brains, add to the general store old songs or stories or beliefs learned in childhood by the cabin fireside, and, though driven into the background by subsequent education, still to be recalled when really needed. Not long ago two members of the Society had the good fortune to obtain through some of the officers of the school a collection of about one hundred and fifty letters, written some twenty years ago for General Armstrong by the students, all on the subject of conjure doctors. After careful study and assortment, the material contained in them was embodied in two papers containing a considerable amount of novel and, we believe, authentic information about the methods of these practitioners, and their influence over their dupes.
Very early in the history of the Society we took up for careful study the "hag stories" that are found, vouched for with the most solemn asseverations, in every negro cabin. As story after story came in, the characteristics of this embodied nightmare came more clearly into view, until she stood out as an Afro-American vampire, a compound of European and African superstition, adding a new horror to existence by her stealthy fluid ways, the dire results of her nightly visits, and the terrible thought that she may be—indeed, in all probability is—your next-door neighbor.
On another occasion, a member of the Society who had in early childhood attended many night meetings in the little log meeting-houses in one of the most thickly-wooded counties of Virginia, was able to reproduce verbatim, from his own memory, several of the sermons and prayers of the night-hawks, as the night preachers were called. This report was rendered possible by the fact that the same sermons and prayers are used over and over by the same preacher, and that they are intoned in such a way as to remain in the memory like a song. Out of this recital grew up an interesting discussion of religious observances in general,—a discussion which brought out much that will surely help later in the understanding of the origin and place of the religious music of the negro.
In the study of the negro music, we have as yet done comparatively little. For this delay in beginning what we are convinced will prove one of the most interesting and valuable departments of our work, we have had two reasons. One of these reasons is, that until recently we have had no professional musician in our club, and another is the extreme difficulty of securing a negro song alive, as you may say. The Hampton School has already done much work in the line of collecting, arranging for our system of musical notation, and publishing, the negro spirituals, but that is not the kind of work that our Society wishes to do. Our desire is, not to obtain any song in a more or less changed or mangled condition, as you surely do
