I am expected to supply a preface for this new edition of my
first book--to advance from behind the curtain, as it were, and
make a fresh bow to the public that has dealt with Uncle Remus in
so gentle and generous a fashion. For this event the lights are
to be rekindled, and I am expected to respond in some formal way
to an encore that marks the fifteenth anniversary of the book.
There have been other editions--how many I do not remember--but
this is to be an entirely new one, except as to the matter: new
type, new pictures, and new binding.
But, as frequently happens on such occasions, I am at a loss for
a word. I seem to see before me the smiling faces of thousands of
children--some young and fresh, and some wearing the friendly
marks of age, but all children at heart--and not an unfriendly
face among them. And out of the confusion, and while I am trying
hard to speak the right word, I seem to hear a voice lifted above
the rest, saying "You have made some of us happy." And so I feel
my heart fluttering and my lips trembling, and I have to how
silently and him away, and hurry back into the obscurity that
fits me best.
Phantoms! Children of dreams! True, my dear Frost; but if you
could see the thousands of letters that have come to me from far
and near, and all fresh from the hearts and hands of children,
and from men and women who have not forgotten how to be children,
you would not wonder at the dream. And such a dream can do no
harm. Insubstantial though it may be, I would not at this hour
exchange it for all the fame won by my mightier brethren of the
pen--whom I most humbly salute.
Measured by the material developments that have compressed
years of experience into the space of a day, thus increasing the
possibilities of life, if not its beauty, fifteen years
constitute the old age of a book. Such a survival might almost be
said to be due to a tiny sluice of green sap under the gray bark.
where it lies in the matter of this book, or what its source if,
indeed, it be really there--is more of a mystery to my middle age
than it was to my prime.
But it would be no mystery at all if this new edition were to be
more popular than the old one. Do you know why? Because you
have taken it under your hand and made it yours. Because you have
breathed the breath of life into these amiable brethren of wood
and field. Because, by a stroke here and a touch there, you have
conveyed into their quaint antics the illumination of your own
inimitable humor, which is as true to our sun and soil as it is
to the spirit and essence of the matter set forth.
The book was mine, but now you have made it yours, both sap and
pith. Take it, therefore, my dear Frost, and believe me,
faithfully yours,