Oddities in Southern Life and Character (Paperback)

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1910. Excerpt: ... DUKESBOROUGH TALES. Why it is I know not, but certain it is that Georgia, which is made the scene of so much of the humor of the South, has furnished a very large proportion of the humorists themselves. The author of " Dukesborough Tales" is a native Georgian, and, although he is but just coming into the general notice of the public, that original volume made its appearance nearly ten years ago. It deserved prompter and more cordial recognition. The sketches of which it is composed are redolent of the rusticity of the South. They breathe the very life of the village, and present us a series of characters both new and naive, but whimsically true to the quaint, simple, serio-comic existence, that, like a country stream, ran through Dixieland during the years preceding the great war, which, a mere episode in the one section of the Union, was a " deluge" to the other section. Richard M. Johnston, the author of these "tales," was in the old time Professor of Belles Lettres in the University of Georgia. It does not appear, however, that in those days he applied his brilliantly descriptive talents to more than a passing anecdote. He is described by a recent writer in a Georgia newspaper as a great social favorite. "Dick Johnston, as he was called," says this writer, "a familiarly welcomed comer in every household in middle Georgia, not only drilled them in classic lore, but taught them manners, --that is, how to behave at home and abroad, how to be mindful of the feelings and charitable of the frailties of others, -- and polished them off with the polite arts of the drawing-room, and the important lesson of knowing how to preside at the head of a table and carve a turkey without scattering the joints on the floor and splashing the dressing upon the clothes of the guests." And, pursuing the...