In that charming and dainty series of books published under the captivating title of “Fiction, Fact and Fancy,” and edited by the gifted son of the prince of American literary critics, there is a volume with the companionable name of Billy Downs. It is as follows that Mr. Stedman introduces the creator of Billy Downs and a host of other characters, mostly types of Middle Georgia life, that shall live with the language. “So we reach the tenth milestone of our ramble, and while we are resting by the wayside let us hail the gentleman who is approaching and ask him for ‘another story.’ We who have heard him before know that he seldom fails to respond to such a request, and always, too, in a manner quite inimitable. As he comes nearer you may observe the dignified, yet courteous and kindly bearing of a gentleman of the old school. The white hair and moustache, the sober dress, betoken the veteran, although they are almost contradicted by eyes and an innate youthfulness in word and thought. It is not difficult to recognize in Colonel Richard Malcolm Johnston the founder of a school of fiction and the dean of Southern men of letters.” The Colonel is the founder of a school of fiction, if by that school, we understand those, who are depicting for us the Georgia life of the ante-bellum days. In no otherwise can we assent to Mr. Stedman’s phrase. For American critics to claim the dialect school of fiction as their own in origin, is on a par with their other critical achievements. Dialect was born a long time before Columbus took his way westward. The first wave of mankind leaving the parent stock, in their efforts to survive, carried with them the germ of dialect. Fiction in its portrayal of men and manners of a given period, was bound to reproduce it faithfully—the very least to give us a semblance of that life. This could not be done in many instances without the use of dialect. To do so were to deprive the portraiture of individuality.

Fiction produced on such lines would be worthless. Of late there has been much cavil against dialect writers. This cavil, strange to say, emanates from the Realists.

They lay down the absurd code, that Art is purely imitative. She plays but a monkey part. Her sole duty is to depict life, paying leading attention to the portrayal of corns, bunions, and other horny excrescences, that so often accompany her. Realists will not be persuaded that such excrescences are abnormal. From a jaundiced introspection of their own little life, they frame canons of criticism to guide the world. With these congenial canons lying before them, one is astonished, if such a phrase may be used in the recent light of that school’s pyrotechnic display, that they can condemn dialect. Granted, for the sake of argument, that Art is merely imitative, will not the first duty of the novelist be to reproduce the exact language, and that when done by the master-hand of a Johnston carries with it not only the speaker’s tone, but the power of producing a mental image of the speaker—the very acme of the Realists’ school? To paint a Georgia cracker speaking the ordinary Boston-English would be like crowning the noble brow of a South Sea native with a tall Boston beaver. The effort would be unartistic, the effect ludicrous. Colonel Johnston believes in the imitativeness of Art, to the extent of reproducing for us the peculiar dialect of Middle Georgia. He has informed us that there is not a phrase in his novels that he has not heard amid the scenes of his stories. To reproduce these is a distinct triumph of the novelist’s art, but the Colonel has done more; into his every character has he breathed a soul. His figures are not the automaton skeletons of the Realists, but living men and women who have earnestly played life on the circumscribed stage of Middle Georgia.

This life is fast passing away. Prof. Shaler, a competent authority, tells us: “At present the strong tide of modernism is sweeping over the old slave-holding States with a force which is certain to clear away a greater part of the archaic motives which so long held place in the minds of the people. With the death of this generation, which saw the rebellion, the ancient regime will disappear.” It can never be lost as long as the novels of Malcolm Johnston are extant. There, in days to come, by the cheery ingle-nook, will a new generation live over in his delightful pages the curious life of Georgia. Cuvier asked for a bone to construct his skeleton. The readers of the Dukesborough tales, Billy Downs, etc., will not only have the skeleton, but live men and women preserved for them by the novelist’s elixir. He has known his country and kept close to mother earth, having in his mind that “no language, after it has faded into diction, none that cannot suck up feeding juices secreted for it in the rich mother earth of common folk, can bring forth a sound and lusty book. True vigor and heartiness of phrase do not pass from page to page, but from man to man.... There is death in the dictionary.” That the Colonel’s language has sucked up feeding juices secreted for it in the rich mother earth of common folk will be seen on every page. Let us take at random the communication of Jones Kendrick to his cousin Simeon Newsome, as to S’phrony Miller. Sim is a farmer lad overshadowed by the overpowering “dictionary use” of his Cousin Kendrick. Sim has gone a-wooin’ S’phrony. Kendrick hearing of this and urged by his mother and sister, comes to the conclusion that he would like to have S’phrony himself. This important fact he admits to Cousin Sim in the following choice morsel: Sim is overseeing his hands on the plantation; Kendrick approaches and is met by Sim. Kendrick speaks:

