The age-herald., 1901-12-08
BY CAMPBELL CORY.

Alabama has not been so prolific of books that new one. native to the soil, fails to waken a wide and profound in terest and arouse keenly the feeling of local pride So this Is written in frank praise, not in discriminating criticism, of Miss Martha Youngs first book, Plantation Songs," recently issued by Mr. R. H. Russell, the New York pub fisher who understands so we'll the art of placing literature before the public with all the embellishments which the art of printing can contribute. The authors pseudonym, "Eli Shepperd," over which she has made her fame as writer of dialect, is on the title page. The book is striking in Its artistic style, its cover, it's paper, it's whole execution being cost ly to seeming extravagance. Yet only ing daintiness. the polished niceness, the fine artistic touch that has been given to the lines within.
 I think no picture of Miss Young has before appeared in any public print. The one sent herewith is genuinely truthful likeness, and beneath it's loveliness shines forth for these who know her we'll some beams of that enthusiasm which is so en- gazing a trait of her character. As every one knows, she lives in Greensboro, was born and bred there in the heart of the Alabama Black Belt, and in that precise portion, too, where the old plantation system has undergone the least changes. often note In the speech of those Vest ern Alabarnians a certain kindliness and sympathy of tone toward the negro. an absence of complaining, a cheeriness of view which has utterly departed from us here in Montgomery these dozen years or more. She lives and observes in a region where the housemaid and the field hand are still themes for anecdote rather than problems for serious discussion. In her pen pictures friendly touch Is every where, a laughing appreciation of the ne- gro. not only as he was, but as he is.
 
 This book ought to be near and dear to Alabamians, for 1t comes springing fresh and sweet from the Alabama soil the canebreak soil. The reader has no need to ask where the author lives or what life she protrays, for that is in the book itself, whose local touches are de- finitive. Before coming to the dialect let us give Miss Youngs description of the land she lives in, as true as it is po- etic:
 So through the fields where cotton grows, Striped by the corn in even rows, The dusky lovers take their way Beneath the gray wings of new day. They pass great cotton-woods whose
 leaves
 Clap like glad hands, pass the low caves Of some bare lonely cabin home, Across the new-ploughed, sooty loam Down the white road whose limestone
 bluff
 Is gay with ''nigger heads of buff; Where vines of wild potato blooms Hang down the banks dropped, snowy
 plumes,
 White meliilotus fills the air
 With perfume aromatic, rare: And thousand bees are lowering OCT Those blossoms rich with crystal store Of honeys sweet as those that fill The flowers of Hymettus Hill; Across the bridges meath which gleam The ripples of the bored-wells stream: Afar. anear-the pleasant splash, Artesian waters downward dash A million fountains whose clear gush Makes Alabama's Black Belt lush. The morning star still shines apace Ere the broad sun lifts his face; The hedges are astir with birds; Afar they hear the lowing herds; The eternal praire breeze blow The purple hazes to and froi