UNCLE REMUS ADDRESSES BROTHER WIND Copyright by Uncle Remus's Magazine. By permission of the publishers. Brer Wind, please stop yo' prankin', You keer no mo' fer Chris'mus Dan a mule in a patch er rye! De country roun' we panted— You could hear de babies cry— De Breeze you sont wuz feeble, He couldn't do mo' dan sigh, An' when we wanter cool off, Now, whiles youer here, please tell me You stayed 'way all de summer, So please des stop yo' capers, I never did like sech doin's, An' dis is de reason why: I'd heap ruther tol' you howdye De 9 er last July! It's gittin' close to Chris'mus, 'Way off ter de Bye-an'-Bye, Youer roarin' up de chimbleys, De chillun got de shivers, Dey dunner how er why; You make um think of ghostes Ez fur ez de birds an' furder, No wonder you cough an' cry; Ef you'd 'a' been lyin' off some'rs Kaze all de green wuz a-wiltin', An' de gyarden groun' wuz dry; Er I'll know de reason why!" Brer Wind, please stop an' lissen, Under de wide blue sky! MR. BILLY SANDERS, OF SHADY DALE HE VISITS THE WHITE HOUSE Copyright by Uncle Remus's Magazine. By permission of the publishers. "I LAID off to git here while the great North American Squeeze was screwed up to the tightest notch," remarked Mr. Billy Sanders, as he dusted the bottom of a chair with his coat-tails, "but as luck would have it, I had to go to Washin❜ton for to see ef I couldn't git a foreign office for one of Jeff Doolittle's mother-in-law's cousins. This cousin aint in a happy frame of mind when he has a couple of drams too much, an' he's wuss off when he lacks a couple, an' Jeff an' his folks is keen for to git him out'n the country. They don't want to have him in the house when prohibition begins to lay its cold an' clammy hands on private bottles. So Jeff paid my way as best he could, though I'll not deny that we had all sorts of a time in pullin' the money loose from the great North American Squeeze. We changed cle'rin'-house checks for cle'rin'-house silver, an' it was as much as two niggers could do to take my carpet-bag to the station, an' arter I got there, it was as much as I could do to git the dad-blamed train for to take up its line of march to the capital of our common country-an' you never will know how common it is until you go over it a time or two. "What you wanter do,' says Jeff, in a fog-horn whisper, 'is to find out ef some of them foreign offices aint next-door to a brewery; ef so, that's the place I want my mother-inlaw's cousin to have, bekaze I don't want the jimmies to git holt of him all of a sudden.' "All I could do was to hold my breath an' promise as hard as I could, an' so I mounted the pantin' train, an' keyed myself up for to be whirled through space at the rate of fifty mile an hour. I went to bed in a hot berth, an' atter sleepin' as I thought, forty-eight hours, I waked up on time, wiped the dust from my rosy face, an' looked out. You mayn't believe it, but, standin' by the window, wi' the same grin on his face, was the nigger I thought I had left in Atlanta the night before. He ketched a glimpse of me, an' opened his mouth so wide that you could 'a' rolled a wheel-barrer into his interior department. He was a Shady Dale nigger, an' he know'd me. He holler'd out, 'Howdy, Mr. Sanders! Fum de way you got on dat train yistiddy, I 'lowed you was gwine some'rs!' I called the porter an' found out that the train hadn't moved a inch from whar I took it in sech a hurry. Now, up here in Atlanta, you may call this travelin', but down our way, we call it somethin' else, an' tack on a few words that never do look well in print; they sound like they've been drove in wi' a wedge. "Things bein' what they was I laid back an' begun for to ruminate on the great North American Squeeze. Ef you aint a mighty good guesser, you never will know the ginnywine occasion of it. Fust an' fo'most, Teddy Roosevelt had to be biffed; he had been botherin' the trusts an' corporations, owned by the Wall Street magnets an' mugnets, an' it was about time for 'em to hit back. Then, ag'in, the South's been a-gittin' so dad-blamed prosperous that the fellers that control the country through the banks was kinder gittin' skeer'd; they jest couldn't stand it. When our editors an' big men begin for to git the swell-head, the magnets an' mugnets tip the wink to the banks an' all the concerns that roost in the same barn, an' then all on 'em begin for to call in the'r loans, an' draw the thick fog of usury around ever'thing an' ever'body. The fog spreads an' gits thicker, an' when it's at its thickest, the banks are takin' what they call the'r legitimate profits. Currency goes to a premium, an' the buzzards sun the'r wings in the top of the tallest trees. In this whirl they got a good many things they wanted, including the Tennessee Coal, Iron an' Railway Company. But this is one of the times when the magnets an' mugnets went a leetle wide of the mark; they flung at Teddy, an' hit the whole country in the neighborhood of the gizzard; they flung too fur an' free. The'r whole scheme slipped between the'r legs an' took to the woods, an' they've had a mighty time tryin' for to gether up the loose eends. They skeered ever'body an' hurt nobody, an' Teddy is more populous wi' sensible folks than he has ever been. I take notice that some of the big newspapers that depend on Wall Street for their payroll are tryin' for to lay the blame of the whole thing on the President, an' as I lay in my palatial but stuffy berth, I was reminded of the trouble that Jim Blaisdell got into wi' the weather man. Didn't you never hear about it? Why, down our way, it's what you liter'y fellers call a classic. One time, six or seven years ago, the weather man got word that a cyclone was headin' for Jim's neighborhood, an' he sent out all sorts of warnin's to the infected deestrick, tellin' them to take to the'r cyclone pits an' keep the'r heads kivver'd ontell the wust had come to the wust. "Now, Jim Blaisdell is a smart Aleck; he's got the idee that he kin manage anything that's got motion; an' so he sot down an' writ the weather man a note, tellin' him for to fetch on his cyclone. The man never got the note, bekaze, by the time Jim had finished it, his wife holler'd an' tol' him to run out in the yard an' look at the funny shaped cloud that was b'ilin' up in the southwest. Jim run an' looked, an' said it wa'n't nothin' but the weather man's cyclone. Then he tuck out his hankcher for to wipe his manly brow, an' that's all he remembered for a consider'ble spell. The cyclone ketched him up by his galluses an' flung him |