' somebody movin' 'roun'. An' I say, "Lize, whut yo' doin'?" But she frown. an' shek huh haid, Hesh yo' mouf, I's only tu'nin' of de chillun in de bed. "Don' yo' know a chile gits restless, layin' all de night one way? An' yo' got to kind o' 'range him sev'al times befo' de day? So de little necks won't worry, an' de little backs won't break; Don' yo' t'ink 'cause chillun's chillun dey haint got no pain an' ache." So she shakes 'em, an' she twists 'em, an' she tu'ns 'em 'roun' erbout, 'Twell I don' see how de chillun evah keeps f'om hollahin' out. Den she lif's 'em up head down'ards, so's dey won't git livah-grown, But dey snoozes des' ez peaceful ez a liza'd on a stone. W'en hit's mos' nigh time fu' wakin' on de dawn o' jedgement day, Seems lak I kin hyeah ol' Gab'iel lay his trumpet down 66 an' say, 'Who dat walkin' 'roun' so easy, down on earf ermong 'T will be Lizy up a-tu'nin' of de chillun in de bed. A COQUETTE CONQUERED 1 Yes, my ha't's ez ha'd ez stone— Phiny loves you true an' deah? Got a present! Whut you got? Huh! Yo' sass do sholy beat Think I don't git 'nough to eat? 1 From Lyrics of Lowly Life. Copyright, 1896, by Dodd, Mead & Company. Whut's dat un'neaf yo' coat? 'Tain't no possum? Bless de Lamb! Gin it to me; whut you say? Ain't you sma't now! Oh, go 'way! Tell me, is you talkin' true, Guess you thought you's awful keen; Nevah min', Miss Lucy. Evahthing you done, I seen; Nevah min', Miss Lucy. 1 From Lyrics of Lowly Life. Copyright, 1896, by Dodd, Mead & Company. Seen him tek yo' ahm jes' so, Say now, honey, wha'd he say?— Won't tell me an' I'm yo' pal! Guy Wetmore Carryl Guy Wetmore Carryl, son of Charles Edward Carryl (see page 34), was born in New York City, March 4, 1873. He graduated from Columbia University in 1895, was editor of Munsey's Magazine, 1895-6, and, during the time he lived abroad (from 1897 to 1902), was the foreign representative of various American publications. As a writer of prose he was received with no little acclaim; his stories The Transgression of Andrew Vane (1902) and Zut and Other Parisians (1903) held the attention of a restless reading public. But it was as a writer of light verse that Carryl was preeminent. Inheriting a remarkable technical gift from his father, young Carryl soon surpassed him as well as all other rivals in the field of brilliantly rhymed, brilliantly turned burlesques. Although he wrote several serious poems (the best of which have been collected in the posthumously published The Garden of Years, 1904), Carryl's most characteristic work is to be found in his perversions of the parables of Æsop, |