364 
f^OREST AND STMfiAM. 
the oars as they dip in the limpid waves, the whispering 
of the leaves, the curling smoke of the camp-fires, the 
stillness of the woods, that pervades all like the wooings 
of a pure and gentle spirit. 
"These are some of the reasons that sportsmen can 
adduce to prove that man and nature are akin." In the 
stillness of the vast forest one seems nearer to his Creator 
than in the busj^ streets of the city; one feels his littleness; 
he sees how the Creator in his mysterious ways provides 
for all of these, his children, and loses not sight of any. 
It puts one in a frame of mind to be at peace with all 
the world. The nerve-racking race for the almighty dol- 
lar is off for a while. There is surcease from the demands 
of fashion. You come back from the woods a better man 
morally and physically. There is a spring m your step, a 
tan on your cheek, a sparkle in your eye that none of the 
much-advertised patent medicines nor your doctor's pre- 
scriptions can give you. A week in the woods beats a 
month at the popular watering places. The more of 
nature's tonic you take the less need you have for the 
M. D. C. L. Bradley. 
Tennessee, 
The Origin of Dixie. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
I have been greatly interested in the statements of Mr. 
Harris and Mr. Mather about the production of Dixie 
by Dan Emmett in 1859. 
There can be no doubt that he brought out the song 
with Bryant's minstrels in that year; but was not the 
song built upon something older, perhaps even antedat- 
ing "Coal-Black Rose" and "Old Zip - Coon"? The 
name "Dixie's Land" was certainly known to Mr. 
Mather in 1840. And I have some personal recollections 
which will scarcely go on all fours with any other sup- 
position. First, I seem to remember the verses about 
"Old Mistress Married Will the Weaver," and "Simmon 
Seed and Sandy Bottom" as in an old song book tliat 
in the forties I much preferred to Milton, which, at the 
same time, we parsed at school. Next, I have a very 
clear recollection of the public performance which gave 
Dixie its vogue just at the time when secession grew into 
an actual issue, and thus accidentally led to its adoption 
as the Southern national air. It certainly was not the 
performance by Bryant's minstrels in 1859, but it was 
its introduction into a play called the "Japanese Em- 
bassadors," brought out at one of thq leading theaters on 
Broadway about June, i860. 
In this play a bogus Japanese "Embassy is requested 
to sing a Japanese song, and they sing Dixie. I hap- 
pened to come to New York about this time, and was 
much with a relative, then living there, who was much 
older, and who was himself the greatest amateur on 
the violin I have ever met and with the most extensive 
repertoire. He certainly took me to see the Japanese 
Embassador expressly to hear Dixie, which he evidently 
thought the gem of the play; and my recollection of the 
matter is that the very cream of the joke lay in the fact 
that Dixie was such an old, old song. I think I can re- 
member his saying that he had known it very many 
years before. 
Yet I know that recollections of forty years are not 
infallible upon points no more exciting and important 
than the age of a song or the book in which it was first 
seen, and I am prepared to admit my memory at fault 
if definite evidence can be produced. And it seems to 
me that the evidence of the person who wrote the play 
of the Japanese Embassador ought to settle it. He will 
probably know whether he borrowed a recent produc- 
tion of Bryant's minstrels, or whether he revived a very 
old song. Surely some reader of Forest and Stream 
in New York city can get access to theatrical records 
and find who wrote the Japanese Embassador and who 
played in it, and can perhaps run this question down 
The difficulty of doing so will increase every year, and 
it ought to be done soon. 
I think the old slave holder near New York, whose 
name is perpetuated, was not named Dixie, but Dix. 
His land naturally was Dix's land, regardless of the spell- 
It was this play bevond all doubt which suddenly and 
quickly started all New York city Dixie-mad. Surely 
many others besides myself must remember the play and 
the quickly following popularity of the tune. Fyom the 
city it spread everywhere like a conflagration. On Aug. 
