The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-07-01

ITS all an accident that any of us
 ever got to know about Uncle Remus, Brer Rabbit, Br'er Fox, the Tar Baby and all the rest of that delight ful crew. Leastwise. that is what Uncle Remus' best friends says, and he surely ought to know.
 Where is there q growing boy or girl or grown boy or girl. for that matter. who does not know the name of Encle Remus' best friends It's Joel Chand- ter Harris, of course; and the story of the accident that has made all of us more CT less intimate friends of Uncle Remus. and Uncle Remus best friend, goes back to a day some months be- fore the civil war when q small, red headed, freckled, blue-eyed boy, curled up on a dilapidated green sofa in the postmaster's office in little Eatonton, Georgia. and deeply engrossed in boring over the columns of newspapers placed in his hands by the friendly official md his attention arrested by an insignificant advertisement tucked away In the cor ner of page Boy wanted 10 learn the printers trade" 1t announced, and closed with the name and address of tine ad- vertiser
 Joel Chandler Harris was then F years old and as shy as a partridge but his mind was fired with the idea of going to work especially as he knew that his mother needed help. So in great fear and trembling, he wrote out his applca- ton and mailed it to the advertiser. Joseph A. Turner. wealthy planter iiv- ing nine miles frem I1atonton. MT Tur- ner had determined to begin the publtca- ton of a weekly paper. It was to be call ed the Countryman and modelled after the papers of Addison, Goldsmith and John son.
 With no idea that his letter would get him the place. the boy had really numbered the days he was still to add to the years he had spent on the old green sofa eagerly devouring the gran dilokuent editorial discussions of the fed eral Union. the Union, the Recorder and the other papers that were loaned him. Great was his surprise. therefore. when one day Mi. Turner himself drove into town for him and took him back, em- ployed.
 Here, during the next six years. Joel Chandler Harris learned to become d good printer But he learned great deal more than that. Hour after hour he sat in his employers library fami.iarizng himself with the thoughts and styles ot the classical authors of all times. rms was after MT. Turner, who edited his own paper discovered that various para graphs which had crept into the paper without his knowledge had been written by his youthful employe. to whom then was thrown open the written fore ol the ages. al
 But. keen as was the lad to be in the company of these master thinkers and writers what pleased him most was the great big outdoors all about him. He roamed the woods, and, obserVant De- yond his years, it's secrets were re yealed to- him. He made fast friends with horses and dogs, the birds and all living creatures that he could approach or that would approach him. Above all his fancy was ever stirred, his sense of the humorous tickled by the quaint, and equally quaintly told stories that were to be heard around the cabin fires of the plantation negroes So that when the Countryman failed the year after the war. and it became necessary Tor nm to seek employment elsewhere Joel Chand- Ter Harris was ''chock full, so to speak, of ante-bellum negro folk lore and the ways of many of natures creatures, Brer Rabbit, Brer~Fox and all the rest. The young printers first employment after leaving the home of his patron was in Macon, Ga. Next he was private sec retary to the editor of the Crescent Monthly, which was published in New Orleans. Before it failed he wrote some sketches and para graphs for it, after it's death he became general factotum of the Forsyth (Ga) Advertiser. The humor in