"People come and looked at him, but they could n't do any good, and, after so long a time, the negroes dug the stump up and put it in a wagon with Mr. Watkins and carried 'em both home. There they was, Mr. Watkins and the stump. Then when the time come to bury Mr. Watkins, they had to bury the stump with him. I won't blame you if you don't believe all this, but my grandmother vowed that her grandmother saw Mr. Watkins on the stump, and if you could hear her tell it you 'd feel like every word of it was so, and you 'd never forget it as long as you lived."
This is the story the rough outline of which has caused such a commotion among the folk-lore students and scholars in India, in Bombay and Jahore. There are symptoms that the controversy is to be transferred, in part at least, to these shores, and I feel it to be due to all concerned that a true version of the story of the late Mr. Watkins of Georgia, together with all the facts in the case, should be laid before the public. No one can regret more than I do that any act or word of mine, however well intended, should have provoked, even indirectly, a controversy that has