10 I sailed for California and Oregon by the Isthmus. 
Dixie had gone but a steamer or two ahead of me and it 
became a regular joke with the passengers to hear it 
whistling, playing and singing at Aspmall, Fanaraa, 
Acapulco, San Francisco, Portland and even at Victoria. 
It struck the South in the fervor of the politics which 
led up to secession, and by chance the spirited air was 
already married in the chorus to words which exactly 
suited the temper of the people. No Southern poet or 
orator with a month to try in could have produced 
words to fit and express the burning sentinient of those 
days all through the South half as well as the accidental 
lines ' 
"In Dixie's Land I'll take my stand 
To live and die in Dixie." 
Those two lines of the chorus were the whole of the 
song to the South. All the rest was mere frame to the 
picture, and cut no figure, except perhaps the single 
"Dixie's land is a land of cotton," 
which identified the locality. Ambitious poets in plenty 
ofifered new and pariotic verses, but no one would have 
them, and "Will the Weaver" still holds the fort. Nat- 
urally the air became a favorite on all special political 
occasions, and having been given a prominent place at 
the inauguration of President Davis m Montgomery, it 
was afterward always considered as the national air 
of the South. _ , , „ . ^ 
Whoever wrote the "Japanese Embassadors is the 
party responsible. But for him it might have been 
"Bonnie blue flag" or most any other old tune, and 
the chorus is what did the business. ^^^^ ^^^^^^^ 
More about the Great Eye Theory. 
Or the Eye Theory of Greatoess. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Yours in reference to Mr. Kephart's statement that "the 
eyes of a man and the hog are the only ones which do 
not shine in the dark," and my statement that "the eye of 
an animal subjected to a certain light dilates and mag- 
nifies the terror in the inspiring object," and inquiring 
if "the university extension lecturers, the presumed source 
of our respective propositions, said anything about the 
dilation of the pupil of the eye of the fisherman in his 
long, lingering gaze upon the big on^ that gets away," 
came duly to hand. 
Three inspiring questions are presented for reply. First, 
where did Mr. Kephart get his information? Second, 
can't a fellow contrive a way to cast discredit, doubt and 
contumely upon the discoveries of a rival investigator? 
Third, about the eye of the fisherman. 
With the system born of a philosophic mind, I_ take up 
the last question first. Your happy suggestion is, I be- 
lieve, the first rational explanation of this phenomenon in 
the spiritual world. Here were men of renowned pro- 
bity in all ages obviously fibbing scandalously about the 
size of the fish that broke the leader or tore out the hook, 
and, until you spoke, the world could only look upon the 
spectacle as a psychic myster)-, and upon you, their 
prophet, as, so to speak, the father of liars! In the light 
of our joint discovery the veil of suspicion is lifted from 
the fishermen, your people, and, incidentally, though re- 
luctantly, from yourself. Henceforth we stand forth upon 
a probative equality with money changers, Lizzie boys 
and all other benighted creatures who do not fish. It 
only remains for some of the mere painstaking drudges 
of science (Kephart will do) to accurately determine the 
degree of dilation. Supplied with this information, which 
may appropriately be called "Sir Horace Kephart's Bi- 
Visual Theorem," proper deduction may be made of the 
optical illusion, either by the fisherman on the spot or by 
the man with the blue pencil in the Forest and Stream 
office. For a while it might be better to leave this to be 
done at the Forest and Stream end, until the fishermen 
and the people become used to the discovery and faith is 
restored. 
I now take up the first two question, as to Mr. Kep- 
hart's discovery. Let us first examine his method of 
reasoning in arriving at the result announced. In saying 
that the eyes of man and the hog do not shine at night, 
is it not clear that if he arrived at the discovery as to the 
one kind of eyes by scientific experiment, he reached the 
conclusion as to the eyes of the other animal by analogy? 
