The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-02-21
An1usenrents
PoIk slIller.s Lecture.

< For two hours at the Grand last night Polk Miller led his audiencs among the scenes of that vanished land "The Old south." and sang the songs that have preserved the sentiment of that rare period which will return no more.
 MT. Miller was presented by Rev.
 Henry M. Edmonds as "the man who brings the past up to the present" And
 that he did, most excellently. Mir. Mii-
 Ter is to the manner born. On a Vir-
 ginia plantation he Is like McGregor
 when his foot was on his native heath.
 The earliest music he knew was the
 twang Of the ban1o. and he never knew
 the members of his own family potter
 than he did his play mates down tn de
 quarter" No man on Southern plan
 tation ever loses the memory of the
 fun. the music and the delight of plan
 tation life. Mr. Miller, more fortunate
 than the others. is able to voice that
 memory, to translate 1t into song and
 story. and to recall to those who knew
 the old life. its brightness, and Its
 charm.
 The old time negro is passing with
 the old "quarters.' the old rail fence
 and the old wooden gin-house. The
 plantation houses are either burned or
 they are empty of that glory which
 once they knew so well. And the old-
 time southerner is passing with his negroes and his house.
 It is well for this generation that .
 man of Mir. Miller's talents and senti- ment goes back and forth telling the story of the golden era, which is alive now only in song and story Of all who, have essayed to tell the story or sing the song Mir. Miller Is, perhaps, best qualified for the task. He was old enough to be a soldier in the Con. h. xss Az A his plantation boyh ood was early enough to have been spent when the glory of ante-bellum life was at It's height.
 It is his pleasure now to take his banjo and yitaiIse the music of the ne- gro; not the rag-time hybrid of today. which is neither of the negro nor of | the white man, but the tender. beautiful and almost barbaric music which be- 1 longs to the negro and to no other race, and which, somehow, seems to l hark back to the African days of his | race. He has caught, too. that weird l note of mystieism In the negro's char | acter. that superstition which is strong ! CT than hts religion. l The negro's apt and wonderful in- vention of expression, his turn of an | idea. peculiar to himself--his numerous | view of all that concerns hiu--all these | Mir. Miller has caught and embalmed tn | the entertainment which he gives sc | simply and 70 foreibly. His audience listened to him two hours last night. n 1 was astonished when 1t learned how I long he had been talking and singing Mir. Miller loves the banjo and he taught l his hearers to love 1t. He ia convinced | that in few years true banjo music l will be dead and this thought grIeves him. He Illustrated the old plantation | music. the songs that used to float ovei | the cotton felds or rise beautifully al I night from the quarters. He iliustrat. | ed these and the younger portion oi | the audience learned something O, I their beauty. 1 He told, with some pathos, of tn. tender and conhdlng relations that OK, isted between whites and blacks of th, | old order and sighed that such an uu. | derstanding between the races wa, gone forever. He paid. and he did wei in doing %. his tribute to Irvine Rus l sell. the Misaissippi genius. who first even before Joel Chandler Harris ans
 Thomas Nelson Page. wrote of the ne | gro and from the negro's queer view O
 the world. All in all Mfr. Miller's audi
 ence was hugely pleased with the tw, | hours entertainment. ss q