Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 18.djvu/277

 The Women of the South. 277

ris, J. W. Morris, F. P. Morrison, S. Maupin, D. R. Mahone, H. P. Moore, C. W. Mahone, J. H. Mahone, H. L. McCandlish, R. Owens, B. F. Piggott, J. T, Parham, B. H. Ratcliffe, J. Ratcliffe, C. H. Richardson, L. P. Slater, J. Simcoe, S. Simcoe, M. Spraggins, R. B. Shelburne, I. Smith, Talbot Sweeney, F. R. Sykes, L. Taylor, R. P. Taylor, William Vaughan, T. H. Whiting, J. T. H. Wilkins, J. B. Wilkins, William Wilkins, A. L. Williamson,]. M. Walthall, and W. H. Yerby.

Markers : B. W. Bowry and J. M. Maupin.

THE WOMEN OF THE SOUTH.

BY JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS.

Southern women have been heretofore referred only to the standards of fiction.

There are three pieces oi fiction that have had a long and popular run in what may be described in a large way as the North American mind. One is that the stage representation of negro character are true to life ; another is that the poor white trash of the South are utterly worthless and thriftless; and the other is that the white women of the South lived in a state of idleness during the days of slavery, swinging and languishing in hammocks, while bevies of pickaninnies cooled the tropical air with long-handled fans made of peacock tails.

Preposterous as they are, age has made these fictions respectable, especially in the North. They strut about in good company, and sometimes a sober historian goes so far as to employ them for the pur pose of bolstering up his sectional theories, or, what is still worse, his prejudices.

I do not know that these fictions are important, or that they are even interesting. If there was an explosion every time truth was outrun by his notorious competitor, the man who sleeps late of a morning would wake with a snort and imagine that the universe was the victim of a fierce and prolonged bombardment.