[Review of The Conjure Woman]

For sheer delight in the supernatural as practiced by and exercised upon the plantation negro, you may be commended to "The Conjure Woman," by Charles W. Chesnutt. There are seven stories full of marvelous things, quaint things, comic things, told by the venerable "Ole Julius Mcadoo, who 'uz bawn an' rais' on dis yer same plantation." Mr. Chesnutt has the gift of story-telling, and with that a shrewd humor, an eye for comic effects, an unfaltering artisticc sense. The dialect need not be feared; it is easily read; Mr. Chesnutt's mastry of language as a means and not an end is, indeed, not the least of his literary talents. Here is a book that will entertain, and, if you have a mind for it, that will also enlighten you by the way about certain phases of the plantation life of the Old South. Mr. Chesnutt knows his ground well, and his characters /484/ are to the manner born. James MacArthur