[Review of The Conjure Woman]

Taking it either for its genuine flavor of the South, its rich reminiscence of the golden time before the war and its raciness of the soil, or merely for the subtle and delicious humor of it, "the Conjure Woman," by Charles W. Chestnutt, may be depended upon by any reader of a catholic taste for a period of rare enjoyment. A Northerner grafted upon the newer South, his sympathetic and impressionable wife and "Uncle Julius" are the only people on the stage. Out of the depths of the cunning old negro's memory and imagination comes a flood of "conjure" lore and of weird and wonderful romance, full of "goophering," which is a most diabolical species of witchcraft, of evil obsessions and of enchantments of black magic. The humor lies in the Northern man's discoveries of practical motive in the tales of the wily old "Uncle Julius." The sketches are done with admirable taste and skill. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.; price $1.25.)