Wherein does this analogy consist? What subtle process 
of thought — what range of experience, either of his fel- 
low creatures or of the other creatures — prompted or sug- 
gested this? The Rev. Sam Jones alleges a distinct line 
of demarkation between the two. He says that while a 
hog, when he grabs an ear of corn, will shell some of it 
for the chickens as he runs ofif, man does not shell any; 
he takes it all. 
As to any element of scientific investigation which may 
have entered into the supposed discovery, I wish to ask 
Mr. Kephart in all candor whether he did not pursue 
such investigations in a swamp down in Arkansas; and if 
so, whether the hog in mind was hot on the ground, and 
the scientist astride a limb of a tree at an altitude deter- 
mined with scientific accuracy and attained with the fierce 
zeal of the enthusiastic searcher after truth? If so, we 
have in the point of view thus disclosed a possible solu- 
tion of the whole question. The eyes shine, when they 
do shine, in terror; but was that hog in terror when it 
ran him up that sapling? Surely not. He was doing it 
for pure sport, and the mind can easily picture the two 
of them, Mr. Kephart as above described, and the hog 
witli his front feet scratching the bark, and see which is 
having fun and which is only having a little vacation. 
Suppose the conditions were reversed, and that Mr. Kep- 
hart had chased the hog up the tree; would not he have 
had the laugh on the hog? And would he have had any 
cause for anger? 
It appears, therefore, from whatever standpoint we as- 
sume the discovery to have emanated, there is something 
to be said in opposition to it. Of course Mr. Kephart can 
come back at me and tear my discovery to pieces, or try 
to; but I really do not see how he can do so. The beauty 
about my assertion is that it has the inherent perfection 
of exact scientific discovery. It cannot be disproved; at 
least only by the animals themselves, and they, so far as 
I have heard, are on the side of the affirmative. 
George Kennedy, 
A second edition of the April number of the Game Laws in 
Brief and Woodcraft Magazine is now printing and will be ready 
immediately. 
That Boy. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
My friend the Adirondack boy has got a camera — one 
of the old film style — which knocked around the house 
for years unused, and just the kind for a lad to monkey 
with and fit up for plates as this one was, if he has that 
turn of mind. I told him he could take it on one con- 
dition; that he send me a picture once in a while. Oc- 
casionally he remembers, and his letters, when they stroll 
down this way, contain a photograph or two. One of 
these came last week, and possibly you and your readers 
may be interested to see exactly what a backwoods boy, of 
average pert in spirits, looks like. He tore ofif the sides 
of the picture, so there is no telling what was there, but 
it does not matter. This boy is a fair hunter, fisherman 
and all-round woodsman. He still-hunts the varying 
hare in winter with success, and is quick to capture trout 
in brook, pond or creek. His school work is in due pro- 
portion. The letter that accompanied the picture runs 
in part as follows: 
"Shame has driven rne to write. I am no good, or I 
would have written long ago. Better late than never (bet- 
ter never late, though) so I'll write a line for luck. We 
are in for a week's vacation — Teachers' Institute and all 
its glory. Every teacher in Jefiferson county gathers here 
and every pupil breathes freer. The kids and girls have 
got to take them to their boarding houses (not I this 
time — some other). 
"The leaves are just peeping out of their buds and the 
robins and other birds are carrying grass and stuff for 
their nests. It is well to have it spring again. I've killed 
a couple of woodchucks so far, and some muskrats. 
Trapped two dollar an' a half mink above the trestle. I 
took a treble fish hook, small size, baited it with raw 
beef, strung out like a worm, and poured fish oil on it. 
Fixed the spring pole so it lifted down instead of up. 
That drowned the minks quick. I wanted to catch some 
skunks, too, only I'm afraid the school teachers and trus- 
tees and all the folks wouldn't like it. 
"Say, don't tell my folks, because they would worry; 
but three or four weeks ago, while Clarence Crabb and I 
were trying to go up under the trestle to the traps, the 
nose of the boat went out behind the big rock there, 
caught the current and flopped us over at a hit-in-the- 
head gait. Of course we had to swim from the middle of 
the river to shore. There were cakes of ice floating 
along, and where I crawled out I dug my fingers into a 
THAT BOY. 
snowbank. I wouldn't have missed the fun for anything. 
