Page:Southern Life in Southern Literature.djvu/534

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ESSAYISTS AND DESCRIPTIVE WRITERS

The literary development of the new South has not produced notable writers of essays, if the term be taken in the narrower sense. But this is no disparagement to Southern writers. The essay characterized by a personal, confidential attitude of the writers toward their subjects and their readers and by an informal, familiar style what is commonly called the familiar essay is a rare form that few in English or Ameri can literature seem able to do well. If the term be extended in scope to include the short article discussing in a systematic way some topic of literary, historical, or social interest, the large number of such arti cles by Southern writers in the various magazines and reviews give the South a respectable showing in this phase of literary activity. The saving of space has required that the representatives in this field selected for this volume be confined to a very small number.

SUSAN DABNEY SMEDES

This selection is from Mrs. Smedes s "Memorials of a Southern Planter," a book which may be regarded as a series of essays. In this book she endeavored to give a faithful picture of her father, Thomas S. Dabney. He was born in Virginia in 1798, but in early manhood he moved to Mississippi and bought in Hinds County an extensive plantation which he called "Burleigh." At the close of the war he found himself impoverished. A SOUTHERN PLANTER S IDEALS OF HONOR (PAGE 373)

QUESTION. In what ideals does Thomas Dabney seem typical of the

Southern planter of the old South?

BASIL LANNEAU GILDERSLEEVE

THE CREED OF THE OLD SOUTH (PAGE 377)

Of the article from which the selection here given is taken, Mr. Wil liam Archer, an English critic, has written in his "America To-day " as follows: "I met a scholar-soldier in the South who had given expres sion to the sentiment of his race and generation in an essay one might almost say an elegy so chivalrous in spirit and so fine in liter ary form that it moved me well-nigh to tears. Reading it at a public