Mrs. Mary Fairfax Childs, maker of dialect verse, was born at Lexington, Kentucky, May 25, 1846. She is the daughter of the Rev. Edward Fairfax Berkley (1813-1897), who was rector of Christ Church, Lexington, for nineteen years. Dr. Berkley baptized Henry Clay, in 1847, and buried him five years later. Miss Berkley was a pupil at the Misses Jackson's Seminary for young ladies until her thirteenth year, or, in 1858, when her father accepted a call to St. Louis, in which city he labored for the following forty years. In St. Louis, she continued her studies at a private school for girls, when she left prior to her graduation in order to devote herself more especially to music, Latin, and French. Miss Berkley was married, in 1870, to William Ward Childs, a returned Confederate soldier; and in 1884 they removed to Clinton, Missouri, where they resided for seven years, when business called them to New York, their home until Mr. Child's death in 1911. Mrs. Childs's life in New York was a very busy one. She was prominent in several social and literary groups; and for many years she was corresponding secretary of the New York Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Her first poem that attracted wide attention was entitled De Namin' ob de Twins, which originally appeared in The Century Magazine for December, 1903. It was the second in a group of Eleven Negro Songs, written by Joel Chandler Harris, Grace MacGowan Cooke, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, and one or two other poets. That Mrs. Childs's masterpiece was the flower of the flock admits of little question: it is one of the best negro dialect poems yet written by a Southern woman. Exactly a year later the same periodical published her A Christmas Warning, with the well-known refrain, Roos' high, chicken—roos' high. These, with many others, were brought together in an attractive volume, entitled De Namin' ob de Twins, and Other Sketches from the Cotton Land (New York, 1908). This collection is highly esteemed by that rather small company of lovers of dialect verse. Mrs. Childs's poem, The Boys Who Wore the Gray, has been printed, and is well-known throughout the South. She has recently completed another collection of sketches, called Absolute Monarchy, which will appear in 1913. At the present time Mrs. Childs is historian of the Society of Kentucky Women of New York, although she is residing at Kirkwood, Missouri, near St. Louis.

Bibliography. Letters from Mrs. Childs to the present writer; The Century Magazine (January, 1906).

DE NAMIN' OB DE TWINS[32]

[From De Namin' ob de Twins, and Other Sketches from the Cotton Land (New York, 1908)]