All the damage was a lost chair and shrunk suits of 
clothes. It wasn't very cold. 
"Gene Farnham and I went to the Plains, where I got 
my wildcat a year ago, after arbutus, on last Sunday. We 
got grape baskets full of the little sweet sweeters. 
"You know how they grow — way down under the 
leaves, with the moles and worms — but look like stars in 
bunches when you dig them up. Wake robins are begin- 
ning to be out in full bloom, and hepaticas and spring 
beauties are all over in the shaded woods. Of course there 
are ponds of bluets forming all over along the river flats. 
Some of the boys and girls are planting beds of pansies 
so they can have button-hole bouquets, and be regular 
dudes. I guess I'd need several bouquets. 
"Now, say. It is most time for bass fishing, and I'm 
going to try my luck. I wish you'd sort of see about 
some tackle, of which I haven't any to speak of — actually 
a piece of chalk-line, and hooks 3in. long. Think of that 
for fish weighing a pound!" 
With camera, rod and guns, boats, school and efferves- 
cent spirits and chums, what can't a boy do? 
Raymond S. Spears. 
New York Citv. 
The Old Desk. 
It's very old, and very shabby; and it's all inked up 
with spilled and spattered ink, and there are here and 
there dabs of mucilage from a knocked-over bottle; and 
in the center, on one edge, is the gap where some cheer- 
ful friend whiled away the minutes by whittling at the 
wood, to discover whether it was solid or veneer. He 
found out, but has never had another chance to gouge 
this particular desk. 
Many letters come to the old desk, best of all those that 
gossip of the field and the forest and the waters. If one 
were privileged to look over the shoulder of the man who 
sits at the desk, he would find in these letters an open 
book of nature and human nature — a combination that is 
• oi never failing, never monotonous, never ending interest. 
Let us thus read some of the letters. 
The Comfadery of the Field. 
Plow strong it is and all pervading many of us have 
found by experience. There is a testimony to it, in a 
letter from an Ohio correspondent: "I am sick, as I 
wrote you before. Last fall I went out on a camp hunt in 
hope of being benefited, and I was. My principal occu- 
pation was to sit on a log; and I found it a great art 
to do it well. I was out four weeks, and got one shot at a 
deer and killed it — first and only one of my life. I find 
the heart of a sportsman always open to a fellow, especial- 
ly if the fellow is sick. Many a time have the tears 
come to my eyes, caused by offers of help to better sport 
by men who were strangers, but brother sportsmen after 
all." 
Earth Scitlpture. 
The Putnams have recently published a work written 
by Professor Geike on "Earth Sculpture, or the Origin 
of Land Forms," in which is described the agency of 
water in its various forms, and other agencies in fashion- 
ing the earth's surface into the many forms we see about 
us, mountain and hill, plain and valley, river courses and 
shore lines, in the larger aspect; and the thousand and 
one varied details which present themselves on closer 
view. This branch of geology is one well worth our 
attention, for with some knowledge even slight of the 
general principles, we may find abundant opportunity to 
study out their appHcations in particular instances, and 
thus to discover the secrets of those processes hy which 
the physical characteristics of the country we are in have 
been produced. The more the sportsman — shooter or 
angler—knows of geology, botany, ornithology, the richer 
is the store of entertainment and enjoyment opened to 
him in his outings. 
But the man at the desk has been reminded of Profes- 
sor Geike's books by this part of a letter which has come 
to the desk from Coahoma. As Forest and Stream 
readers may remember, Coahoma holds the important- 
position of chief engineer in charge of one of the Missis- 
sippi River levee districts; and what he knows about the 
earth sculpturing by the Father of Waters would fill a 
book, and it would be a book we would all like to read. 
Here'is the letter; he writes from Clarksdale, Miss., under 
date of April 27: _ . - - 