“Ma and sister Maria have been for some time specified. They have both been going on to me about S’phrony Miller in a way and to an extent that in some circumstances might be called obstropolus, and to quiet their conscience I’ve begun a kind of a visitation over there, and my mind has arriv at the conclusion that she’s a good, nice piece of flesh, to use the expressions of a man of the world, and society. What do you think, Sim, of the matter under consideration, and what would you advise? I like to have your advice sometimes, and I’d like to know what it would be under all circumstances and appearances of a case which, as it stands, it seems to have, and it isn’t worth while to conceal the fact that it does have, a tremendous amount of immense responsibility to all parties, especially to the undersigned, referring as is well known in books and newspaper advertisements to myself. What would you say to the above, Sim, in all its parts and parties?” It may interest the reader to know that Sim acquiesced “in all its parts and parties,” and that S’phrony became Mrs. Kendrick, while Sim took another mate. Of further interest to the imaginative young woman is the fact, that Mrs. Newsome and Mr. Kendrick perishing a few years later by some sort of quasi-involuntary but always friendly movements, executed in a comparatively brief time, S’phrony and Sim became one. In calling Johnston the dean of Southern men of letters, Stedman does not define his position. Page, the creator of Marse Chan, and one of the most talented of Southern dialect writers, negatively does so. In an article that has literary smack, but lacks critical perception, he rates him below Miss Murfree, James Lane Allen, and Cable. These three writers Page places at the head of Southern writers of fiction. Critics nowadays will adduce no proof; they simply affirm. The text of this discrimination should be the exactness of the character drawing, the life-like reproduction of environments, and the expertness of the dialect as a vehicle to convey the local flavor. It will hardly be gainsaid that Johnston knows his Georgia no less than Cable knows Louisiana. Johnston is a native of Georgia; the time of life most susceptible to local impressions was spent there. Cable’s boyhood was otherwise. It will not be thought of that in the painting of Creole life, Cable has excelled the painter of Georgia life. In the handling of dialect, Johnston and Harris touch the high water mark of Southern fiction. It was an old critical dictum that an author to succeed must be in sympathy with his subject; this may be affirmed of Johnston. It is otherwise with Cable, and especially with Lane, whose Kentucky pictures are often caricatures. Cable poses as the friend of the colored man. His pose is dramatic. It lends a charm to his New England recitations. We have a great love for champions of every kind. The most of Mr. Cable’s pages deal with Creole life, and for that life he has no sympathy. He paints it as essentially pagan, albeit it was essentially Catholic. A padre makes him sniff the air and paw ungraciously. The ceremonies of the church are so many pagan rites. Cable belongs to the school that contemns what it does not understand. His pictures of Creole life are untrue, and much as they were in vogue some years ago, are passing to the bourne of the forgotten. Johnston, although a living Catholic, fond of his church, and wedded to her every belief, draws an itinerant preacher of the Methodists with as much enthusiasm and sympathy as he would the clergy of his own church. He has no dislikes, nothing that is of man but interests this sunny-hearted romancer of the old South.

Strange as it may seem, the knowledge of his wonderful power of story-telling came late and in an accidental way. It is best described in his own words. “Story-writing,” said the Colonel, “is the last thing for me in literature. I had published two or three volumes on English literature, and in conjunction with a friend had written a life of Alexander Stephens, and also a book on American and European literature, but had no idea of story-writing for money. Two or three stories of mine had found their way into the papers before I left Georgia. I had been a professor of English literature in Georgia, but during the war I took a school of boys. I removed to Baltimore and took forty boys with me and continued my school. There was in Baltimore, in 1870, a periodical called the Southern Magazine. The first nine of my Dukesborough Tales were contributed to that magazine. These fell into the hands of the editor of Harper’s Magazine, who asked me what I got for them. I said not a cent, and he wanted to know why I had not sent them to him. ‘Neelers Peeler’s Conditions’ was the first story for which I got pay. It was published in the Century, over the signature of Philemon Perch. Dr. Holland told Mr. Gilder to tell that man to write under his own name, adding that he himself had made a mistake in writing under a pseudonym. Sydney Lanier urged me to write, and said if I would do so he would get the matter in print for me. So he took ‘Neelers Peeler’s Conditions,’ and it brought me eighty dollars. I was surprised that my stories were considered of any value. I withdrew from teaching about six years ago, and since that time have devoted myself to authorship. I have never put a word in my book that I have not heard the people use, and very few that I have not used myself. Powelton, Ga., is my Dukesborough. I was born fourteen miles from there.

“Of the female characters that I have created, Miss Doolana Lines was my favorite, while Mr. Bill Williams is my favorite among the male characters. I started Doolana to make her mean and stingy like her father, but I hadn’t written a page before she wrenched herself out of my hands. She said to me, ‘I am a woman, and you shall not make me mean.’ These stories are all of Georgia as it was before the war. In the hill country the institution of slavery was very different from what it was in the rice region or near the coast. Do you know the Georgia negro has five times the sense of the South Carolina negro? Why? Because he has always been near his master, and their relations are closer. My father’s negroes loved him, and he loved them, and if a negro child died upon the place my mother wept for it. Some time ago I went to the old place, and an old negro came eight miles, walked all the way, to see me.

“He got to the house before five o’clock in the morning, and opened the shutters while I was asleep. With a cry he rushed into the room. ‘Oh, Massa Dick.’ We cried in each other’s arms. We had been boys together. One of my slaves is now a bishop—Bishop Lucius Holsey, one of the most eloquent men in Georgia.”

These charming bits of autobiography show us the sterling nature of Malcolm Johnston, a nature at once cheerful, kind and loving. It is the object of such natures, in the pessimistic wayfares of life, to make friends, illuminating them with sunshine and tickling them with laughter.