of the Indian conjurer.  In the old plantation days they flourished vigorously, though discouraged by the “great house,” and their potency was well established among the blacks and the poorer whites.  Education, however, has thrown the ban of disrepute upon witchcraft and conjuration.  The stern frown of the preacher, who looks upon superstition as the ally of the Evil One; the scornful sneer of the teacher, who sees in it a part of the livery of bondage, have driven this quaint combination of ancestral traditions to the remote chimney corners of old black aunties, from which it is difficult for the stranger to unearth them.  Mr. Harris, in his Uncle Remus stories, has, with fine literary discrimination, collected and put into pleasing and enduring form, the plantation stories which dealt with animal lore, but so little attention has been paid to those dealing with so-called conjuration, that they seem in a fair way to disappear, without leaving a trace behind.  The loss may not be very great, but these vanishing traditions might furnish valuable data for the sociologist, in the future study of racial development.  In writing, a few years ago, the volume entitled The Conjure Woman, I suspect that I was more influenced by the literary value of the material than by its sociological bearing, and therefore took, or thought I did, considerable liberty with my subject.  Imagination, however, can only act upon data—­one must have somewhere in his consciousness the ideas which he puts together to form a connected whole.  Creative talent, of whatever grade, is, in the last analysis, only the power of rearrangement—­there is nothing new under the sun.  I was the more firmly impressed with this thought after I had interviewed half a dozen old women, and a genuine “conjure doctor;” for I discovered that the brilliant touches, due, I had thought, to my own imagination, were after all but dormant ideas, lodged in my childish mind by old Aunt This and old Uncle That, and awaiting only the spur of imagination to bring them again to the surface.  For instance, in the story, “Hot-foot Hannibal,” there figures a conjure doll with pepper feet.  Those pepper feet I regarded as peculiarly my own, a purely original creation.  I heard, only the other day, in North Carolina, of the consternation struck to the heart of a certain dark individual, upon finding upon his doorstep a rabbit’s foot—­a good omen in itself perhaps—­to which a malign influence had been imparted by tying to one end of it, in the form of a cross, two small pods of red pepper!

Most of the delusions connected with this belief in conjuration grow out of mere lack of enlightenment.  As primeval men saw a personality behind every natural phenomenon, and found a god or a devil in wind, rain, and hail, in lightning, and in storm, so the untaught man or woman who is assailed by an unusual ache or pain, some strenuous symptom of serious physical disorder, is prompt to accept the suggestion, which tradition approves, that some evil influence is behind his discomfort; and what more natural than to conclude that some rival in business or in love has set this force in motion?